The Los Angeles Police Department has conducted an internal investigation into officials’ responses in two homes in the San Fernando Valley, where they investigated reports of violent attacks but found no victims because they did not go in.
In both incidents, callers reported hearings or witnessed violence against 911 dispatchers, proactively attacked, and later found a body in each location.
LAPD chief Jim McDonnell addressed the incidents at a meeting of the city’s Civil Police Commission (the department’s oversight committee) on Tuesday. McDonnell admitted that officials did not immediately enter any home, saying he had begun an administrative investigation into their response.
Menash Hidra's body was found in his apartment in the fifth-floor Valley village on April 26, and an attacker broke into a nearby unit, jumped from the balcony to his balcony and attacked him.
Three days ago, neighbors called and authorities said they were screaming, and then a man shouted, “I'm going to die. I'm going to die,” law enforcement sources said. The officer responded to the calls, knocked down the door and found nothing.
The same day that Shidra's body was found, Aleksandre Modebadze's body was also beaten to death at his home in Woodland Hills. In this case, a woman inside the house called 911 and reported the attack, but the arrived officer knocked on the door and left. Only after they returned later did they find that Modebadze was fatally injured.
At Tuesday's meeting, Commissioner Rasha Gerges Shields asked the chief how to determine that the call was a possible fake call, often referred to as a “hit” call, designed to trigger a large number of police responses to the victim's address, or reasonably “people who may need your help.”
The chief said it was difficult. When officials arrive and no one responds to them, the 911 operator will try to dial the original caller for more information and view previous events at the same address to help the officer decide. McDonald said officials will also try to talk to neighbors before entering the site.
“There is a sensitivity to get into a place without kicking the door,” he said. “So we did a very in-depth study on this.”
The chief added that at present, the two homicides are not related.
Although the suspect in the Woodland Mountain homicide has been arrested, the man seen on the ring door camera footage tangled around the hall of the Valley Village apartment building where Shidra's murder remains outstanding. The chief executive said investigators believe they have identified attackers with a history of violent crimes.
Officials from the Van Nuys department found Hidra's body in his high-rise apartment after a friend began to worry. He was pronounced dead at the scene. According to sources familiar with police reports, he stabbed his head and had blood on the floor.
The blood was stained between the apartment in Menashe Hidra and the nearby vacant walls.
(Richard Winton/Los Angeles Times)
Three days ago, officials were called to the apartment by neighbors.
During a recording of a police dispatch call before 4 a.m. on April 23, dispatchers were heard reporting the call to the officers on the scene: “van Nuys Unit, possible ADW [assault with a deadly weapon] In progress… The caller heard two males fighting, wrestling, pounding and yelling. “Multiple law enforcement sources said police responded to the scene but never entered the apartment.
The day before Sidra's body was found, LAPD officials investigated the burglary in the vacant apartment next door. Internally, officers found broken skylights and dry blood, according to two sources who were not authorized to discuss the investigation.
Investigators suspect the killer may have broken into the vacant apartment near Hidra through the skylight and moved from the balcony of the unit to his.
Last week, a reporter visited residents last week, bleeding handprints and markers were visible on the walls between the Sidra balcony and the vacant apartment. Blood was also seen on the door handle at the exit of the stairwell, and in a video released by the police, the attacker was seen fleeing the building.
Blood was killed on the door handle of a stairwell in the Valley Village apartment building.
(Richard Winton/Los Angeles Times)
On the day of the murder, the suspect was seen wearing a deep hoodie coat, a white shirt and blue jeans.
The same day, Sidra's body was found deadly in the valley of Modebadze, 47. Los Angeles police said three assailants broke in early Saturday morning.
A woman named LAPD around 12:30 a.m. reported three people broke into her home and beat her partner before she was suddenly beaten by the phone, according to law enforcement sources. The 911 operator tried to call back multiple times without success. Sources told The Times that shortly before 1 a.m., police arrived at the home, but no one answered the door, there was no noise inside the house, and the blinds fell down.
Later, the officer was severely beaten for head injuries and eventually died from injuries.
The woman filed a complaint to LAPD's response to its officials, according to law enforcement sources.
The LAPD Marshal's task force officials, assisted by the FBI, killed the suspect within hours of Modebadze and detained him.
