Dennis RomeroUpdated at the bottom with an ID. Headline has changed. First posted at 5:17 p.m. Tuesday.
Rancho Palos Verdes is one of the most elite communities in the Unites States, and it's certainly a place where murder is quite foreign.
Not today, it would appear: Sheriff's deputies responded to a home in the upscale community only to find a body in a smoldering SUV that had just burned up:
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department says in a statement that it deputies responded to a home in the 30100 block of Miraleste Drive at 3:54 p.m. today “to investigate the circumstances surrounding the suspicious death of a person.”
A subsequent statement says cops went to a “vehicle fire call” and found the body. The situation was first reported at 2:30 p.m., deputies stated:
The identity, age, and gender of the body will be determined by the Coroner's office at a later time.
Overhead news footage of the residence showed what appears to be a burned out Chevrolet Blazer.
Homicide detectives were on the case.
In 2009 prominent attorney Jeffrey Tidus was found fatally shot in his own driveway in nearby Rolling Hills Estates. That murder remains unsolved.
[Update at 3:42 p.m. Wednesday]: The sheriff's department today identified the dead man as 42-year-old Christopher Waters of the Long Beach “area.”
Cause of death was still under investigation.
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