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Man charged in killing of California dad camping with daughters

LOS ANGELES >> A 42-year-old man with a history of arrests connected with weapons offenses was charged today in a series of bizarre shooting incidents that left a father dead and caused widespread panic in Malibu last year, authorities said.

Anthony Rauda was charged with one count of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and multiple counts of burglary in connection with several shootings in Malibu Creek State Park between 2016 and 2018, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

The charges include the July slaying of Tristan Beaudette, a 35-year-old research scientist from Irvine who was shot and killed while camping with his two young daughters.

Rauda is scheduled to appear in a Van Nuys courtroom today.

Beaudette’s slaying was the last in a series of shootings that left Malibu residents unnerved and frustrated. As investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department struggled to come up with a motive or suspect, news of other shootings stretching back as far as 2016 began to surface, leading to speculation that a sniper was stalking the area. Unfounded reports of shootings and gunfire — some of which were dismissed as residents simply responding to the sound of a transformer explosion — began pouring into the Lost Hills sheriff’s station last summer.

Rauda was arrested in the area in October on suspicion of burglary while carrying a rifle that investigators think might be linked to the shootings. He has been held on a parole violation since then and was set to be released this week, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the situation.

After news of Beaudette’s killing surfaced, several other people came forward to report they had been shot at or injured in the area in recent years.

Prosecutors today said the string of shootings began in November 2016. A young man hiking the Backbone Trail had been sleeping overnight in a hammock in Tapia Park, just south of Malibu Creek State Park, when he said he was struck by pellets from a shotgun.

The victim, James Rogers, previously told The Times he needed surgery to remove the pellets.

“I heard a loud bang and then felt a burning sensation in my arm and fell to the ground,” he said. “Before I could look at my wound, I did a quick check of the perimeter and I saw nothing.”

Meliss Tatangelo said she was camping in her Honda when she heard a loud noise around 5 a.m. in January 2017. She and another camper did not go outside, but she later found what looked like spent ammunition in the back of her car where she had been sleeping.

Rauda fired into vehicles on three separate occasions in 2017, but no one was injured, prosecutors said in a news release. The district attorney’s office said he also shot at a Tesla in June 2018, four days before Beaudette was killed. Investigators also think he is responsible for several burglaries in the Calabasas area.

If convicted, Rauda faces life in prison.

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