The golf world and the city of Ames, Iowa, are in shock following the murder on Monday of former Iowa State golf star Celia Barquin Arozamena.
Arozamena’s body was found Monday morning at Coldwater Golf Links in Ames, home of Iowa State University. Police were called to the course around 10:20 a.m. to investigate a possible missing female after golfers found a golf bag with no one around it. Police later found her body in a nearby pond. She had apparently been stabbed to death.
Collin Daniel Richards, 22, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Arozamena. A police dog tracked Arozamena’s scent to a homeless encampment along a creek near the golf course, where Richards had been living in a tent, the complaint said. Officers found Richards with several fresh scratches on his face consistent with fighting, and a deep laceration in his left hand that he tried to conceal, it said.
”It’s still very troubling for something like this to happen in broad daylight in a community that is as safe as Ames is,” Ames police Cmdr. Geoff Huff said at a news conference Tuesday.
Celia was one of the most accomplished players in Cyclone golf history. In April, she became the second women’s golfer at Iowa State to earn medalist honors at a conference tournament when claiming the 2018 Big 12 Championship. She did it with a three-shot victory. Arozamena, a native of Puente San Miguel, Spain, was finishing her civil engineering degree this semester after exhausting her eligibility at Iowa State in 2017-2018.
She was well known in her native country and was considered a rising star. She had aspirations to play professional golf.
This was the second fatal stabbing of a female student in Iowa in recent months. An immigrant from Mexico was charged in the July 18 kidnapping and stabbing of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, who vanished while out for a run in the small town of Brooklyn.
