UPDATE: Victims and killer identified (updated throughout) . . .
Reports of a family fight and gunshots in the 9900 block of
Dandelion Circle in Fountain Valley around 6 p.m. Friday led police to a home on a cul de sac where they found a woman dead in the driveway.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Three more gunshots rang out from inside the home, prompting the responding officers to force their way inside and discover the bodies of a 40-year-old man and 8-year-old girl who'd been shot to death.
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The home owner and an adult female relative were hiding in the bathroom during the rampage. The woman of the home and two 15-year-old male relatives had run out the front door before the shooting indoors.
No identities have been released, but here is what police have been able to piece together:
Randall Yancey, 40, who was involved in a custody dispute with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Theresa Yancey, had waited outside until the 46-year-old mother drove up. After she pulled up and got out of the car with her daughter, Madison Yancey, 8, Randall confronted Theresa and an argument began. Relatives came out of the home and pulled Madison inside.
Randall shot Theresa, leading the relatives to call 9-1-1. Randall then tried to force his way into the home, kicking a hole through the front door. He eventually made his way in by shooting a hole through a side window. That's when the woman of the house and the 15-year-olds bolted out of the front door.
Randall shot and killed Madison and then himself.
Police say the dead woman lived with her daughter in the home, which is owned by her parents. It's just off Brookhurst Street, across from Mile Square Park.
The Orange County Register reports:
Theresa Yancey filed a petition to dissolve the couple's marriage
Oct. 4, according to Orange County Superior Court records. Each of the
parents filed a declaration for child custody, Theresa on Oct. 4 and
Randall on Oct. 25, records show.No
family court hearings had been scheduled. The last court action taken
before the shootings was a summons filed by Theresa Yancey on Oct. 27,
records show.
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.