While deputies investigated the case, Carrillo committed at least one other act of violence. “But somehow it happened, twice, and students had a lot of questions.” “People aren’t supposed to die on campus at Sonoma State,” Cartwright said.
The yearslong mystery of what happened to Kimberly helped drive calls for university officials to improve security. They believe the evidence will show Carrillo was the killer, said Fowler, who declined to elaborate on that evidence.Ĭampus concerns over Kimberly’s slaying resurfaced in 2018 when another burst of deadly violence rocked the university community when a visitor was stabbed to death in a dormitory.īraden Cartwright was a sophomore when Kimberly’s body was found, and he would later oversee student reporting on the investigation as editor-in-chief of the university’s newspaper, the Sonoma State Star.
“We’re confident Kirk was there and we’re confident Daniel was there,” Fowler said.ĭetectives also have both forensic and physical evidence from the scene where Kimberly’s body was discovered Nov. They have no evidence of other witnesses to the slaying, he said. 17, 2016, when they believed the violence occurred, Fowler said. Since his 2016 death, detectives have assembled evidence against Carrillo including cellphone GPS data that puts him at the location of the killing on the university campus on Oct. He was supposed to start work at a Rohnert Park machine shop later that day. He last saw his mother, Jennifer Kimberly, when he left home on his bicycle, saying was headed out to see a friend. “We’re very confident that he committed the murder of Kirk Kimberly.”īorn in Santa Rosa in 1998, Kimberly was an only child, grew up in Cotati and attended schools in nearby Rohnert Park and practiced jiujitsu, a martial art. “You have to have probable cause to make an arrest - we’re above that threshold,” Fowler said. Carrillo’s impending freedom “didn’t necessarily hasten the process, but it gave us the opportunity to put our plan in motion to arrest him,” Fowler said. It took time to put together the case against Carrillo and rule out other suspects, he said. Fowler said they had a list of suspects and Carrillo was just one.įowler, who oversees the sheriff’s violent crimes team, said they haven’t stopped investigating Kimberly’s slaying.
28, shortly before he was to be released.ĭetectives now say Carrillo was a prime suspect from the start of the investigation into Kimberly’s killing, although for more than three years they did not arrest him and remained tight-lipped about whether they had a suspect in the case or whether the killer remained at large. He was arrested on suspicion of Kimberly’s murder Feb. Jayson Fowler declined to describe a motive.Ĭarrillo has been incarcerated since September 2017 in an unrelated case. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office announced a break in the case Monday, revealing the arrest of the 20-year-old Rohnert Park man investigators had long suspected of the killing. More than three years would go by with little information about the investigation. Though Kimberly wasn’t a student at SSU, the brutal violence shocked the university community, prompting calls from students and staff to improve security and lighting on campus. Kimberly’s partly-buried body was discovered two weeks later by a campus landscaper in a remote area near the Green Music Center parking lot, known at the time to be a common party spot. A former high school classmate of a Cotati teen whose body was discovered in 2016 in a shallow grave on the Sonoma State University campus was named Monday as the prime suspect in his murder.ĭaniel Carrillo was 16 years old when detectives suspect he stabbed Kirk Kimberly, an 18-year-old acquaintance from Rancho Cotate High School, in a secluded, brush-covered corner of the university campus in October 2016.