SNAPSHOT / A GLIMPSE OF THE SYSTEM : A Jilted Husband, a Bombed Chicken Cafe, 74 Days in Jail
No one was inside the chicken restaurant on Sunset Boulevard when the pipe bomb blew up in August, 1989. A good thing, detectives would say. Somebody could have been killed.
Investigators learned that the owner of the restaurant, Fernando Gonzales, recently “ran off to Texas” with the wife and only child of Ohannes Meguerditchian, a self-employed diamond setter, according to court records.
Meguerditchian eventually was arrested and charged with the bombing, which buckled a wall and did an estimated $40,000 damage. Prosecutors also filed a special charge against Meguerditchian stating that he had to go to prison if found guilty.
But after Meguerditchian agreed to plead no contest, the district attorney’s office dropped the special charge and reduced the primary accusation to illegal possession of explosives.
In May of this year, Superior Court Judge Lance Ito sentenced him to six months in jail. A six-month sentence in Los Angeles today amounts to 74 days.
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