Holiday Weekend Almost Trouble-Free

Mayhem took a holiday for the most part in the San Fernando Valley during the long July 4th weekend, with fire and police officials reporting Monday there had been no fireworks-related injuries or fires, and no fatal traffic accidents in the area.

The one major crime reported was the shooting death of a Canoga Park man early Monday morning. Los Angeles police received a call Monday just before 2 a.m. that gunshots had been fired in the 8800 block of Independence Avenue in Chatsworth, said Officer Eduardo Funes.

When police arrived at the scene they found no victim, but several minutes later a call came from Northridge Hospital Medical Center reporting that a man shot in his lower body had been brought there for treatment, Funes said. The victim, later identified as Francisco Escobar, 17, died at about 4:50 a.m.

No arrests had been made as of Monday night and police were continuing to investigate.

A substantial weekend fire caused an estimated $90,000 damage to a Sylmar house and its contents, but Los Angeles Fire Department officials said Monday that it did not appear fireworks had sparked the blaze.

The weather on Monday may have seemed unusually warm--with a high of 98 in Woodland Hills and 90 in Burbank--but only because this has so far been a cooler than usual summer.

“The temperatures on Monday were actually about normal for this time of year,” said Guy Pearson, a meteorologist with WeatherData, a company that supplies weather information to The Times. “They finally got up to normal, and maybe just a little above normal in some areas, because of a high-pressure system over the Pacific that got big enough to have an effect.”

That system is likely to shrink a bit over the next couple of days, bringing low clouds, a bit of fog and slightly lower temperatures to the Valley on Wednesday and Thursday, Pearson said. But the long-range forecast calls for temperatures to be back up around normal on Friday and Saturday.