Fled

Few markets crashed harder than Compton when California's real estate bubble burst. The city's northwest side saw the median home price plummet to $94,000 in 2009, down from $385,000 at the peak. Foreclosures dotted the streets. Families fled, leaving trash and old furniture behind. "There were a lot of empty houses. It was a big mess," said real estate broker Ruben Magdaleno of Re/Max VIP. These days, the working-class community has a new identity: comeback kid. Northwest Compton has posted the most dramatic price jump of any area in Southern California.

CAIRO - The convictions Tuesday of 19 Americans who worked for pro-democracy groups highlight Egypt's long-standing resistance to broadening freedoms in a country that has veered from secular autocratic rule to an increasingly restrictive Islamist-led government. The criminal court case against the Americans on charges of operating illegally funded organizations strained relations between Washington and Cairo and hardened Egypt's suspicions toward international civil society programs.

War resisters: An article in Wednesday's Section A about Canadian lawmakers urging the government to let U.S. deserters stay in the country said war resister Josh Keys fled to Canada with his wife and three children. Keys has four children.

After allegedly gunning down his wife and two young daughters, Shane Franklin Miller drove 200 miles to the isolated Northern California town where he grew up. A day later, investigators found his abandoned Dodge pickup, with live rounds for a firearm and a note to his family inside. "He briefly addressed members and made implied threats toward some of them, and apologized to others," according to the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. The killings sparked a large manhunt that began the night of May 7. Authorities said Miller, 45, shot his wife Sandy, 34, and daughters Shelby, 8, and Shasta, 5, near Shingletown.

A Girl Scout leader and her husband were arrested after an emaciated, terrified and nearly naked 17-year-old showed up at a gym with a chain locked to his ankle, saying he had just fled his captors, authorities said. The boy, who appeared to be about 10 to 12 years old, told authorities that he ran away from a Sacramento foster home last year and had been held captive for nearly a year. Police said they believe the boy had been chained to a car seat but picked up a dropped key, unlocked himself and fled when the car stopped Monday.

Predicting events after they have taken place is no great trick, but it does seem Goetz made three grievous mistakes. First, he failed to kill the hooligans who threatened him; second, he fled to New Hampshire instead of simply surrendering to the police and explaining he did what had to be done in self-defense; and third, he should have have refused all interviews with the media. ROBERT MILLS Cypress

It was very encouraging for us to read that Petar Mladenov, the new leader of Bulgaria, promised free elections in that country as early as May, 1990 (Part A, Dec. 12). There were about 1.5 million Turks (10% of the total population) living in Bulgaria in early 1984. These were people whose ancestors have lived on that land for the last 500 years. Since late 1984, however, over 300,000 Bulgarian Turks fled Bulgaria escaping persecution. That was the time when the government of Todor Zhivkov (now deposed leader of that nation)

A convicted murderer who fled a Massachusetts prison while on furlough and became a California real estate agent and actor was sent back to prison. Superior Court Judge Andrew Gill Meyer in Norfolk, Mass., said Arthur Bembury, 37, still should be punished, and sentenced him to one to three years in prison. Bembury pleaded guilty to escaping from Norfolk State Prison. He fled while on a weekend furlough to visit his family in August, 1974, and was caught last October. Bembury was convicted in 1970 of second-degree murder and had an appeal pending when he fled.

Officers shot at an armed man Monday, the Long Beach Police Department said. The incident happened at 11:30 a.m. during a traffic stop on the North Crest Drive on-ramp to the southbound 405 Freeway, police said in a news release. The man, who was a passenger in the stopped car, had a weapon in his hand, police said. The man fled down an embankment but was eventually caught and a weapon was found nearby. No one was injured in the shooting, police said. -- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

A man was sentenced Friday to 53 years to life in prison for fatally shooting his girlfriend after she refused to give him drugs. The slaying occurred Feb. 8, 2007, as Anton Naimat, 21, argued with his live-in girlfriend, Nicole Villareal, in their bedroom in an Irvine apartment. When she refused to give him methamphetamine, Naimat shot Villareal in the head then fled the apartment with his father. Naimat was convicted of first-degree murder May 22. His father, Tassawur Naimat, 53, was found guilty of being an accessory and is scheduled to be sentenced in July.

Hedda Bolgar, a psychologist old enough to have attended Sigmund Freud's lectures in Vienna but youthful enough to have treated patients until just a few weeks ago, has died. She was 103. Her mind was sharp, her zest for work keen, and her social calendar full until shortly before her death on Monday, said Allen Yasser, her longtime friend and colleague. "It took me a month to get a dinner date with her, and we were virtually family," said Yasser, a psychologist and psychoanalyst.

A vehicle believed to be involved in a fatal South L.A. crash may have been fleeing the scene of a nearby shooting, Los Angeles police said Tuesday.  LAPD Officer Christopher No said that shots were fired and that police believe a car leaving the area ran through a red light and subsequently crashed, causing collisions involving five to six vehicles.  Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said multiple cars collided near...

An Anaheim man was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for fatally stabbing a man during a drug deal, after which he fled to Las Vegas, prosecutors said. Johnathan Allen Kincaid, 23, was found guilty in Feburary on one felony count of special circumstances murder in the commission of a robbery, according to the Orange County district attorney's office. Prosecutors said that on July 29, 2009, Kincaid met Tayroh Stinson, 31, in Garden Grove and the two men had a dispute.

A man accused of drunk driving in a crash that killed five members of a Los Angeles family had weeks earlier fled from an Orange County juvenile detention facility. The Orange County Probation Department requested an arrest warrant for Jean Ervin Soriano, 18, after it discovered that he had left the Youth Guidance Center in Santa Ana on March 1. But authorities didn't find him until Saturday morning on a Nevada highway after he allegedly rear-ended a van filled with family members returning from a trip to see a dying relative.

Bebo Valdes Pianist and bandleader who fled Cuba Bebo Valdes, 94, a renowned Cuban pianist who recorded with Nat King Cole, was bandleader of Havana's Tropicana nightclub during its glittering heyday and was considered the last luminary from the golden age of Cuban music, died Friday of pneumonia in Sweden. His death was confirmed by the agent for his son Chucho Valdes, a well-known pianist in his own right. Valdes, who enjoyed a remarkable late-career resurgence after he was coaxed out of retirement in the 1990s, was a classically trained musician with a strong interest in American jazz.

AL QASR, Lebanon - Each evening, Ali Jamal and other men in this border town grab their Kalashnikov assault rifles, jump on their motorbikes and ride across the irrigation canal into Syria to protect their homes. The enemies are Sunni rebel "terrorists," he says, who target Jamal and his neighbors because they are Shiite Muslims. "Imagine, these people used to be our neighbors," said the 40-year-old farmer, perplexed by the transformation. "Now they want to kidnap and kill us. " Tensions gripping the villages along the border here between northeastern Lebanon and Syria illustrate the increasingly sectarian nature of the 2-year-old Syrian conflict and the risks it poses for the entire region.

WASHINGTON - Two years into a civil war that shows no signs of ending, the Obama administration is considering resettling refugees who have fled Syria, part of an international effort that could bring thousands of Syrians to American cities and towns. A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families. The State Department is "ready to consider the idea," an official from the department said, if the administration receives a formal request from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the usual procedure.

COALCOMAN, Mexico - Rafael Garcia slaps the oversize wooden desk where he sits, one of the last mayors still in office in this region of Mexican farm country known as Tierra Caliente - hot land. Mayors from a couple of the nearest towns fled with their drug-cartel pals, people here say, when locals took up arms against them. But at Garcia's City Hall, the facade is festooned with hand-lettered signs supporting local gunmen who challenged the cartel, loosely referred to as community "self-defense" guards, comunitarios . Several cities in Tierra Caliente are now patrolled by such groups, whose members, often masked, man checkpoints and pull over passing vehicles for inspection.

The reward for the man wanted in connection with the tragic hit-and-run accident in an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn has risen to $12,000, police said on Tuesday, as authorities searched for the man who fled the scene where a family was killed. “The reward has risen to $12,000,” Sgt. Lee Jones told the Los Angeles Times by telephone. “We are searching and still seeking the suspect, Julio Acevedo.” Acevedo, 44, is wanted in connection with the traffic accident in the early hours of Sunday in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, home to the largest community of the Satmar Orthodox Jewish sect outside of Israel.

OUTSIDE SAN LUIS DE LA LOMA, Mexico - Don Polo's heavily armed convoy wound its way through the hills above the lush coastal plain of Guerrero state, its groves of slender palm trees now far below him. The two-lane country road twisted eastward, and upward, for miles. But around each bend, there were no campesinos , no burros, no dogs, no cars barreling down toward the Pacific. Fields of yellow grass, grown taller than a man, covered the landscape, animated only by the wind. This, though, was no vision of tranquillity.