77th Street Division

The body of a 38-year-old woman was found on the side of the road Tuesday morning in Angeles National Forest after her husband reported that the couple had been abducted, authorities said. The woman's naked body was lying in the brush in the 4100 block of Big Tujunga Canyon Road, said Sheriff's Lt. Al Grotefend, the lead investigator in the case. A cause of death had not been determined, officials said. Los Angeles police discovered the body about 5:30 a.m.

Authorities Tuesday identified a 17-year-old boy who was fatally shot during an argument inside an MTA bus in Hyde Park. Edward Walker III was pronounced dead at the scene after the gang-related shooting about 9 p.m. Monday near 60th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard. Walker and another youth got into an argument when the bus they were riding stopped at the intersection, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement. As the argument escalated, the assailant pulled out a handgun and fired once at Walker, who collapsed on the bus floor, officials said.

A shooting Tuesday in South-Central Los Angeles left a man dead and police searching for more than half a dozen young men who fled in two vehicles, authorities said. In a possibly gang-related act, a gunman chased a man in his early 20s and fired repeatedly at him, hitting him several times, said Det. Charles Tizano of the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street Division. The shooting began about 3:30 p.m. near 73rd Street and Vermont Avenue, Tizano said.

A former Los Angeles police officer was sentenced to five months in federal prison Monday for violating the civil rights of a man he and his partner falsely arrested in 1995. Edward Patrick Ruiz, 37, will serve an additional five months under home detention. His former partner, Jon Paul Taylor, 28, was sentenced last year to 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay a $3,000 fine.

When police detectives in South-Central Los Angeles raided almost two dozen locations this weekend to arrest gang members and confiscate their guns, ammunition and other firepower, the officers unexpectedly stumbled onto something "much more explosive"--dynamite. In the 11-hour raid at four drug houses and 18 residences, the officers arrested eight people considered leaders of a faction of the Bloods street gang.

A man beat his girlfriend's infant son, leaving the child in critical condition, then kidnapped her 5-year-old son Thursday in Gardena, police said. The kidnapped boy was found at 39th Street and Grand Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles about three hours later. Someone in a grocery store noticed that he had been alone and called police. Michael Jerome Marks kidnapped the boy at 1:30 p.m.

The Police Department's 77th Street Division has begun foot patrols along Crenshaw Boulevard between Vernon and Manchester avenues, City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter announced last week. Two patrols of two officers each operate from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Funding for the new patrols is being provided through Project Safety L.A., a funding program approved by the City Council last month that uses police overtime pay for extra patrols.

Meeting face to face with the dispirited members of the Los Angeles Police Department, Mayor Richard Riordan on Tuesday encouraged officers at the 77th Street Division to speak their minds. They did, giving the mayor an earful: "Most of the people in the office here . . . don't feel supported," one officer said. "I don't think that most of these officers feel supported by the chief," said another. "The belief of this chief is, I think, 'My way or the highway.'

Police are seeking help from the public in finding a 10-year-old South-Central Los Angeles girl who may have been abducted on her way to school Wednesday morning. Erica Avance was last seen by her father, Eddie Avance, who walked her halfway to school about 8:30 a.m., said Det. Kelie Sturgis of the LAPD's 77th Street Division. "He thought she was going to school and when he went to pick her up at 3 p.m., he was notified that she had not been at school all day," Sturgis said.