From Kim Minugh:
A year-and-a-half after Mary Ourk was gunned down in a drive-by midtown shooting, Sacramento police have identified a suspect.
Dominick West, 27, (left photo) was arrested today in connection with Ourk's fatal shooting June 2, 2007. He has been in custody since March, when he was arrested by the FBI's Innocence Lost Task Force for a local case of sex trafficking of a minor.
Police said Ourk's killing was random and unprovoked.
The task force is a federal effort aimed at domestic trafficking of juveniles for prostitution and includes members of the Sacramento Police Department and the FBI.
Ourk was 21 years old when she died. She had just left The Empire nightclub with a friend when the driver behind her began honking. She pulled over near 12th and W streets, believing she knew the person honking.
The car pulled alongside Ourk's, and the driver shot her.
Her killing shocked the nightclub scene and baffled police. They had only this vague clue: the shooter was a man with short hair who fled in a white four-door sedan.
Ourk grew up in Stockton, surrounded by a close-knit Cambodian community, her family and friends told The Bee shortly after her death. She moved to Sacramento after graduating from Stagg High School in 2004, and was living with her high school sweetheart, Daryl Hale.
Ourk had been attending American River College and working at an accounting firm when she died. She was described as happy, friendly and a lover of music, dancing and her Chihuahua, Rufus.
The U.S. Attorneys Office and the Carol Sund/Carrington Foundation also assisted in this case.
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