The identities of both the victim and the man believed to have killed her at homeless encampment in Victorville last month have been identified by San Bernardino County authorities.
On Saturday, November 15, a 38-year-old man went to the Victor Valley Global Medical Center, located at 15248 Eleventh Street in Victorville at around 3:40 p.m., telling one of the personnel there, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department that “there was an injured female on the ground near the hospital.”
Sheriff’s deputies were summoned, and the man, identified as Taureen Alden Sims, led them to an encampment south of Verde Road and east of Hesperia Road, according to the sheriff’s department. There, just before 4 p.m., the responding deputies found a 52-year-old woman who had sustained, according to the department, massive injuries.
“The female victim was alive but unresponsive and had trauma to her face,” according to a statement provided by the sheriff’s department at the time of the incident.
The woman was transferred to a hospital for treatment, but succumbed to her her injuries.
Detectives from the sheriff’s department’s specialized investigations division/homicide detail were dispatched to Victorville. According to the department, investigators identified Sims, who is six foot five inches tall and weighs 195 pounds, as a suspect in the killing.
The woman was identified as Karen Marie Beatty, but here name was wothheld in the immediate aftermath of her death as attempts to locate her family and notify them were being made.
Despite the arrest of Smith on murder charges, the cause of Beatty’s death, beyond the notation that she had suffered consderable physical trauma, was not immediately cataloged. The coroner’s office, a division of the sheriff’s department was assigned to come to a determination of the cause of death.
Sims was charged with murder by the district attorney’s office on November 17. His prosecution is being handled by Deputy District Attorney John Richardson. Deputy Public Defender Michael Matthias is representing him.
With Deputy District Attorney Sherman Curi standing in for Richardson, Sim was arraigned before Judge Miriam Morton on November 18. Sims, with Matthias present, was unresponsive and Judge Morton entered a not guilty plea for him.
Overseeing the case against Sims is Judge Elizabeth Ulsh, who was appointed to the bench in September by Governor Gavin Newsom. Yesterday, December 4, during Sim’s pre-preliminary hearing before Judge Ulsh in Victorville Superior Court’s Department 12, the proccedings against Sims were suspended after the court declared there to be doubt about the defendant’s mental health The hearing was continued to January 22, at which time a report on Sims’ fitness to stand trial to be completed by court appointed Orange County-based Doctor of Psychiatry John Kinsman is to be provided to the court.
Neither the sheriff’s Department nor the district attorney’s office has been forthcoming with information relating to the evidence implicating Sims in the murder. It is not known how familiar Sims and Beatty were with one another prior to the murder. Both were denizens of the homeless encampment near Verde Road.
Sims was charged with nine misdemeansors in San Bernardino County over the last 18 years, in 2007, 2016, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2020 and 2025, on charges such as driving withut a license, driving while intoxicated, trespassing, stalking, public intoxication, possession of a controlled substance and relieving himself in public. He was also charged with two felonies stemming from the same incident in 2010, raping a drugged victim and raping a person unconscious of the act,. Both of those charges were dismissed.
This week, the coroner’s office had yet to reach a conclusion as to why Beatty had died. The department released her name.