2 College Students Found Dead At Walnut Creek Home In Apparent Murder-Suicide
WALNUT CREEK (CBS SF) — Police are investigating an apparent murder-suicide after finding two college students shot to death at a Walnut Creek home.
Walnut Creek police say neighbors in the North Homestead neighborhood called 911 Tuesday morning after hearing gunshots at about 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Authorities identified the victims as 19-year-old college student Clare Orton, of Walnut Creek, and 21-year-old Scott Bertics, of Lafayette.
Police say the two knew each other and had a previous dating relationship.
Police say Orton was shot while answering the front door. Then immediately, her ex-boyfriend turned the gun on himself..
Orton was a Las Lomas High School graduate and captain on the school's cross country team, according to the school's newspaper, the Las Lomas Page.
She was home from college after finishing her freshman year at San Diego State University, where she was an honors student studying environmental engineering, university spokesman Greg Block said.
Orton's Facebook page indicates that she was a member of Los Lomas High's Eco Action Club and SDSU's Society of Women Engineers. Today, one member of the society said the group was mourning the loss their fellow environmental engineer.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with her loved ones," Madeleine Rasche wrote.
Bertics graduated from Acalanes High School in Lafayette, where he was also on the cross country team, and went on to attend Stanford University.
He enrolled in the fall of 2012, but took a voluntary leave of absence in the fall of 2014, university spokesman Brad Hayward said.
Bertics had not yet declared a major, according to Hayward, but he is listed on a 2013 demonstration called "Controlling Robot Dynamics with Spiking Neurons."
He's also acknowledged in a paper titled, "Developing Articulated Robots in Task-Space with Spiking Silicon Neurons."
A YouTube channel bearing the name "sbertics" appears to be a repository for school-related videos and a winter vacation in Hawaii.
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