Author: Jill Jones

Pretty much everyone who grows up along the Southern California coast knows about grunion and their fabled spawning runs.

And that includes, apparently, the young sharks hanging out near shore just waiting for the little silvery fish to get down to business. 

“Around March and April, we seem to have an increase in sightings of small juvenile sharks,” said Ralph Collier, founder of the Shark Research Committee, a nonprofit organization that has been cataloging shark sightings up and down the Pacific Coast since 1963.

“They go where the food is,” he told Brianna Bailey in the Daily Pilot.

Of course, once they’re full to bursting on grunion, the sharks in turn becoming prey themselves to fishermen (perhaps the latter are holding a grudge over the grunion lost to the sharks?). Ty Gevas of Newport Landing Sportfishing confirms that shark fishing is good in the ocean waters off Newport Beach in the spring and summer months.

Ah, the circle of life.

— Jill-Marie Jones

Newport Beach City Atty. David R. Hunt will go on voluntary administrative leave a little more than one week after he was arrested on suspicion of felony spousal abuse.

Hunt, 52, was arguing with his son at his Santa Ana home on March 14 when his wife intervened and Hunt struck her, causing her to hit a table and then the floor, police said. The 49-year-old woman had a cut on her arm and a large bump on the back of her head, police said. She was taken to a hospital for treatment.

In a recording of the 911 call, one of Hunt’s sons can be heard telling a dispatcher “my dad just went crazy, he pushed my mom down and started going after my brother.”

On Tuesday, City Council members met in closed session with Hunt and separately with his wife, said Mayor Keith D. Curry. During the meeting Hunt asked to be placed on administrative leave.

Assistant City Atty. Leonie Mulvihill was appointed acting city attorney in his absence.

The City Council has hired independent counsel to guide the board as members continue to examine how to proceed in the case, Curry said.

Hunt was booked at Orange County Jail and released the next day. He has been city attorney in Newport Beach since 2008.

— Paloma Esquivel in Orange County

A mother of four who spent 23 years in prison for setting a deadly fire and was paroled with the help of law students who believed she got an unfair trial was deported Thursday, just hours after she was released.

Rosie Sanchez, 49, was convicted of setting a 1985 fire to a competitor’s business in downtown Los Angeles that killed a man. Prosecutors argued she did it because she needed money, but she maintained her innocence.

Ten years ago, students and staff at the Post-Conviction Justice Project at USC Law School met with her. They came to believe she’d gotten an unfair trial because she had inadequate representation and they spent years working to free her.

Last month, the judge who presided over the case urged the governor to release her. "The jury’s decision in her trial has always continued to haunt me because it was one of the few times in my 59 years as a lawyer that I think justice was not served," wrote Sam Bubrick.

Of the thousands of cases that go before the state parole board every year, only a tiny percentage of inmates are recommended for release. Those who get that recommendation have the added hurdle of getting past the governor’s veto.

On Friday, students and family learned that Sanchez had surmounted both hurdles and would be freed.

But Thursday, as Sanchez’s family prepared for her arrival, they learned she wouldn’t be coming home to Anaheim. She was picked up from prison by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and was taken to the San Ysidro border crossing before she could see her family.

Sanchez believed she had legal status when she was arrested, her daughter said. But ICE agents determined she did not, said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice.

“The bottom line is someone who is in the country illegally and has a felony conviction has very few legal avenues available,” Kice said.

For Rosie Sanchez, the decision is bittersweet, her daughter said. “She’s happy because she’s going to be free,” said Rosie Sanchez, the daughter who shares her mother’s name. “But she’s going to be alone.”

— Paloma Esquivel in Orange County

Los Angeles County Interim Probation Chief Cal Remington faced tough questions from probation staff, youths and advocates at a Wednesday night forum hosted by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas at his Exposition Park field office.

Remington is expected to deliver an assessment of the troubled department to supervisors before incoming Chief Donald Blevins takes over April 19.

In recent weeks, the department has drawn criticism for failing to investigate and discipline staff for misconduct, including child abuse. On Tuesday, sheriff’s investigators arrested a former teacher at a county probation camp on six counts of child endangerment for allegedly organizing fights between students during class.

Remington is expected to update supervisors Tuesday about efforts to improve the department’s internal affairs investigations.

Standing in front of a sign that read, “The Los Angeles County Probation Department: How Broken Is Broken?” Remington told Wednesday’s standing-room-only crowd of about 150 that he favored expanding community-based programs without increasing the departments $700-million budget.

When Ridley-Thomas and several audience members pressed Remington about what cuts he thought should remain under the budget, he suggested streamlining costs at county juvenile halls and camps, and possibly closing some camps.

“There’s money being wasted,” he said.

But the former Ventura County probation chief, who has been on the job for about five weeks, offered few other specifics.

Kim McGill, of the Inglewood-based Youth Justice Coalition, said she was frustrated by probation officials’ failure to partner with the community, but hopeful that Remington, Ridley-Thomas and other county leaders recognize the problem.

“We want to know who within that department has gotten what assignment to change things,” McGill said. “Put a kid, put a parent in charge and see what they do.”

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Bob Hope Airport officials announced plans Monday to make the current voluntary nighttime curfew mandatory — five months after federal officials rejected a nine-year,
multimillion-dollar application for nighttime flight restrictions.

Joyce Streator, president of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, said the authority has begun discussions with airlines on converting the existing voluntary nighttime curfew between 10 p.m. and 6:59 a.m. into a permanent mandatory restriction for all passenger-air carriers.

If those negotiations are successful, Streator told the Glendale News-Press, then the authority “will begin a consensus-building process" that would include residents directly affected by airport operations; the cities of Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and Los Angeles, the FAA and the airlines.

— Christopher Cadelago in Glendale

Former Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl was sentenced Monday to two years’ probation, a $40,000 fine and 200 hours of community service for tax fraud.

Haidl, a Newport Beach businessman and one-time assistant to convicted former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, was accused of tax fraud in a scheme to help pay his son’s legal bills in a sexual assault case. He was given probation rather than prison time because of his cooperation in the federal corruption case against Carona.

Haidl was accused by federal prosecutors of filing a false income tax return after his son, Gregory Haidl, was charged along with two friends of sexually assaulting an apparently unconscious 16-year-old girl and videotaping the incident. The elder Haidl pleaded guilty to tax fraud and agreed to cooperate in the government’s case against Carona in exchange for prosecutors’ recommendation of leniency.

Haidl became the government’s star witness in the case against Carona and at times wore a hidden microphone during conversations with the former sheriff.

Gregory Haidl was released from prison in 2008, after serving about three years of a six-year sentence on the sexual assault conviction.
Carona was acquitted in 2009 of all but one charge, witness tampering. He is appealing that conviction.

— Paloma Esquivel in Orange County

Five paroled sex offenders staying at a Huntington Beach hotel have agreed to move out following an outcry from nearby homeowners who criticized authorities and hotel operators for housing them there.

Three of the parolees had relocated by Friday evening, a spokesman for Extended Stay America said. “The remaining two will be relocated once the crowd disperses and it’s safe for them to leave the property,” said Tony Knight of Sitrick and Co., a crisis management firm working with the hotel chain.

Residents said they became aware of the sex offenders’ presence a week ago when Huntington Beach police distributed fliers listing the parolees’ names and photos at the hotel’s lobby at 5050 Skylab Road.

The resulting publicity included a live broadcast by talk show hosts John and Ken on KFI-AM (640) from outside the hotel Friday.

In a statement, Knight said relocation of the five parolees was delayed by a requirement that any move had to be approved by state parole officials. Aside from the time-consuming legal process of eviction, the hotel had no legal authority to oust the parolees, Knight said.

–Bob Pool

A 35-year-old woman escaped a would-be rapist Friday by jumping off a Malibu cliff and sliding down a 100-foot embankment, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said.

The woman had just finished jogging about noon above Point Dume State Beach when the assailant grabbed her from behind. She struggled with the man before breaking free and jumping over the beachfront cliff, deputies said.

The attacker — described as a 35- to 40-year-old white or Latino man with no front teeth, about 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighing 200 pounds — did not follow her. But he did steal her white 2004 Toyota Land Cruiser from the vicinity of Cliffside Drive and Birdview Avenue at Point Dume, investigators said.

The woman was treated for cuts and bruises that she suffered while sliding down the cliff, deputies said.

–Bob Pool

A man jumped to his death Friday from an 11th-floor exterior balcony at the Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana and two Orange County sheriff’s deputies were injured when they attempted to stop him, authorities said.

It was unclear if the man, who has not been identified, had any court business or why he was in the building.

Santa Ana police detectives, who are investigating the fatal fall, said the man triggered an alarm when he opened the balcony door.
Courthouse deputies who raced to the scene found him standing near the balcony railing, preparing to jump.

When they were unsuccessful in talking the man out of leaping over the railing, they attempted to grab him, detectives said.
The man broke free from the deputies’ grasps and plunged to his death. The deputies were treated at a hospital for minor injuries after the 12:50 p.m. incident.

–Bob Pool

The death of former child star Corey Haim may be linked to an illegal Southern California prescription drug ring, authorities said Friday.

State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown announced that his office is investigating the ring’s possible connection with Haim’s death Wednesday. The 38-year-old actor, whose credits included “The Lost Boys” and “Lucas,” died at a Burbank hospital after being found unresponsive in his apartment near Universal City.

Brown said an unauthorized prescription under Haim’s name was found during an ongoing investigation of fraudulent prescription drug pads ordered from a San Diego vendor.

The drug ring operates by using stolen doctor identities to order prescription drug pads from authorized sellers. The prescription forms are then sold on the street to addicts or drug dealers who have them filled at pharmacies. Doctors whose names are used on the prescriptions are usually unaware that their identities have been stolen.

Detectives reportedly found prescription drugs at Haim’s home. His death was described as an apparent overdose.

“Corey Haim’s death is yet another tragedy linked to the growing problem of prescription drug abuse,” Brown said.

He said investigators so far have uncovered about 5,000 fraudulent prescriptions linked to the drug ring.

–Bob Pool

A company that has installed multi-story supergraphics across Los Angeles said Thursday that it is willing to pay $12.5 million to save an expanse of the Hollywood Hills — but only if the city agrees to settle a lawsuit over its existing signs.

Beverly Hills-based SkyTag, which has been locked in a legal fight with Los Angeles officials over signs in Westwood, Koreatown and elsewhere, said it would provide the money to preserve 138 acres near the Hollywood sign if the city allowed its contested supergraphics to become permanent.

Two council members who represent Hollywood dismissed the idea, saying unpermitted signs should not be used as a bargaining chip.

“We’re not going to trade off beautification in one place for the visual decay of another,” Councilman Eric Garcetti said.

SkyTag has persuaded a federal judge to block Los Angeles from removing its supergraphics at 20 locations. The company appeared before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in December, arguing that the city’s ban is unconstitutional.

The images have infuriated neighborhood groups and made SkyTag so toxic politically that Garcetti gave back a $500 contribution sent to him by company President Michael McNeilly.

Nevertheless, SkyTag attorney Gary Mobley said his client would be willing to provide enough money to preserve the undeveloped land near the Hollywood sign, which once was itself an advertisement. As part of any deal, the company would like signs at about roughly 20 locations to remain, Mobley said.

“We’re hoping to get a meeting with several council members to discuss” the proposal, he said. “The idea is a win-win.”

SkyTag is best known locally for installing huge images of the Statue of Liberty on Wilshire, Hollywood and Westwood boulevards. Many went up at the end of 2008, just as the council approved a temporary ban on new supergraphics. In August 2009, a permanent ban was passed.

Councilman Tom LaBonge, who also represents Hollywood, has aggressively publicized the effort to save the land. But he, too, said he was not interested in trading, saying the sign shouldn’t be used to “solve someone else’s problem.”

— David Zahniser

Photo: Hollywood sign and surrounding hills. Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.

President Obama on Wednesday nominated a magistrate judge from the Eastern District of California to serve that busiest of U.S. federal courtrooms, where a flood of lawsuits and petitions from the state’s prison network swells the annual caseload to more than 1,100 per judge.

If confirmed by the Senate to fill the vacant sixth judgeship on the Sacramento-based court, Kimberly Mueller would become the first woman to serve on the Eastern District bench, which handles cases from the broad interior stretch of the state from the Oregon border to south of Bakersfield.

Mueller, 53, has served as a magistrate judge since 2003, handling civil cases, pretrial matters and death row inmates’ petitions for habeas corpus relief.

A graduate of Pomona College and Stanford Law School, Mueller was recommended to the White House by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). In a statement announcing the nomination, Boxer hailed Obama’s choice of Mueller, saying her “sharp intellect and broad experience will be an asset to the Eastern District of California, the nation’s busiest federal court.”

Mueller has also worked as a sole practitioner, at the Sacramento office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, and served on the Sacramento City Council.

— Carol J. Williams

The California Supreme Court decided Wednesday to review a state law that prohibits convicted felons from owning body armor.

An appeals court overturned the ban last year on the grounds the law was too vague.

State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, whose office appealed the ruling, called the state high court’s decision to examine the law “a clear victory for police officers everywhere.”

A ruling by the court, which did not comment on its reasons for taking the case, is probably a year away.

The ban was passed in 1998 in response to a North Hollywood shootout between police and two heavily armored bank robbers. The 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles struck down the ban in December in a challenge brought by Ethan Saleem, a parolee who was arrested after he was found to be wearing a 10-pound bulletproof vest under his shirt.

— Maura Dolan in San Francisco

An Orange County jury needed just a few hours Tuesday to hand down the death penalty for Rodney James Alcala, convicted Feb. 25 of murdering four Los Angeles County women and a 12-year-old girl from Huntington Beach in the late 1970s.

It was the third time Alcala, 66, has been convicted for the murder of Robin Samsoe, 12, last seen alive riding her bike to ballet class in June 1979. He had been condemned to death both times, but the convictions were overturned. He has been in custody since his 1979 arrest.

Before the third trial began in January, he was linked through DNA, blood and fingerprint evidence to the deaths of Jill Barcomb, 18, whose body was found in the Hollywood Hills; Georgia Wixted, 27, of Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 32, of Santa Monica; and Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank.

During his closing arguments Tuesday, Alcala — a onetime photographer and “Dating Game” contestant who acted as his own attorney in this trial — asked jurors to spare him the death penalty, saying they would become killers themselves if they sent him to death row and arguing that the sentence would lead to decades of appeals.

By assigning the death penalty, “you become a wannabe killer in waiting,” Alcala told jurors before playing a portion of “Alice’s Restaurant,” a rambling 18-minute Vietnam War protest song by folk singer Arlo Guthrie. In the section played, a man being drafted for war tells a military psychiatrist:

“Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth…I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL.”

As the word reverberated through the Santa Ana courtroom, Robert Samsoe, Robin’s brother, stood up and walked out.

Alcala remained seated while speaking to the jury during his closing. He wore the same tan sports coat he’s worn since the trial started two months ago.

He told jurors the death penalty would lead to appeals that could last another 15 or 20 years with a high probability the conviction would be reversed.
A sentence of life in prison without parole “would end this matter now,” he said.

“This is probably the most important decision you will ever make,” Alcala told the jury, made up of five women and seven men. “Choose wisely.”

Earlier in the day, Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy told jurors Alcala is “an evil monster” who knows how to follow the rules when he wants to and who raped and tortured his victims because he enjoyed it.

Alcala, Murphy said, is an intelligent man who grew up in a middle-class home, had a mother who loved him and had every opportunity in the world.

The prosecutor walked jurors through the defendant’s crimes, including two previous convictions for raping and beating two girls. Both victims testified during the sentencing phase.

Monique H., who was 15 when Alcala picked her up and took her to a mountainous area near Banning, told the jury last week that Alcala asked her to pose for pictures, then knocked her unconscious. He beat, raped and sodomized her, she said.

What she described is “a vignette of everything he did to the ones that did not survive,” Murphy said.
“You speak for the conscience of this community. Hold Rodney Alcala responsible for what he did.”

— Paloma Esquivel in Orange County

[Updated 5:27 p.m.: For the record: An earlier version of this post
said Alcala was convicted last week. He was convicted Feb. 25.]

For a timeline of the Alcala case see: Long road to justice in case of serial killer Alcala

A Santa Clarita City Council candidate has been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting two teenage girls, authorities said Friday.

Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said Johnny Pride, 26, was arrested by the agency’s special victims unit on suspicion of rape, lewd acts and oral copulation of two 14-year-old girls. He allegedly gave the girls alcohol at his apartment before the assaults, according to investigators.

Pride was arrested Thursday in connection with the alleged assaults, which occurred Feb. 27. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

A former reality TV show contestant, Pride is running for a seat on the Santa Clarita council in the April 13 election.

— Richard Winton

Photo: KTLA

Authorities are investigating a bag found in a park north of San Diego in connection with the disappearance of a girl last year in the same area where Poway High School senior Chelsea King went missing last week.

Law enforcement officials said there is a strong likelihood that a body discovered Tuesday in a shallow grave on a tributary of Lake Hodges is that of King, but no official identification has been made.

Escondido police Lt. Craig Carter said the bag was originally discovered by three young boys in Kit Carson Park last May. The boys told their parents that the bag contained what looked like human hair. After the King investigation revived reports of 14-year-old Amber Dubois’ disappearance in February 2009, one of the boys’ mother recalled the conversation with the children and alerted police to the bag, Carter said.

Authorities have been searching the pond area since 8 a.m. Friday. They found a shredded bag with no hair in it, Carter said.

It is unclear whether the bag is the same one that the children found last year, he said.

A full search of the area will be conducted Friday night and Saturday, including draining a pond in the search for clues, Carter said.

–Amina Khan

Photo of Dubois. FBI

Santa Ana High School held a “re-dedication ceremony” Friday to mark the replacement of a collection of bronze plaques that were stolen from the school’s entrance more than a year ago, officials said.

The plaques commemorate the school’s veterans and their service in various wars, along with the school’s dedication and centennial, according to a news release.

The replacements were paid for through fund-raising efforts by alumni, veterans groups and private donors.

“We are thrilled to be able to restore such an important part of the school’s history,” said Principal Julie Infante.

–Scott Glover

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will co-host a pre-Oscars bash for award nominees Thursday night at the Getty House, the mayor’s official residence in Windsor Square.

The mayor is teaming up with the Hollywood Reporter to put on the inaugural red carpet “Nominees’ Night."

The Hollywood Reporter describes the event as a “cocktail reception” designed to be the opening celebration of the 2010 Academy Awards weekend and to honor this year’s nominees. The list of sponsors includes Microsoft Bing and L’Oreal Paris.

Sarah Hamilton, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said the city is “not paying a penny" to put on the party. L.A. is grappling with a $212-million budget shortfall, which is expected to more than double next year.

Hamilton said the event is also intended to draw attention to one of the “most important industries in the city and its biggest night." According to the mayor’s office, the entertainment industry employs more than 200,000 people locally and generates about $25 billion a year in the region.

The state’s share of U.S. feature film production plunged to 31% in 2008, down from 66% in 2003, according to the California Film Commission. And only 57% of all TV pilots were shot in L.A. in 2009, down from 81% in 2004, according to FilmL.A.

Concerned about so-called runaway production to other locales, the mayor and Los Angeles City Council have pushed for incentives to keep film and television producers in L.A., including cutting red tape to film in city buildings and increasing the availability of parking spaces and power nodes downtown for generators. The council is also considering creating a special film commission to promote the local industry.

— Phil Willon at L.A. City Hall

Costa Mesa will stop enforcing its controversial anti-solicitation ordinance following an agreement reached with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, city officials said Tuesday evening.

City Atty. Kimberly Hall Barlow confirmed an earlier report from an ACLU attorney, who said that Costa Mesa agreed to a moratorium on enforcing the ordinance — which prohibits anyone from actively soliciting work in public streets — until the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules on another case challenging a similar ordinance.

In exchange, the ACLU, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund will temporarily hold off pursuing their recently filed lawsuit that alleges Costa Mesa’s ordinance is unconstitutional.

The Daily Pilot has the details here.

— Mona Shadia in Orange County

A Santa Ana jury Tuesday voted for the death penalty for a 46-year-old woman convicted of murdering a Westminster fortuneteller and her daughter, a crime prosecutors said was motivated by a bad fortune.

Tanya Nelson, 46, of North Carolina was found guilty last month in the 2005 stabbings of fortuneteller Ha Jade Smith, 52, and her daughter, Anita Vo, 23.

If the judge agrees with the jury’s recommendation at a formal sentencing later this month, Nelson would become the second woman to receive the death penalty in Orange County history.

Smith and Vo were found stabbed and covered in white paint in their home in April 2005. Credit cards, jewelry and cash were also taken from the home.

Five weeks later, police arrested Nelson in Orange County, after she had assumed the identities of the victims and spent more than $3,000 in a shopping spree at South Coast Plaza.

The prosecution relied on the testimony of Phillipe Zamora, who pleaded guilty last year to two counts of first-degree murder in the case and could be sentenced to 50 years to life.

Zamora testified that Nelson ordered him to stab Smith and that he panicked after seeing Nelson attack Vo.

— My-Thuan Tran