Arrest

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Investigators don't know where 15-year-old Sierra LaMar is, but they are almost certain she is dead. For more than two months, the high school cheerleader's family has been holding out hope. They have organized repeated searches of the Northern California neighborhood where she disappeared and made numerous public appeals for help. On Tuesday, even as authorities announced the arrest of a 21-year-old suspect on suspicion of murder, Marlene LaMar vowed not to stop looking for her daughter.

How can you tell if you or someone you know is having a heart attack? Sometimes the symptoms can be surprisingly subtle. "They can be very different from person to person, between women and men and even within an individual who has more than one heart attack," says Dr. David Rizik, director of Interventional Cardiology for Scottsdale Healthcare Hospitals, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Men and women may experience atypical heart attack symptoms. In contrast to the "classic" chest-splitting, gasping-for-breath symptoms, many heart attacks begin with symptoms that are so mild they are often mistaken for indigestion or muscle ache.

OAKLAND — Right fielder Torii Hunter , on the restricted list since May 14 while he deals with the arrest of his 17-year-old son, will probably rejoin the team early next week, Manager Mike Scioscia said. Hunter has been in Texas, where Darius McClinton-Hunter was arrested on a sexual assault charge. Though the Angels have not been required to pay Hunter during his 10-day absence, he is receiving his full salary, according to a person familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly about it. If Hunter returns for Monday night's game against the New York Yankees in Angel Stadium, he will have been away for two weeks.

Death threats and a $10,000 bounty offered for a citizen's arrest of George Zimmerman have raised concerns about the threat of "vigilante justice" in the racially charged case. A group identifying itself as the New Black Panther Party is offering $10,000 to anyone who makes a citizen's arrest of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin slaying. The reward, and an earlier spate of death threats, also raise questions about whether law enforcement is taking steps to protect Zimmerman and his family.

Trayvon Martin's slaying has led to the single most popular petition in the history of Change.org: More than 2.2 million people have added their signatures to an online petition demanding an arrest in the case. "It is easily the largest petition Change.org has ever seen," Megan Lubin, a spokeswoman for Change.org, told The Times. At various points, as many as 1,000 signatures were pouring in each minute. "We've never seen that before," Lubin said. "It was pretty unprecedented and a milestone for a campaign on the site.

The arrest of a South Pasadena investment manager on insider trading charges extended the government's sweeping investigation beyond Wall Street into a remote outpost of the investment world. Danny Kuo, a technology expert at Whittier Trust Co., was taken into custody by FBI agents in the cold pre-dawn hours Wednesday at his two-story Spanish-style home in a residential neighborhood. Unlike the dozens of high-level hedge fund managers who have been arrested in the government's four-year crackdown on illicit trading, Kuo, 36, toiled at a mid-size 77-year-old firm that keeps a low profile and caters to rich families.

After news broke of the arrest of notorious mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, presidential candidate Mitt Romney paused to comment. "I hope the capture of Whitey Bulger brings some measure of relief to the families of his numerous victims," the former Massachusetts governor said in a statement today. "It brings to a close a sad and sordid chapter in recent Massachusetts history. " Bulger, now 81, has been on the run since 1994, when he fled Boston as federal agents were preparing to arrest him in connection with at least 19 killings, racketeering offenses and other crimes from the early 1970s to mid-1980s.

Once, Albert Huang was the pride of his community, a young mayor and only the second Asian American to serve on San Gabriel's City Council. Now he may well be remembered for fighting with a woman at a dumpling house late at night and for being arrested. At an emotional news conference in his lawyer's office on Tuesday morning, the 35-year-old Huang, who is also an architect and developer, announced his resignation from the San Gabriel City Council. He said he was tired of the bad press he and his family have been getting since his arrest last Friday.

More than a thousand protesters converged in the streets of Sanford, Fla., on Saturday to demand the arrest of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Civil-rights organizers from the NAACP and other groups kicked off the march at about 11 a.m. in one of the city's historic black neighborhoods; they proceeded from there to the Sanford police headquarters, the Orlando Sentinel reported . The march is the latest in a series of demonstrations sparked by the Feb. 26 killing of the black teenager and the Police Department's subsequent refusal to press charges against Zimmerman.

Two men charged in state court in connection with the brutal beating of San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow will each face federal charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, authorities said Tuesday. Marvin Norwood and Louie Sanchez were arrested last year and charged with felony assault and mayhem in the attack on Stow in one of the parking lots at Dodger Stadium on March 31, 2011. The U.S. attorney's office added the weapons charges in a 14-page indictment. If convicted of the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, each man faces up to 10 years in federal prison.

A former Los Angeles County property appraiser accused of improperly slashing the value on more than 100 Westside homes and businesses was taken into custody in Oregon on Monday, marking the first arrest in the wide-ranging corruption probe into the assessor's office. Prosecutors say Scott Schenter, 49, falsified department documents and unlawfully lowered property values by $172 million for multimillion-dollar homes and businesses. Schenter allegedly secured campaign contributions from the owners for Assessor John Noguez, authorities said.

A minor traffic accident after the Dodgers' win over St. Louis on Sunday night sparked a fight that resulted in the beating of one man and the arrests of four others, Los Angeles police said. The beating victim was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at a hospital and released, police said. A pregnant woman who was a passenger in his car was taken to the hospital for observation as a precaution and also was released. Occupants of the other vehicle, four men in their 20s, were booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and were being held in lieu of $30,000 bail, Los Angeles police officer Bruce Borihanh said Monday.

SAN DIEGO - Alleged drug kingpin Victor Emilio Cazares, among the most wanted trafficking suspects in the United States, has been arrested in Mexico, U.S. and Mexican officials say, despite having changed his appearance through plastic surgery. A senior U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico confirmed this week that Cazares was captured April 8 at a highway checkpoint near the western city of Guadalajara. Mexican authorities on Friday confirmed Cazares was in custody. Mexican authorities did not make the arrest public at the time, and it has not been previously reported.

Los Angeles police Friday afternoon arrested the man suspected of fatally shooting two USC students from China in a botched robbery and a second man believed to have some involvement in the killings, several LAPD sources said. The man suspected of being the killer in the case that has garnered international attention and turned a harsh spotlight on the elite campus set among some of the city's roughest neighborhoods was taken into custody about 4 p.m. Dozens of detectives, plainclothes officers and members of the Los Angeles Police Department's SWAT unit descended on the 1200 block of 91st Street in South Los Angeles, residents said.

A retired LAPD homicide detective was arrested this week in the fatal beating of his wife in Hawaii six years ago. He had been a suspect since her death. Dan DeJarnette, 59, was taken into custody without incident Monday night at his home on the Big Island in connection with the slaying of his wife, Yu Dejarnette. He appeared in a Hawaii courtroom Tuesday to face formal charges. He said at the time of her November 2006 death that he had awakened and found her lying on a lava embankment about 20 feet from the couple's home in Ka'u on the southern end of the island.

Los Angeles school officials were scrambling Friday to explain why parents were never notified about the October arrest of a teacher at Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima for alleged child sexual abuse. Paul Chapel, a third-grade teacher who has been suspended without pay, is charged with 15 counts of lewd acts and continuous sexual abuse with three girls and one boy, each younger than 14, between Sept. 13, 2010, and April 15, 2011, according to a Sept. 28 complaint filed by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether a Secret Service agent can be held liable for arresting a Colorado man who confronted then-Vice President Dick Cheney and told him his "policies in Iraq are disgusting. " The justices will consider an issue potentially significant to all Americans — whether they can criticize public officials without fear of arrest. But the case before the court is complicated in two ways. First, it involves Secret Service agents who have a special duty to act quickly and decisively to protect the president and vice president from harm.

Last week, my colleagues and I did something defense attorneys rarely do: We asked the government to file charges against our client. And because it seems unlikely the case will ever make it to an American courtroom, we have asked that it be heard in the nation's flawed military commission system. Abu Zubaydah, our client, was an early poster child for the Bush administration's torture regime. He was the first prisoner held in a secret "black site" and the first to be tortured using "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

SAN MARCOS, Calif. —When paramedics arrived at the Purdy home March 20, Margaret was seated in her favorite chair in the living room. The morning sunshine streamed in through a picture window that overlooked a valley. A plastic bag was over her head, tied securely at the neck. A suicide note in her handwriting was in a folder on her desk, beneath a shelf with books about death and dying. She had written that the pain from her various medical conditions had become unbearable. Alan Purdy met the paramedics at the door.