Update, December 20, 10:14 a.m.: UC Irvine criminology student Gregory Scott Turner, who was wanted for the attempted murder of his wife last week, was found dead in San Juan Capistrano Friday afternoon.
An autopsy report is pending, but it is believed the 33-year-old took his own life. He was discovered by campus police who tracked Turner through the GPS signal from his cell phone.
His wife, who was taken to a safe house after treatment at a hospital, has been identified as 32-year-old Ketra Batiste-Turner.
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Original Post, December 16, 8:40 a.m.: A 7-year-old girl called
9-1-1 Wednesday afternoon to report her father, in front of her and her
5-year-old sister, beat their mother to unconsciousness in their campus
apartment at UC Irvine.
A manhunt is now under way for Gregory Scott Turner.
Or, the 33-year-old criminology student's body.
Campus police believe Turner, who is wanted for attempted murder, may be suicidal.
They say he tried to strangle his wife during a violent confrontation in their Verano Place apartment before the emergency call was made around 2:20 p.m. Wednesday.
Turner was last seen driving a 2006 blue Chevy truck with the license plate 8P53538.
His daughters, who were not physically harmed during the attack, are now in protective custody while their mother is being treated at a local hospital.
Verano Place is the same UCI apartment complex where Brian Hughes Benedict is alleged to have chased his ex-wife Rebecca Clarke out of her unit on Sept. 13, 2009, before shooting her to death in the parking lot. Their 4-year-old son was strapped into a car seat in the lot at the time.
A 36-year-old grad student, Benedict now faces a murder trial for what is so far the only shooting death on campus.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.