UPDATE NO. 4, FEB. 2, NOON: Nolan Pascal Pillay is scheduled to be arraigned at Santa Ana’s Central Jail some time today on two felony counts of special circumstances murder with sentencing enhancements for multiple murders and the personal discharge of a firearm, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s office. That would set up the 37-year-old Irvine resident for a sentence of life in state prison without the possibility of parole—at a minimum!
UPDATE NO. 3, FEB. 2, 7:54 A.M.: Click here for the Go Fund Me page aimed at raising money for funeral expenses and to keep the doors open at Arlyn Pillay Art Gallery, which a friend says “recently became a hotspot for OC bands, comedians and visual artists.” Friends and loved ones gathered at the Tustin Avenue gallery Wednesday to mourn. Here is the crowd-funding pitch: On Tuesday, our beloved friends were taken from us in a tragic state of events. Arlyn and Lulu Pillay were the lights that that lit up our path in the art world. Two people that expressed love and peace through their artwork. They taught us to take the pain of our past and put in a piece of art to create a new future. This Gofundme will help pay for the funeral expenses along with keeping both of their beloved art shops open. We hope that this will help to keep inspiring other artists to follow their dreams as Arlyn and Lulu would push us to do.
UPDATE NO. 2, FEB. 1, 5:12 P.M.: From Kim Mohr: “The Irvine Police Department has worked with the Orange County Coroner’s Office to confirm the identities of the victims in yesterday’s double homicide on Crystal Circle in Irvine. The victims have been identified as Gloria Pillay, 58, and Arlyn Pillay, 35. The victims were the mother and brother of suspect Nolan Pascal Pillay, who remains in custody.”
Photographer Miguel Vasconcellos tells the Weekly that he shot photos of Arlyn Pillay at San Diego Comic-Con a few years back, when the artist with a gallery in Tustin made an appearance. “He was a great local artist,” Vasconcellos said. “It’s crazy this happened.”
Police still don’t know why Nolan Pillay allegedly shot his mother and brother to death.
Writer’s note – This update previously had a video embedded of Arlyn Pillay, made by his brother Nolan in 2008, that has since been removed from YouTube.
UPDATE, FEB. 1, 8:24 A.M.: The Irvine Police Department has released a little more information about Nolan Pascal Pillay’s relationship to the two victims of Tuesday afternoon’s double slayings. “Irvine Police believe this to be a family violence incident, in which the adult victims and the suspect were related,” says Kim Mohr, the department’s spokeswoman. “However, the victims in this case are not being named at this time, pending identification by the Coroner’s Office.”
A check of online records reveals there may have been another person around the same age as 37-year-old Pillay and two people in their 60s residing in the home, all with the same last name as the suspect.
“No other suspects are at large, and there is no danger to the community,” Mohr stressed, which is obviously welcome news in longtime “America’s Safest City” Irvine, where these are the first two murders of 2017 after there having been only three all last year in the town of 236,716 people.
But the exact location of the grisly incident should not be surprising when you consider our 2012 story, “I Know Where You Lived Last Summer.” Using the Fourth of July shooting rampage at LAX by slain gunman Hesham Hadayet as a jumping off point, we noted that he lived in Woodbridge, the Twin Peaks of Irvine’s master planned communities. Crystal Circle, the scene of Tuesday’s shootings, is Woodbridge adjacent.
ORIGINAL POST, JAN. 31, 5:20 P.M.: A 37-year-old man was taken into custody near the scene of the fatal shooting of two people in a res idential neighborhood of Irvine this afternoon, according to police.
Nolan Pascal Pillay was taken into custody at the scene of what police believe was a domestic incident.
The shooting was reported shortly before 1 p.m. in the 14000 block of Crystal Circle, on a cup de sac of single-family homes that are about a block from Greentree Elementary School, which was placed on lockdown during the police investigation.
It is believed the deceased resided in the home where the shooting happened, but it is not clear if Pillay did.
According to California Notaries, “Nolan Pillay is a Notaries Public licensed to practice in California. The address on file for Nolan Pillay is 14972 Crystal Cir, Irvine 92604.” Online real estate records also indicate he is a homeowner at that address.
More details to come.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Irvine Police Detective Jason Renshaw at 949.724.7244 or
jr******@ci**********.org
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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.