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UPDATE: Lake Forest 19-year-old Matthew Thomas Dragna will be arraigned in Santa Ana at 1:30 p.m. Friday in the Oct. 23 murder of longtime Hotel Laguna catering manager Damon L. Nicholson, who is believed to be Laguna Beach's first homicide victim since 2002.

Courtesy of Laguna Beach Police Department

Matthew Thomas Dragna

​Dragna, who is being held on $1 million bail, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in state prison if convicted, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office.

Laguna Beach police investigators served simultaneous search warrants Wednesday evening at Dragna's home and a Santa Ana rehabilitation center, where the suspect was taken into custody, Lt. Jason Kravetz announced earlier today.

Dragna is accused of having entered Nicholson's home in the early morning hours of Oct. 23, bludgeoning him to death and fleeing with several stolen items.

Salvador Hernandez reports in the Orange County Register that Dragna, who has a history of drug use and burglary arrests, established a relationship with Nicholson on the Internet before the Laguna Beach man was beaten to death.

​Various Orange County communities are going to be crawling with extra cops this weekend as pre-Thanksgiving pushes are made to get drunks, druggies, the unlicensed and unsafe motorcyclists off the road and to ensure everyone is buckling up.

R. Scott Moxley blogged earlier today about the Orange County Sheriff's Department setting up DUI checkpoints in Stanton and Villa Park on Friday. The next night, the Garden Grove Police Department conducts one from 9 p.m. Saturday to 3 a.m. Sunday at the intersection of Harbor Boulevard and Quatro Street.

​UPDATE: University of California Regents voted for a 32 percent tuition increase today, with a dissenting vote coming from the student-regent. The vote was taken and debated over loud protests outside from hundreds of demonstrators. Our big sis' LA Weekly reports one arrest today.

See also the Los Angeles Times LA Live blog post and their photos here.

​Here's government-sponsored motivation for you to make it safely to Thanksgiving. The Orange County Sheriff's Department announced this morning that its "DUI Task Force" will conduct "roving patrols" in Stanton and Villa Park on Friday, November 20. Deputies will target areas that attract drunks and collisions.

​What happens when just before being released from duty at Camp Pendleton for the weekend, you allegedly: participate in a mandatory safety briefing that covers the dangers of drunken driving, including the tidbit that should you get behind the wheel while drunk, you'll likely kill someone; go on to chug alcohol for two hours; tell everyone you're going to drive home to Santa Ana; pass out in your barracks; have your car keys removed from your pocket as you're passed out by a lance corporal; wake up, demand your keys, become belligerent, throw trash and break your cell phone against a wall; ask a lower-rank Marine to fetch your keys; pull rank on the same Marine, forcing him to give you your keys; drive your Dodge Caliber 75 mph in a 50 mph zone on MacArthur Boulevard in Newport Beach; fail to stop of slow down near the intersection of Jamboree Road; hit an Aston Martin waiting at the red light with a radiologist in the driver's seat and his wife is in the passenger seat; cause the car to spin out before coming to a stop, resulting in the doctor's life being taken a half hour later and the woman suffering from bleeding in her brain and back injuries; break your ankle in the same wreck; omit an odor of alcohol, slur your speech, rock red, watery eyes and have a blood alcohol level of .12 percent three hours after the crash?

If you're 22-year-old Lance Corporal Elijah Leigh Ferguson, you face trial today in your hometown of Santa Ana on murder charges.

The Orange County District Attorney's office release follows . . .

​A Laguna Hills accountant hired to manage a brother and sister's trust fund has been sentenced to four years in state prison for stealing more than a half million dollars to pay for a doll collection. 

Margot Jean Strawn, 58, had pleaded guilty to two felony counts of grand theft with sentencing enhancements for aggravated white collar crime over $500,000 and property damage over $150,000 and $50,000. Besides the prison time, Strawn was ordered to pay more than $500,000 in restitution to the victims, $95,000 of which she handed over at her sentencing Monday.

The Orange County District Attorney's office release on the case follows after the jump . . .

It's the Weekly's weekly round-up of local crimes and police calls--now with more . . . um . . . you'll see. (Not that you'll want to.) 

TUESDAY, NOV. 10

​

​ Nothing to See Here Folks. . . . Seriously, You Don't Want to Look This call came in around 1:10 p.m. concerning activities near the corner of Aliso Creek Road and Enterprise in Aliso Viejo: Two women in their late 80s (!) making out in a black convertible and lifting their shirts. And that's when the heavy bass kicked in: BOWM-CHICKA, BOWM-BOWMMM . . .   Grammy, you told me you were going to water aerobics! (Hat tip to the Orange County Register for keeping tabs on their frisky readership.)

 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 11

Real Cut-Up A man was walking near McFadden Avenue and Sullivan Street in Santa Ana, where two men came up, one placed a knife to his neck and the other swiped his wallet containing $8 American. They took off, and the victim, who was sliced in the process, headed to a local hospital for treatment of cuts to his hand and the side of the neck. Police got the call to come over and check him out around 2 a.m. No description was offered of the robbers.

Continue reading " Crime Time: Late Octogenarian Lesbian"...

FreeFoto.com

Welcome.

​The Orange County District Attorney's office shot over the release after the jump about a former caretaker for developmentally disabled adults facing arraignment Thursday for allegedly stealing more than $100,000 from her clients by writing checks from their accounts.

Shandie Marie Lacsamana Rosete, a 33-year-old Placentia resident, is up on 14 felony counts of caretaker theft from a dependent adult as well as sentencing enhancements and allegations for aggravated white collar crime over $100,000, loss over $100,000, and property damage over $50,000. She could get 19 years in state prison if convicted.

​Alonso Jose Lopez, a 31-year-old resident of Vista in San Diego County, got Navel Gazing mentions here and here, but he'd no doubt prefer those over the his latest mention: in an Orange County grand jury indictment unsealed today that identifies him as one of nine San Diego criminal street gang members who are among 11 people charged in a recent crime spree in Tustin, Laguna Beach and San Diego County.

Photo from Ryan Sheckler's MySpace page

Ryan Sheckler with one of the spoils of his success.

​Matthew Mercuro, the 36-year-old chief financial officer for fellow San Clemente resident Ryan Sheckler's businesses, was arrested and charged today with embezzling more than $365,000 from the 19-year-old professional skateboarding sensation, according to the Orange County District Attorney.

The suspect, who is accused of fraudulently transferring funds to himself from two corporate accounts, has been charged with two felony counts of grand theft with sentencing enhancements for excessive taking over $200,000 and $65,000. If convicted, Mercuro faces a maximum sentence of six years and eight months in state prison. 

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Joshua Steven Rodriguez, 18, of La Habra, was fatally stabbed on Nov. 1, but his death was not officially deemed a murder until a massive search warrant sweep Thursday morning led to several arrests.

Joshua Steven Rodriguez with his mother Yolanda Mansillas and brother Reise Rodriguez (center).

​

A fight involving gang members broke out after midnight at a party in the 1000 block of East Francis Avenue in La Habra. Rodriguez, who police do not believe was in a gang, was found stabbed to death just after 12:30 a.m. Two others were sent to the hospital but their injuries were not life-threatening.

​About 300 officers from 20 law enforcement agencies made sweeps through various Orange County communities last night and early today and swooped up 67 kids in violation of city curfew laws, the District Attorney's office announced.

Curfews begin at 10 or 11 p.m., depending on the city, and last until 5 a.m. the following day. During those hours, minors can't be out in public unless they are accompanied by a parent or guardian, working or taking part in an educational endeavor.

The DA, which billed it as the largest-ever curfew sweep in Orange County, explains more in its statement after the jump . . .  

What is the definition of organized crime?

​"$90 million."

--The amount local labor unions hoped to fleece from public contracts to build the "Great Park" in Irvine, according to Irvine Democrat Chris Mears on the current episode of KOCE's "Real Orange."

Larry the Liar nailed by fellow Liberal

​"We have the great balloon not the Great Park."

--Acclaimed UC Irvine professor Mark Petrecca on the current episode of KOCE's "Real Orange" discussing the failure of Irvine city councilman Larry Agran, a fellow liberal and the ethics-less godfather of the city's politics, to deliver on his nine-year-old promises to convert a military airport into a "world class" public park. In the absence of building a park, Agran has shamelessly celebrated giving massive, taxpayer subsidized balloon rides over the proposed park area.

A still from the video mentioned in the lawsuit. Watch the full thing here.

​We reported back in September that the American Civil Liberties Union had settled a lawsuit against Newport-Mesa School District and Corona del Mar High School administrators brought by the Orange County Equality Coalition and the Ketchum-Wiggins family, whose daughter Hail was harassed via Facebook video and who said administrators didn't do enough to punish the harassers. The lawsuit came in the midst of controversy over a school production of Rent--originally spiked by the school's administration, some allege, because it depicted homosexuality--which featured Hail Ketchum-Wiggins as lead.

It's November now, which means all the high-school seniors involved in the case, including Hail Ketchum-Wiggins and the three boys who "joked" about raping and murdering her, aren't at CDM anymore. But Karyl Ketchum, mother of Hail, is still losing sleep. She tells the Weekly that she believes the school has failed to follow through on a few terms of the settlement agreement, and that she fears for the safety of her daughter when she returns from college for the holidays.

Ketchum is considering her options. One of them involves YouTube.

Courtesy of Orange County District Attorney

Frederick Davison

​The Orange County District Attorney's Office is so upset over the dismissal of a civil suit aimed at keeping a convicted rapist and child molester locked up that it is alerting the community about the 40-year-old's man's release from custody today.

The DA argued during a two-week trial that Frederick Davison should be kept in a state mental hospital as a sexually violent predator, but Orange County Superior Court Judge David Thompson, ruling there was insufficient evidence to send the case to a jury, dismissed it. The DA cannot file another petition, so Davison, who has indicated he will move in with his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend in Topanga Canyon, will be freed this evening.

"The OCDA believes Davison still poses a danger to the community based on the evidence presented to the court," reads a statement released by district attorney Tony Rackauckas' media office.

Davison will be required to register as a sex offender within five days of release and be listed on the Megan's Law website, and any future felony could earn him a third strike.

AP pool photo

Three blind vice.

​NEWS ITEM: A pro-rape Facebook page that was set up by past and current "anti-consent" students of an elite Australian college has been taken down amid widespread condemnation.

INSTA-PUNDITRY: Guess that leaves Kyle Nachreiner, Keith Spann and Gregory Haidl hanging with their pending friend requests.

It's the Weekly's weekly roundup of local police calls and assorted mayhem.

MONDAY, NOV. 2

". . . and I don't like you!"

​"I'm Talking Tina . . . and Things Are Going to Be Different Around Here" A woman called 9-1-1 around 3:45 in the morning to say she heard a baby toy go off downstairs in her home in the 26800 block of Moore Oaks Road in Laguna Hills even though no one else was supposed to be down there. She wanted deputies to come by and make sure everything was safe. Set your tasers to stun, boys!

What Brown Has Done for Her Lately Another woman on Radiance Lane in Las Flores, one of the unincorporated areas adjacent to the city of Rancho Santa Margarita, contacted deputies to report that she had received a call around 11 a.m. from a man claiming to be from UPS asking if she was home alone.

Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, the one on the right.

​Funds are being collected for an upcoming court challenge of Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens.

OCCCCW, a Costa Mesa-based political action committee (PAC) that aims to expand the distribution of concealed weapons permits, has posted on its website a message that begins, "Soon OCCCWS will be going to court to fight just one example of the Sheriff's egregious behavior."

Courtesy of Orange County District Attorney's Office

Because her race is apparently so important to many who have left comments, here is Tomeka Charee Harris' booking photo.

​QUESTION: What happens if you smoke meth, go for a morning drive on the 91 freeway and fall asleep at the wheel, losing control at high speeds while exiting at the East Street off-ramp, smacking into a fence and plowing into a utility pole, which causes major head trauma and, later, death to your 27-year-old boyfriend and your daughter, who was one day shy of turning 2?

ANSWER: If you're 29-year-old Tomeka Charee Harris of Fullerton, you get six years to stew in prison.

The Orange County District Attorney's Office press release on the case follows the jump . . .  

Michael Clemmons

​In "Sex, Crimes and Videotape," Clockwork told you about former Santa Ana City College football player Michael Alexander Clemmons, 20, of Tustin, and his former Tustin High School classmate John Paul Foster II, 23, of Seaside in Monterey County, pleading guilty Sept. 24 to charges of raping an intoxicated 18-year-old woman in a Tustin motel and videotaping their crimes.

The other cleat has dropped as a second former player with the Santa Ana Dons--Luster Mitchell Lewis, 21, of Irvine--pleaded guilty in the case, and all three men were sentenced to six years behind bars.

The three men had become friends at Tustin High School before Foster moved to Monterey County and Lewis and Clemmons joined the Dons' roster. But Foster would come down and visit his friends occasionally.

Luster Lewis

​That's what happened in July 2008 when the trio was partying in a room at the Key Inn in Tustin. The 18-year-old woman was "highly intoxicated," according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office, when she was dropped off at the motel by a mutual friend who asked Clemmons, Foster and Lewis to look after her.

To say they failed is an understatement.

While the young woman was, as the DA put it, "unconscious, incapacitated and unable to resist due to intoxication," Foster videotaped the duration of the sexual assault. Lewis removed her clothes and moved her from the bed to the floor so he and Clemmons could repeatedly rape, orally copulate and digitally penetrate her. One of the fine, upstanding gentlemen ejaculated onto her face, and Foster joined in the sexual assault by rubbing his penis against her face while holding the video camera and then, handing the camera to another defendant, Foster pissed on her.

Courtesy of Orange County District Attorney's Office

Izad Chavoshan's booking photo.

​UPDATED WITH COMMENT FROM A CHURCH OFFICIAL . . .

The bizarre case of the Huntington Beach man charged with trying to burn down Orange County Church of Christ not one, two, three but four times (!) just keeps getting bizarrer.

Thirty-year-old Izad Chavoshan could get up to 20 years in state prison if he is convicted of the three felony counts of arson, one felony count of attempted arson and a hate crime sentencing enhancement against him. It certainly won't help Chavoshan's defense that he has a prior strike conviction from 1998 for criminal threats.

Yet, to read Chavoshan's Facebook page, you get the impression that authorities must've grabbed the wrong dude. The 1996 Marina High School grad lists his nickname as "Johnny Cash," his party affiliation as Republican and his favorite quote being law-and-order moralista  Ronald Reagan's "I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself."

From Izad Chavoshan's Facebook page

Chavoshan's page includes photos from Orange Coast College Persian Students Society events and parties, and among his message to the other 150 fans of the Los Angeles International Church of Christ-East Region Religious Center was this one from Aug. 5: "Hello LAICC . . . I encourage all of you to attend Harvest Crusade. I am a born-again Christian and a Republican. www.harvest.org."

Just 10 or so weeks later, he was arrested not with a smoking gun but a burning trash can in front of the LAICC's Orange County church in Irvine, and investigators linked him to three other fires there since Oct. 15.

What the hell happened?

Courtesy of U.S. Border and Customs Protection

Found it!

​You never know what will turn up in a container at the Long Beach port. Sure, the vast majority are filled with legal products bound for store shelves all across this great land. But every so often inspectors will find smuggled guns, drugs, humans . . .

. . . a Volkswagen Bus that was reported stolen in Washington more than 35 years ago.

Photo by Beth Stirnaman

Joe Arpaio (left), Barbara Coe and Bill Hunt--together at last. They are shown here at a VIP reception before a fundraiser for Hunt's campaign for Orange County sheriff.

​I went to a Bill Hunt for Sheriff fund-raiser tonight, and a Joe Arpaio Dinner Show broke out.

A funny moment--not funny ha-ha but funny nonetheless--happened during CNN's live coverage of the Fort Hood slayings this afternoon.

For anyone who was in a cave, at Disneyland or on the road at the time, 12 people were shot dead and 31 others were wounded in a shooting rampage at the U.S. Army base in Texas, a prime point of deployment for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lone gunman, who was originally reported to be among the soldiers killed, was being treated for four gunshot wounds, according to Army brass.

After a CNN reporter had just mentioned on air how fears have been expressed that lower enlistment standards have allowed people with criminal records to join the armed forces, Situation Room anchorman Wolf Blitzer wondered aloud to CNN consultant and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark if the gunman could have been a young gang-banger plucked from the worst streets in America.

As Clark began to answer, Blitzer interrupted to inform that the gunman had just been identified. At least one viewer repeated to himself, "don't be a young gang-banger, don't be a young gang-banger . . ." Of course, he wasn't.

​Garden Grove police are seeking an alleged fraudster who has been pouncing on grandmas and grandpas.

Courtesy of Orange County District Attorney

Tracy Lynn Salcido, before the tears.

​Tracy Lynn Salcido, the former Orangewood Children's Foundation chief financial officer convicted of having stolen more than $780,000 in donations from the nonprofit, was sentenced to 12 years in state prison and ordered to pay nearly $1.2 million in restitution to cover her theft and attorney and accounting fees incurred by Orangewood.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald also denied the 40-year-old Yorba Linda resident's request to delay reporting for her prison sentence so she can spend the holidays with her youth soccer coach husband and two children.

Family is important to Salcido, whose hubby had also worked at United Retailer/United Convenience Stores, the business his father owns and whose accounts the Mrs. deposited 206 forged Orangewood checks into. She was the only person charged in the scheme, which her attorney blamed on extreme family pressures.

The Orange County Register reports that Salcido was tearful and apologetic at her sentencing.

It's the Weekly's weekly round-up of local police calls--actually the Weekly's TWO weekly round-up as an attempt is made to make up for lost vacation time.

Left courtesy of E! Entertainment, right courtesy of Orange Police Department

Ryan Seacrest (left) gets paid another visit from his No. 1 Army special forces fan, Chidi Benjamin Uzomah Jr.

​

SEACREST OUT, UZOMAH BACK IN Remember Chidi Benjamin Uzomah Jr., the 25-year-old Lakewood resident who pleaded guilty last month in Orange County Superior Court to misdemeanor assault, battery and possession of a switchblade knife two or more inches long in connection with his trying to get too close to Ryan Seacrest outside Children's Hospital of Orange County in Orange on Sept. 13? Police say Uzomah is at it again. He was allegedly armed with a knife Friday morning when he walked into the lobby of the E! Entertainment building where Seacrest hosts his KISS-FM radio show and E! News Daily but was detained by security guards before he get could close to the pint-sized American Idol host. Uzomah, who was handed over to  LAPD officers, was sentenced to 15 days in jail, three years probation and ordered to stay away from CHOC and Seacrest after the September incident in which he attacked a security guard standing between Uzomah and Seacrest, who was unaware of the fracas. "His aggressive and violent efforts to come into physical contact with me are extremely frightening to me," Seacrest declared in justifying the restraining order to the court. "They have jeopardized not only my personal safety but also the safety and well-being of those around me." Now, TMZ reports the Army has apologized to Seacrest because Uzomah was a sergeant with the Army Reserves under the 426th Civil Affairs Battalion-a part of the Army's special forces. "We apologize to Ryan Seacrest," Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nathan Banks is quoted as saying. "Pending the outcome of the local investigation, the Army will decide what further action to take. We take all matters of our personnel seriously."

And now, back to our regularly scheduled crime blurbs . . .

Gurel is stuck in prison

​Wickedly cruel Irvine rapist Metin Reza Gurel may have thought he'd found a way to overturn his 2008 convictions when officials conceded after his trial that the prosecutor and the lead Irvine police detective on the case had shielded their sexual affair from defense lawyers.

That salacious news originated in September 2008 from Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who said he was "regretful" to learn that Deputy DA Suzy M. Snyder violated office ethics by secretly engaging "in a sexual relationship with a testifying police witness."

Because the government has a duty to disclose to the defense exculpatory evidence--including information that might impeach a witness, Rackauckas immediately notified Gurel's defense team, James Crawford and Leonard Klaif.

Not lost on the defense was the fact that they'd suspected that the police detective had encouraged the embellishment of the victim's testimony in order to secure convictions. A flurry of legal moves followed. Synder never returned to her office at Harbor Court in Newport Beach. Gruel, 44-year-old Turkish citizen, may have thought he'd soon see freedom again.