Suspect arrested after Caltech scientist fatally shot at his home outside LA | US universities

A renowned California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientist who studied distant planets and other areas of astronomy for decades was recently shot to death at his home in a rural community outside Los Angeles, authorities said.

Carl Grillmair, 67, died Monday of a gunshot wound to the torso in Llano, an unincorporated community in the Antelope Valley, according to information from the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office. The county Sheriff’s Department said it arrested a suspect in Grillmair’s killing, identifying him as 29-year-old Freddy Snyder.

Snyder faces one count of murder in connection with Grillmair’s death, as well as carjacking and burglary charges in connection with other cases. He was still in custody Friday.

The Los Angeles Times cited a Caltech spokesperson who confirmed that the university employed Grillmair as a research scientist. He contributed to the exploration of the universe within the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech, a partner of the American space agency NASA, the National Science Foundation and researchers around the world.

Grillmair’s resume lists more than four decades of experience in his field, including hundreds of publications, articles and abstracts – as well as a NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal.

“He was very famous in astronomy and a very renowned scientist,” Sergio Fajardo-Acosta, who worked alongside Grillmair at Caltech for 26 years, told the Times. “His legacy will live on forever.”

Officials said local deputies responded to an emergency call reporting an assault with a deadly weapon at Grillmair’s home shortly after 6 a.m. Monday.

They said officers found Grillmair on his porch after he had been shot once. Emergency services pronounced him dead at the scene.

While investigating Grillmair’s murder, officers reportedly arrested Snyder in connection with a carjacking that occurred nearby. Authorities later charged Snyder with Grillmair’s murder, the nearby carjacking and a reported burglary on Dec. 28, according to court records reviewed by the Guardian.

It was not immediately clear whether Grillmair knew Snyder.

Fajardo-Acosta told the Times that Grillmair appreciated his home in southern California’s remote Antelope Valley because it allowed him to easily study the stars at night. He did this in his own astronomical observatory at home, equipped with various telescopes, as Fajardo-Acosta says.

Some reacting to the news of Grillmair’s death pointed out that he was killed about two months after the December shooting death of Nuno Loureiro, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which devastated the international scientific community.

Loureiro and the suspect in his murder had previously followed the same university program in Portugal. Authorities said the suspect then killed himself after also shooting two students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, about 50 miles from the suburban Boston home where Loureiro was murdered.