UPDATE, JAN. 11, 12:32 P.M.: The virtual ink had not dried on our original post when the Orange County District Attorney’s office announced Jacob Michael Margo had been charged with Octavio Jesus Alcala’s murder. Margo, who was charged today with one felony count of murder with a sentencing enhancement for the personal discharge of a firearm causing death, could be sentenced to 50 years to life in state prison with a conviction, according to the OCDA, which adds he is scheduled to be arraigned some time this afternoon at the Central Jail in Santa Ana.
ORIGINAL POST, JAN. 11, 10:48 A.M.: As close readers know, if a murder happens in Orange County, it’s news to me.
The June 2015 slaying of 19-year-old Octavio Jesus Alcala of Santa Ana was really news to me.
I did not even know about it until the Irvine Police Department’s Farrah Emami informed me Friday about an arrest in the homicide. Perhaps I was on vacation when the killing happened. Or on glue.
Anyway, on the morning of June 5, 2015, employees arrived to work at a construction site in the area of Wolf Trail and Orchard Hills in Irvine to find a dead young man—later identified as Alcala—face down in a remote, graded construction area that did not have any buildings, Emami says.
Irvine homicide detectives had been working the case ever since, and on Thursday they served multiple search warrants and arrested Jacob Michael Margo, 21, of Santa Ana, Emami says.
The IPD spokeswoman released no specifics of the continuing investigation, including how Alcala died, a possible motive for his killing or his relationship to Margo, but she did direct anyone with additional information to call detectives Sarah Tunnicliffe or John Sanders at
949.724.7170.
