Feb. 05--Los Angeles County prosecutors have charged a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old with murder in the killing of two young women whose bodies were found last fall in a popular Montecito Heights park.
Dallas Stone Pineda, 17, and Jose Antonio Echeverria, 18, killed the two teenage victims "to further the activities" of a criminal street gang, according to a complaint filed by the district attorney's office.
The charges come more than three months after the bodies of Gabriela Calzada, 19, and her friend Briana Gallegos, 17, were found in Ernest E. Debs Regional Park, a picturesque area with rolling hills that is popular with hikers, joggers and dog walkers. The district attorney's complaint said Echeverria used a rifle to kill Calzada.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference that the two women were killed at the park in a "horrific scene." Only one victim was shot, he said. Both were bludgeoned, but he declined to say with what.
Investigators, he said, believe no other people were directly involved in the killings. He declined to detail a motive for the crime.
Capt. Billy Hayes, who oversees the department's Robbery-Homicide Division, said Pineda and Echeverria knew the victims, but he declined to say how.
Pineda and Echeverria appeared dressed in jail scrubs in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Thursday afternoon. As Superior Court Judge Sergio C. Tapia ordered them held without bail, a woman in the audience held her hand over her mouth and quietly wept. She declined to comment after the hearing.
Tapia delayed an arraignment for the pair until March 8.
The bodies were found in bushes not far from a trail. Police said both teenagers had suffered significant head trauma, but coroner's officials have not said how the women were killed.
As detectives worked to track down the suspects, an uneasiness permeated the neighborhood. Dozens of residents gathered at a town hall meeting led by the LAPD, asking whether they were safe. Some said they were worried about going to the park. Others feared a serial killer was on the loose, a rumor police quickly tried to dispel.
Detectives remained tight-lipped about their investigation, even as residents and reporters watched police search three homes in connection with the case in mid-November.
Records showed Echeverria was arrested Friday night at a Montecito Heights home not far from the park, on suspicion of shooting at an occupied vehicle. Prosecutors also charged him with attempted murder, shooting at a car and bringing methamphetamine into a jail.
Prosecutors alleged in their complaint that both Echeverria and Pineda were active gang members. Echeverria used the moniker "Klepto" and Pineda used "Trippy," prosecutors alleged. Pineda was charged as an adult, a district attorney's spokesman said.
The district attorney's office said prosecutors would decide later whether to seek the death penalty for Echeverria. Pineda is ineligible for execution because of his age. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Arrest records list Echeverria's home on Topaz Street, just blocks from the entrance to the park where the dead teenagers were found. On Thursday, a woman who did not identify herself told a reporter through the metal screen door that Echeverria's family was not home.
"We have nothing to say," she said.
At the site where the bodies were found, two easels sat along a ditch off an empty trail. One was decorated with the photo of Gallegos and had deflated balloons hanging from it. On the ground next to the other was a broken photo frame with no photograph.
Zoyla Perez, 72, who has lived in her home at the foot of the park since 1987, said she was glad they arrested someone for the murders, but was saddened -- and frightened -- to learn one of the men lived nearby.
"It scared me a little," she said in Spanish. "We didn't think that the people who did it would live so close."
The bodies were found along her favorite walking path, one she now no longer takes. She said she has stopped leaving her front door open in the evenings for fresh air out of fear of the gunshots she hears at night.
Eric Calderon, 18, was walking his dog Thursday afternoon along the trail next to the memorial for the teens, as he does twice a week. He said he lives around the corner from where Echeverria resides and was shocked when police searched the home in connection with the killings.
"Hopefully they caught the right guy," he said.
The mother of the 17-year-old victim, Gallegos, said Wednesday that the news of the charges did not bring relief. Instead, she said, it was a reminder that her daughter was gone.
"It brings back so many things," she said.
The mother, who did not want her name published out of concerns for her safety, said she doesn't want to get involved in the upcoming court proceedings.
"I just want this nightmare to get over," she said.
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