Remarks by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas
Itzcoatl Ocampo Charges
January 17, 2012
Thank you all for coming. We have with us Anaheim, Brea/Yorba Linda, and Placentia Police Departments, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department William O’Leary Assistant, Special Agent in Charge, Los Angeles Field Office, FBI.
I would like to commend the Homeless Homicide Investigative Task Force involving these agencies for their tireless, swift work to gather the evidence on this case.
There are many members from the task force here today, and I would like to give them a round of applause for their tireless hard work for the last month.
I also want to commend the citizens whose brave actions led to the apprehension and filing of the charges against this defendant.
Today, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office filed four counts of special circumstances murder/ with allegations that there were multiple murders/ and that the murders were committed while lying in wait, and with the use of a deadly weapon.
If 23-year-old Itzcoatl Ocampo is convicted, he faces a minimum sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
These charges also mean Ocampo is eligible for the death penalty.
The investigation of this case is ongoing and we do not have all of the information to make that decision:
As is customary in all special circumstance cases other than mass shootings – I will be convening the Special Circumstances Committee at a later date to announce that decision.
There are going to be some members of the public who feel less sympathy for these victims because they were homeless/and some had criminal records.
Often, these types of victims are preyed upon because the perpetrator does not believe anyone would care about/ or miss them. I am proud to live in a community where we do care about the more vulnerable members of our community. We saw it in the Kelly Thomas case, and we see it here.
As this case was being investigated and the facts were coming to light, I became increasingly concerned about the viciousness of these attacks.