Pierre Haobsh
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY — By all accounts, 57-year-old Dr. Weidong Henry Han, his wife Huije Yu, 29, and their 5-year-old daughter Emily were a loving family, regarded with affection by their friends and their community. Dr. Han was reputed to be a leading practitioner of alternative medicine, with a roster of devoted and loyal patients.
Their position in the community made them unlikely prospects for violent death at the hands of a killer, but when Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department deputies visited their home in the early evening hours of March 23rd pursuant to a call from an associate of Dr. Han’s reporting the doctor’s failure to appear at work or for meetings throughout the day, they discovered their dead bodies in the garage.
According to SBSD Public Information Officer Kelly Hoover, their bodies were found “wrapped in plastic and duct-taped,” adding that “all of the victims suffered gunshot wounds.”
Upon the identification of the Hans by law enforcement, SBSD Sheriff Bill Brown called a press conference, during which he commented that he had personally never seen such a horrific crime perpetrated upon such innocent victims.
He assured the public that whomever was responsible for the crimes would be the subject of intense and immediate investigation.
The investigation, in fact, was already in full swing as the full resources of the SBSD Criminal Investigations Division promptly initiated a comprehensive investigation that included the collaborative efforts of the SBSD Forensics Team, the California Department of Justice Crime Lab, and intensive interviews of all known associates of the Han family.
The product of this focused work led to the identification of Oceanside resident Pierre Haobsh, 27, an alleged recent “business associate” of Dr. Han’s.
Pursuant to that lead, SBSD detectives, working with the cooperation of Oceanside police, Haobsh was contacted at a gas station in an unincorporated area of San Diego County and taken into custody at gunpoint.
He was found to be in possession of a “loaded 9mm handgun and property believed to belong to one of the victims,” whereupon he was immediately served with a no-bail Ramey Arrest Warrant and transported to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he awaits booking on three counts of murder.
Sheriff Brown uncharacteristically offered his own feelings on the case during the press conference, remarking “This was a diabolical, pre-meditated crime, one of the most odious that I have ever been involved with or that this agency has ever investigated.”
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
