City Fire Captain Held in Slaying

A veteran Los Angeles Fire Department captain was arrested Wednesday in the slaying of a woman whose nude body was found in the middle of an Eagle Rock street.

Authorities believe the woman was dragged about half a mile by a car, with a blood trail leading from the fire captain’s home.

David Jaime Del Toro, 50, who worked for the Fire Department for 23 years, was booked on suspicion of murder after being questioned for several hours by detectives from the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division.

Authorities withheld the identity of the victim, who was 42.

Lt. Paul Vernon said detectives still didn’t know where the woman was killed. But they found blood leading from outside Del Toro’s home on Vincent Avenue to the 5100 block of Loleta Avenue, where her body was discovered.

Police were investigating whether tire tracks found on the victim’s body came from Del Toro’s Toyota Tundra truck.

“We will be looking at whether she was killed in the home, in the truck, or at the location where the body was found,” Vernon said. “Part of our investigation is to determine whether the trail originated from the house to the body or from the body to the house.”

Los Angeles Fire Capt. Carlos Calvillo said the agency placed Del Toro, who was assigned to Fire Station 1 in Lincoln Heights, on administrative leave. The department is fully cooperating with the police investigation, he said.

Firefighters at the station declined to comment on the case. But some neighbors found it hard to reconcile the man they described as polite and fun-loving with the allegations police are making.

Marilyn Koehn, who lived next door to Del Toro for two decades, said he was considerate and thoughtful. During the holidays, he brought over gift baskets with toys for her pets.

She called him “a devoted fireman” who had an ego “as big as the whole outdoors” but loved his job and did “anything and everything in the Fire Department.”

Those opinions were echoed by a friend who attended Franklin High School with Del Toro but would only give her name as Cindy.

She said Del Toro was easygoing, loved good food and recently told her he was attending to his sick mother in Highland Park.

Court records show that in 2002 Del Toro was the subject of a temporary restraining order a month before he was charged by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office with four counts of misdemeanor violence against his spouse.

Those charges were dropped a short time later “in the interest of justice,” according to the records.

Officials at City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo’s office said Wednesday they couldn’t immediately determine why the case was dropped.

On Vincent Avenue, a neighborhood of single-story homes, a dark track wound its way up the block and around the corner. It ended on Loleta Avenue just before a sidewalk, bloodstains still glistening on the pavement.

Neighbors in the area said they heard nothing suspicious.

“I’m up four or five times during the night and I’m a light sleeper, so if there was screaming I would have heard it,” said a woman who asked that her name not be used.

She said the victim was lying on her back.

“I got the impression she was hit by a car because she had tire tracks on her body,” she said.