UPDATED: The 63-year-old victim has been identified (details below) . . .
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UPDATES THROUGHOUT:
A female friend went to visit 63-year-old Donald Keith Taylor, who lived in the 1000 block of Grand Canyon Road in Brea on Friday. She found him dead. He'd been shot multiple times.
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Taylor had a roommate who was not home at the time of the 10:30 a.m. discovery. The roommate and the visiting friend helped with the Brea Police investigation.
The trail led officers to the Alhambra home of 53-year-old Beth Q. Jia, who had been dating Taylor off and on. A search warrant served at her home Saturday turned up ammunition and evidence that linked her to Taylor's murder, according to police.
Detectives discovered Jia was in a friend's El Monte apartment around 4 p.m. Sunday. As the cops waited for a search warrant, Jia left the apartment around 8 p.m. and drove off in her 2010 Toyota Corolla.
She was pulled over, but as detectives approached the Corolla, they heard a single gunshot. They found her suffering from a single gunshot wound to the head. She was taken to County USC Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
The Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver found in the car was the same caliber weapon used to kill Taylor.
Police believe Jia acted alone, but the investigation remains open for now.
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.