Suspect in attack is found dead
A man accused of hitting ex-fiancee, her mom with a hammer died in a forest crash.
A Glendale man suspected of viciously attacking his former fiancée and her mother with a hammer in July was found dead last month after crashing his car in the Angeles National Forest, authorities said Tuesday.
A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department helicopter spotted the wreckage of Brian Cruz’s pickup truck Sept. 26 several hundred feet down an embankment near Big Tujunga Canyon Road and Angeles Forest Highway.
Inside the vehicle was a severely decomposed body, said Glendale Police Sgt. Dan Suttles.
“We suspected it was Cruz, but the state of decomposition was so much that we weren’t able to readily identify him,” he said.
The body was found the day after authorities offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to his arrest, thinking he had f led to Mexico.
Authorities weren’t sure it was Cruz until Oct. 11, when the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office confirmed it was him.
Suttles said it is unknown what caused Cruz to go down the embankment because any evidence of what happened was long gone by the time his vehicle was found.
“We don’t know if he wasn’t paying attention while driving or if it was a suicide,” he said. “It’s been such a long time that it’s hard to find evidence of his car braking as there are no tire marks on the road.”
No weapons or abnormal injuries were found by authorities to indicate he died from something other than the crash, Suttles added.
Authorities said he died right after he attacked his former fiancée and her mother with a hammer July 19 in the Glendale home they shared.
The former fiancée suffered skull fractures and an amputated finger in the attack.
It’s unknown what sparked the attack.
Suttles said Cruz had family in the Palmdale area and it’s believed he was on his way there when the crash occurred.
When the former fiancée was informed of Cruz’s death, Suttles said, “there was no discussion of satisfaction” in what happened.
“This is just a tragic ending to a tragic event,” he said.
Nguyen writes for Times Community News.