Man Found Dead Under ‘Suspicious Circumstance’ in Santa Barbara Remembered as Loving Father, Brother

The apartment buildings along Los Aguajes Avenue sit in one of Santa Barbara's most walkable pockets — a few blocks from the beach, steps from the harbor, part of the West Beach neighborhood where tourists and longtime locals share the same quiet streets. It was there, on the night of October 28, that a routine request for a welfare check became something far darker, and a family's private grief became a public case.

The Santa Barbara Police Department announced this week that the man found dead in that apartment was Lawrence Matthew Brennen, 39. His death, investigators say, occurred under what they've described only as "suspicious circumstances" — a phrase that leaves far more unanswered than it explains.

Two people who lived in the apartment — Jenica Ochoa, 45, and Kenneth Tompkins, 43 — were arrested the night of the welfare check, after officers reported identifying suspicious circumstances at the residence, according to SBPD Lieutenant Ryan DeJohn. The next morning, just before 7 a.m. on October 29, investigators returned with a search warrant. What they found, according to the Santa Barbara Independent, was Brennen's body wrapped in a bed roll, placed inside a metal container, and sealed with plastic wrap.

Ochoa and Tompkins have each been charged with conspiracy to commit a crime and concealing a death. Both have pleaded not guilty and have been released on bail. They are expected back in Santa Barbara Superior Court on November 30.

What the charges do not yet answer — and what the SBPD Criminal Investigations Unit is still actively working to determine — is how Brennen died. Officials have not released details about what led up to his death, leaving a community with fragments of a story and a family waiting for the whole of it.

A Daughter's Remembering

Behind the case number and the court dates is a man his daughter remembers as irrepressibly alive.

"My dad was always a free spirit," Mia Brennen told the Independent. She remembers her father as a loving dad, brother, and friend — a storyteller whose adventures always had a tale attached. "His laughter would fill the room with a smile that would wipe away any tear," she said. "We will keep you in our hearts forever, dad."

The family has set up a SupportNow page to raise money for funeral costs — a reminder that even as detectives and prosecutors piece together what happened inside that apartment, Brennen's relatives are grappling with the immediate, unglamorous burden of laying him to rest.

"While we are still awaiting answers, we are asking anyone who can to help donate so we can give him a beautiful funeral," Mia Brennen said.

For neighbors in West Beach, the case has landed with particular weight. It's a neighborhood of short-term rentals and apartment courtyards, a place where people come and go. Violence of this sort is not what the blocks near the waterfront are known for, and the details that have emerged — a body concealed, charges filed a week after the discovery — have unsettled residents who thought they knew their corner of town.

A Familiar Path Through the Courts

Court records reviewed by the Independent show that neither Ochoa nor Tompkins is a stranger to felony proceedings in Santa Barbara County.

Ochoa was sentenced to state prison by Santa Barbara Superior Court on three separate occasions, the first following a felony burglary conviction in 2007. She later faced felony firearm-possession charges — a count that applies to people with prior felony convictions — in both 2011 and 2016, with the 2016 case also carrying a conspiracy charge.

Tompkins, for his part, was sentenced to County Jail by Lompoc Criminal Court in 2014 after convictions on felony burglary and a misdemeanor forgery count involving checks or bank bills.

Whether their histories will factor into the current case remains to be seen. The charges they now face — conspiracy and concealing a death — are not, on their own, homicide charges, and prosecutors have not publicly said whether additional counts could follow as the investigation continues.

What Comes Next

The next concrete milestone is November 30, when Ochoa and Tompkins are expected to report to Santa Barbara Superior Court. Until then, the SBPD Criminal Investigations Unit continues its work, and the central question — what killed Lawrence Matthew Brennen — remains open.

Cases like this one tend to unfold slowly in public and painfully fast in private. For investigators, there are autopsies, forensic reviews, and witness interviews. For a daughter and her family, there is only the waiting, and the effort to bury a father with dignity.

In her words to the Independent, Mia Brennen did not speak of the charges or the suspects. She spoke of her dad — the free spirit, the storyteller, the man whose laugh could change the temperature of a room. That, at least, no court proceeding can take from them.

Anyone with information about the case is encouraged to contact the Santa Barbara Police Department as the investigation remains active.