Recently in Lomita Category

The Torrance Superior Court jury found Roy Joseph Senter, 74, guilty of two counts of continuous lewd acts on a child under the age of 14. He returns to court Nov. 24 for sentencing. He faces life in prison.

Full story will be up later at dailybreeze.com

Previously:

Court clerk may testify in Lomita molestation trial

(And an update on that: I'm told that the clerk was called to testify during an evidentiary hearing to see if she would be permitted to take the witness stand before the jury. I'm not sure what she said, but my understanding is that Judge James Brandlin gave the defense the green light to call her. However, she was not called.)

Deputies made two arrests this morning in the 2007 killing of Sonia Rios Risken, the so-called "Lomita Black Widow" believed to be the mastermind behind the shooting deaths of two husbands 19 years apart.

We were there.

Eric Delacruz, 28, Risken's great-nephew who called her his grandma, was taken intocustody at his Carson house.

Also arrested was Fernando Romero, 24, of Highland.

Story coming soon to dailybreeze.com.

Prosecutors declined to file charges on Friday against a Lomita school janitor arrested for allegedly grabbing a 13-year-old female student's breast. Rolonzo Smoot, 23, was arrested Wednesday afternoon by Los Angeles Unified School District police officers after a Fleming Middle School student reported that he grabbed her as they passed each other in the hall earlier that day.

Deputy District Attorney Jodi Link said prosecutors decided there was insufficient evidence to charge Smoot, but have ordered him to attend an office hearing to discuss his behavior.
Smoot was released from custody Friday, according to the Sheriff's Web site.

Here's a preview of this weekend's 48 Hours Mystery take on the "Lomita Black Widow" case of Sonia Rios Risken and her two slain husbands. If you recall, Risken had two husbands killed in similar fashion in the Philippines 19 years apart. It runs Saturday night at 10 p.m. on CBS.

If you listen closely, you can hear my voice talking about someone taking a shot at her.

(It takes a moment to load and you get a commercial first, so hang on.)

Earl "Duke' Bourdeau, the first husband of Sonia Rios, was finally buried in a U.S. cemetery on Friday. His remains had been hidden for 21 years in the Philippines, where the retired Marine was murdered in 1987 while visiting his wife's family. The Lomita woman was long-suspected in the killing.

It's been a crazy week here inside the Court Machine, so I'm a little late updating some of my cases. I just learned about this one:

A robbery suspect who holed up in his San Pedro home for four hours will spend seven years in prison, according to prosecutors. Kevin Thomas St. Pierre, 38, pleaded no contest to 22 counts of robbery, attempted robbery and commercial burglary in Torrance Superior Court on Nov. 13, said Deputy District Attorney Don Syn.

St. Pierre made his plea without a deal from prosecutors, allowing a judge to decide what his punishment should be. He was believed responsible for holdups or attempted holdups at businesses in San Pedro, Torrance, Redondo Beach and Lomita.

Los Angeles police chased St. Pierre following a robbery in Lomita on Sept. 2. He fled to his apartment in the 900 block of West 30th Street and refused to come out. He finally surrendered after a special weapons team surrounded his home.

My Friday morning began with a question from a reader on yesterday's search of an armed robbery suspect in Lomita:

"You call this News? No description. Not sure if anything was stolen. Glad to see that you knew he was an adult.
Why not wait till you get some facts before you waste my bandwidth with something like this?"

I guess I'll tackle these questions one at a time. Yes, I call this news. We had several inquiries from the community about the helicopters circling overhead and concerns about a "wierd" thing in "such a small town and it is happening even here these days," as one resident wrote in an e-mail to me.

As for what I knew (or what I didn't know), what you need to understand is that reporters are only the messengers. We don't make the news, nor are we involved in how it plays out. If you have a problem with how much information was (or was not) released, then that is an issue to take up with the Lomita Sheriff's Department. We fight this fight daily, and you're welcome to lead a battle.

I had all the facts that were available. Believe me, I wish that in every breaking news situation, we had all the information RIGHT NOW accurately and completely. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like that, but we're working hard to keep our readers as up-to-date on their community as possible. I apologize if that seems like a waste of anything to anybody.

Thank you to this reader for his questions, they are absolutely understandable and legitimate. And thank you for not writing in all capital letters or calling me names in the process. I know it's tempting, but it's nice when we can all get along.

 

 

 

An armed robber in Lomita eluded capture today, despite a large manhunt.

The suspect, described only as an adult male, confronted a pedestrian with a gun about 1:20 p.m. in the 25600 block of Oak Street, according to sheriff's Lt. Doreen Alcaraz.

Helicopters and deputies searched the area for several hours, but called off the search without finding anyone, Alcaraz said. It is not known what, if anything, was stolen from the victim.

Here's the correct link to homicide victim Tyce Riddle's mom's MySpace page. Hope this works this time.

And hopefully Jennifer Riddle and the detectives can get the answers they need.

Here's Sunday's story of her plea for help to find who killed her son.