A video of a gang of teenage e-bikers beating up a man near the Hermosa Beach Pier until one of them yells “he’s dead, he’s dead” sent waves of outrage through the tight-knit coastal community this week.
On Wednesday, the Hermosa Beach Police Department said it had identified five juveniles involved in the attack. Their ages range from 13 to 15. Two who are accused of being the primary aggressors are under arrest.
The two teens were booked on suspicion of felony assault at the city jail and will be transported to Juvenile Hall. Their case will be presented to the L.A. County district attorney’s office’s juvenile division for filing consideration, police said.
The group assaulted a 56-year-old resident about 8 p.m. Friday near 11th Court and Beach Drive, police said. The resident had walked past his intended destination to initiate contact with the youths and did not appear to have been targeted, authorities said.
Surveillance camera recordings show the teens surrounding the man, knocking him to the ground and then repeatedly punching and kicking him.
Officers responded to a 911 call for the assault and took the victim to hospital. He was discharged and interviewed by officers Monday. No information has been shared on his condition or injuries.
In the days after the assault, police spoke with the parents of the teens involved and fielded numerous phone calls, e-mails and videos from the scene submitted by the community as calls for accountability intensified.
“We know the videos circulating are disturbing,” the department said in a Wednesday statement. “As with all cases, we take this seriously and appreciate the community’s patience while we continue to work on this case. We sincerely thank those who have trusted the process and allowed our team to remain focused on the facts and evidence.”
The city of Hermosa Beach enacted an emergency ordinance in June 2024 intended to curb dangerous behavior on the motorized bikes. The ordinance requires minors to wear helmets on e-bikes, forbids riding an e-bike under the influence of drugs or alcohol and bans e-bikes on the Greenbelt trail. Juveniles who violate the ordinance can have their e-bikes impounded.
The Police Department issued 40 e-bike citations this year as of Nov. 13 and has impounded 19 e-bikes since the ordinance was adopted.
Anyone with additional information regarding the recent assault is asked to contact the Hermosa Beach Police Department at (310) 318-0360.
Alex Odeh looms large in Orange County’s consciousness, decades after he was killed at the age of 41.
One fall morning in 1985 the prominent Palestinian activist arrived to work at the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. When he opened the civil rights group’s door, a rigged pipe bomb went off, mortally wounding him.
“How can I forget that horrible day?” said Michel Shehadeh, whoreplaced Odeh as the West Coast regional director of the organization, which formed in 1980 to combat anti-Arab stereotypes in U.S. media. “Fear spread through the community like fire.”
Mourners filed into a church in Orange for Odeh’s funeral, quietly discussing whether attacks would continue, and how they could protect the community, Shehadeh recalled.
Shehadeh described Odeh as a physically slight man, peacefu and soft-spoken—a lover of poetry. He remembers wondering, “why this guy?”
“He did not pose a threat, not in the way looked, and not in the way he behaved, and not in the way he spoke,” Shehadeh said.
Odeh‘s murder remains unsolved 40 years later. To many Palestinians and other Arabs in Southern California, his death serves as a grim reminder of the discrimination the community has faced.
But he is also a symbol of resilience. His memory stands as a call to action that has taken on renewed significance in recent years.
When a wave of student activism against Israel’s war in Gaza unfurled on university campuses across the U.S. last year, students at UC Irvine hoisted a banner onto a campus building declaring the site “Alex Odeh Hall,” amid protest chants and the banging of drums.
“The whole narrative around Palestine has shifted. People went to the streets,” Shehada said. “It’s a different world.”
And yet, he said, the backlash against his community continues.
The detention of recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil this year reminds Shehadeh of his own arrest by federal agents in 1987.
Shehadeh was among eight arrested on charges relating to their pro-Palestinian activism, and was threatened with deportation, even though he’d immigrated to the U.S. lawfully as a teenager, and was a grocery store employee living in Long Beach.
“History repeats itself,” Shehadeh said.
Hostile encounters felt almost run-of-the-mill, especially for those who were politically active.
The Santa Ana office where Hind Baki worked alongside Odeh, first as an intern and then as a full-time employee fresh out of college, frequently received threatening phone calls.
Baki said Odeh was, “very matter-of-fact- about it,” telling her to log the calls, and report them to local police.
She recalled him saying, “they call my house all the time, too, but don’t worry, they wouldn’t dare do anything in America.”
When she started getting threatening phone calls at the home she told her parents she was alarmed. But Odeh reassured her that it was just talk.
After the bombing, when Baki took the few boxes of paperwork she could salvage from the office to a temporary office in Los Angeles, the calls continued. That’s when she decided to get another job.
William Lafi Youmans, co-creator of a documentary investigating Odeh’s death, said he grew up in Detroit hearing about Odeh as a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming too vocal.
“It was a bit of a warning,” Youmans said. “It’s sad, because whoever killed Alex was trying to silence the community.”
The film was completed two years ago, just before 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack in Israel, which also resulted in 251 Israelis being taken hostage.
Amid a surge of anti-Palestinian sentiment, Youmans gave up his hope of having the documentary accepted into film festivals, even as Israel launched its bombing campaign in Gaza, which has since killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
To mark the anniversary of Odeh’s death, Youmans and his co-creator held a private screening of the film in Costa Mesa Friday night, and have renewed the process of submitting it to film festivals.
An FBI investigation into the bombing remains open, and the names of three suspects have been aired publicly in the media. Authorities said they continue to seek the public’s help.
“The investigation into the murder of Alex Odeh has spanned generations, but the FBI has never given up and will continue to investigate new leads on this case,” said Akil Davis, assistant director for the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, in a statement.
Davis said the U.S. Department of Justice’s long-time offer of a reward for up to $1 million for information leading to an arrest and conviction for the crime still stands.
“I’m confident that we will find answers,” Davis said.
Helena , the eldest of Odeh’s three daughters, said she thinks about her father all the time.
“It’s still painful,” she said. “Another decade has gone by and we’re still waiting for justice. Our lives have grown and blossomed but we haven’t had our father there to see it happen.”
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee gathers each year at a Garden Grove hotel for a banquet memorializing Odeh. Earlier this year, it opened an office in Anaheim’s Little Arabia District — for the first time since the Santa Ana bombing.
Leadership of the organization asked Helena to be its first full-time employee, but the trauma of her father’s assassination gave her pause.
“What if I go to work one day and I don’t come home?” Helena said.
After speaking with family, she declined the job offer.
Two state police officers and a suspect were shot while officers were responding to a call in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, authorities said. The troopers were taken to hospitals, Pennsylvania State Police said in a statement.Sister station WGAL reports that, according to Pennsylvania State Police, state troopers responded to a retail theft at Dicks Sporting Goods in Guilford Township, Pennsylvania.The suspects fled the scene, traveling towards Interstate 81. Troopers quickly located the suspect vehicle, and a pursuit ensued. Spike strips were deployed and successfully stopped the vehicle at I-81 southbound at exit 3, where the vehicle came to final rest off the roadway in Antrim Township, WGAL reports.Two female suspects immediately complied with trooper commands and exited the vehicle to be placed in custody. The male suspect began shooting at the officers, striking two of them. Troopers returned fire, fatally wounding the male, WGAL reports.Both troopers were flown to an area hospital and are considered to be in critical and serious condition, according to WGAL.Gov. Josh Shapiro said he and his wife, Lori, were praying for the officers and asked others to join them. “Pennsylvania’s law enforcement officers are the very best of us — running towards danger every day to keep our communities safe,” Shapiro said in a post on the social platform X. State police said there was no threat to the public but “the scene remains very active.” The shooting took place in southern Franklin County, which is about 85 miles northwest of Baltimore.___ Sister station WGAL’s McKenna Alexander, Morgan Schneider and Austin Boley contributed to this report
CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. —
Two state police officers and a suspect were shot while officers were responding to a call in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, authorities said.
The troopers were taken to hospitals, Pennsylvania State Police said in a statement.
Sister station WGAL reports that, according to Pennsylvania State Police, state troopers responded to a retail theft at Dicks Sporting Goods in Guilford Township, Pennsylvania.
The suspects fled the scene, traveling towards Interstate 81. Troopers quickly located the suspect vehicle, and a pursuit ensued. Spike strips were deployed and successfully stopped the vehicle at I-81 southbound at exit 3, where the vehicle came to final rest off the roadway in Antrim Township, WGAL reports.
Two female suspects immediately complied with trooper commands and exited the vehicle to be placed in custody. The male suspect began shooting at the officers, striking two of them. Troopers returned fire, fatally wounding the male, WGAL reports.
Both troopers were flown to an area hospital and are considered to be in critical and serious condition, according to WGAL.
Gov. Josh Shapiro said he and his wife, Lori, were praying for the officers and asked others to join them.
“Pennsylvania’s law enforcement officers are the very best of us — running towards danger every day to keep our communities safe,” Shapiro said in a post on the social platform X.
State police said there was no threat to the public but “the scene remains very active.”
The shooting took place in southern Franklin County, which is about 85 miles northwest of Baltimore.
___
Sister station WGAL’s McKenna Alexander, Morgan Schneider and Austin Boley contributed to this report
A polarizing figure on the Los Angeles Police Commission will retain his seat despite having never received an approval vote from the City Council.
Erroll Southers, who previously served as president of the civilian panel that watches over the LAPD, has taken criticism for what critics say is his unwillingness to provide oversight of police Chief Jim McDonnell, while also facing renewed scrutiny in recent months for his past counterterrorism studies in Israel.
For the record:
9:33 a.m. Oct. 1, 2025An earlier version of this story reported that Erroll Southers’ nomination was not on the City Council’s agenda last week. Southers was on the agenda but the council continued the matter and took no vote.
New members of any city commission must typically be approved by a City Council vote within 45 days of their nomination. Mayor Karen Bass put forward Southers in mid-August, but his first scheduled vote was delayed because he was traveling, and the council continued the matter without explanation at a meeting Friday in Van Nuys. Now that his 45-day window has elapsed, multiple officials told The Times that city rules allow Southers to continue in the position by default for a full five-year term because he was already serving on an interim basis.
Around City Hall, news of the council’s inaction set off speculation about whether it was the result of a scheduling mix-up — or because Southers’ backers didn’t believe he could get enough votes.
Failing to vote on a member of one of city’s most important and high-profile commissions is almost unheard of, said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former councilman and L.A. County supervisor now at UCLA.
“They have responsibility to confirm or not confirm,” he said of the council. “I never understood why you would campaign for office, as hard as you campaign to get there, and not vote on something that’s as important to the public.”
Appointed by the mayor, police commissioners act much like a corporate board of directors, setting the LAPD policies, approving its budget and providing oversight, including reviews of officer shootings and other serious uses of force.
Southers, 68, has been a member of the panel since 2023, when Bass picked him to serve out the term of a departing commissioner.
A former FBI agent and Santa Monica cop turned top security official at USC, Southers helped lead the nationwide search for the next LAPD chief. The position eventually went to McDonnell — who like Southers served as director of the school’s Safe Communities Institute.
His backers say that Southers has been committed to his role, participating in numerous listening sessions with Angelenos to learn what qualities they wanted in a police chief. He has also become a regular presence at LAPD recruitment events and graduations.
Zach Seidl, a mayoral spokesperson, praised Southers for his stewardship of the commission, saying the career lawman “brings deep knowledge of the police department’s operations, a commitment to the continued development of policies that further transparency and accountability, and trusted relationships with community members and law enforcement.”
But more than any other commissioner, Southers has accumulated a loud chorus of detractors who oppose keeping him in the key oversight role.
Although it has long been part of his resume, Southers’ work in the mid-2000s in Israel has especially become a lighting rod due to the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
Last month, a United Nations commission accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas militant attacks that left 1,200 dead and 251 others kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel’s military campaign has so far killed more than 66,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials and international aid groups.
Although Southers has said little publicly about the conflict, he has previously described traveling to Israel and studying with the Israel Defense Forces to learn about anti-terrorism strategies for his academic work.
His opponents have argued his writings suggest that authorities should use an individual’s public support for controversial causes as a potential warning sign of extremism. Such arguments, they say, can be used to justify the criminalization of minority groups or silence dissent.
Southers weathered calls for his resignation from the commission last year after he was among the USC officials responsible for clearing encampments occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters on the school’s campus.
Others have focused on his oversight of McDonnell. Far too often, critics say, he has let the chief off the hook after recent controversies. Most recently Southers and his fellow commissioners have faced calls to put more checks on aggressive behavior by LAPD officers toward journalists and nonviolent protesters.
Shootings by police have also been a point of contention with Southers. LAPD officers opened fire 31 times in the first nine months of this year, already surpassing the total number of shootings in 2024.
The commission ordered the department to present a report on the shootings, but that was not nearly enough to satisfy Greg “Baba” Akili, a longtime civil rights advocate with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles who has frequently spoken out against Southers’ nomination.
As commission president, he said, Southers seemed more willing to shut down public speakers at the board’s meetings than to question the department’s narrative of recent events.
“It’s like having a member of the police force on the commission,” Akili said of Southers. “We don’t want to see just Black faces in high places: We want people who actually … uplift the public.”
As a young lad growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area town of Pittsburg, my school uniform consisted of corduroys the color of Ash Wednesday, a white dress shirt and a maroon V-neck sweater. I walked west from my family’s apartment on 10th Street, turned left on Montezuma, and arrived about 15 minutes later at the campus of St. Peter Martyr.
My teachers were nuns, the parish priests were Dominicans, and Sunday mass was a celebration of faith, humility and grace.
I am not without sin. I’m an imperfect man and the church is an imperfect institution.
But I’ve been wondering lately what my favorite St. Peter Martyr teachers — Sisters Roberta, Eileen and Estelle — would make of today’s political discourse, in which claims of piety and Christian faith are not always backed by words and deeds, particularly from a certain world leader.
I think if they were teaching today, the nuns would tell everyone in class to get out their pencils and notebooks and write a letter to the president.
So here goes.
Dear President Trump:
Ever hear of St. Peter Martyr School?
Probably not, but I’m an alum. The school was named after St. Peter of Verona, who campaigned against heresy and paid the price when one of the Cathars sunk an ax into his skull (what a way to go). So I guess politics haven’t really changed much over the centuries.
By the way, nice job recently on your presentation at the National Bible Museum, where you launched the “America Prays” initiative to celebrate spirituality and restore “our identity as one nation under God.” And congratulations on your missionary work. I see that you raked in $1.3 million on your “God Bless the USA Bible.”
Well put, Mr. President, and unsurprising, given that you once called the Bible your favorite book. But I know that in my own life, I need to flip back through the pages on occasion to ground myself in the teachings.
So here’s an idea:
I’ll share a Bible verse, and then I’ll follow it with a recent quote from you. Not that I’m judging, or anything. But we might all benefit spiritually by asking whether, in our own lives, God would approve of how we conduct ourselves.
Are you ready?
Corinthians 12: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.”
Trump: “You know, Biden was always a mean guy, but he was never a smart guy. … You go back 30 years ago, 40 years ago, he was a stupid guy, but he was always a mean son of a bitch.”
Essay Topic: An obsessive need to demean and diminish others is explained by some behavioral therapists as a sign of insecurity, weakness, or an unhappy childhood. Write 500 words, in cursive, on how any of this might apply to you.
Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Trump: “This climate change, it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world in my opinion … all of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong, they were made by stupid people. … If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country’s going to fail.”
Essay Topic: Despite the growing horror of melting icecaps, deadly storms, disappearing coasts and widespread famine, if the Garden of Eden were a national forest, would you lay off Adam or Eve, or both of them, and would anything prevent you from opening the property to drilling?
John 3:17: “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”
Trump: “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now. It’s — I can tell you. I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.”
Essay Topic: Given that we probably shouldn’t, as mere mortals, assume divine powers, is condemning someone to hell — or entire countries, in this case — an act of blasphemy?
Leviticus 19: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”
Trump: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Essay Topic: You once said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and yet your late mother and two of your three wives were immigrants. Were you ever tempted to have any, or all three of them deported, and if so, in which order?
Psalm 103: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”
Trump: “Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country.”
Essay Topic: Given that Jesus would not likely have called half the population of the United States scum, and that he probably would have protested ICE raids at Home Depots, would you say the son of God was a member of the extreme radical left?
Matthew 5: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”
Trump: “I hate my opponent and I don’t want what’s best for them. … I can’t stand my opponent.”
Essay Topic: Which saying do you find the most offensive and probably created by the radical left — turn the other cheek, or treat others as you would have them treat you?
Bonus points: At what age did you begin pulling the wings off of butterflies, and which, if any, of the 10 Commandments have you not broken?
Matthew 23: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
Hallellujah and amen to that. And yes, it is possible.
But first you must write and recite, 1,000 times, the Act of Contrition. (It’s the prayer that ends with: “I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin. Amen.”)
Sisters Roberta, Eileen and Estelle will be waiting for you at the Pearly Gates. And trust me — they will know if you’ve done your homework.
The long-awaited report investigating how Los Angeles County officials failed to order timely evacuations for west Altadena as the Eaton fire threatened the community did not assign blame for the botched alerts, instead chalking up the issue to a night of chaos, unprecedented conditions and poor communication.
The 132-page report released Thursday seemed to downplay how early the fire threatened west Altadena — despite 911 calls that reported flames and smoke in the area — and only once mentioned the 19 people who died in the fire, of which all but one were found in the town’s western side.
Instead, it focused on the fire’s “perfect storm,” poor preparation and the fact that the satellite-outlined “fire front” hadn’t entered west Altadena until 5 a.m. after evacuation alerts were issued, though several spot fires were confirmed in the area earlier in the night.
The independent investigation by consulting firm McChrystal Group, released eight months after the Los Angeles area firestorm, came after The Times revealed that the county didn’t issue evacuation alerts in west Altadena until hours after smoke and flames from the Eaton fire threatened the community.
While areas east of Lake Avenue got evacuation orders just after 7 p.m. on Jan. 7, most of west Altadena did not receive any evacuation alerts until 3:30 a.m. Some zones didn’t receive alerts until almost 6 a.m., hours after people began reporting fire in the area to 911.
Officials told the Times that the responsibility to issue evacuation orders was split among three agencies: the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles County Fire Department and the county Office of Emergency Management.
But Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna later downplayed his department’s role, saying firefighters typically take the lead because they are “the experts” in such situations. The Office of Emergency Management, which is in charge of sending out alerts, said there were no technical issues.
Without assigning blame or explaining what went wrong, the report confirmed that between 1 and 3 a.m. on Jan. 8, the county did not send out any evacuation alerts — including to west Altadena. The report said that at that time, “all areas [L.A. county fire officials] believed were directly impacted by or at risk from the Eaton Fire had already received an evacuation warning or order.”
But that was clearly not the case.
The first evacuation order for west Altadena came at 3:25 a.m., after dispatchers received at least 14 reports of fire in the area, according to 911 logs from the Los Angeles County Fire Department obtained by The Times.
The report said that the initial calls for fire did not match the location of destroyed structures, appearing to question the validity of those early calls and the presence of flames. The report claimed that the first 911 call for a fire in west Altadena where the structure was later confirmed damaged came just before 1 a.m. on Jan. 8 — still more than two hours before evacuation orders were issued.
The reports provides two examples of Fire Department staff flagging that the fire may be burning west more than an hour before evacuations alerts went out for west Altadena.
A Fire Department staff member in the field in Altadena said they suggested to Unified Command staff a little before midnight on Jan. 8 that, due to high winds, evacuation orders should go out for the foothills of Altadena, all the way to La Cañada. Unified Command staff said they did not recall this occurring and that the fire front was not moving west at the time.
About two hours later, at 2:18 a.m., a staffer with the county Fire Department radioed in that they saw fire north of Farnsworth Park moving west along the foothills.
Though some officials present in the decision-making process told investigators they had taken notes in the field about evacuation decisions, the notes “were either incomplete, not time-stamped, or not maintained.”
“No official form or documentation was used by LACoFD, LASD or OEM to jointly and formally record which zones should receive evacuation orders or warnings, the time the decision was made, or the time the zones were communicated to OEM staff at the EOC.”
The report also mentioned — without naming specific people or agencies — that the county “had concerns about over-warning” during the fire, worrying about adding confusion, panic or unnecessary traffic issues. State guidelines on alert and warning systems explicitly warn against this, as have experts, repeatedly.
The report said that based on satellite data from the National Guard, the fire front did not cross into western Altadena until around 5 a.m., two hours after evacuation orders had been issued. The report acknowledged that 911 calls were coming in from the area hours before the orders, but categorized those incidents as “spot fires.”
The report repeatedly mentions how conditions created a “perfect storm” for firefighters, while highlighting that there seemed to be a real focus about NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab catching fire, which could release toxic fumes if ignited.
While the fire initially burned eastward, firefighters soon reported that it was spreading “everywhere all at once” with wind gusts between 70-90 MPH.
“Evacuation decisions and messages could not keep pace with the fire,” the report stated.
The report also claims that the fire entered west Altadena as wind speeds increased, describing it as a “more densely populated” area with older homes built with materials that were “more vulnerable to ignition.”
The report found several problems with how the county carries out evacuations. Sometimes, when officials evacuated a zone, they would automatically evacuate the zone next to it. But that practice was not codified and did not happen in western Altadena.
The three agencies in charge also did not have a single platform with which to coordinate communication, exacerbating issues with decision-making across the fire response, the report found. Sheriff’s department staff may not have been aware in real time of which zones were under evacuation warnings or orders, as they were not always side by side with other agencies at unified command, according to the report.
The report was conducted by The McChrystal Group, a consulting firm with experience assessing government response to natural disasters. The report included dozens of interviews with fire and county officials as well as public listening sessions.
Some who attended the sessions said they were cathartic. Others said they were skeptical much would come of the county-funded report.
“I think it’s going to be more hot air to cover the county’s ass,” said Shawna Dawson Beer. whose home burned down in the Eaton Fire. “I don’t expect any real accountability.”
During a May 7 listening session, residents repeatedly told the consultants that their evacuation orders had been dangerously delayed. “None of us really received alerts,” said one woman.
County officials largely declined to answer questions about what went wrong with the delayed evacuation alerts, citing the ongoing probe. The McChrystal Group also did not answer questions, only issuing two updates over the last few months, though neither contained any substantive information.
In 2019, almost a year after the Woolsey fire, a similar report prepared by Citygate Associates detailed how multiple simultaneous fires strained first responders’ ability to prioritize where to send people. The blaze destroyed some 1,600 structures and killed three people.
Similar issues were found with the county’s response this January, according to the 2025 report. Both reports questioned the wisdom of further development in fire-prone areas, given officials’ stated inability to defend the vast number of Californians who live within high risk areas.
A Times investigation also found that most county fire trucks didn’t shift into west Altadena until long after it was ravaged by fire. Many county fire trucks had already been deployed to the Palisades fire and to east Altadena. Marrone said the lack of fire trucks in west Altadena probably boiled down to “human error” by fire officials who decided where the trucks should move.
A 911 call released Tuesday shows how frantic a couple was as they were trapped inside a car sinking in a canal in Florida.Listen to the 911 call in the video player above. Investigators said the couple was driving in a remote section of northwestern Martin County when they were hit by another car, sending them off the road where they landed upside down in the canal.The other car did not stop.The woman in the car was able to get to her phone and call 911.“Please! We need you!” she said to the dispatcher.The woman, whose name has not been released, explains the situation to the dispatcher who asks if the car is sinking.“Yes!” the woman replied. “That’s what it feels like. The car is sinking, sir.”“Where’s the water now?” the dispatcher asked.“We’re in the ditch outside,” she said.“Is the water in the car and how high is it?” the dispatcher asked.“It’s up to my stomach,” she said. “We don’t know how much time we have!”The woman explained to the dispatcher that the power in the vehicle was out, and they could not open the doors nor the windows.“How far in the water are you?” the dispatcher asked.“We’re deep in the water!”“And there’s no way to get that window down?”“No. We tried everything! We’re scared!”After about 10 minutes, the call appears to drop.“You still there, sir? Ma’am?” the dispatcher asked.There was no reply.Deputies arrived a short time later and were able to bust out the car’s windows and pull the couple to safety.Both people were injured, but investigators said both are expected to recover.The sheriff’s office said they are still looking for the other driver involved in the crash.
MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. —
A 911 call released Tuesday shows how frantic a couple was as they were trapped inside a car sinking in a canal in Florida.
Listen to the 911 call in the video player above.
Investigators said the couple was driving in a remote section of northwestern Martin County when they were hit by another car, sending them off the road where they landed upside down in the canal.
The other car did not stop.
The woman in the car was able to get to her phone and call 911.
“Please! We need you!” she said to the dispatcher.
The woman, whose name has not been released, explains the situation to the dispatcher who asks if the car is sinking.
“Yes!” the woman replied. “That’s what it feels like. The car is sinking, sir.”
“Where’s the water now?” the dispatcher asked.
“We’re in the ditch outside,” she said.
“Is the water in the car and how high is it?” the dispatcher asked.
“It’s up to my stomach,” she said. “We don’t know how much time we have!”
The woman explained to the dispatcher that the power in the vehicle was out, and they could not open the doors nor the windows.
“How far in the water are you?” the dispatcher asked.
“We’re deep in the water!”
“And there’s no way to get that window down?”
“No. We tried everything! We’re scared!”
After about 10 minutes, the call appears to drop.
“You still there, sir? Ma’am?” the dispatcher asked.
There was no reply.
Deputies arrived a short time later and were able to bust out the car’s windows and pull the couple to safety.
Both people were injured, but investigators said both are expected to recover.
The sheriff’s office said they are still looking for the other driver involved in the crash.
Police have made an arrest in the theft of hard drives containing unreleased music by Beyoncé.Atlanta-area police arrested Kelvin Evans for allegedly breaking into an SUV in the city over the summer and stealing hard drives and other items that were connected to the Grammy winner.Evans is now in jail facing a charge of entering an automobile with intent to commit theft.It is not yet known if he has legal representation.Officers responded on July 8 after receiving a call regarding a theft from a vehicle, according to police.”They have my computers, and it’s really, really important information in there,” an unidentified caller is heard on a 911 call obtained by CNN. “I work with someone who’s like, of a high status, and I really need the, um, my computer and everything.”The items were stolen from a car that had been rented by her choreographer during a Cowboy Carter tour stop in the city, according to police.Investigators have not recovered the hard drives or other items that were allegedly taken.
Police have made an arrest in the theft of hard drives containing unreleased music by Beyoncé.
Atlanta-area police arrested Kelvin Evans for allegedly breaking into an SUV in the city over the summer and stealing hard drives and other items that were connected to the Grammy winner.
Evans is now in jail facing a charge of entering an automobile with intent to commit theft.
It is not yet known if he has legal representation.
Officers responded on July 8 after receiving a call regarding a theft from a vehicle, according to police.
“They have my computers, and it’s really, really important information in there,” an unidentified caller is heard on a 911 call obtained by CNN. “I work with someone who’s like, of a high status, and I really need the, um, my computer and everything.”
The items were stolen from a car that had been rented by her choreographer during a Cowboy Carter tour stop in the city, according to police.
Investigators have not recovered the hard drives or other items that were allegedly taken.
NagaCorp Ltd. (OTCMKTS:NGCRF – Get Free Report) was the recipient of a large decrease in short interest in the month of August. As of August 31st, there was short interest totaling 11,700 shares, a decrease of 50.6% from the August 15th total of 23,700 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 1,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 11.7 days. Based on an average daily volume of 1,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 11.7 days.
NagaCorp Price Performance
Shares of NGCRF opened at $0.78 on Friday. NagaCorp has a 52 week low of $0.33 and a 52 week high of $0.78. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $0.59 and a 200-day simple moving average of $0.49.
NagaCorp Dividend Announcement
The firm also recently announced a dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, September 30th. Investors of record on Wednesday, September 10th will be paid a $0.0101 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, September 9th. This represents a yield of 142.0%. NagaCorp’s payout ratio is presently 37.44%.
NagaCorp Ltd., an investment holding company, manages and operates a hotel and casino complex in the Kingdom of Cambodia. The company operates in two segments, Casino Operations; and Hotel and Entertainment Operations. It owns, manages, and operates NagaWorld, an integrated hotel and entertainment complex that consists of rooms and suites, gaming tables, and electronic gaming machines, as well as public and premium gaming halls, all-suite luxury spa, shopping gallery, food and beverage outlets and clubs, entertainment services, and meeting spaces, as well as hotel convention spaces.
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The Port Orange Police Department said officers responding to a call on Labor Day shot and injured an adult male in the city.POPD said officers were called out to make a well-being check on the 1400 block of Kerry Court in the area of Hidden Lake Drive and Chamale Lane around 4:10 p.m. on Monday. An adult male was shot and transported to the hospital from the scene.What led up to the man being shot and the extent of his injuries are not clear at this time.The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is now investigating the officer-involved shooting portion of this incident.>> This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
PORT ORANGE, Fla. —
The Port Orange Police Department said officers responding to a call on Labor Day shot and injured an adult male in the city.
POPD said officers were called out to make a well-being check on the 1400 block of Kerry Court in the area of Hidden Lake Drive and Chamale Lane around 4:10 p.m. on Monday. An adult male was shot and transported to the hospital from the scene.
What led up to the man being shot and the extent of his injuries are not clear at this time.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is now investigating the officer-involved shooting portion of this incident.
>> This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
If you spend much time in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, you will notice, amid the clamor of buses and trucks and car horns and vendors hawking their goods, a nearly steady symphony of sirens.
They scream day and night in rapid response to an endless run of emergencies, many of them in and around MacArthur Park. But it’s not usually a fire that LAFD Station 11 is responding to. Through August of this year, there have been 599 drug overdose calls, compared with 36 runs for structure fires.
“I’ve had three in one day, same person,” said firefighter/paramedic Madison Viray, who has worked at Station 11 for nine years.
California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.
That’s just one measure of how bad the epidemic is in the low-income neighborhood where homelessness is rampant, drugs are sold and consumed in the open, 83 people died of overdoses in 2023, and merchants complain of gang threats and thefts by addicts.
In the middle of it all is Station 11, located on 7th Street two blocks from the park, with its trucks rolling out around the clock in every direction. Hanging on a wall inside the station is a proclamation from Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez and her colleagues honoring the crew for being ranked by Firehouse Magazine as the busiest ladder company in the nation in 2022.
This year, Station 11 ranks just behind Station 9 in Skid Row (site of the city’s other major drug zone) for total runs, but it is on course to match last year’s total of 15,262 calls for fire and medical incidents (the majority of which do not involve overdoses).
Photographs of the crew at Los Angeles Fire Station 11 are mounted in the recreation room of the firehouse.
While I was meeting with several members of the crew in Station 11 Wednesday afternoon, Viray and engineer Cody Eitner left abruptly to answer a call from an alley near 6th Street and Burlington Avenue. They returned a short time later to say they were too late to save the victim.
“Someone found him and called, but they’d been gone for too long and there was nothing we could do,” Eitner said.
The word on the street is that the drugs in the neighborhood are dirty. Cocaine might be spiked with fentanyl, and fentanyl might be spiked with the veterinary tranquilizer Xylazine, or “tranq” —all of which elevates the possibility of bad reactions.
It’s not uncommon to see people in the park with multiple festering ulcers on their arms and legs — one of the side-effects of tranq. Nor is it uncommon to see people bent in half, like twisted statues, because of muscle rigidity the firefighters refer to as the “Fentanyl fold.”
“Most of the time they’re thankful for saving their lives,” Cody Eitner said about the people they have revived from drug overdoses.
Battalion Chief Brian Franco, who first worked at Station 11 two decades ago as a firefighter, said, “we’ve seen a lot more fatalities from the overdoses than we did with heroin.”
And yet with fentanyl, the drug naloxone, if administered quickly enough, can reverse the effects of opiates and save lives. Sometimes it’s used by friends of the victim, or by a MacArthur Park overdose response team recently initiated by Councilmember Hernandez and the L.A. County Department of Public Health. Or by crews from Station 11.
“The vast majority of our [overdose] calls now are fentanyl,” said Capt. Adam VanGerpen, who serves as a public information officer but also goes on runs. “If we see that there are very shallow respirations … then we’re gonna open up their eyes and see if their pupils are pinpoint. Now we know it’s probably not … cardiac arrest or … respiratory arrest. Now we’re thinking, OK, this is an overdose.”
It can be easier to treat a fentanyl case than a PCP or meth overdose, VanGerpen said, because the latter two drugs can make a person agitated and combative. If it’s a fentanyl overdose, responders will administer the naloxone as a nasal spray (Narcan), inject it into a muscle, or pump it through an IV, depending on the situation.
“Anytime we’re successful, it’s satisfying,” said Capt. Adam Brandos. “In a station like this, where we run so many calls as we do, and it’s kind of a monotonous routine, those little wins are really good with the morale. But it’s not so satisfying to see the repeat. And we’re not changing the cycle at all. … It keeps repeating itself over and over again.”
Two men slump on a bench in MacArthur Park.
Sometimes, Brandos said, a single response can trigger a cascade: “We may go on one call in the park where that call turns into four, because … of the other guy who’s over by the tree, and the other gal that’s over by the lake, and then the other person that’s over here. So that’s pretty normal.”
What is most striking about it all, Brandos said, is that these scenes play out so frequently they have become normalized.
When you first set eyes on the depths of social collapse and public distress, it’s shocking. But it’s all there again the next day, and the next, and although the shock endures, a bit of numbness takes hold, along with doubts that anyone in power is up to the task of restoring any semblance of order.
Anthony Temple, an emergency incident technician at Station 11, took me on a dark virtual tour of a typical day, beginning at the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro Station, which has doubled in recent years as subterranean hall of horrors:
Capt. Adam VanGerpen watches as a fire truck is deployed from Station 11.
“People have overdosed … on the subway platform while people are getting out of the train,” Temple said. “You’ve got people moving around this person, and we all come down there and do what we’ve got to do and take them to the hospital and leave. And you go back to the station and you get dispatched on another overdose where the person will be down, on the sidewalk, kind of like hanging into the street. …
“It’s just day in, day out, morning, noon, night, sidewalk, platform, staircase, park,” Temple said. “You know, it’s just like everywhere.”
Two members of the crew, Viray and Brandos, said they’ve brought their children to the neighborhood to show them where Dad works, and to show them a world they couldn’t have imagined.
And the reaction?
“Shocked,” Viray said of his 14-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.
Emergency medical technicians and paramedics with Los Angeles Fire Station 11 keep an eye on a man they revived from an overdose.
“I wanted to show them what some decision-making could look like,” said Brandos, whose girls are 9 and 11. “They wanted to know why everybody was leaning over on the sidewalk. … I told them exactly what was going on.”
The crew told me they share a camaraderie that’s specific to the demands of Station 11. If you choose to work there, it’s because you like staying busy, you take pride in the number of runs, and you learn to accept that you didn’t create the crisis and can’t fix it. You can only respond to it, one call at a time.
Just before 6:30 p.m., a call came in. A middle-aged man was down at Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, across the street from the park, in possible cardiac arrest from an overdose. A truck and an ambulance rolled, lights flashing, sirens blaring. They were on the scene in less than three minutes.
The subject was down in front of Yoshinoya Japanese Kitchen, which is bordered by vendors selling electronics, clothing and toiletries. Some of them were closing down in the fading light of day, and people were still gathered behind the restaurant in an alley that serves as a drug bazaar. It’s a hellscape that has become part of the terrain, like the palm trees that rise over Alvarado Street and the street lamps that have gone dead.
One vendor went about his business as if he’d seen this scene play out so often he didn’t need to look again. Some passersby paused to check out the commotion, perhaps waiting to see if the unconscious man would make it. A boy of 10 or so moved in close enough to watch as three firefighters moved toward the man.
The air was rank with the day’s burned energy and wasted chances, and in the spot where I stood behind the ambulance, trash fanned out six feet into the street from the curb. A bag of chips. A Yoshinoya takeout bag. Coke cans. Empty food containers.
All of this is the normalized reality of a neighborhood that once stood as a gem of the city, and now suffers in wait for someone, anyone, to stand up and say this should not exist, cannot exist, and must end, for the sake of civility and for the benefit of the working people who make up the majority of the residents here, raising children who deserve better.
Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics with Los Angeles Fire Station 11 get ready to take a man, they just revived from a drug overdose, to the hospital at the corner of S. Alvarado and Wilshire Blvd.
Firefighter/paramedic Luke Winfield put on a pair of white latex gloves and prepared a nalaxone IV, tied a blue tourniquet around the man’s upper arm and plunged the life-saving drug into the crease of his elbow.
After several seconds, the man jerked up as if on springs, back from the edge of death. He asked what had happened.
“You overdosed,” one of the firefighters said.
Still wobbly, he fell onto a vending cart and lay on his back, looking up at the reincarnated sky as it faded to pink. He was going to make it. This time. They loaded him into the ambulance for a ride to the hospital.
I asked Winfield how many times, in his two years at Station 11, he had done what he just did.
Jiangsu Expressway Company Limited (OTCMKTS:JEXYY – Get Free Report) saw a large decrease in short interest during the month of August. As of August 31st, there was short interest totalling 1,000 shares, a decrease of 9.1% from the August 15th total of 1,100 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 1,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 1.0 days.
Jiangsu Expressway Price Performance
OTCMKTS:JEXYY opened at $20.45 on Wednesday. Jiangsu Expressway has a 12 month low of $17.21 and a 12 month high of $22.40. The business’s fifty day moving average price is $19.61 and its 200 day moving average price is $20.31.
Jiangsu Expressway Company Limited engages in investment, construction, operation, and management of toll roads and bridges in the People’s Republic of China. The company operates the Jiangsu section of Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway, Ningchang Expressway, Zhenli Expressway, Guangjing Expressway, Xicheng Expressway, Xiyi Expressway, Zhendan Expressway, Yanjiang Expressway, Jiangyin Bridge, Sujiahang Expressway, Changyi Expressway, Yichang Expressway, and Wufengshan Bridge.
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Fullerton police said Monday that a man they killed last month appeared to provoke the incident in an effort to die.
On June 15, police said they responded to a 911 call urging the department to send multiple officers to deal with a man who threatened the caller and others with knives on Imperial Highway.
When officers arrived, they found a man who matched the caller’s description holding what appeared to be two knives, according to police.
Officers told the man — later identified as 27-year-old Lorenzo Roger Hills III of Brea — to drop the weapons, but instead he ran at them with the knives in hand, prompting officers to fatally shoot him.
On Monday, police said they recovered two knives and a cellphone. Upon investigation, police said the phone was registered to Hills and was the same one used to make the initial 911 call.
“It is believed Mr. Hills intentionally provoked a deadly police encounter, commonly referred to as ‘suicide-by-cop,’” the department said.
Police on Monday released body camera video that shows Hills running toward officers, who shoot him before he nears them.
Police also released a recording of the 911 call, in which the caller gives his name as Antonio. After the caller reports a mentally ill man wielding knives, the dispatcher tells the caller she’ll remain on the line with him until officers arrive.
The caller responds that he may have to go, but then doesn’t after the dispatcher tells him he must stay on the phone so officers know exactly where the knife-wielding man is.
Before officers arrive, the caller says, “My phone is cutting …” and the line goes dead.
Suicide prevention and crisis counseling resources
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek help from a professional and call 9-8-8. The United States’ first nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline 988 will connect callers with trained mental health counselors. Text “HOME” to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.
A Riverside woman who bombarded the former executive director of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue with phone calls and threatening voicemails — the first coming just months after the deadliest antisemitic attack on U.S. soil — has been sentenced to almost three years in prison, according to court documents.
Melanie Harris, 59, hurled antisemitic slurs, vowed violence, including beheadings, and used “vile and inflammatory language,” according to a Miami-based FBI agent.
Harris, who pleaded guilty in March, was sentenced by a Miami judge to 32 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for intentionally transmitting a threatening communication in interstate commerce. The Federal Bureau of Prisons will determine where Harris will serve her sentence.
A call and email to the attorney representing Harris were not returned.
Markenzy Lapointe, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said Harris’ ”antisemitic threats terrorized a Jewish family.”
“Her hate-filled telephone calls and voicemails were abhorrent,” Lapointe said in a statement. “No one should live in fear of threats, harassment and hate-fueled violence.”
The calls began in February 2019, according to court documents — just months after Robert Bowers shot and killed 11 worshipers at the Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. Bowers, who has since been convicted and sentenced to death, espoused white supremacist views and ranted about his hatred of Jews online prior to the shooting.
Harris cloaked her identity using the *67 feature, which blocks caller identification, and left voicemails laden “with antisemitic and harassing language,” according to court documents.
She initially placed three calls in a span of three minutes, first to Tree of Life and then twice calling a person identified in court documents as Victim No. 1, the former executive director of Tree of Life who was then living in the Pittsburgh area.
Between February 2019 and March 2022, Harris called Victim No. 1 an additional 53 times, according to court records. An analysis presented in court demonstrated that Harris attempted 190 calls between October 2022 and February 2023, including 129 in November. Many of those calls, however, were unanswered or immediately hung up on, according to court documents.
All calls to Victim No. 1 were made from Harris’ Riverside home, authorities said.
Harris left 15 voicemails for Victim No. 1 on Oct. 3, 2022, including four threatening and antisemitic messages. In one, court documents say, Harris twice threatened to decapitate Victim No. 1’s stepchild, whom she referred to using an antisemitic slur, according to court documents.
That same day, Harris made three additional calls to Victim No. 1, all advocating similar violence against him and his family, according to court documents.
On Nov. 22, Harris threatened in another voicemail to stab Victim No. 1, according to court documents. There was an additional call and threat on Dec. 6.
In voicemails left at Tree of Life, she gloated about the shooting of Jewish grandmas, using a slur, according to court documents. Harris also lobbed antisemitic slurs at the adult child and stepchild of Victim No. 1 and his wife, court documents say.
Neither the victims nor Harris knew each other, court documents and prosecutors said. Harris was not believed to have any ties to Tree of Life.
Victim No. 1 and his wife eventually left Pennsylvania and moved to Broward County, Fla. Victim No. 1, however, did not change his cell number, wishing to keep ties with the Pittsburgh community, according to court documents.
Authorities say Harris also made references to Anne Frank’s death at the hands of the Nazis, and Jews being sent back to Auschwitz. In one call played in court, Harris repeatedly screamed, “Sieg Heil, [Jew] killers,” using a slur, before hanging up, according to court documents.
She was arrested on March 4, 2023.
“The nature of her threats of violence towards the victims and their faith were clearly meant to evoke a climate of fear and intimidation,” Jeffrey B. Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, said in a statement. “Such conduct cannot be tolerated.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department has recommended ending a pilot program that sends mental health workers to non-emergency calls, saying it didn’t actually free up first responders and hospital emergency rooms.
The recommendation was made by Peter Hsiao, assistant chief of the Emergency Medical Services Bureau, in a report submitted to the Los Angeles Board of Fire Commissioners at its Tuesday meeting. The board did not discuss the item, which now will be sent to the L.A. City Council for its consideration.
In his report, Hsiao said that the idea behind the therapeutic van pilot — sending a van staffed with a psychiatric response team instead of LAFD paramedics or emergency medical technicians to handle 911 calls involving patients suffering nonviolent mental health crises — was “sound in theory” but not in practice.
He wrote that workers with the county Department of Mental Health “lacked the requisite training and thus were unqualified to perform medical assessments or provide emergency medical services.”
Hsiao said the lack of training offset any benefit to the Fire Department and its resources. Last year, he wrote, fewer than four patients each day met the narrow criteria established for transport by a therapeutic van. He said the mental health agency made several efforts to increase the usage of the van but still fell short.
The pilot program, a partnership between the city and the Department of Mental Health, officially launched in the fall of 2021 and has cost nearly $4 million. The vans operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and are staffed with psychiatric mobile response teams that include a driver experienced in transporting patients to and from health and mental health facilities, a psychiatric technician and a peer support specialist. The vans were placed at five fire stations throughout the city.
The program’s launch, which city and fire officials praised, came amid the public’s frustration over the city and county’s handling of the homelessness crisis, which has been intensifying for years. It also coincided with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to push more people with severe mental health and addiction disorders into court-ordered care that includes medication and housing.
The Department of Mental Health did not respond to a request for comment.
The therapeutic van program already faced issues when the city sought to expand it in 2023. At the time, LAFD raised concerns about the program’s limitations, stating that many of the patients required emergency care and first responders could not transfer them to the therapeutic vans. There was also a staff shortage that prevented some of the vans from operating more than 12 hours.
In his report, Hsiao said the Fire Department was simultaneously operating another program with capabilities similar to the therapeutic van program but with a greater scope of service.
These advanced provider response units, Hsiao wrote, consist of an EMS advanced provider who is either a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant and an LAFD firefighter or paramedic.
The units are capable of treating and assessing voluntary and involuntary mental health patients, including writing so-called 5150 holds to temporarily institutionalize people at risk to themselves or others. The units are also able to provide emergency care and write prescriptions.
“Patients experiencing mental health crises in conjunction with medical, violent or substance abuse issues require a responder with broader capabilities and preferably the ability to transport to non-traditional receiving facilities,” Hsiao wrote in his report. “These functions are largely satisfied by the [advanced provider response units].”
Hsiao said leftover funds allocated for the therapeutic van should go to other programs, such as advanced provider response units.
File photo of the AT&T logo. The network is experiencing wireless service interruptions Thursday, Feb. 22, and encourages Wi-Fi calling.
Mark Lennihan
AP
A cellular outage has impacted mobile phone customers nationally, leaving many users without the ability to place calls.
The outage, which began in the early morning hours of Thursday, Feb. 22, is affecting customers of AT&T, Verizon and many other cell service providers, according to DownDetector.com.
AT&T says there is a quick fix to placing calls by enabling Wi-Fi calling on your phone.
So how do you do that?
iPhone users
By using Wi-Fi calling, mobile phone users will be able to “make or receive a phone call if you have a Wi-Fi connection in an area with little or no cellular coverage,” Apple says.
To turn on the option, Apple says to go to “Settings” on your phone. Then, tap the “Phone” and then “Wi-Fi Calling.”
“If Wi-Fi calling is available, you’ll see ‘Wi-Fi’ in the status bar while viewing control center,” according to Apple. “Then your calls will use Wi-Fi Calling.”
To enable this option on Android phones, open the Phone app, tap “More,” then go to “Settings.” Then, Google says to tap “Calls” and then tap “Wi-Fi calling.”
Not all phone carriers support Wi-Fi calling, according to Google.
“Once you’ve set up Wi-Fi calling, you can make a call over Wi-Fi just like any other call,” Google said. “When you’re connected to the internet, you’ll see ‘Internet Call’ or ‘Wi-Fi calling’ on the notification screen.”
Mike Stunson covers real-time news for McClatchy. He is a 2011 Western Kentucky University graduate who has previously worked at the Paducah Sun and Madisonville Messenger as a sports reporter and the Lexington Herald-Leader as a breaking news reporter. Support my work with a digital subscription
Gunshots rang out just before midnight Friday at a vacant skyscraper that taggers recently covered in graffiti across the street from Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles, authorities said.
Officers responded to Oceanwide Plaza on Figueroa Street late Friday night after receiving a call of shots fired but found no victim or suspects, according to LAPD Officer Jader Chaves.
Police recovered two spent bullet casings at the scene and the investigation is continuing, he said.
The incident comes after vandals spray painted at least 27 floors of the skyscraper this week, judging by aerial video of the building.
Early Tuesday morning, officers responded to a vandalism call on South Figueroa Street, the site of the unfinished and long-idle Oceanwide Plaza development, according to the LAPD.
The department’s Air Support Division reported seeing more than a dozen suspects trespassing and possibly spray painting the building.
By the time more officers arrived, all but two suspects had fled the location, authorities said. The two — L.A. residents Victor Daniel Ramirez, 35, and Roberto Perez, 25 — were arrested and transported to the Central Area station, where they were cited for trespassing on private property and released.
Two days later, officers returned to the construction site in the early afternoon to respond to another vandalism call, this time involving spray painting on the 30th floor, according to the LAPD. Officers were told by the site’s security guards that the suspects fled the building in a car.
Police found a car matching the description they’d been given and told the driver to stop, but the driver didn’t yield, the department alleged. Officers eventually found the vehicle a short distance away and the driver was cited for failure to yield to an officer. The investigation is still ongoing.
Oceanwide Plaza was once one of the biggest real estate development projects in Los Angeles, but construction was halted five years ago when its Chinese developer ran out of money. The $1-billion mixed-use project was supposed to feature hotel and retail space as well as luxury apartments and condominiums.
The buildings have remained unfinished ever since in the popular LA Live complex, which includes shops, restaurants and the Grammy Museum. Crypto.com Arena anchors the complex and will host the 66th Grammy Awards on Sunday.
The family of a slain El Monte police officer blames two emergency dispatchers for failing to tell the officer and his partner that they were on their way to confront a possible armed suspect high on PCP before the gunman ambushed and killed them.
The officers were aware of the basics of the call: A woman may have been stabbed by her husband. What the officers were not verbally told was that the suspect had a history of violence with his wife, was armed with a gun and was high on PCP, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Daily News. The incident is still under investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office.
“Having that information could have allowed them to be aware of the threat that they were facing, potentially even sparing their lives,” Santana’s sister Bianca Santana said Monday outside the El Monte police station during a protest.
Friends and family wore black T-shirts emblazoned with Santana’s face, and his father, Joe Santana, held a sign that read, “My Son’s Life Mattered.” The protesters demanded the Police Department fire the two emergency dispatchers who took the 911 call and relayed the information to the officers in the field.
Paredes and Santana were fatally shot at the hotel in what police describe as an ambush. Flores ended up taking his own life during a shootout with officers in the motel parking lot.
The 911 call that set off the series of events was made by Maria Zepeda, Flores’ mother-in-law, according to an audio recording obtained by the Daily News. Zepeda told the dispatcher that Flores stabbed her daughter and he had recently abused her.
“He’s on PCP. He has a gun,” Zepeda told emergency dispatcher Ruth Bonneau, according to the news outlet.
When the officers got the call shortly before 5 p.m. dispatcher Kristen Juaregui did not relay information about the suspect possibly being armed. But she did enter that information into the call report, which the officers would have read from inside their police cruiser, the Daily News reported. Santana’s family were not aware of those details until the news story broke over the weekend, said Satana’s wife, Sasha Santana.
Santana’s twin 3-year-old boys, Jakob and Joshua, joined their family while carrying protest signs along with their stuffed animals.
“I don’t want anyone else to go through what we go through,” she said, renewing her call for the department to reprimand the dispatchers and terminate their employment. “I do not want them to set foot in another police department. I am angry. My husband would not have been knocking nonchalantly on that hotel door if he was aware of what was going to happen. If he was aware that there was a man in there armed and on PCP.”
Family members said they believe the officers are unfairly being partly blamed for their own deaths, because pertinent details about the 911 call were fed to the officers in a written update while they were racing to the motel. Sasha Santana said that the officers would have not had the time to read that update.
It has felt as though the department has ignored the family’s well-being, Joe Santana said.
“No one came to us and said, ‘We messed up, we’re sorry,’” Joe Santana said as he sobbed in front of the station. “I know my son was new, but he was proud to be part of the El Monte PD family.”
Paredes, 42, was sworn into the El Monte Police Department in 2000. Santana, 31, joined the department about a year before the shooting.
Santana’s family does not condemn all the officers with the Police Department, but believes leadership have concealed vital information that led to the two officers’ deaths.
“We might appear strong as we stand here seeking justice, but internally we are filled with anger and pain,” said Santana’s sister Jessica Santana as her voice broke. “And it’s that pain that fuels us to fight for the truth.”
The shooting and response to the incident is part of an ongoing investigation by the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office, according to a statement from El Monte Police Chief Jake Fisher.
“Together we are moving forward as we collectively continue to grieve and recover from the horrific event,” the statement said.
After interviewing witnesses, reviewing police camera footage, reports and call logs, Fisher said, the Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s investigators have found there was no “wrongdoing by our police officers or civilian personnel.” But the investigation has not concluded, and it’s unclear when the findings will be made public.
“We fully anticipate this finding to hold and that our D.A. will officially clear all involved officers and close the investigation,” the statement said.
Wyatt Reneer, president of the El Monte Police Officers Assn., attended the protest in support of the Santana family, but also in support of the officers and dispatchers with the department.
“Our dispatchers, our officers, everyone here is doing their job to the best of their ability, and they’re doing the right thing,” Reneer said.
Santana’s mother, Olga Garcia, said: “There has been no worse feeling in my life than losing my son. Learning a year later that there was information he did not have that could have saved his life, information he could have used to protect himself and his partner, it shatters my heart each day that goes by.”
A woman spent 15 freezing hours inside a gondola high above the snow-covered slopes of a Lake Tahoe area ski resort, according to local authorities.
Monica Laso was on a snowboarding trip with friends at Heavenly Ski Resort on Thursday when she decided she was too tired to ride back down the mountain, according to KCRA News, which first reported the incident.
So she asked an employee if she could take a gondola back down, boarding at about 4:58 p.m. Two minutes later, the station reported, the ski lift stopped running and she was left alone, cold and without a phone or light.
Laso remained inside the gondola through the night, rubbing her hands and feet to stay warm as the temperature dropped into the low 20s.
Friday morning, a call came in to South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue at about 8:30 a.m. There was a woman at Heavenly Ski Resort who was suffering from cold exposure, the caller said, according to Sallie Ross, spokesperson for the department. She had been found inside the gondola after workers started the lift up for the day, sending her back down to the base of the mountain.
An engine was dispatched and minutes later firefighters arrived at the resort, Ross said. Laso was treated at the scene and declined to be taken to a hospital.
“They assessed her and she did not choose to be transported,” Ross said in a telephone interview Saturday. “It sounds like she wasn’t injured or anything, but she definitely didn’t have a great night, that’s for sure.”
Laso said in a Spanish-language interview with KCRA that she yelled out whenever a worker passed by below, but that she “felt very frustrated” because they couldn’t hear her. The long, dark night was “very cold,” she said.
A media contact for Heavenly did not immediately return a call seeking comment Saturday evening. KCRA reported that the resort provided a statement saying that it was investigating the incident, which came barely two weeks after one skier was killed and another injured in an avalanche at Palisades Tahoe, a ski resort about 40 miles northwest of Heavenly.
Ross said the fire rescue department had “certainly never responded to anything like this,” describing the incident as “a total anomaly.”
“I don’t know how something like that could have happened. It’s very weird,” she said. “She must have felt some kind of terror, really, knowing she’s there all alone and not knowing if someone was going to find her. That must have really been terrifying for her.”
Stanley cup mania landed one Sacramento woman in handcuffs last week after she wheeled a shopping cart full of the reusable water bottles out of a store without paying, authorities said.
On Jan. 17, Roseville police responded to a shoplifting call north of Sacramento in the 6000 block of Stanford Ranch Road.
Retail workers reported seeing the suspect leave with dozens of Stanley cups in her cart. She ignored their calls to stop and stuffed the merchandise into her car before leaving, police said.
Officers stopped the woman just as she pulled onto a local highway.
Police say a woman filled her car with Stanley water bottles, ignoring employees’ calls for her to stop.
(Roseville Police Department)
After searching her car, 65 Stanley cups worth about $2,500 were recovered, according to police. The woman, who hasn’t been identified, was arrested on suspicion of grand theft.
Fueled by influencers, the craze over the Stanley bottles, which are popular for keeping drinks chilled for hours, has led to fights and shouting matches as exclusive colors and collaborations fly off the shelves.
Retailers on eBay are currently selling a coveted pink Starbucks Stanley cup for as much as $5,000.
Law enforcement agencies have warned consumers to be on the lookout for scams related to counterfeit cups and credit card theft.
Roseville police cautioned against trying to cash in on the craze by way of retail theft.
“While Stanley Quenchers are all the rage,” the police department wrote on Facebook, “we strongly advise against turning to crime to fulfill your hydration habits.”
