Over 100 firefighters battled a “city-block-sized” fire that destroyed multiple homes in South Los Angeles early Tuesday, displacing families and injuring at least three people, fire officials said.
Around 3:20 a.m., crews responding to the 1500 block of East Vernon Avenue in Central-Alameda found an apartment building under construction engulfed in flames and downed power lines, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Neighboring residents were awakened and told to evacuate as firefighters defended the surrounding buildings.
A 66-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman were taken to a hospital for serious burns, and a 30-year-old man was evaluated at the scene but declined to be taken by paramedics for further treatment, according to authorities.
Nearby residents were evacuated due to the massive fire, which spread to seven other buildings, five of them a total loss.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Seven buildings were damaged in the fire, and five are considered a total loss, the Fire Department said. The American Red Cross and the Los Angeles Emergency Management Department are assisting 17 people whose homes were destroyed.
It took 140 firefighters 78 minutes to put out the fire, with some firefighters from the Los Angeles County Fire Department called in to assist.
Arson investigators are on the scene as part of the city’s protocol for structure fires, but the cause of the fire is still under investigation and it’s not clear when authorities will make a determination, LAFD spokesperson Margaret Stewart said. The blaze tore quickly through the open-sided wooden frame of the building that was under construction.
“When you have a building that’s in the framing stages, it’s going to burn hot and fast because you have all of the wood exposed and nothing stops; there’s no compartmentalization,” Stewart said. “There’s nothing that stops the flame so it goes up very hot, very fast, which then exposes anything that’s around it.”
Gerardo Diaz, 30, heard his father screaming in the early morning. That’s when he saw the flames outside their home.
Diaz dragged his father, whose mobility is limited from a previous stroke, out of the house.
“When we came out the door, we already had the flames on our porch,” Diaz said after the fire was put out. “I don’t know — it’s just like a blink of an eye. All of a sudden it burned down.”
Half of the house burned down and his truck was damaged, Diaz said, but he was grateful that his family was able to escape relatively unharmed. “The heat was so hot,” his 12-year-old niece, Kimberly Erendira, said.
Raymon Chaidec, 58, woke up around 3 a.m. to booms and yells outside his house. He looked out the window and saw an out-of-control fire towering above the utility poles on his street.
“It was way up there, even taller than the poles that you see are now burned,” he said, motioning his hands to the sky.
Chaidec raced out of the house with his daughter, and they watched from their driveway as the fire engulfed the construction site across the street and encroached onto their property.
“We were ready to run,” he said. “We were scared when we saw the fire get a little close to our house, but nothing was damaged. We are so, so lucky.”
Aaron Vazquez, 28, heard explosions and felt his home vibrating. He looked out the window and saw orange, but didn’t think it was a fire.
“I thought it was an ambulance,” Vazquez said. “I look out the kitchen window and all I see are flames. There were dogs in the back, from the neighbors in the back, that were whimpering and crying.”
Firefighters douse the smoldering wreckage of the apartment building that was under construction.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Vazquez was able to get his family out of the home but went back inside for his cat. Intense heat radiated from the fire burning next door as he searched for his cat, which he eventually found.
“It was a huge inferno,” he said.
Vazquez’s home was not destroyed, but he thinks there was some water and smoke damage. The sides of adjacent homes were burned from the heat that radiated off the fire at the construction site.
Several hours after the fire started, neighbors watched from the sidewalk as crews demolished the ruins of the building that had been under construction. A bulldozer knocked over the remaining charred wooden planks to prevent any of the wood from smoldering, LAFD Capt. Carlos Caceres said, after crews convinced city officials that the building was beyond repair.
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Nathan Solis, Irfan Khan, Ashley Ahn, Karen Garcia
Freda Horton woke up on a Friday morning to a barrage of frantic texts from friends and family. “Are you OK?” they asked. There had been a fire reported at Gossip Grill the previous night just half an hour after Horton’s shift ended. She works as a bartender at the beloved lesbian bar in San Diego.
Firefighters on the scene of the Oct. 20 blaze, which started in the outside patio, were able to knock it down before the flames reached the rest of the establishment — but not before an estimated $7,000 in damages had been done. News of the suspected arson at the bar spread quickly in Hillcrest, a prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood in San Diego.
Patrons and fans rallied, focused on restoring this haven for the queer community to its old self. But despite the superficial nature of the fire and the relative ease it took for the bar to recover financially, the fear it caused among some patrons was not so easily quelled.
Those who spoke with The Times in the aftermath of the fire said that, in a world where violence against queer people has become all too commonplace, safe spaces are crucial to the community. For some, the incident at Gossip Grill, one of Southern California’s few lesbian bars, shook their sense of safety.
Alyssa G., left, Paloma M., Camille K. and Melanie Quijano share a toast on Nov. 4 at Gossip Grill.
(Jireh Deng / Los Angeles Times)
The morning after the fire, Horton said volunteers wielding work tools rallied to overhaul the damages, and even a tattoo artist donated proceeds from their work to help them recoup losses. The following week, they were back to business as usual, if not even more busy, Horton said, as patrons flooded the establishment and bought drinks to help raise money for repairs.
“We’re already taken care of it. You got a group of lesbians and a Home Depot card — come on now,” Horton said with a laugh.
There was no evidence that the arson was a result of a hate crime. San Diego police arrested Ryan Habrel, 38, on suspicion of two counts of arson with the special allegation that he used a device to accelerate the spread of the fire. Habrel has pleaded not guilty to the charges and remains in custody at a San Diego County jail in lieu of $150,000 bail. He has also been ordered by a judge to stay away from Gossip Grill as well as other local restaurants owned by the same conglomerate, Mo’s Universe Restaurant Group, including Hillcrest Brewing Co., Urban MO’s, insideOUT, Baja Betty’s and Barrel & Board.
Habrel’s next court appearance is set for Dec. 18, according to online jail records. The Times was unable to reach a legal representative for Habrel, and the San Diego County district attorney’s office declined to comment as the case is ongoing.
Although the arson was fresh in patrons’ memory, just two weekends later, the bar was buoyant. Leftover Halloween decorations hung overhead as people rocked and swayed on the Gossip Grill dance floor to a range of music genres, from Afrobeats to disco.
Gossip Grill is just a skate ride down the block for Hillcrest resident Melanie Quijano. She’s been a regular at the bar for the last five years and on a recent weekend was celebrating a reunion and a birthday among her friends. She said the Hillcrest community has always been welcoming to its queer residents.
Although the fire was upsetting, she was upbeat: “S— just happens. Gossip opened up the next day, completely fine.”
Two patrons sway to the music on the dance floor of Gossip Grill in San Diego.
(Jireh Deng / Los Angeles Times)
Others felt the incident shouldn’t be quickly dismissed, hate crime or not. Kristin Brill was in San Diego over the weekend to attend a Doja Cat concert with friends, but she had seen the news of the fire on social media. Where Brill lives in Montana, there aren’t many queer bars, which make her yearly visits to Gossip Grill even more sacrosanct. The 27-year-old said the fire, regardless of the motive behind it, dredged up the hostility to the community that’s been documented in the news.
She said attacks like the shooting in Florida’s Pulse Nightclub had normalized violence against queer people. “There’s amped-up racism and homophobia everywhere,” Brill said. “There’s tons of anti-trans laws being passed.”
That hate toward LGBTQ+ people is what drives them to seek safe spaces like Gossip Grill. Camille K. (who declined to provide their full last name because of their active military service) recently moved to San Diego for work and was elated to be surrounded by others in the queer community. Growing up in the Midwest, they noted the high suicide rates among queer youth and said loneliness and a lack of representation could be at their root.
“You can go online. You can see people that identify as who you are,” K added. But that online support cannot rival the euphoria of being physically surrounded by affirming representation. “Coming into this space, it’s a whole new realm.”
And it’s not just the lesbians who find their welcome home at Gossip Grill. Hillcrest, as a gayborhood, is home to a number of queer bars lining University Avenue. Anthony Patton, a local social worker who’s lived in San Diego for three years, said Gossip Grill ranks as his favorite local bar for its authentic and warm atmosphere.
“Unlike other bars in the Hillcrest area, I made connections just off the cuff — it’s been genuine. I feel able to be free and express myself and dance and be accepted,” Patton said. Sometimes in other gay bars, he notices that people move in cliques or can be judgmental before deciding to strike up a friendly conversation. “Being a gay Black male, oddly enough, Gossip Grill is the place where I feel the most at home.”
Anthony Patton dances beneath decorations left over from Halloween celebrations at Gossip Grill.
(Jireh Deng / Los Angeles Times)
On the wall of Gossip Grill’s outdoor patio, a neon pink sign, “Welcome Home Beautiful,” greets people as they walk into the bar. “[That’s] our whole motto,” said Horton of their bar’s values. “We want to be your home away from home.”
Like Horton, bartender Justin Nelson has worked at Gossip Grill since it opened 14 years ago — he’s affectionately known as the “lesbro” of the team. Horton remembers seeing the bar outgrow its first location, also in Hillcrest, within six months of opening. “We literally had our little dance floor in front of the bathrooms with a DJ sitting in a windowsill,” Horton said. The bar opened at its present location in 2009.
During the pandemic, the bar survived when many others shut down by finding unique ways to get people to support the business. They sold alcohol by the bottle as well as home-delivered food. “I literally dressed up in a blow-up unicorn outfit and hand-delivered food to our guests.”
Freda Horton, left, and Lindsey Leavitt, bartenders at Gossip Grill, prepare one of their nonalcoholic cocktails, Lady Business.
(Jireh Deng / Los Angeles Times)
But what’s stayed true for Horton and for Gossip Grill over the years is a commitment to making room for everyone — whether that’s meant raising awareness for the Black Lives Matter movement or welcoming trans women in the community. That spirit is at the foundation of the establishment. Nurturing the community around their bar has been one of Horton’s greatest joys.
“You get to watch the baby gays grow up and become an incredible powerful part of our community,” Horton said. “And that’s been an honor for us because they come in at 21 and they’re still coming in now in their mid to late 30s.”
Times staff writer Jeremy Childs contributed to this report.
A South Gate man was arrested on suspicion of breaking into and vandalizing a 106-year-old Catholic church building in Irwindale, police said.
Irwindale police were called to Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission at 16239 Arrow Highway on Wednesday after a witness reported seeing someone at the front door, police said in a news release.
When officers arrived, they found someone had shattered a stained glass window and broken into the mission, police said.
The suspect was identified as Martin Garcia, 36.
According to the police statement, Garcia had ransacked the inside of the mission and was booked on vandalism charges.
Built from thousands of rocks from the San Gabriel River that were carried in wheelbarrows and with donkeys, Our Lady of Guadalupe opened in 1917, when the first Mass was celebrated inside the small chapel.
In 1990, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles found it would not be able to pay for needed improvements to make the church able to withstand a major earthquake. Irwindale officials took over the church that year, paying $270,000 for the 100-by-200-foot chapel and the adjacent lot. The city now makes the chapel available for rental.
A magnitude 3.5 earthquake was reported early Monday about 22 miles from Bakersfield, Calif., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The earthquake occurred at 2:37 a.m. and was about 25 miles from Tehachapi, 29 miles from California City and 32 miles from Arvin, Calif.
In the last 10 days, there have been no earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.
An average of 234 earthquakes with magnitudes between 3.0 and 4.0 occur per year in California and Nevada, according to a recent three-year data sample.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 2.7 miles. Did you feel this earthquake? Consider reporting what you felt to the USGS.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 6.5 miles. Did you feel this earthquake? Consider reporting what you felt to the USGS.
Are you ready for when the Big One hits? Get ready for the next big earthquake by signing up for our Unshaken newsletter, which breaks down emergency preparedness into bite-sized steps over six weeks. Learn more about earthquake kits, which apps you need, Lucy Jones’ most important advice and more at latimes.com/Unshaken.
This story was automatically generated by Quakebot, a computer application that monitors the latest earthquakes detected by the USGS. A Times editor reviewed the post before it was published. If you’re interested in learning more about the system, visit our list of frequently asked questions.
Last December, Mayor Karen Bass moved to speed up the production of affordable housing in Los Angeles by issuing Executive Directive 1. This measure streamlines the approval of new multi-unit residences by exempting them from the usual slate of hearings, appeals and environmental reviews. The city Planning Commission voted this month to continue ED1, bringing the directive one step closer to becoming permanent.
On its face, this is the sort of bold housing policy Los Angeles needs. The city is not building nearly enough units to meet demand. In fact, an LAist analysis found that from 2010 to 2019, the city lost eight times more homes that were affordable for low-income residents than it gained.
This has partly been due to developers being deterred by lengthy, expensive and risky approval processes for new construction. On its face, ED1 is helping to chip away at that problem: The Department of City Planning reported that, as of the end of October, it had approved more than 50 new developments under the directive and had 55 other applications pending, projecting the addition of 12,383 new affordable homes.
But absent from this success story is the way this directive is reshaping the character and makeup of Los Angeles’ working-class neighborhoods and displacing longtime residents. In her effort to permanently streamline the construction of affordable housing, Mayor Bass is asking the city to weigh in on a bigger question: Who gets to live in Los Angeles?
According to our analysis of city data, in ED1’s first 10 months, more than a third of new developments filed under the directive have been in South Los Angeles, an area with one of the highest concentrations of Angelenos living in poverty. We also found that one-third of those South L.A. developments require the demolition of existing affordable housing, eliminating at least 62 rent-stabilized units in the area and displacing hundreds of residents, many of whom cannot afford to move elsewhere in their neighborhood or the city. Under the streamlined process, tenants have mere months to find new homes. We’ve talked to many such residents who fear they will become homeless.
It’s also worth noting where ED1 developments aren’t happening. In June 2023, Mayor Bass revised the directive to exclude parcels zoned for single-family homes — which initially made up more than half of approved projects, according to an analysis by Abundant Housing.
This change came after the city planning department heard “feedback” from residents it surveyed as well as members of the City Council concerned about apartment buildings “plunked down in the middle of single family neighborhoods.” This exemption prevents the city from streamlining the construction of affordable housing in these “higher-resource areas” with the least density. It also makes multifamily residential zones more of a target for developers.
If L.A.’s wealthy neighborhoods are preserved at the expense of low-income ones, we will all feel the consequences: rising rents as the number of rent-stabilized units continues to shrink; an increase in homelessness, especially for seniors and renters on fixed incomes who have no other housing options available; less diversity in Los Angeles as residents in the affected neighborhoods, which are predominantly Black and brown, scatter outside the city to afford rent; and more traffic as families have to relocate farther from their schools and jobs.
Los Angeles urgently needs more affordable housing, and streamlining the development process is a necessary step. But city leaders need to be mindful of what may be destroyed if the approach is not equitable. Before making ED1 permanent, the city should exempt rent-stabilized units from the streamlining process so that a more thorough assessment can take place and tenants have more time to consider their options. The city should further ensure that developers — even those pursuing 100% affordable housing projects, some of which may technically be exempt — comply with the obligations for relocation, right of return and right to remain under California’s Housing Crisis Act of 2019.
Displaced tenants also should receive more robust relocation services, including help securing comparable replacement housing in the same area. Under the current process, the city provides a list of potential housing providers and tenants are burdened with the search for affordable units.
Finally, single-family homes should not be exempt from streamlining. Such an exemption reflects the sort of NIMBY position that got us into this affordable housing crisis in the first place. It will only reinforce the inequity that has shaped housing policy in Los Angeles as affluent neighborhoods remain relatively sheltered from change while low-income neighborhoods are dismantled for the sake of growth.
Los Angeles’ leaders must consider the unintended consequences ED1 could have. Our city has to balance the need to build affordable housing with the need to keep our most vulnerable residents and communities housed and intact. Not doing so risks undermining the efficacy of this directive, which aims to ensure more Angelenos have access to affordable housing, not fewer.
Maria Patiño Gutierrez is the director of policy and advocacy, equitable development and land use at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy in Los Angeles.
The Antelope Valley is facing a hard freeze warning for the early morning hours on Monday, with temperatures expected to plunge below freezing overnight, according to the National Weather Service.
The temperatures could damage outdoor plumbing and harm crops and unprotected pets or livestock in the Antelope Valley, including the areas of Palmdale, Lancaster and Lake Los Angeles, the weather service warned. It recommended that outdoor pipes be wrapped, drained or allowed to drip slowly and that in-ground sprinkler systems be drained and any above-ground pipes covered to protect them from freezing.
Lancaster had a low of 22 degrees Fahrenheit early Sunday morning, said David Gomberg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. The Antelope Valley is facing chillier temperatures than the rest of the region because it is more protected from wind at night, causing “radiational cooling,” Gomberg said. “Areas that are more wind sheltered get exceptionally cold.”
“Most other areas of Southern California see at least a little bit of wind, which modifies the temperature,” Gomberg explained, with temperatures in most valley areas in the 40s and the Los Angeles coast and basin in the low to mid 50s, “not too unusual for this time of year.”
Some areas, including the Santa Clarita Valley, Calabasas, Agoura Hills and the Malibu coast, were under a wind advisory Sunday, with gusts of up to 45 miles per hour expected. The National Weather Service warned that the high winds could make driving difficult and blow down tree limbs, potentially leading to power outages.
A 20% chance of rain — mostly intermittent showers — is forecast for the Los Angeles County region beginning Wednesday and continuing through Friday, according to the NWS. Temperatures will range from the low 40s to high 60s.
Maddy Montiel and Brad Butterfield marveled at the community they found this semester at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Montiel, an environmental science major, and Butterfield, a journalism major, had lived in their vehicles for several years, the only way, they said, that they could afford to attend college. They usually found parking in campus lots or on nearby streets.
But the pair and about 15 others like them — students living in sedans, aging campers, a converted bus, who could afford a $315 annual parking permit but not rent — found one another on campus parking lot G11. They started parking together in a row of spaces and named their community “the line.” They shared resources: propane tanks to heat their living quarters, ovens to cook meals. They helped one another seal leaky roofs and formed an official campus club aiming to secure a mailing address.
They felt safe.
Students Brad Butterfield and Maddie Montiel embrace next to a pair of parking tickets she received from Cal Poly Humboldt police.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“None of us have ever had something like that before,” said Montiel, 27. “People who live like this don’t really congregate, and try to stay out of view.”
Then the notices arrived late last month. The university was going to enforce a campus policy, written into parking regulations, that prohibits overnight camping. Remove vehicles by noon on Nov. 12, or they could be towed and students could face disciplinary action, the letter said.
Montiel and Butterfield moved their vehicles to another campus parking lot, hoping the university would back down if they became less visible. They found two spots under redwood trees at the edge of campus. Others from G11 scattered, driven back into hiding.
On the morning of Nov. 13, several students who stayed at G11 and other campus lots awoke to discover parking violations on their windshields, a $53 fine for living overnight in their vehicles, $40 for those whose vehicles were too large for one spot.
The actions by Humboldt — defended by university officials as necessary for health and safety — provide an up-close look at how low-income California State University students determined to earn a college degree struggle to meet their basic needs amid the state’s student affordable housing crisis.
Cal Poly Humbolt student Caleb Chen eats noodles in his van in campus parking lot G11.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“We’re putting everything we have into our education in order to be here,” Montiel said. “For them to just keep putting all of this added pressure onto us just seems really unnecessarily cruel.”
The campus-wide email landed at the end of October: The university would soon prohibit students from sleeping in cars.
“Overnight camping in University parking lots creates unsanitary and unsafe conditions for both those encamped and for our campus community at large,” the email said. “The University Police Department and other campus offices have taken calls from concerned members of the campus community expressing fear and frustration about the situation.”
Days later, three administrators visited students parked in G11 to share details about the enforcement, said Butterfield, 26.
“This is a direct response to the public health and safety concerns that have stemmed from overnight activity in University parking lots,” said a letter given to students. The university would provide temporary emergency housing to students through the end of the semester, which ends in December, or would help students identify campsites or other locations where they could park off campus.
Tom Jackson, Cal Poly Humboldt’s president, declined an interview request through spokesperson Aileen Yoo, who said university staff is also available to help students find longer-term housing solutions.
“These aren’t evictions. The University is enforcing a long-standing parking policy,” Yoo said in an email.
Two people walk through the lobby of a building at Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
In response, faculty in the sociology department wrote a letter to university officials, condemning them for upholding a policy that “criminalizes” the students. The message to the campus community “framed our houseless students as a group of people who are feared, clearly intimidating them to get them off campus,” the letter said.
“There are ways that we can address this in a way that best serves our students and community,” said Tony Silvaggio, chair of the sociology department and vice president of the Humboldt chapter of the California Faculty Assn. “And it’s not just kicking them off campus to live on the streets somewhere else.”
The University Senate, a campus governing body, passed a resolution urging the university to suspend its enforcement of the parking policy until the end of the academic year, include students in decision-making and explore “safe parking” options on campus.
The students of G11 started an online petition, pushing back against the characterization that they are unsanitary or create danger. The students said they went out of their way to pick up trash and to maintain a clean environment.
The campus-wide email was “an attempt to shame, humiliate, and isolate the houseless community on campus,” the petition said. “We are living in our vehicles and are legally homeless because, quite simply, we cannot afford rent.”
After the uproar, the university sent a second campus-wide email that said, “The challenges of affordable housing can be particularly acute for students, and the University is invested in supporting them.” But the university did not reverse its decision.
Butterfield and Montiel raced to persuade officials to reconsider, meeting with administrators, including campus police and the dean of students.
They tried to schedule a meeting with Mark Johnson, the university’s chief of staff, and Cris Koczera, director of risk management and safety services. But an email from a campus ombudsman told the students the administrators would not meet with them. The university’s decision and the options it presented were clear, the email said, and “no constructive discussion is to be had.”
For Montiel, Humboldt was a world away from San Bernardino, her hometown. She first visited the university in high school, tagging along on a road trip with a friend.
Students Brad Butterfield and Maddy Montiel, along with their dog Ollie, prepare for class after taking a shower on the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Montiel was struck by the abundance of the nearby forest, the beauty of the redwoods that towered over campus. Years later, she learned the college had an environmental science program that offered experiences that aligned with her goals of working in ecological restoration.
“I fell in love with the place and always saw it as a dream — but never attainable because it was so far, and it’d be too expensive,” she said.
She attended Riverside City College for five years, enrolling in classes full time as she juggled multiple jobs. After she earned multiple associate degrees, she told herself, “I’m just going to go for it and figure out living up in Humboldt.”
She is making it work by living in a 1995 Chevy Coachman, purchased with a loan that costs her $600 a month. She has also taken out $25,000 in student loans for tuition and fees and works as a studio tech in the campus metalsmithing studio to pay for other living expenses.
In fall 2022, Montiel purchased a campus parking permit that allows students to park on campus during the academic year and eventually settled into the G11 lot.
A student’s note on the window of his van tells police he is not camping at Cal Poly Humboldt. The university recently told students they could not sleep in their cars overnight.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
In her aging Coachman, she studies on a tray table and practices yoga on a narrow strip of walkway. She cooks meals on a small propane stove inside. Her bed is lofted over the driver and passenger seats. Every other week, she visits a dump station to empty waste and fill her water tanks.
Over time, more students began to park in G11, a lot situated among dorms and a short walk from a campus market. The location was convenient for shuttling back and forth between classes or to access the campus gym for showers. This semester, the 15 to 20 students found comfort in their community. They celebrated the start of the year with a beach bonfire and eventually formed the Alternative Living Club.
Student Caleb Chen searches for water late at night with a gallon container on the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
The club began as a way for unhoused students to receive mail, as they needed an address for scholarship and job applications. Montiel, the club’s president, envisioned more. The club could offer a support system for unhoused students, an avenue to propose ideas about how the university could better help them. They talked about pooling funds for a storage facility, formalizing a safe parking program.
Montiel said many cash-strapped students have approached club members and said they are leaning toward moving into vehicles “because it’s their last and only option” to stay in college.
But now Montiel wonders if the club and the growing visibility of homelessness on campus led to the university’s decision to displace them.
“We’re kind of more seen,” she said. “We weren’t just scattered and hidden.”
Carrie White, another student who took up residence in the parking lot, transferred to Humboldt after graduating from community college in Utah. As she calculated her living expenses, the 27-year-old biology major realized she could not afford rent while attending school.
“I can’t afford to pay $1,500, $900 a month and work and then do a STEM degree,” said White, who is from England. “I can’t afford it.”
Student Brad Butterfield prepares to move his camper off the Cal Poly Humboldt campus.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
So she purchased an old school bus and gradually converted it to her home. At Humboldt, she works up to 20 hours a week, balancing a research assistant job with an internship in 3D facial reconstruction and a fellowship where she volunteers in the community.
As a person who is autistic, White said, she relies on routine and is sensitive to noise and light. Living in her bus, she has some control over her environment.
“I’ve tried to do those things with my budget and with my situation, and then this has happened,” she said. “There’s a lack of thought and consideration.”
This isn’t the first time in recent years that Cal Poly Humboldt has generated anger over its response to student housing shortages.
Last academic year — in anticipation of a large enrollment jump after becoming a polytechnic campus — the university announced it would prioritize limited on-campus housing for first-year students. Many continuing students would have to search for housing in off-campus rentals or at a limited number of motels leased by the university.
Around the same time, officials also weighed a proposal to house students on a floating barge, an idea that attracted national media attention and was mocked in a brief segment by Stephen Colbert. The barge plan has not materialized, and enrollment remained flat this academic year.
Brad Butterfield stores his belongings with his dog Ollie after taking a shower on the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
But the university’s approach to dealing with housing shortages points to a larger issue in the California State University — the nation’s largest four-year public higher education system, with nearly 460,000 students.
At Cal Poly Humboldt, 2,069 beds were available on campus in 2022, the report said. The campus enrolled nearly 6,000 students.
Humboldt also faces challenges unique to its location as the northernmost Cal State campus. Arcata, a city of about 19,000 people where Cal Poly Humboldt is located, is in the midst of its own housing crisis. Earlier this month, the City Council declared a shelter crisis.
The declaration enabled the city to draw on funding to continue operating a safe parking program, which is operated by Arcata House Partnership, an organization that provides support for unhoused people. The program provides a space for residents who live in their cars to safely park and services including charging stations, bathrooms and meals, as they work to find stable housing.
But the program is full, and up to 20 people at a time are on the waitlist, said Darlene Spoor, executive director of Arcata House Partnership. She said she would be “willing to have a conversation with people from the university about whether we could open a safe parking program for students.”
Students Derek Beatty, left, and Caleb Chen hang out late at night in parking lot G11 at Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Spoor said, more people have moved to Humboldt and purchased homes at high prices, pricing some longtime residents out of homebuying and driving up rental costs.
Plans are underway to ease the strain on students. By fall 2025, Cal Poly Humboldt plans to build more on-campus dorms and apartments, increasing the number of available beds by 1,250.
But on-campus options still remain out of reach for some students. A dorm room shared by three people and a required basic meal plan, for example, is expected to cost at least $10,900 per student next academic year. Room and board in a double costs about $13,000; a plan for a single dorm room runs more than $14,500 for the nine-month academic year.
Neither of those options would have worked for Steven Childs. The 47-year-old wildlife major said he would not have attended Humboldt if he could not live out of his cargo van.
He was scrolling YouTube one day when he came across a video that showed Humboldt students living in their cars. He thought to himself, “Oh, man, I think that’s my option. That’s the only way that seems reasonable.”
Childs, who lives in the San Gabriel Valley when school is not in session, gave up work as a private investigator to attend Humboldt. His wife’s salary now supports them both.
“I’m pushing 50, and I don’t want to be saddled with college debt through retirement,” he said. “I could sacrifice and live out of a vehicle.”
Butterfield, the journalism major, could not find housing that worked within his budget range of $650 to $900 a month, plus security deposit and other fees.
He decided to pay for his education with savings from service-industry and other jobs, and does not want student loans.
Brad Butterfield and Maddy Montiel study in a camper parked on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
He lives in an 1976 GMC Sportscoach that cost $9,500. He spends at least $200 a month on expenses for the RV, including insurance and propane.
“I had a couple hundred dollars left in my bank account to come up here and try to live off of,” he said.
On the night of Nov. 13 — hours after receiving citations for overnight camping — about 10 G11 students gathered inside a small university building. They worried they could face disciplinary action or lose their vehicles. Five unpaid tickets could get them towed.
One student said he had struggled to fall asleep the night before, worried that parking enforcement would ticket him. Another student wondered aloud about what they would do next semester. They brainstormed ways to draw more attention to their fight.
They talked about occupying a building. They discussed how they would appeal the parking violations, and weighed potential legal action. Two students said they planned to sleep overnight in a campus study room so footage from security cameras could prove they did not sleep in their vehicles.
In the end, they agreed to stay in touch over a group chat to prepare for the upcoming weeklong fall break.
Student Brad Butterfield outside his camper at the Cal Poly Humboldt campus.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Montiel and Butterfield had decided to move their vehicles again, this time off campus, to a city street next to a university parking lot. They have to move the vehicles by 7 a.m, when the city begins enforcing metered parking restrictions.
“Love you guys,” Montiel told the group before everyone went their separate ways.
Melinda Bettencourt was still in her nightgown when the police showed up at the door. It was a slow Saturday morning last fall, but her heart raced when she heard the uneasy tone in the officer’s voice.
The Fresno woman knew her youngest daughter, Amanda Bews, had been struggling for years. After battling a painful nerve condition, the 29-year-old started using drugs and had taken to living on the street. Eventually Bettencourt lost track of her. So when men with badges showed up at her home, Bettencourt feared she knew why — and she was right.
Bews had been arrested on a pair of misdemeanor charges, and died in a Los Angeles County jail two days later. But the officer who showed up at her door couldn’t tell Bettencourt anything about how her daughter died.
And a few weeks later, no one could explain what had happened to the rotting body Bettencourt saw at the funeral home.
“She looked like she was mummified,” Bettencourt told The Times, describing the “horrible” shock of watching bugs hover around her dead daughter’s face as a foul stench emanated across the room.
Even the pictures are gruesome: A side-shot of a face so bloated with death it’s gone flat. A close-up of skin, one patch bloodied and another so decayed it’s turned gelatinous. Part of the nose is missing, and the features are bloated beyond recognition.
When Bettencourt saw what was left of her daughter, she screamed.
“I couldn’t believe it was my baby,” she said.
Earlier this month, after more than a year of looking for answers, San Diego-based attorneys Lauren Williams and Timothy Scott filed a lawsuit against county officials, jail medical providers and the funeral home that handled Bews’ body.
“Folks whose family members die in custody are often waiting months for information about how their loved ones passed away. And even when they do find out from an autopsy, the answers are still vague — and that’s what we see here,” Williams told The Times.
“We see a lot of facts consistent with the county failing to treat a case of alcohol withdrawal, but no one is accepting responsibility and calling it what it is,” she said. “And the same is true about any questions the family has about how and why Amanda’s body decomposed to the extent it did.”
Citing pending litigation, the medical examiner’s office declined to comment. Both the funeral home and jail medical providers did not respond to emails this week. And the Sheriff’s Department sent a general statement, but did not address several specific questions about the case.
“Any loss of life is tragic, especially those who are within our custody and care,” the statement said. “The Department takes every in-custody death seriously and strives to make every effort possible to prevent similar deaths in the future.”
It was in herearly 20s that Bews really started drinking. By that point, she had a husband and two children and, according to her mother, “nobody could really figure out why” her life took such a turn. But it was right around the same time her medical problems started.
At first, Bews complained of pain in her feet and ankles, but the problem grew steadily worse. For months, doctors couldn’t figure out why, until a spinal tap revealed she had Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that causes the body to attack its own nerves, leading to tingling, weakness and pain.
Sometimes, her mother said, Bews couldn’t walk or take care of herself. Then during a hospital stay, she was prescribed painkillers. Soon, she turned from prescription pills to heroin and alcohol. Eventually, she stopped coming home.
“She just didn’t want to subject her kids to this,” Bettencourt said. “She was embarrassed.”
By the time Bews got arrested, her mother hadn’t heard from her for three years.It was Sept. 7, 2022, and court filings show that sheriff’s deputies had picked her up in Santa Clarita for allegedly shoplifting at a BevMo. During her arrest, records show, she admitted to using heroin and said she’d been drinking.
Before booking, the deputies took her to a nearby hospital, where records show she told the staff she had been drinking “a fifth to a handle [1.75 liters] a day” for the past six years. According to the lawsuit, they discharged her just after midnight and noted that she should go “TO ACUTE CARE FACILITY,” meaning she would need consistent monitoring and treatment once she arrived at the jail.
Medical records shared with The Times show she was prescribed medications for anxiety, blood pressure and alcohol withdrawal. She was assigned to a cell in the 1400 Module, an intake unit where another woman had died months earlier. But just after midnight on Sept. 9,medical staffat the jaildecided she was “cleared for detox” and did not require any medications.
According to the lawsuit, that meant the jail staff stopped treating her — neither for her opioid withdrawal nor for the even deadlier alcohol withdrawal.
When a nurse came to check on her a little over four hours later, Bews didn’t respond and her cellmate couldn’t rouse her. Deputies tried giving her an overdose-reversing drug, but it didn’t help.
Lab tests found drugs in her system, but at such low levels that her lawyers said they were more indicative of withdrawal than overdose. And according to the autopsy report, her body also showed signs of dehydration, and there was vomit in her airways.
“Based on the toxicology results, Amanda did not die of acute drug intoxication or drug overdose,” her lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. “Rather, Amanda died of untreated or inadequately treated effects of withdrawal from alcohol and drugs.”
In addition to allegedly failing to treat Bews’ withdrawal, the suit says jailers also erred by not checking on her more often. Under state requirements, jailers are required to check on inmates at least once an hour. Though the autopsy makes clear that medical staff did not check on her for at least four hours, the records don’t say whether any jailers checked on her during that time, and the Sheriff’s Department did not clarify.
Instead, this week the department told The Times Bews’ death had been thoroughly investigated and that “appropriate administrative action” was taken against “several” employees.
After the police left the Bettencourts’ home that morning in September, Melinda sat down to cry. Her husband tried to calm her enough to call the phone number the officers had left behind, so she could talk to the Los Angeles detective in charge of the case.
As she waited in vain for answers, Bettencourt had to figure out how to get her daughter’s body from Los Angeles to Fresno for the funeral.
First, Bews’ body was sent to the Los Angeles County medical examiner for an autopsy, which ultimately declared her death an accident resulting from the “effects of heroin, methamphetamine and chronic alcohol use” — a description indicating Bews’ death was drug-related without clearly calling it an overdose.
In mid-September — less than a week after Bews died — an embalmer from the Chapel of Light, a Fresno-based funeral home, came to pick up her body in Los Angeles.
Though the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office confirmed to The Times earlier this year that their standard practice is to refrigerate dead bodies to slow down decomposition, the embalmer — Catherine Valenzuela — later said the body she received was already noticeably decayed.
“She was decomposed,” Valenzuela wrote in a Sept. 21, 2022, letter turned over to Bettencourt’s lawyers. “Her face has major skin slippage and discoloration was apparent throughout her remains.”
According to Valenzuela’s letter, the smell was “so strong and offensive” that she drove with the windows down all the way back to Fresno. But according to Bettencourt, if there was already a clear problem, no one at the funeral home told her. She didn’t find out until several weeks later, when she and her husband showed up at the funeral home for a viewing just before theOct. 7 service.
An employee led the couple to a back room to see Bews’ remains. As she took in the scene — the bugs, the smell, the decaying flesh — Bettencourt’s heart raced and, for a moment, she thought she was dying, too.
Afterwards, she realized it was a panic attack. She’s been having them ever since she learned of her daughter’s death — along with nightmares, anxiety and regret.
“I had almost been hoping she would get arrested so she could get some help — and then I find out she got arrested and died,” she said. “I feel guilty for even thinking that now.”
The lawsuit filed Nov. 17 in federal court lists 11 claims, including negligence, wrongful death and deliberate indifference. It doesn’t name a dollar amount in damages.
But Bettencourt and her lawyers said that aside from any compensation, they hope the case leads to some accountability – and some more answers.
The admissions consultant described what it takes to get into an elite college: Take 10 to 20 Advanced Placement courses. Create a “showstopper project.”
Asian American students need to be extremely strategic in how they present themselves, “to avoid anti-Asian discrimination,” the consultant, Sasha Chada of Ivy Scholars, said at the October webinar to an audience of mostly Asian parents and students.
Edward Yen, who doesn’t consider himself a “tiger parent,” wondered what extreme accomplishments his 11-year-old daughter will need to get into USC — considered a relative shoo-in back in the 1990s, when he attended.
Parents and students at an annual college and career fair at Temple City High School.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
“I appreciated the honesty,” Yen said of Chada’s presentation, which was co-hosted by the Los Angeles County Asian American Employees Assn. and the nonprofit Faith and Community Empowerment.
At seminars like Chada’s around Southern California this fall, some held in Korean or Mandarin for immigrant parents, consultants reinforced the message — even students with superhuman qualifications are regularly rejected from Harvard and UC Berkeley.
Parents who didn’t grow up in the American system, and who may have moved to the U.S. in large part for their children’s education, feel desperate and in the dark. Some shell out tens of thousands of dollars for consultants as early as junior high, fearing that anything less than a name-brand school could doom their children to an uncertain future. Sometimes, anxious students are the ones who ask their parents to hire a consultant.
Some consultants say they try to push schools that fit the student best, not necessarily the top-ranked ones — even as skeptics wonder whether they are scare-mongering in an attempt to drum up business. But especially for parents from countries like South Korea, China and India, where a single exam determines a student’s college choices, the lack of objective standards can be overwhelming.
“The worst part of stress comes out when kids feel helpless, not when someone sets a high bar for them,” said Chada, whose Indian father grew up in Northern Ireland.
Julie Lin, left, and her 14-year-old daughter Jasmine Liao visit an annual college and career fair at Temple City High School.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
“A lot of our Asian parents are thinking it’s a golden ticket if you’re able to get into Harvard or Yale,” said Yen, president of the Los Angeles County Asian American Employees Assn., who lives in San Marino and whose parents immigrated from Taiwan. “I just want my daughter to be healthy, safe, and I want her to be successful in life.”
Srikanth Nagarajan, a 52-year-old manager at DirecTV and an immigrant from India, has been nudging his daughter to shoot for top schools like Harvard.
Sam Srikanth, a senior at El Segundo High, has a 4.41 GPA and has taken seven AP courses, which she said was the maximum number offered at her school. She is captain of the varsity swim team and is working on a research project about the role of race in college basketball recruiting.
After asking teachers and school counselors to read her admissions essays, Srikanth decided to hire a private counselor. But she ended up not using the counselor’s suggestions because they didn’t feel like her voice.
Srikanth said her “hopes got a little bit higher” after the Supreme Court’s decision.
But with her last name, she said, “you actually fill out the application and realize there’s no way colleges won’t figure out what race you are.”
Her older sister, who applied to colleges five years ago with a similar resume, got rejected from 18 of 20 or so schools and ended up at Boston College.
“I can’t be let down if my expectations are already so low,” Srikanth said.
When Sunny Lee came to the U.S. from South Korea in 2006 for postdoctoral work at USC, she thought that people could succeed in America even if they didn’t go to college.
But after moving to San Marino about a decade ago to raise her three sons — the oldest is now in 7th grade — she saw neighbors hiring athletic coaches and academic consultants for kids who were still in elementary school.
The moms she knows fret about students who seem like slam dunks being denied by top schools.
“A student known as a genius at San Marino High ended up going to Pasadena City College,” said Lee, 48, a researcher at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Moms were having a mental breakdown.”
A friend told Lee that she regretted spending only $3,000 for a consultant to go over her child’s admissions essays. For her next child, the friend would spend at least $10,000.
With both her and her husband working full-time, Lee feels an admission consultant is necessary just to keep up, especially with opaqueness and unpredictability of college admissions.
“It’s a fight over information,” she said.
She said she doesn’t think her oldest son needs a consultant yet. But she would like her middle son, a fifth-grader, to start working with one.
On the outskirts of Koreatown in July, dozens of Korean American students and parents attended a five-hour seminar hosted by Radio Seoul.
Several admissions consultants said in Korean and English that the end of affirmative action could improve Asian American students’ chances of getting into elite colleges.
One urged parents to give up their hobbies — no more golfing every weekend — so they can hover over their children.
Won Jong Kim, director of the college consulting firm Boston Education, described several students who got into elite schools.
Anna, who got into Harvard, took AP Calculus AB in 7th grade. Ben, who got into Stanford, took 15 AP classes.
Esther’s academics weren’t “stellar,” Kim said — only a 4.3 GPA, 1520 SAT and nine AP courses. But in her personal statement, she wrote about her mother’s fight with breast cancer. And she was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania.
“That was her trump card. It was a unique situation that she overcame,” Kim said. “To be frank, she got really lucky.”
In an interview, Kim said he wanted to show the “common characteristics” of those who get into Ivy League schools.
“Every year, the bar goes up for students looking to get into top colleges,” he said.
Chung Lee, the chief consultant at Ivy Dream, said he tries to share information in free seminars hosted by various community organizations.
Ethan Chen, 17, left, and Audrey Balthazar, 16, both Arcadia High students, browse through material at a college and career fair at Temple City High School.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
“The colleges’ lack of transparency has created this sense of fear,” he said.
In Temple City, Shun Zhang said she doesn’t want to put pressure on her son, Connor Sam.
Zhang, a 48-year-old realtor, wants to give him the support structure she didn’t have growing up as an immigrant from China.
Her only requirement is that he play a sport, to stay active and healthy. Still, Sam, a senior at Temple City High who is on the varsity soccer team and interns for Assemblymember Mike Fong, feels the need to push himself. He wants to double major in sociology and some kind of science at UCLA.
Hoping to be “more organized and put together,” he asked his parents for a personal admissions counselor to help him reflect on his accomplishments and brainstorm essay topics. He has been working with the counselor for two years and finds it helpful.
Sam, whose father is a refugee from Vietnam and works as a project manager, said he thinks about how well his parents have provided for him and wants to be as successful.
Going to a good college would go a long way in securing a good job and “maintain where I am,” he said.
But for all his hard work and preparation, he views college admissions as a crapshoot.
“I don’t really know what they are looking for,” he said.
At least three people were killed by speeding or inebriated drivers in South Los Angeles on Thursday, marking the deadliest Thanksgiving Day in the community in recent years, according to police and media reports.
“In 28 years, this is the worst Thanksgiving I’ve ever seen,” Det. Ryan Moreno of the LAPD’s South Traffic Division told KNBC-TV Channel 4. Moreno responded to the three accidents.
In total, nine fatal accidents occurred in the LAPD South Traffic Division in less than two weeks, according to police.
The first incident on occurred about 5:30 a.m. Thursday near the intersection of 18th and Figueroa streets in Harbor Gateway, according to police and NBC. A driver suspected of being drunk and traveling more than 100 mph hit a car with three women inside, killing a 24-year-old single mother of a 5-year-old boy.
Just after 1 p.m., another suspected drunk driver pulled out of a liquor store on Western Avenue near 83rd Street and crashed into a speeding motorist, who then struck and killed Alma Letecia Aragon, 26, as she walked with her 8-year-old daughter, authorities said. The child remained in critical condition on Friday.
“It’s looking right now, [that] it’s going to take a miracle [for] this girl to pull out,” Moreno said to NBC. “We’re all praying for her that she makes it.”
A few blocks away, on Western Avenue and 73rd Street, police responded about 11 p.m. to a speeding driver under the influence of marijuana who authorities said struck and killed a homeless man.
“All of these cases range from manslaughter, to possibly murder,” Moreno told NBC. “It’s people just now, self-entitled, thinking, they can do whatever they want.”
Authorities in Orange County are investigating the death of a woman whose car plunged into a manmade lake in Irvine on Thanksgiving Day.
Irvine police and firefighters responded about 10 p.m. Thursday to reports of a vehicle driving into the lake south of Irvine Center Drive, where West Yale Loop and East Yale Loop meet, according to the Irvine Police Department.
A witness told authorities that the female driver was traveling south on Yale Loop when her car, a silver Mercedes four-door sedan, continued over the curb and into the lake.
Fire officials found the car submerged about 30 yards from the water’s edge.
“The water was thick and murky so it took some time to locate the car,” said Capt. Thanh Nguyen, of the Orange County Fire Authority. Two swift-water rescue teams, as well as rescue trucks and several helicopters were dispatched to assist with the search and removal of the body, he said.
The woman, who was alone, was recovered from inside the car and pronounced dead at the scene, officials said. She was identified as Camilla Megan Mendoza, 30, of Long Beach.
Irvine police are investigating the cause of the crash. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact Det. Christopher Ostrowski at (949) 724-7047 or email costrowski@cityofirvine.org.
Authorities are investigating the death of a man with a gunshot wound whose body was found floating in the ocean in Hermosa Beach early Friday.
Hermosa Beach police officers discovered the body of a white male between the ages of 40 and 45 near the shoreline about 7 a.m., officials said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The man had suffered a gunshot wound, according to media outlets that cited the police. It was not clear whether foul play had been involved.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is assisting in the investigation. Anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to contact the sheriff’s department’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500.
If the key to a long life — along with good genes and lots of luck — is to keep moving, Pete Teti is on the right trail.
He started Thanksgiving Day as he has begun most every other day for more than 20 years — with a hike in Griffith Park. Teti, three days away from his 100th birthday, met up with his usual cohort of friends near the Griffith Observatory and began the climb toward Mt. Hollywood, a roughly two-mile round trip.
He stopped briefly to take a seat on a park bench that has his name engraved on it — he’s a bit of a legend in these parts — and played his harmonica for a few minutes. Then he was back up and moving.
Pete Teti, middle, turns 100 years old on Sunday. Pete is hiking with his buddies Kori Bernards, left, and her dog Lucca, and Annette Sikand, right, in Griffith Park early in the morning on Thursday in Los Angeles. Teti is mentally sharp and physically fit, an inspiration to friends.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles stretched out beneath us, skyscraper to sea, in the silver, cloud-filtered light of a newborn day. In a city of strivers ricocheting around in congested isolation, the park is an island of repose, a place where lives intersect and time slows. Teti exchanged smiles, waves and greetings of “good morning” and “happy Thanksgiving” with fellow travelers he’s come to know.
“They leave all their problems down there in the city,” Teti said, moving with the ease of a man half his age.
“He’s got a lot of swagger,” said his friend and walking mate Annette Sikand, who took note of Teti’s erect posture and steady gait.
Teti, wearing a charcoal colored newsboy cap, paused at a turnout in the trail and blew into his harmonica again, the Hollywood sign clinging to the mountain at his back. Then the World War II vet, who served in Europe, Africa and the Pacific with the U.S. Army, decided to keep advancing up a steeper portion of the incline.
“I thought we were … ready to go down again, but no,” said Teti’s friend Jay Miller, who is 20 years younger than Teti. “No, you have to keep going up.”
Pete Teti, who turns 100 on Sunday, takes regular hikes in Griffith Park.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Tom McGovern met Teti several years ago, when McGovern accompanied the late Councilman Tom LaBonge on daily hikes, and the men bonded under the hypnotic spell of the park. The senior member of the walking club may have slowed a bit over time, McGovern said, but not much.
“His pace, for his age, is remarkable. No doubt about it,” said McGovern. “For any age, his pace is good.”
Along the dusty trail we bumped into Mozhi Jabberi, who said she was walking once or twice a week until she met Teti recently. Inspired by him, she decided to hike more frequently.
“I want people to know he started his serious hiking at the age of 79,” said Jabberi, 52.
Nancy Kristol and her husband, Mark, were heading up the trail with Rocco, one of the many dogs who seem to enjoy being serenaded by the harmonica-playing hiker. The Kristols met Teti during the pandemic, Nancy said, and she enjoys her encounters with a man so “in tune with his environment and the love of his mountain.”
“It’s very special to have met him up here,” she said, “when there’s all this chaos down there and all this insanity that we’ve all experienced. To meet him up here was just a gift, and we appreciate him every day.”
He follows no secret diet, Teti told me. He eats what he feels like eating — including a pastry at Figaro Bistro, if the mood strikes him, or a burger from In-N-Out. But all things in moderation, he said. He began hiking when he had trouble tying his shoes one day and decided to slim down, and the park is conveniently located not far from his home in Silver Lake.
But there are a couple of things about Teti’s lifestyle that belong in any textbook on aging well. He does not live in isolation, and his physical activity is matched — actually, it’s surpassed — by his intellectual curiosity.
Teti worked for half a century as a teacher in Los Angeles, mostly in the arts, but late in life, he has reinvented himself in pursuit of new interests. Many people, as they age, resist change. Teti embraces it.
“He’s made two violins, he does engraving, he’s a painter, he’s currently creating animation, he’s constantly learning about physics, geometry, fractiles,” said Jay Miller.
The day before our hike, I visited Teti at his home, where he built a stained-glass gazebo in the front yard and laid tiles in the back patio. His studio is stuffed with books, computers and his most recent abstract paintings. He works in one corner of the house while his equally artistic wife, Rose Marie, 89, works in a room that serves as an ever-growing museum of her vibrantly colored paintings and whimsical home-made chandeliers.
Pete Teti holds the harmonica he plays while hiking. He is a hiker, artist, teacher and WWII veteran as he approaches his 100th birthday.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Teti — who took up the harmonica just a few years ago — told me his curiosity dates back to his childhood in southern Italy.
“I was nosey, and from school, I would stop at the cabinetmaker’s and stand by the door and sometimes he invited me in and put a tool in my hand,” Teti said. “And then I’d go to the blacksmith, and he invited me in to make a horseshoe, and I was excited.”
His family moved to Pennsylvania in the 1930s, and Teti settled in Los Angeles after serving in World War II and earning a master’s in art at USC. When school ended, his lifelong course in continuing education began. Teti showed me the bank of screens and keyboards in his workshop, where he’s teaching himself to convert sounds, shapes and colors into computer-driven art and animation.
A lot of it was beyond my comprehension, but Teti bubbled with childlike enthusiasm. Sometimes, he said, it’s impossible for him to get a good night’s sleep. His imagination keeps waking him up.
“It’s pretty incredible that a 100-year-old guy knows how to use this software,” said Les Camacho, a sound engineer who is half Teti’s age and helped him with the computer setup.
Not long ago, Teti called Camacho midday and said hey, let’s go get a burger.
“On the way back from In-N-Out we were listening to KLOS and all of a sudden AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ comes on, so I wanted to change it, and he said, ‘No, no, leave it, I like that,’” said Camacho, 47. “He was head-banging in my car.”
There’s such unbridled optimism and positivity about him, Teti’s friends say, he’s something of a pied piper in the park, where he’s been known to dance a jig while playing his harmonica.
“In a city so big and sometimes so lonely and troubled, he’s a constant light to those who get to be around him,” said Kori Bernards, another hiker.
Pete Teti, second from right, hikes with his buddies in Griffith Park early on Thanksgiving morning.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
A man of 100 might be inclined toward disillusionment at the state of the world, given domestic fracturing, the devastation in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East and the acceleration of climate change. But when I asked him about this, Teti told me he remembers the dirt floors of his childhood home, the Great Depression, the millions of lives lost in World War II and so much more.
“It’s a cycle,” he said. “It seems like I’ve lived from the Renaissance to modern times, and I look back and say what’s happening now is nothing new. It’s happened throughout history. So I tell my friends this is a low cycle right now. … But I trust in younger people who come into the world without the prejudice of adults. I trust young people to change things.”
So how did Teti intend, on Sunday, to celebrate 100?
You guessed it. The plan was to meet pals near the bench with the L.A. Parks Foundation dedication that reads: “Pete Teti. Harmonica man, avid Griffith Park hiker, artist, teacher and WWII veteran.”
And then Teti would lead the walk up the trail and into the next century.
As the former superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park — and a 38-year career employee for the National Park Service — I have seen the undeniable benefits that come with conserving our public lands. Nowhere has this become more clear than in the California desert, where conservation efforts have nurtured a growing and sustainable outdoor recreation community and economy. A new proposal to establish the Chuckwalla National Monument and protect public lands adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park is the next step in continuing these endeavors.
Proposed by Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Palm Desert), the Chuckwalla National Monument and Joshua Tree National Park extension would encompass roughly 660,000 acres of public land in the California desert. The designation would help ensure more equitable access to nature for residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley, Blythe and other local communities. Already, these lands are beloved for outdoor activities such as hiking, picnicking, stargazing and recreational off-highway vehicle use. Elsewhere in the California desert, public lands conservation that supports similar activities has led to visitor spending that directly benefits the economies of nearby communities.
The proposed monument would also help safeguard the ecologically rich but vulnerable Colorado Desert bioregion. Conserving this area will protect important wildlife and plant habitats, including those necessary to support the desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep and the Mecca aster, among others. The monument would also conserve critical wildlife corridors between Joshua Tree National Park and other protected areas such as the Palen/McCoy Wilderness. Additionally, the region’s undisturbed desert lands are increasingly valued for their important role in sequestering atmospheric carbon, a key contributor to global climate change.
The lands proposed for protection include the homelands of the Iviatim, Nüwü, Pipa Aha Macav, Kwatsáan and Maara’yam peoples (Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Mojave, Quechan and Serrano nations). The proposed monument would preserve this cultural landscape by protecting important heritage values, sacred sites and objects, traditional cultural places, plants and wildlife.
The timing for this effort could not be better, as support for public land conservation is steadily growing throughout the West in general. The 2023 Colorado College Conservation in the West Poll shows that more than 80% of voters across eight Western states support the “30×30” goal of protecting 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Additionally, the proposed national monument would help advance California’s own “30×30” goals.
At a time when conserving nature and meeting renewable energy goals are critical, a Chuckwalla National Monument would accomplish both. It is complementary to the goals of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a multi-year collaborative process that identifies areas suitable for renewable energy development and lands important for conservation. The proposed monument avoids lands suitable for energy projects and it protects areas that are important to conserve for their biological, cultural and historic values.
President Biden is on track to protect more land than any other first-term president in modern American history. To date, he has responded to calls to safeguard public lands near the Grand Canyon, in southern Nevada and elsewhere. Biden should continue this work and designate Chuckwalla National Monument and protect lands adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park, helping to preserve some of California’s desert treasures.
Mark Butler is the former superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park and a 38-year career employee of the National Park Service.
There are car chase fanatics, and then there’s me.
During high school, I suffered through weekend reruns of “Little House on the Prairie” and “M*A*S*H” in hopes that the stations would cut to a live police pursuit. In college, I wrote a term paper exploring their allure and even interviewed a man who charged a dollar a month to alert subscribers via beeper whenever one started.
When I earned enough money for a Sony Playstation in the mid-2000s, one of the first games I bought was “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” so I could live vicariously through my character as he crashed through blockades while blasting “Pressure Drop” by Toots and the Maytals. I live-tweeted real-life chases for years, à la ManningCast, and I still tune into KCAL-TV Channel 9 every night at home for their three-hour news block — just in case.
I’m a fan despite knowing I shouldn’t like them. Pursuits are a waste of police resources. Watching them encourages stations to air more of them, which encourages copycats. Too many end with innocent bystanders maimed or killed. And yet, like too many Southern Californians, I just can’t quit. Seeing someone flee the law at 90 miles per hour while caroming across crowded freeways taps into a Jungian desire to buck authority, channels the American love for the open road and offers a cheap adrenaline rush — all from the safety of our living rooms.
So I was excited when Pluto TV, a free streaming service best known for airing classics like “I Love Lucy,” “Dr. Who” and “The Carol Burnett Show,” debuted a 24-hour car chase channel last week. I left it on for an entire day, expecting to be endlessly entertained.
California Highway Patrol chase Al Cowlings, driving, and O.J. Simpson, hiding in rear of white Bronco on the 91 Freeway in 1994.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Car Chase — that’s the direct, if unimaginative, name for Pluto TV’s new channel — airs each pursuit from the first breaking news chyron to its inevitable end. Almost all first appeared over the past few years on Channel 2 and Channel 9, both owned by Pluto TV’s parent company, Paramount. Mundane commercials — cellphone games, Toyota, some prescription drug hawked by Queen Latifah — break up the pursuits, so that each feels like a play with acts.
The day I tuned in, I saw a stolen black pickup wheeze up the Sepulveda Pass. A big U-Haul barreled down the 91 Freeway in Anaheim. A woman made it all the way to Fallbrook. Most passed through the San Fernando Valley, that speedster paradise of long, straight highways and streets. The best one lasted all of two minutes, ending with a car skidding out of control and crashing into a building before the driver tried to make a run for it and got tackled by law enforcement officers. Nearly all happened at night and still had the timestamp, station logo and temperature of when it originally aired.
It was all as surprising as Old Faithful.
Newscasters and helicopter reporters offered the same pablum. No one ever got away at the end. This is what millions of people like myself have obsessed over for decades? The only attempt at anything original came during the commercial breaks, when an overly dramatic announcer offered boilerplate slogans: More from this car chase when we come back. Stand by, for more — Car Chase. Helicopter to base, we’re in the air with more Car Chase. We’re back up — over the Chase.
After sitting through hour after hour, I realized that watching people peel potatoes offers as much excitement — and there’s even more potential for blood.
You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all — yet you can’t turn away. I was so mesmerized by Car Chase that I forgot to watch the much-anticipated Monday Night Football matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.
By hour 9, I realized that the siren call of police pursuits isn’t the possibility of violence or even escape, but rather how comforting they are. We’ve collectively seen so many televised police pursuits that they’re part of our Southern California experience, like beautiful sunsets and screeching green parrots. You can instantly summon the sound and look of a car chase in your mind. The din of the helicopter blades in the background as the chopper pilot-reporter offers his play-by-play. The hushed tones of the newscasters. The grainy, widescreen shots of the getaway vehicle and the cops who want to catch it.
In our increasingly fractured society, car chases are one of the last collective Southern Californian experiences. When there’s one going on, all of our problems take a break, if only for an hour. If there weren’t any more car chases, something would be terribly wrong. We stare on, even as we look away from the fact that the central characters are people in extremely troubled moments, risking their lives and those of others.
No wonder Pluto TV — whose nostalgia shtick is so thick that one of their channels is devoted to Ed Sullivan’s best musical and comedic guests — was the network that thought it up.
The aftermath of a police pursuit in Echo Park in 2019. Three robbery suspects were killed and a fourth hospitalized in critical condition.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
“Data and research show that car chases have been of huge interest to audiences for many years,” a Pluto TV spokesperson told me via email. The streamer has no plans to change what they’re doing right now but promised “we will continue to listen to our audiences” and tweak as needed.
Group them by theme — motorcycles, RVs, funny endings — with appropriate soundtracks (“Yakety Sax,” for sure, but don’t forget “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”). Pull from Paramount’s collection of films with legendary car chases — “Mission Impossible,” “The Italian Job,” even “Grease.” And for crying out loud, bunch your commercials together at the start or finish of a car chase, the way public television thanks its sponsors. I don’t need the Charmin bears harshing my buzz.
Car Chase could be the Southern California scrapbook we didn’t know we needed.
Then again, maybe Pluto TV doesn’t need to change a single thing. My friend called at one point during my marathon. He’s a serious guy, a political strategist by trade. I had barely explained the channel’s premise before he interrupted me.
Glenn Kumro was sitting astride his bike on the Strand in Hermosa Beach after stopping to talk to some friends when something slammed into him from behind.
He tumbled over his handlebars, breaking his shoulder, fracturing his hip and losing two teeth.
A speeding e-biker had hit him, Kumro said recently. The e-biker apologized and admitted to being distracted before riding off.
“Just imagine if it was a kid who got hit,” said Kumro, a 58-year-old disabled veteran, who lived in Hermosa Beach at the time of the accident two years ago and has since moved to Northern California. “Those bikes go way too fast.”
A careless rider on a regular bike could also cause trouble on the beachfront sidewalk that on some stretches is teeming with cyclists and pedestrians as well as skateboarders, rollerbladers and dog walkers.
A man rides his e-bike on the Strand in Hermosa Beach. In Hermosa Beach, it’s against city code to use electric power on the Strand.
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
But e-bikes can go up to 28 mph — well above the Strand’s 8 mph speed limit — and are usually heavier and bulkier than regular bikes. They have become increasingly popular in recent years, and some coastal cities have restricted their use.
On the Strand, Hermosa Beach prohibits the use of electric power while permitting e-bikes as long as they’re pedaled manually. Since September, Manhattan Beach has completely banned e-bikes on the Strand, allowing them on city streets and the 22-mile Marvin Braude Bike Trail, which also hugs the coastline.
Redondo Beach, which has a beachfront path separate from the Strand, doesn’t have its own e-bike regulations, but e-bikers must abide by state laws requiring them to follow the same rules as regular cyclists.
E-bikers and e-bike shop owners say the bikes are safe when ridden responsibly. But the number of unsafe riders in the South Bay has left city officials and police grappling with how to keep everyone safe. In Orange County, an abundance of e-bikes on the boardwalk has resulted in collisions with pedestrians and dogs and prompted residents to call for stricter regulations.
Some South Bay residents say the rules aren’t enforced and the bikes are disruptive. They say they often see e-bikers weaving around other cyclists and exceeding the speed limit.
Police officials say e-bike laws are hard to enforce on the Strand, where motorcycles and radar guns aren’t practical. There also aren’t enough officers to routinely station someone there.
“Without a heavy police presence, people are going to do what they want to do,” said Erik Mar, 70, a Manhattan Beach resident who cycles along the coast every day. “It’s kind of lawless.”
Redondo Beach resident Carlos Hernandez, 48, rides his electric bike along the coast nearly every weekend. He starts in the Hollywood Riviera in Redondo Beach and heads north to Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach.
“I use electricity when I need to,” he said — even when he’s on the Strand, where electric power is prohibited. It’s not an issue as long as he’s not riding recklessly, he said.
Hernandez’s friends Sam Valencia and Michael Pacheco, who also live in Redondo Beach, often join him for rides by the beach. Valencia, 48, has a regular bike and is considering buying an e-bike for his 12-mile round-trip commute to El Segundo, where he works for toy company Mattel.
“They go too fast,” he said of e-bikes on the Strand. “They just need to follow the flow down here. It’s not a race. … If you want to ride fast, get on the road.”
People ride an e-bike on the Strand in Hermosa Beach, where the posted speed limit is 8 mph.
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
Pacheco, 50, rides an e-bike and says it’s not a big deal to occasionally use electric power on the Strand. He’s seen e-bikes explode in popularity, he said, and knows they can be dangerous when not handled carefully.
All three friends said the reckless riders they see are usually teenagers who speed, race each other and disregard road signs.
Recently, Redondo Beach City Councilman Zein Obagi was walking with his fiancée on his city’s beachfront bike path when a young person on an e-bike sped past them, weaving around pedestrians and other cyclists.
“If he hits somebody, that’s going to be a very tragic accident,” Obagi said. “It is a serious concern of the residents here, and people want something done about it.”
Obagi said the number of e-bikes in the South Bay has “blown up” over the last year. He described their increasing popularity as a double-edged sword.
“It’s a dream to have environmentally friendly micro-transit,” he said, “but it’s a nightmare to have a kid driving 25 miles per hour on an electric bike.”
Obagi said he and his fellow council members support stricter statewide regulations on e-bikes but don’t plan to implement municipal rules in Redondo Beach. The city doesn’t have the resources to set up its own licensing program, he said, and a speed limit would be difficult to enforce. He referenced a speed limit recently implemented in Manhattan Beach, which has not yet resulted in any citations.
He doesn’t blame police for a lack of enforcement — they need to work with parents and schools to make e-bikes as safe as possible, he said.
Hermosa Beach Mayor Justin Massey raised the issue of e-bikes at a City Council meeting Oct. 10, asking Police Chief Paul LeBaron about enforcement.
“We’ve dedicated so much of our time, attention and resources to the Strand in particular,” LeBaron responded. “We know that there’s threats to public safety down there … it’s the one place in the city that actually brings pedestrians and vehicles together, ” he said, referring to e-bikes, regular bikes and skateboards.
In addition to the difficulties of patrolling a narrow, crowded path, it can be hard to tell if e-bikers are using their motors or just pedaling, LeBaron said in an interview.
And pursuing a speeding biker can be dangerous.
“In order for officers to catch that person, they essentially have to break the same rules they’re trying to enforce, endangering everyone on the Strand,” LeBaron said.
Still, there have been no reported collisions on the Strand this year or last, which LeBaron attributed to effective policing.
“We’d be talking about tragedies right now if we weren’t doing what we could,” he said.
In early September, the Manhattan Beach City Council adopted e-bike regulations, including a ban on riding on the Strand, a 15-mph speed limit on the Marvin Braude Bike Trail and prohibitions on racing, stunts and riding on sidewalks.
“While e-bikes have become popular and are a great way to reduce our reliance on cars, pollution, and traffic, they aren’t toys and can be dangerous when not operated properly,” Manhattan Beach Mayor Richard Montgomery said in a statement.
The new ordinance has not led to any citations on the Strand or the Marvin Braude trail so far this year, according to the city clerk’s office.
A woman riders her e-bike on the Strand in Hermosa Beach. In Hermosa Beach, it’s against city code to use electric power on the Strand.
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
In February, state Assemblymember Tasha Boerner Horvath (D-Encinitas) introduced a bill that would eventually create a licensing program with a written test for riders without a driver’s license, as well as state-mandated e-bike training. It would also prohibit children under 12 from riding e-bikes.
The Redondo Beach City Council is drafting a letter in support of the bill, Obagi said.
More statewide e-bike laws are desperately needed, said Redondo Beach Police Chief Joe Hoffman.
“Unfortunately, the technology for e-bikes has outpaced the legislation in the state of California,” he said. “It has put police departments at a disadvantage.”
Six juveniles were briefly detained after gunshots rang out near Northridge Fashion Center on Friday evening, but no one was injured and no arrests were made, police said.
Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Kelly Muniz said gunfire was reported near the AMC Theater outside the mall around 6 p.m. Police detained six juveniles running from the scene but later released them as none possessed a weapon or had visible injuries.
Shell casings were recovered, Muniz said. Television stations reported that a glass window had been shattered at a sushi restaurant near the theater.
The shooting happened on Black Friday, generally considered to be one of the biggest retail shopping days of the year, though the large crowds that used to descend on malls have decreased in recent years with the rise of E-commerce and the extension of discounts through the weekend by most stores.
A convicted drug trafficker linked to the Sinaloa cartel who worked for the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was gunned down Thursday morning in an industrial stretch of Willowbrook, according to authorities and court records.
Eduardo Escobedo, 39, was one of two men killed in the 14200 block of Towne Avenue, according to officials from the Los Angeles Medical Examiner-Coroner and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The other victim was Guillermo De Los Angeles Jr., 47.
Around 8 a.m. Thursday, sheriff’s deputies responded to an industrial area filled with warehouses, including a truck yard, pallet storage facility and a church. Escobedo and De Los Angeles died at the scene. A third man was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening gunshot wounds.
“It appears that there was some type of gathering or party at the location from last night to early this morning,” Lt. Omar Camacho told KABC-TV Channel 7 at the scene.
Eduardo Escobedo in a photo from court records.
(United States District Court exhibit)
Escobedo, whose nickname, “El Mago,” translates to “The Magician,” served four years and nine months in federal prison for conspiring to distribute more than 10,000 kilograms of marijuana and laundering drug proceeds. He was released in 2018.
Raised in East Los Angeles, Escobedo rose to become the primary distributor of marijuana in Los Angeles for Guzman’s oldest son, Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, a prosecutor said at a 2014 detention hearing. He laundered the proceeds in part by buying exotic cars and shipping them to Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa and the cartel’s stronghold.
Escobedo was also alleged to have ordered the death of a rival trafficker who was gunned down in his Bentley on the 101 Freeway in 2008. While Escobedo was never charged in the murder, his brother and another man were convicted and are serving life sentences.
Escobedo was born in the United States, his lawyer, Guadalupe Valencia, said at the detention hearing. He attended Garfield High School, where he met his wife, and later graduated from a continuation school, Valencia said.
In July 2011, Escobedo, then 27, was arrested leaving a stash house where police found a ton of marijuana, Adam Braverman, an assistant U.S. attorney, said at the detention hearing. Torrance police, which served the warrant, said the stash house was in the West Adams neighborhood.
In October 2013, Escobedo was caught on a wiretap speaking with Guzman Salazar about smuggling more than five tons of marijuana through a tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border, Braverman said. Authorities seized 2.7 tons of cannabis from a courier working for Escobedo, according to the prosecutor.
Guzman Salazar remains one of Mexico’s most wanted men. One of his top lieutenants, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, nicknamed “El Nini,” was captured by the Mexican National Guard earlier this week in Culiacan. Justice Department officials are seeking to extradite Pérez Salas, who is charged in two U.S. jurisdictions with conspiring to traffic methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine; laundering money; retaliating against witnesses; and possessing machine guns.
Escobedo was also helping Guzman Salazar launder money through the purchase of sports cars that were shipped to Culiacan, Braverman said. Federal agents determined that Escobedo used a false name to buy two Lamborghinis from a dealership in Newport Beach.
Braverman said Escobedo was stopped by the Irwindale police driving one of the cars, a $175,000-dollar Murcielago. The Lamborghini was purchased with a series of cash deposits just beneath the $10,000 threshold that triggers a bank reporting requirement, according to a warrant for the car’s seizure.
Agents listened on a wiretap as Guzman Salazar asked Escobedo to purchase a Nissan GTR and make $50,000 in modifications, Braverman said. Mexican authorities seized the Nissan in Culiacan in 2014, as well as a McLaren that Escobedo had bought in California for $175,000, the prosecutor said.
At the time of his arrest in 2014, Escobedo was living in a sprawling Granada Hills home with a pool and tennis court. Drug Enforcement Administration agents searched Escobedo and found him carrying a large amount of cash, four phones and keys to five different cars.
A father of four, Escobedo claimed his annual income of about $200,000 came from a business he owned with his wife, International Hair Authority, that imported hair extensions and sold them. Escobedo also reported owning a record label, Magic Records Corporation.
Braverman said agents suspected Escobedo was using the hair company’s accounts to launder drug money, pointing to a $50,000 wire transfer from a man named Harvinder Singh. Scotland Yard, the London police force, arrested Singh and his associates, who were shipping cocaine from Mexico to London on British Airways flights, Braverman said.
After pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute marijuana and launder money, Escobedo was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison.
He was never charged in a murder that sent his younger brother to prison.
In 2008, police found a bullet-riddled silver Bentley Continental GT crashed on the center median of the 101 freeway in downtown Los Angeles. Jose Luis Macias, 25, was slumped behind the wheel. A bullet had gone through the back of his head.
Nicknamed “Huerito,” Macias worked for the Arellano Felix organization, a Tijuana-based cartel that rivals the Sinaloans. Macias’ friends often got into fights with Escobedo’s brother, Andy Medrano, at a Pico Rivera nightclub called El Rodeo, according to an appellate decision that summarized the evidence in Medrano’s trial.
In the early morning hours of Dec. 12, 2008, Macias was at a festival for the Virgin of Guadalupe on Olvera Street when he got into a fight with Medrano and a friend, Michael Aleman, a witness testified. Security guards broke it up.
Macias was waiting at a red light in his Bentley when two men approached the car on foot, a witness testified. The witness, a stranded motorist waiting for a tow truck, saw muzzle flashes erupt in quick succession, as if from automatic weapons. The Bentley made a U-turn and sped toward the freeway.
Police suspected Escobedo had ordered the killing. According to a search warrant affidavit reported by The Times in 2009, detectives believed he and Macias were engaged in “a power struggle” over control of trafficking networks.
At the 2014 detention hearing in federal court, Braverman said Los Angeles detectives suspected Escobedo “ordered the homicide to occur.”
“Our understanding is that individual was a rival drug trafficker driving in that Bentley,” he said.
Detectives arrested Escobedo in 2011 and questioned him about the homicide before letting him go. Valencia, his attorney, said Escobedo was subpoenaed to testify, but was told by a prosecutor he wasn’t being called as a witness in the trial. His brother and Aleman were convicted of Macias’ murder and sentenced to life terms.
After his release from federal prison in 2018, Escobedo opened a chain of restaurants and food trucks called Benihibachi, according to a motion his lawyer submitted to terminate his probation early. The motion included a photograph of Escobedo wearing a shirt with the restaurant’s logo, chopping a tub full of onions.
His attorney, Ezekiel Cortez, urged the judge to see the good Escobedo had done after leaving prison. “As a society, you recognize that they listened. You recognize people who turned their lives around,” Cortez said at a hearing. “You recognize people who cut their ties, as in this case, with former very bad associations.”
“Mr. Escobedo proved to the whole word that he cut his ties completely,” Cortez said. “And he acquired some risks.”
Calling Escobedo “an enormous success,” U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw agreed to terminate his probation early. “Free from these influences,” Sabraw said of Escobedo’s ties to drug traffickers, “you are a very productive, wonderful human being.”
Still, Escobedo flaunted his opulent lifestyle on social media in recent years. He posed for photographs with Floyd Mayweather and Al Pacino. He wore flashy tracksuits by Dolce and Gabbana and sported a diamond-encrusted Richard Mille watch. One photograph showed Escobedo holding a duffel bag full of money. In another, he embraces a member of the Mexican Mafia while holding a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne.
In a corrido, or ballad, titled “El Mago,” the group Edicion Especial sang that Escobedo had changed for the better. “A long time ago it was different,” the song goes, but today he has “los gringos” eating at his Japanese restaurants. He thinks often of his brother, “the one who is in prison.”
Investigators have not disclosed a motive for the killings. Camacho didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
De Los Angeles had been released from federal prison in December 2022, court records show. A member of the 18th Street gang called “Sad Boy,” he served 10 years for distributing methamphetamine.
After Escobedo’s death Thursday, the group Enigma Norteno put out a ballad called “El Mago Merlin.” Escobedo still hangs out in East Los Angeles and fears no one, the song goes. He baptized the child of Guzman Salazar, the kingpin’s son, and bought his “compadre” a white Lamborghini Huracan for his birthday.
Los Angeles police have launched an investigation into a protest Thursday at the Brentwood home of the president of a pro-Israeli lobbying group, with footage on social media showing them igniting smoke devices in the street and spattering fake blood on the property.
The incident, which police are investigating as a possible hate crime, is the latest in Los Angeles after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, prompting Israel to bombard and invade Gaza, the Palestinian enclave that Hamas controls.
The crisis has roiled Los Angeles, home to large populations of both Jews and Palestinians. On Nov. 1, Canter’s Deli, an iconic Jewish restaurant in the Fairfax District, was defaced with antisemitic messages spray-painted below a mural depicting the history of Jews in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Police Department officers responded Thursday morning to the 11900 block of Foxboro Drive, where a group of protesters were causing a “disturbance,” according to a statement posted on X. Police made no arrests at the scene, but were investigating the incident as suspected vandalism, assault with a deadly weapon and a hate crime.
The statement did not name the owner of the home that was targeted. Officer Melissa Ohana, an LAPD spokeswoman, said the department doesn’t identify victims of crimes.
But in a post on X, Mayor Karen Bass appeared to identify the victim as Michael Tuchin, a Los Angeles attorney and president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.
“I’ve spoken with Michael Tuchin and Chief [Michel] Moore about yesterday’s disturbing incident,” Bass wrote. “Hate and violence will not be tolerated in our City. LAPD will continue to work with city and business leaders to keep Angelenos safe.”
Tuchin didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
A video posted by the People’s City Council – Los Angeles showed a group of people standing outside a home that the organization identified as Tuchin’s, holding a banner that read, “F— your holiday baby killer.” A red liquid had been poured on the driveway. Small white bundles were scattered on the driveway and front lawn.
Footage posted by Sam Yebri, a former City Council candidate, showed smoke billowing in the street as people yelled and a siren droned.
Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said a person contacted the department at 10:37 a.m. about an unspecified incident in the 11900 block of Foxboro Drive. During the call, it was determined that the police and not the Fire Department should respond, Humphrey said. No fire units were dispatched to the scene.
Police on Friday were continuing to investigate why a car crashed into two pedestrians in South Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon, leaving a woman dead and a girl seriously injured.
Around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, a car was exiting a private property near the intersection of 83rd Street and Western Avenue when it struck a vehicle heading south on Western, said Officer Melissa Ohana, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department.
The car that had been struck then collided with two pedestrians on the sidewalk, a 26-year-old woman and an 8-year-old girl, Ohana said. The woman died at the scene. The child was taken to a hospital, where she remained Friday in critical condition. Ohana said the relationship between the two victims wasn’t clear.
The driver of the car that initiated the chain of collisions, a 58-year-old man, was hospitalized in stable condition. Ohana said it wasn’t clear if alcohol or another intoxicant was a factor in the crash, but she added that detectives will take that into account as part of their investigation.
The driver of the car that struck the woman and child was not hospitalized, Ohana said.
