LOS ANGELES — A 68-year-old tourist from New Zealand was struck and killed by a car during a botched robbery at an upscale shopping mall in a popular Southern California resort town south of Los Angeles, police said.
Violence broke out Tuesday afternoon at the Fashion Island shopping center in Newport Beach when two men, one with a gun, attempted to rob a woman and her husband at a Barnes and Noble store, Newport Beach police Sgt. Steven Oberon said at a news conference.
The woman was dragged onto the street by one of the suspects and killed by a third man driving a white sedan, Oberon said, adding that the three men then fled in the sedan.
The woman was identified by police on Wednesday as Patricia McKay, 68, who was visiting from New Zealand.
Newport Beach Police officers pursued the three suspects in the white sedan onto the freeway and eventually arrested the men.
According to police, one of the suspects fired his weapon three times during the robbery, but no one was injured.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called the killing “an absolute tragedy” in an interview with the BBC. radio interview thursdayLuxon knew McKay’s husband, former bank chairman Doug McKay, very well, he said.
“He’s a wonderful man and it’s a wonderful family. … I think the family will be in great shock and all our thoughts and prayers are with them,” Luxon told Newstalk ZB.
Without naming Patricia McKay, a New Zealand Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in an emailed statement that consular officials are assisting the family of a citizen killed in Newport Beach.
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Charlotte Graham-McLay, an Associated Press reporter in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.