A contract security guard was hospitalized Monday afternoon after he drove onto an airport taxiway and sped past planes, authorities said.
On Dec. 8 around 1:12 p.m., the guard assigned to a security checkpoint “drove a vehicle into an airport taxiway at a high rate of speed,” according to a statement from John Wayne Airport spokesperson AnnaSophia Servin.
Video shared with ABC7 showed a white sedan speeding down the taxiway near planes. The news outlet reported that an air traffic controller advised a Southwest plane to “hold position.”
“There’s a high-speed chase on the taxiway,” the controller said.
Orange County sheriff’s deputies detained the driver shortly thereafter and requested a medical assessment from the Orange County Fire Authority, the statement said.
“The individual was evaluated on scene and determined to be experiencing a possible medical emergency,” Servin said.
He was subsequently hospitalized and suspended from his job, according to the statement. Airport operations continued on schedule.
Photo: Taken from video released by Vancouver Police
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Vancouver police say they are looking for the husband of a rideshare passenger who rammed the car his wife was riding in four times. He did extreme damage to the car of the rideshare driver.
The driver picked up the woman from work on November 15th around 5:00 a.m. Not long after, the husband of the woman slammed into the rideshare driver. The driver had video cam footage of it all, it was released by the Vancouver Police Department.
The driver calls 911 and begins to make her way to the closest police dpartment. Over the course of several minutes the suspect continues smashing into the rideshare car, shattering the rear window and nearly pushing them over a 20-foot embankment.
The car of the husband was found, but he remains at large and wanted by police.
Resources are available for anyone experiencing domestic violence:
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text “START” to 88788
Washington State Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-562-6025
Council for the Homeless Housing Hotline: 360-695-9677
A LOT OF PEOPLE IN CENTRAL FLORIDA NEED HELP PUTTING FOOD ON THE TABLE, AND THIS LINE OF CARS WAITING FOR A THANKSGIVING MEAL IS PART OF THE PROOF. THIS EVENT WAS PUT ON BY THE HISPANIC AMERICAN ALLIANCE GROUP IN WINTER PARK AND WESH TWO MICHELLE MEREDITH REPORTS. SOME PEOPLE GOT IN LINE LAST NIGHT. THERE WAS MUSIC, PEOPLE DANCING, FRUIT CRATES THAT WERE CREATIVELY TURNED INTO SUN HATS. IT LOOKED LIKE A PARTY. BUT TAKE A CLOSER LOOK. AND THERE WAS FOOD BEING STUFFED INTO CARS THAT PULLED UP ONE AFTER ANOTHER IN A LINE THAT SEEMED NEVER ENDING BECAUSE THIS WAS BETTER THAN A PARTY. IT WAS A FOOD GIVEAWAY PUT ON BY THE HISPANIC AMERICAN ALLIANCE GROUP, AND THE JOINT WAS JUMPING. THEY TELL US THEY STARTED THIS FOOD GIVEAWAY DURING THE PANDEMIC, AND 75 FAMILIES SHOWED UP. AND SINCE THAT TIME IT HAS JUST EXPLODED BECAUSE OF THE NEED. THE FOOD WAS SUPPLIED BY SECOND HARVEST AND WINN-DIXIE, BOTH CONTRIBUTING A TOTAL OF 56,000 POUNDS OF IT. WITH WINN-DIXIE PITCHING IN 500 TURKEYS. I’VE BEEN AMAZED TODAY WITH THE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE I MEAN, IT’S 500 THAT WE’VE WE’VE SIGNED UP TO BE ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN LINED UP HERE SINCE LAST NIGHT, AND THAT’S A BIG DEAL. AND EVEN THIS MORNING, COMING IN AT 630, THEY WERE LINED UP DOWN THE STREET A COUPLE OF MILES, AND FROM CHOPPER TWO WE COULD SEE THE LINE GOT OUR ATTENTION AND THE ATTENTION OF THE FOLKS WHO WAITED HOURS TO GET A CHANCE AT A FIRST CLASS THANKSGIVING DINNER. I CAN EAT DINNER FOR THIS BECAUSE IT’S TOO MUCH. IT’S SAD BECAUSE PEOPLE IS NEEDED, BUT IT’S HAPPINESS THAT WE CAN HELP THEM. SO THAT IS A IS A JOINT OF DIFFERENT EMOTIONS AT THE SAME TIME. HAPPINESS THAT ON THIS DAY SEEMED TO PUT A SMILE ON EVERYONE’S FACE. COVERING ORANGE COUNTY AND WINTER PARK MICHELLE MEREDITH WESH TWO NEWS. RIGHT NOW YOU CAN HELP GET FOOD TO STRUGGLING NEIGHBORS. WESH TWO NEWS. SHARE YOUR CHRISTMAS FOOD AND FUND DRIVE BENEFITS. SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK. IF YOU’RE ABLE TO, WE HOPE YOU’LL HELP BY GIVING ONLINE OR STARTING A FOOD DRIVE. ALL PROCEEDS WILL BENEFIT OUR NEIGHBORS WHO NEED IT MOST. ALL OF THE DETAILS ARE ON THE SHARE
Hundreds of families wait in line for Thanksgiving food giveaway in Winter Park
A Thanksgiving food giveaway organized by the Hispanic American Alliance Group in Winter Park provided meals to hundreds of families, with some arriving the night before to secure their spot in line.The event featured music, dancing, and creatively repurposed fruit crates as sunhats, creating a festive atmosphere as cars lined up to receive food. The giveaway, which began during the pandemic, has grown significantly due to increasing demand.The food was supplied by Second Harvest and Winn-Dixie, contributing a total of 56,000 pounds of food, including 500 turkeys.”I’ve been amazed with the amount of people,” said Shawn Sloan from Winn-Dixie. “It was 500 the amount of people we signed up to take care of, and people have been here since last night, and even coming in at 6:30, there were people lined up down the street a couple of miles.”From Chopper 2, the line of cars waiting for food stretched for miles, capturing the attention of those waiting for hours to receive a Thanksgiving dinner. “I can eat dinner.. for this…it’s too much,” said Matilde Canela, who picked up food at the event.Lorena Ortega from the Hispanic American Alliance Group expressed mixed emotions about the event. “It’s sad because people are needing but it’s happiness that we can help them, so it’s a joint emotion as the same time,” she said.The event brought smiles to many faces, highlighting the community’s spirit of giving and support during the holiday season.
WINTER PARK, Fla. —
A Thanksgiving food giveaway organized by the Hispanic American Alliance Group in Winter Park provided meals to hundreds of families, with some arriving the night before to secure their spot in line.
The event featured music, dancing, and creatively repurposed fruit crates as sunhats, creating a festive atmosphere as cars lined up to receive food. The giveaway, which began during the pandemic, has grown significantly due to increasing demand.
The food was supplied by Second Harvest and Winn-Dixie, contributing a total of 56,000 pounds of food, including 500 turkeys.
“I’ve been amazed with the amount of people,” said Shawn Sloan from Winn-Dixie. “It was 500 the amount of people we signed up to take care of, and people have been here since last night, and even coming in at 6:30, there were people lined up down the street a couple of miles.”
From Chopper 2, the line of cars waiting for food stretched for miles, capturing the attention of those waiting for hours to receive a Thanksgiving dinner. “I can eat dinner.. for this…it’s too much,” said Matilde Canela, who picked up food at the event.
Lorena Ortega from the Hispanic American Alliance Group expressed mixed emotions about the event. “It’s sad because people are needing but it’s happiness that we can help them, so it’s a joint emotion as the same time,” she said.
The event brought smiles to many faces, highlighting the community’s spirit of giving and support during the holiday season.
The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office released a video showing a group of people attempting to break into a home in Deltona and then opening fire when they were unable to gain entry.The video, posted on social media, shows four individuals approaching a residence on Wainwright Street, with detectives noting that three of them appear to be carrying guns.The group tried to break into the home, and when they couldn’t, they started shooting, VCSO said.Timothy Haight told WESH 2 he lives a few hundred feet from the road where the shooting happened and heard the whole thing. Saying, “I am a night owl, so I was up at four o’clock, and my desk is right next to the back door. Just heard the gunshots like literally as if they were happening in my backyard.”VCSO said they spotted the group’s car on I-4 and followed it into Orange County before losing it.Investigators collected evidence outside the home, with evidence markers visible on the residence signifying each bullet.Neighbors reported hearing the shots around 3 a.m. Deputies confirmed that no one was hurt during the incident.The Sheriff’s Office said deputies are still pursuing leads in the case.
DELTONA, Fla. —
The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office released a video showing a group of people attempting to break into a home in Deltona and then opening fire when they were unable to gain entry.
The video, posted on social media, shows four individuals approaching a residence on Wainwright Street, with detectives noting that three of them appear to be carrying guns.
The group tried to break into the home, and when they couldn’t, they started shooting, VCSO said.
Timothy Haight told WESH 2 he lives a few hundred feet from the road where the shooting happened and heard the whole thing.
Saying, “I am a night owl, so I was up at four o’clock, and my desk is right next to the back door. Just heard the gunshots like literally as if they were happening in my backyard.”
VCSO said they spotted the group’s car on I-4 and followed it into Orange County before losing it.
Investigators collected evidence outside the home, with evidence markers visible on the residence signifying each bullet.
Neighbors reported hearing the shots around 3 a.m. Deputies confirmed that no one was hurt during the incident.
The Sheriff’s Office said deputies are still pursuing leads in the case.
Alexa Bartell (Provided by Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department)
A Jefferson County judge refused to reduce the prison sentence for one of the men convicted in the killing of 20-year-old Alexa Bartell during a spree of rock-throwing attacks more than two years ago.
Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik, 21, was sentenced in May to 45 years in prison for Bartell’s death. She was killed in April 2023 when Karol-Chik and two other teenagers threw a 9.3-pound rock through her windshield as she drove on Indiana Street near the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. The rock struck Bartell in the head.
In September, Karol-Chik sought to knock 10 years off his sentence through a post-sentencing review, citing his good behavior in prison. He noted that he’d applied for a 10-year prison education program through which he expects to receive a bachelor’s degree in Christian studies and then work in chaplains’ offices across the prison system.
First Judicial District Court Judge Christopher Zenisek, who presided over Karol-Chik’s case and imposed the original 45-year prison sentence, opted against holding a hearing to listen to arguments about sentence reduction and instead denied Karol-Chik’s request in a brief Oct. 8 order.
“The court, in its discretion, determines that the sentence is appropriate as originally imposed due to the severity of the offense and community safety concerns,” Zenisek wrote.
Karol-Chik was convicted of second-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in Bartell’s killing. He faced between 35 and 72 years in prison under the terms of his plea agreement.
The two other participants in the attack are also serving decades-long prison sentences.
All three men were 18 at the time of the rock-throwing spree. They rode together in a truck and egged each other on as they threw rocks first at parked cars and then at passing cars as the night went on. The driver of the truck sped up before the attacks, and Koenig whooped with excitement after Bartell was killed and her car drifted off the road, testimony at trial revealed.
Prosecutors argued during Koenig’s jury trial that he threw the rock that killed Bartell; his defense attorneys argued that Kwak threw it. Both sides acknowledged that all three teenagers could be convicted in Bartell’s killing regardless of who threw the rock.
1 injured in crash that caused 2 cars to catch fire on Business 80 in Sacramento
ALL RIGHT, JACKIE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. WE WANT TO GET SOME BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW. LIVECOPTER3 IS OVER BUSINESS 80 IN N STREET, WHERE WE HAVE A PRETTY BAD CRASH CAUSING A MAJOR BACKUP. THIS IS NORTHBOUND BUSINESS 80 CLOSE TO N STREET, AND THE CALL CAME IN AT ABOUT 422. WE UNDERSTAND THREE VEHICLES ARE INVOLVED. TWO CARS AND ALSO AN SUV, AND WE KNOW IT LOOKS LIKE 1 OR 2 OF THOSE CARS THEN ERUPTED INTO FLAMES. AND SO RIGHT NOW WE HAVE THREE LANES BLOCKED. SO ANYBODY HEADED NORTHBOUND IS GOING TO BE CAUGHT UP IN THIS. BUT YOU CAN SEE THE FRONT OF THAT ONE VEHICLE. THE OF YOUR SCREEN. IT LOOKS LIKE THERE’S FRONT END DAMAGE. AND THEN WE HAVE THAT VEHICLE TO THE RIGHT OF IT. AND IT LOOKS LIKE IT POSSIBLY HAD SOME SORT OF DAMAGE THERE IN THE BACK. AND SO BOTH OF THESE VEHICLES LOOKS LIKE STARTED A FIRE. THERE’S A THIRD VEHICLE IN THERE SOMEWHERE THAT WAS INVOLVED IN THIS. ACCORDING TO CHP COMMUNICATIONS PAGE. BUT THE CHP IS NOW EXPECTING THESE LANES TO BE BLOCKED FOR SOME TIME, AND THAT THEY’RE EXPECTING SOME DELAYS. SO THIS IS AN AREA TO AVOID RIGHT NOW. NORTHBOUND BUSINESS 80 NEAR END STREET.
1 injured in crash that caused 2 cars to catch fire on Business 80 in Sacramento
Two cars caught fire on the Business 80 highway in Sacramento after a crash on Tuesday afternoon. One person was taken to the hospital after the crash, according to the California Highway PatrolLive Copter 3 flew over the scene around 4:30 p.m. Crews could be seen extinguishing the fire, located near N Street on northbound Business 80. Three vehicles were involved in the crash, CHP said. Traffic in the area was was temporarily delayed due to the incident, but the roads have since been cleared. See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
Two cars caught fire on the Business 80 highway in Sacramento after a crash on Tuesday afternoon. One person was taken to the hospital after the crash, according to the California Highway Patrol
Live Copter 3 flew over the scene around 4:30 p.m. Crews could be seen extinguishing the fire, located near N Street on northbound Business 80.
Three vehicles were involved in the crash, CHP said. Traffic in the area was was temporarily delayed due to the incident, but the roads have since been cleared.
On Saturday morning, Genaro Alfonzo pulled up to the Kia Forum in Inglewood wearing his Dodgers hat and jersey, with a flag for his Boys in Blue flapping from a Toyota pickup truck.
But the morning after his beloved Dodgers won Game 6 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, Alfonzo was not happy. It was nearly 11 a.m., and the 70-year-old had not yet eaten.
“Just this,” he said, tearing up as he held up a blue plastic coffee cup, half empty. “I’m not working. My wife’s not working — there’s no work. The market is expensive.”
Alfonzo was among thousands of people who showed up to a drive-through food distribution event Saturday at the Kia Forum put on by the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank on the first day of a lapse in funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
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It was the first day of the month — the first day of a pause in federal food assistance for millions of low-income Americans, including 5.5 million Californians, because of the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.
On Friday,two federal judges, in separate rulings, ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to begin using more than $5 billion in contingency funds for SNAP during the government shutdown. But they gave the agency until Monday to figure out how to do so.
Although the orders were a win for people who rely on SNAP, they did not mean that recipients would be spared a lapse in food aid. Over the weekend, state and local food banks scrambled to prepare for a deluge of need.
People pick up food distributed by Noel Community Organization at the Lily of the Valley Church of God In Christ Saturday in Long Beach.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta — whose office helped bring about a lawsuit by a coalition of Democrat-led states against the Trump administration over the food aid cutoff — said Thursday that a ruling in the states’ favor would not mean SNAP funds would immediately be loaded onto CalFresh and other benefit cards.
“Our best estimates are that [SNAP benefit] cards could be loaded and used in about a week,” he said, adding that “there could be about a week where people are hungry and need food.” For new program applicants, he said, the delay could be even longer.
On Saturday, amid gray skies and fog, scores of volunteers for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank gathered outside the Forum to serve Angelenos looking to stock their shelves and refrigerators for what could become the longest shutdown since 2018, when the government was shut down for 35 days.
Volunteers disbursed food containers for about 5,000 vehicles, according to the food bank. Each offering had items for about 40 meals, with whole grains, fresh produce, tortillas, canned tuna, yogurt and frozen chicken.
“This is what large-scale disaster relief looks like,” said Michael Flood, chief executive of the food bank. “It’s about getting as much as possible out to as many people as possible — safely and in a short time.”
Fueled by bins of snacks — chips, oranges and bottled water — many volunteers expressed enthusiasm for the long day ahead.
“I’m just happy to be here — it’s a great opportunity to help people,” said Jordan Diaz, 35.
Ron Del Rio, 54, said he was happy to help but angry about the circumstances.
“It’s frustrating and heartbreaking to see people who are hungry,” he said. “It’s just so unsettling that it has to be this way. Why are there 5,000 cars coming through here in a country that is so rich?”
Norma White gives Dario Medina a free haircut as people wait to pick up food distributed by Noel Community Organization at the Lily of the Valley Church of God In Christ Saturday in Long Beach.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
About 600,000 SNAP recipients live in Los Angeles, according to Mayor Karen Bass, who said in a statement Friday that “no one in Los Angeles should have to worry about putting food on the table because of circumstances beyond their control.”
For volunteer Diane Jackson, 72, loading up cars with boxes of fresh produce hit close to home. Her son had been in line to receive food earlier that morning.
“He has 7 children!” she said. “He made sure to come out here. I’m so glad they’re here — it feels good.”
Volunteers were greeted with fist bumps, air kisses and shouted thank yous.
As she waited in line, Maxx Bush, 79, who lives near the Forum, said she was angry because people’s incomes are not increasing, even as groceries, housing, insurance, medication, gasoline and other necessities are becoming more expensive.
“Our elected officials are letting us down because we vote and put these people in office, and they tend to get a personal vendetta going with each other and forget about the main thing, which is the people.”
In their opposition to states’ request for a temporary restraining order requiring the disbursement of contingency funds, attorneys for the USDA argued that the $5.25 billion is reserved “in the event of natural disasters and other uncontrollable catastrophes” and could cause more disruptions later. The emergency funds will not cover the roughly $9 billion required for all November benefits, according to the USDA.
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom activated the National Guard to help package food and directed $80 million to food banks to stock up. More than 63% of SNAP recipients in California are children or elderly people, Newsom’s office said.
“I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible,” President Trump saidin a post on Truth Social on Friday. “It is already delayed enough due to the Democrats keeping the Government closed … it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding.”
On Saturday, Bonta snapped back.
“The Trump Admin CHOSE to withhold food assistance from people in need. They CHOSE to let people go hungry and now are only changing their tune thanks to lawsuits,” Bonta said on X. “It should have never gotten this far in the first place.”
Two people leave a food distribution site Saturday in Long Beach.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Around noon on Saturday, the parking lot at the Forum was a cacophony of sound: car engines rumbling, car stereos blasting music, fire engines blaring in the distance, children shrieking, airplanes roaring en route to nearby LAX.
Rayvone Douthard, 51, picked up food in a white Nissan truck with his windows down and stereo blaring a cover by the band Tierra of the 1967 song “Together.” Douthard, a DJ who wore a brightly colored tie-dye T-shirt, said he received federal food aid and was concerned about the delay in funding.
“It’s not right,” he said. “Donald Trump needs to stop what he’s doing. Everyone needs food.”
Then he turned his music up again.
“But I feel positive about this,” he said, gesturing at the bustling parking lot. “Everybody working together. Like the song says!”
JOPLIN, Mo. — With tears in her eyes and a wave, Brittney Perrin drove off in her new 2008 Nissan sedan from the parking lot of Higher Power Garage.
The vehicle was one of nine provided to nine families through the organization’s Barriers to Work Low-Cost Vehicle Program on Wednesday. Higher Power Garage staff watched as one by one the vehicles left the lot.
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JOPLIN, Mo. — With tears in her eyes and a wave, Brittney Perrin drove off in her new 2008 Nissan sedan from the parking lot of Higher Power Garage.
The vehicle was one of nine provided to nine families through the organization’s Barriers to Work Low-Cost Vehicle Program on Wednesday. Higher Power Garage staff watched as one by one the vehicles left the lot.
This page requires Javascript.
Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
JOPLIN, Mo. — With tears in her eyes and a wave, Brittney Perrin drove off in her new 2008 Nissan sedan from the parking lot of Higher Power Garage.
The vehicle was one of nine provided to nine families through the organization’s Barriers to Work Low-Cost Vehicle Program on Wednesday. Higher Power Garage staff watched as one by one the vehicles left the lot.
This page requires Javascript.
Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
Video above: Previous coverageA murder charge has been dropped against a woman who was accused of killing a man during a road rage shooting in Orange County. Tina Allgeo appeared in court on Thursday morning for a hearing about a motion to dismiss the charges against her. Allgeo was facing charges of second-degree murder and aggravated battery.Allgeo pleaded no contest to aggravated battery, and the murder charge against her was dropped.BackgroundThe victim, Mihail Tsvetkov, and Allgeo encountered each other in front of an Olive Garden restaurant. She got out of her car and confronted him about driving too close to her.Allgeo says he then bumped her car. The report says she exited her car a second time, holding her phone to call the police. Police said Tsvetkov drove away.In a written statement, Allgeo told police she accidentally struck his car while trying to get his tag number.The report says Tsvetkov then got out of his car, approached Allgeo, opened the car door, and a struggle ensued.According to the report, she said she shot him once because she feared for her life as he punched her multiple times.Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has criticized the case, saying it’s “stand your ground.”Witnesses at the scene described the confrontation as brief and unprovoked. About the victim The victim was identified as Mihail Tsvetkov. The victim’s sister said he was planning to relocate in 12 days to be with his family before he was killed.
ORLANDO, Fla. —
Video above: Previous coverage
A murder charge has been dropped against a woman who was accused of killing a man during a road rage shooting in Orange County.
Tina Allgeo appeared in court on Thursday morning for a hearing about a motion to dismiss the charges against her.
Allgeo was facing charges of second-degree murder and aggravated battery.
Allgeo pleaded no contest to aggravated battery, and the murder charge against her was dropped.
Background
The victim, Mihail Tsvetkov, and Allgeo encountered each other in front of an Olive Garden restaurant. She got out of her car and confronted him about driving too close to her.
Allgeo says he then bumped her car. The report says she exited her car a second time, holding her phone to call the police. Police said Tsvetkov drove away.
In a written statement, Allgeo told police she accidentally struck his car while trying to get his tag number.
The report says Tsvetkov then got out of his car, approached Allgeo, opened the car door, and a struggle ensued.
According to the report, she said she shot him once because she feared for her life as he punched her multiple times.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has criticized the case, saying it’s “stand your ground.”
Witnesses at the scene described the confrontation as brief and unprovoked.
About the victim
The victim was identified as Mihail Tsvetkov.
The victim’s sister said he was planning to relocate in 12 days to be with his family before he was killed.
On an overcast morning in September, Hector Alessandro Negrete left his beloved Los Angeles — the city he was brought to at 3 months old — and headed down Interstate 5 to Mexico, the only country where he held a passport.
It was a place that, to him, had “always felt like both a wound and a possibility.”
Negrete, 43, sat in the passenger seat as a friend steered the car south and two more friends in another car followed. He had condensed his life to three full suitcases and his dachshund mix, Lorca.
They pulled over at the beach in San Clemente. Angel Martinez, his soon-to-be former roommate, is deeply spiritual, and his favorite prayer spot is the ocean, so he prayed that Negrete would be blessed and protected — and Lorca too — as they began a new stage in their lives.
On the near-empty beach, the friends embraced and wiped away tears. Martinez handed Negrete a small watermelon.
As instructed, Negrete walked to the edge of the water, said his own prayer and, as a gift of thanks to the cosmos, plopped it into a crashing wave.
Negrete, holding a drink, embraces his friend Angel Martinez as they visit a drag club in Tijuana after leaving Los Angeles a day earlier.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete doesn’t call it self-deportation.
“Self-repatriation,” he said. “I refuse to use this administration’s language.”
President Trump had been in office just over a month when Negrete decided he would return to Mexico. Methodical by nature, he approached the decision like any other — by researching, organizing and planning.
He registered Lorca as an emotional support animal, paid for a vaccine card and a certificate of good health, and crate-trained her in a TSA-approved carrier.
He announced his decision to leave in June on his Substack newsletter: “If you’re thinking, ‘Alessandro’s giving up,’ look deeper. I am choosing freedom. For the first time, I feel unshackled from the expectations of waiting.”
Negrete walks the streets of Boyle Heights while shopping for moving supplies after deciding he would leave the U.S. on his own terms.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete had grown tired of wishing for immigration reform. He had built his career advocating for immigrants such as himself, including stints as statewide coordinator for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, and as executive director for the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance.
He said his work had helped legalize street vending in Los Angeles and he assisted the office of then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris in securing the release of a young woman from immigration detention. He was the first openly undocumented and LGBTQ+ person on the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council.
Under previous administrations, Negrete’s political work had felt like a shield against deportation. Even during Trump’s first term, Negrete had marched at rallies denouncing his immigration policies.
But that was before the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement patrols that tore into Southern California during Trump’s second term. On June 6, as anti-ICE protesters took to the streets, Negrete rushed to downtown Los Angeles when fellow activists told him street medics were needed.
“One of my homies said, ‘Hey fool, what are you doing here?’” he recalled. Seeing Los Angeles police officers advancing on the crowd, he realized that no amount of public support could protect him.
He fled. “Thank God I left.”
Negrete, in red, with his friends and colleagues at a farewell party and yard sale in August.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
In mid-August, Negrete hosted a yard sale and going away party. The flier was tongue-in-cheek: “Everything must go! Including me!”
His red T-shirt stated plainly, “I AM UNDOCUMENTED,” and his aviator sunglasses hid the occasional tears. Tattoos dotted his extremities, including an anchor on his right leg with the words “I refuse to sink.”
“I think it hit me when I started packing my stuff today,” he told a former colleague, Shruti Garg, who had arrived early.
“But the way you’ve invited everyone to join you is so beautiful,” she replied.
One table held American pop-culture knickknacks — sippy cups with Ghostface from the movie “Scream,” collectible Mickey Mouse ears, a Detective Batman purse shaped like a comic book, another purse shaped like the locker from the ‘90s cartoon “Daria.”
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Negrete said the items reminded him of his youth and represented the gothic, quirky aspects of his personality.
“I was born in Mexico, but I don’t know Mexico,” he said. “So I’m leaving the American parts of me that are no longer going to serve me.”
The back yard slowly filled with loved ones from Negrete’s various social circles. There was his mostly queer softball team — the Peacocks — his running group, his chosen family and his blood family.
Negrete’s close friend Joel Menjivar looked solemn.
“I’m scared it’s going to start a movement,” he said. “Undocumented or DACA friends who are talented and integral to the fabric of L.A. might get ideas to leave.”
Another friend, Mario Mariscal, said he took Negrete’s decision the hardest, though at first he didn’t believe Negrete was serious. More than once he asked, “You really want to give up everything you’ve built here for a new start in Mexico?”
Eventually, Negrete had to tell Mariscal that his questions weren’t helpful. During a deeper conversation about his decision, Negrete shared that he was tired of living with the constant fear of getting picked up, herded into an unmarked van and taken away.
“I just kept telling him, ‘That’s not going to happen to you,’” Mariscal said. “But the more this administration keeps doing it, the more it’s in our face, the more we’re seeing every horror story about that, it became clear that, you know what, you do have a point. You do have to do what’s right for you.”
Negrete continues packing for his move to Mexico as roommate Martinez works at their Boyle Heights home.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete is cognizant of the privilege that makes his departure different from that of many other immigrants. He is white-passing, fluent in Spanish and English, and moved with $10,000 in savings.
In June, he was hired as executive director of a U.S.-based nonprofit, Old School Hub, that works to combat ageism around the world. The role allowed him to live wherever he wanted.
He decided to settle in Guadalajara, a growing technology hub, with historic buildings featuring Gothic architecture that he found beautiful. It also helped that Guadalajara has one of the country’s most vibrant LGBTQ+ scenes and is a four-hour drive from Puerto Vallarta, a renowned queer resort destination.
As Negrete began his new job while still in L.A., he picked a moving date — Sept. 4 — and booked a two-week Airbnb near the baseball stadium.
That Guadalajara’s team, the Charros de Jalisco, wore Dodger blue felt like a good omen.
On the day he left the United States, Negrete and Martinez hold a prayer at the beach in San Clemente in which Negrete offers thanks to the universe with an offering of a watermelon.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
On the drive toward the border, messages poured into Negrete’s phone.
“I’m sending you all my love Alessandro,” one read. “Cuídate. [Take care.] Know that even though you’re far away from home, you carry us with you.”
“Todo te va a salir bien,” read another. Everything will go well for you, it said. “Spread your wings and flyyyyy.”
Afraid of being stopped and detained at the airport, as has happened to other immigrants attempting to leave the country, Negrete preferred to drive to Tijuana and then fly to Guadalajara.
Negrete’s driver, his friend Jorge Leonardo, turned into a parking lot at the sign reading “LAST USA EXIT.”
Negrete put on his black felt tejana hat and called Iris Rodriguez, who was in the companion car. He asked her to cross on foot with him.
Negrete walks his last few steps on American soil as he enters Mexico en route to Guadalajara, his new home.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I don’t want to go alone,” he said.
“We’re still on American soil,” Leonardo said. “You can still change your mind.”
Negrete ignored him.
“See y’all on the other side,” he said as he hopped out of the car.
He and Rodriguez stopped for photos in front of a sign with an arrow pointing “To Mexico.” Around a corner, the border came into full view — a metal turnstile with layers of concertina wire above it.
The line for Mexicanos was unceremoniously quick. The immigration agent barely glanced at Negrete’s passport before waving him through.
On the other side, a busker sang “Piano Man” by Billy Joel in perfect English.
“Welcome to the motherland,” Rodriguez told him. Negrete let out a deep breath.
Negrete tours downtown Guadalajara, where he now lives.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete’s immediate family members, and almost all of his extended family, live in the U.S.
He was born in Manzanillo, Colima, in 1982. Three months later, the family relocated to Los Angeles, where his parents had two more children.
At 17, Negrete was one of two students in his graduating class at Roosevelt High School to get into UC Berkeley. That’s when he found out he didn’t have papers.
His parents had divorced and his father married a U.S. citizen, obtaining a green card when Negrete was at Roosevelt. They began the legalization process for Negrete in 1999, he said, but two years later he came out to his family as gay.
His father was unsupportive and refused to continue seeking to adjust his immigration status. By the time they mended their relationship, it was too late. Negrete had aged out of the pathway at 21.
In 2008, Negrete said, he was arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. Four years later, President Obama established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Negrete failed to qualify because of the DUI.
He said he got his record expunged in 2016, but — again — it was too late.
Negrete waited until his last night in the U.S. to tell his mother, who now lives in Colorado, that he was leaving. He had grown tired of friends and other family members begging him to change his mind.
He had partially hinged his decision on the fact that his mom was in remission from her third bout with cancer and had just obtained legal residency. With life more stable for her, he could finally seek stability for himself.
“You taught me to dream,” Negrete recalled telling her. “This is me dreaming. I want to see the world.”
She cried and scolded him, promising to visit and repeating what she had said when he came out to her all those years before: “I wish you told me sooner.”
At a hotel in Tijuana, Negrete’s emotions finally caught up with him.
The day after Negrete and his three friends left L.A., three more friends surprised him by arriving in Tijuana for a final Friday night out together. One of them presented a gift he had put together with help from Negrete’s entire social circle — a video with loved ones sharing messages of encouragement.
In Negrete’s hotel room, as he and his friends watched, the mood grew sentimental.
“You’re basically the one that formed the family friend tree,” one friend said in her clip. “Friendships do not die out in distance.”
Negrete sobbed. “Yes! Friendships don’t have borders,” he said.
“Every single one of you has said this hasn’t hit y’all, like it’s a mini vacation,” he said. “I want to think of it as an extended vacation.”
“This isn’t goodbye, this is we’ll see each other soon,” he continued.
Off his soapbox, Negrete then chided his friends for making him cry before heading to a drag show.
Negrete had a habit of leaving social gatherings abruptly. His friends joked that they would refer to him as “catch me on the 101” because every time he disappeared during a night out, they would open Apple’s Find My app and see him on the freeway heading home.
“We’re not gonna catch him on the 101 no more,” Martinez said.
The last few flights of stairs lead Iris Rodriguez and Negrete to his Airbnb apartment in Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
On the flight to Guadalajara, Negrete’s heart raced and he began to hyperventilate. The anxiety attack caught him off guard.
Negrete had worked hard to show his friends and family that he was happy, because he didn’t want them to think he had doubts — and he had none. But he began to worry about the unknown and to mourn his former dreams of gaining legal status and running for public office.
“It hit me all at once,” he recounted. “I am three hours away from a whole new life that I don’t know. I left everything and I don’t know what’s next.”
Many deep breaths by Negrete later, the plane descended through the clouds, revealing vibrant green fields and a cantaloupe-hued sunset.
Negrete tests the bed at his temporary home in Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Inside the Airbnb, he was surprised to find a clothesline instead of a dryer. Noticing the blue 5-gallon jug of water in the kitchen, he remarked that he would have to remember tap water wasn’t safe to cook with. But alongside the new was something familiar: The view from his 11–story apartment showed off a sprawling metropolis dotted with trees, some of them palms.
The next day started off like any Sunday, with a trip to Walmart and drag brunch.
Negrete marveled at the cost of a large carton of egg whites ($1) and was shocked to see eggs stored at room temperature, liquid laundry detergent in bags and only single-ply toilet paper. He treated himself to a Darth Vader coffee mug and a teapot featuring characters from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
After brunch, it was time to play tourist. Negrete was accompanied by Rodriguez, who stayed with him for the first two weeks, and a new friend, Alejandro Preciado, whom he had met at Coachella in April and happened to be a Guadajalara local.
Negrete tours downtown Guadalajara. He was drawn to the city, in part, by its Gothic architecture.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Their first stop was the city’s Spanish Renaissance cathedral, where Negrete said a quick prayer to the Virgin Mary at his mother’s request. Negrete treated his friends to an electric carriage ride around the historic buildings, where he excitedly pointed out the Gothic architecture, then they bought aguas frescas and walked through an open-air market, chatting in an English-heavy Spanglish.
“I’m trying to look at how people dress,” Negrete said, suddenly self-conscious about his short shorts. “I’m pretty sure I stand out.”
After dinner, Negrete was booking an Uber back to his Airbnb when a message popped up: “We’ve detected unusual activity.”
The app didn’t know he had moved.
Before he arrived in Guadalajara, Negrete had already joined an intramural baseball team and a running club. Practices began days after his arrival.
Negrete enjoys a view of the sprawling hills of Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Within a month, he moved into an apartment, visited Mexico City and reconnected with aunts in Mexico City and Guadalajara he hadn’t seen in decades.
He reflected on the small joys of greeting neighborhood señoras on morning dog walks, discovering the depths of Mexican cuisine and the peace of mind that came with no longer feeling like a target — though he’ll still freeze at the sight of police lights.
Still, Negrete remained glued to U.S. politics. In late September, the federal government detailed plans to begin processing initial DACA applications for the first time in four years. Had Negrete stayed in the U.S., he would have finally qualified for a reprieve.
He isn’t regretful.
Lorca greets Negrete as he arrives home after touring Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
His new dreams are wide-ranging. He wants to buy a house in Rosarito, where friends and family from L.A. could visit him. He wants to travel the world, starting with a trip to Spain. And he wants to help U.S. organizations build resources for other immigrants who are considering repatriating.
The goal isn’t to encourage people to leave, he said, but to show them they have agency.
“I actually did it,” he said. “I did it, and I’m OK.”
Now, he said, Mexico feels like an estranged relative that he’s getting to know again.
Like a teenager armed with their first smartphone, President Trump’s masked immigration enforcers love nothing more than to mug for friendly cameras.
They gladly invite pseudo-filmmakers — some federal government workers, others conservative influencers or pro-Trump reporters — to embed during raids so they can capture every tamale lady agents slam onto the sidewalk, every protester they pelt with pepper balls, every tear gas canister used to clear away pesky activists. From that mayhem comes slickly produced videos that buttress the Trump administration’s claim that everyone involved in the push to boot illegal immigrants from the U.S. is a hero worthy of cinematic love.
But not everything that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and its sister agencies do shows up in their approved rivers of reels.
Their propagandists aren’t highlighting the story of Jaime Alanís García, a Mexican farmworker who fell 30 feet to his death in Camarillo this summer while trying to escape one of the largest immigration raids in Southern California in decades.
They’re not making videos about 39-year-old Ismael Ayala-Uribe, an Orange County resident who moved to this country from Mexico as a 4-year-old and died in a Victorville hospital in September after spending weeks in ICE custody complaining about his health.
They’re not addressing how ICE raids led to the deaths of Josué Castro Rivera and Carlos Roberto Montoya, Central American nationals run over and killed by highway traffic in Virginia and Monrovia while fleeing in terror. Or what happened to Silverio Villegas González, shot dead in his car as he tried to speed away from two ICE agents in suburban Chicago.
Those men are just some of the 20-plus people who have died in 2025 while caught up in ICE’s machine — the deadliest year for the agency in two decades, per NPR.
Publicly, the Department of Homeland Security has described those incidents as “tragic” while assigning blame to everything but itself. For instance, a Homeland Security official told the Associated Press that Castro Rivera’s death was “a direct result of every politician, activist and reporter who continue to spread propaganda and misinformation about ICE’s mission and ways to avoid detention” — whatever the hell that means.
An ICE spokesperson asked for more time to respond to my request for comment, said “Thank you Sir” when I extended my deadline, then never got back to me. Whatever the response would’ve been, Trump’s deportation Leviathan looks like it’s about to get deadlier.
As reported by my colleagues Andrea Castillo and Rachel Uranga, his administration plans to get rid of more than half of ICE’s field office directors due to grumblings from the White House that the deportations that have swamped large swaths of the United States all year haven’t happened faster and in larger numbers.
Asked for comment, Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, described The Times’ questions as “sensationalism” and added “only the media would describe standard agency personnel changes as a ‘massive shakeup.’”
Agents are becoming more brazen as more of them get hired thanks to billions of dollars in new funds. In Oakland, one fired a chemical round into the face of a Christian pastor from just feet away. In Santa Ana, another pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at activists who had been trailing him from a distance in their car. In the Chicago area, a woman claimed a group of them fired pepper balls at her car even though her two young children were inside.
La migra knows they can act with impunity because they have the full-throated backing of the White House. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller crowed on Fox News recently, “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.”
That’s not actually true, but when have facts mattered to this presidency if it gets in the way of its apocalyptic goals?
Greg Bovino, El Centro Border Patrol sector chief, center, walks with federal agents near an ICE detention facility in Broadview, Ill.
(Erin Hooley / Associated Press)
Tasked with turning up the terror dial to 11 is Gregory Bovino, a longtime Border Patrol sector chief based out of El Centro, Calif., who started the year with a raid in Kern County so egregious that a federal judge slammed it as agents “walk[ing] up to people with brown skin and say[ing], ‘Give me your papers.’” A federal judge ordered him to check in with her every day for the foreseeable future after the Border Patrol tear-gassed a neighborhood in a Chicago suburb that was about to host its annual Halloween children’s parade (an appeals court has temporarily blocked the move).
Bovino now reports directly to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and is expected to pick most of the ICE field office directors from Customs and Border Protection, the arm of the federal government that the Border Patrol belongs to. It logged 180 immigrant deaths under its purview for the 2023 fiscal year, the last year for which stats are publicly available and the third straight year that the number had increased.
To put someone like Bovino in charge of executing Trump’s deportation plans is like gifting a gas refinery to an arsonist.
He’s constantly trying to channel the conquering ethos of Wild West, complete with a strutting posse of agents — some with cowboy hats — following him everywhere, white horses trailed by American flags for photo ops and constant shout-outs to “Ma and Pa America” when speaking to the media. When asked by a CBS News reporter recently when his self-titled “Mean Green Machine” would end its Chicago campaign — one that has seen armed troops march through downtown and man boats on the Chicago River like they were patrolling Baghdad — Bovino replied, “When all the illegal aliens [self-deport] and/or we arrest ‘em all.”
Such scorched-earth jibber-jabber underlines a deportation policy under which the possibility of death for those it pursues is baked into its foundation. ICE plans to hire dozens of healthcare workers — doctors, nurses, psychiatrists — in anticipation of Trump’s plans to build more detention camps, many slated for inhospitable locations like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz camp in the Florida Everglades. That was announced to the world on social media with an AI-generated image of grinning alligators wearing MAGA caps — as if the White House was salivating at the prospect of desperate people trying to escape only to find certain carnage.
In his CBS News interview, Bovino described the force his team has used in Chicago — where someone was shot and killed, a pastors got hit with pepper balls from high above and the sound of windshields broken by immigration agents looking to snatch someone from their cars is now part of the Windy City’s soundtrack — as “exemplary.” The Border Patrol’s peewee Patton added he felt his guys used “the least amount of force necessary to accomplish the mission. If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them.”
One shudders to think what Bovino thinks is excessive for la migra. With his powers now radically expanded, we’re about to find out.
Police chases increased tenfold in the six months after Chief Todd Chamberlain broadened the Aurora Police Department’s policy to allow officers to pursue stolen vehicles and suspected drunk drivers, a move that made Aurora one of the most permissive large police agencies along the Front Range.
Aurora officers carried out more chases in the six months after the policy change than in the last five years combined, according to data provided by the police department in response to open records requests from The Denver Post.
The city’s officers conducted 148 pursuits between March 6 — the day after the policy change — and Sept. 2, the data shows. That’s up from just 14 police chases in that same timeframe in 2024, and well above Aurora officers’ 126 chases across five years between 2020 and 2024.
The number of people injured in pursuits more than quintupled, with about one in five chases resulting in injury after the policy change, the data shows. That 20% injury rate is lower than the rate over the last five years, when the agency saw 25% of pursuits end with injury.
Chamberlain, who declined to speak with The Post for this story, has heralded the department’s new approach to pursuits as an important tool for curbing crime. Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman believes the change has already had a “dramatic impact” on crime in the city.
However, the effect of the increased pursuits on overall crime trends is difficult to gauge, with crime generally declining across the state, including in Denver, which has a more restrictive policy and many fewer police pursuits.
“You throw a big net out there, occasionally you do catch a few big fish,” said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha. “But you also end up with the pursuit policy causing more accidents and injuries.”
Of those 87 arrestees, 67 had a criminal history, 25 were wanted on active warrants, 18 were on probation and seven were on parole, the monitor found.
“What we find is that people who steal cars, it’s not a joyriding thing, it’s not a one-off, they tend to be career criminals who use these vehicles to commit other crimes,” Coffman said. “There seems to be a pattern that when we do apprehend a car thief, they tend to have warrants out for their arrest, and we do see the pattern of stealing vehicles to commit other crimes. So we are really catching repeat offenders when we apprehend the driver and/or passengers.”
The soaring number of pursuits was largely driven by stolen vehicle chases, which accounted for 103 of the 148 pursuits since the policy change, the data shows.
Auto theft in Aurora dropped 42% year-over-year between January and September, continuing a downward trend that began in 2023. In Denver, where officers do not chase stolen vehicles, auto theft has declined 36% so far in 2025 compared to 2024.
Denver police officers conducted just nine pursuits between March 6 and Sept. 2, and just 16 so far in 2025, data from the department shows. Four suspects and one officer were injured across those 16 chases.
“I think there are broader societal factors at work,” Nix said of the decline in crime, which has been seen across the nation and follows a dramatic pandemic-era spike. “When something goes up, it is bound to come down pretty drastically.”
Aurora officers apprehended fleeing drivers in 53% of all pursuits, and in 51% of pursuits for stolen vehicles between March and September, the police data shows.
Coffman said that shows officers and their supervisors are judiciously calling off pursuits that become too dangerous. He also noted that every pursuit is carefully reviewed by the police chain of command and called the new policy a “work in progress.”
“I get that it is not without controversy,” Coffman said. “There wouldn’t be the collateral accidents if not for the policy. So it is a tradeoff. It is not an easy decision and it is going to always be in flux.”
Thirty-three people were injured in Aurora police chases between March 6 and Sept. 2, up from six injured in that time frame last year. Those hurt included 24 suspects, five officers and four drivers in other vehicles.
One bystander and one suspect were seriously injured, according to the police data.
The independent monitor noted in its October report that it was “generally pleased” with officers’ judgments during pursuits, supervisors’ actions and the post-pursuit administrative review process, with “two notable exceptions” that have been “elevated for additional review and potential disciplinary action.”
The monitor also flagged an increase in failed Precision Immobilization Technique, or PIT, maneuvers during pursuits, which it attributed to officer inexperience. The group recommended more training on the maneuvers, which are designed to end pursuits, and renewed its call for the department to install dash cameras in its patrol cars, which the agency has not done.
“It sounds reasonable,” Coffman said of the dash camera recommendation. “They are not cheap and we need to budget for it.”
‘No magic number’
It’s up to city leadership to determine if the benefits of police chases outweigh the predictable harms, and there is no “magic number,” Nix said.
“When you chase that much, bad outcomes are going to happen,” he said. “People are going to get hurt, sometimes innocent third parties that have nothing to do with the chase. You know that is going to be a collateral consequence of doing that many chases. So knowing that, you should really be able to point to the community safety benefit that doing this many chases bring.”
The majority of large Front Range law enforcement agencies limit pursuits to situations in which the driver is suspected of a violent felony or poses an immediate risk of injury or death to others if not quickly apprehended.
Among 18 law enforcement agencies reviewed by The Post this spring, only Aurora and the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office explicitly allow pursuits of suspected drunk drivers. The sheriff’s office allows such pursuits only if the driver stays under the posted speed limit.
Aurora officers pursued suspected impaired drivers 13 times between March and September, the data shows, with five chases ending in injury.
Omar Montgomery, president of the Aurora NAACP, said he is a “cautious neutral” about the policy change, but would like Aurora police to meet with community members to explain the impact in more detail.
“People in the community do not want people on the streets who are causing harm to other individuals and who are committing crimes that makes our city unsafe,” he said. “We want them off the streets just as bad as anyone else. We also want to make sure that innocent people who are not part of the situation are not getting harmed.”
Topazz McBride, a community activist in Aurora, said she has been disappointed by what she sees as Chamberlain’s unwillingness to engage with community members who disagree with him.
“Do I trust them to use the process effectively and responsibly with all fairness and equity to everyone they pursue? No. I do not trust that,” she said. “And I don’t understand why he wouldn’t be willing to talk about it. Why not?”
Montgomery also wants police to track crashes that happen immediately after a police officer ends a pursuit, when an escaping suspect might still be speeding and driving recklessly.
“They are still going 80 or 90 mph and they end up hitting someone or running into a building,” he said. “And now you have this person who that has caused harm, believing that they are still being chased.”
The police department did not include the case of Rajon Belt-Stubblefield, who was shot and killed Aug. 30 by an officer after he sped away from an attempted traffic stop, among its pursuits this year. Video of the incident shows the officer followed Belt-Stubblefield’s vehicle with his lights and sirens on for just under a minute over about 7/10ths of a mile before Belt-Stubblefield crashed.
Police spokesman Matthew Longshore said the incident was not a pursuit.
“The officer was stationary, running radar when the vehicle sped past, and the officer was accelerating (with both lights and siren eventually) to catch up to the vehicle,” Longshore said. “The officer did not determine nor declare that he was in pursuit of the suspect’s vehicle before the suspect crashed into the two other vehicles.”
The officer, who has not been publicly identified, killed Belt-Stubblefield in an ensuing confrontation. Belt-Stubblefield, who was under the influence of alcohol, tossed a gun to the ground and was unarmed when he was shot.
Whether or not a pursuit preceded his death was one of several questions raised in the independent monitor’s Oct. 15 report, which characterized the shooting and the department’s response to the killing as a setback in otherwise improving community relations.
A woman reportedly drove the wrong way on the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro late Saturday and crashed into a car carrying five people including a baby.
The suspect, who was driving a white SUV eastbound in the westbound lanes of the bridge, was arrested at the scene.
A witness near the incident said the vehicle that was struck carried four adults and a child, according to ABC7, and one person was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
A woman is arrested late Saturday after a collision on the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro.
(OnScene.TV)
Not far from the scene, an unrelated accident turned deadly on Saturday night.
Around 11 p.m., a driver lost control of their Mustang after driving at high speeds, leading them to crash into a power pole at 22nd Street and Harbor Boulevard in San Pedro, according to Los Angeles police.
A teen in the passenger seat died from injuries sustained in the crash, police said.
The driver, a juvenile, sustained minor injuries and was booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter.
A spokesperson with the Los Angeles Police Department said detectives were investigating the crash.
A single-car wreck on Saturday night in San Pedro led to the death of a teenage boy.
A man was taken into custody late Tuesday after driving his car into a security barrier outside the White House, authorities said.The U. S. Secret Service said the man crashed into the security gate at a White House entrance at 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday. The man was immediately arrested by officers from the Secret Service’s uniformed division, the agency said.Investigators searched his car and deemed it to be safe, Secret Service officials said in a statement.Authorities did not immediately provide any additional information about the crash, the driver’s identity, or any potential motivation.
WASHINGTON —
A man was taken into custody late Tuesday after driving his car into a security barrier outside the White House, authorities said.
The U. S. Secret Service said the man crashed into the security gate at a White House entrance at 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday. The man was immediately arrested by officers from the Secret Service’s uniformed division, the agency said.
Investigators searched his car and deemed it to be safe, Secret Service officials said in a statement.
Authorities did not immediately provide any additional information about the crash, the driver’s identity, or any potential motivation.
Yaakov Kilberg, 19, was driving the Mazda carrying all four victims, according to the Asbury Park Press. Aharon Lebovits, Shlomo Cohen and Chaim Grossman, all 18, were passengers in the vehicle, the outlet reported.
Christopher Neff, a 41-year-old resident of Westminster, Colorado, was identified by police as the pickup driver, Philadelphia NBC affiliate WCAU reported. He suffered serious injuries in the wreck and was hospitalized, authorities said.
Police said around 12:40 a.m., Neff was traveling northbound in the southbound lanes about 25 miles southwest of Philadelphia, according to local CBS affiliate KYW. The teens were headed southbound when Neff collided with them head-on, then a tractor-trailer struck their vehicle from behind, police said.
“A simultaneous winching operation and extrication on the second vehicle determined, unfortunately, that four occupants had succumbed to their injuries,” the Carneys Point Fire Department wrote on Facebook.
Kilberg, Lebovits and Cohen were residents of Lakewood, N.J., while Grossman lived in Fallsburg, N.Y. They were reportedly Yeshiva students enjoying a weekend break.
When his date pulled out handcuffs, the man thought it was for consensual sex.
He submitted to having his wrists cuffed and ankles bound together. Then the other man pulled out a baseball bat.
The Feb. 22 incident, recounted in a detective’s affidavit, began on Grindr, a hookup app for gay men. It ended with the handcuffed man badly injured — but alive.
With his cooperation, detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department said, they identified his alleged assailant as Rockim Prowell, 34, and suspected it wasn’t the first time he’d lured a victim using Grindr.
Prowell was charged in September with killing two men whose deaths had gone unsolved for years, authorities said.
“We needed to connect the dots,” said Det. Ray Lugo of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Prowell has yet to enter a plea to charges of murder, attempted murder, carjacking, robbery, burglary and assault. His attorney, Deputy Public Defender Carlos Bido, didn’t return a request for comment.
The trail of evidence that led detectives to Prowell began in 2021, authorities say, when a married father of five left home at 1 a.m. for a date with a man he’d met online.
Inglewood police officers found Miguel Angel King’s white Toyota CHR parked on Queen Street the afternoon of July 22, 2021. The vehicle’s hatchback area, Lugo said, was covered in blood.
King, 51, had been reported missing by his wife and children days earlier, Lugo said.
A native of Tijuana who came to Los Angeles as a child, King raised five children, including three girls he adopted from foster care, said his daughter, Angela King. He worked hard, running a child-care business and helping his sister with a burger restaurant, she said.
As the family waited for news, Angela King said she tried to convince herself that her father was just taking an unannounced vacation.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she recalled. “I was scared. My father was home every single night, every single day.”
Lugo and his partner, Det. Leo Sanchez, reviewed King’s phone data and learned it was last active near a lagoon in Playa del Rey. Sheriff’s divers searched the water but found nothing.
On Aug. 14, 2021, police discovered a decomposed body in the Angeles National Forest above Glendora, Lugo said. Two weeks later, the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner identified the remains as King’s. The cause of death was a single gunshot to the head.
Then the case went cold.
Robert Gutierrez left home in South Los Angeles the evening of Aug. 21, 2023, an LAPD detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit. He told his nephew he was meeting someone he’d encountered on Grindr.
Launched in 2009, Grindr is now a publicly traded company that claims more than 14 million users in 190 countries and territories.
In a written statement, a Grindr spokesperson said the company cooperates with law enforcement and encourages people to use its video calling feature to verify connections for safety before meeting in person.
“We take our role as a connector for the queer community seriously and work diligently to provide a safe environment for our users,” the spokesperson said.
Police around the world have investigated homicides where killers met their victims on Grindr. In London, authorities investigated the deaths of four men in 2014 and 2015 who were drugged, raped and killed by a suspect they’d met on Grindr, the BBC reported.
In 2023, a Scottish father of two was killed by a 19-year-old he’d met on Grindr. Only after Paul Taylor’s death did his family learn of his double life.
“I will never have the opportunity to hear from Paul about his lifestyle choices,” his widow told a court, according to the BBC, “but I do not judge him.”
Two days after Gutierrez left home, his nephew reported him missing.
According to a search warrant affidavit, LAPD detectives searched impound logs and city license plate readers for Gutierrez’s black Infiniti FX35, finding nothing. His bank records showed someone had used his credit card to pay the $132.60 monthly rent for a storage unit in San Bernardino.
When detectives got a court order to search Gutierrez’s Grindr account, they saw he’d made plans to meet someone at an apartment building on Imperial Highway in Inglewood, according to the affidavit.
The man’s name: Rockim Lee Prowell.
Prowell had a modest criminal record, but nothing to indicate violence. Detectives from the Beverly Hills Police Department arrested him in 2021 for burglary and theft, according to a probation report.
The previous year, police were alerted to an intruder at a vacant five-bedroom house. They found a shattered sliding glass door and two televisions missing, the probation report said. In April 2021, a real estate agent showing a $19-million, 7,500-square-foot home arrived to find the property burglarized and three televisions stolen, according to the report.
From surveillance footage, detectives identified the suspect’s car as a black Toyota Prius. In the video, the suspect appeared to be a white man with long curly brown hair, according to a law enforcement source who wasn’t authorized to discuss the case publicly and requested anonymity.
Two weeks later, Beverly Hills officers spotted the Prius at Lexington Road and Beverly Drive, the probation report said. The car was outfitted with a stolen license plate.
Prowell was behind the wheel. Inside the car, detectives found a brunette wig and a rubber mask resembling a white male that the law enforcement source said looked realistic enough to be “movie quality.”
According to the probation report, Prowell, who is Black, admitted burglarizing the houses in Beverly Hills. He was homeless and had “fallen on tough times,” he said.
He looked up properties that were listed for sale, knowing they’d be vacant, and burglarized them for televisions that he sold online, Prowell told police. With his background in construction, he said he knew that turning off the homes’ circuit breakers would disable their surveillance systems.
The law enforcement official said Prowell was linked to burglaries in North Hollywood, Van Nuys, West L.A., Santa Monica, South Pasadena and Newport Beach, but there is no record of him being charged for those alleged crimes.
Charged with burglary, grand theft and vandalism for the Beverly Hills break-ins, Prowell was released on bail May 6, 2021. He pleaded no contest four months later to two counts of burglary and one count of grand theft.
When it came to the sentence that Prowell would receive, a probation officer wrote that his “callous and premeditated” crimes would have continued if he hadn’t been caught. But with no prior criminal history, Prowell was eligible for probation.
The judge agreed with the officer’s recommendation of no jail time, sentencing Prowell to two years’ probation.
By then, authorities allege, Prowell had already killed.
Around 3 a.m. on Feb. 22, 2025, LAPD officers raced to 59th Place in South L.A., where they’d been dispatched by a report of “unknown trouble,” a detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit.
They found a 40-year-old man with a broken leg, according to the affidavit and a statement by the L.A. County district attorney. The man, who is not named in the affidavit, told the officers a harrowing story.
After messaging for months on Grindr, he and a man made plans to meet for the first time. His date, whose name he didn’t know, sent him an address. When he arrived, the man said he allowed himself to be handcuffed and have his ankles bound, thinking they were going to have consensual sex.
Instead, his date pepper-sprayed him, beat him with a metal bat and demanded the PIN to his bank cards, he told police. After covering his eyes with a blindfold, gagging him with a sock and taping his mouth shut, the suspect dragged the man to a car, threatening to put him in the trunk.
The man said he managed to get his legs free and ran out the garage door, screaming.
The suspect — identified by police as Prowell — started the car and crashed into the man, breaking his leg. He got out of the car and tried to persuade the victim to come back inside, even removing the handcuffs, the affidavit said.
Instead, the victim took off running and asked a neighbor to call the police. By the time the officers arrived, the suspect alleged to be Prowell had vanished.
The victim recalled his date’s Grindr username, and detectives served a search warrant on the company, court records show.
It’s unclear how detectives identified Prowell as the suspect, but Lugo said the surviving victim’s account was the break authorities needed.
“Our case was a lot of circumstantial evidence,” Lugo said.
When detectives searched a home associated with Prowell in Inglewood, they found Gutierrez’s Infiniti in the garage, according to a statement from the L.A. County district attorney’s office. His body has still not been found.
Last month, prosecutors charged Prowell with murdering King and Gutierrez and attempting to kill the third victim who described being bound, assaulted and hit with a car.
If convicted, Prowell faces life in prison without parole or the death penalty, prosecutors said in a statement. The district attorney’s office has yet to make a decision whether to seek capital punishment.
Angela King said she wanted her father to be known for more than how he died.
She cited the Gospel of Matthew: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”
VIDEO: Utah family wake surfs in their backyard after record rainfall
Problem here and of course *** Farmington family decided to make the most of the mess this weekend, attempting to wake surf in their backyard. *** lot of water coming into the yard, nonstop, and my husband’s hunting, and I thought, there’s nothing I can do about this. So my kids started planning it and then I thought, I think we can do one better. So I grabbed *** ski rope and we put it on the back of the car and off we went. Were you worried about your kids getting hurt or dragged behind your car because we’re gonna have to say, you know, don’t try this at home. Um. You know, I was, I was careful. I’ll say I was careful, but I think sometimes we’re too careful in this world, so I think *** little bit of excitement’s OK. Stacy Durius has 4 older brothers, and she got one of them to jump in on the fun. They are usually the ones that are telling me to do crazy things and getting me when I was younger to do crazy things, and now I’m the younger sister who brings them to come and play with me too. He’s putting on his wetsuit and getting right in, her kids watching from the back of her car. Stacey says she’s never seen this kind of water in her yard and corral area here in Farmington, where she runs *** small farm and keeps horses. The record rainfall Saturday transformed this into *** muddy mess. I was like, Oh man, the kids are going to be *** mess. And then I thought, you know what, let’s just make the best of this, um, and go have some fun. And it looks like they did.
VIDEO: Utah family wake surfs in their backyard after record rainfall
A Utah family decided to make the most of the mud and water by attempting to wakesurf in their backyard after Saturday’s record rainfall.”A lot of water coming into the yard nonstop, and my husband’s hunting. I thought there’s nothing I can do about this, and my kids started playing in it, and I thought I think we can do one better, so I grabbed a ski rope and put it on the back of the car, and off we went,” Stacie Dorius said.Dorius has four older brothers, and she was able to get one of them to jump into the fun as well. “They are usually the ones doing crazy things and getting me when I was younger to do crazy things and now I’m the younger sister who brings them to come and play with me, too,” Dorius said. Dorius’ brother put on his wetsuit and got right in, while her kids watched from the back of her car, as they were pulling him. Dorius said she has never seen this kind of water in her yard and corral area in Utah. However, the record rainfall transformed her small farm into a muddy mess.
FARMINGTON, Utah —
A Utah family decided to make the most of the mud and water by attempting to wakesurf in their backyard after Saturday’s record rainfall.
“A lot of water coming into the yard nonstop, and my husband’s hunting. I thought there’s nothing I can do about this, and my kids started playing in it, and I thought I think we can do one better, so I grabbed a ski rope and put it on the back of the car, and off we went,” Stacie Dorius said.
Dorius has four older brothers, and she was able to get one of them to jump into the fun as well.
“They are usually the ones doing crazy things and getting me when I was younger to do crazy things and now I’m the younger sister who brings them to come and play with me, too,” Dorius said.
Dorius’ brother put on his wetsuit and got right in, while her kids watched from the back of her car, as they were pulling him.
Dorius said she has never seen this kind of water in her yard and corral area in Utah. However, the record rainfall transformed her small farm into a muddy mess.
