This Weekender Updater updates you … uh, this weekend … on relatively recent incidents: a November police chase that ended with the pursued smashing into a pier, a fatal Christmas Eve gang shooting and an early Christmas morning burglary gone very wrong. There's also New Year resolutions to an LAPD cop beating a teen relative and a lawsuit accusing a paint company of contributing to an employee's death.
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Story: “Christmas Naughties: Stabbing, Burglar Shot, Gang Slaying, Dead Motorcyclist, Drive-by”
Update: District Attorney Tony Rackauckas says Angel Arellano may have escaped a Christmas Eve shooting and be alive today had the 17-year-old not resisted the terms of a Santa Ana gang injunction, City News Service reports. “It's hard not to wonder, had Arellano been enjoined in the injunction and complied with the 10 p.m. curfew, he would still be alive today,” Rackauckas said. “This case is exactly what we were trying to prevent by filing the criminal street gang injunction” against the Townsend Gang. Countered ACLU attorney Peter Bibring, who is helping to fight the injunction, “Nobody should have to give up their constitutional rights to avoid being killed. … [Rackauckas] basically suggests [Arellano] got what was coming to him for asserting his constitutional rights, and that's offensive.”
Story: “Christmas Naughties: Stabbing, Burglar Shot, Gang Slaying, Dead Motorcyclist, Drive-by” (Yep, the same one)
Update: Jeremy William Bell, who was shot by an Anaheim Hills homeowner during an alleged Christmas burglary, is facing felony counts, sentencing enhancements and pre-trial hearings. The 29-year-old Fullerton man is charged with first-degree residential burglary, aggravated assault, and attempted first-degree residential burglary, and he faces sentencing enhancements for using a deadly weapon and a prior conviction in 2012 in Riverside County for a felon possessing a firearm. Bell could get nine years and four months in prison if convicted.
Story: Daniel Hun Chun, LAPD Cop, Accused of Child Abuse That Could Imprison Him for 6 Years
Update: Los Angeles Police Department Officer Daniel Hun Chun pleaded guilty to beating a teen relative for getting poor grades and other behavioral problems. The 40-year-old North Orange County resident was originally charged with felonies that could have sent him to state prison for six years. But he copped to a single count of misdemeanor battery and faces up to six months in jail at his March 5 sentencing in Fullerton.
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Story: Worker Burned in Hot Tub Business Blast (last paragraph)
Update: Vista Paint Corp. was ordered to pay $950,000 to settle a lawsuit charging illegal handling and use of a toxic hazardous substance which resulted in the death of one worker and serious injuries to a second at the firm's Fullerton facility. The Orange County District Attorney's office, which announced the settlement, had charged the company with violating a prior injunction by permitting the unsafe handling and use by employees of a paint and epoxy remover that contained the toxic hazardous substance methylene chloride, which has been known to cause cancer, death and long-term harm to individuals exposed to the substance without adequate ventilation. Roberto Ramirez Magdariaga died after being overwhelmed by exposure to the substance on Nov. 15, 2011.
Story: Devin Ashley Chavez Was DUI and Had Cocaine on Him When He Crashed into Pier: Police
Update: Devin Ashley Chavez pleaded no contest in a Torrance courtroom to charges stemming from a police chase that ended when he crashed his vehicle at the Manhattan Beach Pier on Nov. 6. The 28-year-old Cypress resident was sentenced to 16 months behind bars.
Story: Javier Montoya Faces Murder and Other Counts in Fiery Death After Night of Police Chases
Update: Javier Homero Montoya pleaded not guilty Friday to second-degree murder and leading police on two separate chases in Westminster with the second one leading to a friend's death in the passenger seat. The Riverside 41-year-old is charged with a count each of murder, assault with a deadly weapon, evading peace officers while driving recklessly, evading police officers while driving recklessly and causing serious bodily injury or death and two counts of aggravated assault on a peace officer, all felonies. He also faces a sentencing enhancement for residential burglary conviction in Riverside County in 2000. Ordered held on $1 million bail, Montoya could get just shy of 60 years in prison with a conviction.
Story: Mother, Aunt and Uncle Admit to Abuse of Toddler Who Died After Days of Smacks to Head
Update: Mother Noel Lynn Hurtado, aunt Ilene Irene Hurtado and uncle Timothy Hurtado were each sentenced Friday to 15-year terms in prison for the 2007 death of 23-month-old Dartanian Hurtado. For technical reasons, the deceased child's mother and aunt had to enter new pleas of guilt to child abuse likely to cause great bodily injury or death and admit a sentencing enhancement for personally inflicting great bodily injury. As part of the negotiated settlement, charges of murder and child assault causing death, which would have led to life sentences, were dropped, according to Assistant District Attorney Howard Gundy. The prosecutor explained to City News Service that the adults actually received 12-year prison terms, but because the plea deal included waiving credit for 956 days in custody awaiting trial, it amounts to 15-year sentences.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.