Glendale police want to talk to these people about mass shooting at restaurant
Before the shooting, hundreds of people were attending a dance party on the restaurant's patio. The event had been put on by On A Sunday Afternoon, a Chicano lifestyle and clothing brand that regularly organized dance events.
The department published two pictures capturing three people.
Officer Moroni Mendez, a department spokesperson, said homicide supervisors asked for the images of the people to be shared because they believed the people pictured possessed important information related to their case.
Mendez said the people police were searching for were not suspects.
Mendez asked anyone who recognized any of the people pictured to contact police by calling the department's nonemergency number at 623-930-3000. Calls can be made anonymously through Silent Witness at 480-948-6377.
The department's May 7 appeal to the public wasn't its first.
Glendale police spokesperson Jose Santiago previously encouraged anyone with information about the incident to anonymously upload any videos or photos they had of the incident to a web portal. Anyone with verbal tips could call the department's nonemergency number, Santiago said.
Glendale police asked the public on May 7 to help detectives identify three people who were present for a mass shooting that killed three and injured five at El Camaron Gigante restaurant on May 4. They were not suspects, police said, but may have important information.
Glendale police asked the public on May 7 to help detectives identify three people who were present for a mass shooting that killed three and injured five at El Camaron Gigante restaurant on May 4. They were not suspects, police said, but may have important information.
Persons of interest appear in videos posted to social media
In video footage posted online, the woman police designated as the first person of interest can be seen pointing to a group of men and calling security over.
As security arrives and separates her from the group of men, the person labeled as the second person of interest can be seen throwing an object, possibly a bottle, at the men she was pointing out.
This confrontation drew the attention of the disc jockeys on stage, who stopped the music. The event organizer, Bobby Luera, can be heard on the video using a microphone on the stage to ask for calm, and then ending the event after the object is thrown.
The man police labeled as the third person of interest appears on video talking to at least one of the men from the group the woman pointed out as security escorted him towards the exit.
Videos posted to social media capturing the incident depict a chaotic scene with some people pushing and striking each other. One video shows a crowd chanting 'beat it' as security separates the participants of a fight and removes them from the area.
Questions about Glendale shooting remain as days pass
Glendale police's latest appeal came three days after the fatal shooting killed brothers Damien Anthony Sproule, 17, and Christopher Juaquin Sproule, 21, as well as Milo Christopher Suniga, 21.
Stephanie Ortega and Regenea LaRoche Sproule, the mother and stepmother of Damien and Christopher, respectively, said the brothers were looking to meet people who were also interested in cars.
'They were out there trying to make friends from the lowrider community,' Sproule said. 'Because they had just gotten their own lowriders and they wanted to fix them up, so they needed to make friends.'
Veronica Tarango, Suniga's cousin, the third person who died in the shooting, told The Arizona Republic at a community vigil on May 6 that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the crossfire. Suniga wasn't a violent or confrontational person, she said.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Glendale police want to talk to these people about mass shooting
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Los Angeles Times
10-08-2025
- Los Angeles Times
California took center stage in ICE raids, but other states saw more immigration arrests
Ever since federal immigration raids ramped up across California, triggering fierce protests that prompted President Trump to deploy troops to Los Angeles, the state has emerged as the symbolic battleground of the administration's deportation campaign. But even as arrests soared, California was not the epicenter of Trump's anti-immigrant project. In the first five months of Trump's second term, California lagged behind the staunchly red states of Texas and Florida in the total arrests. According to a Los Angeles Times analysis of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data from the Deportation Data Project, Texas reported 26,341 arrests — nearly a quarter of all ICE arrests nationally — followed by 12,982 in Florida and 8,460 in California. Even in June, when masked federal immigration agents swept through L.A., jumping out of vehicles to snatch people from bus stops, car washes and parking lots, California saw 3,391 undocumented immigrants arrested — more than Florida, but still only about half as many as Texas. When factoring in population, California drops to 27th in the nation, with 217 arrests per million residents — about a quarter of Texas' 864 arrests per million and less than half of a whole slew of states including Florida, Arkansas, Utah, Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and Nevada. The data, released after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government, excludes arrests made after June 26 and lacks identifying state details in 5% of cases. Nevertheless, it provides the most detailed look yet of national ICE operations. Immigration experts say it is not surprising that California — home to the largest number of undocumented immigrants in the nation and the birthplace of the Chicano movement — lags behind Republican states in the total number of arrests or arrests as a percentage of the population. 'The numbers are secondary to the performative politics of the moment,' said Austin Kocher, a geographer and research assistant professor at Syracuse University who specializes in immigration enforcement. Part of the reason Republican-dominated states have higher arrest numbers — particularly when measured against population — is they have a longer history of working directly with ICE, and a stronger interest in collaboration. In red states from Texas to Mississippi, local law enforcement officers routinely cooperate with federal agents, either by taking on ICE duties through so-called 287(g) agreements or by identifying undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated and letting ICE into their jails and prisons. Indeed, data show that just 7% of ICE arrests made this year in California were made through the Criminal Alien Program, an initiative that requests that local law enforcement identify undocumented immigrants in federal, state and local prisons and jails. That's significantly lower than the 55% of arrests in Texas and 46% in Florida made through prisons or jails. And other conservative states with smaller populations relied on the program even more heavily: 75% of ICE arrests in Alabama and 71% in Indiana took place via prisons and jails. 'State cooperation has been an important buffer in ICE arrests and ICE operations in general for years,' said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a Sacramento-based senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. 'We've seen that states are not only willing to cooperate with ICE, but are proactively now establishing 287(g) agreements with their local law enforcement, are naturally going to cast a wider net of enforcement in the boundaries of that state.' While California considers only some criminal offenses, such as serious felonies, significant enough to share information with ICE; Texas and Florida are more likely to report offenses that may not be as severe, such as minor traffic infractions. Still, even if fewer people were arrested in California than other states, it also witnessed one of the most dramatic increases in arrests in the country. California ranked 30th in ICE arrests per million in February. By June, the state had climbed to 10th place. ICE arrested around 8,460 immigrants across California between Jan. 20 and June 26, a 212% increase compared with the five months before Trump took office. That contrasts with a 159% increase nationally for the same period. Much of ICE's activity in California was hyper-focused on Greater Los Angeles: About 60% of ICE arrests in the state took place in the seven counties in and around L.A. during Trump's first five months in office. The number of arrests in the Los Angeles area soared from 463 in January to 2,185 in June — a 372% spike, second only to New York's 432% increase. Even if California is not seeing the largest numbers of arrests, experts say, the dramatic increase in captures stands out from other places because of the lack of official cooperation and public hostility toward immigration agents. 'A smaller increase in a place that has very little cooperation is, in a way, more significant than seeing an increase in areas that have lots and lots of cooperation,' Kocher said. ICE agents, Kocher said, have to work much harder to arrest immigrants in places like L.A. or California that define themselves as 'sanctuary' jurisdictions and limit their cooperation with federal immigration agents. 'They really had to go out of their way,' he said. Trump administration officials have long argued that sanctuary jurisdictions give them no choice but to round up people on the streets. Not long after Trump won the 2024 election and the L.A. City Council voted unanimously to block any city resources from being used for immigration enforcement, incoming border enforcement advisor Tom Homan threatened an onslaught. 'If I've got to send twice as many officers to L.A. because we're not getting any assistance, then that's what we're going to do,' Homan told Newsmax. With limited cooperation from California jails, ICE agents went out into communities, rounding up people they suspected of being undocumented on street corners and at factories and farms. That shift in tactics meant that immigrants with criminal convictions no longer made up the bulk of California ICE arrests. While about 66% of immigrants arrested in the first four months of the year had criminal convictions, that percentage fell to 30% in June. The sweeping nature of the arrests drew immediate criticism as racial profiling and spawned robust community condemnation. Some immigration experts and community activists cite the organized resistance in L.A. as another reason the numbers of ICE arrests were lower in California than in Texas and even lower than dozens of states by percentage of population. 'The reason is the resistance, organized resistance: the people who literally went to war with them in Paramount, in Compton, in Bell and Huntington Park,' said Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio Los Angeles, an independent political group that patrols neighborhoods to alert residents of immigration sweeps. 'They've been chased out in the different neighborhoods where we organize,' he said. 'We've been able to mobilize the community to surround the agents when they come to kidnap people.' In L.A., activists patrolled the streets from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m., seven days a week, Gochez said. They faced off with ICE agents in Home Depot parking lots and at warehouses and farms. 'We were doing everything that we could to try to keep up with the intensity of the military assault,' Gochez said. 'The resistance was strong. … We've been able, on numerous occasions, to successfully defend the communities and drive them out of our community.' The protests prompted Trump to deploy the National Guard and Marines in June, with the stated purpose of protecting federal buildings and personnel. But the administration's ability to ratchet up arrests hit a roadblock on July 11. That's when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking immigration agents in Southern and Central California from targeting people based on race, language, vocation or location without reasonable suspicion that they are in the U.S. illegally. That decision was upheld last week by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But on Thursday, the Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court to lift the temporary ban on its patrols, arguing that it 'threatens to upend immigration officials' ability to enforce the immigration laws in the Central District of California by hanging the prospect of contempt over every investigative stop.' The order led to a significant drop in arrests across Los Angeles last month. But this week, federal agents carried out a series of raids at Home Depots from Westlake to Van Nuys. Trump administration officials have indicated that the July ruling and arrest slowdown do not signal a permanent change in tactics. 'Sanctuary cities are going to get exactly what they don't want: more agents in the communities and more work site enforcement,' Homan told reporters two weeks after the court blocked roving patrols. 'Why is that? Because they won't let one agent arrest one bad guy in the jail.' U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who has been leading operations in California, posted a fast-moving video on X that spliced L.A. Mayor Karen Bass telling reporters that 'this experiment that was practiced on the city of Los Angeles failed' with video showing him grinning. Then, as a frenetic drum and bass mix kicked in, federal agents jump out of a van and chase people. 'When you're faced with opposition to law and order, what do you do?' Bovino wrote. 'Improvise, adapt, and overcome!' Clearly, the Trump administration is willing to expend significant resources to make California a political battleground and test case, Ruiz Soto said. The question is, at what economic and political cost? 'If they really wanted to scale up and ramp up their deportations,' Ruiz Soto said, 'they could go to other places, do it more more safely, more quickly and more efficiently.'
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Yahoo
Fresno area school founder charged for using public funds to pay lavish expenses
A former Madera charter school executive faces federal charges two years after an audit tied him to the misuse of public dollars. The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it is charging Nicolas Retana, 67, with one count of embezzling money from a program that receives federal funding. His indictment was unsealed and Retana was arraigned Monday, according to a news release. Retana co-founded Ezequiel Tafoya Alvarado Academy in Madera in 2005 and served as its executive director until he was fired in 2020 following allegations he physically abused students. The school, which serves students in grades K-8, is now called Liberty Charter School. Two years ago, an audit of the school concluded $1.06 million in public funds were potentially misused between 2016 and 2020, and that Retana was tied to the alleged fraud. The FBI launched an investigation of Retana after the audit. Now, the federal government says Retana 'concealed the misused funds by mislabeling the expenses in school accounting records and misrepresenting the expenses when asked.' 'For example, Retana purchased new Ford F-150 Raptor pickup trucks for his two sons using school funds,' the federal news release says. 'He also had a personal relationship with a self-proclaimed sex worker turned relationship coach whom he paid $12,000 using school funds.' The 2023 audit of the school also found nearly $38,000 went to Retana's daughter's higher education expenses. If Retana is convicted of embezzlement, he faces 'a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine,' the federal news release says. John McClure, executive director of Liberty Charter School, said in a Wednesday statement to The Bee that it was the school that requested an investigation by law enforcement at the outset of the case. 'We want to thank both the FBI and Department of Justice for their hard work on this case,' McClure said in an email. 'The charter school and its board will continue to cooperate with law enforcement as this case moves forward.' The Bee's attempts to reach Retana on Tuesday were unsuccessful. But in a 2023 phone interview with The Bee, Retana said the audit report's findings were simply 'not true.' He added that the motivation behind the report was racism against him because he is a Chicano who has spoken out about the lack of effort schools put into Latino students. 'There's no ifs, ands or buts about it,' Retana told The Bee in 2023. 'I've always been a target.' 2023 audit: Wild spending at Madera school In 2023, when Liberty Charter School was still called Ezequiel Tafoya Alvarado Academy, McClure said he had filed a police report related to some of the audit's findings three years prior. 'I can assure you that these issues all stopped when I took over as Executive Director and will never happen again,' McClure said at the time. The Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team, the state's school finance watchdog that provides financial guidance to schools, initiated the audit in 2021. The auditors found charter funds were used to make payments totaling $37,563 to colleges between 2016 and 2018. They also found Retana's daughter held several communications positions at the school before being hired as a teacher in 2016. 'Interviews with charter staff indicated that these charges were for (Retana's) daughter's college education,' the audit report said. The report also said Retana's two sons were hired as custodians and later became the school's night security officers. Both received gas cards from the charter and both were issued Ford F-150 Raptors. The audit found that both of them crashed their trucks – each of which cost about $40,000 – and that one of them used his in a hit-and-run. An invoice found in the report also showed the school's board approved a $12,000 payment to an 'Associate #2' for six '8th Grade Life Coaching Workshops' in 2019. The report stated that interviews with staff revealed Retana may have been romantically involved with the life coach, though he denied that in his 2023 interview with The Bee. The report found that the life coach did not possess any type of teaching or counseling credential in California. But Retana said a credentialed counselor is not what he was going for. 'I just wanted someone who was going to be able to do to deal with the eighth-graders, that they would like and that they could work with,' he told The Bee in 2023. Solve the daily Crossword
CBS News
18-07-2025
- CBS News
Peter Mendez speaks about $2.5 million settlement after botched Chicago police raid
This week, the city of Chicago finalized a $2.5 million settlement with a family targeted by a botched police raid. In 2017, officers pointed guns in the face of Peter Mendez, then 9 years old, after raiding the wrong home. On Friday, Peter, now 17, spoke out for the first time about his family's settlement with the city. "Kind of relieved; I can close this chapter of my life and move on," he said. Peter said he's ready to move on from the fear and trauma he experienced the night a team of Chicago police officers wrongly raided his family's home. Back then, the CBS News Chicago Investigators had no idea they would uncover a citywide systemic pattern of officers taking the word of informants without verifying the information and then raiding the homes of innocent people. In Peter's case, he testified officers pointed guns at him and his parents, and handcuffed his father, Gilbert, face down on the ground in front of him. This week, the City Council voted to end the Mendez family's civil rights lawsuit by agreeing to pay the family $2.5 million. What message does the family's legal team think the lawsuit sends to the city? "It says stop pointing guns at kids. Get your search warrant investigations right," attorney Al Hofeld Jr. said. After the CBS News Chicago Investigators revealed what happened during raid on the Mendez family's home, other families started coming forward to say the same thing happened to them. In 2019, Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Peter Mendez Act, requiring police to get training to deal with children during traumatic situations like a raid or seeing a parent handcuffed. Peter was all smiles when the bill was signed into law. He said Friday he feels like he will always be a champion for other kids. "I don't believe that children should have to go through the same thing I experienced; not at all, not in the slightest," he said. His high-profile case impacted adults too, like Anjanette Young, who also came to CBS for help exposing her wrong raid after seeing Peter's story. Together, the two wrong raid victims, along with CBS News Chicago's 7-year probe into wrong raids, have led to a completely overhauled police search warrant and raid policy. "You gave a voice to the voiceless, you know, gave us the voice when we didn't feel like we had nothing," Peter said. Botched raids by Chicago police have cost taxpayers millions of dollars in settlements. In the Mendez family's case, in addition to the $2.5 million settlement, the city spent another $700,000 in legal fees to a private law firm to defend the officers in court before ultimately settling the case.
