A renowned California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientist who studied distant planets and other areas of astronomy for decades was recently shot to death at his home in a rural community outside Los Angeles, authorities said.
Carl Grillmair, 67, died from a bullet wound to the torso on Monday in Llano, an unincorporated community in the Antelope Valley, according to information from the LA county medical examiner’s office. The county sheriff’s department said it had arrested a suspect in Grillmair’s slaying, identifying him as 29-year-old Freddy Snyder.
Snyder faces a count of murder in connection with Grillmair’s death, along with charges of carjacking and burglary pertaining to other cases. He remained in custody on Friday.
The Los Angeles Times quoted a Caltech spokesperson who confirmed that the university employed Grillmair as a research scientist. He helped explore the universe as part of Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, a partner to the US space agency Nasa, the National Science Foundation and researchers worldwide.
Grillmair’s curriculum vitae listed more than four decades of experience in his field, including hundreds of publications, contributed papers and abstracts – as well as an exceptional scientific achievement medal from Nasa.
“He’s irreplaceable,” Sergio Fajardo-Acosta, who worked alongside Grillmair at Caltech for 26 years, said in an interview on Friday. “I will miss him very personally, and I will miss him as a colleague as well.”
Officials said local deputies responded to an emergency call reporting an assault with a deadly weapon at Grillmair’s home shortly after 6am on Monday.
They said deputies found Grillmair on his front porch having been shot once. Paramedics pronounced him dead on the scene.
While investigating Grillmair’s killing, deputies reportedly arrested Snyder in connection with a carjacking that occurred nearby. Authorities subsequently charged Snyder with Grillmair’s murder, the nearby carjacking and a burglary reported on 28 December, according to court records reviewed by the Guardian.
It was not immediately clear whether Grillmair was acquainted with Snyder.
Fajardo-Acosta said Grillmair made important contributions to scientists’ understanding of Earth’s galaxy, the Milky Way, advancing knowledge of its collisions and mergers with other galaxies in its long-ago past.
He considered Grillmair’s most remarkable achievement to be detecting indications of water on a distant planet orbiting around a star different from the sun.
Water, of course, is a telltale sign of life – or at least conditions that are favorable to life. And finding signs of life on another planet has been “a quest for all of humanity” throughout history, Fajardo-Acosta said.
“That’s monumental,” he added; the discovery won his friend Nasa’s exceptional scientific achievement medal in 2011.
Fajardo-Acosta said Grillmair spent his free time flying airplanes over the desert, and on home improvement projects. He was known for his ability to tell personal stories with flair while unwinding with his friends.
Grillmair enjoyed his home in the remoteness of southern California’s Antelope valley in large part because it allowed him to easily study the stars at night, Fajardo-Acosta said. Grillmair did so in his astronomical observatory at home, equipped with various telescopes.
“Carl was always very happy there,” Fajardo-Acosta recalled.
Some reacting to the news of Grillmair’s death noted that he was killed roughly two months after the shooting death in December of Nuno Loureiro, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist, that devastated the international science community.
Loureiro and the suspect in his murder had previously attended the same university program in Portugal. Authorities said that suspect later died by suicide after also fatally shooting two students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, about 50 miles (80km) from the suburban Boston home where Loureiro was slain.