by Liz Mullen
Hermosa Beach Police Department detectives are investigating the theft of expensive truck spotlights from at least four trucks in the city in recent weeks.
“We don’t know if it’s one person or multiple people, but they are stealing spotlights off of trucks,” HBPD Officer Keaton Dadigan told the Easy Reader. “They’re called Baja Spotlights, like when you go off road in Mexico or in the sand dunes.”
The spotlights are pricey, costing as much as $1,000 or more and constitute grand theft. “They are going around looking for these types of spotlights, kind of like when they target certain types of vehicles to get the catalytic converters,” he said.
All of the trucks hit by spotlight thieves have been parked in driveways or on the street. None of the thefts occurred on trucks parked in garages.
Eaton Fire patrol ends
Officer Dadigan was one of the HBPD officers who went to the Eaton Fire in Altadena as part of the mutual aid agreement among County cities.
Officers patrolled the evacuated areas of the fire, concentrating on areas where homes were still standing with items inside that would-be looters could steal.
“We were up there to protect that area to make sure if you are not an emergency personnel (person), if you are not with Edison or the gas company, there is an evacuation zone and we pretty much have to enforce that,” Dadigan said.
Most of the people HBPD officers stopped were residents of the area, desperate to get back into their homes, Dadigan said.
“We did contact some suspicious subjects who said they were just ‘looking around,'” Dadigan said. Officers did not find stolen items or other things that would allow them to arrest these people.
HBPD officers, as well as officers from the Manhattan Beach Police Department, the Redondo Beach Police Department and other South Bay agencies had been working the fire since the day after it started. Their duty ended on January 18.
“The (LA County) Sheriff said they could take it from there,” Dadigan said. “We are pretty much on standby at this point. If they need us, they’ll give us a call.”
Mira Costa student remembered
A celebration of life will be held on Thursday, January 23 for Mira Costa High School senior Ford Savela, who was killed in a hit and run traffic collision earlier this month.
The event will begin at 5 p.m. and will be held in the Mira Costa auditorium.
On January 7 at about 11:25 p.m., Manhattan Beach Police Officers responded to a report of a collision and transported three people, including Ford, to a local trauma hospital. One of the injured underwent surgery while Ford succumbed to his injuries.
MBPD put out an alert for Kameron Lee Peterson, 32, the driver of the other vehicle, who fled the scene on foot. On January 9 Peterson was arrested by officers from the MBPD Traffic and Detective Bureaus.
On January 13 Peterson was charged by the Los Angeles County’s District Attorney’s Office with three felonies.
Peterson is charged with one count of murder, one felony count of reckless driving and one felony count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death or serious injury to another person.
“It is further alleged that the reckless driving caused death to Ford Savela,” a District Attorney spokesperson told Easy Reader in an email. Peterson pleaded not guilty to the charges in Torrance Superior Court on January 13. He has been in the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail since then, held on $1 million bail.
A preliminary hearing is set for March 10 in the Torrance Superior Court. ER
