Politics & Government
Trial Ordered in Homeless Encampment Murders
Judge finds Friday enough evidence for prosecuting reputed gang members charged with murdering five homeless people at a Long Beach camp near the river.
Two reputed gang members were ordered today to stand trial for murder in connection with the November 2008 shooting deaths of five people at a Long Beach homeless encampment.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Melissa N. Widdifield found sufficient evidence to require David Cruz Ponce, 32, and Max Eliseo Rafael, 26, to proceed to trial following a hearing that stretched over portions of three days.
The two are charged with the Nov. 1, 2008, slayings of Hamid Shraifat, 41, of Signal Hill; Vanessa Malaepule, 34, of Carson; and Frederick Doyle Neumeier, 53, Katherine Verdun, 24, and Jose Lorenzo Villicana, 44, all of Long Beach.
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The victims' bodies were found at an encampment near the San Diego (405) Freeway's Santa Fe Avenue offramp around 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 2, 2008. The murder charges include special circumstance allegations of murder during a kidnapping, murder of witnesses to a crime, murder while participating in a criminal street gang and multiple murders. Prosecutors will decide later whether to seek the death penalty against the two.
The judge also found sufficient evidence to require Ponce to stand trial in connection with the March 23, 2009, kidnapping and murder of Tony Bledsoe of Lancaster, along with two counts of possession of a firearm by a felon. Ponce and Rafael are also charged with kidnapping Shraifat - who was allegedly forced at gunpoint to lead the assailants to the encampment where Villicana was living - along with conspiracy to commit murder involving an alleged murder plot in 2010 to retaliate over a fellow gang member's killing.
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``I'd like to make it clear that these victims were not targeted because they were homeless,'' Long Beach police Chief Jim McDonnell said after the arrests last year. ``This encounter stemmed from a personal vendetta of one of the suspects as the result of an ongoing dispute with one of the victims over narcotics. The other victims were killed to ensure that there were no witnesses to this crime.'' Ponce and Rafael remain jailed without bail while awaiting arraignment May 17.