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| Crime Scene puts you behind the yellow tape with takes on true crime, cold cases and more. This is also your forum to discuss crime, its impact on your neighborhood and how we cover it. Have any questions or tips? You can leave a comment here or e-mail me. |
ANGELS commented on Thursday's Column
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Police arrested Baldwin Park School Board member Sergio Corona this morning on suspicion of driving under the influence and felony vandalism. He was apparently breaking windows at a home in the 13900 block of Standstone Street in Baldwin Park.
Police said when they pulled Corona over, he confronted them "shirtless and sweaty" and had to be Tased.
About 24 hours before Wednesday's expected swearing in of a new police chief in Baldwin Park, another resident got murdered.
In a drive-by shooting to be exact. It occurred just blocks from the police department. Remarkable because it's the city's fifth homicide in 2008.
By comparison, at this time last year, Baldwin Park recorded just one slaying.
Welcome to Baldwin Park, "Hub City of the San Gabriel Valley."
A stiff ocean breeze blew in from the Pacific Wednesday. Purple blossoms blew off the Jacarandas and bunched up in the gutter. Dust kicked up and made the intersection of Ramona Boulevard and Merced Avenue seem like an apparition from the Wild West.
It must have sounded like something out of a Clint Eastwood movie about 6:15 p.m. Tuesday evening.
A car with two women and a man approached the intersection from the west and stopped at the light. Another car pulled alongside. Shots rang out. Gunfire struck the man in the stopped car at least once.
By 7 p.m. he was dead and laid out on a slab in a local hospital waiting for relatives to identify him. By all accounts there was no immediate provocation for the slaying.
"But who knows what happened before?" asked Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide Lt. Dan Rosenberg.
Even so, "There were indicators to suggest there were local gangs involved," Rosenberg said. "My guess is that when this all pans out that will be the case."
The upswing in homicides comes as Baldwin Park is in the midst of remaking itself.
Whole blighted neighborhoods that were once filled with seedy pay-by-the-hour motels and ramshackle motor home courts have been torn down.
The fences, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers and parolees have moved on to greener pastures. Families have started taking over affordable housing options that line Ramona and Baldwin Park boulevards.
Recent news stories suggest despite resistance from longtime shop owners, at least one developer holds high hopes for plans to revitalize the city's core via eminent domain and redevelopment.
And yet, as if they lived in a town straight out of a spaghetti western, residents still cower in fear of the gangs that seemingly run the real city.
What usually happens in those old films is that the town's lone sheriff or marshall leaves town and is replaced by a "shoot first, ask questions later" kind of lawman.
The hired new muscle drives out the bad guys and everybody lives happily ever after.
As for the new muscle in Baldwin Park?
Her name is Lili Hadsell, but you can probably call her chief.
Hadsell, who began the year as a lieutenant, likely takes over as the county's third female municipal police chief. After many years working for the Baldwin Park Police Department, Hadsell told reporter Amanda Baumfeld she's ready for the challenges -- even as the town's homicide rate continues to soar and residents remain fearful.
"I am not new to the community," Hadsell said. "Our gang unit has helped with violence and the city is not what it was like 10 years ago. It is relatively safer now. We have a stronger police presence on the street."
In "High Plains Drifter," a bad guy tells new sheriff Clint Eastwood: "Life here's a little too quick ... Maybe you think you're fast enough to keep up with us, huh?"
To which Eastwood responds, "A lot faster than you'll ever live to be."
If only things were that simple in Baldwin Park.
Police say a 22-year-old Baldwin Park resident was shot and killed in an unprovoked attack near the intersection of Ramona and Merced *Tuesday night.
The dead man was riding with two women in a car when the attack occurred. The shooter apparently sped off.
No arrests have been made, detectives said they have no leads in the case.
Baldwin Park Police interim Capt. Lili Hadsell* has been officially named Chief of Police, according to city officials.
As far as I know the appointment of Hartsell would make her just the second woman police chief in the San Gabriel Valley if not Los Angeles County, behind Marilyn Diaz of Sierra Madre.
More at Leftovers.
*Tania Chatila says Hadsell is the county's third female chief. Inglewood's Jacqueline Seabrooks is the second.
Chuck Hubbs, who was the night city editor at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner when I was a copy boy there, always had me running weekend casualty counts.
Every Friday and Saturday, just when I'd be getting ready to leave, he would exhort in his unmistakably deep voice. "Check those wires kid. See how many bodies have piled up."
I'd rip pieces of printer paper from machines that spit out copy from the Metro Wire and City News services and run them back to Chuck so that he could compile a daily body count for an inside page.
Some weekends were slow with one or two slayings. Others seemed quite busy; with eight, 10, even 15 killings.
I wonder how many of those even got solved?
This past weekend undoubtedly would have qualified as a slow one. And yet, it could have been quite deadly.
Young men were injured in shootings in Whittier and Pico Rivera.
A few other teens might have taken bullets in Baldwin Park. But somehow they were luckier than Jose Perez, 16. The Baldwin Park High student was shot to death talking to a friend outside a home in the 5000 block of Maine Avenue Saturday night.
By my count, Perez is the second student from that high school to succumb to gun violence this school year. That seems awfully high.
In November, Baldwin Park High student Luis Estrada, 14, and his father Pedro were gunned down by four attackers in front of their home in the 4000 block of Downing Avenue.
Three teens, all former Baldwin Park students, have been arrested in the case, officials said. A fourth remains at large. Gang rivalry apparently motivated the incident.
As they did in the Estrada case, school administrators promised Monday to provide grief counseling to anyone who needed it at Baldwin Park High School.
"The school will of course do something for the students who need the services," said Lynne Kennedy, associate superintendent for student achievement in the Baldwin Park district.
Although there is absolutely no indication that Perez had gang ties, it's pretty clear his attackers used gang tactics. Witnesses said the men drove slowly north on Maine Avenue. They flipped a U-turn, drove up to Perez and opened fire.
Because Perez had only just enrolled at Baldwin Park, and was killed on a Saturday night far away from campus, Kennedy claimed the slaying reflects more on the community at large than on the high school.
"You have to expect these things," she said. "There's crime in the city and there's going to be fall over to students who attend the school."
Kennedy also claimed that there is no gang problem at Baldwin Park High School, even as she pointed to the city's tenacious problem with three notorious groups.
This morning (as I do most mornings) I know I'll drive along Puente Avenue past Baldwin Park High on my way to work.
I'll watch the kids pass and wonder who is going to college? Who is going to Iraq? Or Afghanistan? Who is going to get married, settle down in town and raise another generation of students?
I'll have another question on my mind this morning though: Who will be the next name in my casualty count?
From Brian Day's story:
BALDWIN PARK -- A 16-year-old boy was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting Saturday, authorities said.
Jose Perez of Baldwin Park was pronounced dead at the scene of the attack, which was reported about 9:15 p.m. in the 5000 block of Maine Avenue, said Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Rick Pedroza.
Perez's body was found across the street from a house party in the residential neighborhood, but police don't believe the party and the shooting were related.
A description of the shooter or the shooter's vehicle was not available.
Carlos Sanchez, 28, a life-long area resident, said he was standing with Perez minutes before the shooting occurred.
Sanchez said he had just gone over to the party across the street to get some food when people started shouting about a shooting.
State parole agents arrested a pair accused of stealing a purse from the parents of Moe the chimp. Here's the story from reporter Brian Day:
CLAREMONT - A man and woman suspected of stealing a purse from the owners of Moe the chimpanzee late last month in West Covina were arrested Thursday, officials said.
Baldwin Park residents Karen Jean Cervantes, 46, and Michael Dean Huffman, 44, were arrested shortly after 8 p.m. when state parole agents stopped Huffman's truck in Claremont, said West Covina police Corporal Rudy Lopez. Huffman, a parolee, immediately led police to Cervantes, he said.
The pair has been booked on suspicion of several felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from the theft of a purse from La Donna and St. James Davis' shopping cart at a Target store in the Eastland Shopping Center on March 30, Lopez said.
Arraignment for Roy Perez has been postponed to April 7. Perez, is accused of killing his mother, a neighbor and her 4-year-old daughter and critically injuring the neighbor’s two other children during a shooting rampage in Baldwin Park last month.
Sheriff's homicide Lt. Dan Rosenberg said Perez was found by Baldwin Park police in front of his residence in the 14500 block of Rockenbach Street, where authorities said he lived with his mother, sister, niece and nephew.
Got this note via email. We do have some updated information on Friday's incident, but as for Saturday, we're still checking. Here's the note:
Hi Frank, any news on the two shootings in Baldwin Park last Thursday and Friday? (March 20th and 21st). Both happened on Barnes ave. I believe the Friday evening shooting was an attempted robbery . Two teens were injured. I been living here all my life and this is the worst gang activity I have ever heard of.
Yesterday, I asked to cover a press conference called by the CHP as part of their effort to find clues in the search for a killer who shot a woman to death on the 10 freeway late Wednesday night.
I worte a version of the story for the Tribune, which didn't appear in the newspaper-- but is online here.
That same version of the story was put in a common folder used at our sister paper the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Here's that version.
What's interesting to me (and my reason for sharing the stories) is to point out how news can vary from community to community -- even when those communities are only a few miles apart. The Pomona story absolutely needed the context of pointing out that two shootings occurred there in a short period of time. On the other hand, the story for SGVN didn't really need the context of Pomona, but is important because of the San Bernardino Freeway connection.
Here's the original photo caption:
California Highway Patrol commander Bill Siegl (cq) asks for the help of any witnesses to a freeway shooting on the eastbound San Bernardino (10) Freeway at White Avenue in Pomona at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday March 12, 2008. The victim, Deborah Lynn Lepper, 54, of Montclair, died at an area hospital a few hours after the shooting. Siegl is pictured at a press conference at the Baldwin Park CHP station March 13, 2008.(SGVN/Staff photo by Leo Jarzomb/SVCITY)
David Gundersen used to be a cop in Baldwin Park. He moved out and up. First stopping in Adelanto then moving on to Blue Lake, a small city near Eureka, where he became chief.
Just before Valentine's Day this year, Dave got himself arrested -- for rape. Ultimately he was booked and arraigned on 19 felony counts.
His colleagues and neighbors say Dave's a nice guy.
Here's what the officials are telling the Eureka Times-Standard. There's much more to this story....
These come from reporter Brian Day:
"All I know is two families are devastated. Two good families."
- Anonymous 20-year resident of the street
Several neighbors did not recall ever seeing police at the house, or even on the block. (including above "20-year resident."
"There's never been trouble. No gangs, no activity like that."
-Anonymous resident
Roy Perez was "pretty quiet," and "kept to himself." "He never had any friends."
-Anonymous resident
"He's a little off."(Roy Perez) But the resident added that they had not seen anything that would lead him to believe Roy was capable of this kind of violence.
-Anonymous resident
END BRIAN"S CONTRIBUTION
Comment: I find it interesting that some of these people asked to be anonymous even though they were on television for most of the day.
I returned Tuesday morning to the Baldwin Park neighborhood where three people were killed, including an infant were killed Monday.
A man accused in the shooting, Roy Perez, 28, of Baldwin Park, is in custody.
The neighborhood was swarming with media, including Univision, Telemundo, Azteca America, KCBS, KCAL, KNBC, and KABC. The FOX 11 van carting Nichelle Turner was already packing their gear to head for the next story.
There are widely varying accounts of what happened. And no one can quite explain the sequence of events that ked to the killings and Perez's arrest.
Brian Day and I listened to the incident as it unfolded on the newsroom scanner. Brian's first words were, "I think this is going to get big. He bolted for the scene and arrived before backup units or the fire department. He reported that upon arrival he saw a man sitting on a porch wailing about his house his neighbors and begging the fire department for help.
Neighbors told a Univision reporter and our Bethania Palma that the man was in fact Perez. We are still trackign that down.
I also heard the story of a man named "Mario." Mario was appraently moving from a house next door to where the shootings occurred. A relative said "Mario" witnessed much of the incident and saw Perez run from home to home in the neighborhood.
"Mario" apparently stayed outside the whole time the incident unfolded. "Mario's" relatives said he wasn't interviewed by the police and was allowed to leave before the investigation had been completed.
As you can see from the picture by Leo Jarzomb, the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner arrived roughly 12 hours after the killings. They are removing one of the three victims.
Perez was booked for murder and held without bail. Fatally wounded were Perez’s mother, Alicia Rivera Perez, 47; along with Dalmy Perez De Mata, 31, and her daughter Briana Mata, said Craig Harvey of the coroner’s office.
THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN CORRECTED 2-25-08 11:18 P.M. and again at 11:32 p.m.
[BYNAME]By Brian Day and<QA0>
Frank C. Girardot
<MC>Staff Writers
[BODY]BALDWIN PARK — Police arrested a man after a shooting incident Monday night that left two women and a 4-year-old child dead and two other children wounded in two homes in the 14500 block of Rockenbach Street.
The <NO1>man who was arrested <NO>suspect was not identified. The surviving victims were taken to a local hospital, but their conditions were not known, authorities said.
They were described as a 9-year-old and a 14-year-old.
Police responded to a report of shots fired about 7:30 p.m., said Baldwin Park police Capt. Michael Taylor<NO1><NO>. The officers discovered a total of three people fatally wounded and two others who had been shot, Taylor said.
<NO1>Both of the dead children “were very young,” Taylor said.
<NO>The shooter, who was armed with a handgun, apparently went from one house to the other during the rampage, said Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lt. Dan Rosenberg.
<NO1>“This was a tragic event in a quiet neighborhood,” Taylor said.
<NO>A dispatcher at the Baldwin Park Police Department said all available units had been dispatched to the scene.
The shootings may have stemmed from a family dispute, officials said.
<NO1>“The son shot the mom,” said a man who identified himself as the son-in-law of one shooting victim.
<NO>A call to the Baldwin Park Police Department at 7:28 p.m. indicated that a man had shot his mother.
“The suspect got into an argument with his mom,” Rosenberg said. “He then went next door and shot the neighbors.”
<NO1>Other family members were apparently talking to police detectives following the shooting, authorities said.
<NO>Several officers from the Irwindale Police Department were dispatched to the scene. Additional units from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department were called in to handle crowd and media control.
Immediately after the shootings, a man, who appeared to be in his 20s, sat outside the home where the incident took place and cried out:
“In my house. In my house. My neighbor,” the man said, pointing arriving firefighters in the direction of the victims. “Please hurry up. Hurry,” he said. “There might be time to save them.”
Police with automatic rifles patrolled the working class neighborhood in the moments after the shooting as multiple reports of shots fired flooded in from other homes in the neighborhood.
Family members tried to force their way in at the crime scene, but detectives held them back. More than one broke through crime scene tape.
In the aftermath, family members consoled one another.
<NO1>Several had questions that police were unable to immediately answer.
<NO>“Where’s my dad?” one man asked.
[TAG1]brian.day@sgvn.com
frank.girardot@sgvn.com
<MC>(626) 962-8811 Ext. 2718, 2717
http://www.insidesocal.com/sgvcrime
Police reported two persons down and a third possibly wounded Monday night Feb. 24 in the 14500 block of Rockenbach Street in Baldwin Park. Quite possibly the shootings stemmed from a family dispute. There is a suspect in custody.
Reports of shots fired and several persons (including a 9-year-old) are down. A suspect is in custody and Baldwin Park and Irwindale units are on scene. The BPPD has requested assistance from the Sheriff's Department.
The shootings were reported in the 14500 block of Rockinbach near Maine Street.
The Baldwin Park POA told reporter Bethania Palma last night that the City Council had fired.
Here's an excerpt from her story:
BALDWIN PARK - The police officers association said the city fired its police chief during a closed session meeting Wednesday.
After coming out of a closed session meeting Wednesday night, the city attorney said "no reportable action" had been taken on agenda items, which included evaluation of public employee department heads. The city attorney didn't say which department heads were being evaluated.
But Baldwin Park Police Association members said Chief Edward Lopez told them he had been fired as he left City Hall.
"It was brought to my attention that this council fired Chief Lopez," said Detective Chris Kuberry, police association vice president, during public comment. "I am disgusted with your actions to say the least."
The shooting death of Ana Maria Acosta, 32, outside her parents' Monterey Park home Monday night stands as another reminder of the nature of temporary restraining orders - sometimes they aren't enough.
Police say Acosta's estranged husband, Aaron Raigoza, 34, is a "person of interest" in the shooting, and witnesses placed him at the scene of the crime.
Turns out Raigoza was named in a TRO filed by Acosta.
...
Attorney Denise Wright, who briefly represented Raigoza, a high school teacher in Huntington Park, wouldn't discuss her former client. Wright did recall Acosta as a "lovely, lovely, reasonable, level-headed woman."
...
Wright said she makes a living representing Los Angeles Unified School District employees and teachers like Raigoza.
"I represent a lot of teachers," Wright said. "They are the nicest people."
...
A man who lives in an apartment complex near King Taco in Baldwin Park called in early Wednesday to talk about a shooting in his neighborhood.
He had a ton of reasons for not wanting his name published, but we'll boil it down to this: He fears for his safety.
The shooting, which police characterized as a drive-by, resulted in the death of a 29-year-old man, according to Baldwin Park police Lt. David Reynoso.
The now-deceased man was reportedly walking on the sidewalk when he was shot twice in the abdomen, once in the thigh and once in the left arm.
Nearby, the caller and several others hit the floor.
"There was like eight to 20 shots," the man recalled. "I thought the first one was an M-80. Boom, boom, boom, boom. They were loud. We didn't know if the shooter was going to come over the wall to the apartment building where I live. Everybody was really scared."
The City Council apparently took the shooting into consideration late Wednesday in a discussion about the future of police Chief Edward Lopez.
Tania Chatila, who covers Baldwin Park for this newspaper, reported a conversation she had Wednesday afternoon with Councilwoman Marlen Garcia.
"She could not comment on Lopez's job security Wednesday afternoon, but did say they were going to be taking everything `into account in evaluating the chief,"' Chatila said.
Including Tuesday's killing, Garcia told Chatila.
"It's really a matter of looking at the community at large and ensuring we are providing the best programs and processes to provide a safe community."
...
A woman was injured and shots were fired in a credit union takeover in Santa Fe Springs.
The robbers apparently bluffed their way into the location by pretending to make a delivery - in a Buick Le Sabre!
Veteran police reporter Ruby Gonzales said the heist "smacks of an inside job."
"Why hit a credit union in a fairly secure location when you can just hit one in a shopping center?"
Police said they've made one arrest in the case and more are pending.
Homicide investigators made two arrests in the killing of Luis and Pepe Estrada of Baldwin Park. The father and son were shot to death outside their Downing Avenue home on Nov. 14.
Police now say that Luis was wrongfully targeted by gang members seeking one of his family instead.
This is a screen grab from the video a Baldwin Park man shot Monday night while detectives and coroners investigators look over the body of murder victim Oscar Garcia.
Not sure who everyone in the picture is, but the man in the center appears to be a coroner's investigator. The man with the flashlight is obviously a BPPD officer or tech.
There are other scenes in this video, but most are too graphic to display here.
This was the scene outside the home where Oscar Garcia was shot Monday nigh tin Baldwin Park. The photo in the foreground depicts Oscar and his four-month-old son Oscar Jr.
Baldwin Park Police have no leads in the case, and say the shooting wasn't gang related.
BALDWIN PARK — An unidentified man was shot and killed Monday night in the 13100 block of Waco Street, officials said.
The dead man was a male Hispanic, according to Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Maribel Rizzo, of the sheriff’s Information Bureau.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene. Baldwin Park police officers set up a brief containment of the area following the shooting but were unable to locate suspects.
The shooting is the third homicide in Baldwin Park in the past 10 days and the 78th in the San Gabriel Valley in 2007.
A father and son were shot to death near their Baldwin Park home Wednesday night, officials said.
Here's the CBS 2 version from overnight.
Here's the early SGVN version.
The shooting in the 4000 block of Downing remains under investigation.
No one killed. But just a few days after announcing nothing much happens in Baldwin Park, officials are attempting to sort out the details of a Sunday drive-by shooting. My guess is that if somebody did a study of drive-bys in Bolen Parque they'd find a high percentage of woundings and very few deaths.
Don't know if that's intentional or just a random fact.
Maribel, a cousin of Richard Herrera, 23, a La Puente man who was gunned down at the Food For Less in Baldwin Park on Saturday left this comment today. I'm quoting it here because I'm sure it goes to the heart of how many family members feel in the aftermath of such a tragedy.
my consin recently died from a gun shoot wound that 2 asian and one black person did they took someone that didn't deserve to die he was only 23 years old this happen in bladwin park food for less on saturday early morning he wasn't a gang member he was a great person love everywhone he didn't deserve to die that way we can't believe he is gone my family is takeing really bad we are a very close family he is the first person in are family to die of a muder someone so kind so loveable so full of life is gone not only did they kill my consin but they also put a hole in are hearts it will never be the same without are consin richard he left behind 2 older bothers 3 younger sisters a mom and dad and all his consins aunts and uncles that are to much to count but i don't understand why my consin had to die this way.
Well, my mother told my father, just before hmmm, I was born, "I got a boy child's comin, He's gonna be, he's gonna be a rollin stone, Sure 'nough, he's a rollin stone Sure 'nough, he's a rollin stone"
I was thinking about this Muddy Waters song as photog Raul Roa and I rolled from an accident in Baldwin Park to a bomb scare in Industry this a.m.
Turns out there was a murder in Baldwin Park Friday night, we'll get some details on that. A man was killed and two teens were wounded in the 10:53 p.m. incident.
In Monrovia Friday, a man was shot in the leg and wounded Friday night.
Updated weekend talley: two dead, five wounded.
Disclaimer: These are the ones police actually reported.
By way of comparison, during all of last week six U.S. soldiers in Iraq were wounded in battle and removed from combat, according to icasualities. According to the same site, two U.S. Soldiers were killed by hostile fire over the weekend.
Weekend violence left one man dead and three teens wounded around the east San Gabriel Valley. We'll follow up on these throughout the day. Two of the incidents, including the murder, have West Covina datelines. One of the injured teens was identified by police as a girl.
In East Los Angeles, two brothers are suspected of beating their brother to death following an argument Sunday.
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