Robberies

Two men intent on stealing back a flock of cockfighting roosters from a Bakersfield animal shelter Friday had their middle-of-the-night plan interrupted by California Highway Patrol officers, authorities said. The men were apprehended near the Bakersfield Animal Shelter carrying burlap sacks containing feathers, said Lt. Brad Wahl of the Bakersfield Police Department.

Maurice Simmons, a linebacker who signed a letter of intent with USC, was arraigned Friday in Compton Superior Court and charged with felony robbery and assault with a firearm in connection with an incident that allegedly took place this week. Simmons, an 18-year-old senior at Compton Dominguez High, and codefendant Lamont Lee Hall, 19, both pleaded not guilty before Judge Judith Meyer, said Sandi Gibbons, spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.

The 27-year-old man who pulled off a daytime jewelry store robbery Sunday at a crowded Mission Viejo mall stumbled and fell while racing to his car before discovering he was on the wrong level of a parking structure. As he tried to jog down the flight of stairs to his car, a pair of deputies were climbing up -- an encounter that ended in fatal gunfire. It appears nothing went right for Kirk Christian Knight in a robbery that had a tragic ending for the Rancho Santa Margarita man.

Los Angeles police are investigating two armed robberies that took place in classrooms on the campus of the University of Southern California in recent days, authorities said Tuesday. The incidents -- one late Friday and the other Sunday afternoon -- occurred after many USC students had left campus for the start of spring break. In each case, a student reported being robbed at gunpoint while alone in a classroom studying. USC officials said the first incident, reported at 11 p.m.

The assailants, at least two men, showed up at Jesse's Auto Sales in East Los Angeles around lunchtime. They quickly hustled two salesmen, both grandfathers well known in the neighborhood, into a garage with a cracked concrete floor. The gunmen then shot the two men at close range before escaping with two cars from the lot. "Two older men, just working, taken to the back and executed," said Sgt. Richard Garcia, a homicide investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The rampant theft of copper and other metals in Southern California has begun hitting Inland Empire freeways hard, leaving motorists in increasing danger as traffic signals and lights in underpasses and rest areas have gone dark, law enforcement and Caltrans officials said Tuesday. Thieves also have swiped guardrails and irrigation systems along roadways.

Police on Friday continued searching for an increasingly violent suspect who robbed four women on four consecutive days in downtown Long Beach's upscale arts district and stabbed two of them multiple times in broad daylight. "We're working very hard to apprehend this suspect," said Long Beach Police Department spokeswoman Nicole Avalos. "In the first two robberies, no one was harmed. But in the last two, the victims were cut with a sharp object."

Facing a potential life sentence in federal prison, a former Los Angeles police officer who was the admitted mastermind of a home invasion robbery gang apologized for his crimes Monday, telling a federal judge, "I became something that I despised." In a somewhat rambling, emotional address made moments before he was sentenced, Ruben Palomares told U.S. District Court Judge Gary A.

Seemingly defiant to the end, a former Los Angeles police officer convicted of participating in a home invasion-style robbery ring declined Monday to address a federal judge moments before sentencing, an opportunity many defendants use to plead for leniency. William Ferguson, a 35-year-old father of three, stood silently with his hands chained at his waist as U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess sentenced him to 102 years in federal prison.