2 Officers Accused of Mishandling Investigation

Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks has recommended discipline for two officers accused of bungling an investigation into the abduction of a 15-year-old West Hills boy, who was later killed, police said Thursday.

Officers Brent Rygh and Donovan Lyons allegedly failed to properly investigate a 911 call from a woman who witnessed the Aug. 6 kidnapping of Nicholas Markowitz, said Sgt. John Pasquariello of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The witness later testified that she gave police the license plate number of the white van used in the kidnapping.

Two days after he was kidnapped, Markowitz was shot to death in Santa Barbara. But it wasn’t until nearly a month later, when Los Angeles police were contacted by Santa Barbara authorities, that the LAPD connected the 911 call to the Markowitz case and tracked down the van.

Troubled by the apparent lapse, Capt. Jim Cansler, commander of the LAPD’s West Valley Division, requested an internal investigation.

“In essence, it’s been alleged against these two officers that they failed to conduct a proper investigation,” Cansler said Thursday.

In an interview Thursday with The Times, Rygh said he did nothing wrong. He said the witness who called 911, identified in court documents as Pauline Ann Mahoney, told him by phone that she’d seen several young men beating a boy and driving off with him in a van, but that the van stopped and the boy got out.

“We spend a considerable amount of time checking the area, looking for the van or someone who had been hurt,” Rygh said. “We didn’t find anyone and had to assume he was OK based on the lady’s statement that the kid got out of the van and walked away.”

Rygh said they ran a license plate check but did not go to the van owner’s home because “we were more concerned with looking for the victim at that point.” Lacking a victim on hand, they did not take a police report.

But a police dispatcher mishandled a second 911 call the department received, he said. That caller reported seeing four men throw someone into a van and drive away, but the 911 dispatcher issued a “for information only” radio bulletin rather than a report of a kidnapping in progress.

“If we had received the other call . . . it would’ve been treated completely differently,” Rygh said. He said he did not hear the informational radio bulletin, which was broadcast only once, because he was on the phone interviewing Mahoney.

Rygh said the dispatcher faces disciplinary action, but an LAPD spokesman could not confirm that Thursday night.

Lyons could not be reached for comment.

Markowitz’s parents have filed a negligence claim against the LAPD, the precursor to a lawsuit, which the city attorney’s office has rejected.

“Is the system working or not?” asked Jeff Markowitz, Nicholas’s father. He called the police response to his son’s kidnapping ridiculous.

“The one time in my life that I may need assistance [from police], I didn’t get it,” he said. “They had enough information to make contact with the owner of that van.”

The van owner, a West Hills man, told police he had loaned the vehicle to a friend, Jesse James Hollywood. Hollywood, 21, is now a fugitive wanted in the kidnapping and killing of Markowitz.

Four men have been charged with Markowitz’s kidnapping and murder: Ryan Hoyt, Jesse Rugge and William Skidmore, all 21; and Graham Pressley, 18. All have pleaded not guilty.

Police say the men kidnapped Markowitz in a botched attempt to collect a drug debt from the boy’s older half brother.

After a four-month investigation by the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division, Cansler said he and Parks recommended discipline for the officers. The case has been referred to a Board of Rights hearing, the LAPD’s equivalent of a trial. No hearing date has been set.

The officers involved remain on patrol, Pasquariello said. Rygh, who joined the force eight years ago, is assigned to the west San Fernando Valley. Lyons, a seven-year veteran, recently transferred to the Foothill Division.