Area’s First Indictments Filed Under Federal Carjacking Law

A federal grand jury Friday returned the first indictments in this area under the new federal carjacking statute.

U.S. Atty. Terree A. Bowers said James Anthony Johnson, 21, of Hawthorne, and Leon Chambers, 25, of Inglewood, were indicted in Los Angeles and have been in custody since their arrests last month in the Baldwin Hills area.

Bowers and Charlie Parsons, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said the case was selected for federal prosecution because the suspects are believed to have gang connections, they have criminal records, both were out on parole at the time of the crime and the gun used in the carjacking was stolen during last spring’s riots.

“We are targeting those individuals who are career criminals, to get them some good, hard jail time,” Bowers said.

“The bottom line is to get these people off the street,” Parsons said.

According to federal officials, Johnson and Chambers walked up to David C. Chiang on Jan. 29 as Chiang was sitting at an intersection in his 1989 Ford Mustang. The suspects allegedly pointed a .38-caliber revolver at Chiang’s head and ordered him out of his car.

“As the two defendants drove away in the victim’s car, the victim jumped into his friend’s car and (they) gave chase,” Bowers said.

The friend’s car was equipped with a cellular telephone, which Chiang used to call Los Angeles police, the officials said. They said police joined the pursuit, which ended when Johnson lost control of the car and it crashed into a hillside near Stocker Street and La Cienega Boulevard.

Police said they found a Charter Arms pistol the suspects had thrown from the car. Parsons said the revolver was one of more than a thousand firearms stolen from a Western Surplus store during the riots.

Bowers said that more than 5,000 of the 15,000 carjackings nationwide in the first nine months of last year occurred in Southern California.

He said that because of limited resources, federal officials will be able to target only a small number of such cases under the federal carjacking statute that went into effect last October.

“We are paying particular attention to the most egregious cases,” Parsons said. “It’s an extension of our policy of making violent crime a priority of the FBI.”

Parsons discounted recent broadcast reports that a South-Central Los Angeles gang has been stockpiling handguns stolen during a rash of gun store break-ins.

“That’s nothing but conjecture,” the agent said. “I don’t have any hard evidence that is occurring.”

Parsons cautioned that as the city prepares for the trials of defendants in the beatings of Rodney King and Reginald Denny, the news media “must be careful not to hype the possibility of another civil disturbance.”

The riots erupted last spring after four white police officers were acquitted on all but one charge in the beating of King, a black motorist. The officers now are facing trial on federal charges. Three black men charged with the beating of white truck driver Reginald O. Denny during the riots are facing trial in state court.