Fired Co-Worker Held in Engineer’s Slaying

A former mini-train engineer at Travel Town in Griffith Park has been arrested as the suspected getaway driver in the killing of a popular engineer during a robbery at the park this week, Los Angeles police said Wednesday.

John B. Moore, 28, was arrested at his Palmdale home Tuesday evening. Detectives identified him as the driver of a motorcycle that a gunman used to escape after killing Stanley Diamond on Sunday, police said.

Moore, who worked at Travel Town with Diamond until being fired earlier this year, was being held without bail at Parker Center on suspicion of murder, Lt. Dave Waterman said. Investigators are expected to ask prosecutors to charge him today with murder and robbery.

Waterman said Moore has denied any involvement in the slaying and investigators have not identified the man who shot Diamond, 49, of Glendale once in the upper chest about 7 p.m. Sunday.

Diamond was shot when he struggled to keep a bank bag containing cash collected at the end of the day at three Griffith Park children’s amusement concessions. The robbery and shooting occurred near the Los Feliz station, on the opposite side of the park from Travel Town, where Diamond was an engineer and was well known to children.

“Information from witnesses and other information led us to Mr. Moore,” Waterman said. “We don’t know who the shooter was yet.”

Waterman declined to elaborate on the identification of Moore. Earlier this week, police said the gunman wore a motorcycle helmet during the robbery.

Neither the gun used to kill Diamond nor the money taken--more than $2,000--has been recovered, police said.

Diamond, who worked at Travel Town for nearly three years, was a familiar face for children who rode the trains. Many asked for him and he often received letters of praise from parents and schools.

The news that a former employee was arrested in the case hit other employees and company operators hard.

“I don’t know how to react,” said Don Gustavson, president of GP Recreations, which operates the train ride concessions in Griffith Park. “I am shocked that anybody would kill anybody. It doesn’t make sense to me. That we had an employee that would do it is also shocking.”

“The mood is not too good here,” added Clarence Pearl, an assistant manager at Travel Town. “We haven’t gotten over Stanley getting killed. Now we hear this.”

Still, Pearl said, he and other employees had suspicions that the robbery had been committed by someone who knew the procedures for collecting money at the end of the day.

“You had to have worked here to know how to do that robbery--that was my theory,” Pearl said.

Gustavson said Moore, who rode a motorcycle to work, was a train engineer at the Los Feliz station for six months until he was fired in January for repeatedly missing work.

Gustavson has scheduled a memorial service for Diamond on Monday at Travel Town. “He was very popular and dear to us,” he said. “The main idea is to find whoever did it but we want to remember Stanley.”

The victim’s younger sister, Michele Diamond, flew to Los Angeles from Colorado to arrange a private memorial service for family members. She said Wednesday that her brother never complained or worried that his job could be dangerous. She said he had taken on the task of collecting receipts from the park’s three concessions because it meant extra pay.

“I don’t think it even entered his mind it could be dangerous,” Michele Diamond said. “He was like a lot of people, scraping to get by.

“I feel very sad for this city because things are so out of hand,” she said. “I hope someday soon people can feel safe, especially in a place where children should be safe. I wish the people here could take back their city.”