Valley Homicides Fall Nearly One-Third : Deaths: Police report 16 slayings for first three months of 1995, down from 23 for same period a year ago. A variety of factors, including the weather, are cited.

Homicides in the San Fernando Valley have fallen nearly one-third during the first three months of 1995 contrasted with the same period last year and represent half the number tallied during the first quarter of 1993, Los Angeles police said Monday.

Authorities report 16 killings in the Valley up to the end of March, contrasted with 23 last year and 32 in 1993 during the first quarter, police said.

“I think it’s phenomenal,” said Los Angeles Police Department Detective Gil Uribe, homicide investigator at the North Hollywood Division. Police there report two homicides over the first three months of 1995, contrasted with six for the same period in 1994.

“In 24 years I’ve never seen anything like it,” Uribe said of the decline.

Homicide detectives attribute the homicide drop to factors ranging from an improved economy to a truce among Latino gang members in the Valley. The season’s wet weather might have also dampened the activities of would-be killers, police say.

“Who knows, maybe they are all at home watching the O. J. trial” one detective quipped.

Whatever the cause, investigators are not complaining, especially those assigned to the Van Nuys Division, which has not recorded a single homicide in 1995, contrasted with two during the first three months last year and six during the first quarter of 1993.

The Foothill Division is the only region in the Valley to record an increase in homicides. Six people have been killed in that division this year, contrasted with four the previous year, said Police Department Detective Frank Bishop, who heads the Foothill homicide detectives.

With fewer new cases, detectives at some divisions have been able to devote their attention to older, unsolved cases and pursue suspects wanted on arrest warrants.

Recently, detectives at the North Hollywood Division got a break in a 23-year-old murder investigation, which they had recently reopened during the lull. In that case, Omer Harland Gallion, a 65-year-old retired aerospace worker, was arrested and charged with killing his mother-in-law more than two decades ago.

Whether the recent drop in killings will continue is uncertain. Veteran detectives say homicides tend to run in cycles.

“Last year we had 25 homicides,” Bishop of the Foothill Division said. “This year who knows what it’s going to be?”