A Los Angeles man who admitted during a police interview to a string of shootings that left three people dead in the midst of a wave of robberies at convenience stores and fast food restaurants across Southern California in 2022 was ordered by an Orange County Superior Court judge on Thursday to stand trial.
Malik Patt, 21, during a videotaped interview publicly shown for the first time in court this week, acknowledged carrying out a series of robberies, killings and attempted killings at 7-Eleven, Subway and donut stores in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Patt during the police interrogation didn’t give a clear motive for the killings, though he implied that race may have played a factor as to why he shot some people and not others. He initially denied knowing anything about the crimes, until detectives told him that family members had identified him from surveillance footage.
Patt acknowledged killing a homeless man outside a 7-Eleven he robbed in North Hills, a customer in a 7-Eleven parking lot in Santa Ana — identified by police as 24-year-old Matthew Rule — and a clerk in a 7-Eleven in Brea — later identified as 40-year-old Matthew Hirsch. He also admitted shooting and injuring a customer at a 7-Eleven in Riverside, and a clerk and customer at a 7-Eleven in La Habra.
Associate Defender Michael Hill, who is representing Patt, noted that during the the police interview Patt also claimed to have shot three other men in Los Angeles and Fullerton, despite detectives finding no proof that such potentially fatal attacks occurred. The defense attorney noted that was an indication that Patt may have been lying or exaggerating while talking to police.
Investigators in previous court filings have tied Patt to 16 robberies carried out during an increasingly violent rampage encompassing four separate mornings in July of 2022.
But Patt in the police interview said the robberies began much earlier, in January 2022, shortly after he…
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