A 24-year-old man was convicted Tuesday of murdering a woman and her three young daughters and then setting the family’s Lancaster house on fire.
Jurors deliberated about three hours before finding Corey Lynn King of Altadena guilty of four counts of first-degree murder for the Sept. 9, 2008, killings of Sonya Harris, 43, and her daughters, Kayla Clark, 9, Melinda Harris, 11, and Ebony Horton, 14, according to Deputy District Attorney Robert Sherwood.
The panel found true the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder during involving the infliction of torture involving Harris and her two older daughters, and also convicted him of one count each of arson of an inhabited structure and grand theft auto.
The jurors are due back in a Lancaster courtroom next Tuesday for the trial’s penalty phase, in which they will be asked to recommend whether King should be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Harris was stabbed more than 50 times and her 14-year-old daughter was stabbed more than 60 times, according to trial testimony. The woman’s 11-year- old daughter was beaten and stomped to death, as well as stabbed, and the 9- year-old was strangled, according to the prosecutor.
King — described as a family friend — then drove to a nearby gas station, bought gasoline, poured gasoline over the victims’ bodies and throughout the house before setting it on fire.
Sherwood said an argument might have preceded the killings, and Harris’ three daughters killed because they were witnesses to their mother’s murder.
King was arrested the day after the bodies were found inside the burning home in the 1500 block of East Avenue J-3. He surrendered to sheriff’s officials after hearing his name mentioned in connection with the blaze, which was set after the killings.
— City News Service