An Orange County District Attorney's office statement on Wednesday's scheduled arraignment of Ahmad Siddiqi fills in some holes about the murder of Soraya Faroqi and her unborn child.
Currently, the Marine who spent several months in Afghanistan before the slaying faces a minimum sentence with a conviction of life in state prison without parole. The special circumstances charges filed against the 23-year-old could make him eligible for the death penalty.
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Faroqi, also 23, was a civilian interpreter with the Department
of Defense and had returned to Orange County from Afghanistan on Dec.
13. Siddiqi's former girlfriend was in the first trimester of her pregnancy.
Following his overseas deployment, and after spending some time at his home in Alexandri, Virginia, Siddiqi flew to Orange County for a Dec. 19 meeting with Faroqi in her friend's Westminster apartment. They were to talk about their former relationship.
The conversation obviously did not go well. Neighbors later told Westminster Police they heard loud arguing and saw Siddiqi, armed with a knife, chasing Faroqi through the apartment complex. According to prosecutors, he tackled her behind bushes in a carport, where he repeatedly stabbed her while Faroqi's friend screamed at him to stop.
Cops arrived to find Siddiqi and the dead body of a woman who had been stabbed repeatedly. He was arrested on suspicion of murdering her and, when prosecutors learned Faroqi was with child, a second murder count was added.
Siddiqi is scheduled to be arraigned in Santa Ana Wednesday morning on two felony counts of special
circumstances murder with sentencing enhancements for murdering multiple
victims, lying in wait, and the personal use of a deadly weapon. He is currently being held without bail.
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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.