My friend is famous!

[Dooligan]

Partied with him the week before...then this...

Transient Death Breaks Salinas Homicide Record

Dec 27, 2008 02:12 PM


SALINAS, Calif. - Orion Christopher Moore, 29, of Santa Clara was originally charged with homicide in the death of a 60-year old panhandler, marking the 25th homicide for the city. Salinas broke the 1994 record for homicide when a transient was killed Friday night in an altercation at a truck stop.

On Monday, Moore was released from jail and the bail dropped because the Monterey County District Attorney's office says they need more time to investigate what happened, and need to hear more witness testimony.

In a press release, police say Moore stopped Friday at the Pilot Truck Stop on Sanborn to get gas; Moore was approached by a man who wanted to wash Moore's windshield for money. While Moore was inside the store, the man began washing the windshield of Moore's car. A passenger inside Moore's car told the man to leave; Moore returned to his car and knocked the man to the ground.

The man was reported to have struck his head on the ground; he was taken to Natividad Medical Center where he died from his injury.

Moore was arrested on scene without incident; he was booked into Monterey County Jail his bail has been set at $1 million.

The DA's office hopes to wrap up the investigation in about a week, and will know then how or if they will charge Moore.


http://www.kcba.com/Global/story.asp?S=9584297 (http://www.crowsnestforums.com/forums/redirector.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kcba.com%2FGlo bal%2Fstory.asp%3FS%3D9584297)

[StoneTheCrow]

Damn,that sucks.Just proves the point it pays to keep your hands to yourself,unless he was defending himself.I didn't see anything about him defending himself though.

[Dooligan]

If you ask the prosecuter, he wasn't. What that doesn't say is when he came out his girl was out of the car, and the bum's pants were around his ankles. Tell me you wouldn't do the same thing. Hell, I've choked people out, swept legs and pinned them to the ground, had my knees to their heads...could have happened at any point.

He is part of a group of friends that are all military. And not dummies, 1st Recon and 20th SF guys. Rory is a mellow cat who is never quick to violence (in my experience of him, which is over a few years).

Here is both sides of the story:

The 29-year-old Santa Clara man, a 2004 Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo graduate, had a solid job with Siemens, the big German company. He was the research chair of his professional association of heating and air-conditioning engineers. On his LinkedIn profile, he said he valued "imagination, creativity, courage and hard work."

His credentials didn't count at the truck stop on Work Road. Before the night was out, Moore was arrested on suspicion of murder, accused of causing the death of a transient windshield-wiper who wouldn't accept no for an answer. A day later, the engineer's photo made the local front of the Mercury News.

In the shorthand of the police beat, Moore was the perp, booked, fingerprinted, condemned in the press. For a man whose job is to reduce the carbon footprint of a big corporation, Moore suddenly had seen his own profile increase in the worst way possible. He spent nearly four days in jail.

But it might not have been as simple as it sounded. Moore's attorney has offered a version suggesting that Moore came to his girlfriend's aid. The cops, meanwhile, are re-interviewing witnesses while the Monterey County District Attorney's Office decides whether to file charges.
Begin with the undisputed. This was a tragedy. Not the least of it is that we still don't know who the dead man is. What we know is that he was around 60 and carried no documents, no identification. He was old to be on the streets.

Police say the homeless man offered to wash Moore's windshield, an offer the engineer refused. Moore then went inside to complain about the transient. When he came out, he saw the homeless man washing the windshield anyway. Moore's girlfriend was trying to dissuade the man.

According to this version, an irritated Moore ran up to the homeless man and shoved him. The windshield-wiper fell backward and struck his head. He died en route to Natividad Medical Center, a Christmas victim at a hospital named for Christmas.

Moore's version, related by his Walnut Creek attorney, Lawrence Kaplan, departs from the cops' account on several key points.

Kaplan says the homeless man originally panhandled Moore without offering to clean the window. The engineer remembers hearing, "Give me your money," or "give me all your money."

When Moore came out of the station after using the bathroom and complaining about the transient, Kaplan says, he saw the man holding an object — since determined to be a squeegee — with his pants around his ankles. Kaplan said the homeless man seemed to be in a "confrontation" with the girlfriend.

"Rory rushes up to protect his girlfriend, concerned for her safety," Kaplan told me. "At some point, the guy advances on him, and Rory shoved him, with two hands to the chest."

The attorney said Moore thinks the homeless man, who appeared to have a heavy odor of alcohol, might have gotten tangled in his own pants. It's unclear whether the windshield washer was standing on the raised fueling platform.

The cops have viewed the truck stop's surveillance tape of the incident, which should determine whether the victim's pants were down. If this were a clear case of self-defense, I doubt they would have sought murder charges. But my instinct tells me the prosecution has a difficult case.

More interviews

Terry Spitz, the chief assistant district attorney of Monterey County, commended the police investigation but said his office had asked for witnesses to be re-interviewed. "We want to make sure we have a case that would convince a jury," he said.

Moore is scheduled to meet with Salinas detectives Tuesday with his lawyer present. Bad guys facing a potential murder rap — even involuntary manslaughter — don't usually do that. And Moore doesn't strike me as stupid.

"The guy is 100 percent reliable," says Scott Gainer, an engineer who has worked with Moore in his professional organization." He was the first to volunteer, always willing to show up and come up with creative ways of tackling things."

Sadly, we won't hear from the victim, whose body now rests in the coroner's cooler. As I think about him, I can't get over the feeling that our judgment of what happened depends on our view of the homeless.

In the comment section of the Salinas Californian, one woman wrote that the transient had cleaned her windshield several times and remembered when she gave him too much money. "The next time I saw him, he refused to take money from me since, as he put it, he owed me one window cleaning."

Her benign view of the homeless — one I share in most cases — diverges from the feelings of many other travelers. To them, a panhandler with a squeegee threatens safety.

A big piece of this case lies with the tragic fluke that the homeless man hit his head in a way that killed him. But in deciding whether Moore had a criminal role in a homicide, you have to weigh two primal emotions: fear and anger.

If you stress fear, you sympathize with Moore. If you stress anger, you lean toward the cops. My guess is that a jury, like the rest of us, will find it almost impossible to be unanimous.

[StoneTheCrow]

That puts it in a whole new perspective,hopefully the video tape will show how he claimed it happened.

[Stormcrow]

Neither of the accounts leads me to believe that your friend intended to harm the man. Let alone murder him. I truly hope it turns out for him.

[Dooligan]

He's got a good lawyer, and the lawyer has been very candid with his family. Anyone could be put in the same situation and react that way. Rory can do more damage than a push. Easily. If he wanted to harm the guy, he wouldn't have pushed him first. And if he did open with a push for fis first offence, he would have gone to the ground on him after the guy went down.

He knew it was a bum.

Personally, I would've done worse than push him.

[The Goddess]

why did he leave his girlfriend alone in the car if this guy was still hanging around?

[StoneTheCrow]

why did he leave his girlfriend alone in the car if this guy was still hanging around?

Good question.

[Stormcrow]

why did he leave his girlfriend alone in the car if this guy was still hanging around?
I'm willing to venture that, like most people, he merely considered him an irritant at the time. Only perceiving a threat upon his return.

[CULPRITE_INC]

bad for both party's, i just hope the judicial system doesn't ruin two lives out of it.

[StoneTheCrow]

bad for both party's, i just hope the judicial system doesn't ruin two lives out of it.

It's been known to happen,say a D.A. takes a natural disliking to this dude,they could find ways to find him guilty all day long.Make it stick too.

[gigman]

$1,000,000 bond for accidentally killing someone? That sounds a little steep to me.

[Dooligan]

why did he leave his girlfriend alone in the car if this guy was still hanging around?

He wasn't a threat at first. If the bum was perceived as a threat at first, he probably wouldn't have stopped in the first place...

[Dooligan]

$1,000,000 bond for accidentally killing someone? That sounds a little steep to me.

The charge is murder.

[Dooligan]

It's been known to happen,say a D.A. takes a natural disliking to this dude,they could find ways to find him guilty all day long.Make it stick too.

Gonna be hard to dislike Rory. He is a charismatic and genuine guy. Just wrong place, wrong time.

[CULPRITE_INC]

It's been known to happen,say a D.A. takes a natural disliking to this dude,they could find ways to find him guilty all day long.Make it stick too.

Dont you love the system.