by George Wiley
Imagine this. Police in Hawthorne receive a call from a neighbor that a burglary may be taking place in an abandoned house on 118th St. in their city. On arriving at the residence, police discover the house filled with "people, guns, and money."
Those were the words used by Sgt. Phil Keenan of the Redondo Beach Police Department to describe what Hawthorne authorities reported the day after Christmas.
Not sure what they had on their hands, Hawthorne police took the people into custody on suspicion of burglary and confiscated the guns and money.
The money, or some it, it turned out, had come from a Wells Fargo Bank branch on Elena Avenue that was robbed the day before Christmas. In that robbery, said Keenan, four people in masks wielding rifles burst into the bank, made the customers and clerks lie on the floor and helped themselves to cash in tellers' drawers. The single security guard in the bank had chosen that moment to go to the bathroom.
When the money in Hawthorne was determined to have come from a bank robbery, the FBI was called in.
Federal charges later were filed against Adil Adem. The FBI is investigating to see if bank robbery charges can be filed against any of the other suspects.
Keenan said that bank robbers often are caught because they plan out their robberies with some care but don't think about whom may be watching them or observing their odd behavior after the robbery.
"It was kind of an abandoned house, and these people basically laid claim to it. They weren't supposed to be there," said Keenan. "The neighbors became suspicious."
"We are able to solve a lot of bank robberies," Keenan added. A good number of them are solved because the robbers just don't know when to quit. They keep robbing banks again and again, said Keenan.
In other Redondo Beach police activity, Keenan said, a 15-year-old suspect was facing burglary and assault charges for a brutal attack on the resident of an apartment in the 1800 block of Huntington Lane. In that case, Keenan said, the juvenile allegedly entered the apartment on the afternoon of Jan. 6 and, finding no one at home, began preparing food and downloading music from the Internet onto CDs.
Suddenly thinking to himself what would he do if the resident came home, the youth found a baseball bat and placed it beside him. This didn't satisfy him, so he looked around, found a hammer and some nails and pounded nails into the bat to make it a more formidable weapon.
Soon after that, the youngster heard someone arrive at the door of the unit and begin unlocking it. He hid with the bat and when the male resident walked in the door, the juvenile began striking him. "He hit him about 10 times," Keenan said, "but the victim was finally able to break free and flee the unit."
The juvenile also fled, but not before taking a camera.
A short time later, Redondo patrol officers saw the juvenile "covered with blood" not far from the scene of the assault. Even before the juvenile could be questioned, Keenan said, he put his hands up and told officers, "It was me. I did it."
The victim, said Keenan, was taken to a hospital where he was treated for severe lacerations to the head and a broken right hand. He was later released. Police were not releasing the names of either the assailant or the victim.ER