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A 20-year-old man was charged with three counts of homicide and several other sentencing enhancements in reference to a lethal crime spree at 7-Eleven shops stretching from the Inland Empire into Orange County, making him eligible for the dying penalty.
Malik Donyae Patt, 20, and Jason Lamont Payne, 44, have been arrested Friday. The connection between the 2 males continues to be underneath investigation, however they’re neighbors in Los Angeles, in response to Orange County District Legal professional Todd Spitzer.
Patt was being held with out bail in Santa Ana jail. The fees in opposition to Patt embrace three counts of homicide, two counts of tried homicide, three counts of theft, one rely of carjacking, and several other enhancements for participating in a number of murders and using a firearm through the fee of those crimes.
“Malik Patt is a stone-cold serial killer. There is not any different approach to describe him,” Spitzer mentioned. “He executed harmless folks and he shot others, and his conduct and the crime spree he engaged in…is, I actually received chills up my very own backbone. It is chilling.”
Spitzer mentioned the communities the place every of those crimes befell have been paralyzed by worry {that a} last-minute go to right into a doughnut store or a handy retailer may very well be deadly.
“To see anyone who might kill somebody in chilly blood like that is simply unfathomable,” Spitzer mentioned.
Payne, who’s being held on $1 million bail, was taken to a Los Angeles-area hospital for therapy of minor accidents he sustained whereas being arrested by the ATF Orange County Violent Crime Job Power. He has been charged with three counts of theft and one rely of tried theft in reference to the Santa Ana, La Habra, and Brea crimes, and faces greater than 9 years in jail if sentenced as charged.
Each males are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.
Patt was recognized by police because the gunman behind a string of violent robberies at 7-Eleven shops that left two folks lifeless, and wounded a number of others. The crimes started simply after midnight on July 11, which occurred to be the comfort retailer chain’s annual 7-11 vacation, with a holdup in Ontario the place no pictures have been fired and nobody was injured. It was adopted about an hour-and-a-half later with a theft in Upland at a 7-Eleven retailer on Arrow Route.
Not even a half hour later, a buyer was shot within the head throughout a theft at a 7-Eleven in Riverside. The client stays in “dire situation,” Spitzer mentioned.
A doughnut store in Santa Ana was robbed simply after 3 a.m. Twenty minutes later, 24-year-old Matthew Rule of Santa Ana was shot and killed exterior the 7-Eleven on seventeenth Road. Rule had been on his approach to the shop to get his girlfriend a drink when he intervened on behalf of a homeless man who was being robbed.
At about 4:15 a.m., 40-year-old Matthew Hirsch was shot to dying whereas working on the 7-Eleven retailer on Lambert Street in Brea. A couple of half-hour later, Patt allegedly shot a person sitting in his car exterior one other 7-Eleven retailer in La Habra, then the shop clerk who got here out, however these individuals are anticipated to outlive.
Patt can be charged with carjacking an individual leaving his dwelling after the shootings, then later abandoning the stolen car.
Based mostly on retailer surveillance photographs, police linked the identical suspect to every of the robberies.
Patt can be being charged with the homicide of a homeless man within the North Hills space, close to a 7-Eleven retailer robbed on July 9. The shop was considered one of 4 that had been robbed within the North Hills space that day. No accidents have been reported in these robberies, however the suspect was armed with a handgun.
Spitzer mentioned any homicide trial will probably be held in a single county for all of the alleged crimes, and he would work with fellow prosecutors in Riverside and Los Angeles counties. Separate prices for the San Bernardino County robberies may also be filed in opposition to Patt, and investigators are nonetheless working to find out if the pair are behind a Fourth of July theft at a Yum Yum Donuts in unincorporated Whittier, and different unsolved crimes all through the area.
7-Eleven had supplied a $100,000 reward for info resulting in the arrest and conviction of a suspect within the robberies. It isn’t clear if anybody was eligible to assert the reward.
“We’re grateful that the Orange County District Legal professional has introduced native legislation enforcement has apprehended suspects associated to the latest violent incidents. we are going to proceed to completely help legislation enforcement with their investigation,” 7-Eleven mentioned in an announcement.
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