3rd Suspect Held in MacDonald Killing

A fugitive task force on Saturday arrested a third suspect in the March slaying of Chad MacDonald Jr., the 17-year-old from Yorba Linda who had served as a Brea police informant.

Jose Alfredo Ibarra, 19, was arrested on a murder warrant in the Norwalk area Saturday at 5:05 p.m., Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Vincent Callier said. He was being held without bail at Los Angeles County Jail.

Ibarra is the third person arrested in the March 2 torture and murder in Norwalk of MacDonald and the rape and shooting of his 16-year-old girlfriend.

Florence Lela Noriega, 28, and Michael Lucas Martinez, 21, already are in custody.

For the last months of his life, MacDonald was involved with illicit drugs and was a police informant--a role that sparked broad condemnation of the Brea Police Department’s use of juvenile informants.

Authorities have said that the people who killed MacDonald accused him of being a “snitch.”

MacDonald’s body was found March 3, dumped in a South Los Angeles alley. He had disappeared a few days earlier from his Yorba Linda home.

His 16-year-old girlfriend was found alive in Angeles National Forest, after she was raped repeatedly and shot in the jaw. She has since been released from the hospital and is recuperating, sources close to the family said.

MacDonald’s mother has blamed the slaying on Brea police, who used MacDonald as an informant until 10 days before his death. A witness told police the assailants called MacDonald a “narc” the night he was killed at the Norwalk house where he frequently bought drugs.

Police said two men and a woman held the teens captive at the Norwalk house for days before killing MacDonald and driving his girlfriend to the remote forest.

Investigators believe that Martinez and Ibarra jumped MacDonald soon after he arrived at the home, began beating him and eventually strangled him.

Martinez, 21, and Noriega, 28, were arrested March 7 at a Las Vegas motel. A handgun and a rifle were found in the room, police said. The two were extradited to Los Angeles, where Noriega pleaded not guilty to murder in early April.

MacDonald began cooperating with police after he was arrested in January for possession of methamphetamine, according to police documents. He made one supervised drug buy during that period, at a house near the Yorba Linda high school he once attended. Police said they terminated their relationship with him after he was found to be carrying drugs during a traffic stop.

“This is a pretty good thing to get this guy arrested,” Callier said. “It was a brutal crime.”

Times correspondent Jon Steinman and Times staff writer Bonnie Hayes contributed to this report.