Originally Posted by deflave
Originally Posted by safariman
I have no regrets other than that the police got the perp before I could get my mitts on his sorry carcass. He (the murdering carcass that is in jail right now) should be very grateful today for the bars and guards that are surrounding him today.



Article

Placer County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the death of Byron Claiborne, an Auburn resident and former Roseville City Councilman, after an apparent head trauma put him in a coma Dec. 17. He died at Sutter Roseville Medical Center the next day.

Claiborne, 79, served on Roseville City Council from March 13, 1978 to March 8, 1982, while June Wanish and Harry Crabb were mayors.

According to sheriff’s spokeswoman Dena Erwin, a tenant renting a room at Claiborne’s ranch on Shirland Tract Road found him on the floor of his kitchen early Dec. 17, shortly before 1:20 a.m. The tenant ran upstairs to ask another tenant to call 911, then returned to render medical aid until paramedics arrived.

Erwin said there was “a lot of blood,” and Claiborne fell into a coma. He died at the hospital around 35 hours later, at 12:09 Dec. 18.

Erwin said Claiborne’s injuries appeared to have come from a fall in which he’d hit his head on the kitchen counter, but Claiborne’s son, Mark, was skeptical.

Mark told the Press Tribune that he thought his father had been assaulted, given the bruises on Claiborne’s face, marks on his knuckles and internal bleeding. Mark said for all of his life, his father had taken in people who suffered from drug or alcohol addiction and given them jobs and a place to live, hoping to rehabilitate them. Mark said Claiborne had varying degrees of success with this, and he feared one of his father’s tenants might have turned on him.

“He lived a risky life in that he let them live right there in his home while he was working with them, doing Bible studies and things,” Mark said. “He was a very devout Christian and believed that’s how we should live – helping people get off of drugs and stuff, and introduce them to the Lord, and work ethic, and he invested his whole life in that.”

Bruises notwithstanding, Erwin said an autopsy Monday revealed nothing suspicious, although it did not establish a definite cause of death. She said Claiborne’s age might account for many of Claiborne’s apparent injuries from the fall, but forensic testing to officially rule out homicide is ongoing and could take weeks to finish.

“If you have a fall, which he had, and he had a cut to his head, that can cause bleeding, which can cause blackened eyes,” Erwin said of the bruises.

Mark pointed out that detectives put bags around his father’s hands and feet to protect potential DNA evidence, but Erwin said that was standard procedure.

As of Tuesday afternoon, no one had been arrested in connection with Claiborne’s death.

In addition to Claiborne’s service on Roseville City Council, Mark said his father was once president of both the Sunrise and Tuesday-lunch Rotary clubs, served as president of Toastmasters “many times,” served as the choir director and worship leader at Roseville's First Church of the Nazarene and the Roseville First Assembly of God, was a scoutmaster in the 1970s and sat on the Boy Scouts Golden Empire Council.