Woman, 72, Killed in Her Van Nuys Home by Burglar

A 72-year-old woman was killed when she startled a burglar in her home Tuesday morning, police said, becoming the second elderly woman apparently killed by a burglar in Van Nuys in three days.

There was “absolutely no connection” between the two slayings of the elderly women, said Detective Stephen Fisk of the Los Angeles Police Department, who said evidence at the two crime scenes points to at least two different killers.

Aliza Levi was killed Tuesday at the home she shared with her husband, Zvi, in the 7900 block of Norwich Avenue, Fisk said.

Police declined to say how Levi was killed.

Zvi Levi told police he left the house to run errands at 10 a.m., and when he returned at 12:30 p.m. “he found her dead in the house,” Fisk said.

On Sunday, Berneda McMackin, 77, was found dead in her smoke-filled Van Nuys home. She had been stabbed and beaten, then her body was set afire in an attempt to hide the crime, police said.

No suspects have been arrested in the slaying of McMackin, which police said was committed during what may have been a burglary.

In Levi’s killing, police are searching for a Latino in his early 20s, about 5 feet, 7 inches tall, with curly brown hair, seen by a neighbor running from the house around noon, Fisk said. The same man may have committed a series of burglaries in the neighborhood in the last few months, Fisk said.

Neighbors said they saw a transient hanging around the tree-lined neighborhood of older single-family homes looking for work last week.

Juan Sosa, who lives next door to the Levis, said a transient broke into his home last month but fled, taking some recyclables from Sosa’s garage, when Sosa’s 80-year-old mother saw him and screamed.

Shocked by the killing, Sosa said his wife wants to move out of the neighborhood as soon as possible.