Home sale feud may have prompted OC fatal shooting

Huntington Beach family had been at odds for months, one neighbor said

Huntington Beach (Getty)
Huntington Beach (Getty)

What may have been a family dispute over an upcoming home sale turned deadly in Orange County, leaving one man fatally shot and three other people injured, including the gunman.

The shooting happened Saturday morning on the 4500 block of Operetta Drive, east of the Huntington Beach community of Sunset Beach, the Orange County Register reported.

Details remain scant but authorities believe the shooting was related to a family dispute over the property sale. Police said “a group of real estate professionals” was at the home at the time of the shooting, after having accompanied a family member to the property, the paper reported.

The exact nature of the dispute remains unclear, but it apparently had been brewing for months.

“Going back about a year now, I’d notice the ‘For Sale’ sign out front ripped out of the ground and knocked over almost every day,” David Pontes, a neighbor, told the Register. Someone else, Pontes added, would repeatedly put the sign back up.

Huntington Beach officers arrived at the property just after 10:50 a.m. Saturday, where they found three people shot in front of the house, according to the report. Officers were helping the victims when the suspect emerged from the house with a “superficial gunshot wound,” according to the report.

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All four people were taken to a hospital, where one adult male was pronounced dead. Another victim was treated and released, and the third victim remained hospitalized but was expected to survive, authorities told the Register. The suspected shooter was in stable condition.

Authorities have not released the names of the victims or the gunman.

Police evacuated several nearby homes and called in the department’s SWAT Team after calls came in about the shooting.

Operetta Drive is in the northern reaches of Huntington Beach, a couple of miles inland and just south of the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge.

[OCR] — Trevor Bach