Author: Amanda Covarrubias

L.A. city leaders will gather at LAX Monday morning for a ceremony to mark the start of a $1.26-billion expansion-and-refurbishment project at the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

The work is expected to be completed by mid-2013 and will add two concourses and nine new gates for the next generation of large commercial planes. It also will add 1 million square feet for ticket counters, security checkpoints, passenger lounges and expanded customs and immigration facilities.

Stores and restaurants will occupy a central area.

Airport officials said the building project will be the most expensive the city has ever undertaken and is expected to employ about 4,000 construction workers. The Bradley terminal has not undergone major improvements since the 1984 Summer Olympics.

The aging airport has often received poor-to-average marks in surveys of passengers and airlines.

Among those scheduled to attend the 10 a.m. ceremony are Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa and council members Bill Rosendahl, Janice Hahn and Tom LaBonge.

[Updated at 10:20 a.m.: A previous version of this post stated the project’s cost was $1.26 million. It is $1.26 billion.]

— Jeff Gottlieb

Photo: A bust of the late Tom Bradley is located in front of the LAX international terminal named for the former mayor. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

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 Two LAPD officers were slightly injured early Monday when their squad car collided with another vehicle in South L.A., authorities said.

 

The officers suffered “minor abrasions” but were taken to a hospital for observation after complaining of pain, said Officer Sara Faden, an LAPD spokeswoman.

The crash occurred about 7:10 a.m. near the corner of Seventh Avenue and Exposition Boulevard, in Leimert Park. Television images indicated the squad car went through a fence and came to rest near a railroad right of way.

Police were investigating the cause of the incident.

— Patrick J. McDonnell

Photo: A pedestrian snaps a picture of an LAPD car that crashed into a chain link fence near Exposition Boulevard and Seventh Avenue after colliding with another vehicle. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

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The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in West Hollywood canceled classes Monday after a car crashed through the wall of the renowned performing arts school on Santa Monica Boulevard.

No one was injured in the Friday afternoon accident near Hayworth Avenue, which occurred when a Mercedes S500 rear-ended a stationary Toyota Camry. The Camry then “careened from the street, over the sidewalk, and through our wall as if it was desperate to take a seat in the Stage Lee theatre. He almost made it to the back row,” David Lee Strasberg, the school’s creative director and chief executive, wrote on its website.

It appeared the Camry driver, who was in his 80s, was attempting to pull over to the side of the street after his car was rear-ended, and he may have mistaken the gas pedal for the brake, said Sgt. Kristin Aloma of the West Hollywood Sheriff’s station.

There was no structural damage to the building, David Strasberg, son of famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who founded the studio in 1969 with his wife, Anna, wrote on the website.

The school plans to resume classes Tuesday.

— Amina Khan

Map: The location of the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in West Hollywood. Click to enlarge. Credit: Google Maps

A series of 18 small earthquakes shook Friday near Redlands, but there were no immediate reports of damage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“Most of them were small, so they wouldn’t have been felt,” said Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the agency’s National Earthquake Information Center.

Most of the tremors registered around a magnitude 2.0, but four were larger than a magnitude 3.0, Caruso said.

One of the stronger tremors, a magnitude 3.4, was recorded at 11:53 a.m. and was felt in Loma Linda, Caruso said. It was rapidly followed by other tremors, at least one exceeding magnitude 3.0.

“These are pretty small, but people will see them,” Caruso said. “They’ll see their chandeliers sway back and forth. Or if they have a pool, they might see waves, that sort of thing.”

— Ann M. Simmons

FBI officials are investigating an unauthorized landing at Los Angeles International Airport early Friday after a man allegedly stole a small plane with the intention to crash it into the ocean.

A source familiar with the case said that Skye Edward Turner, 23, allegedly took the Cirrus SR22 single-engine aircraft after a domestic argument and had planned to fly the plane into the ocean but reconsidered. [Update: An earlier version of this post misspelled
Turner’s first name as Syke.]

[Updated at 5:20 p.m: After Turner contacted LAX air traffic controllers about 2:25 a.m. while he was still outside the airport’s airspace, controllers in San Diego issued instructions to help him descend and got clearance from LAX for the plane to land. The pilot aborted his first landing because he was coming in too fast, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.]

After touching down, the pilot was met by authorities from the Los Angeles Fire Department and Los Angeles Airport police.

[Updated at 1:50 p.m.: The aircraft had been flying for six hours before landing in Palm Springs, according to a source, where it was refueled and flown to Los Angeles.

The pilot appeared to be incoherent, and was taken to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, where he was cleared physically and mentally by doctors to be booked, a source said.]

Turner claimed he had gotten the aircraft’s keys from an airport in San Diego County, a source said.
The pilot was handed over to the Los Angeles Police Department, and the FBI was participating in the investigation, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller.

Even though the incident turned out not to be terrorism, it showed that potential threats come not only from larger commercial planes but also small aircraft, said Marshall E. McClain, who heads the union representing the LAX police force.

The incident comes one day after a 53-year-old pilot, who had been battling the Internal Revenue Service for decades, plowed his single-engine Piper Cherokee into a Texas building housing IRS offices, killing at least one worker.

–Andrew Blankstein and Amina Khan

George Laguerre was supposed to fly to Haiti on Friday.

The charismatic owner of Echo Park’s popular Tigeorges’ Chicken restaurant had plans to visit the beleaguered island nation to see his family and to deliver aid through a nonprofit he heads.

Instead, Laguerre spent the morning cleaning up damage from an electrical fire that tore through the roof of his restaurant Wednesday night. Nobody was injured in the blaze, and the fire did little damage to the inside of the restaurant. But a thin coat of ash covered the tables, and the sour smell of smoke hung in the air.

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to go to Haiti for the last 40 days,” Laguerre said as he spread a tarp over a rotisserie and an espresso machine to protect them from rain that could seep in through ceiling holes created by the fire.

Laguerre had initially planned to travel to Haiti in mid-January but his plans were delayed when a magnitude 7 earthquake shook the capital of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, killing more than 200,000 people and closing the airport.

“There were no flights,” he said. “So I waited, waited. I was all ready to go, and then – this fire.”

It took more than two dozen firefighters to put out the blaze, according to L.A. Fire Department spokesman Devin Gales. Fire investigators  estimate it caused $50,000 in property damage and $10,000 in content damage. The art space next door, L’KEG Gallery, also was damaged.

Laguerre said that despite the blaze, he feels blessed.

The fire could have been worse, he said. And then there’s the lucky fact that none of his relatives in Haiti were injured in the earthquake. They live in northwest Haiti, where the earthquake did little damage.

Laguerre has hired a contractor to repair the roof of the restaurant, and he hopes to reopen soon. When things have settled down, he will take his long-awaited trip to Haiti to plant fruit trees, distribute cooking appliances, and “give my people a sense of direction.”

Laguerre, who grew up with 10 brothers and sisters in Port-de-Paix, Haiti, opened Tigeorges eight years ago. A Haitian flag tacked onto the restaurant’s wall was unscathed in the fire.

— Kate Linthicum in Echo Park

Photo: George Laguerre at his fire-damaged restaurant. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

An L.A. County judge ruled Friday that the Alameda County district attorney’s office can stay on the murder case of a former transit officer accused of shooting an unarmed rider even though authorities acted inappropriately by trying to interview the officer over the objections of his attorney.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry found that Oakland police detectives, working under the direction of the Alameda County district attorney, violated former BART Officer Johannes Mehserle’s constitutional rights following his arrest when they attempted to question him even though his attorney had told them he would not agree to an interview.

Mehserle’s attorney, Michael L. Rains, argued that the conduct was “shameful” and that the entire Alameda County district attorney’s office should be removed from the case.
Perry described the actions of the detectives and then-Dist. Atty. Tom Orloff as “unseemly” but also found that it was a “fairly minor” violation.

In allowing the D.A.’s office to keep the case, Perry noted that Mehserle declined to speak to detectives and that Orloff had since retired.
Perry also denied a request to reduce Mehserle’s $3-million bail. He said the former police officer, who is free on bail, remained a flight risk.

Mehserle, 28, is charged with murder in the New Year’s Day 2009 killing of Oscar Grant on a BART station platform. Fellow passengers recorded the shooting and its chaotic aftermath on cellphones in footage that was broadcast widely. The shooting sparked riots in downtown Oakland and death threats against Mehserle.

Mehserle’s defense has argued the officer meant to shoot Grant with an electric stun gun but mistakenly grabbed his pistol instead.
More than two dozen Grant supporters attended Friday’s hearing while others joined in a demonstration outside the downtown Los Angeles courthouse. The supporters held signs that read “Justice for Oscar Grant” and “Stop Police Murder Now.”

The trial, which was moved to Los Angeles following concerns about pretrial publicity in Alameda County, is scheduled to begin June 7.

— Jack Leonard at the L.A. Superior Courthouse downtown

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By the time Dale Reavis considered evacuating his La Cañada Flintridge home during the storms that hit Southern California earlier this month, it was too late. He was trapped.

A torrent of mud flowed down the street in front of his house on Ocean View Boulevard, and mud and debris raged down a canyon riverbed behind the property, Reavis recalled.

“I saw the flood of mud come down and hit homes and cars,” said Reavis, 50.

About 3½ feet of mud swept into his frontyard, tearing up the landscaping and piling up against the entryway, causing some muddy water to leak inside. At one point, Reavis climbed a tree in an attempt to stay out of harm’s way.

“I couldn’t drive out. I was stuck,” he said. “I was pretty scared, and I really didn’t like that feeling.”

So as more rain approached the region Friday, Reavis was not taking any chances. He spent Friday morning boarding up windows and fortifying his property with sandbags.

“I’m hanging out now to see how things go, but I would definitely consider leaving,” he said.

Evacuation orders have been issued for almost 200 homes in La Cañada Flintridge and La Crescenta ahead of two storms expected to sweep into the area late Friday night and Saturday morning and again overnight Sunday into Monday. Residents were ordered to leave their homes by 4 p.m. Friday.

But Murdock Allen planned to stay put.

“I have no intention of leaving,” said Allen, 77, a retired phone company manager. “We’re safe enough here that I don’t believe we’re in any imminent danger.”

The front of his home on Normanton Street off Ocean View Boulevard in La Cañada Flintridge stands 12 feet above street level. During mudslides earlier this month, the house remained intact, but the force of the mud flows pushed aside K-rails, or concrete barriers, and entered the driveway, destroying Allen’s Dodge Dakota truck.

Allen said he would not bother setting out sandbags because the 3-by-5-foot sandbag wall he built last time to protect his driveway was washed away.

An unexpectedly powerful rainstorm unleashed a torrent of mud Feb. 6 that inundated 43 houses and left La Cañada Flintridge’s northernmost neighborhood awash in boulders and debris. Thirty-one homes, primarily in the Paradise Valley development, were engulfed in mud and debris, and 12 had structural damage. About 25 cars were sent smashing into walls and trees.

The McLaughlin family on Ocean View Boulevard was ready Friday to hunker down. Despite fighting a deluge of mud that engulfed their home during the recent mudslides, Heather McLaughlin said she and her father would likely stay put, though she would rather her mother leave.

“If we don’t stay here and something happens, no one will be here to try and protect the house. No one will be here to try to prevent more damage,” said McLaughlin, 23, an elementary school teacher.

The McLaughlins home took on about a foot of mud, and they have spent the last couple of weeks trying to make it habitable again.

“If we had evacuated for the mudslide, we wouldn’t have been here to quickly get the mud out of our home,” McLaughlin said.

— Ann M. Simmons

A NASA panel says the north runways at Los Angeles International Airport are safe and should remain in their current configuration, according to a report released Friday.

The panel said that while other proposals — including widening the distance between the two north runways — might make the airport runways safer, "the risk is so low, reducing that risk by a substantial percentage is of limited practical importance.”

A committee of academics working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released a preliminary copy of the report Friday morning at the Flight Path Learning Center near LAX.

Nearby residents had been concerned about the report, fearing it would persuade elected officials to push a runway and surrounding airport land into their neighborhoods.

Airport officials have been trying to determine whether a greater distance between those two runways would reduce the number of near-misses involving arriving and departing jets.

The academic committee was charged with looking at five options. One would involve doing nothing, while a second would push the northernmost runway 100 feet north into Westchester. A third would push the northernmost runway north by 340 feet. A fourth would result in the elimination of one of the two runways on the north side of LAX. A fifth would call on the airport to relocate one of its north runways 340 feet south – a move that would require the demolition of Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at the airport.

— Jeff Gottlieb near LAX and David Zahniser at L.A. City Hall

Photo: Los Angeles Times file

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Two rainstorms are expected to move into Southern California this weekend, but public works officials said Friday they were confident debris basins would hold up in Los Angeles County foothills ravaged by fire and mudslides.

As a precaution, evacuation orders have been issued for 146 homes in La Canada Flintridge and 46 homes in La Crescenta, said Bob Spencer, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works. Authorities began calling residents Thursday night, warning them to evacuate their homes by 4 p.m. Friday.

Deputies will be going door-to-door to tell residents about the evacuation orders, law enforcement officials said. Residents also were being advised not to leave trash cans or vehicles on the street. Parking restrictions had been imposed on certain streets in La Canada Flintridge and La Crescenta, Spencer said.

Spencer said seven smaller debris basins in the burn areas had been completely cleaned out. The remaining 21 were much larger and could take several weeks to be cleared, but a lot of material had already been removed, Spencer said.

“We’ve got adequate capacity for these particular [rain] events as forecasted,” Spencer said. “But weather can always change.”

The last several days of dry weather had allowed workers to make significant progress in clearing debris, and “the flood control system is working effectively,” he said. Since the start of the rainy season, 1 million cubic yards of debris had been captured and averted from landing in neighborhoods.

The first of the imminent storms was expected to bring between one-third to three-quarters of an inch of rain overnight Friday into Saturday morning, with up to 1-1/2 inches expected in the valleys and mountains, said Stuart Seto, a weather specialist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

Snow levels were expected to drop to 4,500 feet Friday night with several inches possible in the higher mountain resorts. While the amount of rainfall expected was not as intense as the deluge that triggered mudslides earlier this month, if a thunderstorm were to hit the areas affected by last year’s Station fire, “that could cause problems,” Seto said. Thunderstorms are forecast to occur off the coast or slightly inland, he added.

Angeles Forest Highway, Big Tujunga Canyon Road and Upper Big Tujunga Canyon Road were to be closed Friday at noon, according to the public works department.

More than 1,000 public works personnel were expected to be deployed to burn zones across L.A. County, including areas such as Palos Verdes and Malibu, which were charred by previous wildfires, Spencer said.

A second, less-intense storm was expected to move in Sunday night and into Monday. Intervals of rain are expected Tuesday through Thursday with temperatures ranging from the low- to mid-60s Saturday through Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

— Ann M. Simmons

Photo: Paul Dupont, left and Sergio Yescas put their weight into their work as they secure K-rails on Ocean View Boulevard in La Canada Flintridge. Credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times

Map: Use The Times’interactive maps to learn more about which foothill communities are considered at risk.

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Crews worked Friday to clear a landslide that spilled dirt and boulders onto two freeway transition roads in San Dimas, shutting off the connectors and slowing morning and afternoon commutes.

“They’re out there right now – they have bulldozers,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Krystal Carter. “Caltrans is out there with the geologists, doing their thing.”

The hillside near Interstate 10 and California 57 collapsed shortly before 8: 40 a.m. Thursday, knocking over a light pole and affecting transition roads on the westbound Interstate 10 and northbound California 71 connectors to the northbound 57.

CHP officials say it will take at least a week until the roads are clear for traffic.
There were no reports of anyone being hurt or buildings damaged, but the landslide slowed traffic to a crawl Thursday.

Commuters were encouraged to take alternate routes, such as Interstate 15 north to the 210 Freeway, or California 60 to the northbound Interstate 605 to the 210. Commuters can still access eastbound Interstate 10.

Drivers may also take southbound 57 and use another exit to get on the northbound side, or exit at Towne Avenue from the westbound 10 and take surface streets to reach the 57 again, Carter said.

[Updated at 10:34 a.m.: If it rains Friday afternoon as expected, crews would stop work and cover the sinkhole with a nearly 80,000-square-feet plastic tarp, said Caltrans spokesman Patrick Chandler.

“We’ve got about 2,500 cubic yards of rock, dirt and debris out there," he said. "It’s equivalent to a four-story apartment building.” Trucks drove into the area every few minutes to pick up dirt and carry it to a dumping site, he said.]

— Amina Khan

Riverside County sheriff’s deputies killed a man in his Moreno Valley home while responding to a burglary report, sheriff’s officials said Thursday.

Jose Ruiz, 31, was fatally shot shortly before 3 p.m. Feb. 8 in the 16000 block of Century Street near Plumeria Lane, the sheriff’s office said.

Deputies responding to a neighbor’s report of a burglary entered Ruiz’s home and shot him when he became “combative” with a gun, said Deputy Melissa Nieburger.

Ruiz died about 20 minutes later at the scene, according to a coroner’s report. The shooting remains under investigation, Nieburger said.

— Amina Khan

Yuri Foreman, an aspiring rabbi who is the first Israeli to win a world boxing title, will stage boxing workshops and hold a question-and-answer session this weekend in Long Beach.

The World Boxing Assn. junior middleweight champion will conduct the Q and A at 10:30 p.m. Friday at the Jewlicious Music, Arts and Culture Festival, where he will hold a boxing workshop Saturday at 7:45 p.m. He will conduct another workshop at 10 a.m. Sunday.

“He’s a genuine hero among young people,” said Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, the festival’s founder and director. “Today, with a very assimilated Jewish community, it’s exciting to have people like Yuri who have an impact on the world. Yet they’re firmly rooted in a positive Jewish identity.”

The festival runs Friday through Sunday at the Alpert Jewish Community Center at 3801 E. Willow St. in Long Beach.

— Kevin Baxter

A Los Angeles judge commended R&B singer Chris Brown on Thursday for his efforts to fulfill the terms of his sentence for assaulting his then-girlfriend, pop star Rihanna.

“It looks like you are doing really, really well,” Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg told the 20-year-old performer during a progress hearing that lasted less then two minutes.

Brown, dressed in a black, military-style jacket and gray jeans, listened silently as the judge went over papers from authorities in the singer’s native Virginia detailing his progress.

Schnegg, who sentenced Brown to five years’ probation in August, said he had worked off 32 of the 180 days of “community labor” and completed a third of the required domestic violence classes.

“You haven’t missed one. You are participating and doing a very good job,” she told him.

Brown left Rihanna bruised and bloodied during the attack last year that began inside a rented Lamborghini after a pre-Grammy party. He has apologized for the assault.

— Harriet Ryan at L.A. Superior Court

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The three employees of Tesla Motors Inc. killed in an East Palo Alto plane crash were tentatively identified Thursday as Doug Bourn, Brian Finn and Andrew Ingram.

Authorities said at a noon news conference that they planned to use DNA, dental records or fingerprints to confirm the identities of the three employees of the San Carlos, Calif.-based maker of electric vehicles.

Bourn was a senior electrical engineer and the pilot of the plane. Finn was a senior manager and Ingram an electrical engineer. They were headed to Hawthorne, where Tesla has business operations.

Authorities said no distress signal was sent from the twin-engine Cessna 310, which took off shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday from a Palo Alto airport in thick fog. With visibility at an eighth of a mile and a cloud ceiling of 100 feet, the pilot received authorization to fly using instruments.

“The last communication was regarding the takeoff clearance, “ said Josh Cawthra, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

He said a probe would look into whether the weather played a role in the accident and the possibility of a bird strike.
The city of East Palo Alto has a sensor system designed to detect gunshots, and the system recorded a “very clear and quite powerful” audio of the crash, said Mayor Ronald Davis.

The recording has been sent to a laboratory in Washington for analysis. A preliminary report on the cause of the crash is expected in about five days.
The crash damaged four structures, destroying one home, and charred five vehicles. Nobody on the ground was injured.

— Maura Dolan

A hillside near the 10 Freeway and California 57 in Pomona that collapsed Thursday and shut down two interchanges was still moving by mid-morning, sending rocks and dirt tumbling onto traffic lanes, a Caltrans spokeswoman said.

CHP officials said the transition roads will remain closed for up to a week while crews work to repair the road and clean up the debris.

“They are still trying to stabilize the hillside,” Caltrans’ Judy Gish said Thursday.

Boulders began sliding down the hillside about 8:30 a.m. near the westbound 10 Freeway transition to northbound 57 Freeway, and a light pole was lying in the road, said California Highway Patrol Officer Francisco Villalobos. California 71 to the northbound California 57 also was closed.

Investigators were trying to determine what triggered the slide.

— My-Thuan Tran

Photo: While geologists survey the top of the hill, CHP Officer Edmund Zorrilla gives the media a close-up view of the landslide. Credit: Allen J. Schaben  / Los Angeles Times

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An anti-censorship advocacy group is criticizing Temecula city officials for removing a nude painting from a city-owned gallery.

The National Coalition Against Censorship sent a letter this week to City Manager Shawn Nelson after a portrait of a woman by local artist Jeffrey Scott Hebron was pulled from the show “Visual Expressions 2010” at the Merc gallery because it was not "family-friendly."

“Simple nudity is not sufficient ground for excluding artwork from public exhibition,” the letter stated.

It also cited several U.S. Supreme Court cases that found public officials could not censor material simply because they found it offensive or provocative.

Hebron said he went to the gallery on opening night Jan. 22, expecting to see his painting, but it was not there. He went up to the storage unit in the attic, where he found it stashed, and as he was carrying it down, artists and gallery-goers came by to take a look.

“I’ve been painting for 20 years," Hebron said. "You go to any gallery in the world and you’ll see this. I’m not a political person, but as an artist I feel like everyone should be able to judge for themselves.”

City officials could not be reached for comment.

The coalition’s programs director, Svetlana Mintcheva, who penned the letter, said it was probably too late to rehang the painting in the gallery because the show ends Sunday. But raising the issue may prevent a similar situation from occurring, she said.

“We’d like the city to apologize to the artists, but much more importantly, to clarify policy," Mintcheva said. "The city manager cannot come in and censor a curated show.”

— Amina Khan

Los Angeles police asked for the public’s help Thursday in finding the man who raped a 15-year-old girl in Echo Park on Christmas Day.

The girl was walking in a secluded area near Echo Park Lake about 7:30 p.m. when she encountered the man, who raped her then fled the scene, police said. The girl was treated at a hospital.

The suspect is described as a man in his 20s, possibly Latino, about 6 feet tall and between 160 and 170 pounds. He wore prescription glasses and was last seen wearing a black, hooded sweat shirt with white horizontal stripes, and he had a piercing on his lower lip.

Video of the suspect was captured by a surveillance camera at a nearby liquor store.

“Usually in our cases, where there is a later date, the detectives were following some leads and they probably have exhausted all of them, so they’re turning to the public for help,” said LAPD Officer Norma Eisenman.

Anyone with information about the attack or the suspect should call sexual assault detectives at the LAPD’s Rampart Station at (213) 484-3624. During non-business hours, call 1-877-LAPD-24-7.

— My-Thuan Tran

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