Orange County Judge Jeffrey Ferguson arrested on suspicion of shooting dead his wife Sheryl as a community and colleagues are left in shock and dumbfounded.
Did he do it? A Southern California judge has been arrested on suspicion of murder after his wife was shot dead inside their Anaheim Hills home, Thursday night.
Cops responded just after 8 p.m. Thursday to the home of Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, 72, where they found his 65-year-old wife Sheryl had been shot at least once, the Anaheim Police Department stated in a Facebook release.
She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The judge was taken into custody on suspicion of murder and held on $1 million bail, police said, saying he was arrested ‘without incident.’
‘Detectives are not disclosing any additional details at this time because the investigation is ongoing,’ cops said.
Two sources told the Los Angeles Times that a child of the couple was inside the home when police arrived.
A neighbor, John Poulter, told the LA Times that news of the shooting and arrest was “tragic.”
‘It’s a shock,’ he said, adding that he frequently saw the Fergusons walking their dog around the neighborhood.
He added that the neighbors exchanged pleasantries when they saw each other in the street and that he never expected anything like this to happen.
‘So many people in the neighborhood flooded the street [afterward] and just kept repeating, ‘There’s no way he could have done this,’’ Poulter said.
Colleagues who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they were not aware of any issues between the judge and his wife.
Ferguson has served as a judge in Orange County Superior Court since 2015.
Ferguson began his legal career in 1983 as an Orange County deputy district attorney, according to his bio.
‘He was promoted to Senior Deputy District Attorney, and posted to the Major Narcotics Enforcement Team a decade later,’ it says. ‘Ferguson has been named prosecutor of the year four times by the Orange County Narcotics Officers Association.’
The judge earned his degree in 1982 from Western State College of Law.
Previous reprimand
As a judge, he was reprimanded in 2017 by the state Commission on Judicial Performance for making an inappropriate comment about a judicial candidate on Facebook and remaining ‘friends’ on the social media platform with attorneys appearing before him in court, the Orange County Register reported.
The commission found that Ferguson violated the code of judicial ethics by posting a comment ‘with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth of the statement,’ according to the outlet.
Ferguson wrote in his bio that his wife had worked for the Santa Barbara and Orange County Probation Departments before spending almost 20 years with the American Funds Service Co.
A neighbor who did not want to be identified told KTLA that the couple had lived in the home for more than 20 years.
