Law enforcement officials announced Wednesday that they are offering a $20,000 reward in the search for two men who beat and then ran their vehicle over a Marine in the Los Angeles area in May.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officers responded to a scene around 2 a.m. on May 28 in Bellflower, California, a city in southeast Los Angeles County, where they found the body of 42-year-old Peter Chounthala, an active-duty Marine assigned to the Wounded Warrior Battalion.
Chounthala had been badly beaten and then run over by a car, and was pronounced dead at the scene. It was not immediately clear where he was stationed or what rank he held. The vehicle was described as a 2021-2023 dark-colored Kia K5.
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Chounthala is survived by his wife and their 3-year-old son, according to the sheriff’s department, which delivered a press briefing alongside the Marine’s family this week.
Jurina Chounthala, his wife, said that “he was everything to me. … He’s like the glue that held all of us together,” referencing his family and friends.
She described him as “just the best dad” and a “dedicated Marine.”
“We are truly burdened by life and death,” Witpha Chounthala, the Marine’s sister, said at the press conference. “Peter was loved by many. He was a father, a husband, a brother, an uncle, a friend and a Marine.”
Witpha said that Chounthala…
