The Orange County District Attorney's office announced the charges in a second case involving an elderly man who shot his longtime wife.
Kenneth Joseph Leake, 75, Costa Mesa, is charged with one felony count of attempted murder and one felony count of elder abuse for allegedly shooting his 72-year-old bride of 50 years Doris Leake four times in the head and once in the wrist while she was napping.
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Leake also faces sentencing enhancements for the personal use of a firearm, personal use of a deadly weapon, personal discharge of a firearm, personally inflicting great bodily injury, and personally inflicting great bodily injury to an elder.
If convicted, he could get 60 years to life in state prison. Leake is being held on $1 million bail and is scheduled for a continued arraignment Oct. 16 at Harbor Justice Center, Newport Beach.
Police got a call around 12:21 p.m. Thursday of a man yelling in front of his home in the 2000 block of Orange Avenue in Costa Mesa. Arriving officers discovered there may also have been a possible shooting victim. Inside the home, they discovered the victim with a gunshot wound to her head. Paramedics were called and she was taken to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana to be treated. She is expected to survive.
According to the OCDA account of the incident, Kenneth Leake fired five shots from a .32 caliber handgun into his wife while she was napping. He arrested Leake outside his home.
Police say the .32 caliber handgun was still on the dining room table.
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.