Death Penalty for 3 Sought in Slaying of Teen Informant

Prosecutors said Friday that they will seek the death penalty against three defendants accused of killing a Yorba Linda teenager who worked as a police informant.

The announcement comes eight months after Chad MacDonald, 17, was found beaten and strangled to death in a south Los Angeles alley. His girlfriend was found the same day, wandering dazed in the San Gabriel Mountains after being raped, shot in the jaw and left for dead.

Police arrested Michael Martinez, 21; Florence Noriega, 29; and Jose Ibarra, 20, on suspicion of murder. Authorities said the three killed MacDonald to punish him for being an informant. All three have pleaded not guilty.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, said prosecutors decided to seek the maximum penalty because the slaying involved “special circumstances” such as torture.

MacDonald worked as an informant for the Brea police after he was arrested in January on drug possession charges. According to testimony by MacDonald’s girlfriend during a preliminary hearing, the couple met with Martinez, Noriega and Ibarra at a house in Norwalk the evening of the attack.

The defendants searched them for recording wires and said they wanted to teach MacDonald a lesson, according to the girlfriend.

Ibarra’s attorney, Forrest Latiner, said in September that the three never intended to kill MacDonald, only teach him a lesson for being a “snitch.”

Brea police officials have said the teenager worked an informant only once and that he had stopped weeks before the murder. MacDonald’s mother, Cindy MacDonald, has filed a $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit against Brea police, and the two cities the department serves, Brea and Yorba Linda.

The case also prompted the passage of an Assembly bill in August that limits the use of juveniles in police operations.

A trial date is not yet set, Gibbons said. The defendants’ next appearance in court will be Jan. 29.