San Juan Capistrano has gone 16 months without a murder.
Murders are pretty rare in our fair village, said Lt. John Meyer, chief of police services for the city. He said San Juan averages .69 murders a year.
“According to the records available to me, from January, 2000 to the present (over 13 years) we have had nine reported homicides in the city,” Meyer said.
To get to our average, the crimes are staggered, he said. The city doesn't have any one year with five and then multiple consecutive years without.
The longest stretch without an intentional killing was between July 2007 and mid-2010, Meyer said.
But local authorities didn’t find out about that case until a year later because the suspect allegedly hacked the victim’s email account and posed as him.
, is still pending.
The most “recent” killing occurred Dec. 1, 2011, the case of Robert Eugene Vasquez, whom deputies believe ambushed Bobby Ray Rainwater at the San Juan Mobile Estates and slaughtered him with a knife.
Vasquez’s trial is scheduled for May 24.
For the period during which Meyer has records, here are the murders in the last 13 ½ years:
2000 – 1
2001 – 1
2002 – 2
2003 – 1
2006 – 1
2007 – 1
2010 (Shin)
2011 (Vasquez)
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