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Dorner manhunt: Arcadia parish school closed for safety reasons

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An Arcadia church school connected to Christopher Dorner’s Los Angeles Police Department training officer canceled classes Monday as a precaution, officials said.

Holy Angels School, part of Holy Angels Parish, will remain closed until officials are certain Dorner does not pose a threat, a spokesman said. Holy Angels Parish is led by Father Michael Evans, brother of Teresa Evans, who was involved in a July 2007 incident mentioned in an online manifesto authorities attributed to Dorner.

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In a letter sent Friday and read aloud at Sunday Mass, Michael Evans said he would be ‘away for a few days because a member of my family was named in the manifesto of Christopher Dorner.’

TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

‘While I am not under direct threat from the suspect, both LAPD and Arcadia PD have recommended I be away from the parish,’ he wrote. ‘I consulted with the archdiocese and they concurred that this is a good decision.’

Michael Evans said he requested an ‘increased police presence’ at the parish.

‘Two major reasons for this are to ensure the safety of all God’s children, and to reassure the community that Holy Angels is a safe place for us to worship, pray, educate and do the work of the gospel,’ he said.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

He also asked the church to ‘keep the law enforcement community in your prayers during this very dangerous and trying time.’

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Local, state and federal agencies have spent days searching for Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and Navy veteran suspected of fatally shooting three people and wounding two others. The shootings began Feb. 3 with the deaths of Monica Quan, a Cal State Fullerton assistant basketball coach, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence. While on the run early Thursday, Dorner allegedly shot three police officers in Corona and Riverside, killing Riverside Officer Michael Crain, 34, a married father who served two tours in Kuwait as a rifleman in the U.S. Marines.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

Quan was the daughter of a retired LAPD captain whom Dorner apparently accused in a lengthy online manifesto of not representing him fairly at a hearing on his firing. In what police said was his posting to Facebook, Dorner allegedly threatened the retired captain and others he blamed for his firing.

More that 50 LAPD families remain under police guard.

Dorner’s case involved a July 28, 2007, incident in which he and training officer Teresa Evans responded to a call about a man causing a disturbance at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Pedro. The man, Christopher Gettler, was uncooperative and Evans used a Taser to subdue him, reports said.

Two weeks later, Dorner told a sergeant that Teresa Evans had kicked Gettler once in the face and twice in the left shoulder or nearby chest area, and had told Dorner not to include the kicks in his report.

LAPD records show Dorner’s disciplinary panel heard from several witnesses who testified that they did not see the training officer kick the man. The panel found that the man did not have injuries consistent with having been kicked, and there was no evidence of having been kicked on his clothes.

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A key witness in Dorner’s defense was the man’s father, who testified that his son told him he had been kicked by police. The panel concluded that the father’s testimony ‘lacked credibility,’ finding that his son was too mentally ill to give a reliable account.

Evans denied kicking Gettler and said Dorner was having problems readjusting to police work after returning from a 13-month military deployment overseas.

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— Kate Mather, Jack Leonard, Joel Rubin and Andrew Blankstein

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