Help Considered in Finding Officer’s Killer

Garden Grove investigators are considering using agents from other Orange County police departments next week to help track down whoever killed a veteran patrol officer.

Since the March 9 slaying of Officer Howard E. Dallies Jr., Garden Grove police have interviewed hundreds of people and tracked as many leads and may need some help piecing together the case, Capt. David Abrecht said.

“For all of the technology that we have, this (case) is really back down to some of those traditional police techniques of simply interviewing and comparing notes and generating additional leads,” Abrecht said. “It’s the kind of stuff computers and high technology can’t do.”

If Garden Grove investigators do not get a break in the case this week, Abrecht said, then department officials will ask for other officers.

Dallies, 36, was shot and killed in north Garden Grove during the early-morning traffic stop of a motorcyclist, police said. Investigators later recovered a motorcycle in a nearby neighborhood that police believe was used as the getaway vehicle.

Forensics experts have probed the gray Kawasaki, which was stolen and carried switched license plates, to generate more leads in the case.

Police are trying to locate a man who hailed a taxicab a few blocks from the crime scene and about 15 minutes after the slaying.