Hate Crimes Los Angeles

Maggie Houston remembers the shots that flew over her head minutes after a 13-year-old Latino boy had murdered an 11-year-old African American boy to earn entry into a street gang. The youth, riding a bike, had spotted Houston, a 48-year-old African American woman, on her doorstep and decided to shoot at her too. Houston ducked and scrambled into her house to call for help. The deep emotional scars left behind have just begun to heal.

There were prayers and bowed declarations of God's greatness. Greetings of all-encompassing peace. The funeral procession and the handfuls of dirt that began to fill up the grave. Then the men left the dead to part with hard embraces and tears, and the women were given their opportunity to visit the grave, sitting and weeping on the gray soil.

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating a cross burning on the front lawn of a board-and-care home for the mentally disabled in a racially mixed Mid-Wilshire neighborhood, a police spokesman said Friday. A pair of two-foot wooden crosses were burned on the lawn of the home in the 1300 block of South Ogden Drive shortly before 10 p.m. Thursday, said Lt. Willie Pannell of the Wilshire Division.

An Antelope Valley convenience store owned by a Syrian American has been shot at twice this week in what detectives believe was retaliation for the East Coast terror attacks, sheriff's officials said Friday. Murhaf Maida's store on Avenue L in Quartz Hill was hit by two shots Tuesday night and four more Thursday night, officials said. No one was injured. Several shots missed the store, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Donald Rubio. Det.

In what police said they are investigating as a possible hate crime, a 35-year-old white motorist was arrested for allegedly striking and killing a Latino pedestrian with her car early Friday outside a bagel bakery. Police said Marie E. West of Redondo Beach ran over Jesus Plascencia, 66, because he is Latino, and the Los Angeles County district attorney's office has assigned a special hate crimes prosecutor to the case.

As part of a growing multiracial movement to combat hate crimes, a coalition of community leaders Wednesday denounced vandals who destroyed computers and scrawled defamatory messages on the office walls of a Muslim professor. Vandals broke into the USC office of Iraj Ershagi, a petroleum and chemical engineering professor of Iranian descent, poured motor oil and battery acid over office equipment and destroyed research papers.

The number of reported anti-gay incidents rose substantially in metropolitan Los Angeles last year, according to a national report that ranks the city second in the nation in the number of hate crimes against gay men and lesbians. There were 332 incidents--ranging from harassment to murder--reported to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in 1994, a 53% increase over the previous year. Only New York, with 632 episodes, recorded more.

A racially motivated shooting may have preceded the hijacking of an MTA bus and a wild chase through downtown Los Angeles that ended after the bus crashed into a van, killing a mother of three, police said Thursday. "It appears the crime . . . prior to the commandeering of the bus and the hostage-taking, was hatred-motivated," Det. Dennis English of the Los Angeles Police Department said.

For the second time in two weeks, vandals spray-painted racist and satanic symbols--including the letters "KKK"--on the facade of a church in a mostly black, inner-city neighborhood, drawing cries of outrage Tuesday over Los Angeles' rising incidence of hate crime.

Type the word "swastika" into the computer and a pattern emerges in an instant: A rash of incidents in which the crooked cross symbols of hate were scrawled or painted on homes, businesses and vehicles over a three-week period in the west San Fernando Valley. They are incidents that not long ago might have collected dust on some detective's desk, if they made it that far. No witnesses, no suspects. Next to impossible to solve, would have been the rationale.

Two white Canyon Country men pleaded no contest Tuesday to stalking a black pizza parlor manager, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. David Wayne Haisten, 19, and Kevin Michael Conroy, 21, also pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor hate crime. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Meredith Taylor sentenced Haisten to 180 days in county jail and Conroy to the 97 days of jail credit he received.

A racially motivated shooting may have preceded the hijacking of an MTA bus and a wild chase through downtown Los Angeles that ended after the bus crashed into a van, killing a mother of three, police said Thursday. "It appears the crime . . . prior to the commandeering of the bus and the hostage-taking, was hatred-motivated," Det. Dennis English of the Los Angeles Police Department said.

Burglars who stole vehicles worth more than $60,000 from a Reseda used-car dealership over the weekend also spray-painted a swastika on the premises, prompting police on Sunday to call it a hate crime. Employees at Magic Auto Center, 6360 Reseda Blvd., found the business ransacked Sunday, said Sgt. R.J. Acosta of the Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley station. Three vehicles were stolen and five were damaged, Acosta said.

In an emotionally wrenching hearing, a Los Angeles federal judge sentenced white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. to five life terms Monday for the 1999 murder of a Filipino American postal worker and a shooting rampage that left five people seriously wounded at a San Fernando Valley Jewish community center.

Weeks afterward, people were still talking about the gunman's rampage, about the children he shot, about the hate he spewed. But the killing of Joseph Ileto remained at the fringes of discussion. Sometimes he was not mentioned at all. Ileto was not a child. He was not Jewish. And he was not at the North Valley Jewish Community Center on Aug. 10, 1999. He was Filipino American--and Buford O. Furrow Jr., a white supremacist, confessed that he had killed Ileto for the color of his skin.

Federal prosecutors dropped their plan to seek the death penalty against white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. after getting access to voluminous medical records showing that he had tried for a decade to get treatment for homicidal and suicidal urges, U.S. Atty. Alejandro N. Mayorkas said Wednesday.

The federal judge presiding in the case of alleged skinhead Christopher David Fisher scolded prosecutors and a defense attorney Friday for bickering over pretrial evidence. Fisher, 20, is charged with making and selling illegal weapons--mostly pipe bombs--and with plotting to blow up the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. Prosecutors say the Long Beach man also was the leader of the Fourth Reich Skinheads, a white supremacist group. U.S.

In a deal that would spare him a possible death sentence, white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. has agreed to plead guilty to murdering a Filipino American mail carrier and seriously wounding five people at a San Fernando Valley Jewish community center in a 1999 shooting rampage. Furrow, a 39-year-old mechanic from Washington state, would receive a mandatory life prison sentence under terms of his agreement with federal prosecutors.

One of two teenage boys responsible for trashing West Valley Hebrew Academy in Woodland Hills last fall pleaded guilty to a felony vandalism hate crime charge Tuesday in Sylmar Juvenile Court. Superior Court Referee John Paventi sentenced the 15-year-old Valley resident to three years and eight months of probation, 200 hours of community service, a 10-week tolerance training course and a stay in a group home, the length of which will be determined by the boy's behavior.