Court Bailiff Slashed Before Rape-Kidnap Case Hearing

A raucous struggle broke out inside a Los Angeles Municipal Court lockup Tuesday when a defendant in a kidnaping-rape case allegedly drew a crude knife on a bailiff. The court official was wounded in the face before other bailiffs wrestled the prisoner to the floor, authorities said.

Both the bailiff, Deputy Los Angeles County Marshal Richard Duran, and the inmate, Paul Garcia, were hospitalized at County-USC Medical Center.

Both Duran, a 16-year veteran of the county Criminal Courts, and Garcia, who was apparently hurt in the scuffle with bailiffs, were reported in stable condition.

A second bailiff, Deputy Marshal Don Dutton, suffered minor injuries in the scuffle and was treated at the hospital and released.

Garcia is one of three defendants in a preliminary hearing that began Monday. The three are accused of 113 felony counts--including rape and kidnaping--after they allegedly kidnaped and held two immigrant women against their will in a camper for several months. They have pleaded not guilty.

Marshal’s Capt. Morris Seidner said Duran was apparently taking the prisoner, who uses the names Paul Garcia and Richard Gonzalez, from a lockup cell to court when Garcia pulled a knife.

The incident occurred as attorneys, interpreters and a Times reporter waited in the courtroom for the proceedings to begin.

Judge Glenette Blackwell had not yet taken the bench when the sounds of scuffling, screams, moans, heavy breathing and shouts could be heard from the lockup area.

“He’s got a knife!” a man was heard to scream.

Frantically, the judge and others in the courtroom began telephoning for assistance. Garcia’s aunt, who was seated in the courtroom, screamed, “Paulito! Paulito!”

Within minutes, dozens of sheriff’s deputies, bailiffs and Los Angeles police officers swarmed the downtown courtroom, each rushing in and out of the lockup, shutting and locking the door behind them, then reemerging to demand more help.

“Call the paramedics,” someone shouted from behind the closed door of the lockup.

Deputy Marshal Dominick Delio, apparently one of the first to reach Duran, described part of what happened. He and two other bailiffs entered the lockup and found Duran slumped in a corner with blood covering his face.

“Dicky D. (Duran) shouted, ‘He’s got a knife.’ So we just rushed him (the inmate). . . . When you see a deputy just lying there, the mass of blood, what are you going to do? . . . He (Garcia) was fighting all the way.”

Delio said the knife, which he saw on the floor, appeared to have been fashioned inside jail.

“It was a good one,” Delio said. “Looked like a razor blade with a handle.”

It is not clear how the knife was smuggled into the courthouse.

Seidner said people in custody are always searched before being taken to court, but added that such procedures are “not an exact science.” The incident is being investigated, the marshal’s captain added.

Delio later said he never saw a knife in Garcia’s hand. But Seidner said it had been determined that it was Garcia who attacked Duran. Court officers said they believed that the only other people in the lockup at the time were Garcia’s two female co-defendants, who one witness said stood frightened and huddled next to each other in the aftermath of the fight.

From the courtroom, a reporter could see a man in County Jail blue overalls--presumably Garcia--on the floor in the corner of the lockup with several deputy marshals on top of him. Splotches of blood covered the floor.

Eleazar Carrasco, an interpreter who was trained as a doctor in Mexico, was rushed into the lockup before paramedics arrived. Carrasco said the bailiff suffered a deep cut on his cheek and others on his forehead and along his jawbone, but that none of the wounds severed an artery.

Paramedics arrived and administered emergency first aid. Duran was eventually wheeled out on a gurney, his head wrapped in blood-soaked white bandages. Garcia was taken out a few minutes later, with bandages on his face and ribs.

The attorneys and interpreters participating in the hearing, meanwhile, were ushered into a neighboring courtroom where another judge, Patti Jo McKay, continued the preliminary hearing until today. Blackwell was apparently too upset to continue Tuesday.

Courtroom regulars said they had never seen anything quite like Tuesday’s incident.

“This is pretty severe,” Seidner said. “We’ve had people attempt to escape before, punches thrown. But this was truly life-threatening. This wasn’t a knock-down-and-try-to-run. This was (someone) trying to do grievous injury.”