The magic of video.

Only a few days ago I was discussing with Dolores Hickambottom how many years ago, the Star-News would publish quotes from Elbie Hickambottom with every phonetic detail of his stutter intact. I told her how we endeavor to not polish the grammar and speech of some sources by quoting them with the same accuracy as everyone else.

After describing recent reprisal killings in his city as "pretty bad," Monrovia Mayor Rob Hammond's quote, as per Friday's story, "The bugle call went out and the cavalry is here," didn't make it into our video from the morning press conference.

I suspected that quote may have been incorrect after viewing the footage from the grassroots conference -- featuring the two parents of the rampage's most recent teen victims -- on the rough, grass lawn where Brandon Lee was shot Tuesday.

In that video, Rob in fact says the "Calvary" has been called. Bizarre Biblical reference ftw?

Politicians are uniformly strange creatures to observe, and reporters take a certain fascination with their idiosyncrasies. Rob showed up after the parents' conference had started, lingering to the side. But once the television cameras began rolling, he not-so-subtly inserted himself into the front row by shaking the hand of Khalid Shah, then turned around to take up a grim-faced, camera-framed position next to Jeanette Chavez, mother of 16-y-o murder victim Sammantha Salas.

Not to say his sentiments weren't sincere. But whether they were or weren't seemed secondary, at best.

Posted by Todd at 1:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Attended the 10 a.m. conference at Monrovia City Hall to hear about this new task force planned to quash the out-of-control gang violence going on, it was light on details but with clergy, school, police and city officials on hand, it was an opportunity for a lot of questions to be asked.

By noon was down at the crime scene where Brandon Lee was killed Tuesday night where Brandon's father Willie Lee was sobbing and embracing Jeanette Chavez, mother of 16-year-old Sammantha Salas killed Saturday night. Incomparable Star-News photographer Walt Mancini took this picture as they sat, rocking and crying, a marked bullet hole over their shoulder.

"There's not much to say other than stop the violence. You're hurting innocent kids, you're hurting innocent people. Keep God in your life," Willie Lee, Jr. said.

Posted by Todd at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Brandon Lee on random MySpace profile

To the language and content sensitive: Don't go there.

UPDATED: Collectively, we're somewhere in between 19th Century notions of what a newspaper and journalism means and the 21st Century landscape of content immediacy and iterative reporting. There aren't road signs here. The editorial discomfort over posting this picture without further comment had more to do with context, and that thinking is correct. It wasn't well communicated, but it probably would help if the phone on my desk actually worked.

So here's the image purported to be Lee in a Du Roc Crips T-Shirt. It's not posted to be sensational or to "criminalize" the victim. Brandon should not be dead today. Period.

However the narrative regarding what is happening in Monrovia and unincorporated "No Man's Land" has its inconsistencies. One of those is the extent to which innocents or "innocents" are being caught in the crossfire. It's an uncomfortable, difficult-to-process space that someone like 16-year-old Sammantha Salas could be gunned down in front of her home through no fault of her own. And that someone might have considered her a target by association. Police and family, as per tomorrow's story, link her father to a checkered past.

I'll try to explore some of these things in tomorrow's story.

Brandon Lee was 19 and it confounds reason that he would be murdered. Except his own gang connection might have run more deeply than his family thought. More than the police -- who now say they believe he was a full-fledged member of the DuRoc Crips -- other, more personal connections make that link, including the content of his makeshift memorial at the site of his murder. And at some point, he stood and posed for this picture. Does it tell the complete story of Brandon Lee? No, but it can't be ignored either and illustrates another facet.

Posted by Todd at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Reports in that Monrovia City Council members are meeting at the community center there, despite no public notice as required under the Brown Act. Someone at the center confirms to Molly that the entire council is meeting currently and that it's open to the public. No notice was ever posted, however.

UPDATED: 7:50 p.m.: City tried to deny access to reporter Robert S. Hong before relenting. WTF?

Posted by Todd at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just back from southeast Monrovia and unincorporated parts. Police had left Almond Avenue, but a photographer served to clue me into the crime scene. Despite being told "no one is talking," I managed to score an invite into the bullet-scarred home where Brandon Lee, 19 of Duarte, was shot in front of last night.

A couple of Brandon's relations lived there. His great-granduncle in-law(?) provided some contact information that eventually led to his parents. Emerging from the home just after 10 o'clock, I ran into Frank Girardot who'd come out to put his eyes on some of the crime scenes.

Fed some info back to the newsroom for some of the web updates your seeing now, some of which I've gone back and tweaked a bit once back in the office.

Brandon was to be a linebacker at PCC next semester, his father said, and the bullets which killed him weren't the first to cut short his ambition. Last summer, just before he left for junior college in Fresno, Brandon was shot in the arm. His father blames Latino gangs for both incidents. He says Brandon wasn't a banger, but hung out with them.

Don't have details on this image but photo dug it up from their archive of sports coverage.

Posted by Todd at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)