Author: Carlos Lozano

A man convicted of helping kill a Westminster fortune teller and her daughter four years ago was sentenced Thursday to 27 years to life in prison.

Phillipe Zamora, 55, pleaded guilty last year to two counts of first-degree murder in the 2005 killing of Ha Jade Smith, 52, and Anita Vo, 23.

Zamora’s friend Tanya Nelson was convicted in February for the killings and could be sentenced to death later this month. Prosecutors argued that Nelson blamed Smith for telling a bad fortune and was so angered that she traveled from North Carolina to Orange County to kill her.

Zamora, a key part of the prosecution’s case against Nelson, testified that Nelson ordered him to stab Smith in her home and that he panicked after seeing Nelson attack Vo. Zamora and Nelson poured white paint on the victims’ faces and hands.

Nelson’s attorney argued that Zamora testified against her to avoid harsher punishment.

–My-Thuan Tran

Following months of debate, plans to create the first Hebrew-language charter school in California got the go-ahead this week, after modifications to the charter helped to allay concerns that the institution would violate separation of church and state.

 

On Wednesday, trustees for the William S. Hart Union High School District unanimously approved the establishment of the Albert Einstein Academy for Letters, Arts and Sciences, which will open this fall in the Santa Clarita Valley. One board member recused herself from voting.

“I am elated and relieved,” said Rabbi Mark Blazer, one of the school’s principal organizers. “This is an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of our children.”

At a second public hearing about the school in February, school board members had deadlocked over whether to approve the school’s charter. One of their main concerns was that the school would be a religious academy, since the required study of the Hebrew language — typically associated with Jewish culture — would dominate the syllabus.

The school’s charter had originally stated that it would be compulsory for students to study Hebrew for a minimum of four years. Study of a second language would be required for two years.

On Thursday, Blazer explained that studying Hebrew would no longer be compulsory. Students would be allowed to choose to take Hebrew, Arabic or Spanish for four years.  They would also have the option to study another language after that, Blazer said.

“It was never an issue for me that Hebrew be mandatory; it was for our funders,” the rabbi added. He said it was unclear whether the omission of Hebrew as a study requirement would affect the school’s funding.

The school will open with 225 students in grades seven through nine, adding 75 students each year until reaching full capacity at 450. The student body ultimately will expand to include the 12th grade, according to organizers.

Blazer emphasized that children of all religious and ethnic backgrounds would be welcome to enroll, and no religious courses would be offered.

 “The Hebrew language is rich with culture and history,” Blazer said in written comments.  “But this is definitely not a Jewish school.”

–Ann M. Simmons

Learn more about the enrollment and performance of local schools in the Times’ California Schools Guide.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) have laid out the framework for a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform bill that would include tougher border enforcement, creation of biometric Social Security cards and a path to legalization for the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.

The announcement of the plan, which brought immediate praise from President Obama, comes days before a pro-immigration march scheduled for the nation’s capital on Sunday.

”It thoughtfully addresses the need to shore up our borders, and demands accountability from both workers who are here illegally and employers who game the system,” Obama said in a prepared statement.

“A critical next step will be to translate their framework into a legislative proposal, and for Congress to act at the earliest possible opportunity.”

The plan includes four basic pillars, including the creation of biometric Social Security cards to ensure illegal workers cannot get jobs in the future; fulfilling and strengthening border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here.

— Anna Gorman

Photo: Border Patrol Agent Munga Wechsler, 26, looks for signs of illegal entry into the U.S. along the border fence near Antelope Wells, N.M.  Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

State regulators voted Thursday to establish a committee to explore the possibility of requiring porn industry performers to use condoms and to take other safety measures.

The six-member California Division of Occupational Safety and Health standards board voted unanimously on the advice of staff to create an advisory committee to report back on whether to change state law to require safe-sex protections for adult-film actors and actresses.

The decision was greeted with applause from the crowd of about 40 people, including current and former adult-film performers, at Costa Mesa City Hall.

Board member Guy Prescott, director of safety for Operating Engineers Local Union No. 3, said he had planned to vote against the measure but changed his mind after hearing from performers and other members of the industry.

“The question is the particular acts and exposures to the workers and what are we doing to prevent that,” said board member Jonathan Frisch, principal risk manager at PG&E Corp. "I found it extremely interesting to hear from members of the industry here this morning. It’s going to be very, very important that we do have them at the table.”

The board, appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, had up to six months to act on a Dec. 17, 2009 petition filed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to change state law and require mandatory condom use for adult-film workers and more stringent safety training and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

“We believe the state of California has a responsibility to regulate these workplaces as they do every other workplace,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein told the board.

The foundation has been pushing regulators and porn industry leaders to better safeguard the health of adult-film performers since an HIV outbreak among porn performers in the San Fernando Valley in 2004.

More than a dozen speakers addressed the board before the vote, including Los Angeles County public health experts and several current and former adult-film workers.

Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, director of communicable disease control and prevention at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, recommended mandatory condom use and increased, free STD screening for adult-film performers.

Rates of STDs such as chlamydia and gonorrhea are seven times higher in the adult-film industry than in the general population, he said, and up to a quarter of performers are diagnosed with an STD in a given year.

Former porn actor Darren James, who tested HIV-positive during a 2004 outbreak, called current industry STD testing practices a security blanket that actors mistakenly believe protects them from infection.

“You think you’re safe but you’re not; in between scenes, you don’t know what other actors are doing,” James told the board.

Then he turned to the crowd and addressed fellow actors.

“I’m living your nightmare every day,” he said. “You don’t want to live what I’m going through now.”

Actress Angelina Armani disagreed. She said that during the last two years she has appeared in many adult films, has been tested regularly for STDs and has never contracted a disease.

“My industry has protected my safety and continues to protect the safety of other performers,” Armani told the board.

Last summer, the foundation sued Los Angeles County after the disclosure that an adult-film performer had tested positive for HIV. In the suit, it alleged public health officials failed to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and to enforce laws requiring employers to protect workers against exposure to bodily fluids.

The suit was dismissed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge late last year, but the foundation appealed the decision last Thursday.

Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a Canoga Park-based trade association said her group’s members have tried to comply with state health and safety regulations but that they are overly vague and general. She said she supports forming an advisory committee as long as it includes adult-film workers, producers or other industry representatives.

“Our industry is eager to comply with California state standards,” she told the board.

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Laguna Beach fire fighters rescued three people who were trapped in a cove Wednesday as the sky darkened and the tide was rising.

Two males and a female in their 20s walked into a cove known as Littleman’s Cove around 6 p.m., said Jeff LaTendresse, deputy chief of the Laguna Beach Fire Department.

A high surf came in, and the trio discovered they could not get out of the cove the same way they came in.

“They were scared,” he said. “There was some pretty good surf last night. The tide kept coming and coming.”

The fire department was contacted around 9 p.m. and began a rope rescue operation, LaTendresse said. The three were loaded into stokes baskets and pulled 100 feet up a cliff using ladder trucks, he said.

The tide reached 5 feet during the rescue operation, which took three hours, he said.

Two of the people were transported to a local hospital and treated for exposure.

“We get our fair share of rescuing people several times a year,” LaTendresse said.

— My-Thuan Tran

A Los Angeles jury is deliberating the case of a man who allegedly tortured his estranged wife until she signed divorce papers.

Mohammad Hanafi, 58, of Hawthorne, is charged with kidnapping his wife, Raisa Hanafi, and torturing her by gagging her and drugging her, authorities said. He also allegedly forced her to sign over her assets in divorce papers.

Raisa Hanafi was confined for five days before she was able to escape, according to court documents.

The Superior Court panel also will decide whether to convict co-defendant Kisasi Liggins, who allegedly helped Hanafi in the 2008 crime.

During the trial, Hanafi’s attorney denied that he tried to kill the woman. 

Raisa Hanafi testified that the men threatened to cut her up and feed her to dogs. She also said the men shocked her with a Taser.

— My-Thuan Tran

A customer of Farmers and Merchants Bank in Long Beach who was shot in the leg when he helped capture a suspected bank robber sued the bank Wednesday for negligence.

Richard Camp tackled the armed suspect, Robert Gordon Lockwood, 51, before he could reach bank tellers during the March 5 incident, according to court papers filed by his attorney, Eric Dubin. Another bank patron helped subdue the suspect, who fired several shots, hitting Camp in the upper leg.

In all, three people, including the suspect, were shot and wounded during the botched robbery, police said. None of the injuries were life threatening.

The bank subsequently sent Camp some flowers and offered to take him and his wife for lunch, according to the court documents.

But Camp, a general contractor, is unable to work and has no way to support his wife and daughter for now.

His lawsuit alleges that the bank’s security guard was in the parking lot when the suspect entered the bank, and therefore the bank failed to provide a safe and secure environment for its patrons.

— My-Thuan Tran

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Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck this week followed through on a plan to move about 180 officers out of specialized units and spread them among the department’s regional stations.

The move is an effort to counter the impact on the department of the city’s growing budgetary crisis.  With no cash available to pay officers who work overtime, the department instead forces cops to take vacation days when they accrue a certain amount of overtime.

That has resulted in an overall depletion in the department’s workforce and the reassignments, Beck said, are aimed at giving station commanders some more officers to fill patrol cars, gang units and other basic assignments.

Beck outlined the reassignment plan last month and announced the details Tuesday. Several specialized units ultimately were tapped to lose officers, including the elite Metropolitan Division that will see 50 officers depart — about a quarter of its total roster. 

The transfers come on the heels of an earlier decision to reassign about 140 other specialized officers back into the area stations.

— Joel Rubin

Repairs underway at the riot-damaged California Institute for Men at Chino include replacing ceramic bathroom fixtures with stainless steel and cotton bedding with flame-retardant fabrics to prevent the kind of widespread destruction that occurred there in August, state prison authorities reported Tuesday.

In a report on lessons learned from the Aug. 8 riot that injured 249 prisoners and eight staffers, investigators with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation praised staff response to the violent disturbance for preventing escapes and fatalities.

But they also cited racial tensions as the cause of the chaotic melee and recommended measures to reduce overcrowding in the tense Reception Center-West complex where 1,300 beds were destroyed.

The reception center, made up of eight massive dormitories, will be converted to a 375-bed housing unit for minimum-security prisoners, the report said. The inmate intake functions of the reception center, where new arrivals typically spend about two months, will be transferred to the nearby H.G. Stark complex, a former juvenile facility where adult prisoners displaced by the riot have been housed for the last seven months.

The damaged dorms at the prison are being rebuilt under the Inmate Ward Labor Program that pairs state construction supervisors with local contractors and inmates. Cost of the repairs is estimated at $5.2 million.

California’s 33 adult prisons suffer such severe overcrowding that a panel of federal judges last year ordered the population reduced by about 40,000 by summer 2011.

–Carol J. Williams

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, right, along with acting warden Aref
Fakhoury, left and California State Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate,
center, tour debris-strewn Mariposa residential hall at the California
Institution for Men in Chino shortly after the conflict. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

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More than a dozen Los Angeles courtrooms will be shuttered when layoffs for court personnel commence next month, officials said Monday.

Layoff notices for 329 employees are expected to be sent out Tuesday, said Allan Parachini, spokesman for the Los Angeles Superior Court. The layoffs will take effect April 1.

The final list of courtrooms that will be closed is still being worked out, but it will include several civil courtrooms at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse downtown as well as criminal courtrooms in other locations, Parachini said.

“The public and attorneys will immediately recognize that the court’s capabilities have been dramatically reduced, and when I say immediately I mean immediately,” he said. “Even those just trying to pay a traffic ticket will be impacted.”

The layoffs, the first in a series projected by court officials, will be based on seniority. All employees hired after a certain date in 2009 will all be laid off, Parachini said.

Presiding Judge Charles “Tim” McCoy has said he may ultimately be forced to eliminate 1,800 jobs and close 180 courtrooms.

The Los Angeles County court system employees roughly 5,400 workers. The next round of layoffs is expected in September.

The effect of the layoffs in April will be immediately felt throughout the county system and will be significantly more disruptive than in 2002, when the courts laid off about 150 staff, Parachini said.

This first round of layoffs has “twice as many bodies going out the door than 2002 and 2003,” he said. “You can imagine what the ramifications are.”

— Victoria Kim

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Eamonn Daniel Higgins spent seven years attending college.

Between 2002 and 2009, he attended 10 different schools in Southern California, including Cal State Los Angeles, Irvine Valley College and Santa Monica College, according to federal prosecutors. During that time, he studied sociology, marketing, English, business and math.

The problem was that Higgins hadn’t registered for any of the courses, authorities said. Rather, dozens of foreign students — mostly from the Middle East — were paying him to sit in class, take exams and write papers for them so their student visas would remain valid, according to a charging document filed in the case. Students paid up to $1,500 for course assignments and finals and up to $1,000 for English and writing proficiency exams, the document said.

Investigators with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the demand was so great that he hired employees, including a blond woman who they believe posed as an Middle Eastern man to take a test. Agents are continuing to investigate the case and believe Higgins had several co-conspirators.

On Monday, Higgins, 46, pleaded not guilty in federal court in Santa Ana to conspiracy to commit visa fraud. During the brief hearing, Higgins told the judge he wasn’t working. He faces up to five years in federal prison if convicted. 

Higgins and his attorney, federal public defender Elizabeth Macias, declined comment.

Authorities believe he has helped more than 100 foreign students from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

"We have seen visa fraud schemes before, but we have never seen anything quite like this,” said Debra Parker, Los Angeles acting special agent in charge of investigations for the immigration agency. “This is something really sophisticated.”

Though immigration agents said they don’t believe that any of the students had links to terrorism, Parker said Monday the agency was still investigating. “It definitely highlights some of the vulnerability, the way these people were able to go and compromise the integrity of the immigration system,” Parker said.

Immigration agents on Monday morning also arrested 16 students who they believe hired Higgins and his staff. Six of the students have been charged criminally, while the others face immigration charges and possible deportation. Agents plan to interview the students in an effort to determine their motives.

The investigation began last summer after police in Daly City, Calif., found a wallet with seven fake California driver’s licenses, all with a photo of Higgins’ nephew, according to court documents.

— Anna Gorman in Los Angeles and My-Thuan Tran in Santa Ana

Photo: ICE

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The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Friday to require that all pet dogs and cats redeemed from city shelters by their owners be microchipped before their release.

The tiny microchip, injected by a needle under the skin, contains an identification number that correlates to a listing in a database that includes information about the animal’s guardian, alternative contact and veterinarian. Whenever an animal is turned into a shelter, it is scanned for a microchip.

The city already requires that dogs and cats up for adoption at city shelters be microchipped before they are adopted. Their new owners pay a $15 fee for the service. And the shelters allow all pet owners to schedule appointments to bring in cats and dogs to have them microchipped at a fee of $25 per animal.

Microchipping is considered one way to help reunite owners with their animals and reduce the euthanasia of those lost pets languishing in shelters whose owners can’t be located.

Extending the microchip ordinance to pets in shelters reunited with their owners not only raises the chances of future reunifications but also increases revenues for the city. 

In a 2007 letter to the City Council on this issue, former L.A. Department of Animal Services General Manager Ed Boks said that if the 4,030 dogs reunited with their owners in 2006 had been subject to mandatory microchipping at $15 an animal, the city would have made $60,450.

— Carla Hall

Los Angeles County prosecutors Friday charged a North Hills man with stalking and making criminal threats against Dr. Drew Pinsky, star of the VH1 TV show “Celebrity Rehab” and the radio show “Loveline.”

Charles William Pearson, 33, was set appear in Superior Court in Pasadena on Friday afternoon after his arrest earlier this week  at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, authorities said.

Pearson is accused of stalking Pinsky since November and making a series of threats last month against the doctor, his wife and children.

The suspect allegedly sent threatening messages to Pinsky, who he believed was tracking him with an implanted device. In a bizarre court claim last month, Pearson sought $2,500 from the doctor for "implant tampering."

Pinsky told KNBC on Thursday, "I hope this guy gets treatment because he clearly needs it."

–Richard Winton

Fifty-five years after two U.S. Air Force pilots mysteriously disappeared after taking off from Los Angeles, the pair were memorialized Friday by family members who gathered at Dockweiler State Beach beneath the flight path at Los Angeles International Airport.

The wreckage of the Lockheed T33A jet the pair were flying on Oct. 15, 1955, was discovered last year a mile offshore.

Search crews at the time were conducting a hunt for a missing WWII-era female pilot.

About 40 family members of Lt. Richard M. Theiler and Lt. Paul D. Smith were among those who gathered on the beach to hear the pair eulogized.

After the beach ceremony, the participants boarded two boats to travel to the crash site, where the plane’s wreckage sits about 100 feet below the surface, and scattered flowers in the area.

“America was in her prime, leading the world” when the pair disappeared, said Air Force Chaplain Lt. David Sarmiento. “These were the early days of the U.S. Air Force that were filled with promise.”

 –Bob Pool

A woman who is suspected of abducting her 8-year-old daughter 14 years ago from the child’s home in Northern California has been arrested in Monrovia.

Jessica Click-Hill, who is now 22, was contacted and authorities said she was unharmed. They did not reveal where she is now living.

The mother, Wendy Hill, was arrested after being spotted at a local Claim Jumper restaurant in Monrovia, officials said.

An FBI investigation was launched after authorities received a tip from officials at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Police would not say whether Click-Hill was aware that she was a kidnapping victim.

— Amina Khan

[For the record, 12:15 p.m.: An earlier version of this post stated that the daughter had been discovered in Monrovia.]

Photo: Jessica Click-Hill and her mother Wendy Hill (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) via KTLA News.

A new storm was expected to bring another round of showers to Southern California this weekend, but forecasters did not expect it to dampen Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony or affect residents of denuded foothill communities.

Most of the rain is expected Saturday evening, continuing through Sunday morning, with decreasing shower activity through the afternoon, said Bill Hoffer, a spokesman for the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

“The lower pressure … will be overland, so moisture and precipitation will be rather limited,” Hoffer said.

Rainfall totals could range between one quarter and three quarters of an inch, with the possibility of about 1 inch of rain in the foothills and mountain regions, particularly across the San Gabriel Mountains, he said.

Despite the limited threat to areas ravaged by last year’s wildfires, Los Angeles County officials urged residents in foothill communities to remain vigilant and be prepared to evacuate if necessary.

“We have issued the alert advising that, given the current forecast, evacuations are possible,” said Bob Spencer, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works. “But they haven’t pulled the trigger on that yet.”

An incident command center would be activated at 3 a.m. Saturday, Spencer said.

He said his agency was prepared for any changes in the weather that might affect the burn areas. All seven of the smaller debris basins in the region were almost empty, and the remaining 21 larger basins had available capacities of between 50% and 80%, Spencer said.

–Ann M. Simmons

The body of a man who jumped from a pier at the Port of Los Angeles was recovered Friday morning, and investigators are still trying to piece together the events that led to his death, authorities said.

The man had called 911 Thursday evening from a truck stop near E Street in Wilmington and made statements that led dispatchers to alert the Los Angeles Fire Department, said spokeswoman Lt. Stephanie Young.

The unidentified man may have crossed through Leeward Bay Marina to get into the port, where he jumped a fence into a car-transport facility. There, he approached a longshoreman and handed him his cellphone, Young said.

But as private security vehicles at the facility approached shortly before 7:30 p.m., the man grabbed his cell phone back and jumped from a pier into the water about 15 feet below.

The propeller of a cargo ship docking nearby churned up the water, creating a strong current, and the man drowned, authorities said.

Rescuers used sonar to recover his body shortly before 1 a.m. Friday after divers made unsuccessful attempts to find him.

–Amina Khan 

A 28-year-old Tarzana woman was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for setting a nightclub dancer on fire.

Rianne Celine Theriault-Odom was found guilty last month of aggravated mayhem and torture in connection with the February 2009 attack on Roberta Dos Santos Busby, officials said. 

During an argument, Theriault-Odom took a Dr. Pepper bottle filled with gasoline and hurled its contents at Busby before igniting the fluid, officials said. Busby was set on fire from the waist up.

"The DA described her as a human fireball, a human torch," LAPD Det. Louis Zorrilla said of the victim. The defendant and the victim, who share the same birthday, did not know each other, authorities said.

Busby, who had to have 30 skin grafts over her body, left the courtroom immediately after giving her statement Thursday, officials said.

A restitution hearing is set for March 26.

But Busby said no restitution could make up for what happened to her.

“I deal with it daily. I don’t sleep; I’m still in pain,” said the mother of two young girls. “I really honestly don’t look at myself in the mirror. I hate looking at my reflection.”

Busby said she still doesn’t understand the brutality of the attack.

“In order to do something like that, you don’t have feelings,” she said. “I wanted to know for a while — and now I don’t care why. Why isn’t going to bring me back, the way I looked.”

— Amina Khan

Photos: Busby and Theriault-Odom. KTLA

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Eighty-year-old Doris Thompson has made a long career of petty theft and burglarizing medical buildings.

And even though she was sentenced to three years in state prison for her latest crime this week, officials aren’t sure that’s enough to stop Thompson’s escapades when she is released.

“She likes to burglarize medical suites for some reason. That’s her niche,” said Paulette Paccione, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case.

On Wednesday, Thompson, who has a rap sheet dating to 1955 and has landed in state prison nine times, pleaded guilty to a commercial burglary she committed in December, when she hid in the restroom of the Children’s Medical Group office in Torrance and waited until employees left for the day.

A security camera caught Thompson prying open drawers with a chisel and screwdriver, Paccione said.

She took $400 in cash and checks, stamps totaling $25, a plastic urine container and an audiogram device, used to test hearing impaired children, valued at $1,000, said Sgt. Jeremiah Hart, of the Torrance Police Department.

This is not the first time Thompson targeted the Torrance medical building, Hart said. In 2005 and 2006, she burglarized other medical offices in the complex while wearing a wig, he said.

During the investigation of the December burglary, a Torrance detective recognized the woman in the surveillance camera from a crime bulletin put up by Beverly Hills police a few years earlier for a similar crime, Hart said.

“That’s her MO,” Paccione said. “What she does is she goes in with her little burglar bag. She takes cash, stamps, whatever she can find.”

Paccione said Thompson, who has used 25 aliases, is a unique woman. “You usually don’t get 80-year-old female burglars.”

She said that Thompson told the judge in court that she probably deserved more time in prison than the three-year sentence.

“I don’t think this will stop her from doing this again,” Paccione said. “She’s not really apologetic about it. This is her thing.”

–My-Thuan Tran

Calling it an act of domestic terrorism, Hemet police are on high alert after a booby trap targeting members of the gang task force went off, narrowly missing an officer as he left his car to open a gate.

The is the second time in recent months that members of the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force have been targeted.

In Tuesday’s incident, an officer was stepping out of his car to open a security gate at the task force headquarters when there was a loud crack and a bullet flew by just a few feet from him, landing 100 yards away in a nearby driveway.

“It was an improvised device capable of firing a regular bullet, and it was attached in such a way so that when the gate was opened, it activated and fired. Fortunately it narrowly missed,” said Hemet Police Lt. Duane Wisehart. “The gun was affixed to a fence and hard to see. It could have definitely killed someone. This is domestic terrorism.”

On New Year’s Day, someone cut a hole in the roof of the building and rerouted a natural gas pipeline. Then the valve was opened, filling the office with gas. Police said an explosion could have been set off had they not discovered the leak and emptied the building.

Wisehart said the device found this week wasn’t overly sophisticated but that it was deadly nonetheless. The building houses investigators from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, the parole department and the district attorney’s office.

The unit is in the process of moving to another location.

Wisehart said Hemet has about 1,000 gang members, many who moved in from Los Angeles, drawn by low housing prices. Still, there are no suspects in this case.

“It could be one person who is mad at the police or the gang task force,” he said. “Everyone is being much more vigilant of their surroundings. We don’t know how far this person is willing to go. It’s unnerving.”

— David Kelly

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