By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH
LOS ANGELES — The brother-in-law of an Irvine man who was shot and killed while camping in a tent at Malibu Creek State Park with his two young daughters testified Monday that he heard loud popping sounds and one of the victim’s children crying, and found the man dead as his two daughters kneeled next to him in a pool of blood.
During emotional testimony in Anthony Rauda’s murder trial, Scott McCurdy told the downtown Los Angeles jury that he was sleeping in a nearby tent when he was awakened by “several loud pops” that he initially thought may have been fireworks or something from a nearby fire pit and saw “like a flash of light” early the morning of June 22, 2018.
He said he heard one of Tristan Beaudette’s daughters start to cry and waited for his brother-in-law to calm the girl down, then decided to get out of his own tent to see what was going on when he heard the girl’s older sister talking with her.
“I heard the girls crying,” he said, telling jurors that Beaudette’s youngest daughter said, “Wet, wet” and that he didn’t think anything about it at the time.
McCurdy said he tried to verbally comfort the girls while trying to rouse his brother-in-law from sleep and turned on his brother-in-law’s phone after noticing that his own hand felt slippery.
“My hand was covered in blood,” he said, noting that he turned back to his brother-in-law and saw the girls kneeling in a pool of blood and his brother-in-law’s face in a pool of blood.
He said he reached down to try to feel his brother-in-law’s neck for a pulse and realized he should get the girls out of the tent and call out to neighboring campers for help.
The victim’s brother-in-law said he held on to the girls until a few neighbors came over and then went back into the tent to check on Beaudette.
“I noticed there was nothing in his eyes,” he said of the 35-year- old Allergan research scientist. “I realized he was gone and I…
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