More Details Released on Triple Homicide

[Update: Jan. 8, 2019] On Friday, the Sheriff’s Office released preliminary results of its investigation into the shooting death of David McNabb. The suspect, believed to have killed three people at an Orcutt home, had been holding a Browning .243-caliber, lever-action rifle that was found to be unloaded; it had belonged to his late father. He pointed it toward deputies responding to the murder scene. Four deputies fired 23 rounds from .223 rifles; McNabb was struck five times. The motive for the murders is still under investigation.

[Original Story]

Further details are being released by the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office in the triple homicide attributed to former custody deputy David Gerald McNabb. The three victims were discovered on December 28, by a woman who lived at the house on the 5900 block of Oakhill Road in Orcutt. She was a friend of Nicole McNabb, 34, whom she found covered in blood in a bathtub. The discovery sent her running out of the house to call the authorities around 8:05 that Saturday night.

When deputies responded, they found the suspect in the house, armed with a rifle. After a negotiation team was called in, David McNabb, 43, said other people were in the home, and the Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Team moved in to rescue them. They encountered McNabb and sought to subdue him with a 40mm impact weapon and beanbag rounds. He “continued to pose an immediate threat,” the Sheriff’s announcement reads, and he was shot. He later died at the hospital. An autopsy is expected to occur on January 3, and the shooting is under investigation.

The deceased were identified as his sister, Nicole McNabb; his mother, Melanie McNabb, 64; and a friend of his mother’s, Carlos Echavarria, 63. All had been beaten and stabbed to death. None appeared to have been shot, and autopsies are scheduled.

McNabb had been a Santa Barbara County custody deputy from 2001 to 2012, and resigned voluntarily, according to the Sheriff’s Office. He was arrested in Oxnard in 2012 and served time for felony domestic violence in 2014. Due to the conviction, he was not legally allowed to own a firearm.

The Sheriff’s Office stated that during the investigation, McNabb’s brother, Brian McNabb, 40, was found to have assaulted an unidentified family member at his own home in Santa Maria prior to the murders in nearby Orcutt. Brian McNabb was arrested on December 30 on charges of battery with serious bodily injury and is being held on $50,000 bail. The charges and arrest are unrelated to the homicides.