Arcadia: December 2007 Archives

BTW, that's AC/DC playing "Shoot to Thrill" in the background.

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Arcadia police arrested a 44-year-old high-risk sex offender Thursday morning on a parole violation. Apparently, Paul Jeffrey Cricks, of Arcadia, didn't charge his electronic ankle bracelet – which has a global positioning system attached to it – and essentially disappeared from parole officers for a few days.

When the state agents realized Wednesday they weren't getting a signal from the bracelet, they went to Cricks' house in the 600 block of Baldwin Avenue. After breaking down the door, they found personal items, the bracelet's charger but no Cricks.

Further investigation found the offender had skipped out on work the last couple of days. He works at a tire shop in La Puente, according to police.

It wasn't until Thursday morning that Cricks was finally found. Arcadia officers, following up on the case, went back to Cricks' home. This time he was there, along with a small amount of narcotics, according to Arcadia police Lt. Larry Goodman.

So where was this offender – previously convicted of annoying or molesting children and indecent exposure – hiding out the last few days? No one seems to know.

All police have to say is the fact that Cricks was MIA was a major "public safety" concern. Really? But now he's in custody, so I guess the game of Where's Waldo? .... er.... Where's Cricks? is over.

He's back from Minnesota but Isaac Campbell was not ready Tuesday to enter a plea in the state's case against him.

Here's the story from PSN's Molly Okeon:

Isaac Campbell, 32, appeared in Alhambra Superior Court on Tuesday, wearing a blue jumpsuit and glasses.
Campbell is charged in the death of Liya “Jessie” Lu, 31, of San Gabriel. He was being held in lieu of $1.2 million bail.
Campbell is also facing two marijuana charges in a separate case.
Lu, who was studying to be a nurse at Pasadena City College, was working two part-time jobs as a Kaiser Permanente Hospital medical assistant and a secretary in a law office. She had moved from China to the United States nine years ago.
Lu’s body was found in the 1700 block of South Baldwin Avenue in Arcadia in September.
She was reported missing to the San Gabriel Police Department on Aug. 11 after she failed to return from a visit to Campbell’s apartment, officials said.
Authorities said Campbell was called in for questioning briefly, then fled to Minnesota, from which he was extradited.
Before leaving town, Campbell asked a friend who owned the Arcadia home at which Lu’s body was found to store several items, including a vehicle and a trash can, officials said.
The friend discovered Lu’s body sealed in a plastic garbage bag and covered with kitty litter in the trash can, officials said.
Lu’s parents, Yongtai Lu and Shilan Guo, who are in the U.S. from China for the court proceedings, were present at the hearing, along with friends of their daughter’s.
According to her cousin, Jeremy Zhou a San Gabriel resident, Lu has two brothers, 40-year-old Jun and 36-year-old Gang, both of whom live in China.

Just days after Crime Scene runs its first ever transportation story, we have another.  This from KCBS 2 KCAL 9:

Authorities traced cell-phone signals Sunday to find and arrest a man who left a suspicious package on a public bus, and then repeatedly phoned in bomb threats. The satchel was blown up by a bomb squad, but contained only "miscellaneous papers," according to Lt. Keith Obenberger of the sheriff's Transit Services Bureau.

The bomb threats kept coming, and sheriff's detectives were able to trace the man's cell-phone transmissions to a neighborhood near East Colorado Boulevard and North First Street in Arcadia.

"I believe we found him (the suspect) on the street," Obenberger said. The incident started at about 9:45 a.m., when the suspect made several calls warning that there was going to be a bomb on a bus, singling out the bus route number.

Deputies notified the bus driver, who said he found an unattended package underneath one of the rear seats in his bus, he said.

Deputies and a bomb squad rushed to the area of Baldwin Avenue and Las Tunas Drive, evacuating what they said was a "large circumference" of neighboring businesses and an apartment building, Obenberger said.

The squad blew the suspicious package apart at about 11:30 a.m., and the suspect "kept making more threat," Obenberger said. "We were able to narrow down where he was at."

The man, whose name has not been released, was booked at the sheriff's Temple station on suspicion of making terrorist threats and false reporting of a bomb.

The man accused of killing his girlfriend then dumping her body in a trashcan, covering it with kitty litter then leaving the can in his friend's Arcadia backyard has been extradited to LA from Hennepin County Jail in Minnesota.

Isaac Campbell is due in Alhambra court on Dec. 18, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's inmate locator.

Crime scene thanks the anonymous tipster for the heads up.