Highway Patrol Fires Officer in Murder Case

SAN DIEGO —  California Highway Patrol Officer Craig Peyer, charged with the on-duty murder of a San Diego State University student, has been fired after a CHP internal investigation concluded that he “did without justification kill” the woman, it was announced Friday.

Peyer’s firing, effective Thursday, was announced by CHP Border Division Chief Ben Killingsworth at a press conference here. In a nine-page report filed Friday with the state Personnel Board in Sacramento, CHP Commissioner J. E. Smith flatly stated that Peyer murdered Cara Knott, 20, on Dec. 27 and accused him of “loathsome misconduct.”

Knott, an honors student at San Diego State, was strangled between 9 and 10 p.m. on the old U.S. 395 bridge near Interstate 15 and the Mercy Road off-ramp north of San Diego. Her body was thrown 65 feet into a dry creek bed, where it was discovered the next morning.

Peyer was arrested Jan. 15, charged with murder and is free on $1-million bail pending his trial, scheduled for September in San Diego County Superior Court.

In addition to the murder allegations, Peyer was fired on grounds that he improperly stopped women motorists at night on numerous occasions and forced them to park on the darkened Mercy Road off-ramp.