LAKE COUNTY ? Eleven weeks and one day since former taxi driver, soccer coach, father and respected community member Paul Joseph Womachka went missing, the Lake County Sheriff”s Department released new information about his murder in a late-breaking press release Thursday evening.
The LCSD”s ongoing investigation into the murder of Paul Joseph Womachka waits on DNA test results from several pieces of evidence, according to the Thursday press release from the LCSD. The release goes on to state that the investigation has met with a lack of cooperation from residents of the Big Valley Rancheria.
The LCSD submitted several pieces of evidence to the California Department of Justice for tests. Those tests results may identify “a person or persons” present at the time of Womachka”s death, according to the release, and are not yet available.
Womachka went missing just after midnight in the morning hours of June 27 after he was hired to drive Morgan Matthew Jack, 30, to his home in the Big Valley Rancheria, according to the release.
Deputies and divers from the North Shore Dive Team responded June 29 to the marina adjacent to Konocti Vista Resort & Casino, where they found Womachka”s body inside his submerged “Hey, Taxi” van.
Jack is considered a person of interest in Womachka”s murder, but was arrested on an unrelated parole violation at the casino the night Womachka”s body was found in the marina, according to LCSO Lt. Cecil Brown. Brown confirmed that no charges related to the murder have been brought against Jack.
“Detectives continue to be frustrated by a lack of cooperation from residents of the Big Valley Rancheria,” writes Brown in the Thursday release.
“This crime involved a violent murder as well as a van being crashed through a fence into the marina. Detectives have received second-hand information that Rancheria residents have described the attack in detail, or even claimed to be participants. However, no witnesses have come forward to provide first-hand information about the murder,” writes Brown.
Brown told the Record-Bee late Thursday that Big Valley Tribal Chairman Valentino Jack agreed in a meeting “well over a month ago” to provide property records and maps of the rancheria to the LCSD, but has not.
A call to Chairman Jack was not returned as the Record-Bee was going to press Thursday night.
Any person who has information regarding this investigation is asked to call LCSO detective Nicole Costanza at 262-4236.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
