DUARTE : Gang Members to Be Arraigned in Slayings
Four Duarte-area gang members will be arraigned in Los Angeles Municipal Court next week in the murder of gang kingpin Keith Cardell Thomas, 30, of Los Angeles and his friend, Daniel J. Chapman, 28, of Seattle.
After a three-month investigation, Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators broke the Jan. 30 execution-style slayings of Thomas and Chapman. The two were discovered Feb. 1, shot to death--their hands bound behind them--in the back of a Ford Explorer abandoned in an avocado grove in an upscale Duarte neighborhood.
Thomas was murdered by gang members who welshed on paying for a load of drugs and Chapman may have been an innocent victim, detectives said.
The murder suspects--Anthony Fitzpatrick, 24; Lamar McDaniels, 18; Travis Berry, 26, and J.C. Ware, 19, all of unincorporated Duarte--were arrested April 29. Rioting in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating verdicts delayed arraignment.
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