Prowler

Deliberations began Friday in the second murder trial of Ricky Kyle, the Texas son of a wealthy television executive shot to death three years ago as he searched for a prowler in his Bel-Air mansion. Kyle insists that he fired in self-defense when his millionaire father began shooting as they searched the darkened estate for a burglar, but the prosecution charges that a father-son rift involving drugs and greed led to premeditated murder.

Three Navy fliers were killed when their jet crashed about 50 miles west of Spokane, Wash., on Monday, officials said. The fliers were on a training mission on an EA-6B Prowler based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island , on Washington's Puget Sound. No one on the ground was hurt, Navy officials said. The fliers' names are to be kept confidential for a day while their families are notified, officials said. A farmworker, Mike Johnson, told the Spokesman-Review newspaper that he was feeding cattle shortly before 9 a.m. when he saw a black mushroom cloud rise soundlessly in the distance.

Ricky Kyle was filled with hate for his millionaire father and greed for his fortune, a prosecutor told jurors Monday during final arguments in Kyle's patricide retrial. Deputy Dist. Atty. Stanley Weisberg reminded jurors of evidence presented during the 4 1/2-month second trial of Henry Harrison (Ricky) Kyle Jr., charged with first-degree murder in the July, 1983, shooting death of his father, production company executive Henry Harrison Kyle Sr., 60.

David Laut traveled the world as an Olympic shot-put medalist, but he never forgot his roots in Oxnard. When his glory days ended, Laut -- who earned a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles -- bought a home in south Oxnard, taught in the local public schools and raised a son with his wife, Jane, his high school sweetheart. About midnight Thursday, Laut, 52, stepped outside of his home to confront prowlers and was gunned down, according to law enforcement officials and neighbors.

Investigators are looking for a prime-time prowler who slips into homes to take cash and jewelry while the residents are watching television. "It's a little bizarre," Sgt. Pat Whitman of nearby Cherry Hills Village said Wednesday of the 55 such burglaries that have occurred since December in the Denver area. "Most burglars would rather find an empty house than (one with) a resident inside."

A prowler resembling the suspect in a homicide and a string of recent rapes and attempted rapes in Orange and Los Angeles counties was sighted in an Anaheim trailer park late Monday night, but a nine-hour search by police officers, helicopters and dogs failed to capture the man. At about 10 p.m., an elderly resident of the Sunkist ) Garden Mobil Home Park at 1400 S. Sunkist St.

A west Ventura woman was awakened early Sunday by a burglar wearing a stocking over his head who fled with the woman's purse and cell phone. Police said the victim was awakened about 5:50 a.m. by an intruder using a penlight to see his way around her apartment in the 300 block of Paseo De Playa. Upon seeing the prowler, the woman screamed and slammed her bedroom door shut, said Ventura Police Sgt. Larry White.

Matthew Thomas McInroe, who is charged in the killing of a Garden Grove man shot to death in his own yard by a prowler, is now a suspect in a series of other violent crimes in the city dating back to 1983, police said Tuesday. Sgt.

Re "O.C. Sued by Mother of Slain Baby Boy," July 13: So, Shantae Molina has filed a lawsuit against the Orange County Sheriff's Department for violating her civil rights while they were investigating her shooting her 8-month-old child. Molina shot a gun four times, during the middle of the day, because she thought she heard a prowler in one of the safest communities in Orange County, if not the state of California. She killed her child. I have cats, dogs, kids, utility company personnel, even skunks and opossums on occasion running through my yard, and have managed to live without a weapon for 46 years.

There is a quiet in John Rolfe Gardiner's work. Tell him that and he may take it as a compliment, which it is, but he also acts a little puzzled. For the characters in his new novel, "In the Heart of the Whole World," get all the action they could want: The narrator's teen-age daughter runs a sex club in a mall and very nearly stars in a chain-saw snuff movie.

A relaxing soak in a hot tub came to an abrupt end when Marlene Todd of Deadwood came eye to eye with a mountain lion in her backyard. "I was kind of hidden, sitting with my back up against the side of the tub, and I heard a little rustling sound in the needles right beside me," she said. "I didn't realize what it was until it took a leap and jumped up on the side of my hot tub. We locked eyes, and it kicked off of the hot tub and ran away. When it jumped, it flipped my robe into the hot tub."

July 8, 1889: When Mayor Henry Hazard awakened at 10:30 p.m. to the sound of a prowler outside his home on Fort and 3rd streets, he called to request that a mounted policeman come to his aid. But before help arrived, Hazard, "hurriedly slipping on his pantaloons, took his shotgun and went out to investigate the matter," The Times reported. He found a man under his house and got him to surrender. But when the intruder took off running, the mayor took action.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy shot and wounded a suspected prowler on the rooftop of a home early Sunday, authorities said. Deputies were answering a prowler call in the 900 block of Clela Avenue about 2:15 a.m. when they saw the man on the roof of a residence, said Deputy Ban Nguyen, a sheriff's spokesman. When the deputies attempted to make contact with him, the man, who was holding an object in his hand, charged at one of them, Nguyen said.

The Schockners have at least nine security company signs around their home in the leafy, upper-middle-class Bixby Knolls neighborhood of Long Beach, a dog known throughout the area for its protective barking and a locked fence. In addition, two police officers were standing at the front door and a third was in an alley behind the house when a man allegedly stabbed 50-year-old Lynn Schockner to death Monday just outside her back door.

Ten years after the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, this bucolic town is on edge once again as police distributed fliers Monday in their intensified search for a serial prowler who has entered homes and hovered near women and girls as they slept. The most recent break-in came early Saturday morning, when the hooded intruder allegedly entered a home in the eastern portion of town before a mother saw the figure leaving her daughter's room and fleeing on foot.

DaimlerChrysler said Wednesday that it will end production of the Chrysler Prowler in February and replace the slow-selling, hot-rod-styled convertible with the Crossfire sports car. Prowler production, which began in 1997 with the car sold as a Plymouth, will halt Feb. 15 when the last of 300 candy-red 2002 models rolls off the line in Detroit, said Thomas Marinelli, Chrysler-Jeep global brand vice president, in an interview.

DaimlerChrysler said Wednesday that it will end production of the Chrysler Prowler in February and replace the slow-selling, hot-rod-styled convertible with the Crossfire sports car. Prowler production, which began in 1997 with the car sold as a Plymouth, will halt Feb. 15 when the last of 300 candy-red 2002 models rolls off the line in Detroit, said Thomas Marinelli, Chrysler-Jeep global brand vice president, in an interview.

July 8, 1889: When Mayor Henry Hazard awakened at 10:30 p.m. to the sound of a prowler outside his home on Fort and 3rd streets, he called to request that a mounted policeman come to his aid. But before help arrived, Hazard, "hurriedly slipping on his pantaloons, took his shotgun and went out to investigate the matter," The Times reported. He found a man under his house and got him to surrender. But when the intruder took off running, the mayor took action.

Re "O.C. Sued by Mother of Slain Baby Boy," July 13: So, Shantae Molina has filed a lawsuit against the Orange County Sheriff's Department for violating her civil rights while they were investigating her shooting her 8-month-old child. Molina shot a gun four times, during the middle of the day, because she thought she heard a prowler in one of the safest communities in Orange County, if not the state of California. She killed her child. I have cats, dogs, kids, utility company personnel, even skunks and opossums on occasion running through my yard, and have managed to live without a weapon for 46 years.

After confronting a prowler who shot at him, a 77-year-old man returned fire and wounded the gunman early Saturday, Los Angeles police said. The intruder escaped and the resident was not injured, police said. According to Los Angeles police, the shooting occurred about 4:50 a.m., when Devonshire Division officers responded to a radio call about a prowler in the 10600 block of Sylvia Avenue.