A 20-year-old Los Angeles area man is accused of killing a juvenile girl he was in a relationship with after forcing his way into her residence.
Police responded to the residence in Arcadia, California, roughly 13 miles northwest of Los Angeles, at around 11 a.m. local time Thursday and found the victim dead from a gunshot wound, the Arcadia Police Department said in a release.
“We heard a woman screaming, and we thought like, ’Oh, are the neighbors just fighting?’ And then we heard the helicopters. We heard the cops. We came outside, and we saw the windows that were like blown out and shattered,” neighbor Daisy Valdez told KNBC-TV.
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The victim has been identified by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office as Mina Kurdian, 15, according to KCBS-TV.
The suspect, identified by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as 20-year-old Paul Anthony Cruz Jr., according to the Los Angeles Times, fled the scene to Pasadena, California, six miles northwest of Arcadia.
Pasadena spokesperson Lisa Derderian said that Mr. Cruz was found in the city with a self-inflicted gunshot wound at around 12:30 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Pasadena Police Department was trying to contact Mr. Cruz at the time he shot himself, the sheriff’s department told KCBS-TV.
“They tried to arrest him. They tried to get his attention, and before they reached out to him, he took a gun out and shot himself,” witness Edgar Perez told KNBC-TV.
The sheriff’s department said that as of Thursday night, Mr. Cruz remained in critical condition, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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