An investigation is underway after a man allegedly killed his wife in Garden Grove while their two children were home, and was later involved in a shooting hours away in San Joaquin County.
Garden Grove police responded to a home on the 11500 block of Morgan Lane Thursday morning after a child called 911 to report that her mother was in need of help.
Officers arrived on scene and entered the home where they found 37-year-old Crystal Gonzalez dead from undisclosed injuries.
Miguel Lopez, 35, the woman’s husband and the father of two juveniles in the home, was identified as the suspect but was nowhere to be found, the Garden Grove Police Department said.
The children were unharmed and unaware of what happened, police said. They were removed from the home and efforts are underway to connect them with close family members.
The family was staying in the Garden Grove home but are residents of Lodi in the Central Valley, police said.
Shortly after police began searching for Lopez, they were informed that his vehicle had been located in Stockton and local police were on the scene.
Investigators have since learned that Lopez left the Orange County home early Thursday morning, and is believed to have driven more than 350 miles north to Stockton where he was involved in a shooting.
Garden Grove police did not say if he had been apprehended, instead saying that no additional information will be released in an effort to “protect the integrity of the investigation.”
Anyone with information related to the local homicide investigation is urged to contact GGPD Detective Rogers at 714-741-5413.
This is the second major homicide involving family members in Garden Grove this week.
On Monday, three men, all related, were involved in an altercation that became violent and resulted in one man being shot to death and a second being hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
The suspect in that shooting has been arrested.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
