Dispatch, March 7: Victim of One of LAPD’s Top Ten Most Wanted

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Family members of Kenneth Edward Landon II (left) talked to The Homicide Report Wednesday about this week’s long-awaited arrest of a suspect in Landon’s murder: Steve Garcia, number two on the LAPD’s list of the ten most wanted gang members. ‘We are so happy that after six years, this guy has been taken in,’ said one family member, who asked not to be identified.

Landon, 26, was killed Feb. 12, 2001 at a Sylmar hotel in a dispute at a party. Garcia and some of his friends had clashed with Landon, and Landon had asked them to leave the gathering, detectives said. Garcia left, then came back and shot Landon, they said.

Landon was the father of a son, now 12, and worked in construction. He had, according to his mother, problems with drug addiction, and had been jailed as a result. He’d sought treatment, gotten clean, but had relapsed again by the night of the party. Police said he was not a gang member, however, as was incorrectly reported in early media accounts. Landon’s family were at pains to point out the distinction between a devoted father who had run into trouble with the law over his drug addiction, and the kind of violent offender associated with the term ‘gang member.’ Landon ‘may have had his demons,’ one family member said, but, ‘the only person he ever hurt was himself.’