“[T]he brutal violence shocked the university community, prompting calls from students and staff to improve security and lighting on campus.”
That’s the thing with diversity – it may be our strength, but it also requires us to transform all of our beloved public institutions into high security prison-like complexes for our own safety.
A former high school classmate of a Cotati teen whose body was discovered in 2016 in a shallow grave on the Sonoma State University campus was named Monday as the prime suspect in his murder.
Daniel Carrillo was 16 years old when detectives suspect he stabbed Kirk Kimberly, an 18-year-old acquaintance from Rancho Cotate High School, in a secluded, brush-covered corner of the university campus in October 2016.
Kimberly’s partly-buried body was discovered two weeks later by a campus landscaper in a remote area near the Green Music Center parking lot, known at the time to be a common party spot.
Though Kimberly wasn’t a student at SSU, the brutal violence shocked the university community, prompting calls from students and staff to improve security and lighting on campus. More than three years would go by with little information about the investigation.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office announced a break in the case Monday, revealing the arrest of the 20-year-old Rohnert Park man investigators had long suspected of the killing. Detective Sgt. Jayson Fowler declined to describe a motive.
Carrillo has been incarcerated since September 2017 in an unrelated case. He was arrested on suspicion of Kimberly’s murder Feb. 28, shortly before he was to be released.
Detectives now say Carrillo was a prime suspect from the start of the investigation into Kimberly’s killing, although for more than three years they did not arrest him and remained tight-lipped about whether they had a suspect in the case or whether the killer remained at large. Fowler said they had a list of suspects and Carrillo was just one.