A sheriff deputy is scheduled to be arraigned today in the death of Benison and Maria Tran, reports the Stockton Record.
Devin Williams Jr. turned himself in Wednesday for the killings after a manhunt that stretched from the San Francisco Bay Area to Central California. He joined the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department a year ago and previously worked for the Stockton Police Department.
Relatives who witnessed the killing in the Contra Costa County city of Dublin identified Williams as the gunman.
Maria Tran immigrated from Vietnam with her extended family in 2004. The nurse is described as generous and hardworking.
“She was always there for me,” her cousin Diem Thuy Le tearfully said to the San Francisco Chronicle. “How can I accept this?”
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Maria and Benison Tran have been married for two decades.
A motive is unclear, although the mother of the suspect told KTVU that she advised her son to stay clear of Maria.
She said her son went on a ten-day trip with her.
“She told him she loved him,” said Anitra Williams. She described her son as “blinded by love” and said she represented herself as an unmarried woman.
“In fact, her exact words were she was a 35-year-old single parent who had been recently divorced. Bottom line is right now there’s a young boy that’s missing both his mother and father,” she said. “I don’t condone anything that happened.”
The mother said her son failed his probationary period after a year with the Stockton Police Department.
Lt. Ray Kelly of the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department described Williams record with the department as “immaculate,” reported the East Bay Times.
“Somewhere in the last several months of his life, some significant events happened that led up to this moment. A lot of those events went undiscovered and undisclosed, and we’re going to be looking into that. There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered,” Kelly said.
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