Angelo De Nardo, 53, was killed and set on fire along a set of railroad tracks near Clairemont Drive and Morena Boulevard on July 3. Police continue to hunt for the killer behind three other attacks on homeless men. (Pauline Repard)

• The series began Sunday July 3: A passerby saw flames in a greenbelt along a set of railroad tracks near Clairemont Drive and Morena Boulevard, in Bay Park along Interstate 5. Firefighters found a flaming corpse and quickly doused it. Police said Angelo De Nardo, 53, was killed and then set on fire.

San Diego police have identified this man captured by surveillance cameras as the suspect in a series of attacks on homeless men that have left three dead, one critically hurt. (San Diego Police Department / San Diego Police Department)

• Investigators later found surveillance video inside a nearby gas station market that showed a man who bought a gasoline can a short time before De Nardo’s body was found. Witnesses had told police they saw a man earlier running from the area of the fire carrying a gas can.


× Suspect in attacks on homeless

(Beto Alvarez)

• The following day, on Monday July 4, about 4:50 a.m., officers found another man stabbed and bleeding near the intersection of Greenwood and Kurtz streets in the Midway District. Manuel Nunez Mason, 61, was critically injured in the attack.

Shawn Mitchell Longley (DOB 6/7/1975), one of the homeless men who are recent victims of deadly assaults in San Diego. Courtesy Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.


• Less than two hours later, a body was found near the tennis courts at Robb Athletic Field in Ocean Beach. The body was identified as that of Shawn Mitchell Longley, 41.

Investigators gather evidence from the sidewalk and grassy area in downtown San Diego where a homeless person was attacked and mortally injured July 6. (John Gibbins)

• Two days later, on July 6, witnesses heard loud noises and saw one man set another on fire along a walkway between condominium complexes between State Street and Kettner Boulevard, south of Broadway in downtown San Diego. Investigators said a towel was set ablaze and placed on top of the critically injured man, identified as 23-year-old Dionicio Derek Vahidy. A witness grabbed it away before the victim was burned. Vahidy died of his injuries four days later.

San Diego police Officer Brian Lucchesi, who works in homeless outreach, talks with a homeless woman in the Midway area about the assaults on homeless men. (Peggy Peattie)


• As the killings drew national headlines, and with the baseball’s All-Star Game a week away, San Diego police made the investigation their top priority, with investigators working around the clock. Scores of detectives and uniformed officers handed out fliers and searched for witnesses, at one point focusing on trolley stops around downtown, as they believed the killer was using public transportation.

Ronald Mays rolls over to look at a flyer with pictures of a suspect in recent assaults on the homeless, as San Diego police Homeless Outreach Team officer Brian Lucchesi canvasses several areas in the Midway District July 6. (Peggy Peattie)

• Officers and social workers also spent countless hours talking to men who sleep on the streets, warning them of the danger of sleeping alone and showing them photos of the suspect. All four victims had been attacked while they were alone, not near other homeless people. Many transients said they were on edge because of the attacks.

× SDPD searches for homeless attacker


San Diego police homicide Capt. David Nisleit announces that police have a suspect in custody and have probable cause to arrest him for the murder of 2 homeless men during a news conference on Thursday at police headquarters in San Diego. The suspect would later be cleared and released. (Eduardo Contreras)

•Then, on Thursday July 7, police arrested a 36-year-old man they believed behind the brutal attacks. He came under suspicion because he had been convicted of setting another homeless man on fire in 2010. He was booked into jail on two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and one count of arson.

San Diego police released a sketch of the serial killer responsible for a string of violent attacks on homeless people. ( / San Diego Police Department)

• But the following Monday, he was released. Police said witnesses and physical evidence had undermined their confidence that the man arrested was responsible for the attacks. The investigation resumed with its previous intensity.


• On Thursday July 15, San Diego police investigators said they called in the FBI to create a serial killer profile of the attacker, and released a composite sketch of a suspect. They again beseeched the public for help.

San Diego police investigators at the site under a freeway bridge in downtown San Diego where a homeless man was attacked Friday, July 15, 2016. (John Gibbins)

• The next morning, two San Diego Harbor Police officers heard a man screaming under an Interstate 5 overpass at C Street in Golden Hill. Officers found a 55-year-old man bleeding from a severe chest wound. He had been sleeping when he was attacked.

• The attack fit the pattern in the assaults: A man sleeping on the streets alone suffered major upper body chest wounds. (Two of the five victims were set on fire after being wounded.) Police don’t believe the victims were connected.


Suspect in homeless attacks is detained by San Diego Police in Golden Hill Friday morning. (Greg Torkelson / San Diego News Video )

• Officers searching the area found a suspect riding a bicycle on Laurel Street near Union Street, three miles away from the attack. The suspect looked like the man in the the surveillance video and strongly resembles the police sketch made of the suspect. Jon David Guerrero, 39, a Coronado native who appears to have been homeless, was booked into jail on three counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and two counts of arson. He has a history of arrests and mental competency hearings. He is to be arraigned Tuesday.

× Authorities claim to be certain they have apprehended the person responsible for three murders and other assaults on homeless men. Video by David Brooks.

• At a post-arrest news conference also attended by the mayor, police said they were confident Guerrero was the serial killer they had been hunting. “I firmly believe, and want everyone to know, I am firmly confident Guerrero is the suspect,” police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said. Homicide Capt. David Nisleit, who led the investigation in the case, said detectives found evidence at the site of the latest attack and in a search of where Guerrero had been living in downtown San Diego that “definitively links” Guerrero to the killings. “We have the right person in jail,” Nisleit said.

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