A modern criminal interlude

My North East Los Angeles neighborhood has been experiencing a period of unusual criminal activity in recent days, with an AK-47 attack on two police officers, a mother and teenager stabbed by the father of the woman’s younger kids and the truly shocking arrest of a veteran fire fighter on suspicion of running over a naked woman and leaving her dead in an Eagle Rock street, with a trail of gore leading from his house.

When trusted citizens go ape and kill, one expects at least the barest attempt at a cover up. If David Del Toro did what he is accused of, the crime suggests a terrifying arrogance.

When this story broke, I couldn’t help but recall the ghastly discovery made last October, inside the Los Angeles Fire Department repair yard at Pasadena Avenue and Avenue 19. A woman’s torso was found there; her legs showed up in trash bags on the street in Pico Rivera.

Del Toro was assigned to Fire Station 1, less than a quarter mile from the repair yard. A few minutes ago, when I saw the photos linked in beFrank’s blog ("discovery" above), I got chills. See, I didn’t realize when I read about the crime at the time that the body was in the dumpster–I just rashly assumed someone tossed it over the razor wire fence in some gesture of defiance at the Man.

But if it was in the dumpster, that means the killer was inside the secure lot and seeking to conceal it, but not all that carefully. Arrogantly. An act not so far from running a woman over and leaving parts of her pointing to one’s own door.

And even if Del Toro had nothing to do with the torso, one has to wonder if the people who had access to that yard were looked at as potential killers, or as fellow civil servants, always a possibility when a member of a brave brotherhood turns bad. Because a woman died horribly a few nights ago, and if this is no coincidence, her blood is smeared a lot farther than half a mile.

Del Toro is currently free on $1 million bond, and that should give you chills, too.