Author: Amanda Covarrubias

Three people, including a six-month-old baby, were discovered dead of gunshot wounds inside an Alhambra home Thursday morning in what investigators suspect is a murder-suicide.

Alhambra Police Lt. Edith Lopez said officers received a call about 4:30 a.m. of a possible suicide at a house in the 800 block of South Sierra Vista Avenue.

Inside the home, officers found the bodies of a man, a woman and the baby. All three had been shot, she said.

Lopez said evidence led investigators to believe it was a “murder-suicide.” Detectives were not yet saying which adult might have done the shootings.

Coroner’s officials will determine the cause of the deaths. Authorities were withholding the victims’ names until their relatives could be notified.

— Richard Winton

Map: The location of the incident. There have been four homicides within two miles of this location since Jan. 1, 2007, according to the Times’ Homicide Report database.

A team of engineers from San Diego State University will use a small unmanned aircraft Thursday to search for a missing woman in Malibu.

The drone, equipped with high-resolution cameras, will be able to dip into canyons that search teams have had difficulty accessing by helicopter and on foot, said Chip Croft, who has helped lead the search for Mitrice Richardson since she went missing in September.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will assist with the drone search and helped cover the costs to bring it to Malibu, Croft said.

The drone, which is from SDSU’s Immersive Visualization Center, has been used in the past to find the remains of missing people after traditional search efforts fail.
Croft, who is a working on a documentary about Richardson’s disappearance, said he first learned about the drone after talking to the family of Amber Dubois, an Escondido teenager who disappeared last year.

The drone was used in the high-profile search for Chelsea King, a San Diego teenager who went missing Feb. 25. 

Richardson, 24, a Cal State Fullerton graduate, disappeared after she was released from the Malibu-Lost Hills sheriff’s station after midnight on Sept. 17, 2009, without a car, purse or cellphone.
Richardson had been arrested earlier that night at a Malibu restaurant for not paying her bill. Restaurant staff told police she was acting strangely.

Authorities have searched the hills and canyons of Malibu several times. So far, they have found no trace of her.

— Kate Linthicum

Photo: Mitrice Richardson.

Hundreds of travelers waited on the sidewalk at LAX Thursday morning when officials shut down three terminals and delayed at least 14 flights because of a security breach.

All terminals were reopened within two hours of the 5 a.m. incident after authorities  found a man who did not go through proper security
screening, officials said.

Los Angeles International Airport  spokeswoman Nancy Castles said the man was selected for secondary screening but instead picked up his carry-on bag and went through Terminal 7 around 5 a.m. Thursday.

Security screening at that terminal and connecting terminals 5 and 6 was halted while airport police looked for the man. The terminals house United, Continental, Delta and smaller airlines. Airport police located the man and re-screened his bag.

— Kate Linthicum

Photo: Long lines form in front of Terminal 5 at Los Angeles International Airport after a suspected security breach. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Law enforcement officials are telling the Associated Press that the FBI has arrested a Northern California man on suspicion of making threatening phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over healthcare reform.

[Updated at 3:07 p.m.: Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, was arrested at his San Francisco home in the Tenderloin district shortly after noon, said Joseph Schadler, a spokesman for the FBI office in San Francisco.]

Rose Riggs, Giusti’s neighbor in a public housing complex, said she saw two plainclothes and two
uniformed officers take him away in cuffs. Riggs said
Giusti was known for engaging in heated political debates with others in
the building.

“He was not one of my favorite people. He had a real attitude
problem,” she said.]

Charges against the alleged caller have not been disclosed.

Several federal officials say the man made dozens of calls to Pelosi’s homes in California and Washington, D.C., and to her husband’s business office. The suspect allegedly recited her home address and said that if she wanted to see it again, she should not support the healthcare overhaul bill that was recently signed.

— Amanda Covarubbias

Photo: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi  Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

The parents at Wonderland Avenue Elementary in Laurel Canyon were irate about the proposed education cuts from the state budget. So instead of going to Sacramento, they went straight to Hollywood.

The school’s PTA president came up with the idea of creating a video, and one parent suggested they ask Brian Austin Green (of "Beverly Hills, 90210" fame) to star in it. Green, whose son attends the school, agreed, and he got his girlfriend, actress Megan Fox, to costar.

The result was a four-minute short called “Hot for Teachers” that went live on Funny or Die, a viral comedy video site, on Wednesday.

It begins with the Wonderland principal addressing a group of parents yelling about the budget cuts. Then Green gets a call on his phone from Fox.

“People are freaking out about these budget cuts,” he says into the phone. “It’s like Attica in here.”

Green tells Fox to wait for him in the library, and on her way there, she encounters a group of fifth-graders sprawled on the floor and on top of cabinets because of overcrowding. They mistake her for their new teacher.

The kids tell Fox their teacher was laid off and their class was combined with another.

“The kids in this class are multiplying faster than my head lice,” said one of the students as she scratches  her head.

“It’s no wonder so many of us end up in prison,” laments another.

The video ends with Green and Fox urging viewers to sign a petition on the Say No to Cuts website and to “call, write, and annoy the governor until he cries for his mommy.”

Wonderland parents wrote the script and and produced the video with the help of Funny or Die, said John Koch, an entertainment public relations expert whose daughter attends the school. He helped write the script.

“The video is an exaggeration. It’s meant to be funny, but the question is, when is enough enough?” Koch said. “How far are these cuts going to go? It’s a tough situation for a lot of people.”

— My-Thuan Tran

An elderly woman died early Wednesday morning after her Torrance condominium caught fire.

Firefighters from the Torrance Fire Department responded to the 2:30 a.m. fire at a three-story condominium complex on Paseo de la Playa, said Torrance Fire Capt. Bob Millea.

Flames were shooting out a second-floor window, and the hallways of the second and third floors were filled with smoke.

The department deployed 45 firefighters, who were able to contain the fire to one unit on the second floor within 20 minutes, Millea said.

They found an elderly female occupant dead in the condominium, Millea said. She was the only person found inside. Arson investigators were called to the scene.

The blaze caused about $500,000 in damages. About 40 residents were evacuated, he said.

— My-Thuan Tran

The future of the historic De Anza Hotel in Calexico, Calif., remains in doubt because of damage sustained in the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck the U.S.-Mexico border region on Easter Sunday.

Built in 1931, the three-story hotel was once a favorite spot for Southern California business barons and the Hollywood set when they visited the desert and Baja California.

In recent years, the hotel has had financial problems and a series of owners. It is now being operated as a living space for low-income elderly people. About 110 residents were evacuated Sunday night when cracks appeared in the hotel ceiling, plaster fell to the floor and the statuary outside fell off their pedestals.

The city of Calexico’s development director, Armando Villa, said that while the hotel is grandfathered in as an unreinforced masonry structure exempt from certain building codes, there are limits.

“What concerns us now is we’re seeing a lot of stress marks that may or may not have to do with the structural integrity of the building," he said.

The building, just two blocks from the U.S. Mexico border, has been red-tagged, making it uninhabitable until further study.
City officials are waiting for a structural engineering report to be completed later this week to determine if the building can be repaired and saved.

Meanwhile, hotel residents have been moved to a number of shelters throughout Imperial County.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the county, which will free up state resources to aid the recovery effort.

The earthquake’s epicenter was in Mexicali, Mexico, just across the border from Calexico. It has been blamed for at least two deaths and at least 230 injuries.

— Tony Perry in Calexico, Calif.

Map: USGS

In the weeks before his death from a suspected accidental overdose, actor Corey Haim went “doctor shopping” and obtained at least 553 pills of powerful prescription medications from seven different doctors and as many different pharmacies, California’s attorney general said Tuesday.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said that Haim visited physicians at offices, urgent-care facilities and emergency rooms to obtain the potential deadly collection of pills and on one occasion used an alias. Brown said Haim’s case illustrates that prescribed drugs can be just as dangerous as street drugs, and that doctor-shopping can be deadly.

“He is the poster child for the problem,” Brown told reporters Tuesday. “There are a lot of doctor-shoppers and most of them aren’t celebrities.”

Investigators released a report confirming that from Feb. 2 to March 5 — five days before he died – the star of such movies as the “Lost Boys” and “License to Drive” obtained more than 195 tablets of Valium, 194 tablets of Soma, 149 tablets of Vicodin and 15 tablets of Xanax.

Haim, 38, was found unresponsive last month at his mother’s  apartment. He later died at a hospital;  Los Angeles Police Department officials said his death appeared to be an accidental overdose. He had complained of flu-like symptoms before he died. Coroner’s officials have deferred a cause of death pending further tests.

According to state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement investigators, Haim’s primary physician acknowledged the actor was addicted to pain medication. Brown said the actor obtained pain medication for myriads of injuries and also prescriptions for depression.

The doctors responsible for prescribing the pills told state agents that Haim told them he had shoulder pain resulting from an incident while he was filming a movie in Canada. Haim also claimed he was not seeing any other doctors, and many of the physicians complained they felt "duped" by
Haim.

On his visits to multiple pharmacies to fill his prescriptions, investigators found the actor either requested additional medication or asked for refills before the due date.
Brown on Tuesday appealed for doctors to check with the state’s prescription-monitoring database, known as CURES, before prescribing such medications.

The database is available to doctors and pharmacies, Brown said. Its use is voluntary, however.

Witnesses told state investigators that Haim had abused prescription drugs since the age of 15, attempting rehabilitation several times.

Haim’s name already has surfaced in connection with an illegal prescription-drug ring operating in Southern California, Brown said. In that case, the prescription in Haim’s name was for Oxycontin. One arrest has already been made in that investigation.

That investigation into a drug ring is linked to as many as 5,000 illegal prescriptions. It began before the actor’s death and the suspect arrested may not have provided the drugs involved in Haim’s death. The ring operates by ordering prescription drug pads from authorized vendors and using identities stolen from doctors.

The attorney general’s office has focused resources in the last few years on prescription drug rings that provide fake prescriptions to Hollywood figures.
Model Anna Nicole Smith’s boyfriend and two of her doctors were charged with repeatedly supplying the former Playboy centerfold with addictive prescription drugs since 2004, nearly three years before she died of an overdose, authorities said.

Brown also has said that singer Michael Jackson received prescription drugs under various names.

— Richard Winton

The U.S.-Mexico border was opened Tuesday to northbound vehicle traffic in Calexico, but the historic downtown district remained closed as inspectors checked for structural damage to buildings in the wake of the  magnitude 7.2 Easter Sunday earthquake in Mexicali, Mexico.

Although the border crossing had been closed to northbound traffic as officials checked for damage to the federal building where agents examine vehicles, pedestrians continued to cross through the checkpoint from Mexicali in an effort to flee the aftershocks wracking northern Baja California.

Many were headed to the Greyhound bus station, and taxis swarmed the area in the hopes of picking up passengers bound for points north and west.

Mexicali resident Hilda Gonzales waited at the Calexico bus station with her three children.

"I won’t feel safe until I can get to my sister’s house in Los Angeles." Gonzales said. "Then I will feel safe. Maybe I will never come back to Mexicali."

The Salvation Army set up a storefront at the border in Calexico and handed out cookies, water and coffee to entering visitors.

"It’s comfort food," said one of the Salvation Army workers, Laura Cintora.

Although the U.S. Border Patrol resumed its regular routine, the Calexico Police Department remained on extra deployment downtown as yellow police tape kept people away from red-tagged buildings. Yet there were no signs of looting or problems associated with the refugees from Mexicali, Lt. J.J. Serrano said.

"Everyone seems to be on their best manners," he said. "They know everybody is stressed out by this.”

Looking around at the quiet, abandoned buildings, he said: "It looks like a movie set, doesn’t it? Maybe they’ll do a movie about Calexico."

There have been more than 500 aftershocks from Sunday’s 7.2 Mexicali earthquake, and experts said residents in the region can expect many more.

“People who live near [the epicenter] are getting no sleep,” said Kate Hutton, a Caltech seismologist.

Most of the aftershocks have been minor — in the 3 magnitude or less. But there have been six aftershocks that registered more than 5.0, and dozens in the 4 range, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

There was a 4.6 temblor on the border early Tuesday morning. But the last magnitude 5 quake occurred Monday morning.

Hutton said there’s about a 56% chance that another magnitude 5 aftershock will occur sometime Tuesday.

She said that over the next week, there might be as many as 22 magnitude 4 aftershocks and maybe two magnitude 5 aftershocks.

“The good news is that the aftershocks do become less frequent with time,” Hutton said. “After a week or two, it will only be an occasional jolt.”

The aftershocks are being felt most acutely in Mexicali, El Centro, Calexico and other border towns hit hardest by the temblor.

The death toll from the quake remained at two; more than 230 people were injured. The quake, centered about 30 miles south of the border, caused 45 buildings in Baja California to collapse or partly collapse, authorities said.

— Tony Perry in Calexico, Calif., and Ching-Ching Ni in Pasadena

It’s springtime and there’s a bumper crop of unweaned animals being sold illegally on the sidewalks of L.A.’s downtown fashion district.

Los Angeles police Officer Matthew Shafer, who patrols the streets and lots around the Santee Alley shopping mecca, was routinely scouring a Wall Street parking garage on Easter Sunday when he spied a man rustling plastic in a van and went to investigate.

In the van, Shafer found 118 turtles. In another van next to it, he discovered 23 underage rabbits.

"I thought, ‘Getting bunnies on Easter — this is awesome,’" said Shafer who had arrested another illegal sidewalk vendor selling rabbits and turtles the previous weekend on 12th Street and Maple Avenue.

Counterfeit handbags and DVDs are not the only problems for police downtown. The illegal sale of animals — often unweaned and malnourished or sick — is a perennial problem, according to Los Angeles police, downtown security officers and the city’s animal service officials.

When animal services officials can certify that animals are in bad condition, their vendors can be charged with animal cruelty — as was Raymundo Hernandez, the man Shafer arrested in the parking garage.

The animals were confiscated and turned over to Lejla Hadzimuratovic, a rabbit rescuer who runs an organization called Bunny World Foundation.

Vendors who are arrested generally are back on the street dodging officers shortly afterward, said Shafer, who energetically pursues them nonetheless.

“Sometimes, it’s hit or miss,” Shafer said of the search for vendors and their animal wares. “It’s like fishing.”

Shafer and the yellow-shirted fashion district security officers are practically heroes in the eyes of animal rescuers.

Hadzimuratovic takes on the task of nursing the tiny rabbits — often just days old — with a mixture of kitten formula, goat milk and colostrum pills. If they live — and sometimes they don’t — she and volunteers work to keep them all fed and cared for until she can adopt them out.

In the last 10 days, she has taken in about 40 of the furry creatures. The unweaned rabbits that officials confiscated more than a week ago and turned over to her have survived.

“All seven buns are alive and kicking,” she said.

— Carla Hall

Photo: A box of unweaned rabbits confiscated Easter Sunday in a downtown parking garage. Credit: Lejla Hadzimuratovic.

Three strangers waited for the elevator at the Wilshire State Bank building Monday morning. One of them, a businessman, pushed the "up" button. Nothing happened.

He pushed it again. Still nothing.

Five long minutes passed. The man walked over to a stand of Korean newspapers, took one, and started reading.

Similar scenes played out across the region Monday after Sunday’s magnitude 7.2 earthquake in Baja California stopped or slowed elevator service in some Los Angeles buildings.

"The calls are rolling in," said Michael Mateyko, an elevator repairman with Hoist Elevator Co.

Other elevator companies reported a similarly busy morning. Mateyko said managers of buildings near the airport and along Miracle Mile called him to say, "Hey, our elevators are down. What’s up?"

Most elevators that have been modernized or built in the last 15 years have earthquake detection devices, Mateyko said. When the sensor is triggered, the elevator stops at the nearest floor and opens its doors so that no one is trapped inside. Before service can resume, the elevator must be inspected and the sensor reset.

To the chagrin of security guards at the office building in mid-Wilshire, the repairmen had not yet arrived Monday morning, which meant they had a lot of explaining to do.

"Hola, Jose," one of them said to a maintenance worker, who was one of the three strangers waiting for the elevators. "The earthquake messed up the elevators," he said in Spanish. "We’re using the stairs."

But Jose was going to one of the top floors of the 14-floor building, and he was carrying a heavy tool kit. He and the others said they would prefer to go up in the one elevator that was working, even after the security guard warned them it would be a slow ride.

"That 7.2," the guard said as he ushered the group into the working elevator, "Whoa! The house was wobbling side to side."

Just before the doors closed, a woman dripping from the rain squeezed in.

"12 please," she said.

The guard told her the elevator was sluggish and could travel only one floor at a time. He said he would take the three passengers who had been waiting to their floors first.

"Oh my God!" she said, dropping her bag on the floor in a huff.

"My bad for the inconvenience," the guard apologized.

"I really don’t understand," she said. "I really don’t get it."

The elevator crept from floor to floor, depositing its passengers one by one. When the rain-soaked woman finally stepped off, the guard smiled.

"People are getting impatient up here," he said. When it was time for them to come down, he said, they’d have to take the stairs.

— Kate Linthicum

Normal routines gradually returned Monday to the border city of Mexicali, Mexico, hit hard Easter Sunday by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake felt as far away as Los Angeles and Phoenix, Mexican authorities said.

“Little by little, things are coming back to normal,” said Alejandro Contreras, a spokesman for the state government in Mexicali, a sprawling municipality of almost 1 million situated about 125 miles east of San Diego. “People are nervous, of course, but we are calling for calm and working to restore services.”

The quake left two dead and about 230 injured, none seriously, said Jorge Sanchez Rendon, another government spokesman. Most of the injured had scratches and bruises, he said.

The northbound border into Calexico, Calif., from Mexicali, Mexico,
remained closed to automobile traffic Monday morning because of concerns about damage to the
U.S. federal building, but people were allowed to walk through checkpoints into the U.S. as aftershocks rattled the region.

Authorities reported a total of 45 collapsed or partially collapsed buildings in Baja California.

Power and water supply was being restored, authorities said, though much of the city seemed without power early Monday and many traffic lights were not functioning. Authorities said the damaged water supply system was improving, but that pressure was low.

Much of the visible damage downtown was from broken glass. People walked on the streets and cars circulated cautiously.
Officials said electric power had been restored by mid-morning to 75% of users in Mexicali. Half a dozen electrical sub-stations were being evaluated for damage, authorities said.

Thousands of people slept outside Sunday night as aftershocks shook the city, keeping nerves frayed. Authorities were setting up temporary shelters, especially in rural areas where the quake ruptured irrigation canals and led to extensive flooding.

Mexicali is a major farming center, and irrigation is essential to the industry.

“There is a bit of a psychosis, people are scared, especially with all the aftershocks,” Contreras said. “We’re urging everyone not to panic, to know that help is being provided.”

Authorities stressed that reservoirs were safe and amply supplied and there was no danger that Mexicali or the coastal city of Tijuana would run out of water. A major aqueduct was being evaluated for damage but that should not affect water supply, officials said.

Some major roads, including the Mexicali-Tijuana highway, suffered damage but were still functioning, officials said. Officials were examining roads statewide.

Hundreds of motorists and vacationers returning home after Easter break were stranded between Mexicali and Tecate to the west and San Felipe to the south after running out of gasoline. Gas pumps were crippled by the lack of electricity.

Four shelters were set up in Mexicali for people whose homes were destroyed or who were afraid to sleep inside their homes. Thousands of people slept outside Sunday night as dozens of aftershocks continued to shake. University classes scheduled to resume Monday were suspended.

Baja California Gov. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan said patients from Mexicali’s damaged hospital were being treated in tents while crews of inspectors were moving through the city to survey damage.

“Little by little the calm is returning,” Osuna said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon planned to visit the city Monday afternoon to review the damage personally. Osuna said he planned to ask the president to declare the city a disaster area, thus making it eligible for federal aid.

Although cars were prohibited from crossing north from Mexicali into Calexico, Calif., people walked over the border.

Meantime, a steady stream of cars drove south into Mexicali as residents attempted to check on their loved ones. Phones in Mexico were not working.

In Calexico, downtown merchants could be seen sweeping broken glass and fallen plaster away from their storefronts and covering walkways. Many buildings were red-tagged until officials could inspect them further.

Calexico police patrolled the downtown area overnight to watch for looting, but none occurred.

An aftershock hit about 4:12 a.m., causing car alarms to go off all over town, and the cacophony continued for hours.

Traffic was slow Monday morning along westbound Interstate 8 in El
Centro as Caltrans checked for problems on the freeway that may have
been caused by the earthquake.

— Tony Perry in Mexicali, Mexico, Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City and Patrick J. McDonnell in Los Angeles

Photo: Much of the nearly completed four-story parking garage at the Mexicali Civic Center lies in ruins after being shaken apart in the earthquake. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times



More photos: Baja California earthquake



Find the latest L.A. Now earthquake coverage here, and a map of the Baja California earthquake here.

The northbound border into Calexico, Calif., from Mexicali, Mexico, remained closed Monday morning because of concerns about damage to the U.S. federal building, but people continued to stream into the U.S. on foot as aftershocks rattled the region.

A day after a 7.2 earthquake struck the Mexican border town of Mexicali, residents on both sides of the country line remained jittery. Although cars were prohibited from crossing north, people walked over the border to flee Mexicali.

Traffic was slow Monday morning along westbound Interstate 8 in El Centro as Caltrans checked for problems on the freeway that may have been caused by the earthquake.

Meantime, a steady stream of cars drove south into Mexicali as residents attempted to check on their loved ones. Phones in Mexico were not working.

In Calexico, downtown merchants could be seen sweeping broken glass and fallen plaster away from their storefronts and covering walkways. Many buildings were red-tagged until officials could inspect them further.

Calexico police patrolled the downtown area overnight to watch for looting, but none occurred.

An aftershock hit about 4:12 a.m., causing a chorus of car alarms to go off all over town, and the cacophony continued for hours.

Although Calexico has electricity and water, residents of Mexicali and surrounding areas were not so fortunate. 

— Tony Perry in Calexico, Calif.

The Los Angeles Police Department played its own version of an April Fool’s Day prank this week on an unwitting career criminal who thought he was swiping a neglectful reader’s iPod from amid the book stacks at the downtown Central Library.

Anthony Eugene Johnson, 43, approached the bait Thursday within moments of an undercover LAPD detective placing the iPod on top of a laptop computer on a table and walking away, said Lt. Paul Vernon.

On a third pass, Johnson allegedly emerged from the stacks and nonchalantly picked up the iPod and placed it in his jacket pocket, Vernon said. Officers followed him through the library for several minutes. They arrested him when he sat down with his own laptop, Vernon said.

The officers discovered the iPod among the book shelves, where Johnson allegedly had stashed it.

“Thefts at the library are too commonplace, and we want to send a message to thieves: Think twice before you take someone’s stuff,” Vernon said. "We want to scare the crooks into thinking that anytime they grab an iPod, it might belong to a cop.”

Vernon said undercover officers watched the library over several days, talking to security officers and watching patrons, to figure out the worst place to set one’s computer, iPod or purse.

“In this instance, it was a third-floor end table, near the bathrooms and elevators, around 5 pm,” he said.

Johnson was arrested on suspicion of felony petty theft with a prior conviction. He has convictions for robbery, theft and narcotics charges, Vernon said. His bail was set at $20,000.

In 2009, thefts at the Central Library jumped from 35 to 47. Bike thefts more than doubled to eight for the same year. The most common items taken at the library are personal electronic gadgets, such as laptops, digital music players and cellphones.

For the first three months of 2010, thefts at the library have dropped from 16 in 2009 to nine this year. Four patrons have discovered their bicycles stolen from the racks outside the library so far this year.

–Richard Winton

In the latest sign of fallout from the electric rate dispute at Los Angeles City Hall, the head of the union that represents Department of Water and Power employees said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa should have embraced the City Council’s compromise proposal for increasing the size of ratepayers’ bills.

Brian D’Arcy, business manager for the powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, met with the mayor to urge him to support the council’s plan, which would have raised electric rates by 4.5%. That meeting occurred an hour before Villaraigosa’s appointees on the DWP board were scheduled to take up the plan.

The DWP board voted Wednesday to ignore the council’s plan and push instead for a larger 5.7% increase, which was closer to the original request by Villaraigosa. The council shot that plan down the same day, killing any chance of an increase for the next three months.

IBEW Local 18 represents roughly 8,600 DWP employees.

Villaraigosa’s office had no comment.

D’Arcy’s statement, provided by a spokeswoman, was only one of the responses to the council-mayor spat over rates. 

Raman Raj, the DWP’s acting general manager while interim executive S. David Freeman is on vacation, issued his own statement, saying the utility’s financial outlook is in "significant jeopardy" in the wake of the council’s decision.

The DWP has warned that the money generated by a rate increase would preserve its bond rating, which governs the cost of borrowing by the utility. Raj said in his statement that the DWP is looking at its options.

–David Zahniser at Los Angeles City Hall

A Garden Grove gang member was sentenced Friday to 40 years to life in prison for the attempted murder of a father of five, who was left with brain damage and in a wheelchair as a result of a graffiti-related shooting.

Ivan Garcia, 26, was convicted in February of street terrorism and attempted murder for shooting David Puga after the homeowner saw him tagging a block wall on a cul-de-sac.

Garcia was tied to the brutal April 2008 attack by his DNA, which was left on a discarded spray paint can near the crime scene, prosecutors said. As a result of the shooting, part of Pugh’s brain had to be removed and he was left with memory loss and a lack of motor and verbal functions, they said.

Before the sentence was handed down, Puga’s wife, Dorothy, told of the impact on her husband.

“All I have to say to you, Ivan, is that you will suffer in jail like my husband has to suffer for the rest of his life,” she said in court, according to prosecutors. “You have not only hurt our family, but by the way I see your mother crying in the courtroom, you have hurt your family as well.”

Puga and his wife were returning home from the grocery store the night of the attack. Puga went out to move a car from the street to the driveway and spotted Garcia and another man tagging a block wall by crossing out a rival gang’s graffiti.

Garcia then pulled out a gun and shot the 45-year-old Puga three times in the neck, arm and foot and continued to fire as Puga tried to escape by crawling back into his home, prosecutors said.

After hearing the gunshots and finding her wounded husband, Puga’s wife called 911. Witnesses saw Garcia and another gang member toss the spray-paint can into a Dumpster near a convenience store.

In August 2008, forensic experts matched it to Garcia’s DNA, which was in the state criminal database because he had been convicted that year of being an accessory after the fact in a gang murder.

One of Puga’s daughters, who was 16 at the time of the attack and whose name was not released, recalled the attack in court before Garcia was sentenced.

“I will never forget the way my dad was looking at me as he lay on the driveway on his back with blood pouring out his neck,” she stated, according to prosecutors. “I was screaming out loud, ‘Dad, please don’t die!’”

— Richard Winton

For more than three decades, Carlos Perez toiled at a downtown produce market to make a better life for his family. A proud and jovial father and grandfather, he would head to work when most Angelenos were still asleep.

He would park his car in a lot on the east side of Alameda Street and walk across the wide lanes to start his 3 a.m. shift as a supervisor and driver at I&T Produce Co.

But on Monday, the 59-year-old Whittier man was struck mid-street by a car with an impact so hard that shards of glass scattered everywhere from broken lights and the car’s skirting tore off. The driver of the dark Infiniti G35 sedan, which had been traveling north, sped away, never braking or stopping to aid Perez.

The hit-and-run driver disappeared into the downtown night.
Workers at the truck scale and produce factories that line Alameda Street heard the impact and thought it was a two-car collision. They found Perez dead in the wide street, a good distance away from where he usually crossed.

His two sons and daughter remained overcome with grief Friday. They said they could not understand how someone could fail to stop and help their kind, gentle father.

“He got dragged down the street. There was no braking or anything. He died instantly,” said Monique Perez, his 25-year-old daughter. “He did not deserve this. We want justice for my dad.”

She said she hopes someone comes forward to identify the suspect.

“Somebody knows who is responsible," she said. "Please give our family peace of mind.”

When he was not working, Perez doted on his children and in recent years, on his four grandchildren. The day before his death, his family had barbecued and headed to Disneyland, his daughter said.

”He loved hanging out with the grandkids, listening to music and doing family-type things,” she said.

Her father was full of good humor and had a sarcastic wit, she said. He was married for 34 years and had known his wife, Jeannette, since his late teens.

Word was already out among workers in the downtown industrial business district to be on alert for the crumpled Infiniti.

LAPD detectives have no eyewitnesses and few clues apart from the sprawling wreckage left behind on the street.
The debris allowed detectives to determine the car was a dark-colored 2005 or 2006 Infiniti G35, four-door sedan, said Det. Josephine Mapson.

"There should be damage to this vehicle," she said. "A family member, a repair shop or an insurance person is going to hear about it. Someone is going to know about this kind of damage on a car like this.”

Anyone with information is asked to call Det. Mapson or Det. Felix Padilla at (213) 972-1825.

— Richard Winton 

Photo: Carlos Perez, who was killed Monday by a hit-and-run driver while crossing Alameda Street in downtown L.A.. Credit: Monique Perez

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department search-and-rescue team with tracker dogs resumed their search Friday for a Pomona man possibly missing in the San Gabriel Mountains, a sheriff’s sergeant said.

Frank Martinez, 51, was reported missing Thursday by relatives. U.S. Forest Service workers found his vehicle abandoned at the top of San Dimas Canyon Road, where hikers sometimes leave their cars.

The vehicle’s windows had been left rolled down.

A sheriff’s spokesman said the San Dimas Mountain Rescue Team began searching Thursday and planned to comb the area again Friday.

— Richard Winton

Authorities have charged 31 people following an eight-month investigation into an alleged ring of Mexican traffickers smuggling methamphetamine into California and Washington state.

About 90 pounds of methamphetamine, with a street value of $5 million, was confiscated during the investigation, according to federal documents.

The ring allegedly had wholesale distribution cells in Ontario, Fontana and Upland, and in Turlock in the Central Valley. Methamphetamine also was allegedly shipped to a cell in Othello, a small town in eastern Washington, which is best known for growing about half the country’s potatoes made into French fries.

Ten of those charged are in custody. The rest are at large and presumed to be in Mexico, federal authorities said Thursday.

Among them is the ring’s alleged leader, Jesus Marquez-Marquez, a.k.a. “Don Chuy,” who remains in Michoacan, a western Mexico state.

The region is known for heavy immigration into the United States and is where much of Mexican methamphetamine trafficking originated. In the last few years, it has been a main battleground in savage violence among trafficking groups and the Mexican army.

The ring’s alleged main U.S. distributor, David Jimenez-Pedroza, of Corona, is in federal custody in San Diego.

If convicted, he and others face life terms in prison.

— Sam Quinones