San Diego police have arrested a 49-year-old man on suspicion of murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed security guard at Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach last month, ending a nearly month-long homicide investigation with an arrest in El Cajon, the San Diego Police Department said. The arrest is an allegation: the man has been booked on suspicion of murder and has not been convicted of anything in this case.
Source: San Diego Police Department via San Diego Slackers
Police identified the suspect as Brian Mathew McColley, 49. Members of the department's Special Investigations Unit located him at about 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, in the 300 block of Cedar Street in El Cajon, according to the San Diego Police Department. He was arrested on an outstanding warrant for an unrelated offence and booked into San Diego Central Jail on suspicion of murder in addition to that warrant.
The October 5 shooting at Crystal Pier
The victim was Luis Alberto Quiroz-Arreola, 31, an unarmed security guard who was working at the pier when he was shot shortly after 2:00 a.m. on Monday, October 5, at the pier in the 4500 block of Ocean Boulevard in Pacific Beach, police said. He died of his injuries. Crystal Pier is the landmark pier on Ocean Boulevard in Pacific Beach, a coastal neighbourhood of San Diego, and the guard was on duty at the site in the early-morning hours when the shooting happened.
How the investigation reached an arrest
In the weeks after the shooting, San Diego police homicide detectives identified McColley as a person of interest in the case, and the department publicly identified both the victim and the wanted suspect in its releases. The trail ended in El Cajon, a separate city east of San Diego, where the Special Investigations Unit took him into custody on Tuesday afternoon. Police have not released a motive, and they say the investigation remains under investigation — no account of why the guard was shot has been made public by the department.
Police have also not announced any additional suspects in the reporting released so far. The department's earlier release on the case asked anyone with information to contact its Homicide Unit at 619-531-2293 or to leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
An arrest on suspicion of murder is the start of the court process, not its end. Prosecutors must still review the police investigation and decide what formal charges, if any, to file, and the arrested man is presumed innocent unless the state proves a charge in court. Police have released no motive, and nothing in the department's statements establishes why the shooting happened.
What happens next
McColley was booked into San Diego Central Jail on suspicion of murder, in addition to the unrelated outstanding warrant on which he was also arrested. The next steps are a prosecutorial review of the homicide investigation and a first court appearance on any charges that are filed; police have not announced a court date in the releases reporting the arrest. The homicide investigation itself is continuing, and detectives are still asking witnesses or anyone with information about the October 5 shooting to come forward.
For Pacific Beach, the arrest closes the most urgent question left by the October shooting — whether the person police believe is responsible is in custody — while the harder questions, including motive and the full sequence of events at the pier that night, now move into the court process, where they will be tested on evidence rather than on police statements alone.