Drifters accused of two murders
Canadian backpacker was one of victims; robbery cited as motive
They were a trio of drifters, young adults with no fixed address.
She was living her dream, putting aside law school in Quebec, so she could backpack solo along the West Coast.
Last weekend, police say, their lives intersected in the most violent way in San Francisco’s famed Golden Gate Park.
According to police, the body of 23-year-old Audrey Carey was found face down Saturday morning in the park. She had been shot in the head.
The bloodshed did not stop there.
Police believe suspects Morrison Haze Lampley, 23, Sean Michael Angold, 24, and Lila Scott Alligood, 18, also gunned down Steve Carter, 67, a popular yoga teacher in Marin County, Calif., two days later while he walked his dog on a hiking trail 30 kilometres north of San Francisco. He was still holding the leash of his wounded dog when his body was discovered.
A device on Carter’s Volkswagen Jetta enabled police to track the suspects to Portland, Ore., where they were arrested midweek outside a soup kitchen.
Robbery appears to have been the motive in both killings, San Francisco police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said Friday.
“It appears that we have three people that all identify as lost souls,” Marin County sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Doug Pittman told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Police said Friday the killing spree seems to have started when the trio stole a handgun from a parked vehicle.
It is alleged they used the gun to shoot Carey either late Oct. 2 or early Oct. 3.
Carey, who was from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., needed to recharge after dropping out from law studies at the University of Sherbrooke, friend Sandy Picard told the Journal de Montreal. She had contemplated backpacking in Europe but decided on California instead.
She had been camping out at Golden Gate Park, where the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival had got underway a week ago, and was in email contact with her family up until her death, police said.
Two days later, on Monday evening, police believe the same gun was used on Carter as he hiked a popular trail in the Loma Alta Open Space Reserve with his Doberman pinscher.
Carter and his wife, Lokita, both Tantra yoga instructors, had moved to Costa Rica last December to live a simpler life but returned to the United States this past summer for treatment for her breast cancer,
On Wednesday, police tracked the trio to a dining hall at Portland’s St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church.
A man camped out in his van nearby told the newspaper one of the suspects attempted to trade the Volkswagen for methamphetamine.
Portland police homicide detectives, assisted by members of the Special Emergency Reaction Team, arrested the trio outside the church without incident, Sgt. Pete Simpson said.
A gun was recovered from the vehicle, police said.
Some of Carey’s personal property, including camping gear, was also found in the suspects’ possession, authorities said.
Two inspectors from the San Francisco police homicide squad flew to Portland to interview them. They had already been talking to Marin County sheriff’s investigators because of similarities between the two homicides, namely that both were shootings in wooded areas or parks.
California and Oregon media reports indicated that Lampley had multiple run-ins with the law in both states, including convictions for selling or receiving a stolen vehicle and possession of a controlled substance, and an arrest for carrying a sword.
Alligood’s Facebook page suggests she grew up in Hawaii and attended Honokaa High School. Her latest status update, from August, featured a photo of her smiling with the caption: “Spend a day surfing. I promise you’ll feel better.”
Meanwhile, family and friends went to social media to mourn the deaths of Carey and Carter.
Picard wrote a short tribute to Carey on Facebook, calling her “ma belle amie, ma precieuse amie” — my beautiful friend, my precious friend.
Lokita Carter went online to express her “tears of gratitude” for the support she had received.