Police and emergency vehicles at the scene of the officer-involved shooting in commerce. Courtesy OnScene.TV

Huntington Park Police officers on surveillance shot and wounded a man in Commerce when he approached their unmarked car, pulled a handgun from his waistband and pointed it at an officer.

The officer involved shooting took place at 9:45 p.m. Friday, in the 2500 block of Leo Avenue, according to Deputy Lisa Jansen.

“Two Huntington Park police officers were conducting a surveillance at the location regarding a past murder that occurred in the city of Huntington Park,” Jansen said.

Both officers were sitting in an unmarked car when a suspect not related to the surveillance “approached the vehicle on the driver’s door and retrieved a handgun from his waistband. The officer on the driver’s side lowered the window as both officers identified themselves as police officers,” she said.

“When the suspect pointed a handgun at one of the officers, an officer-involved shooting occurred. Both officers fired their weapons at the suspect striking him multiple times in the upper torso,” Jansen said. His handgun was retrieved at the scene.

The suspect was taken to a hospital where he was listed in fair condition, Jansen said.

Sheriff’s homicide detectives were assisting Huntington Park police with the  investigation, she added.

— City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo by Alexander Nguyen

A man was booked Tuesday on suspicion of attempted murder for allegedly stabbing a transient in Azusa.

Officers dispatched at 11:57 p.m. Monday to the area of Sixth Street and Soldano Avenue found a 49-year-old man suffering from several stab wounds, the Azusa Police Department reported.

It was later determined that the stabbing had occurred in the 600 block of East Foothill Boulevard, about three blocks away. Officers found evidence of a violent assault at that location, along with evidence linking the suspect to the attack, according to Azusa police.

The suspect was being held in lieu of $1.025 million bail. Police refused to release his name, citing the ongoing investigation, and asked anyone with information about the stabbing to call them at (626) 812-3200.

— Wire reports 

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo by Gustavo Castillo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Two men who were let go last summer after their arrest in a deadly shooting over gang graffiti near Anaheim when prosecutors declined then to press charges, were charged Tuesday with murder.

Edgar Ramirez, 21, of Anaheim, and David Steven Ortega, 33, have been charged in connection with the July 19 fatal shooting of 51-year-old David Bruce Douglas.

Ramirez was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday, but court records do not indicate an arraignment date for Ortega, who is serving a sentence for a misdemeanor conviction for carrying a dirk or dagger.

The two were arrested in July, but prosecutors requested further investigation. Sheriff’s investigators at the time said they arrested Ramirez after consulting with the prosecutor, but further discussion prompted the request for more evidence, officials said.

Douglas was shot at Poona Drive and Lullaby Lane in an unincorporated area bordering Anaheim, sheriff’s officials said. Another victim, who was 39, survived the shooting injuries.

The victims, who were found in a Ford SUV, had been involved in a confrontation with at least one suspect about “tagging” in the area, sheriff’s officials said in July.

Prosecutors said the two victims “interrupted” the vandals, with the unnamed man following the two defendants on foot.

Douglas drove his SUV over to the other man and picked him up, and Ortega allegedly shot Douglas and the other victim as he got into the vehicle, according to prosecutors. The surviving victim sustained multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the back of his head, prosecutors said.

Ortega, who was arrested again on Monday, was charged with murder with a special circumstances allegation of gang activity.

Ortega was also charged with attempted murder and faces multiple sentencing enhancement allegations for gang activity, shooting a gun, attempted premeditated murder and causing great bodily injury or death to the victims.

Ramirez was charged with murder and attempted murder with sentencing enhancement allegations for gang activity and vicarious discharge of a gun by a gang member.

–City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

California Supreme Court building. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case against a man who killed his mother and buried her body in the backyard of their rented residence in El Monte, where it was discovered after he confessed to police a decade later.

John Taylor Huynh is serving a 26-year-to-life term in state prison for the 2001 stabbing and slashing death of his mother, Hong Tu Phuong.

In February, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense’s contention that there was insufficient evidence to support Huynh’s March 2014 conviction for first-degree murder.

“In this case, after defendant attacked his mother, he did not seek medical attention for her or remorsefully admit his crime,” the appellate court panel found in its Feb. 10 ruling. “Instead, he buried the body, cleaned the crime scene of evidence and attempted to start a new life, something he apparently achieved for nearly 10 years. This is evidence from which the jury could conclude that defendant’s state of mind was not rash and impulsive but, instead, was cold and calculating.”

The appeals court justices noted that Huynh — who was 17 at the time of the crime — told people that his mother had returned to Vietnam and that “he appeared to get away with murder until 2011, when guilt compelled him to walk into a police station and confess the crime.”

Huynh accompanied police investigators to the scene and showed them where he had buried his mother’s body.

—Staff and wire reports

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo via Pixabay

A Manhattan Beach man was sentenced Friday to 50 years to life in state prison for gunning down his wife in their home more than a dozen years ago after she complained that he was playing music too loud.

Bill Lawrence Gallup, now 68, was convicted April 6 of first-degree murder for the July 5, 2003, killing of his wife, Oliva, 50.

She was shot once in the chest after she had fallen to her knees after being struck by debris from the first gunshot, then shot at close range in the eye. Gallup then shot himself twice in the head.

Gallup was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial in 2006, with court proceedings resuming last year after he was determined to be competent.

His wife had asked him to turn music down before the shooting, and the two got into an argument, according to testimony presented at the trial.

Police responding to a 911 call found Gallup’s wife dead and Gallup on a bed with two gunshot wounds to the head, with the gun used in the killing found nearby.

Gallup — who testified in his own defense — told jurors that he did not shoot his wife and didn’t remember anything about what had happened that day, the Daily Breeze reported.

–City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo via Pixabay

A state prison inmate was alleged Tuesday to be the killer of a 19-year-old woman whose decomposing body was found in an ice chest stashed in a stolen car in an unincorporated area near Whittier.

Anthony Moreno, 38, is accused of fatally shooting Dawn McEveety of Huntington Beach.

Sheriff’s investigators said McEveety was killed at a home in the 11900 block of 183rd Street in Artesia on Nov. 24.

Deputies discovered the remains five days later inside a 1991 Toyota Celica Hatchback in the 8600 block of Bradwell Avenue when they responded to an “abandoned vehicle” report.

The deputies immediately smelled the strong odor of decomposition. They opened the vehicle and found the body entombed in an ice chest in the rear cargo area.

Moreno was arrested on an unrelated charge sometime after the shooting and sent to prison, authorities said.

Sheriff’s officials said Moreno is expected to be transferred to Los Angeles to be arraigned on charges of murder and possession of a firearm.

The District Attorney’s Office could not immediately confirm those charges.

Investigators believe other suspects may have helped Moreno dispose of McEveety’s body and urged anyone with information to call the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500 or Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-TIPS (8477).

Maureen McEveety-Sepa, the woman’s mother, told ABC7 at the time that the discovery of her daughter’s body was “a parent’s worst nightmare.”

“We were always worried that something like this might happen when she got with the wrong crowd,” she said.

Her daughter, adopted when she was 16 months old after being born drug- addicted, had not lived with her parents for the past 18 months and rarely returned phone calls, McEveety-Sepa said of the young woman, who went by the name Molly.

She was a wonderful child, but began using drugs and spending time with the wrong people when she hit her teen years, McEveety-Sepa told ABC7, adding that her daughter also had a stint in rehab, but then began using again.

McEveety-Sepa said she last spoke to her daughter two months before her body was found. The young woman was in jail for an alleged drug offense.

–City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo by Gustavo Castillo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Steven Wyvern White, 66, is accused of the financially motivated murder of 79-year-old Dr. Cedric Horn, who was reported missing 30 years ago and whose body has never been recovered, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Larry Yellin.

His arraignment was rescheduled for May 20.

White, who was sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars for killing 48- year-old James Albert Boyd in February 1987, was extradited from Florida to Orange County on Wednesday.

White allegedly made “incriminating statements” regarding Horn’s disappearance while being questioned by Orange County sheriff’s deputies last year in Florida, Yellin said.

Detectives suspect White befriended Horn in order to steal from him, the prosecutor said. A check for $60,000 was drawn from the victim’s bank account, which the defendant tried to spend after Horn disappeared, Yellin alleged.

White, posing as Boyd, attempted to withdraw money from the victim’s bank account and then tried to refinance his truck, the prosecutor alleged.

When White was arrested in June 1987, he had Boyd’s property on him, Yellin said. After White’s conviction for killing Boyd, police in Florida told sheriff’s deputies in Orange County that the defendant was in possession of property belonging to Horn, Yellin said.

Horn left his home for a business meeting in Northern California on March 7, 1986, with plans to visit his daughter in Oregon, as well, Yellin said. Horn, however, told his daughter during the trip that he changed his mind and was headed home, the prosecutor said.

The victim’s car was found in Houston on April 7, 1986, with Horn’s blood soaking a passenger seat headrest, Yellin said.

Last year, investigators established a DNA profile from the evidence in the car that matched the victim, the prosecutor said.

White faces a special circumstance allegation of committing another murder, meaning he would face at least life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of the Orange County killing.

— Wire reports 

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo via Pixabay

A 32-year-old man was convicted Tuesday in connection with the first gang-related murder in Tustin in 11 years.

John Saway was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances of doing so for the benefit of a gang. Saway is scheduled to be sentenced May 13 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Co-defendant Sarith Yin, 29, was convicted in January 2012 and sentenced in April of that year to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His murder conviction has since been upheld by the Fourth District Court of Appeal and by a federal court judge.

Yin was the first of eight defendants to go to trial for the Jan. 10, 2010, murder of 16-year-old Juan Carlos Rodriguez, according to Deputy District Attorney Troy Pino. The city had not had a gang-related murder before that since 1999.

The victim was with a “tagging crew” at the party the night of his slaying, but there was no evidence he was in a gang, Pino said.

Two rival gangs got into a dispute at a party in the 15800 block of Myrtle Avenue, Pino said. Members of one gang left the party and returned later with “the big homies” in their gang, which led to the gunfire about 2 a.m., Pino said.

The victim was hiding behind a tree and was shot while running away, Pino said.

Yin was one of the gunmen, but investigators do not think he shot the teen, Pino said.

Saway is suspected of firing the bullet that killed Rodriguez, Pino said.

Saway’s attorney, Roger Sheaks, argued that his client was acting in self-defense.

“There was some ballistic evidence and shell evidence that suggested (the gang members) had fired a warning shot in the air, which is what one witness said,” Sheaks said.

“OK, so they don’t know it’s a warning sign so they shoot back. My argument was the victim was actually struck and killed by (members of a gang he allegedly associated with). They shot their own person in the back.”

Co-defendant Steven Kao, 25, was acquitted.

The victim’s family had emigrated to Tustin from Mexico, but returned there shortly after his murder, Pino said.

–City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Courtesy of LAPD

Los Angeles Police investigators have developed a way to bypass security features and open the locked Apple iPhone 5S belonging to April Jace, the slain wife of “The Shield” actor Michael Jace.

Jace is accused of killing his wife at their South L.A. home on May 19, 2014.

The bypass occurred earlier this year, during the same period when the FBI was demanding that Apple unlock the iPhone 5C of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI eventually said it found another method for unlocking the phone.

LAPD Detective Connie Zych wrote in a search warrant obtained by the Los Angeles Times that on March 18, the department found a “forensic cellphone expert who could ‘override’ the locked iPhone function.”

The search warrant did not detail the method used by the LAPD to open the phone, nor did police reveal the identity of the cellphone expert. It’s also unclear what operating system April Jace’s phone used.

Jace’s attorney and the prosecutor assigned to his case could not be reached for comment.

Investigators have contended that the actor and his wife argued “about their relationship” via text message shortly before he opened fire, according to the search warrant. His attorneys have countered that April Jace, a well- liked financial aid counselor at Biola University in La Mirada, was having an affair.

Earlier this year, the actor’s attorneys persuaded a judge to delay the Jace murder trial until the wife’s phone underwent a more exhaustive search of its contents.

Shortly after her killing, April’s cellphone was locked by a passcode, which “hindered” the investigation, Zych wrote. Then in 2015, an Apple technician was ordered by an L.A. judge to help police extract data from the phone’s hard drive, according to the search warrant.

In late January, an investigator with the L.A. County district attorney’s office again tried to extract data from the phone but could only obtain the contents of its SIM card.

The following month, authorities tried to inspect April Jace’s iPhone but it didn’t turn on, the warrant stated. But in March, investigators learned that a forensic cellphone expert could “override” the security features, according to the warrant.

—City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

An attempted murder suspect led law enforcement personnel on a chase from Compton to northeast Orange County Thursday, traveling mostly at slow speeds and at times clipping other vehicles while weaving through traffic.

The chase began in Compton, according to the watch commander at the Los Angeles County sheriff‘s Century Station.

It started about 6:20 p.m. and continued east on the Artesia (91) Freeway until the Mercedes-Benz’s tires were flattened by spike strips, according to broadcast reports.

The suspect, who was also suspected of brandishing a weapon, continued driving — with the sleek black vehicle scraping along k-rails and at least one of its wheels seized and sent up sparks from its bare rim, until about 7:30 p.m. — when it came to a smoking halt in the Santa Ana Canyon area near the Riverside County border.

Officers with guns drawn were positioned a short distance away, but no movement was apparent inside the vehicle.

Traffic on both sides of the freeway was halted as the apparent standoff continued.

–City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo by Alexander Nguyen

A reputed gang member was charged with murder Monday in the fatal shooting of an expectant father outside a South Los Angeles barbershop.

Tyrone Foster Jr., 22, is also facing gun and gang allegations stemming from the death of 27-year-old Robert Ellis, who was shot about 2:15 p.m. March 25 in the 5500 block of South Vermont Avenue, according to authorities.

Ellis died at a hospital, said Detective Shawn Svoboda of the LAPD’s Criminal Gang Homicide Division.

“It was tragic,” Svoboda said. “He had just learned that he was going to be a father.”

Relatives said Monday that Ellis’ girlfriend suffered a miscarriage after his death.

Foster was arrested Thursday at a hotel in Hawthorne, police said.

Ellis was standing outside the barbershop with a large group of people when the suspect walked up and opened fire, according to Svoboda. The shooting apparently was gang-related, although Ellis was not a gang member, police said.

The Los Angeles City Council offered a $50,000 reward for help in solving the case, and detectives released surveillance images that included the suspect’s face.

Ellis’ mother, Lenell, thanked the community for its help contributing to the arrest.

“My family and I would just like to thank everyone,” she said. “We’d like to thank the 77th Street police division for all their hard work. We’d like to thank the people in the community that were total strangers that responded, called in, gave tips. We’re very, very, very appreciative.”

— City News Service 

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Lonnie Franklin Jr. Photo via LAPD

Beginning to build her case that a former Los Angeles city garage attendant and sanitation worker should be put to death for the “Grim Sleeper” killings of nine women and a 15-year-old girl, a prosecutor Thursday detailed for jurors a series of other killings she said are linked to the defendant.

At the start of the penalty phase of Lonnie David Franklin Jr.’s trial, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors the gun used to kill a woman in January 1984 — more than 18 months before the first “Grim Sleeper” murder — was the same weapon Franklin used to kill his final victim in 2007.

“This was the first murder in a series of murders committed by the defendant,” Silverman said.

The prosecutor said evidence that the gun used to kill Sharon Dismuke in January 1984 matched the one used to kill Janecia Peters in 2007 — the final “Grim Sleeper” slaying — was “like bookends on this series of murders.”

Dismuke, 21, was found dead Jan. 15, 1984, with a gag in her mouth, two gunshot wounds to the left side of her chest and blunt-force trauma to her head, Silverman said.

The prosecutor also described a series of other killings in which Franklin is suspected, including the shooting death of Georgia Mae Thomas, 43, who was found dead Dec. 18, 2000, in South Los Angeles, with two gunshot wounds to the left side of her chest and blunt-force trauma to her head.

The weapon used in the killing was found at Franklin’s home, and his fingerprint was found on a magazine of the gun used to kill Thomas, the prosecutor said.

Franklin is also suspected in the killing of 28-year-old Inez Warren, who was found Aug. 15, 1988, with a gunshot wound to the left side of her chest and blunt-force trauma to her head, Silverman said. A kit used to collect potential DNA evidence from the woman was inadvertently destroyed in 2000 — years before Franklin’s arrest — but the killing bore the “same pattern or signature” as the other killings, the deputy district attorney said.

The prosecutor also told jurors that a high school ID card — which belonged to 18-year-old Hawthorne High School senior Ayellah Marshall, who vanished in January 2006 — and a Nevada ID card belonging to 29-year-old Rolenia Morris, who disappeared in September 2005, were found by police in Franklin’s garage during a July 2010 search. Authorities have not been able to locate either of the women, Silverman said.

Franklin, while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1974, joined with two other men to grab a 17-year-old girl off a street, gang-rape her and take photos of her, the prosecutor told jurors.

Franklin, 63, was convicted last week of the 10 “Grim Sleeper” killings, along with the attempted murder of Enietra Washington, who survived being shot in the chest and pushed out of a moving vehicle in November 1988. In testimony Feb. 25, she identified Franklin as her assailant.

Washington is expected to be called back to the stand Friday to testify about her ordeal.

During the penalty phase of trial, the seven-woman, five-man jury is being asked to recommend whether Franklin should be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Franklin’s attorney declined to present an opening statement Thursday at the start of the penalty phase, which is expected to last more than a month.

During the trial’s guilt phase, jurors did not hear about the other five women Franklin is suspected of killing.

Prosecutors began the latest phase of the case by calling the first in a series of relatives of the women whom Franklin was convicted of murdering.

With his voice rising, Porter Alexander Jr. — the father of 18-year-old murder victim Alicia Alexander — said, “It was a devastating blow that I received when they came and told me they had found my daughter.”

The 75-year-old man said he has kept his youngest daughter’s belongings “because she’s not gone in my heart.”

He noted that he has been coming to court over the past six years, and said that “there’s nothing going to stop me other than death.”

Mary Alexander, who used a cane to walk to the witness stand, called her slain daughter “my baby girl.”

“She was precious, loveable, loved everybody,” the woman said, telling jurors that she went into a “shell” after her daughter’s death.

“The hurt is still there, the pain is still there,” she said.

Kenneitha Lowe told jurors she goes to the cemetery whenever she feels like she needs to talk to her sister, Mary Lowe, who was killed in 1987. She said she remembers “the good times we had together and now it’s gone.”

“… Her life was lost for no reason,” she said of her sister, who had danced on the TV show “Soul Train.”

Lowe’s cousin, Tracy Williams, told jurors, “This was our introduction to murder, death and killing … I still don’t understand it to this day.”

One of Henrietta Wright’s five children, Rochell Johnson, told jurors she was 4 years old when her mother was killed.

Johnson said she went to the cemetery for the first time last year and thought, “If she only could have seen the evil in that man, she wouldn’t be there.”

Wright’s son, Willie Bush, said he “passed out” after being told that his mother had been murdered and felt bad that he had not been there to protect her.

“I just wish that she could still have been here on this earth,” he said.

Samara Herard — who was the foster sister of the youngest victim Princess Berthomieux — said the girl was brought into their family after suffering abuse and that the girl “became like my daughter.”

After Herard’s mother died, the girl eventually had to move to another foster home, and Herard and her father did not learn about the teen’s death until about a year later, Herard said.

“It felt like it was my daughter that had been murdered,” she said.

At a hearing Wednesday outside the jury’s presence, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy rejected the defense’s request to limit the number of  “victim impact” witnesses who can be called by the prosecution.

One of Franklin’s attorneys, Seymour Amster, told the judge there was “no evidence there was a violent crime” against Marshall or Morris.

In closing arguments last week, the defense lawyer contended that an unknown assailant may have been responsible for the 10 killings for which Franklin was prosecuted.

Silverman countered that there was no evidence to support the defendant’s theory and told jurors that “the only DNA profile that repeats itself again and again is the defendant’s.”

Jurors deliberated about 1 1/2 days before finding Franklin guilty of the killings, which occurred between 1985 and 1988 and 2002 and 2007, with the assailant dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” because of what was believed to be a 13- year break in the killings.

The verdict was reached a week ago Thursday. Franklin was convicted of killing:

— Debra Jackson, 29, found dead from three gunshot wounds to the chest in an alley on Aug. 10, 1985;

– Henrietta Wright, a 34-year-old mother of five who was shot twice in the chest and found in an alley with a cloth gag stuffed in her mouth on Aug. 12, 1986;

— Barbara Ware, 23, shot once in the chest and found under a pile of debris and garbage in an alley on Jan. 10, 1987;

— Bernita Sparks, 26, shot once in the chest and found in a trash bin with her shirt and pants unbuttoned on April 16, 1987;

— Mary Lowe, 26, shot in the chest and found in an alley with her pants unzipped behind a large shrub on Nov. 1, 1987;

— Lachrica Jefferson, 22, found dead from two gunshot wounds to the chest — with a napkin over her face with the handwritten word “AIDS” on it — in an alley on Jan. 30, 1988;

— Alicia Alexander, 18, killed by a gunshot wound to the chest and found naked under a blue foam mattress in an alley on Sept. 11, 1988;

— Princess Berthomieux, 15, strangled and discovered naked and hidden in shrubbery in an alley in Inglewood on March 9, 2002;

— Valerie McCorvey, 35, strangled and found dead with her clothes pulled down at the entrance to a locked alley on July 11, 2003; and

— Janecia Peters, 25, shot in the back and found naked inside a sealed plastic trash bag in a trash bin in an alley on Jan. 1, 2007.

Franklin has remained jailed without bail since his arrest in July 2010 by LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division detectives.

—City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Anaheim police. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

A woman was fatally wounded in an Anaheim park this afternoon in a shooting that was witnessed by children and others, and a man she knew was taken into custody nearby, police said.

Officers were notified at 2:37 p.m. that a woman had been shot at Peralta Park at 115 N. Pinney Drive, according to Anaheim police Sgt. Daron Wyatt. The unidentified woman was taken to an area hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The victim had some kind of relationship with the 49-year-old suspect, but additional details were not immediately available, Wyatt said.

The man was detained a few miles from the park in the parking lot for a police substation and a community center, according to the sergeant, who said the suspect wasn’t in the process of turning himself in when he was taken into custody.

The relationship between the victim and suspect, whose name was not immediately released, were being investigated and it was “too early to make a determination about motive,” Wyatt said.

Crescent Elementary School and Canyon High School were briefly placed under a lockdown, which was subsequently lifted, he said.

— City News Service 

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo via Pixabay

Two men were sentenced Friday to lengthy state prison terms in connection with the November 2014 shooting death of a U.S. Army veteran in Sylmar.

Jerry Raymond Carmona, 28, was sentenced to 25 years in state prison in connection with his no-contest plea April 20 to voluntary manslaughter for the Nov. 9, 2014 shooting death of former soldier Francisco Garcia, 21, who was shot while with a group of people near Sylmar High School.

Carmona also admitted gang and gun allegations.

Vincent Anthony Estrada, 20, was sentenced to 16 years in prison and waived credit for the time he had already served behind bars, according to Greg Risling of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Estrada pleaded no contest April 20 to voluntary manslaughter and admitted a gang allegation.

Garcia’s shooting had “nothing to do with his military service,” Los Angeles police Lt. Paul Vernon said shortly after the crime.

“There was a long-simmering dispute between rival tagger groups or within the same group,” Vernon said.

–City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Lonnie Franklin Jr. Photo via LAPD

Jurors being asked to recommend the sentence for the man convicted of the “Grim Sleeper” murders of nine women and a 15-year-old girl heard emotional testimony Friday from some of the victims’ relatives, with two women saying they have constant reminders of their slain sister despite the passage of nearly a decade since her killing.

“Not only was she a part of our family, she still is a part of our family,” one of Janecia Peters’ sisters, Javonna Latrell Peters, told jurors in the penalty phase of Lonnie David Franklin Jr.’s trial.

“She’s here with me all the time … She’s in my heart every day. She’s a part of me,” the woman said, with her voice breaking.

She said that the two were born 11 1/2 months apart, shared a bedroom and were best friends. She told jurors that she was devastated about learning that her sister’s body had been found on New Year’s Day 2007 and that she thinks she cried for about an hour straight and may have blacked out afterward.

Another of Peters’ sisters, Shamika Smith, said the 25-year-old woman is “constantly in our thoughts, our minds.”

She said Peters was raising a son who’s now 14 and now has three mothers — two aunts and a grandmother — instead of four mothers.

“That’s because one of his mothers is missing,” she said. “I can hug him and kiss him, but I’m not his mother.”

She said her nephew’s face reminds her of her slain sister and makes it seem like a “little piece of Janecia is there.”

The woman’s mother, Laverne Peters, described her youngest daughter as her “sweetheart baby.”

“I have a very hard time even thinking about when I did find out (about her death),” she said, while noting that she couldn’t wallow in her pain and had to wait to cry until after her grandson had gone to bed.

“I couldn’t just lay down and let it be over for us,” the victim’s mother said. “She had a son.”

Alicia Alexander’s older sister, Anita Limbrick, testified that she was shocked, in disbelief, saddened, horrified and angry about learning that her sister had been found dead in 1988, and that she still remains horrified about what happened to her 18-year-old sibling.

Limbrick, who was in the sheriff’s academy at the time of her sister’s killing, said it was hard to be in court as photographs of her sister’s body were shown.

She said she found it “hard to believe that anyone could do anything like that, but I had to see for myself” to help to get closure because she had never been allowed to see her sister’s body.

“I think of good times. I try to think of the good times,” she said, when asked how she remembers her sister.

She noted that her sister loved to sing and once recorded herself singing over a song on an Anita Baker cassette tape.

“Now I’m happy I have it. I was yelling at her at the time,” she recollected.

Jurors had heard Thursday from Alexander’s parents and brother, along with relatives of three of the other victims as prosecutors seek to have them recommend that Franklin be executed instead of serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

The penalty phase of the trial of Franklin, a 63-year-old former Los Angeles city garage attendant and sanitation worker, who was convicted May 5 of 10 counts of first-degree murder, began on Thursday.

The seven-woman, five-man jury also found Franklin guilty of the attempted murder of Enietra Washington, who survived being shot in the chest and pushed out of a moving vehicle in November 1988. In testimony Feb. 25, she identified Franklin as her assailant.

In her opening statement in the trial’s penalty phase, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman detailed for jurors a series of other killings she said are linked to the defendant. Jurors had not heard that evidence during the guilt phase.

Silverman told jurors that the gun used to kill Peters — the final victim in the charged “Grim Sleeper” killings — was also used in the January 1984 shooting death of 21-year-old Sharon Dismuke, a crime for which Franklin was not charged. The weapon was found during a July 2010 police search of Franklin’s property, Silverman told jurors.

“This was the first murder in a series of murders committed by the defendant,” Silverman said of Dismuke’s killing, telling jurors that the same gun being used was “like bookends on this series of murders.”

The prosecutor also described a series of other killings in which Franklin is suspected, including the shooting death of Georgia Mae Thomas, who was found dead Dec. 18, 2000, in South Los Angeles, with two gunshot wounds to the left side of her chest and blunt-force trauma to her head.

The weapon used in Thomas’ killing was found at Franklin’s home, and his fingerprint was found on a magazine of the gun used to kill the 43-year-old woman, the prosecutor said.

Franklin is also suspected in the killing of 28-year-old Inez Warren, who was found Aug. 15, 1988, with a gunshot wound to the left side of her chest and blunt-force trauma to her head, Silverman said.

A kit used to collect potential DNA evidence from the woman was inadvertently destroyed in 2000 — years before Franklin’s arrest — but the killing bore the “same pattern or signature” as the other killings, the deputy district attorney said.

The prosecutor also told jurors that a high school ID card — which belonged to 18-year-old Hawthorne High School senior Ayellah Marshall, who vanished in January 2006 — and a Nevada ID card belonging to 29-year-old Rolenia Morris, who disappeared in September 2005, were found by police in Franklin’s garage during a July 2010 search. Authorities have not been able to locate either woman, Silverman said.

Franklin, while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1974, joined with two other men to grab a 17-year-old girl off a street, gang-rape her and take photos of her, the prosecutor told jurors.

Franklin’s attorney declined to present an opening statement at the start of the penalty phase.

In closing arguments last week, the defense lawyer contended that an unknown assailant may have been responsible for the 10 killings for which Franklin was prosecuted.

The prosecutor countered that there was no evidence to support the defendant’s theory and told jurors that “the only DNA profile that repeats itself again and again is the defendant’s.”

Jurors deliberated about 1 1/2 days before finding Franklin guilty of the killings, which occurred between 1985 and 1988 and 2002 and 2007, with the assailant dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” because of what was believed to be a 13- year break in the killings.

Franklin was convicted of killing:

— Debra Jackson, 29, found dead from three gunshot wounds to the chest in an alley on Aug. 10, 1985;

— Henrietta Wright, a 34-year-old mother of five who was shot twice in the chest and found in an alley with a cloth gag stuffed in her mouth on Aug. 12, 1986;

— Barbara Ware, 23, shot once in the chest and found under a pile of debris and garbage in an alley on Jan. 10, 1987;

— Bernita Sparks, 26, shot once in the chest and found in a trash bin with her shirt and pants unbuttoned on April 16, 1987;

— Mary Lowe, 26, shot in the chest and found in an alley with her pants unzipped behind a large shrub on Nov. 1, 1987;

— Lachrica Jefferson, 22, found dead from two gunshot wounds to the chest — with a napkin over her face with the handwritten word “AIDS” on it — in an alley on Jan. 30, 1988;

— Alicia Alexander, 18, killed by a gunshot wound to the chest and found naked under a blue foam mattress in an alley on Sept. 11, 1988;

— Princess Berthomieux, 15, strangled and discovered naked and hidden in shrubbery in an alley in Inglewood on March 9, 2002;

— Valerie McCorvey, 35, strangled and found dead with her clothes pulled down at the entrance to a locked alley on July 11, 2003; and

— Janecia Peters, 25, shot in the back and found naked inside a sealed plastic trash bag in a trash bin in an alley on Jan. 1, 2007.

Franklin has remained jailed without bail since his arrest in July 2010 by LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division detectives.

–City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo via Pixabay

A man who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the killing of a father who took his teenage son to buy a cellphone advertised online is being sentenced to 26 years in state prison.

Markell Thomas, 20, also pleaded guilty to two robbery charges and testified in the trial of Ryan Roth, with whom he had been charged in the Oct. 19, 2013, shooting death of Rene Balbuena, 41.

Jurors acquitted Roth in September of Balbuena’s killing and the attempted murder of Balbuena’s 15-year-old son, along with robbery counts stemming from the encounter.

Roth’s attorney, Anthony Willoughby, contended that Thomas was trying to “deflect the blame” from himself, though prosecutors said Roth was the gunman.

Jurors deadlocked Thursday on two other robbery counts against Roth stemming from an unrelated heist in August 2013. A second jury deliberated less than a day before convicting Roth on May 12 of those two charges, and he was sentenced Monday to nine years in state prison.

–City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo via Pixabay

A prosecutor Friday urged jurors to convict Michael Jace — who portrayed an LAPD officer on the television drama “The Shield” — of first-degree murder for shooting his wife in front of their two young children, but a defense attorney countered that the actor “snapped” and is guilty of the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter.

In her closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef told jurors that Jace was “obsessed” with his wife, April, who was trying to leave him amid his allegations that she had been unfaithful to him.

Defense attorney Jamon Hicks conceded that Jace shot his wife once in the back and then twice in the legs on May 19, 2014, at the home the couple shared with their sons in the Hyde Park area of Los Angeles, but questioned whether the actor would have premeditated the shooting knowing that the children would be there.

Jurors spent less than 1 1/2 hours in deliberations before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry sent them home for the day. They are due back in court Tuesday.

The prosecutor told the six-man, six-woman panel that the testimony from the couple’s 10-year-old son “tells you it was premeditated.”

The boy, Nehemiah, testified Wednesday that he saw his father bring his 40-year-old mother into a hallway, where she fell down.

“Then my dad said, ‘If you like running, run to heaven,’ and then he shot her,” the boy told the jury.

The 53-year-old defendant “is saying the words that show premeditation – – go to heaven,” Mokayef said, noting that Jace shot his wife at close range after having already shot her in the back.

“Who is going to argue this is not an intent to kill?” she asked.

In an interview with police after his wife’s death, Jace told police that he “wanted her to feel some pain” because she was a runner, the prosecutor noted.

In an audio-recorded interview played for the jury, Jace told police that he was holding the gun when his wife returned home from a baseball game with their sons but that she didn’t immediately notice the firearm.

He told police that she lunged at him, he pushed her away and she spun around before the shooting, and that all he intended to do was “just shoot her in the leg,” not kill her.

The actor also told detectives that he had been drinking that day and that “there were moments” when he had contemplated taking his own life.

The prosecutor noted that the couple exchanged 164 text messages the day of the shooting, telling jurors that Jace’s wife wrote one text message that she was “afraid to come home” and that her husband had engaged in “trickery to make her believe he wasn’t home.”

“It’s almost eerie when you read these texts after the fact,” Mokayef said, calling the case about “control and obsession.”

“He’s obsessed with her … He finally controls her to heaven,” the prosecutor told jurors.

In his closing argument, Jace’s attorney acknowledged, “He did it. We’re not saying he didn’t do it.”

Hicks said the case centered around Jace’s mindset and whether the killing was premeditated.

“We’re not talking about innocence. We’re not saying let him walk … You have to be sure that he planned it” to convict him of first-degree murder, he told jurors.

The defense attorney told the panel that there was no evidence that Jace was brewing and plotting the demise of his wife of nine years, and that the prosecution had “oversold this case” by pursuing a first-degree murder conviction.

Hicks said Jace was desperately trying to save his marriage — as evidenced in the 91 text messages he had sent her the day of the shooting — and had been drinking.

“He snapped,” Hicks said of his client. “If you find there was something that provoked this man … and it created some kind of passion in him, that’s manslaughter.”

The lawyer told jurors that the defense was “not asking” for Jace to be acquitted.

“We’re saying he’s guilty. The question is guilty of what?” Hicks said. “This isn’t first-degree (murder). This isn’t second-degree (murder). This is why we have voluntary manslaughter.”

If convicted of the murder charge and an allegation that he personally discharged a handgun, Jace could face up to 50 years to life in state prison.

Jace is best known for his role as Los Angeles police Officer Julien Lowe in “The Shield.” He has also appeared in such films as “Forrest Gump,” “Boogie Nights” and “Planet of the Apes.”

—City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Photo courtesy of La Habra Police Facebook

A teenager told police his father fatally shot his mother and then killed himself at the family’s La Habra home, authorities said Tuesday.

The boy called police at 8:26 p.m. Monday to report that his mother had been shot at their home in the 600 block of North Fonda Street and that his father was still armed, said La Habra police Sgt. Jose Quirarte.

Officers forced their way inside, removed the teen and his younger sister from the home and found the woman’s body in a hallway and the man’s body in a bedroom, the sergeant said. Both were believed to be in their 40s.

A handgun was also found at the scene.

“Based on preliminary statements and investigation, the crime appears to be one of domestic violence and a murder/suicide,” Quirarte said.

The two children were unharmed and eventually released to other family members, he said.

— Wire reports 

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Lonnie Franklin Jr. Photo via LAPD

Testimony wrapped up Tuesday in the penalty phase of trial for the man convicted of the “Grim Sleeper” serial killings, setting the stage for closing arguments as jurors are asked to recommend whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Lonnie David Franklin Jr.’s lead attorney, Seymour Amster, opted not to give an opening statement as the defense began its portion of the case this morning, then called two witnesses before announcing that its case was complete.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard all of the evidence in this case …,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy said.

She told the seven-woman, five-man jury that it would receive jury instructions and hear closing arguments Thursday, and that it would then most likely begin its deliberations late that day. The trial will not be in session Wednesday.

Franklin, a 63-year-old former city garage attendant and sanitation worker, was convicted May 5 of 10 counts of first-degree murder for the killings of nine women and a 15-year-old girl between 1985 and 2007.

Jurors also found Franklin guilty of the attempted murder of Enietra Washington, who survived being shot in the chest and pushed out of a moving vehicle in November 1988. In testimony Feb. 25, she identified Franklin as her assailant.

During the trial’s latest phase, the defense’s fingerprint identification expert, Kurt E. Kuhn, agreed that Franklin’s left thumbprint matched the fingerprint found on the magazine of a firearm found at Franklin’s property. The prosecution contends the weapon was used in December 2000 to kill Georgia Mae Thomas — one of the victims of a series of other killings in which Franklin is suspected.

When asked by Amster if he could determine if all others universally could be excluded as a source of the fingerprint, Kuhn responded that he could not.

The judge asked the witness, “Your science has never found two individuals with the same print?”

“Not as of yet,” the defense’s expert responded.

Jurors also heard from a former Los Angeles police detective-turned- private investigator Timothy Williams Jr., who was called by the defense to discuss a 911 call made involving the August 1988 killing of Inez Warren — another of the killings in which Franklin is suspected but has not been charged. He said his review of the police reports indicated that the 911 caller reported that some guys pushed her out of the vehicle, but told jurors under cross-examination that he was not asked to review the tape of the 911 call itself and had no way of knowing if the 911 caller was providing truthful information to authorities.

Along with the fingerprint evidence put on during the prosecution’s portion of the trial’s penalty phase, jurors heard from an LAPD criminalist who testified that two guns found on Franklin’s property were linked to bullets taken from the bodies of three women, including one gun that was linked to the killing of Janecia Peters — one of the women Franklin was convicted of murdering — and the January 1984 killing of Sharon Dismuke — a killing in which Franklin is suspected.

The other gun seized at Franklin’s property was determined to have been the weapon that was used to kill Thomas, the criminalist testified.

Jurors also heard from the murder victims’ relatives, who gave emotional testimony about the impact the killings have had on them and their families.

The jury also heard testimony about a gang-rape the prosecution contends Franklin was linked to while he was serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1974.

The rape victim — who was not asked if she could identify Franklin in court — told jurors last week that one of the three men held a knife to her throat after she was pulled inside a vehicle and that she was driven to a field about 30 minutes away.

Speaking through a German interpreter, she said she was in fear for her life and was raped by all three men in an ordeal that she said took “the rest of the night.”

Another prosecution witness, Frank J. Pyle Jr., testified that he attended the trial of Franklin and two other men in Germany.

“I was there each of those eight days along with my interpreter,” Pyle said of his work with the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps branch.

In his closing argument in the trial’s guilt phase, Franklin’s lead attorney contended that an unknown assailant may have been responsible for the 10 killings for which Franklin was prosecuted.

The prosecutor countered that there was no evidence to support the defendant’s theory and told jurors that “the only DNA profile that repeats itself again and again is the defendant’s.”

Jurors deliberated about 1 1/2 days before finding Franklin guilty of the killings, which occurred between 1985 and 1988 and 2002 and 2007, with the assailant dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” because of what was believed to be a 13- year break in the killings.

Franklin was convicted of killing:

— Debra Jackson, 29, found dead from three gunshot wounds to the chest in an alley on Aug. 10, 1985;

— Henrietta Wright, a 34-year-old mother of five who was shot twice in the chest and found in an alley with a cloth gag stuffed in her mouth on Aug. 12, 1986;

— Barbara Ware, 23, shot once in the chest and found under a pile of debris and garbage in an alley on Jan. 10, 1987;

— Bernita Sparks, 26, shot once in the chest and found in a trash bin with her shirt and pants unbuttoned on April 16, 1987;

— Mary Lowe, 26, shot in the chest and found in an alley with her pants unzipped behind a large shrub on Nov. 1, 1987;

— Lachrica Jefferson, 22, found dead from two gunshot wounds to the chest — with a napkin over her face with the handwritten word “AIDS” on it — in an alley on Jan. 30, 1988;

— Alicia Alexander, 18, killed by a gunshot wound to the chest and found naked under a blue foam mattress in an alley on Sept. 11, 1988;

— Princess Berthomieux, 15, strangled and discovered naked and hidden in shrubbery in an alley in Inglewood on March 9, 2002;

— Valerie McCorvey, 35, strangled and found dead with her clothes pulled down at the entrance to a locked alley on July 11, 2003; and

— Janecia Peters, 25, shot in the back and found naked inside a sealed plastic trash bag in a trash bin in an alley on Jan. 1, 2007.

Franklin has remained jailed without bail since his arrest in July 2010 by LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division detectives.

—City News Service

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!

Lonnie Franklin Jr. Photo via LAPD

Calling him “evil” and saying he preyed on women in his own community, a prosecutor urged jurors Thursday to recommend a death sentence for a former Los Angeles city employee convicted of killing nine women and a teenage girl.

In her final argument in the penalty trial of “Grim Sleeper” killer Lonnie David Franklin Jr., Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told the seven-woman, five-man jury that the he committed “horrific crimes of violence” and that “death is the only just punishment for this defendant.” “He’s a prolific serial killer and he’s evil,” the prosecutor said. “He terrorized his own community … He takes joy in inflicting pain and murdering women … His entire life has been about violence perpetrated against women.”

Defense attorney Dale R. Atherton will deliver his closing argument Friday, then Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy will give final instructions to jurors tasked with recommending capital punishment or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Franklin, 63, was convicted May 5 of 10 counts of first-degree murder for the killings of nine women and a 15-year-old girl between 1985 and 2007.

Jurors also found Franklin guilty of the attempted murder of Enietra Washington, who survived being shot in the chest and pushed out of a moving vehicle in November 1988. In testimony Feb. 25, she identified Franklin as her assailant.

During the penalty phase of the trial, the prosecution presented evidence that it contends links Franklin to four other killings: the January 1984 slaying of Sharon Dismuke, the August 1988 killing of Inez Warren, the December 2000 slaying of Georgia Thomas and the presumed killing of Rolenia Morris, a 31-year-old mother of two who “vanished under very mysterious circumstances” in September 2005, Silverman said. “Her identification and her picture were found in a serial killer’s stash or trophy chest, along with a disturbingly similar picture of another woman, Janecia Peters,” the prosecutor said, referring to one of the victims Franklin was convicted of murdering. “The same breast is even exposed.” The deputy district attorney argued that the two women “met with the same fate at the hands of the same man.” Franklin was also involved — along with two other men — in the kidnapping and gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Germany while he was serving in the U.S. Army in 1974, Silverman alleged. “So, what did the defendant learn? Did he learn from his crimes in Germany?” the prosecutor asked, telling jurors that Franklin learned not to let a victim survive and testify against him or he would wind up in prison. “As you have heard, 14 young women and girls lost their lives due to the decisions and choices of the defendant,” the prosecutor said, calling the former city garage attendant and sanitation worker a “sexual predator” and a “career criminal” who has a “long line of victims behind him.”

Citing the enormity of his crimes, Silverman told jurors to “show the defendant the exact same mercy, the exact same compassion” that he showed to his victims. She called life in prison the “minimum sentence” and said “certainly the horror of the crimes in this case deserve more than the minimum sentence.”

The jury heard about 2 1/2 weeks of testimony during the trial’s penalty phase, including firearms and fingerprint evidence that the prosecution contends links Franklin to the killings in which he’s additionally suspected. The panel also heard from a series of the victims’ relatives.

The defense presented two witnesses during its portion of the penalty phase, but did not call any of Franklin’s family members.

A fingerprint identification expert agreed that Franklin’s left thumbprint matched the fingerprint found on the magazine of a firearm found at his property. The prosecution contends the weapon was used to kill Thomas. When asked if he could determine if all others universally could be excluded as a source of the fingerprint, Kuhn responded that he could not.

In his closing argument in the trial’s guilt phase, Franklin’s lead attorney, Seymour Amster, contended that an unknown assailant may have been responsible for the 10 killings for which Franklin was prosecuted.

The prosecutor countered that there was no evidence to support the defendant’s theory and told jurors that “the only DNA profile that repeats itself again and again is the defendant’s.”

Jurors deliberated about 1 1/2 days before finding Franklin guilty of the killings, which occurred between 1985 and 1988 and 2002 and 2007, with the assailant dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” because of what was believed to be a 13- year break in the killings.

Franklin, who was arrested in July 2010, was convicted of killing:

— Debra Jackson, 29, found dead from three gunshot wounds to the chest in an alley on Aug. 10, 1985;

— Henrietta Wright, a 34-year-old mother of five who was shot twice in the chest and found in an alley with a cloth gag stuffed in her mouth on Aug. 12, 1986;

— Barbara Ware, 23, shot once in the chest and found under a pile of debris and garbage in an alley on Jan. 10, 1987;

— Bernita Sparks, 26, shot once in the chest and found in a trash bin with her shirt and pants unbuttoned on April 16, 1987;

— Mary Lowe, 26, shot in the chest and found in an alley with her pants unzipped behind a large shrub on Nov. 1, 1987;

— Lachrica Jefferson, 22, found dead from two gunshot wounds to the chest — with a napkin over her face with the handwritten word “AIDS” on it — in an alley on Jan. 30, 1988;

— Alicia Alexander, 18, killed by a gunshot wound to the chest and found naked under a blue foam mattress in an alley on Sept. 11, 1988;

— Princess Berthomieux, 15, strangled and discovered naked and hidden in shrubbery in an alley in Inglewood on March 9, 2002;

— Valerie McCorvey, 35, strangled and found dead with her clothes pulled down at the entrance to a locked alley on July 11, 2003; and

— Janecia Peters, 25, shot in the back and found naked inside a sealed plastic trash bag in a trash bin in an alley on Jan. 1, 2007.

—Staff and wire reports

>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!