Loading Dock

The Dodgers, what a bunch of babies. I wonder what they would do if they had to get a real job, like on a loading dock? DAVID HAWKINS Riverside

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies Wednesday captured two maximum security inmates who escaped earlier in the day from a Castaic jail where they were being held during their trial for a string of armed robberies. Winder Barrios and Jose Aldana were taken into custody without incident about half a mile from the jail about 14 hours after they were reported missing from the North County Correctional Facility, Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said. The men were detained about 5 p.m. at Hasley Canyon Road and Commerce Center Drive after residents reported two men asking people to give them clothes, he said.

A man with a rifle shot and killed an unidentified man early Sunday as the gunman robbed a group of transients in the 2500 block of Commercial Avenue, police said. The incident occurred at 1:10 a.m. as the transients were standing around a loading dock at 2548 Commercial Ave. Witnesses told police that a man armed with a rifle approached the group and began robbing them when the unidentified man unknowingly approached and was shot in the chest. The gunman fled on foot.

Inadequate training, outdated tactics and aging equipment helped lead to the deaths of nine Charleston firefighters battling a furniture store blaze last year, according to a long-awaited expert analysis. The report said firefighters did not follow standard safety practices and had obsolete equipment when battling the June 18 blaze. The report also said that if a sprinkler system had been installed, the fire likely would have been confined to the loading dock where it started. The fire killed more firefighters than any emergency since the Sept.

Inadequate training, outdated tactics and aging equipment helped lead to the deaths of nine Charleston firefighters battling a furniture store blaze last year, according to a long-awaited expert analysis. The report said firefighters did not follow standard safety practices and had obsolete equipment when battling the June 18 blaze. The report also said that if a sprinkler system had been installed, the fire likely would have been confined to the loading dock where it started. The fire killed more firefighters than any emergency since the Sept.

A fire at a Chevron Oil refinery in El Segundo killed an unidentified truck driver. The driver was at the loading dock of the two-square-mile facility when fire broke out and an explosion occurred, Chevron spokesman Mike Sashaushkin said. The cause of the fire and the extent of damage was unknown, the spokesman said. At the time of the accident, two trucks were being loaded with liquid petroleum gas. The driver of the second truck escaped injury. The fire was under control in about 30 minutes.

An inmate who escaped from the Twin Towers Correctional Facility on Thursday turned himself in to authorities Sunday morning, Los Angeles County Sheriff's officials said. Roger Lavelle Nyles, 35, of Altadena surrendered to Pasadena police three days after his escape, said Deputy Rich Pena. On Thursday evening, Nyles was working at a loading dock at the jail. When a gate opened to let a bus pass through, Nyles ran through as well and caught a cab to South Los Angeles, sheriff's officials said.

A supermarket employee was crushed early Friday morning when a aluminum loading ramp collapsed, pinning him under 500 pounds of meat. Killed was Richard Ramirez, a 32-year-old Norwalk resident and employee of the Alpha Beta Company. Ramirez had been unloading a truck behind the Alpha Beta store at 8970 Bolsa Ave., police said. Ramirez was moving a food rack loaded with 500 to 600 pounds of meat across the ramp connecting the truck's trailer to the store's loading dock, according to Sgt.

Fifty-three of the 55 missing Oscars that mysteriously disappeared from a loading dock were found late Sunday night in a green dumpster behind a supermarket at Venice Boulevard and Western Avenue near Koreatown, according to police. The Oscars, still in cardboard boxes and wrapped in cellophane, were found by a man rummaging through a bin behind the Food 4 Less store, according to television reports.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies Wednesday captured two maximum security inmates who escaped earlier in the day from a Castaic jail where they were being held during their trial for a string of armed robberies. Winder Barrios and Jose Aldana were taken into custody without incident about half a mile from the jail about 14 hours after they were reported missing from the North County Correctional Facility, Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said. The men were detained about 5 p.m. at Hasley Canyon Road and Commerce Center Drive after residents reported two men asking people to give them clothes, he said.

An inmate serving a sentence for receiving stolen property escaped from an Orange County jail Sunday by slipping through an open gate at the facility's loading dock, authorities said. David Olmedo, 22, fled from the Central Men's Jail downtown when a truck made a delivery to the facility, Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. Olmedo, who was due to be released in June, was serving less than a year in jail.

The grisly work of identifying the dead is almost ready to begin. Inside a private warehouse in this tiny town, 65 miles northwest of New Orleans, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has established a makeshift mortuary. A sign -- "Mortui Vivis Praecipiant," Latin for "Let the Dead Teach the Living" -- hangs at the entrance to a long corridor that will become an assembly line of forensic investigation. This will be a daunting job.

An inmate who escaped from the Twin Towers Correctional Facility on Thursday turned himself in to authorities Sunday morning, Los Angeles County Sheriff's officials said. Roger Lavelle Nyles, 35, of Altadena surrendered to Pasadena police three days after his escape, said Deputy Rich Pena. On Thursday evening, Nyles was working at a loading dock at the jail. When a gate opened to let a bus pass through, Nyles ran through as well and caught a cab to South Los Angeles, sheriff's officials said.

Janice Mattoch climbed into the 18-wheeler's cab, shifted into reverse and backed the big tractor-trailer toward the loading dock. Again, and again, and again. Trucking, obviously, isn't Mattoch's usual line of work. A manager at Vons store No. 1916 on Foothill Boulevard in La Verne, she is one of many being pressed into unfamiliar jobs by the supermarket strike and lockout.

Fifty-three of the 55 missing Oscars that mysteriously disappeared from a loading dock were found late Sunday night in a green dumpster behind a supermarket at Venice Boulevard and Western Avenue near Koreatown, according to police. The Oscars, still in cardboard boxes and wrapped in cellophane, were found by a man rummaging through a bin behind the Food 4 Less store, according to television reports.

A shipment of Oscar statuettes for the upcoming Academy Awards have apparently been stolen, just weeks after thousands of Oscar ballots were lost, the academy said Thursday. "The statuettes have turned up missing in the city of Bell and we believe they have been stolen," Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spokesman John Pavlik said late Thursday. He declined to elaborate, saying academy Executive Director Bruce Davis would discuss the matter further at a news conference this morning.

Recently I accompanied a female friend to a preliminary hearing at the Criminal Courts Building on Temple Street. My friend had been the unfortunate victim of rape in an escalator leading to the parking structure near the Children's Museum where she had been visiting with her young son. Having to identify the assailant at the hearing was traumatic enough, but just getting to the court was an ordeal. We arrived for the hearing and parked in the structure behind the Hall of Records.

Arson is suspected in two small fires that broke out on the UC Irvine campus early Thursday morning, UCI officials reported. The blazes were quickly extinguished and caused little damage. Colleen Bentley-Adler, a spokeswoman for the university, said the first fire broke out about 2:45 a.m. Thursday on the first floor of the university's Administration Building. She said that boxes of financial-aid blank forms were stacked beside a wall on the building's first floor and that someone apparently set fire to the boxes.

A 24-year-old man was crushed to death Thursday when the tailgate of a delivery truck pinned him against a metal trash container at TRW Space and Electronics in Manhattan Beach. Derrick Tambara of Los Angeles was standing on the loading dock of a manufacturing building shortly after 10 a.m. when the truck driving crew he worked with clipped him with the tailgate, Sgt. John Dye said. The driver was pulling away to lift the gate up when he accidentally backed into Tambara. Paramedics arrived and administered advanced life support to Tambara, who was not breathing and had no pulse.