Author: Jill Jones

An Orange County jury Tuesday ruled against the mother of a Texas girl who contended Botox injections killed her 7-year-old daughter.

The verdict came in what is believed to be the first case to come to trial alleging the botulinum toxin-based drug contributed to a death. At question was the safety of the blockbuster cosmetic drug in the higher dosages used to treat children with cerebral palsy.

Dee Spears, of Amarillo, Texas, had alleged her daughter Kristen died as a result of receiving large doses intended to reduce limb spasticity.

Allergan Inc., the Irvine-based manufacturer, said in a statement that “the jury’s conclusion supports the evidence that Botox played no role in the passing of Kristen Spears."

“The evidence presented in this case and acknowledged by the jury showed that Kristen died as a direct result of the progression of her condition, and that any symptoms or issues affecting Kristen’s health were present before Kristen first received treatment with Botox,” the statement read.

Botox, best known as a face-lift-in-a-syringe, can relax contorted muscles and sometimes help young patients walk without surgery. Kristen Spears began getting Botox injections at the age of 6 to calm spasms in her legs. The girl died on Nov. 24, 2007, at the age of 7.

Testimony in the trial began Jan. 27. The jury deliberated less than three days.

The verdict comes less than a year after federal authorities mandated "black box" labels that warn of potentially serious reactions to Botox.

Several other suits related to the drug’s cosmetic and non-cosmetic use are pending.

— Lisa Girion

Photo: L.A. Times

Erroll Southers, who in January withdrew his nomination to head the Transportation Security Administration after encountering Republican opposition, is resigning as assistant police chief of Los Angeles World Airports.

In a letter released Monday, Southers said his last day will be March 27.

Los Angeles World Airports oversees Los Angeles International, Ontario International and Van Nuys airports. The police force has about 1,200 officers.

Nancy Castles, a LAWA spokeswoman, said Southers was not asked to leave. In his resignation letter, he said, "I feel that now it is time for me to engage in some new challenges and opportunities that have come my way."

President Obama’s nomination of Southers to head the agency that helps protect passengers from terrorist attack came under fire from Republicans over worries he would support TSA workers unionizing and because of a reprimand he received as an FBI agent when he improperly accessed a criminal records database to check on his former wife’s boyfriend.

— Jeff Gottlieb

Two drivers who struck a 13-year-old girl who was crossing Sunset Boulevard on her way to catch her school bus have not been charged in her death, Los Angeles police announced late Friday.

The preliminary investigation into the Friday morning incident raises the possibility that it was a tragic accident rather than a hit-and-run crime, as was initially believed, said Los Angeles police Capt. Nancy Lauer.

"At this point, we have not arrested nor have we booked either of the drivers," she said. "It appears to be a horrible accident."

Julia Siegler, an eighth-grader at Harvard-Westlake School, was struck about 7:20 a.m. and rushed to UCLA Medical Center, where she died.

Early reports indicated that Siegler was struck by two hit-and-run drivers, but police indicated at the late-night news conference that this was not the case. Instead, Lauer said, witnesses said the girl was crossing the street on a red signal and was grazed by the side-view mirror of one car, which knocked her off balance. A second vehicle, driven by a juvenile, then ran her over.

Both drivers stopped at the scene, which was described as "extremely chaotic," Lauer said. They remained at the accident site until the girl was taken by ambulance to the hospital, Lauer said.

— Seema Mehta

Photo: Irfan Khan / L.A. Times

John Wylie Needham, an Orange County man who was a decorated Iraq combat veteran and was later charged with the murder of his girlfriend, was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital near his mother’s home in Sahuarita, Ariz., authorities said Friday.

Police responded to the home just after 10 a.m. on Feb. 19 and found Needham unresponsive, said Sgt. Alex Droban of the Sahuarita Police Department. "There was nothing unusual or suspicious surrounding the death,” he said. Needham was taken in an ambulance to a local hospital.

According to Salon.com, Needham died about 10 days after back surgery at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Tucson, Ariz.

Needham, 26, was free on $1-million bail posted by his family while awaiting trial. He was charged in the September 2008 slaying of 19-year-old Jacqwelyn Joann Villagomez. She was found severely beaten at Needham’s San Clemente condo. 

Needham served in the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry regiment. They nicknamed themselves "the Lethal Warriors" and during two tours in Iraq, confronted some of the war’s cruelest fighting. Since August 2007, at least six of the veterans have been implicated in four shooting incidents and five slayings.

— Paloma Esquivel in Orange County

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas wants the county’s chief executive, auditor-controller and probation chief to provide a detailed, confidential accounting of how the county’s Probation Department investigates staff misconduct and abuse.

The directive follows a Times article about probation officers who were convicted of crimes or disciplined for inappropriate conduct involving current or former probationers, including several cases of officers molesting or beating youths in their care.

On Friday, Ridley-Thomas submitted a motion for consideration at next week’s Board of Supervisors meeting that calls for the three county offices to review the operations of probation’s Child Abuse Special Investigations Unit and issue a confidential report within two months.

The report would address, among other things, investigators’ experience and training, caseloads, the length of their investigations, how many resulted in disciplinary actions and prosecutions, the possibility of creating an Office of Independent Review with oversight over the department, circumstances that gave rise to opportunities for inappropriate relationships between probation personnel and minors, and recommendations about how such misconduct and abuse can be prevented.

Ridley-Thomas also called for the report to include a comparative analysis of similar units at probation departments in other counties.
He requested that the report be reviewed by the county counsel and submitted to supervisors in closed session.

The motion expands on the supervisor’s proposal earlier this week that the Probation Department expand its internal affairs staff.

Several other county leaders offered alternate proposals this week.
Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mike Antonovich have proposed that the Office of Independent Review, which monitors the Sheriff’s Department, evaluate the Probation Department’s internal affairs and child abuse investigations.

The Los Angeles County Commission for Children and Families called for an audit of the county’s probation ombudsman and the grievance process for youths in county detention halls and camps.

Interim probation chief Cal Remington, who is in the midst of assessing the department before newly appointed director Donald Blevins takes over April 19, has said he welcomed the earlier proposals.

–Molly Hennessy-Fiske

A Santa Barbara man has pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and other charges after killing a 66-year-old marathon runner in August 2008, authorities said.

Gregory Doan, 58, was drunk and high on heroin when his van swerved onto a shoulder, scattering a group of 20 runners who were training as part of a Lymphoma and Leukemia Society team.

Caroline Samuels, who was looking forward to a marathon in San Francisco the next month, was trying to escape up an embankment when she was struck, police said.

Samuels was a longtime resident of the Bay Area before moving to Santa Barbara about two years before the accident. She had become a docent at the Santa Barbara courthouse and had signed on to teach reading skills as an Americorps volunteer.

Doan’s plea was entered Thursday. He could be sentenced to 35 years in prison. He had four drunk-driving convictions in the 1990s, police said.

–Steve Chawkins in Ventura County

John Wylie Needham, an Orange County man who was a decorated Iraq combat veteran and was later charged with the murder of his girlfriend, was found dead last week in Arizona, authorities said Thursday.

Needham, 26, was free on $1-million bail posted by his family while awaiting trial. His body was found in Pima, Ariz., about 150 miles southeast of Phoenix, the Orange County district attorney’s office said. Authorities there are investigating the cause of his death.

He was charged in the September 2008 slaying of 19-year-old Jacqwelyn Joann Villagomez. She was found severely beaten at Needham’s San Clemente condo.

Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputies had responded to a complaint about an argument at the condo and found the veteran naked, authorities said. Needham had to be subdued with a Taser, according to authorities.

After joining the Army in 2006, Needham was deployed to Iraq. He was awarded a Purple Heart for a combat injury that left with him shrapnel in his legs and back.

The wounds caused him to be hospitalized and medicated. He suffered from nightmares and consulted with therapists.

Those who knew Needham described him as easygoing surfer who liked to paint and play the guitar before he went to Iraq. Family members said they knew he was struggling since returning home, but didn’t foresee him turning violent.

After returning from Iraq, Needham left a post on his MySpace page talking about his troubles.

“I’m falling apart by the seams it seems the days here bleed into each other I have to find the will to live,” Needham wrote. “These walls are caving in my despair wraps me in its web, I feel I’m sinking in, throw me a lifesaver throw me a life worth living.”

— Robert J. Lopez

Photo: John Wylie Needham’s booking photo.

Thieves used drills to cut a hole through the wall of a San Juan Capistrano jewelry store, dismantled the security system and made off with a safe filled with up to $1 million in jewels, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said Wednesday.

Sometime between closing time Tuesday and 8 a.m. Wednesday, thieves broke into the back door of a vacant shop adjacent to Mission Jewelers at 31878 Del Obispo St. and began to drill a hole in the shared wall, said sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino.

They abandoned that hole and started a new tunnel in a back room, possibly to avoid being seen by someone through a window, he said.

The thieves – there were probably two, given the weight of the 1,000-pound safe, Amormino added – left through the back of the shop, dismantling a metal security door to do so.

“There’s no question it was very well planned,” Amormino said. “They cut all the wires and took a security camera and most of the security surveillance.”

Authorities did, however, manage to obtain some evidence at the scene, as well as surveillance from an unidentified source, he said.

The investigation was continuing.

— Amina Khan

Rosa Bobbio said she’d fight the city of Anaheim rather than pay a graffiti-related fine. Now city officials say she won’t have to.

After taggers scraped into the windows of her upholstery shop in late 2009, Bobbio was told by Anaheim to get her windows fixed.

Bobbio, who takes a bucket and brush to cover the spray paint that taggers regularly scrawl across her walls, said she couldn’t afford to replace the windows. After the etchings remained for months, the city sent Bobbio fines and fees of $466.66. Bobbio rebelled.

“I told them, ‘I’m not gonna pay this fee. I do whatever it takes. It’s not right. If you want to take me to jail, I go to jail.’ That’s what I told them,” said Bobbio, who has owned Century Custom Upholstery on South East Street for decades.

But then officials of a Tustin-based graffiti removal business heard about Bobbio’s plight. On Tuesday, WKRP Services began sanding the graffiti off the glass and polishing the windows to sparkling new, and is set to place protective film over her windows Wednesday.

The job, estimated to cost about $1,000, will be performed for free, said Mike Speakman of WKRP Services.

Now that the windows are being fixed, the city has waived the fine.

“We’re just glad that we could help Rosa with this issue,” said Anaheim spokeswoman Ruth Ruiz, adding that it is not uncommon for the city to waive a fine once the offending damage has been cleared.

The improvements and protection will make dealing with future glass vandalism easier and cheaper, Bobbio said, but it won’t address the root of the problem.

“What is my guarantee that [the taggers] are not going to come back? “ she said. “There’s no guarantee.”

— Amina Khan

A big-rig car carrier filled with new vehicles crashed into a car dealership in the City of Industry on Friday night after blowing a tire and careening off the westbound 60 freeway, according to the California Highway Patrol.

CHP Officer Patrick Kimball said paramedics responded to the scene but the driver did not need to be taken to a hospital.

The crash occurred at the Puente Hills Ford dealership, just off the right shoulder of the freeway near Azusa Avenue, Kimball said. Several cars parked in the dealership’s lot were damaged by the car carrier.

— Anna Gorman

Rep. Judy Chu (D-El Monte) e-mailed a letter Wednesday to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office requesting a review of all rape cases submitted for prosecution in 2009 by the West Covina Police Department.

Addressed to Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, the letter asked the office to look into allegations of misconduct by West Covina authorities to ensure that proper investigative procedures were followed.

The letter came after a series of articles ran in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune about sex crimes investigator Tyler Kennedy, who was recently suspended over allegations of sexual harassment of an alleged rape victim. Kennedy was also involved with a woman who filed sexual battery charges against her ex-husband. Those charges were dropped after Kennedy’s relationship with the woman was revealed.

After a Tribune reporter this week asked Chu what she thought about Kennedy, the congresswoman said she would look into the matter, her spokesman Fred Ortega said.

In 2009, 12 rape cases presented to the district attorney’s office by West Covina police were declined and no charges were filed, Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the office, said.

Gibbons would not comment on Chu’s letter but said it had been received and would be routed to the appropriate people.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gary Hearnsberger, whose jurisdiction includes West Covina, reviewed 11 of the rape cases and said he found no evidence that Kennedy’s involvement led to biased reports.

“Kennedy was involved in one or two of them, but he was never the lead investigator,” Hearnsberger said. “There might be some suggestion out there that those cases weren’t filed because of Kennedy, and that’s completely untrue. There’s nothing that suggests Kennedy has done anything that’s illegal or improper in any of those cases.”

West Covina Police Chief Frank Wills said he had no problem having the 12 cases reviewed again.
“We’re very comfortable with the request,” he said. “We have a very transparent organization, and we welcome any examination of our professional practices.”

— Corina Knoll

Disney workers embroiled in a bitter dispute with management over healthcare rallied Wednesday outside the entertainment giant’s Burbank headquarters. Five employees launched a hunger strike.

“Shame on Disney!” declared Maria Elena Durazo, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, who appeared at the rally. “They’re making big profits while trying to deny working people affordable healthcare.”

About 2,100 Disney workers represented by Local 11 of the Unite Here union have been without a contract for two years. The union is seeking to continue a healthcare plan that gives workers medical care at practically no cost to them.
Disney wants the workers to enlist in its Signature plan, which would require an employee contribution.

Disney says the contribution would be about $250 a month for a full family. The union says the figure  would be $500, a burden for workers typically earning about $13 an hour.

Disney says that 30 out of 31 unions at the Disneyland Resort participate in the Signature plan and that only Local 11 has rejected it.

The activist union has been seeking to tarnish Disney’s family-friendly reputation with public protests and a highly visible hunger strike on the streets outside the resort in Anaheim. The hunger strike ended Tuesday, but on Wednesday five employees camped on the street outside the corporate headquarters in Burbank and began a new symbolic hunger strike, this time targeting corporate officers. Fasters will sleep in tents set up outside the Disney gates.

“Disney is not being true to the vision of Walt Disney,” said one of the hunger strikers, Christina Sanchez, a pastry chef at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa.

Lisa Haines, a Disney spokeswoman, said that the company’s offer was fair and that the union was being unreasonable. Healthcare at no cost to employees is no longer economically viable, she said. She called on Local 11 to follow through on Disney’s plan for federal mediation of the dispute.

“We feel it would be helpful if the union spent more time negotiating and less time protesting,” Haines said. “We feel that there is a better path toward resolution.”

— Patrick J. McDonnell

Alameda County’s probation chief was named Tuesday to run Los Angeles County’s beleaguered Probation Department and is expected to begin April 19.

The appointment of Donald H. Blevins was approved unanimously by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Blevins’ salary was set at $227,000, with up to $25,000 provided for relocation costs.

Blevins has led Alameda County’s department since 2003, and L.A. County supervisors were said to be impressed with his turnaround of that agency and his handling of tight budgets.

The L.A. County probation agency’s juvenile operation has been the subject of U.S. Justice Department oversight for misuse of force, and county supervisors have criticized persistent management lapses.

— Rong-Gong Lin II at the L.A. County Hall of Administration

A man was shot and killed Friday night in La Puente and two other men were wounded, authorities said.

The shooting occurred in the 300 block of South Stimson Avenue, near the border with City of Industry, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Ed Hernandez said.

The two wounded men were hospitalized but were expected to survive, Hernandez said. No arrests have been made in the case. Hernandez said he did not have more details about the 8:15 p.m. shooting.

[Updated Saturday, Feb. 13: The shooting marked the first homicide within a two-mile radius since March 2009, when Oscar Reyes, 33, was shot in the abdomen and killed in the 15700 block of Caldwell Street in La Puente, according to coroner’s data collected for The Times’ interactive Homicide Report.]  

— Hector Becerra

A 22-year-old graffiti tagger picked the wrong place Friday to leave his mark: a glass door at an aquatic center in Commerce that separated him from 100 Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies discussing having enough backup when chasing suspects, authorities said.

Joshua Vasquez looked shocked as a throng of deputies began running toward him, said Capt. Mike Parker, who was teaching the class. Vasquez turned and ran as at least 40 deputies crammed through the doorway to get him, Parker said. Vasquez tripped over his own feet and fell, Parker said, and deputies restrained him.

As it turned out, the incident was instructive to the deputies, who were participating in a training meeting.

“We were discussing the importance of having backup when engaged in foot pursuits,” Parker said.

That’s when the entire class was drawn to the doorway, where it looked like the suspect was waving at them, Parker said.
“It turns out we could see him, but he couldn’t see us,” he said.

Not lacking in backup, the deputies gave chase.
But the suspect didn’t give up so easily, and he kicked out the rear window of a sheriff’s cruiser before being further restrained, authorities said.

Vasquez was booked on suspicion of felony vandalism to the glass door and to the cruiser.

— Richard Winton

Three men who allegedly guarded hundreds of smuggled Central and South American illegal immigrants at a “drop house” in Lynwood were indicted Friday by a federal grand jury.

Gustavo Sanchez-Lopez, 30; Diego Martinez-Gonzalez, 28; and Francisco Moreno-Lopez, 55, are accused of holding the immigrants until relatives could pay as much as $13,000, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office. The men claimed to be Mexican, but are believed to be from Guatemala, he said.

The suspects were arrested last month when authorities served a search warrant at a house on South Virginia Avenue. At the time, authorities found 37 illegal immigrants, but Mrozek said investigators think the men harbored as many as 336 during a two-month period.

The illegal immigrants allegedly were threatened with beatings or death if their relatives did not pay the smuggling fee quickly, Mrozek said.

According to the indictment, Martinez-Gonzalez and Sanchez-Lopez told female immigrants that they would be given blankets or jackets, or be allowed to shower, in exchange for sex.

If convicted, each man faces a maximum penalty of 60 years in federal prison.

–Hector Becerra

Riverside County sheriff’s deputies are looking for a man who used a violent car accident as an opportunity to steal a family’s dog.

As paramedics removed a 24-year-old woman and her 2-year-old son from the car, which had smashed into a median and landed upside down in the Highgrove area, their frightened Yorkshire terrier, Rizzo, ran out through a broken window, said Sgt. Dave Lelevier.

Two onlookers and several children chased the 3-year-old dog and were returning with him to the crash scene when a man grabbed Rizzo.

He “told them in Spanish that he would return the dog to the owner,” Lelevier said.
But he ran away with the dog.

Lelevier said the mother and child were treated and released from a hospital with minor injuries, but were upset to find out that their family pet had been stolen.

The suspect is described as Latino, about 5 feet 11 and weighing about 180 pounds. He was wearing a tan, short-sleeve shirt that read “White Cap” on the back.

Anyone with information regarding the case is asked to call the Jurupa Valley sheriff’s station at (951) 955-2600.

–Hector Becerra

As students cheered during a lunchtime ceremony, Ozomatli band members presented Garfield High School with a giant $5,000 check to put toward the school’s arts programs.

“I feel like public schools in California are way underfunded and it’s a shame. So it’s partly to bring attention to that,” said Raul Pacheco, a guitarist and vocalist for the band.

After the Los Angeles-based band had helped to judge an arts contest put on by the Got Milk? campaign, the campaign told the band it would donate $5,000 to the high school of its choice.

Pacheco said the group chose to give the money to Garfield partly because the struggling school, whose 2009 academic performance index score sits at 594, was one of 12 existing campuses whose management was put up for bid late last year.

“We thought it was important to support the kids through that shift,” Pacheco said.

Assistant Principal Frances Vilaubi, who accepted the check along with student body president David Soto, agreed.

“We open our arms to that,” she said. “It’s a great positive in a time when there’s change.”

Vilaubi said she hoped to use some of the funds to pay for arts-themed field trips around Los Angeles, from excursions to museums to outings to the opera.

–Amina Khan

Newport-Mesa Unified School District is expected to drop English as a second language classes and slash adult education offerings under a package of proposed budgetary cuts.

According to Tom Ragan in the Daily Pilot, doing away with ESL classes and the bulk of adult education programs would be felt most keenly by the people living in the district’s Costa Mesa side, where these programs are concentrated and where many Latinos live. Hundreds of Spanish-speaking parents take the ESL classes so they can lead by example and talk to their children in English.

Kimberly Claytor, president of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers, said that the elimination of the ESL classes could prove detrimental to student achievement because the parents often are “the first line of help.”

“If the parents don’t learn English, then it can have effects on the household,” Claytor said. “The parents are so often the starting point when it comes to educating the children.”

The school district, however, has no choice but to make the cuts, according to administration officials.



As has happened to most school districts throughout California, Newport-Mesa has seen its state funding slashed. The state has stripped the district of $13.5 million, administrators said, forcing them to cut programs and lay off 80 teachers.

— Jill-Marie Jones

A single mother wounded during a July 10 drive-by shooting in South Los Angeles is due to be evicted Thursday.

Rashaun Williams, 29, was a home health aide and crossing guard, but she has been out of work since she was shot in both legs, an innocent bystander caught in gang crossfire on Imperial Highway.

Williams has been surviving on $328 in monthly CalWorks welfare payments, but she said she can no longer afford the two-bedroom apartment in Lancaster that she shares with her 6-year-old daughter, Ky’mariy Redd.

Williams said Ky’mariy’s father had been helping with the bills until he was hospitalized last month with a heart attack.
She said her only option now is to move in with relatives, probably her mother, who lives in a section of Torrance where Williams said gang violence has surged recently.

“In my condition, that’s the last place I would want to be,” she said, but “I really have no options.”

Williams said her application for federal disability assistance was denied. A doctor recently told her that she may needed additional surgeries on her right leg. She is on Medi-Cal and has been on a waiting list for rehabilitation since the shooting.

The attack “changed my life. It just changed everything completely,” she said. “I haven’t been able to provide for my daughter like I want to.”

[Updated, 9:45 p.m.: Community
activists Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Eddie Jones announced late Wednesday evening that they plan to hold a meeting at 12:30
p.m. Thursday at Lucy Florence Cultural Center, 3351 W. 43rd St., Los Angeles, to demand
that state officials approve Williams’ application for disability assistance. In a
statement, they called the denial "shameful and unconscionable."]

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske