Ex-city worker charged with false crime report
A former receptionist for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was charged Thursday with two misdemeanor counts of filing a false police report for allegedly lying about an incident in which he was stabbed last month.
Authorities said Nestor Lopez falsely claimed he had been attacked by a group of men in downtown Los Angeles. Lopez, who was bloody from stab wounds when he encountered City Hall security guards after the incident about 3:30 a.m. June 3, reported that he was the victim of a robbery attempt.
But Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said a police investigation concluded that Lopez had been slashed by a homeless woman. Mateljan said that Lopez startled the woman after touching her while she was sleeping under a blanket near the Civic Center subway station.
Mateljan said that when LAPD detectives confronted Lopez about alleged discrepancies in his story, he said he had gone downtown to get a work-related item from City Hall. He said Lopez later changed his story again, telling detectives that he had gone to the area to meet a man for sexual relations and by mistake had come into contact with the woman.
Lopez could not be reached for comment Thursday night. He left his City Hall job two days after the incident.
The mayor’s office declined to comment, calling the incident a personnel matter.
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