An 18th Street gang member on Los Angeles' Top 10 most wanted list of gangsters has been captured in Guatemala, authorities said Wednesday, the same day they announced that a recent crackdown on gangs has yielded more than 200 arrests in the San Fernando Valley and South L.A.
Angel Zevallos, an 18th Street Westside member known as "Spanky," was captured last Wednesday and deported by Guatemalan authorities to Texas, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said.
Zevallos, who has waived extradition in Texas, was set to be returned to Los Angeles today to face an attempted murder charge in connection with the Feb. 6, 2006, shooting and wounding of a security guard at the Buddha Bar in Hollywood.
"The capture of Angel Zevallos was truly a team effort," Bratton said. "It was impressive to see how quickly this all came together. Interpol inspectors, deputy U.S. marshals in the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala and LAPD detectives worked as if they were across the room, rather than across a continent."
Zevallos was on the list of most wanted gang fugitives announced last month by Los Angeles officials, who also named the 11 worst gangs as part of a law enforcement campaign to reduce gang violence, which increased 15.7% citywide last year.
Bratton on Wednesday said the effort so far was "going very well."
"Ultimately we are looking for two things," he said. "We are looking to reduce membership and we want to reduce violence by those 11 gangs. That's where we think there are indicators of success. Homicides are down. Shootings are down."
So far this year, city homicides were down from last year's 69 to 50 as of Tuesday.
Zevallos was captured after Chief Inspector Wilfredo Ramos, Interpol director in Guatemala, was tipped to his presence during an unrelated kidnapping investigation. The tipster described a tattooed man in Guatemala City who was bragging about a killing in Los Angeles.
The informant, Bratton said, supplied Zevallos' name and two photographs taken with a cellphone. Interpol confirmed that Zevallos, a Peruvian national, had been in Guatemala illegally since December 2006 and then contacted the LAPD. He was apprehended with the help of U.S. marshals based at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City.
Word of Zevallos' capture came as City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo on Wednesday announced a nuisance abatement action against the Baldwin Village apartment complex where one of the worst gangs, the Black P-Stones, had been staying.
