Dive team searches man-made Temecula lake for evidence in slaying
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department dive team spent Wednesday combing the lake in the Harveston neighborhood of Temecula for evidence in the killing of a 40-year-old Murrieta woman.
Murrieta police Sgt. Jim Ganley said divers were looking for the weapon that inflicted at least 11 blows to the head of Isabelle Jarka, who was found fatally wounded Monday morning in her bedroom on Tamarisk Street.
Investigators have yet to release any information about any possible suspect in Jarka’s killing.
Jarka’s husband told police that he went out to run errands Monday morning and when he returned less than an hour later, the side door to the garage was forced open, the house ransacked and his wife unconscious.
The couple’s two children, a 12-year-old girl and 6-month-old boy, were not home when their mother was killed. They had spent the night at their grandparents’ home across the street, Ganley said.
The Harveston neighborhood is just a few blocks south of the Jarka home, which sits near the city limits.
Neighbors and a family of ducks milled along the shore Wednesday afternoon as the divers worked.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Tim Morin said the divers had to feel their way along the bottom of the murky, man-made lake, which is the centerpiece of the Harveston subdivision and is ringed with homes. At its deepest, the lake is about 14 feet — too shallow to launch the boat that carries the team’s sonar equipment, Morin said.
By early afternoon, the team had marked two promising objects for removal from the lake, which turned out to be unrelated junk.
The team planned to continue its search into the evening, Morin said.
