Pacoima Ca

For years a chain-link fence surrounded the contaminated 25-acre lot near the junction of Interstate 5 and California 118 in Pacoima, a daily reminder of the thousands of well-paying manufacturing jobs lost to Mexico in the last decade.

Eight Los Angeles parks will stay open until midnight from Fourth of July to Labor Day under Summer Night Lights, an anti-gang program launched Monday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The $950,000 program, part of the mayor's plan to bring social services to high-crime neighborhoods, will run from Wednesday to Sunday starting at 4 p.m. It will bring sports, arts classes and movie screenings to children between 9 and 17 at eight of the city's 390 parks, mayoral aides said.

In a dream sequence that recurs throughout the 1987 movie "La Bamba," two planes fly over a schoolyard where youths play basketball in slow motion. The planes collide, explode and shower wreckage across the school and neighborhood. That bit of Hollywood make-believe dramatizes an event that occurred 50 years ago Wednesday in the skies above Pacoima Junior High.

A man tried to kill his girlfriend Monday by parking their car in front of a speeding Metrolink commuter train, but instead died when debris from the crash struck him after he had been ejected from the car, police said. His girlfriend, who was in the car when the train slammed into the vehicle's passenger side, was seriously injured but is expected to survive.

A South Los Angeles woman told police Tuesday that her boyfriend tried to kill both of them when he drove their car into the path of a high-speed Metrolink train but later denied the allegation. Michelle Wright, 23, told detectives from her hospital bed that in the minutes before Brandon Julius Funches, 21, also of South Los Angeles, drove onto the train tracks around noon Monday the couple had been arguing, said Lt. George Rock of the Los Angeles Police Department.

After a dizzying 2 1/2 -hour discussion, a divided Los Angeles school board Tuesday postponed a vote on whether to close a Pacoima charter school that has been beset with low test scores but claimed a near-perfect record of getting its low-income minority students into college. The delay on the future of Discovery Preparatory Charter School came after a compromise plan to extend the charter for a year unraveled under a barrage of conflicting legal opinions and last-minute developments.

Los Angeles police are investigating the carjacking and kidnapping of a man that led to a short pursuit and ended with an officer shooting a suspect in Pacoima, officials said Monday. Officers patrolling in the northeast San Fernando Valley responded to a report of a stolen car being driven erratically about 10 p.m. Sunday, said Sgt. Lee Sands of the Los Angeles Police Department. When the car, with four men inside, failed to yield, officers began pursuing it.

A 63-year-old man was killed and his 51-year-old brother was seriously wounded in a shooting early Sunday, authorities said. Police responding to a call about 2:50 a.m. near the intersection of Dronfield and Vaughn avenues found Albert Rushing dead at the scene with gunshot wounds. His brother, Monroe Brazill, was taken to a nearby hospital in serious but stable condition, said Kevin Maiberger, an LAPD spokesman.

A soccer player was shot to death before a game Sunday afternoon at Ritchie Valens Park in Pacoima, allegedly by a teammate after the two men had an argument, Los Angeles police said. Jaime Villavazo, 22, was shot once in the upper chest about 2:25 p.m. and died after being taken to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, LAPD Officer Mike Lopez said. Police are still looking for the suspect, identified as 24-year-old Camerino Reyes.

After World War II, Pacoima was one neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley where African Americans were permitted to buy real estate. By 1960, 90% of the Valley's blacks called it home. Many lived in the Joe Louis tract, modest dwellings that still line up in neat rows between Glenoaks and Herrick. Pacoima has been ethnically diverse since the late 1880s, when its farms produced olives, peaches and oranges and attracted Asian and Latino workers.