Man May Face Death Penalty If Convicted In Ohio Deputy's Slaying

A man suspected of fatally shooting an Ohio sheriff's deputy could face the death penalty if he's convicted on charges in a new indictment. Twenty-three-year-old Wade Edward Winn was indicted Tuesday on two counts of aggravated murder and 12 counts of attempted aggravated murder in Clermont County, east of Cincinnati. Winn has been jailed under a $10 million bond. A court appearance is scheduled Wednesday afternoon. His lawyer, Jay Clark, says Winn previously has been under psychiatric care. Clark says he doesn't think Winn fully appreciates what happened and how. Prosecutors say Winn faked killing himself during a Feb. 2 standoff at an apartment, then shot through a wall at deputies arriving to help him. Clermont County deputy Bill Brewer died. Another officer was wounded in the leg.
Associated Press

Washington Trooper Struck By Drunk Driver During Traffic Stop

A woman accused of injuring a Washington State Patrol trooper after crashing into his vehicle Sunday evening on Interstate 90 in Spokane Valley may have been driving while drunk. Ashley Hix, 32, pleaded not guilty Monday in Spokane County Superior Court to a felony charge of vehicular assault. Judge Michelle Szambelan set bail at $15,000. WSP troopers arrested Hix at the crash scene, alleging they could smell alcohol on her breath after she hit Trooper Jerry Wier's vehicle. Wier was on a traffic stop near milepost 293, just west of the Barker Road exit, when he was hit by Hix's vehicle. A second trooper's vehicle also was hit during the collision, but he was not in it at the time.
The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

LAPD Officer Recounts Surreal Moment Woman Drove Car With Infant Inside Into Harbor Station

The Los Angeles police officer on duty when a car drove into the agency's Harbor Division station in Wilmington over the weekend spoke about the incident on Monday and said the female driver was subsequently arrested. The woman was behind the wheel of a white sedan when she was caught on video ramming the vehicle into the lobby of the station at 2175 John S. Gibson Blvd., just outside San Pedro, around 4:30 a.m. Saturday. The car eventually came to a stop in front of the reception desk. Sgt. James Talmage, who was the watch commander on duty at the time, said he couldn't believe his eyes when he came out to investigate the commotion in the lobby. "You plan for a lot of things, and I haven't talked to anybody that's planned for somebody driving their car into the station," he said. Talmage said it sounded like an explosion.
KTLA 5

Arrests Made In Millennium Biltmore Hotel Robbery Case

Los Angeles police on Tuesday announced arrests in the case of a violent smash-and-grab jewelry store robbery at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Jan. 18. Three male Inglewood residents were taken into custody and a fourth female was arrested on unrelated charges, LAPD said. The suspects are accused of taking $13,000 in jewelry from Arka Designs Fine Jewelry — a jewelry store located in the hotel lobby.
CBS 2

L.A. County DA Announces Prosecution Of 8 Cases That Cheated Hundreds Of Immigrants

Operating with virtual impunity in Los Angeles for years, con artists have long targeted immigrants desperate for expert legal advice, defrauding some of their life savings and only hastening deportations or other personal disasters. But a fledgling fraud unit at the county district attorney's office has been targeting such scammers since 2017, prosecuting eight cases that cheated at least 300 immigrants out of $3 million, prosecutors announced Tuesday. Before the unit was formed using money from a consumer protection settlement, District Attorney Jackie Lacey said not many such fraud cases were prosecuted in the county “because we didn't have the resources and the training.
KTLA 5

L.A. County Supervisors Vote To Replace Men's Central Jail With Mental Health Hospital For Inmates

Los Angeles County supervisors narrowly approved a plan Tuesday to tear down the dungeon-like Men's Central Jail downtown and build at least one mental health treatment facility in its place. The new plan modifies a $2.2-billion proposal that would have created the Consolidated Correctional Treatment Facility, which was slated to house 3,885 “inmate patients” in a rehabilitation-focused center in the footprint of the Central Jail, which was built in 1963. Under a key provision approved Tuesday, the Department of Health Services would oversee the new facility, rather than the Sheriff's Department, which currently manages all jail operations. The new space, called the Mental Health Treatment Center, would be staffed by the Department of Mental Health, with a limited number of deputies providing security.
Los Angeles Times

$30,000 Reward Offered In Fatal Lynwood Shooting Of 16-Year-Old Girl

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors renewed a $20,000 reward Tuesday in hopes of solving a 2016 gang-related shooting case in which a teenage girl was killed by a stray bullet in Lynwood. Two residents have contributed additional funds to raise the reward to $30,000. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas recommended that the board extend the reward -- set to expire Saturday -- in the killing of 16-year-old Danah Rojo-Rivas, who was shot to death on Nov. 23, 2016. Danah was sitting in the back seat of her family's Ford Mustang with her dog on her lap, riding home with her mother and 18-year-old brother from an evening function at the New Horizons Missionary Baptist Church. While the Mustang was stopped at a red light on eastbound Euclid Avenue at Long Beach Boulevard, the family was caught in the line of fire of a car-to-car shooting.
NBC 4

Hacker Network Members Charged In 2018 Cyber Attacks, Threats In Southern California

Federal authorities Monday arrested one of two young men charged with making false threats of violent attacks at Los Angeles International Airport and numerous Southern California school districts, and staging attacks on computer systems belonging to a Long Beach company and others. The two defendants allegedly are members of the Apophis Squad, a worldwide collective of computer hackers and swatters intent on using the internet to cause chaos. The collective caused disruptions by making threatening phone calls, sending bogus reports of violent school attacks via email, and launching distributed denial-of-service — DDoS — attacks on websites, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Timothy Dalton Vaughn, 20, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina — who allegedly used online handles that include “WantedbyFeds” and “HackerRUS” — was arrested by special agents with the FBI, according to federal prosecutors.
Los Angeles Daily News

Confessed Serial Killer Draws Portraits Of His Victims, And The FBI Asks For Help Naming Them

The victim wears a mournful expression. Her head is slightly cocked, her bright red lips dipped in a frown, her eyes staring into the middle distance. Samuel Little drew the portrait from memory nearly two decades after he says he killed the woman in 1996 in Los Angeles. It is one of 16 haunting pictures that police say the serial killer made in prison of his victims — and who remain unidentified. The FBI released the portraits Tuesday in hope of generating tips that might help authorities identify the women Little killed, and finally close out the long-cold cases. After Little began confessing in May to killing 93 people over 35 years, starting in 1970, police and federal law enforcement have scoured old files and crime scene photographs in an effort to link unsolved murders to the details he recalled. Police have confirmed more than 36 cases so far, a tally that puts Little among the deadliest serial killers, according to the FBI. He claims to have killed 20 people in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Times

California Law That Rolled Back Felony-Murder Rule Violates State Constitution, Judge Says

A new state law that bars murder prosecutions for many accomplices in fatal crimes violates the California Constitution because it conflicts with voter-approved ballot measures, an Orange County judge has ruled. Other judges in the state have upheld the Legislature's recent rollback of the so-called felony-murder rule, however, and the law remains in effect in most of California while the issue heads for the appellate courts. Under the former felony-murder law, anyone who aided in a crime that proved to be fatal could be charged with the same offense as the actual killer. The new law, SB1437 by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, which took effect this year, allows accomplices to be charged with murder only if they intended to kill or acted with “reckless indifference to human life” in aiding the killer. But many other prosecutors opposed the new law, including Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer, who seeks murder charges against an accomplice to a 2016 fatal shooting in Buena Park (Orange County). Superior Court Judge Gregg Prickett ruled that the prosecution could proceed because SB1437 is invalid.
San Francisco Chronicle

Public Safety News

What Happens When The Next Big Wildfire Hits?

Don't be fooled by the precipitation, the snowpack, the wildflowers. When winter ends, it's unlikely that California's iconic landscape will sustain the moisture to withstand the 100-degree summer and fall. California has yet to recover from the 5-year drought that began in 2012. For four years, record wildfires have ravaged the state, including the Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma in 2017 and the Camp Fire last year that wiped out the town of Paradise in Butte County. The 2019 wildfire season officially kicks off in mid-May, but California's wildfire season is essentially year-round now. So what happens when the next big wildfire hits? State fire officials are already amassing new aircraft that drop thousands of gallons of bright red flame retardant. Emergency responders are pre-positioning fire crews in high-threat areas even before a fire starts. State officials will no longer second guess the use of wireless emergency alerts that grab people's attention by making smartphones vibrate and squawk.
CALmatters

Local Government News

LA City Council Approves Ban On Fur Sales

The Los Angeles City Council tentatively passed an ordinance Tuesday that bans the sale and manufacturing of fur within city limits. The ordinance, proposed by council members Bob Blumenfield and Paul Koretz, was approved by a 13-1 margin, with only council member Greig Smith voting against it. The ordinance bans the sale of products that use fur — such as handbags, shoes, hats, earmuffs and jewelry – within city limits. L.A. now becomes the largest city in the U.S. with such a ban. Because the vote was not unanimous, a second vote will be required. Mayor Eric Garcetti will also have to sign the ordinance to make it official. Last September, the city council voted unanimously to direct the L.A. city attorney's office to draft an ordinance outlining the ban.
CBS 2

Mobile Digital Billboard Ban For Rideshare Autos Under Consideration In L.A.

Digital billboards atop personal vehicles would be banned under a motion up for discussion by a Los Angeles City Council committee Wednesday. Councilman Bob Blumenfield said that local drivers have noticed an increasing number of digital billboards attached to the top of some Uber and Lyft ridehailing vehicles recently, and the signs he is targeting use digital LED technology to display changeable illuminated advertising. “It was not too long ago that the Valley was blanketed with unhitched mobile billboards advertising everything you can imagine, and I am proud to have helped rid our communities of that blight,” Blumenfield said recently.
MyNewsLA.com