Hundreds gather to remember slain girl killed in murder-suicide
WALNUT CREEK, Calif. (KTVU) - A sad remembrance was held Sunday night in Walnut Creek as people gathered to remember 19-year-old Clare Orton.
Orton was gunned down by a former boyfriend on her doorstep earlier this week.
"She was probably the hardest worker out of all of us, actually," friend Megan Wenzel told KTVU, as a few hundred people assembled on the lawn at Las Lomas High School.
Orton was a long-distance runner at Las Lomas before her graduation last year. Many former teammates, such as Wenzel, remember her fondly.
"She always pushed us to be better and work together as a team," remembered Wenzel, "and a lot of us, all of us, looked up to her a lot."
Orton was home from college on summer break, when she opened the door at her parent's house about 7 a.m. Tuesday. A source says when she opened the door, her former boyfriend shot her her and then shot himself on the front lawn.
"It's a tragedy, one hundred percent," Walnut Creek Police Lt. Lanny Edwards told KTVU, "with two good, supportive families, this caught everyone off guard."
As far as police have determined, there was no warning Scott Bertics who dated Orton several years ago, would do such a thing.
"The 21 year old went there, he knows her and her family," recounted Lt. Edwards, "he went there, killed her, and then killed himself."
Bertics, who was two years older than Orton, was from Lafayette, and attended a different high school, but like Orton, ran cross-country and went on to college majoring in engineering.
Friends say their break-up was friendly.
"Kind of a mutual breakup, I think," recalled Orton's former teammate Madi Hight, "he went to college, and I think they decided to be friends, because he was going to be away and she was going to be here at Las Lomas. It wasn't a big deal."
But during the past year, as Orton was making the Dean's List, happy in her life at San Diego State University, Bertics was back at home, taking a leave from his studies at Stanford University for undisclosed reasons. As far as her friends knew, he and Orton were not in contact.
"I don't think there was any reason for her to be afraid of anything," observed Hight, "if there was, she would have told us, or told someone in her life."
Explanations, if there are any, may emerge with time.
Questions persist about Scott Bertics' mental state, and where he got the gun.
But on Sunday night, the focus was on Orton and the memories she’s left behind.
"We ran races together and we were always side by side," recalled former teammate Chloe Hansel, "and she was super motivating, always the hardest worker, adding on the extra miles, always there for all of us."