Death Beep Signals Toll of Violence

One week of every month, Larry Kallestad’s pager becomes a measure of the violence on the south side of Los Angeles.

When he goes on call, as he does one weekend every month, each beep means another murder. For Kallestad, a Los Angeles police sergeant and South Bureau detectives’ supervisor, this was a two-beep weekend.

He was called out late Friday night after a 16-year-old girl was shot to death, allegedly by a 13-year-old girl, over an apparent gang-related feud. By the time he went home, it was Saturday morning. The 13-year-old and alleged accomplice were in custody, and the case, for Kallestad’s immediate purposes, was closed.

And then on Sunday, the summons came at 5 a.m. A man interrupting a robbery had been shot in the chest and right arm, dying nearly two hours later at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

A Time for Killing

The killings were among nine countywide over the weekend, the latest grim tally in a year of murderous Friday-to-Sunday stretches. Deaths from stabbings and shootings were scattered from Pacoima to Pomona, from Boyle Heights to Agoura Hills.

The toll was not all that impressive to Kallestad, a 16-year veteran of homicide and a 25-year cop. On his last weekend on call, in May, he was paged seven times from Friday to Sunday for South L.A. alone. On that bloody weekend, he wasn’t able to sleep for more than two hours at a time.

Each weekend there is a spate of killings. The trend has always been there, but with gang violence raging in some sectors of the city, the weekend homicides seem even more pronounced. Weekly roundups of the mayhem have become staples of media reports.

“During the week, it is sporadic, but on the weekend, you know there is going to be a killing,” Kallestad said. “You are going to have at least two, three, maybe four. That has been true for a long time.”

Basis for a Theory

He has broken down the trend, and spun his own theories: “The big nights seem to be Friday and Saturday. The killing times seem to be from 9 to 10. I attribute that to alcohol. That’s the party time.”

In recent years, he added, the ready availability of rock cocaine has increased the tendency to violence, both from users and from dealers fighting over turf.

There are some murders that don’t follow the pattern. Each story is different, with a single common denominator: Someone dies.

The body, in this case, was in the morgue by the time Kallestad arrived about 6 a.m. Sunday at the scene of the second weekend murder, a duplex on 45th Street, south of Vernon Avenue near Vermont.

He had left his Torrance home shortly after 5 a.m., dressed in a pinstriped suit, shirt and tie, and thankful that he’d had 24 hours to himself. There was a full day of work ahead, and he knew what to expect.

There was the yellow crowd control tape strung around the two-story stucco building and a frame house to the west. Two young officers from the 77th Street station had already knocked on doors. There was Paul Mize, the homicide coordinator Kallestad had last seen early Saturday. Like Kallestad, Mize has been on the force for more than a quarter-century.

A Change of Tastes

Mize offered to go for coffee, shaking his head when the officers asked for hot chocolate. “The force has changed,” he said, bemused.

The other two men on the detail, Detectives Bill Cox and Jerry Manske, headed upstairs to question a woman who said she was robbed by the suspect. Art Feruggia, a crime lab photographer, was capturing the evidence on film.

By 8 a.m., Kallestad was putting an account together:

Five hours earlier, a young woman had pounded on the door to the upper apartment, trying to get the sleeping occupants to open up.

“She claims she’s out there for half an hour,” Kallestad explained.

“The suspect is at the corner of 45th and Vermont. He comes over to the gate. She asks for a match. He pulls a gun and robs her of her money and jewelry.”

A man who lived in the lower apartment was arriving home at about the same time. The suspect accosted him, chased him around the building and shot him, Kallestad said.

The dead man’s name was Arrell Kegler. He was 46 years old.

Possible Gang Link

The suspect might be a gang member, the detectives said. He’d been dressed in dark khakis and a white T-shirt, possibly a telling sign. He had short hair and appeared to be in his late teens.

Kallestad and Mize asked the few neighbors who wandered over if they had ever seen a youth like that around. Some had. “He’s a local guy,” Mize said.

“Hey, Art. Art!” Kallestad shouted to the photographer. “Would you get that graffiti?” He waved toward the wall of a hamburger stand, covered with spray paint by someone named J-Rock and someone named T-Loc. Perhaps the messages contained a clue.

By 10 minutes to 9, Cox and Manske had questioned Kegler’s widow, Annie. They sat across from her at a smoked-glass dining table.

Partners just two weeks, they had already defined their roles. Cox, mustachioed and soothing, asked the questions. Manske, a beefy, broad-faced man, scribbled on a yellow legal pad.

“He’s the Good Samaritan type,” Annie Kegler said. “If it weren’t for my husband, we wouldn’t be here. He didn’t want to leave.”

Pounding Recalled

She told the detectives she’d heard the woman pounding upstairs and later had heard Kegler’s car arrive. She’d gone into the bathroom--she showed them how she’d looked out the window and seen him park the car in back. As she went to get her housecoat to stand in the door and greet him, two shots were fired from the direction of the bedroom.

She rushed to the bedroom window and heard her husband moaning outside. “Baby, I’ve been shot,” she said he told her. “Don’t come out, don’t come out, don’t come out.” She called the paramedics.

Annie Kegler leaned back and looked at the ceiling, arms folded. “Do I have to keep on going over and over?” she asked. Manske bent down for a plastic bag with her husband’s bloody clothes.

He left and then returned to slip a business card onto the table, next to a pamphlet titled, “Information from the County of Los Angeles Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner.”

Afterward, Mize left for home and the three others drove to the hospital morgue. Kegler, a muscular, bearded man, was tagged with Patient Number 922922. Cox called the coroner to report the homicide.

It was now nearly noon Sunday.

Other Investigations

Already over the weekend, the live-in girlfriend of a Los Angeles police officer had been shot in Hawthorne and the officer had been booked on suspicion of murder.

In Canoga Park, authorities had found the stabbed body of a woman who had failed to appear at a friend’s wedding.

In Pacoima, a man had been killed in a gang-related drive-by shooting.

A man had been stabbed in Pomona; another had been shot to death in Agoura Hills.

A man had been shot in a Boyle Heights bar after arguing with an under-age customer who had been refused service.

A man had been shot on Western Avenue after he would not give a cigarette to a passer-by.