Published Aug 26, 2024 • 1 minute read
A California man who allegedly decapitated his parents and their dog was shot multiple times by police officers, then began singing Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got to Do With It while he lay bleeding on the ground.
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Officers responded to a grisly murder scene in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., on July 9 when they confronted a bloody Joseph Gerdvil outside the San Juan Mobile Estates.
They had just found the decapitated bodies of his parents — Ronald Gerdvil, 77, and Antoinette Gerdvil, 79 — along with their mutilated dead dog in a mobile home, police said.
Joseph Gerdvil allegedly attacked a maintenance worker after the attack on his parents and threw a shovel at deputies before the bodycam footage begins, police said.
Cops shout at Gerdvil to get on the ground, but the 41-year-old continues to charge toward them while holding an unidentified object and talking to himself incoherently. Gerdvil is then shot in the torso several times, though it took four bullets to take the man down.
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Orange County Sheriff deputies rush over to render aid only after Gerdvil rolled onto his stomach. He mutters, “I love you. I’m sorry you’re going to have to die.”
Gerdvil then says, “Just finish me off. Put one in my head, please. I beg of you.”
As cops tend to his wounds, the accused begins belting out ballads.
“What’s love got to do with it, got to do with it? What’s love but a second-hand emotion?” he sings before moving on to a Stevie Wonder hit.
“I just called to say I love you,” he sings.
The accused killer was taken to the hospital. He faces homicide charges over the deaths of his parents, though a motive for the brutal beheadings remains unclear.
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