crime

Santa Ana police chief resigns amid controversy over rise in shootings, says he has new job

Posted on by Jessica Kwong
Santa Ana police chief resigns amid controversy over rise in shootings, says he has new job

Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas has announced his resignation, saying he has agreed to take a job with another undisclosed agency. In a letter dated Wednesday, April 19, to Acting City Manager City Manager Gerardo Mouet and obtained Thursday by the Register, Rojas noted he had served the city for more than 27 years. He called for the appointment of an acting police chief to “allow for a seamless transition as I separate from…

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How a violent month in Santa Ana set the stage for Council infighting, election angst and jobs possibly lost

Posted on by Jessica Kwong
How a violent month in Santa Ana set the stage for Council infighting, election angst and jobs possibly lost

Just minutes into the new year last year, a 22-year-old man was gunned down walking in the alley behind the Santa Ana apartment where he lived. Two days later, a 19-year-old was fatally wounded in a car-to-car shooting near the city’s Centennial Regional Park. Over the next 24 hours, two more men were killed in gun violence a mile apart in a gang-plagued area already targeted for special enforcement by police and prosecutors. The four…

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Santa Ana woman killed in San Bernardino shootings ‘had a lot to give’

Posted on by Jessica Kwong
Santa Ana woman killed in San Bernardino shootings ‘had a lot to give’

Tin Nguyen spent Tuesday with her boyfriend Haisan Trinh celebrating his 32nd birthday. She had a surprise planned for him on Thursday. Together nearly six years, the couple had been talking marriage – Trinh had even been saving to buy an engagement ring – but the kind and generous Nguyen was already like part of the family, said Trinh’s brother Haian Trinh, 33. She was Haisan Trinh’s “first girlfriend, ever,” his brother said Friday as…

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Family members, national groups push to solve 1985 Santa Ana terrorist attack case

Posted on by Jessica Kwong
Family members, national groups push to solve 1985 Santa Ana terrorist attack case

SANTA ANA – Helena Odeh remembers going with her father Alex Odeh, then the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, to his second-floor office on 17th Street in Santa Ana in the 1980s. “His work was his life,” she said. “That’s what he stood for. He wanted peace.” On Oct. 11, 1985, the morning after he appeared on local and national television praising Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat as “a man…

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Officers accused of crash cover-up

Posted on by Jessica Kwong
Officers accused of crash cover-up

A San Antonio police sergeant and six other members of the force are under investigation after the sergeant crashed a patrol car into a highway wall early Thursday and the others tried to cover up the incident, Police Chief William McManus said at a news conference Monday. The 20-year veteran of the Police Department, off-duty and possibly driving while intoxicated, sideswiped a wall near East Josephine Street around 5:30 a.m., McManus said. The sergeant then walked…

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