Slain Woman’s Neighbors Seek Answers : Crime: West Covina residents demand to know why they were not told that the suspect, a paroled sex offender, was living among them.

Two days after a paroled sex offender fatally stabbed a 26-year-old woman, some West Covina residents Wednesday demanded to know why public officials did not inform them of the man’s presence in their community.

“They should have have let us know that he was out here,” said Elaine Carlos, as she pushed two babies in a stroller past the home of the slain woman, Lola Mary Ramirez. “They should have some sort of way of branding people.”

“We found out he was on parole from the television,” said an anguished friend of Ramirez, who declined to be identified. “I just don’t understand it. How could they not tell us?”

Alan Kidd, 44, was arrested Monday on suspicion of murder after Ramirez’s parents found her bleeding from multiple stab wounds on the floor of their West Merced Avenue home, where she lived. Ramirez died about 20 minutes later at Queen of the Valley hospital. Police later found a knife they believe is the murder weapon.

Regina Stephens, deputy regional administrator of the state Parole and Community Services Division, said paroled sex offenders must register with the police department in the city where they live, as Kidd had, and that state officials will not release a parolee within 35 miles of a victim.

But she said no state law requires notification of neighbors when a sex offender or other convict is released into their midst. And doing so, she added, would be “very difficult.”

Police said Kidd and Ramirez were friends who had met while working out at a local gym and then became tennis partners. Ramirez, who was epileptic, apparently had not been sexually assaulted, Cmdr. Jim Dillon said.

Kidd, a West Covina resident, was arrested in 1989 for trying to strangle and rape a woman in her 50s, according to police and state records. Kidd was convicted, sentenced to a seven-year prison term in August, 1989, and paroled in March, 1993, state records show.

Kidd also had been arrested in 1987 after trying to rape another woman, whom he attempted to subdue with a tire iron or similar weapon, according to West Covina Detective Rudy Lopez. Kidd was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced in May, 1988, to two years in prison but was released in December, 1988, according to state records.

Kidd had been seeing a state psychiatrist. In April, officials rejected Kidd’s request that he be taken off parole earlier.

At his arraignment Wednesday, Kidd pleaded not guilty. A preliminary hearing will be scheduled June 21.