Recently in Azusa Category

Avenues gang members rounded up.

Man shot twice confronting Hollywood taggers.

Black Student Union at Charter Oak High School targeted by yearbook vandal.

Suspicious packages create stir at ELA College.

City begins overhaul of former strip club site at Corky's Corner.

Over the weekend there were five homicides and one suicide recorded in local cities. The first incident involved a man who shot and killed his girlfriend before killing himself on the 605 near Telegraph Road Saturday afternoon.

Later on, four San Gabriel Valley homicides occurred within a six-hour window.

Here's a timeline and brief description of each:

VIOLENCE TIMELINE:

A few weeks ago, I had a surprise late-night encounter with three coyotes roaming the streets of Los Feliz.

It seemed like feral dogs were everywhere that week. Photographer Watchara Phomicinda snapped a picture of a skinny one rooting about an empty field in Irwindale. I can't remember where else they turned up, but they were around.

Last year at this time it was black bears. Bears in Monrovia; bears in Duarte; bears in Bradbury; bears in Azusa.

Old-timers probably know this already, but I was fascinated to find out that predators are nothing new in the San Gabriel Valley or Whittier for that matter.

Grizzlies, wolves, cougars and coyotes roamed pretty freely in these parts right up until the turn of the 20th century.
They're pretty much gone. If only we could say the same about their human counterparts.

***
Whoops.
In my haste to write a brilliant column each week, I've been making grammatical errors. To all you English teachers out there, my deepest apologies.

I had this pointed out to me via a marked-up column sent in the mail by Ms. Beryl Collins of Arcadia.

The mark-up, done nicely in red ink, actually contains just three sentences.
It begins with, "What school did you attend?"

To answer that I guess I have to tell you a little about myself. For the most part I am a product of the California public school system.

After my parents moved to California, I attended Laura M. Hansen Elementary in Saratoga and Joaquin Miller Junior High in San Jose.

The Jesuits took over from there, and although there were some summer school classes at Lynbrook High, I graduated from Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose.

Since then, I've attended UCSD, San Jose State, Pasadena City College and Mt. San Antonio College.

That seems like a lot of education. Even after all that, I still don't know how to construct a proper sentence.

The sentence below was one example pointed out by Ms. Collins. It appeared in a column that ran in this newspaper on June 3:

"I'm sure there's countless similar stories."

She suggests I should have constructed the sentence as: "I'm sure there are countless similar stories."

All I can say is that I'm really glad she hasn't been reading my text messages.

U no wot i mean?

Thanks for the tip, Ms. Collins, I'm sure there are countless similar examples.

***

Are the copper thieves getting bold or what?

Whomever hit an Edison substation in Whittier knew exactly what to take, and absconded with copper grounding wire. It could fetch a tidy sum at the recycling center.

What's probably most irritating about the theft is that Edison had to turn off the power in most of Pico Rivera and portions of Whittier on a hot afternoon.

One can only hope the thief's refrigerator was affected and his (or her) beer got warm.

That's what reporter Dan Abendschein thought when he first arrived on the scene and *saw several large trucks in Azusa and Glendora were among 46 and 48 vehicles that* had their windows blown out overnight.

"ELF," asked reporer Bethania Palma.

"It was just a crackpot theory," Dan replied.

After he saw a few compacts with the same sort of damage Dan admitted he was bummed out that his "theory" didn't pan out.

Was it teenagers?

"Yeah, I think so," said Dan.

Photographer Keith Durflinger had some interesting moments when he was approached by a woman whose car was damaged.

"I got a picture of a lady and her child. And he's looking at the window that got blown out. She said they saw it on TV and said to herself, 'Hey, is thats our car? Yeah that's our car!'"

Keith later found out that Sarah Barroga haven't been driving the unidentified vehicle. They were going to be selling it...

BTW, Dan shot this photo. He thinks it was on Mauna Loa in Glendora
 

Three boys and nine girls claim they were molested my substitute teacher V. Cleon Harper, according to the felony complaint filed against Harper by the Los Angeles County District Attorney.

Harper, who is being held on $1 million bail was scheduled for arraignment at the Pomona courthouse Monday, but that arraignment was postposed until April, 18, according to Sandi Gibbons in the DA's office.

Meanwhile, friends of Harper turned to this blog to begin a campaign of support for their colleague. This comment was left on an earlier entry:

If your reporter were doing his job he would also have discovered this. The teacher coached the students in writing 'mysterious' events about Harper, as a writing exercise. None of the written assignments described any 'touching' other than a light touch on the shoulder. It was only after feedback by the teacher and the administrator that children began to talk about other forms of touching. This same class was known for being disruptive to sub teachers in the past. Harper is among the most upstanding people in the Azusa community and this 'witch-hunt' is an unparalleled abuse of power and authority by the School district, by Child Protective Services and by the Azusa Police Department. It was a complete over reaction to childish fiction to 'get back' at a sub teacher who tried to hold them accountable for their collective mis-behavior.

 

Cleon V. Harper, 65, of Azusa was picked up by Azusa PD on suspicion of 10 counts of child molestation.

Harper was a substitute teacher for a fourth-grade class at WR Powell Elementary School. Children complained to their parents after sitting in Harper's class.

The arrest was the culmination of a week-long investigation by Azusa authorities.

This guy may have been a professor at APU, according to a cursory records search.

Here's comments from Rate My Professor.

A V. Cleon Harper is also listed as a city commissioner on Azusa's website Architectural Barriers Commission.

Another guy who shares the name sits on the board of a group known as "Stepping Stones for Women"  The Motto of the group: "Providing handles of hope to single mothers and their children."

Due to some technical issues, Thursday's column was much shorter in print and online than I had originally written it. (In other words I wrote long and space was short). You probably notice in reading it that it's pretty much a follow up to Sam Quinones excellent piece in yesterday's LAT.

I've heard that Quinones attended every day of trial and was able to score some interviews that I couldn't get. Most notably no one from the Azusa PD returned calls Wednesday to discuss Ralph Flores, Azusa 13 or the impact and aftermath of the spree of hate crimes that plagued Azusa between 1998 and 2004.

Complete column after the jump...

The one-man Azusa crime wave known as Ralph  "Swifty" Flores, 26, received the death penalty Tuesday, as Tribune night guy Brian Day reported:

Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee, who prosecuted the case along with Deputy District Attorney Ian Phan, said Flores deserves to be put to death, "Because he smirks when he plans to kill people, he laughs when he does it, and he brags about it afterward. That's what the evidence showed."

She added that Flores has shown no compunction for his crimes, as he demonstrated by assaulting a sheriff's deputy before the trial began and ordering a "hit" on a deputy during the jury selection process.

Flores sat silently and motionless as the verdict was read, Hanisee said. He showed no reaction at all, she added.

Defense attorney Pierpont M. Laidley said he believes negative feeling toward gang members in general caused jurors to overlook problems in the prosecutions case. "That's why I feel my guy was lynched," he said.

Los Angeles Times' EME expert Sam Quinones extensively covered the trial and put some context in his story about the significance of the sentence and the effect of Flores' crime wave on Azusa politics. Quinones also notes the connection between Azusa 13 and Jacques Padilla, an Azusa emero who's been in the news lately. Here's a snippet from the Times:

For Azusa, the case marks the end to a violent chapter in which a handful of gang members called the "trigger clique" terrorized the town with a series of shootings, killings, robberies and hate crimes targeting blacks.

Their rampage lasted from 1999 to 2004.

Besides Flores, seven other Azusa 13 gang members were convicted of the crimes and sentenced to lengthy prison terms -- five of them in one 2004 trial.

"It was a violent time for the city," said Sgt. Mike Bertelsen, Azusa's gang expert. "We were having a murder a month at the end of 2002."

What brought this violent period to an end "was a combination of citizens, the clergy, City Council and police all working together," said City Manager Francis Delach. "I think that had a big impact."

Azusa's experience shows how a few gang members following directives from the Mexican Mafia prison gang can become a public policy issue, scaring residents while taxing the budget and police resources of an otherwise peaceful town.

 

 

 

 

A jury in the death penalty trial of Ralph Flores, 26, an Azusa 13 gang member recommended Tuesday he be put to death, officials said.

A defense attorney for Flores tried to sway jurors to vote against the Death Penalty by using the lingering doubt argument, which is allowed in California criminal trials. 

The attorney was apparently unsuccessful.

A Los Angeles jury found that Ralph Flores killed four people between 1999 and 2004. Prosecutors said he was a member of one of Southern California's most violent gangs.

Judge Kathleen Kennedy ( you may remember her from the O.J. Simpson preliminary hearing) heard the case and will continue to preside over future hearings.

The tattoo where Flores' mustache should be reads "AZUSA."

As for the convictions, one killing carried a hate crime enhancement, another invoved the torture death of a suspected female informant.

Here's the full story. The penalty phase in Flores' trial begins Monday. he could be sentenced to death.

CORRECTED: 11:42 A.M. 2/28/07

Man found shot on the freeway. We're still trying to sort this one out. It happened early a.m. on the 210 in Azusa. We really know nothing right now. Sometimes these turn out to be attempted suicides, sometimes they turn out to be incidents of road rage. Other times they are targeted attacks. We'll find out which one this is....check back

Here is some more information about the "person of interest" in Eileen's murder.

 From the story:

POMONA - A parolee gang member relative of the husband of a Covina woman who was found murdered in her van on Saturday has been named a "person of interest" in the case by Pomona Police.

Police said Joseph Orta, 34 has not been officially named as a suspect in the murder of 22-year-old Eileen Ponce-Orta, who was found fatally stabbed in the neck on Saturday.

Orta, a former gang member out of Azusa, was convicted for the 2001 attempted murder of his step-father, according to family members of the victim.

Other notes from reporters Brian Day and Dan Abendschein:

Azusa may have captured the Bluetooth Bandit within the last 30 minutes. A man matching the description just robbed a Washington Mutual at 1188 East Alosta in Azusa.

More details as we learn them.

UPDATE: 6:20 P.M.

The Bluetooth was not caught. He somehow escaped, police now say.