was found dead on a trail in Woodland Hills Park<\/a> at around 4 p.m. on May 3.<\/p>\nAt the insistence of the prosecutor\u2019s office, his bond was denied.<\/p>\n
During the arraignment, Oakland County\u2019s Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Meaghan Williams described the alleged circumstances of the attack, noting that Harris was violently bludgeoned and strangled in the middle of the day at the public park near Farmington Road and I-696.<\/p>\n
The defendant reportedly has no prior criminal record or history of assault, according to his attorney.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say eye witnesses testified to seeing the victim and the defendant together at the park prior to the incident, however investigators say the two men did not know each other.<\/p>\n
Police released a sketch of the suspect seen by witnesses on May 20, and apprehended Bercea at his place of work in Wixom on June 8 \u2014 more than a month after the murder took place.<\/p>\n
Pictured is a sketch released by Farmington Hills police of the person of interest in the May 3 homicide in Woodland Hills Park. (Farmington Hills Police Department)<\/p>\n
Bercea was remanded to the Oakland County Jail and is scheduled to appear in court for his preliminary exam conference at 1:30 p.m. on June 24.<\/p>\n
In a news release issued Thursday, Farmington Hills Police Chief John Piggott said that the case may not have been solved without the community\u2019s assistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank our community for placing their trust in us throughout this investigation and for the overwhelming support and cooperation shown to our investigators,\u201d he said. \u201cFarmington Hills remains a safe community because our residents are active partners in our community policing philosophy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. \u2013 The man accused of brutally murdering a 65-year-old man at a park in Farmington…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[10975,143,904,145,144],"class_list":["post-356592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-farmington-hills","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-county","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}