Two young girls, 2 and 4, witnessed in horror as their father was shot and killed while on a camping trip in Southern California, according to reports.
Tristan Beaudette, 35, of Irvine, Calif., was bleeding from a chest wound when deputies found him in a tent early Friday at a Malibu Creek State Park campsite. The girls were unharmed.
“Tristan was out doing something he adored in life being in the outdoors with his two young girls,” a GoFundMe page for the Beaudette family says.
He took the girls camping so his wife, a doctor, could study for an exam, according to the reports. He worked as a scientist for a pharmaceutical company and he and his wife were about to move to the Bay Area.
“And then it was all taken away, by a fatal gun shot in the middle of the night, in front of his two young daughters,” the GoFundMe page said. “Not a second goes by that we aren’t grappling with the senselessness of this crime.”
Deputies said they had no leads, no suspect and no motive, KCBS Los Angeles reported.
“We are working this as a homicide at this point,” Lt. Rodney Moore of the L.A. County Sheriff’s office told The Los Angeles Times. “We are gathering evidence … It will take some time.”
The paper reported that the area where the shooting unfolded is frequented by hikers and day trekkers.
The park was the backdrop for the TV series “M.A.S.H.,” as well as the movies “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and the original “Planet of the Apes,” according to the paper.
