Parking Lots

A man attacked alongside Bryan Stow testified Friday that the beating in a Dodger Stadium parking lot was completely unprovoked and came at the hands of a violent local fan whom their group of San Francisco Giants fans had tried to ignore. The witness, one of four paramedics who traveled together from the Bay Area to attend opening day last year, recalled how the fan, dressed in a white Dodger jersey, set upon them out of the blue as they crossed the lot, shoving Stow and punching another friend in the face.

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.

Listen, you're new in town - or at least most of you - so of course we try to give you a little benefit of the doubt, emphasis on little . See, we've been burned on this once. Still, tried to warn you with my ever-so-helpful cheat sheet before your initial news conference, that your No.1 priority was to be forthcoming. Answer questions honestly and in a straight-forward manner. Which it turns out, you immediately did not. That's called a bad start. That's called raising suspicions and making people nervous, which is exactly the opposite of what you need to be doing.

Magic Johnson has the power to veto any development Frank McCourt might propose for the Dodger Stadium parking lots, according to a provision in an agreement between McCourt and the new owners of the Dodgers. McCourt sold the Dodgers to Guggenheim Baseball Management but retained half-ownership of the parking lots. Guggenheim secured the right to approve any development and designated Johnson as the party who would grant approval. The provision, in a document that is not public, confirms what Guggenheim executives have said, that they control development of the property.

Which is it? Either Magic Johnson, the face of the Dodgers, is clueless on how the organization will be run ... Or he knew he wasn't telling the truth when he became the dominating voice of last week's news conference and told the media enough already with the questions about Frank McCourt. We can all understand "enough already with Frank McCourt," but the Guggenheim folks should have taken that into consideration when they bought the Dodgers. Now they have some explaining to do. But so far for Magic, it's been one turnover after the next.

Nancy Eomurian was driving through a Long Beach church parking lot April 28 when she found a man covered in blood lying on the ground near the lifeless body of his 9-year-old stepdaughter. Next to the child she saw what appeared to be nonsensical scrawl written on the side of a container. "I first thought the scrawl was graffiti, then I realized it was blood," Eomurian said. "It was like time stopped. " Prosecutors allege that the man, 31-year-old Jacinto Zuniga Trujillo, killed the girl out of fear she would reveal that he had been molesting her. The L.A. County district attorney's office accused Trujillo of capital murder and molestation, alleging that he had abused the girl for months.

The Dodgers' new owners will pay $14 million per year to rent the parking lots from an entity half-owned by Frank McCourt, according to land-use documents intended to "facilitate the orderly development" of the property surrounding Dodger Stadium. The potential uses for the property include shops and restaurants, homes and offices, and another sports venue, according to documents obtained Friday by The Times. The documents also discuss the possibility of parking structures on the land.

One of the biggest sports and entertainment moguls in Southern California took a back seat to the other Guggenheim money men Wednesday as the incoming Dodgers owners attempted to set the tone for a new era. Former movie studio boss Peter Guber, who has built an empire of popular minor league baseball teams, left the news conference speeches to his partners and later deflected questions about how he might like to see the parking lots around Dodger...

So you thought maybe they didn't get it, huh? That Magic Johnson sitting next to Frank McCourt at the season opener signaled he had lived in Los Angeles and somehow missed all the animosity that had built up against McCourt. Then there was the money quote from Wednesday's new ownership news conference. Growing frustrated at repeated questions about McCourt's continued involvement in the parking lots - they claim he has none unless there is future development - Johnson finally said this: “Let's move forward, please,” Johnson said.

The demons of the old and troubled ownership were hanging over Dodger Stadium, until Magic Johnson had heard one too many questions about Frank McCourt. To Johnson, the exorcism was complete, and he all but shouted it from the microphone in center field. "Frank is not here," Johnson said. "He is not part of the Dodgers any more. We should be clapping for that. " Johnson and his partners in the Dodgers' new ownership group held their first news conference Wednesday, from which only one bit of news emerged: The Dodgers are lowering the price of parking from $15 to $10, effective immediately.