April 28, 2007

• This Just In

  Breaking News: I shouldn't have left the house this afternoon.

  Again, a blog I really didn't intend to write. It's been a strange week. Updates about my housing condition over the weekend. (It's positive news) But first, we interrupt this blog to tell the following chilling story. After a crime is committed somewhere, and especially if that crime involves loss of life, you always see people being interviewed on the news who either witnessed or lived close to the perpetrator. They never suspected a thing. The guy was quiet, but nobody really ever talked to him. Etc. Here in good ol' SoCal, even after living in the same place for 12 years, I know little of my neighbors. I seem to only talk to them when there's police cars in the neighborhood, or in the middle of one of our constant blackouts. I know a lot more about one of my neighbors now that' she's dead.

  I shouldn't have left the house this afternoon. It's been a strange week, as I mentioned. First was that nasty "three day or quit notice", which prompted the last blog entry, and which will be the subject of my next "Video Blog". I thought I had crossed the hurdle of seeming homelessness, and I took a half vacation day today, as I am now in the midst of a massive spring cleaning, and wanted to rest after almost having thrown my back out yesterday.

  But this blog isn't about  landlord woes or health problems. This blog is about standing about 60 paces from my front door and not being able to get near my place of residence. I went to dinner at about 5:30 p.m, and the first inkling that something wasn't quite right on our block was the collection of about eight police cruisers parked in the street's median, and the yellow police tape strewn across the cul de sac about four houses down from mine. People were milling about, as is usual when something has gone horribly wrong but nobody yet knows exactly what. It seems the that police had been a presence for over four hours, but I didn't know it. I didn't hear any gunshots, police sirens or the ubiquitous sound of helicopter blades, the usual harbingers of "trouble in the hood".

  I was cleaning the bathroom walls and not locked in my media room with the surround sound on, so I was pretty surprised coming upon a crime scene in the middle of my block on my way to dinner.

  Dinner was nice. Bob's Big Boy. I like the spaghetti with chili, and I noticed you could now substitute penne noodles for the spaghetti. I ordered Penne with Chili. I read the paper. News about the Senate passing an authorization bill for Iraq spending with a rider detailing a withdrawal. The Japanese prime minister tries to explain his denial that the Japanese "enlisted" prostitutes for the troops during the "big war". Reviews of a half a dozen films.

  On my way back home, around 7pm, I found the police tape had been moved down the block a bit. An L.A. Sheriff's deputy was parked sideways across the street. I manueuvered right along side him in the middle of  the intersection. "Hi Officer. I need to go home."

  "You can't enter." He declared. He's about 15 or 20 years my junior. He looks and acts like a high school hall monitor.

  "I live in there. I have to go home."

  "This is a crime scene. Nobody can enter or leave."

  "But I live here. Where can I go?"

  "You can wait here with all the others". I looked around, and saw that eight or ten residents, some in parked cars, some walking, laden with groceries, or still dressed in their work clothes with nametags and badges, were milling about. Cliques formed, gossip was exchanged. When I had left earlier to go to dinner, I deliberately didn't even look down the cul de sac to see what might have happened. I know I will read about it later, and I've lived here long enough to know not to call attention to myself, especially when "leaving a crime scene". I didn't know, however, that I wouldn't be let back in.

  I turned down the side street, and doubled back to the other side of my house, down the block. It wasn't yet dark, and it looked as if the other strip of yellow tape was on the near side of my house, meaning I could get in on the other side of the block. I almost burned rubber getting around to the other side, where not one, but three Sheriff's cruisers blocked the road, along with a massive Sheriff's deputy, big, bald, and gruff.

  He motioned me away. " I live here." I pleaded.

  "No body is allowed in. Now move along."

  "WHERE?" I plaintively asked, my voice rising.

  "This is a crime scene. Can't you see the tape?"

  "Of course. But I don't have a jacket and it's getting cooler. When are we going to be allowed in.? What happened?"

  "The crime is still under investigation, and we cannot divulge any information at this time.:"

  I pulled up to the nearest curb. I went to dial my own phone, to see if Joel had gotten through. No answer at the house. When I walked back to the "crime scene" I saw Joel with a group of others across the street, but in front of the tape. The bald officer inquired about which side of the street I lived on. It appeared that they were "escorting" resident who lived on the east side of the street, but those of us who lived on the west side wouldn't see the sun set in their back yards tonight.

  We waited for about three hours. I talked to more neighbors than I have in the 12 years I've lived on the block. News vans from CBS, KCAL, and NBC arrived, extending their microvave antennas nearly thirty feet into the air. Helicopters were hovering around. Things like this have gotten close but not this close. Nobody was talking, but with the help of the FOX news commentators and their scanner, plus some of the neighbors' comments, a picture started to appear about what had happened, at 1:30pm, nearly 7 hours earlier. A woman had been found shot in her home by her "son". A fellow "refugee neighbor" who lived two doors down from the woman mentioned that there had been numerous "domestic disturbances." This is all just about four or five houses down from where I live. I never go into the cul de sac, and I don't know many of the neighbors except those in our immediate project, which is a double duplex.

  I went to get some brew, but I asked one of the Sheriff's Deputies if I could open it in the street. No go. Joel suggested I go to my car, but I said "open container" law and he laughed, as did the nearest officer.

  Very funny. We had to go the McDonald's if we needed to go to the bathroom. One neighbor started to get mad. I was interviewed by a cute KCAL correspondent. (I Tivod the 10pm news, but although the story was reported, I ended up on the cutting room floor. I told her that "the big news" was that they weren't letting residents back into the their homes. Minutes later, the police tape was down. One of the irate neighbors it turned out worked for the city, and he had stormed past the tape minutes before somebody at Sheriff's headquarters decided that the crime scene didn't need to encompass a whole city block.

  I got inside. It was pretty late, past 9pm by now, and I set the Tivo to record the 10pm news. I got on the internet and copied the following story from our local newspaper's website. I was part of the "breaking news" tonight, and doubtless, if we were still standing around out there in the cold. (It's actually a balmy 60 degrees at 10:30pm, but hey) perhaps the footage of me complaining about the fact that "this is America, not a Baghdad checkpoint" would have been aired on our local TV news.

  Following is the News article (unaltered) from the Daily Breeze website. At one point I was asked by the newsgal if I felt afraid or that I could somehow have been in danger. "No", I told her, " I didn't even hear any shots". Check out the story. This is pretty weird, and it happened right here on Mulberry Street, so to speak.

  (Photos: 1. The northern blockade, around 6:30pm, recorded off of KCAL news program at 10pm. 2. Cruisers at the southern end of the street, near the cul de sac, recorded by KCAL earler in the day. 3 News vans photographed from my driveway, microwave towers extended. I could see the 11pm reporters in front of their microphones. This and the next photo taken around 10:30pm. 4. An evidence gathering trailer in the culdesac, shot from my driveway.

   

   

  Lomita woman under investigation in slayings of 2 husbands is found shot

  Body of Sonia Rios Risken was discovered nine days after a gunman missed when he fired a bullet at her in her hair salon and threatened, “I’ll be back!”

  By Larry Altman and Kristin Agostoni
  Staff Writers

  A woman under investigation in the slayings of her two husbands 19 years apart in the Philippines was found shot to death today in her Lomita home.

  The body of Sonia Rios Risken, 60, was discovered nine days after a gunman missed when he fired a bullet at her in her Lomita hair salon and threatened, “I’ll be back!”
   
  Risken had been dead for 12 to 24 hours when a man identified as her son discovered her body inside her home in the 1800 block of 252nd Street about 2:30 p.m., sheriff’s deputies said.

  The hairstylist died from a gunshot to the head. It was not believed self-inflicted, authorities said.

  A motive for the killing was not immediately known. Risken, however, was a suspect in the shooting deaths of both of her husbands nearly two decades apart in the Philippines. She was not with either man at the time, even though each man was visiting her relatives.

  Risken’s death comes a year after a gunman ambushed her second husband, Lawndale High School teacher Law Risken Jr., who was shot in the head April 18, 2006, while visiting his wife’s family.

  Detectives suspected “murder for insurance” as a possible motive and placed suspicion on Risken because her first husband, Earl John Bourdeau, was killed similarly in 1987, allegedly by her brothers, documents obtained by the Daily Breeze showed.

  Philippine officials ordered their local investigators to supply reports on Law Risken’s killing to the FBI’s Los Angeles office, asking agents to “look into the result of insurance claims during the first and the latest, should there be any,” according to a June 28 memorandum written by the Philippine National Police’s director of the Cavite Police Provincial Office.

  Government officials also asked the Tanza city police and other Philippine government agencies to conduct a background check of Law Risken’s wife to “secure updated reports on her present status, activities and whereabouts,” the document said. FBI officials in Los Angeles said the killings were under investigation, but would not comment on the open cases.

  Risken, owner of Sonia’s Artistic Hair Center on Lomita Boulevard, had refused to talk to the Daily Breeze.

  On April 19 — one day after the anniversary of her second husband’s slaying — a gunman walked into the hair salon, fired a bullet and missed, deputies and witnesses said.

  Virginia Simplicio, whose daughter is friends with Risken, said the shooting occurred shortly after an unidentified person called the hair salon and asked to get a haircut. Risken said she was closed.

  Soon after, someone came to the shop and fired a shot at her, Simplicio said. Risken ducked, screamed and called 911.

  Deputies said the gunman yelled, “I’ll be back.”
   
  A merchant at a neighboring business said the man confronted Risken as she arrived for work and opened the door. Risken told the business owner that the man carried a gun and wore a black-hooded sweat shirt.

  “I heard her screaming,” the business owner said. “What she told me was that she was opening the store, and some guy approached her. … She thinks that he was trying to rob her.”

  The man pushed Risken into the shop, where she apparently ducked under a counter and called police on her business and cell phones, the business owner said. The gunman ran without taking anything.

  The business owner did not hear shots fired.

  “Right after, she got cameras installed,” the merchant said, adding that the pictures obscuring part of the salon’s front windows also came down.

  Authorities later called Risken to identify a suspect, the business owner said, but she told them it was the wrong man.

  larry.altman@dailybreeze.com

  Staff writers Doug Irving, Andrea Sudano and Denise Nix contributed to this article.

  RELATED LINK:

  Suspicions raised by two killings 19 years apart. Daily Breeze April 26, 2006
  

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