LOCAL : Mourners at McKenna Funeral Told Not to Judge Brea Ambush Victim

A priest told more than 300 mourners today that they should not judge Horace Joseph McKenna, the ex-California Highway Patrolman ambushed at his Brea ranch in an underworld-style slaying.

“We are not the judge. There is no judgment that you and I can make on any individual,” the Rev. Paul Banet told the assemblage that packed the Angelus Crenshaw chapel in Los Angeles.

A silver metal coffin draped with an American flag stood at the front of the chapel and an easel displayed a three-foot colored photograph of McKenna on a horse.

McKenna, 46, who was asleep in the rear of his limousine as his chauffeur opened a gate to his lavish Carbon Canyon estate, was killed instantly in a fusillade of bullets fired through the window of the car last Thursday. The attack came hours after court documents were released linking McKenna to prostitution, gambling, counterfeiting and drug trafficking.

After the 20-minute service, eight pallbearers, including McKenna’s son Michael, and Robert Berg, the limousine driver at the time of the attack, carried the casket to a hearse. McKenna was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in nearby Culver City.

McKenna, who resigned in 1972 after four years with the CHP, had a history of confrontations with law enforcement, including a federal conviction for conspiracy to counterfeit in 1976, assault with a deadly weapon in a San Pedro bar in 1982 and a record of arrests for running a prostitution ring.