Author: Cara Mia DiMassa

Thirty-seven roosters were euthanized Sunday morning after Riverside County authorities broke up a cockfighting ring near the Salton Sea.

Acting on a tip, a dozen Riverside County sheriff’s deputies and animal control officers busted the open-air cockfight shortly after 10 a.m. in the 100000 block of Avenue 72, known as the North Shore area, said John Welsh of the Riverside County Department of Animal Services.

“Everybody bolted and nobody took ownership of the birds or the property,” Welsh said.

Deputies in four-wheel-drive vehicles chased spectators out into the desert, Welsh said. Thirty-two participants were arrested for misdemeanor animal cruelty, according to a sheriff’s press release.

Of the 40 roosters found on the premises, three had already been killed during the event, Welsh said. The other 37 were given lethal injections by animal control officers.

“Roosters raised to be cock fighters, you can’t put them up for adoption,” Welsh said.. “They’ll fall into nefarious situations where someone would sell them on the black market. You can’t put them in a cage with other birds, they will just kill all the chickens.”

“Their fate is to be humanely euthanized in the field,” Welsh said. “It’s better than that barbaric tournament.”

–Jason Felch

A transient man was arrested on suspicion of murder Sunday after he confessed to bludgeoning a homeless woman to death with a club, Hemet police said Sunday.

The body of 48-year old Robin Livesay was found Tuesday morning behind Davita Dialysis in the 3000 block of West Florida Avenue.

Detectives identified the suspect as Christopher Scott Lewis, a 39-year old transient. Lewis has a tattoo with the word “Headhunter” on the back of his head and is known for impersonating a U.S. Marine, Hemet police said in a statement.

Patrol officers came across a man matching Lewis’ description Sunday morning while on patrol.

Lewis was arrested and confessed under questioning by Hemet detectives, said Lt. Dean Evans of the Hemet Police Department.

Livesay "was a local homeless person,” Evans said. Lewis "was in and out, moved around a little bit…. They were at least acquaintances.”

–Jason Felch

State and local officials joined hundreds of people outside the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in Hollywood on Sunday morning to kick off a national grass-roots campaign demanding equal Social Security benefits for same-sex couples.

The rally and march event–dubbed Rock for Equality–was put together by the center and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in coalition with the Aids Community Action Foundation, said Jim Key, a spokesman for the center.

At the rally, U.S. Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Lakewood), who is a member of the House Subcommittee on Social Security, announced that she would sponsor legislation to provide equal Social Security benefits for same-sex couples. " I don’t think it’s right that Americans should be treated differently by the country they love because of who they love,” Sanchez said, triggering thunderous applause and cheers from the crowd.

“Right now, same-sex marriage couples pay equally into a system that they don’t receive equal benefits from in return,. Shame on this country for allowing that to happen,” Sanchez said.

As of now, people in same-sex relationships are denied Social Security survivor benefits of their deceased partners because the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships as valid relationships.

Sanchez’s bill, however, would lead the Social Security Administration to recognize those civil unions or domestic partnerships as valid relationships for the purpose of dispensing survivor benefits that heterosexual couples with a marriage certificate get.

“I’m saying to the Social Security Administration, this must stop,” Sanchez said.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-El Monte), who also attended the event, offered to support the bill.

“In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act as a law to protect the elderly from poverty. It was a great moment, but the act wasn’t perfect,” Chu told the crowd.

“In 1966, members of the armed services were added, in 1983, federal employees were added, and in the year 2010, that will be the year people from the LGBT community will be added,” she said.

About 700 people attended the event, including Maria Garcia, 44, of North Hollywood who had arrived an hour early to the rally with her 23-year-old son, Philip Garrelts, who is gay. “Every mother should do this for her children,” Garcia said. “There should be equal rights for everyone.”

–Ruben Vives

Residents of South L.A.’s Harvard Park neighborhood followed the sound of gunshots early Saturday morning to find a man lying in the street, fatally wounded in what investigators believe was a gang-related shooting, police said.

Che Yusef Grady, 39, was found just before 6 a.m. on the 1700 block of West 60th Street with bullet wounds to his upper torso, according to Officer Cleon Joseph, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman. Joseph said Grady was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died a short time later.

It was not clear what led to the shooting or why investigators believe it was gang-related. Joseph said he did not know whether the group of people who found Grady had also seen the shooter, but he said police had no description of a suspect.

[Updated at 9:30 p.m.: At least 22 homicides within a mile of the 1700 block of West 60th Street have been reported by L.A. County coroner’s officials since January 2007, according to data collected for The Times’ interactive Homicide Report. The most recent was the Jan. 24 shooting death of Dontae Cotton, 28, about a block away from Saturday’s shooting.]

— Mitchell Landsberg

A 56-year-old woman was struck by a car and killed in a Covina crosswalk on Sunday, police said.

Annie Tomassacci of Covina was walking in the crosswalk at Badillo Street and Grandview Avenue about  1:50 p.m.,  when she was struck by a car traveling southbound on Grandview, according to Covina police.

The driver of the Hyundai Sonata that struck Tomassacci, Teresa Puente, 22, of Covina, was not arrested, police said. Puente did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol, police said.

Anyone with information about this accident is asked to contact the Covina Police Department at (626) 384-5808.

–My-Thuan Tran

Actor Peter Graves was found dead Sunday at his home in Pacific Palisades, according to law enforcement sources. Graves, who stared in "Mission: Impossible," "Airplane!" and Billy Wilder’s "Stalag 17"–apparently died of natural causes, the sources said.

Graves was 83, according to a biography on the website IMDB.com.

In a Times story late last year, Graves said he initially turned down the role for "Airplane!" because he thought it was in poor taste–until actors Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen signed on to the cast. "They say you are supposed to stretch as an actor, so let’s go stretch it," he told The Times’ Susan King.

A full obituary is coming shortly from The Times.

–Andrew Blankstein and Cara Mia DiMassa

Photo: Peter Graves, pictured Dec. 8, 2009. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

More photos

A new Times database puts readers on the sidewalks of Hollywood, using more than a century of archives to track the lives of the stars, including current Oscar nominees Jeff Bridges, James Cameron, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep.

San Diego County investigators arrested a man Sunday in connection with the disappearance of 17-year-old Chelsea King, sheriff’s officials said.

The whereabouts of the Poway High School senior, who failed to return from a run near Lake Hodges on Thursday, apparently were still unknown. The case, however is being handled by homicide investigators.

John Albert Gardner III, 30, was arrested shortly after 4 p.m. after “extensive investigation evidence” linked him to the girl’s disappearance, according to statement issued by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

At a news conference, Sheriff William Gore would only describe the evidence as physical, and a department spokesman declined to elaborate.

State records list Gardner, of Lake Elsinore, as a registered sex offender, convicted of one count of lewd acts with a child under age 14.

The sheriff’s statement said Gardner was arrested without incident outside a business in Escondido, and taken to the sheriff’s headquarters for questioning by homicide investigators.

Volunteers spent the weekend searching for King, and both a Facebook page and website have been set up to aid their efforts. 

–Mitchell Landsberg

Photo: A search group in Bandy Canyon, from left, Wayne Hickey, Greg Post, De L, partially hidden, and Larry Luke decided how to proceed in their search for missing tennager Chelsea  King  on Sunday Feb. 28, 2010. Credit: Peggy Peattie / San Diego Uniotn Tribune / KSWB (Chelsea)

Firefighters late Sunday put out a stubborn fire sparked by a freight train derailment in Central California, allowing residents evacuated because of a toxic cloud to return home, officials said.

But the blaze has caused freight traffic around the state to be stalled or rerouted.

The accident happened about 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the entrance to a
tunnel on the Tehachapi Loop south of Keene. A tanker car carrying
denatured alcohol burst into flames, producing a toxic cloud, said
Engineer Justin Corley, a Kern County Fire Department spokesman. 

The alcohol fire was confined to the tunnel, and firefighters allowed it to
burn out, Corley said. But during the night, the fire spread to at least two
other cars, one containing plastic pellets and another containing corn meal, he
said.

The train was traveling from Barstow to Stockton on Union Pacific tracks when
the accident happened, said Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for BNSF Railway, which
owns the train.

Kent said that because of the crash, BNSF was unable to move freight
through the area. She said that 18 trains were holding Sunday night.

Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt said the railroad is rerouting most traffic from Roseville, Colton or the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach up and down their coastal line–at least 10 trains a day for "the next couple days at minimum."

But he added that there were a number of trains–he couldn’t say how many–that were already en route to the Tehachapi Loop and were parked and waiting for the derailment to be fixed.

–Jessica Garrison and Alexandra Zavis

Firefighters on Sunday battled a stubborn tunnel fire that broke out when part of a freight train derailed near Bakersfield.

There were no injuries in the accident, which happened about 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the entrance to a tunnel on the Tehachapi Loop south of Keene, the Kern County Fire Department said in a statement.

But about seven homes were evacuated when a tanker car carrying denatured alcohol burst into flames, producing a toxic cloud, said Engineer Justin Corley, a Fire Department spokesman. A temporary shelter was set up at Tehachapi High School.

The alcohol fire was confined to the tunnel, and firefighters allowed it to burn out, Corley said. But during the night, the fire spread to at least two other cars, one containing plastic pellets and another containing corn meal, he said.

A large column of black smoke could be seen over the site Sunday. Residents living within two miles were urged to stay inside, with their doors and windows closed.

Fire crews were able to suppress the flames enough to attach cables to the burning cars and pull them out of the tunnel, Corley said. They then used a large backhoe to rip open the cars and extinguish the blaze with foam and water, he said.



But there were still flames inside the tunnel. It wasn’t immediately clear how many other cars might have caught fire.

“We can’t get inside the tunnel to take a look because of the heat,” Corley said.

Firefighters hoped to have the blaze contained by midnight Sunday, he said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the train to derail. The train was traveling from Barstow to Stockton on Union Pacific tracks when the accident happened, said Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for BNSF Railway, which owns the train. Fire crews believed just two cars came off the tracks.

They were being assisted by the Kern County Environmental Health Agency, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol and railroad crews.

— Alexandra Zavis

Photo: A freight train burns after derailing Saturday near Keene, Calif., about 15 miles east of Bakersfield. Credit: Kern
County Fire Department

A man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of kidnapping a 6-year-old girl on a bus in downtown Los Angeles, authorities said.

Early Sunday morning, a homeless woman boarded a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus with her daughter and apparently fell asleep, Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker said. When she woke up about 4 a.m., the child was gone, he said.

The woman alerted the driver, who notified the MTA bus dispatch center and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Transit Services Bureau.  Sheriff’s deputies based nearby and police officers joined in the search.

The mother told sheriff’s officials that before she fell asleep, she had recognized a man on the bus who was also homeless but was not a friend of hers. When she woke up, he too was gone.

MTA dispatchers provided a description of the man and child to bus operators. Shortly before 6 a.m. a driver reported having two people matching their description on another bus.

Sheriff’s deputies intercepted the bus and arrested the man. He was identified as 60-year-old John Thomas. ‪The child was taken into protective custody.

"This incident happened at just after 4 a.m. today, and we found the young girl, unharmed, and arrested the alleged kidnapper less than two hours later,” said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore. “That is good police work."

— Andrew Blankstein

A 25-year-old San Bernardino County man and his 9-month-old son, whom the man had taken under court-ordered visitation, were found dead early this morning in his vehicle in what authorities are investigating as a murder-suicide.

Stephen Garcia of Pinon Hills and his son Wyatt of Yucca Valley were found dead from unspecified traumatic injuries after the Hesperia sheriff’s station received a call Saturday night that Garcia had threatened to kill Wyatt and then himself, according to a statement from the San Bernardino County coroner’s office.

The vehicle was found on a rural dirt road in Twin Peaks about 1:20 a.m. Sunday morning. Autopsies will be performed later this week to determine the exact causes of the deaths.

— Kenneth R. Weiss

Police arrested a 19-year-old man today on charges that he allegedly tried to rape a woman in a Windsor Square residence.

John Christopher Munoz allegedly entered a residence in the 100 block of South Van Ness Avenue on Friday afternoon by scaling a wall, climbing onto a garage roof and gaining access to a balcony, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Police allege that once inside the residence, Munoz attempted to rape a 56-year-old woman working there, but she fended off the attack, police said.

The LAPD launched a manhunt after the attack, and  two patrol officers spotted Munoz on Saturday afternoon.

Detectives believe there may be other victims and are asking that anyone with information call Operations West Bureau, Sexual Assault Detail detectives at (213) 473-0447. During non-business hours or on weekends, calls should be directed to (877) LAPD-24-7.

— Garrett Therolf

Witnesses in Riverside told police Sunday that a woman who was "yelling and acting upset" took off her jacket and hat and then lay down in front of an oncoming car in the 1200 block of Blaine Street.

Authorities have not yet identified the woman but said that she appeared to be between 50 and 60 years old. After she was struck by the vehicle about 1 p.m., the woman was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The driver was interviewed and released, and no charges are pending, authorities said.

"Clearly this is one of those tragic situations where the driver of the car had no chance of stopping and avoiding the woman, through no fault of his own," said a news release from the Riverside Police Department.

— Ari B. Bloomekatz

San Bernardino County officials Sunday evening closed access to the entire Big Bear Valley to everyone except residents and those providing emergency services and supplies.

The move comes at the peak of ski season and is a blow to the area’s businesses and resorts, many of which rely on tourism.

Authorities said they closed access because of rough weather and tough road conditions. Many visitors, they said, were coming to the area and then were unable to leave because of insufficient gasoline supplies at stations there. More than 20 visitors who could not get back down from the mountain because they had run out of fuel or for other reasons were being housed at an emergency shelter, according to a news release from San Bernardino County authorities.

"The gas stations are running out of gas and the grocery stores are running out of food," said county spokesman David Wert.

Highway 38 is closed from Redlands and Yucaipa into Big Bear to all traffic except emergency vehicles and fuel and food trucks. Only residents are allowed east of Snow Valley on Highway 18, and access to Big Bear Valley on Highway 18 from Lucerne Valley is closed to all but residents, authorities said.

Wert said it was unclear how long the valley would be closed to visitors but that officials would reevaluate the situation at noon Monday.

— Ari B. Bloomekatz

Riverside County authorities are investigating the death of a 3-year-old boy who was found severely injured Sunday morning at a home in Cabazon.

The boy, identified by coroner’s officials as Ramon Jimenez, was found by authorities at a home in the 14000 block of Cabazon Street early Sunday, said Deputy Craig Roberts of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Ramon, of Cabazon, was taken to San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital in Banning, where he was pronounced dead. Coroner’s officials said Ramon was pronounced dead at 2 a.m., but Roberts said he was pronounced dead about 5:30 a.m.

– Ari B. Bloomekatz