Pasadena : No Prosecution in Death

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has, for a second time, declined to prosecute Steve Goldbaum, a King’s Villages housing project security employee who struggled with 28-year-old Robert Earl Holloway before Holloway’s death Jan. 18.

In a letter sent to the city last week, Thomas Trapp, assistant director of the district attorney’s branch and area operations bureau, said he agreed with a previous assessment by the district attorney’s office that Goldbaum is not legally culpable. The security dispatcher could not have foreseen that placing his forearm against the back of Holloway’s neck while Holloway was lying face down on the sidewalk could have resulted in death, Trapp wrote.

The matter is being reviewed by the state attorney general’s criminal division.