Month: October 2005

The three boys from Altadena just planned to see their lady friend off at the Pasadena bus terminal for a trip to Philly. But as the bus pulled out of the station, they jumped back into their coupe and sped after it, waving (one assumes less frantically as the hours passed). When the bus alit in Las Vegas, they called home asking that cash be wired to Salt Lake.

But instead of money, it was the Man who awaited the romantic fools. The cops held the youths until their parents could collect them, while the lady’s bus, freed of its gallant shadow, sped off for the East.

Mrs. and Mrs. Leonard Wood of 416 N. Avenue 57 were shocked last night by the violent chiding given by Sheppard W. King III, 22, to his 2-year-old son and namesake.

The male Kings, of 1811 N. Whitley Ave., had sat separately from the boy’s mother inside the lobby of the Pantages Theater because of crowding. When the baby talked during the show, the Woods allege, his father took him into the lobby and hit him multiple times in the face, causing blood to spurt from the child’s nose. The Woods then followed the young family home, and called police to report the abuse.

Sheppard Senior was booked into Hollywood Jail, where he denies striking the child with undue force. Sheppard Junior, meanwhile, was treated at Georgia Street Receiving Hospital for two black eyes, facial and cranial bruises, and a cut lip, before being returned to his mother’s care.

(I will leave it to our staff detective, Larry Harnisch, to tell us if this is the same Shep King III who–under the monicker Abdullah and described as a Texas playboy–was divorced by world renowned belly dancer Samia Gamal in 1953 under mysterious charges of ill-treatment.)

For the second time in two weeks, pint-sized miscreant Thomas George Redhead, 14, has busted out of Juvenile Hall. This time the boy, whose initial offense was stealing a Pacific Electric bus, which he drove to San Diego, shimmied up to the second story of the detention center and dropped more than 16 feet to make a fresh escape. I guess it’s true what they say about Redheads…

Soon after the employees of the cooperatively-owned women’s fashion workshop Glamour Gauge Manufacturing Co, 2514 E. Gage Ave., voted not to join the A.F.L. International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, the threats began. Ventura Fashions of California, for which Glamour Gauge makes clothing, complained to Superior Court last week that a union agent had threatened to destroy their business, possibly with bloodshed.

But it was by stink-]shed that the attack came, by way of a half-brick tied to a fruit jar packed with noxious acids, hurled through Glamour Gauge’s transom last night. The smell was so foul that the adjacent market, novelty shop and typewriter shop were rendered unfit for use, and passersby on the sidewalk also held their noses and ran. Police and the D.A.’s office are investigating.

7-year-old Paul Esparza Jr. is in Juvenile Hall today, but that’s an improvement on his home life. Discovered locked in a five-foot square windowless closet at 1341 S. McBride Street after his cries were heard by a woman who’d come to fill the family dog’s water dish, Paul was freed from his tiny prison after deputies broke down the door.

The senior Paul Esparza, a cement worker, and the boy’s stepmother reportedly locked him up for the past six days before they left for work. Paul was imprisoned while his 6-year-old brother Robert was in school and baby Richard cared for by relatives, due to Paul Junior’s contagious skin condition.

Paul senior was arrested on his return to the house and booked on suspicion of child neglect. Neglect? The kid had water and sandwiches!