A sly senior feline who wedged itself into a brick-sized hole beneath a Seal Beach home’s fireplace was rescued by a team of Orange County Fire Authority personnel.
Franny, a senior cat around 9 to 11 years old, “decided to play a game of hide-and-seek” shortly after being adopted by its new family, OCFA said. After the cat got into the hole, its owners were unable to help her out, so they called firefighters.
Engine 44 responded to the scene and were able to safely get the cat out after several careful attempts.
“We’re happy to report Franny is doing well and settling back in at home, hopefully staying out of tight spaces moving forward.
OCFA took Franny’s rescue operation as opportunity to remind the public that Animal Control can be contacted during urgent matters so appropriate resources can be deployed.
🐾 A Purr-fect Rescue in Seal Beach 🐾
A Seal Beach family’s happy day of rescuing a senior cat yesterday took an unexpected turn when “Franny,” estimated to be 9–11 years old, decided to play a game of hide-and-seek, crawling into a hole about the size of a brick beneath the >> pic.twitter.com/sRYpQhM7eG
A man sentenced to death for the 1980 rape and murder of a Seal Beach woman died in prison on Monday, Dec. 22 at the age of 80, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Wednesday.
Benjamin W. Watta, formerly of Long Beach, was found unresponsive in his cell at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City around 11 a.m. on Monday during a count and pronounced dead by paramedics just after 11:30 a.m., the corrections agency said. The Del Norte County Coroner will determine his cause of death.
Simone Sharpe, 70, killed in 1980. (Courtesy photo)
Benjamin Wayne Watta, convicted of a 1980 murder in Seal Beach. (Courtesy photo)
Benjamin Wayne Watta sits in the Santa Ana courthouse with his legal counsel on Jan. 20, 2009. (File photo by Joshua Suddock, Orange County Register)
Benjamin W. Watta, who was sentenced to death for the 1980 murder of Simone Sharpe, died in prison at age 80 on Dec. 22, 2025. (Photo Courtesy of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
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Simone Sharpe, 70, killed in 1980. (Courtesy photo)
He was convicted of murder during the commission of rape and burglary in 2008 for the 1980 rape and killing of 70-year-old Simone Sharpe in Seal Beach. A jury recommended the death penalty for Watta and that sentence was imposed in 2009.
Sharpe was found dead by her son at her neighbor’s home on Christmas Eve 1980. She had been raped, strangled and suffocated the day before. Sharpe was feeding her neighbor’s cats and collecting their mail for them, going into the home through an unlocked garage door, as they were on a vacation.
Sharpe’s son realized she was missing and looked for her at the neighbor’s house, where he found her dead in a bedroom, between a bed and wall, prosecutors said.
Sharpe’s murder case went cold and was unsolved until 2001, when a district attorney’s office task force focused on killers, rapists and sexual offenders used DNA technology to link Watta to the murder, with DNA from a rape kit collected in 1980.
When the task force made the DNA connection, Watta was in custody for attempted murder of his ex-girlfriend in Florida and was extradited to Orange County.
Watta was moved to Pelican Bay State Prison from Orange County in 2009 and was serving a condemned sentence, the corrections department said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 placed a moratorium on the death penalty in California. The last execution in the state was in 2006.
