A Santa Ana lawyer who was being served with civil court papers was arrested after trying to stab the messenger with a large hunting knife, authorities said today.
A process server was trying to serve Ralph Gibson Pagter Jr., 49, outside his home in the 2230 block of North Towner Street just before 10 p.m. Thursday. The lawyer confronted the man, threatened him and tried to stab him, said Santa Ana Police Sgt. Mark Kozakowski.
The man fled unharmed and called police, who arrived at the home and arrested Pagter on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. He was booked at the Orange County Jail and released today on $25,000 bail.
Pagter has been an active member of the State Bar since 1984, specializing in bankruptcy law.
A former officer with the Bell Police Department has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a female motorist, a federal crime for which he faces as many as 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, said officials with the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Feliciano Sanchez, 34, admitted that he stopped a woman for a traffic violation in May 2007 and took her in his patrol car to a location where he placed his hand on his duty weapon and forced her to provide oral sex, prosecutors said.
A teenage boy shot Thursday night in a Norwalk shopping Center has died, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said today.
The 17-year-old and his two brothers on Thursday night pulled into a shopping center in the 12500 block of Alondra Boulevard, being followed by two men, Deputy Aura Sierra said. The shopping center is near Cerritos College.
The two men climbed out of their vehicle and one began firing, hitting the teenager, Sierra said. The two men then got back in their car and fled.
No suspect or vehicle descriptions were available. A motive for the shooting is still under investigation. Homicide detectives are asking for the public’s help. Anyone with information can call the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500.
A teacher from the San Fernando Valley was arraigned in San Diego federal court today on a murder charge in the death of his wife while the couple were on a cruise ship to Mexico.
Robert McGill, 55, a longtime teacher for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, is accused of killing his wife, Shirley, also 55, while they were on the Carnival Cruise ship Elation on a five-day cruise to Cabo San Lucas.
Shirley McGill was a recently retired employee of the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Canoga Park.
Robert McGill has worked for the Office of Education since 1979, most recently as a teacher in an independent study program for at-risk teens in Canoga Park.
Ship personnel went to the McGills' cabin Tuesday after reports of a domestic fight. Shirley McGill was found dead in the bathroom and her husband's "hands and knuckles appeared as if he had been in a fight," prosecutors said.
In the federal complaint, prosecutors said that McGill told FBI agents that he had killed his wife in the bathroom "with his bare hands."
The FBI sent agents to the ship on a Coast Guard cutter, and Robert McGill was arrested when the ship docked Thursday in San Diego. No motive was given.
The couple married in 2003 and lived in Winnetka. No bail was set for Robert McGill. A detention hearing was scheduled for Thursday.
-- Tony Perry in San Diego
Photos: Top, Robert McGill, in white, is taken off the cruise ship by an FBI agent. Credit: Howard Lipin / San Diego Union-Tribune. Right, Shirley McGill.
Footage from a security camera captured the last, frantic seconds leading up to the shooting death of a teenager in Compton by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy. But the images fail to resolve conflicting accounts of the incident.
The video, taken from a surveillance camera mounted on the facade of a doughnut shop, shows 16-year-old Avery Cody Jr. on July 5 sprinting from the sidewalk onto Alondra Boulevard. A deputy is seen giving close chase with his gun drawn and apparently firing at the boy, who is beyond the camera's range.
A prominent AIDS advocacy group has filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleging that county public health officials have failed to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the pornographic film industry.
The petition, filed Thursday by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, asks the court to order the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to enforce regulations that require condom use in adult film production or take other reasonable steps to stem the spread of disease.
A teenage boy was shot Thursday night in Norwalk, and a Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman described his condition as "death imminent."
Deputy Ed Hernandez, a sheriff's spokesman, said he knew little else about the shooting, which occurred at 6:55 p.m. in the 12500 block of Alondra Boulevard.
There was no word on the circumstances, the motive or the identity of the victim, who was taken to an unidentified hospital.
Determined to prevent the Mongols motorcycle club from using a Lancaster motel to host its annual meeting this weekend, the city’s mayor has taken steps to shut the establishment down.
Mayor R. Rex Parris said that members of the Mongols, who law enforcement agencies consider a violent biker gang, are not welcome in Lancaster because they “are engaged in domestic terrorism ... and they kill our children.”
Parris said the owners of the Desert Inn — whom the Mongols had agreed to pay $16,000 for the use of 113 rooms, the banquet hall, restaurant and bar — had been in violation of several regulations, such as being late on paying transient occupancy taxes.
Parris said the city had been working with the Desert Inn over the last several months to try to help it stay in business. But when the city requested that the motel renege on hosting the Mongols, he said the owners would not comply. Owners of the motel did not return calls seeking comment.
Albert Perez Jr., a Los Angeles-based attorney retained by the Mongols, said his clients were expecting to receive a full refund, and would take legal action if the motel reopened Monday, which he said would confirm why the motel was shut down.
The Mongols still plan to come to Lancaster for a Friday night street fair and have found alternate accommodations. He declined to say where.
“They’re upset because they’re getting a bad rap,” Perez said.
“Pirates of the Caribbean” star Orlando Bloom’s Hollywood Hills home was recently burglarized, with one or more thieves stealing about $500,000 in jewelry, cash and artwork, Los Angeles police said today.
The break-in was discovered Wednesday night by a relative of the British actor, police said. The suspect or suspects were clearly familiar with the secluded home, sources said.
Bloom is the latest Hollywood celebrity to run afoul of burglars. In May, the Los Angeles Police Department released images of two burglars in a Dodge Magnum who tried to break into a home used by Lindsay Lohan.
In December, about $2 million worth of jewelry was stolen from Paris Hilton’s home, police said.
Also, a notorious burglary crew is believed to be responsible for break-ins at the homes of former Paramount Pictures chief Sherry Lansing, the Bel-Air mansion of basketball star Cuttino Mobley and the home of country music stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.
A decorated Asian American police detective filed a civil lawsuit today against the Burbank Police Department, alleging that he was the victim of discrimination and retaliation before being unlawfully fired.
Christopher Lee Dunn, who won the Medal of Valor as a Los Angeles Police Department officer before joining the Burbank force, argued in a 22-page complaint that he was subjected to years of racial taunts and discouraged from joining the department's narcotics unit because he was not white. After success with another unit, the lawsuit alleges he was targeted by management before eventually being run out of the department.
In May, five Burbank police officers sued the department and seven current police officials, alleging that they tolerated an environment in which officers commonly used slurs about race, ethnicity and sexual preference directed at them, their colleagues, suspects and the public at large.
A 55-year-old San Fernando Valley man has been arrested on suspicion of murder in the death of his wife while the two were on an ocean cruise to Mexico, the FBI said.
Robert McGill of Winnetka was arrested after the ship docked today in San Diego.
McGill and his wife, Shirley, 55, were on a five-day Carnival Cruise Lines voyage aboard the ship Elation when ship's personnel went to their cabin Tuesday to investigate a possible domestic disturbance. Shirley McGill was found dead, the FBI said.
FBI agents, ferried by a Coast Guard cutter, boarded the Elation and this morning FBI evidence technicians searched the 2,052-passenger ship when it docked in San Diego.
The FBI has authority in the case under federal maritime law.
A Chinese-born engineer living in Orange County was convicted this morning in the first-ever trial under the Economic Espionage Act.
Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 73, of Orange, a former aerospace engineer at the Boeing plant in Huntington Beach, was immediately taken into custody. He had been free on bail since his arrest last year.
Investigators found some 300,000 documents in a search of his home — some of them stashed in the crawl space — that included plans for the fueling system of a Delta 4 rocket and an antenna system for the space shuttle.
Chung was also convicted of one count of acting as a foreign agent, one count of conspiring to violate the Economic Espionage Act, six counts of violating the act and one count of making a false statement to the FBI. He was found not guilty of obstruction of justice.
Chung's case was heard in federal court by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.
[Updated at 12:01 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to Dongfan “Greg” Chung as a Chinese citizen.]
A man is in custody aboard the cruise ship Carnival Elation as authorities investigate the death of his 55-year-old wife during the cruise, the FBI said today.
The ship returned today to its home port in San Diego after a five-day cruise to Cabo San Lucas. On Tuesday, ship personnel responded to a domestic dispute between the couple in their cabin and found the wife dead, the FBI said.
FBI agents are aboard the ship interviewing witnesses.
A second Marine officer at Camp Pendleton has been charged with leaking intelligence documents to civilian law enforcement between 2004 and 2006.
Major Mark A. Lowe, a reservist, is charged with conspiracy, dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer and wrongful handling of national defense documents. Currently on active duty, he is a real estate broker in Florida in civilian life.
Lowe is the fourth Marine to be charged in the case, which involves the passing of documents about possible terrorist activities in Southern California to an anti-terrorism task force formed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
A San Diego police officer shot and killed a 47-year-old woman who was holding a knife to the neck of her 85-year-old mother, police said today.
The incident began Wednesday night when police responded to a domestic-disturbance call and heard screaming from inside a home in the Mira Mesa neighborhood. After forcing their way into the home, officers found the younger woman holding her mother on the floor of a bedroom with a knife at her neck, said Capt. Jim Collins.
When the younger woman refused to drop the knife, an officer fired at her. She was pronounced dead at the scene; her mother was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The officer is described only as a 15-year veteran. No names have been released.
UPDATE: Police have identified the dead woman as Gianine Desiderio and her mother as Helen Desiderio.
A former L.A. Superior Court family law commissioner was publicly censured today and barred from taking on future judicial assignments for failing to decide a number of cases within the time frame required by law, officials said.
According to the state Commission on Judicial Performance, which investigates misconduct by judges, one litigant complained to court officials that commissioner Ann Dobbs delayed ruling on a case for five years. Two others complained that Dobbs hadn’t made a judgment in their cases for 11 months and six months.
Under California law, a judge is expected to decide on matters within 90 days after the case is submitted to them.
Dobbs, who served as family law commissioner from March 2001 until she retired in October 2007, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Between 2006 and 2007, court officials transferred hundreds of Dobbs’ cases to other judges and gave her time off to complete the others, but she still failed to get them done on time, according to the disciplinary decision.
When she retired in 2007, Dobbs agreed to complete 30 undecided cases from home, half of which had already been sitting on her desk for more than 90 days. She never completed the cases, and mistrials were ultimately declared in at least 15, according to the commission.
A number of those cases had to be retried.
Under the discipline, Dobbs is barred from “receiving an assignment, appointment, or reference of work from any California state court.”
Dobbs’ attorney said in a statement that her client was accepting responsibility for her actions by stipulating to the censure.
“While [Dobbs] did not intend any harm, she now realizes that her inability to handle the volume of cases had unintended consequences for the parties,” attorney Heather Rosing said. “She realizes now that she simply had more work than she could handle given her health situation, and that she should have sought assistance from her court.”
Convicted killer Jesse James Hollywood has been spared the death penalty by the Santa Barbara jury that found him guilty last week of first-degree murder and kidnapping. He will spend his life in prison.
The jury concluded that Hollywood, 29, ordered the execution of a 15-year-old West Hills boy after snatching him off the street near his home and driving him to Santa Barbara. A marijuana dealer at the time, Hollywood kidnapped Nicholas Markowitz to avenge a $1,200 drug debt owed by the boy's older half-brother, Ben.
Defense attorneys contended that Ben Markowtiz had been threatening Hollywood's life for months and had poisoned his dog before Hollywood impusively picked the boy up. They claimed the killing was done independently by friends of Hollywood who wanted to earn his approval.
The trial, which started May 15, was attended every day by members of the Markowitz and Hollywood families.
The crime was notorious when it was committed in 2000 and became the basis for the 2006 film "Alpha Dog.''
The last of four men convicted in the case, Hollywood fled after the crime and was arrested in Brazil in 2005.
Two men are in custody after a high-speed police chase this morning through the Westside that went off-road and in the wrong direction before coming to a halt in Mid-City.
A city councilman in San Bernardino County was arrested this morning for allegedly using his position and influence to benefit a business he operated with his wife, officials said today.
The arrest warrant for Grand Terrace City Councilman Jim Miller was for "conflict of interest," and his bail was set at $25,000, according to a statement from the San Bernardino County district attorney's office.
"The allegations are that, over the last two years, Councilman Miller repeatedly voted for city expenditures that benefited a newspaper and printing business operated by Miller and his wife," the statement read.
Miller was first elected to the Grand Terrace City Council in 2004 and was reelected in 2008, according to the city's website. Miller also is an official with the county real estate services department. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
The city of about 12,500 people is about eight miles south of San Bernardino.
-- Ari B. Bloomekatz
Photo: Grand Terrace Councilman Jim Miller. Credit: City of Grand Terrace website.
Responding to the state’s deepening budget crisis, authorities shut down most Los Angeles County Superior Court operations today as an unpaid furlough program took effect for the first time.
Although all courthouses will remain open, 93% of the county’s 5,400 court employees have been told to stay home on the third Wednesday of each month until June. Presiding Judge Charles "Tim" McCoy said he was forced to take the step in anticipation of a $138-million funding shortfall for the fiscal year that began this month.
“This is not a good day for the people of Los Angeles County,” McCoy said in a statement. “For the first time in modern memory, we are forced to shut down most of our court system because we can’t afford to keep it operating.”
The Los Angeles City Council has denied applications from 28 medical marijuana dispensaries that wanted permission to operate despite a moratorium, clearing the way for the city to shut down any that have opened.
Since the council started to consider applications last month, it has denied every one, ruling against 43, including the 28 on Tuesday.
The council is struggling to assert control over the sale of medical marijuana in the city after its moratorium on new dispensaries proved toothless. Hundreds have opened despite the 2007 ban.
The city has stopped accepting applications for exemptions, but 883 were filed before the council closed the loophole. Until it adopts a permanent ordinance to control dispensaries, a task that has confounded the council for years, it intends to plow through the applications.
Two young children who were inside a car when the vehicle was stolen from outside a Norwalk dry cleaners were found safe nearly three hours later in Compton.
The leader of a gang that allegedly attacked a punk rock musician has been arrested in Los Angeles on extortion charges, the FBI said today.
Elgin Nathan James was arrested Monday night at his Silver Lake home after allegedly attempting to extort $5,000 from a Chicago-area musician, U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a statement.
A complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Chicago claims James was a founding member of a street gang called FSU, which stands for Friends Stand United as well as an expletive.
James and several gang members boasted about the group's violent methods in a 2004 documentary, and FSU was featured last year in an episode of the History Channel’s “Gangland,” prosecutors said.
The victim, who was not identified, was on tour in the Chicago area in 2005 when he became involved in a dispute with an employee of another band, whose security guard is an FSU member in Chicago, prosecutors said. The incident triggered several attacks on the victim by FSU members, they said.
In the fall of 2005, James allegedly told the victim that FSU would stop attacking him if he made a $5,000 “donation,” the complaint said.
If convicted, James faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
A Santa Ana man was beaten and stabbed early this morning after confronting taggers defacing a wall in his neighborhood, police said.
The 38-year-old was walking near the intersection of McFadden and Orange avenues just after 2 a.m. when he saw a group of three young men painting graffiti on a wall, said Santa Ana Police Cmdr. Tammy Franks. The man told them to stop.
After pausing, the three men, joined by two others, surrounded the man and began hitting, kicking and stabbing him in the torso.
The man, whose name was not released, was taken to the hospital and is recovering from injuries that are not life-threatening.
Police have no suspects, but are investigating the attack as a gang crime.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent has pleaded not guilty to charges that he attacked a sleeping couple with a hatchet in an Escondido home while he was off-duty.
Gamalier Reyes Rivera, 32, may have mistaken the woman for his estranged wife, prosecutors said. Rivera allegedly went to the home where his wife and their daughter were living about 1 a.m. on July 9 and began hacking at a couple in one of the bedrooms.
Rivera's wife was sleeping in another bedroom and was unhurt. The woman was injured in the legs; the 29-year-old man suffered hacks to his arms, shoulders and neck and remains hospitalized in critical condition.
In a brief court hearing Monday in Vista Superior Court, Rivera's bail was set at $10 million. Deputy Dist. Atty. George Loyd said Rivera's knowledge of the border region makes him a flight risk. Rivera faces seven felony counts.
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