Neighbors in shock over apparent homicide at Penngrove home

Authorities are investigating an apparent homicide after they were sent Thursday to a rural Penngrove farmhouse where a dead body was found.

Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies converged on the two-story house in the 900 block of Rose Avenue at about noon Thursday. A man who had gone to the home earlier in the day reported finding the body.

An older man and his sister reside at the home, according to neighbors, who described the pair as friendly and quiet. The house is surrounded by horse pasture and chicken houses, which the man rented out for storage.

Neighbors expressed shock at the sight of patrol cars and unmarked sheriff’s vehicles occupying the pockmarked one-lane road, which is off Minnesota Avenue.

“They’re a really nice family,” neighbor Josephine Munger said of the brother and sister. “It’s really very sad. We’re all in shock.”

Sheriff’s officials divulged very little about the case Thursday, saying only that it was being treated as a suspicious death. But their actions suggested that it was homicide.

Numerous detectives, including from the agency’s violent crimes unit, congregated at the home throughout the afternoon. Yellow crime-scene tape at the end of a long driveway prevented public access to the home.

Deputies expanded the crime scene shortly before 2 p.m., taping off a white storage building across the street from the home. A CHP helicopter circled overhead for several minutes and a Windsor police officer canvassed the pasture using a dog.

Sheriff’s Lt. Carlos Basurto confirmed that a person discovered the body after going inside the home. But he would not say what, if any, relationship that person had with the home’s occupants.

The man who lives in the home rented out the chicken house as storage units, as well as the building across the road from the home, according to a neighbor.

You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @deadlinederek. You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.