2 Found Slain in Irvine; Police Seeking Motive

The blood-splattered bodies of two men were found Tuesday afternoon in an Irvine condominium filled with natural gas, and investigators were trying to determine if they were the victims of a double homicide.

“We’re treating it as a homicide scene. We just don’t know if it’s a suicide-homicide or a double-homicide,” said Irvine Police Lt. Sam Allevato.

Such violence is a rarity in Irvine, a city that routinely rates among the safest in the nation. Tuesday’s deaths marked the first killings there this year, police said. Four homicides were recorded in the city of about 130,000 residents last year, but only one the year before.

“It’s certainly a shock. We’re such a bedroom community, and it’s such a sad situation,” Irvine Mayor Christina L. Shea said after Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. “It’s rare in our city, but it does happen. I just hope the best for the families.”

The bodies were discovered about 4:30 p.m. by a man who had arrived with his daughter for a private piano lesson, Allevato said. No one answered the doorbell, but the man smelled natural gas seeping from inside the house, he said.

The man, who declined to be interviewed, reached through a window to unlock the door, entered, discovered the piano teacher’s body at the bottom of a stairway and called police. Police later found the second body in a bedroom.

Police did not immediately release the identities of the victims. Neighbors said they did not know either man, and one neighbor said the home had been sold within the past year.

Allevato said police were delayed in entering the home because of the dense natural gas fumes, which he said came from appliances he declined to identify. He also declined to describe the scene inside the condo, other than to say both victims had blood on their torsos.

Investigators believed the wounds might have come from a knife but did not immediately find a weapon, Allevato said.

Police also said that outside the house they found a trail of blood that ended after about 40 feet.

The killings contrasted sharply with the subdued neighborhood of beige condominiums that line the Rancho San Joaquin Golf Course across University Drive from the William R. Mason Regional Park.

“It’s terrible,” said neighbor Ralph Williams, who came out of his home about 7 p.m. to find his cul de sac draped in yellow police tape and filled with uniformed officers. “It’s a heck of a thing to have happen.”

Also contributing to this report was Times correspondent Kristiane M. Ridgway.