Second Shooting Confirmed At Campground Where Father Of Two Tristan Beaudette Was Killed
Tristan Beaudette was killed in his tent in Malibu Creek State Park with his sleeping daughters.
Police have confirmed a second shooting at the California campground where Tristan Beaudette, a father of two, was killed in his tent with his sleeping daughters.
The second shooting at Malibu Creek State Park, in the Santa Monica Mountains, happened early Monday morning, according to CBS News. Deputies said a man's car was hit by a gunshot.
As for Beaudette's murder, deputies said they still don't know why he was killed or who did it. Beaudette's brother Dylan told Los Angeles station KCBS there were two holes in his brother's tent, one on the top and one on the side, but detectives haven't confirmed if the holes are from bullets.
Beaudette was shot in the upper torso around 4:45 a.m. Friday while he was asleep with his daughters, aged 2 and 4. The daughters were unharmed. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Beaudette was a scientist who worked in pharmaceuticals and was married to his high school sweetheart, Erica Wu. The family released a statement saying he was "happiest out in nature and spent every chance he could hiking, biking and camping with his family." They said their grief is "indescribable."
The park is about 30 miles west of Los Angeles and investigators said its 63 campsites were almost full on the morning of Beaudette's murder. Authorities were focusing on two particular campsites, 49 and 51, in the northern end of the camping space.
There have been a few unsolved shootings at the 8,000-acre park in the past few years.
Two years ago, a man named James Rogers was hiking on the Backbone Trail, just south of the park. He stopped and dozed in a hammock and was his with birdshot from a shotgun.
“I heard a loud bang and then felt a burning sensation in my arm and fell to the ground,” Rogers, who needed surgery to remove the pellets, told the Los Angeles Times. “Before I could look at my wound, I did a quick check of the perimeter and I saw nothing.”
The shooting was investigated but authorities never found a suspect. Rogers said he thinks he was shot at close range.
In January 2017, a woman named Meliss Tatangelo was camping at the park in her Honda. She heard a loud bang around 5 a.m. She later found a round from ammunition in the back of her car near where she'd been sleeping. She noted the incident on her Facebook page.
She said she thinks a shotgun was fired from about 20 feet away and that if the shot was only an inch higher, she'd have been hit while she slept.
The sheriff's office is investigating whether some of the unsolved shootings are connected to Beaudette's murder, but they say there is no evidence of that so far. They also couldn't estimate the total number of shootings in the area over the past few years, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The park was closed on Monday until further notice.
[Photo: Facebook]