UPDATE, DEC. 19, 5:42 P.M.: Prentis John Hill was charged today with murder and a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a deadly weapon that could send him to state prison for 26 years to life, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s office.
Police say Hill is an artist who resided with his girlfriend Shannon Pearce Likens in an apartment complex that caters to artists along the busy retail area at 316 W. Fourth St., Santa Ana.
City News Service examined court filings from Likens’ ex-husband that indicated she had three children and a history of suicide attempts and drug and alcohol abuse. “In September 2013, James Robert Likens IV filed for a temporary restraining order against his then-estranged wife, in which he described a chaotic scene in which she tried to pull their toddler child from his arms, ultimately triggering a call to the police,” reads the CNS report. “He alleged that she had ‘a history of mental problems, and a problem with prescription pills,’ and had to be hospitalized for psychiatric reasons multiple times.”
The ex-spouse reportedly added in his court filing that her “current boyfriend sent a video of (Shannon Likens) showing her clearly impaired in the middle of the day and unable to care for herself, let alone three children.”
ORIGINAL POST, DEC. 18, 9:37 A.M.: The live-in boyfriend of a woman killed in her Santa Ana apartment Saturday has been arrested for her murder, according to police.
Prentis John Hill, 39, was taken into custody after walking into the emergency room at College Hospital in Costa Mesa around 7 p.m. Saturday, states a Santa Ana Police Department advisory.
Just before noon the same day, Orange County Fire Authority paramedics pronounced Shannon Pearce Linkens, Hill’s 38-year-old girlfriend, deceased, police say.
The fire personnel had been called to apartment unit 209 at 316 W. Fourth St. by police, who had begun live-saving measures on the unresponsive woman.
Dispatch had received a call around 11:30 a.m. about a domestic violence incident at the address, according to police, whose officers arrived to find the door closed and no one answering when they knocked.
“Neighboring tenants reported a violent altercation and that the male suspect fled the building prior to the arrival of police,” states the advisory. “Officers entered the apartment and found an adult female on the floor bleeding, with trauma to her body.”
After Hill was arrested, he was booked into the Santa Ana Jail on suspicion of homicide.
Detectives are still working the case and request anyone with information on the case to call the SAPD Homicide Section at 714.245.8390. Orange County Crime Stoppers collects anonymous tips at 1-855-TIP-OCCS.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.