The third victim recently found shot on a Georgia golf course was identified by police as Henry Valdez, 46. The announcement on Wednesday sketches in at least some additional detail on a mysterious shooting that happened Saturday at the Pinetree Country Club in Kennesaw, Georgia.
Valdez is from California, police said. Authorities also said that previously identified victim Paul Pierson, 76, was from Kansas.
“Cobb County Police Department investigators have positively identified the third victim from the homicide on Saturday, July 3rd, 2021 at Pinetree Country Club at 3400 McCollum Parkway in Kennesaw, Georgia,” officers said in a statement obtained by Law&Crime. “He has been identified at 46-year-old Henry Valdez of California.”
As officers previously said, the men were found dead in the bed of Pierson’s white Ram 3500 pickup truck on one of the golf course’s greens. According to the police narrative, club employee and golf pro Eugene Siller was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The unknown suspect, police say, killed Siller for merely being a witness to an “active crime.” All three men died from apparent gunshot wounds, officers said.
“Current information reveals there is not an active threat to the public at large and there was not a directed threat to residents of the neighborhood,” police said in an update Tuesday. “Instead, detectives have learned that Mr. Siller happened upon a crime in progress involving the unknown suspect and the two deceased males who were found in the pickup truck. It does not appear he was in any way targeted, but rather was killed because he witnessed an active crime taking place.”
Neither Pierson nor Valdez seem to have any link to the the golf course, cops have said.
[Screengrab via WXIA-TV]