Superior Court

July 22 (UPI) — Suspect Raymond Boodarian allegedly used a firearm owned by victims Robin Kaye and Thomas Deluca to shoot and kill the couple inside their Encino, Calif., home on July 10.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman on Monday night said Boodarian, 22, used a gun owned by Kaye and Deluca to shoot and kill the couple and then called the police.

“Mr. Boodarian got caught because he used his cell phone to contact police concerning the situation [and] actually identified himself by name,” Hochman told attendees during a special meeting of the Encino Neighborhood Council.

“Police were able to ping the cell phone, find out where he lived, go to his residence and arrest him.”

Hochman said police found the gun used to kill the couple at the crime scene.

“The gun that was actually used in the murders wasn’t [Boodarian’s] gun,” Hochman told meeting attendees.

“It was a gun that he recovered from the actual house,” he added. “It was Robin’s and Tom’s gun.”

More than 100 Encino residents attended an Encino Neighborhood Council meeting to discuss the matter on Monday night, which Hochman addressed.

The residents were concerned that Boodarian was released from jail last year despite being suspected of battery, making threats and brandishing a weapon, ENC President Josh Sautter told NBC News.

A judge dismissed the case following a mental health evaluation of Boodarian.

Kaye and Deluca, both age 70, returned home on the evening of July 10 while Boodarian allegedly was inside to burglarize it, Hochman said.

Local police discovered the victims’ bodies while conducting a welfare check four days later on July 14.

Los Angeles Police arrested Boodarian on July 15 and said he is an Encino resident.

Boodarian is charged with two counts of murder during a robbery, one count of burglary, intentional use of a firearm and committing multiple murders.

He is being held without bail and has an arraignment hearing scheduled on Aug. 20 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, during which he could enter a plea.

Kaye was a music supervisor on the popular “American Idol” television show, and Deluca was a musician.

July 8 (UPI) — A Georgia judge ordered a mental evaluation for Jose Ibarra, the man convicted in the 2024 murder of 22-year-old university student Laken Riley.

It will determine if Ibarra, a native of Venezuela, was mentally competent at the time of the crime and later at trial, including whether he understood the legal consequences of waiving a trial by jury and if he is mentally equipped to assist in his own appeal.

In November, Ibarra was convicted of malice murder and other related charges in the February 2024 attack that left Riley, a nursing student, dead near a wooded trail on the campus of the University of Georgia.

It was the impetus behind the Laken Riley Act, decried as a political move by opponents and which passed the Senate and was signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on January 29.

The decision to call for the mental evaluation was issued last week by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who sentenced Ibarra to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Haggard’s order filed on Thursday instructs officials to figure out if the undocumented migrant was “capable of understanding the nature and object of pretrial proceedings, including waiver of jury trial rights.”

Ibarra, 27, is hoping to vacate his guilty sentence or secure a new court trial after his attorneys filed a new-trial motion only weeks after his conviction late last year.

His legal team argued that the guilty verdict was “contrary to law” and evidence.

Ibarra, who speaks Spanish as a first language and possibly faced a language barrier, was characterized as “a slow learner” last month during a virtual hearing by defense attorney David Dodds.

The state, for its part, did not oppose the evaluation request but filed a separate motion to seek public money to retain expert witnesses for a possible court appeal.