Garden Grove, California’s Ike Souzer ordered held on $1 million bail

Ike Nicholas Souzer is from Garden Grove, Orange County, California, United States. He has been described by family and friends as autistic.

BIOGRAPHY

Souzer has a record of violence in his teenage years. Here are 10 more things about him:

1. His mother Barbara Scheuer Souzer earned a certificate in autism education from the University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California.
2. Project Kinship, a nonprofit organization in Santa Ana, Orange County, spent years advocating for his release from custody.
3. His mother was 34 years old when she gave birth to him.
4. He was born in 2004.
5. With a history of running away, he was on home detention when he stabbed Barbara in 2017.
6. In 2019, he was convicted for voluntary manslaughter and he escaped a juvenile detention facility.
7. In 2021, after he was convicted for assaulting three correctional officers while he was incarcerated, Orange County Superior Court Judge Gary Pohlson reduced felony charges to misdemeanors and gave him 160 days credit time served for the charges.
8. In 2022, he was moved from Theo Lacy Facility, a maximum security jail in Orange, to a halfway house in Santa Ana.
9. In 2024, he was arrested in Mexico.
10. In 2025, he was charged with possessing weapons in Anaheim, Orange County.

TIMELINE

Ike is 6’0″ tall. His registered weight is 200 pounds.

2010s

• In December 2016, his mother and Anaheim firefighter Andy Ingram got engaged.
• On May 4, 2017, he stabbed Barbara twice in the stomach outside their residence in the 11000 block of Gilbert Street in Garden Grove. She named him as her stabber before she died in the hospital. His public defense lawyer claimed he had been abused by her, which was false according to his maternal grandmother Eleanor Watson.
• While awaiting trial on April 12, 2019, he escaped from the Orange County Juvenile Hall in Orange, Orange County.
• On April 13, 2019, he was arrested at a McDonald’s in Anaheim.
• In June 2019, he was convicted for voluntary manslaughter.

2020s

• In August 2021, he allegedly attacked three correctional officers while in their custody.
• In December 2021, he pleaded guilty to assaulting three correctional officers and was ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device until the completion of his sentence on July 9, 2023 but he was released early with orders to remain under electronic monitoring.
• On April 13, 2022, he was moved from Theo Lacy Facility and he removed his electronic monitoring bracelet and escaped from the halfway house Project Kinship assigned him to. That day, his sister Berlin Souzer told CBS News that he is not “extremely dangerous like every news outlet is saying.” She explained, “If he was, they wouldn’t have let him out of jail. He is Autistic and hasn’t been given the correct coping skills throughout incarceration. He was never taught to deal with the problems he encounters.”
• On April 17, 2022, he was arrested at a homeless encampment in Anaheim by by the AB 109 task force, which tracks the impact of California’s prison realignment law.
• In August 2023, he was convicted of making a shank while in the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana and handed down a three-year sentence.
• In October 2023, prosecutors had objected to a three-year split sentence after he was convicted by a jury of making and possessing a shank in jail in 2022. Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael J. Cassidy sentenced him to one year custody time and two years supervised release.
• On January 18, 2024, he was released from custody with 50 percent good time/work time credit.
• On January 21, 2024, the Orange Police Department arrested him for spray painting graffiti on a freeway underpass underneath the 55 freeway in Orange and giving them a false name.
• On March 20, 2024, he pleaded guilty to one count of felony vandalism. Orange County Superior Court Judge Larry Yellin sentenced him to 90 days in county jail and placed on formal probation for two years. He was released because he had credit for that time behind bars. As part of the shank case, he was to stay at Project Kinship and obey all the rules and curfew there. Personnel from the organization transported him from the Orange County Jail to a transitional housing location in Santa Ana.
• On March 21, 2024, he left the transitional housing location in Santa Ana, did not return and failed to notify his probation officer of his whereabouts.
• On March 27, 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials arrested him in Rosarito, Playas de Rosarito Municipality, Baja California, Mexico.
• In August 2024, he admitted he violated terms of his probation when he failed to report his whereabouts to his probation officer and absconded, according to his attorney David Isaac Hammond. Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Robison told him he would have to complete the three-year sentence he received when he was convicted in October 2023.
• On February 18, 2025, he completed a probation violation and was released from jail.
• At around 5:45 a.m. on February 28, 2025, he was arrested for possessing a shotgun near the scene of a shooting at Loara Street and Lincoln Avenue in Anaheim. He was not a suspect in the shooting.
• On March 3, 2025, he was charged in Anaheim with possession of a short-barreled shotgun and rifle and possession of a firearm by a felon and was ordered held on $1 million bail.