VISTA, Calif. (KGTV) – A grieving son is remembering
his father, a homeless man, who was found dead last week at Bonita Cove Park in Mission Beach.
Pictures can tell many things about a person.
“Well, my father, you know, he was a great foundation to my family growing up,” Michael Shook, whose father was found murdered in Bonita Cove, said.
But sometimes it’s better to hear from a son about the story of his father.
“I have very fond memories of him throughout all of these years growing up. What he was really, I would label him as was, a fisherman,” Shook said.
In this case, Michael Shook, who shared the same name as his father, tells ABC 10News his dad went by Scott to many.
“It’s hard to not remember him as the now and the things where he went later on because he not just that homeless man that was laying on a bench, you know,” Shook said. “He was someone’s father. He was someone’s grandfather, was, you know, someone’s husband to my mother. And sometimes we go in different directions, and we get lost.”
San Diego police said Shook’s father was found beaten and stabbed to death in the early morning hours of July 5 in Bonita Cove.
Detectives learned in the early stages of the investigation there was an altercation between Shook and a group of about a half dozen young adults before his body was found.
Finding out about his father’s murder was surreal for Michael.
“I was just here, and two homicide detectives had knocked on the door," he said. "I really thought it was his passing because, you know, he was terminal with cancer and that already had metastasized. But no, he was heinously and brutally murdered.”
Police say two suspects - 18-year-old Daniel Ruben Martin and a 17-year-old teen - have been arrested in this case.
RELATED: 2 teens arrested on suspicion of killing man, 65, at Bonita Cove Park
Michael praises the department for their work following his father’s murder. Shook said while he's hopeful his father's killers will be served justice.
“But I do have some empathy for their families because now being a victim and my family being a victim," he said. Those families are victims of circumstance as well.”
It may take some time to look at photos of joyous memories without shedding a tear or two.
“But we got to go through the whole long, drawn-out closure with this new set of circumstances; the curveball is thrown,” Shook said.
The 18-year-old suspect, Daniel Ruben Martin, is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday afternoon.
