A 21-year-old South Gate man was sentenced April 13 to more than 40 years to life in prison for fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend at a South Gate high school in 2011 and assaulting others who tried to help her, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Abraham Lopez, a Latino, was convicted March 4 on 11 counts including first-degree murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, three counts of assault upon a peace officer, two counts of having weapons on school grounds, two counts of resisting an executive officer and false imprisonment, prosecutors said.

On Sept. 30, 2011, Lopez, then a senior at South East High School in the 2700 block of Tweety Boulevard, attacked another senior, Cindi Santana, a 17-year-old Latina.

Prosecutors said Lopez confronted Santana during lunch about 11 a.m. and forced her to speak with him. When Santana flagged down a school …

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A Redondo Beach man convicted of murdering his girlfriend and her mother was sentenced May 8 to two consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

Jonathan Scott Chacón, a 26-year-old Latino, was also sentenced to two additional years in prison for using a knife to slit the throat of his girlfriend, Courtney Bergman, 19,  and the throat of her mother, Vicki Bergman, 59, on Feb. 28, 2012.

The killings occurred in Vicki Bergman's Redondo Beach apartment. Prosecutors said Chacón testified during the trial that he was acting in self-defense when he killed the women.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Lisa Houlé and Ryan Gould said the defendant’s 2-year-old son was in the home at the time of the killings. 

Chacón escaped to Mexico that same day, but was arrested the following day by Mexican authorities in a hotel in …

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 A Los Angeles Unified School District teacher was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus three additional years Tuesday for stabbing his wife to death outside a West Hills home in 2013, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. 

On March 30,  a jury found Michael Rodney Kane, 48, guilty of first-degree murder, making criminal threats and violating a protective order in connection with the death of his estranged wife, Michelle Ann Kane, 43, of West Hills. 

Kane confronted his wife at her friend's house in the 7100 block of Deveron Ridge Road on June 15, 2013, and began chasing her, according to prosecutors.  

The victim ran into the street to escape the attack but Kane chased her outside and stabbed her multiple times before fleeing the scene, prosecutors said. He was arrested two days later in Yucca Valley.

Michael Kane was a teacher …

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As two young boys walked to the end of a runway in a Compton banquet hall, the crowd went nearly silent. Their black and blue T-shirts bore a photo of a man and read “In loving memory." Their uncle had been shot in 2001 at the age of 26. 

At this unconventional fashion show, teen girls strutted the runway in high heels and clothes lent by local designers. But a message of loss was carried not just by the two boys. In all, 15 mothers and children joined the models on Sunday to honor loved ones lost to violence.

Nearly 150 people gathered to raise awareness about violence in a show called Runway 4 Peace. In previous years, DeNika Stephens, who grew up in Compton, organized the show with the intent of helping young women develop self-confidence through walking a runway. But this year, she said she wanted to address …

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As soon as Antonio Gonzalez heard that his younger brother was dead, he had a feeling that someone had hurt him.

Gonzalez, 54, got the call about 2 a.m. on a Sunday last month from a social worker from Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She gave him the bad news, but didn't say how Jose Gonzalez, 51, had died on a Venice street. The woman told him to talk to the paramedics, who were treating it as an accident.

"I had a feeling that someone did something to him," Antonio said. "He was too happy, too healthy."

Jose had some problems in his life. In 1994, he was hit by a car and although his limbs were intact, he was left mentally slower and couldn't work. After the accident, the two brothers made a 1,600-mile pilgrimage to Jalisco, Mexico, to see the Virgin Mary, because it was a miracle that …

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A 57-year-old Whittier woman was sentenced to 40 years to life in state prison on April 24 for shooting and killing her husband nearly eight years earlier, on April 26, 2007, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

On Jan. 23, a jury found Linda Doreen Gwozdz, who is white, guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of her husband, Patrick Albert Duffey, a 50-year-old white man, in the 15800 block of Sharon Hill Drive in East Whittier.

Coroner’s officials testified that Duffey died of two gunshot wounds to the head.

At the time of the shooting, Gwozdz claimed the incident was an accident, the district attorney’s office reported. She told investigators she was playing with a gun when it went off.

Prosecutors charged Gwozdz on May 18, 2012, after a four-year investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. During that time, Gwozdz moved to Mississippi …

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Three Latino men were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 22 in connection with the robbery and shooting death of a 21-year-old man in Pasadena in 2013, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Zane James Goldstein, a white man from Pasadena, was shot and killed in an alley near Maple Street and Chester Avenue in Pasadena on Jan. 15, 2013.

During the trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Stefan Mrakich of the district attorney's Hardcore Gang Division said the victim agreed to meet the three defendants in the alley for a drug deal. When Goldstein arrived, the prosecutor said, the defendants tried to rob him and then shot him in the head with a shotgun as he tried to escape.

Peter Parra, 38, of Pasadena; Kevin Jessie Cabrera, 27, of North Hollywood; and Raymond Frank Conchas, 26, of Covina were found guilty Feb. …

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You could use many different words to describe Denise Battey — "gentle,"  "loving," "elegant," "disciplined" — but a final descriptor, “stabbed to death in her own home,” doesn’t fit.

Battey was a fitness buff and vegetarian who arose at 4 every morning to exercise and water her vegetable garden, even though a back injury hampered her movement and kept her in constant pain. That’s where an assailant found the slender 50-year-old black woman the morning of Aug. 10, 2012, watering in the big backyard of her compact, tidy home on Allard Street in Norwalk.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Det. Ray Lugo said Battey was dragged inside between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., raped and stabbed repeatedly. She died in her bedroom, where deputies found her body that afternoon. Police went to the house after neighbors called with concerns about her well-being.

FOR THE RECORD

May 13, 1:15 p.m.: An …

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