Crime & Safety

LB Homeless Encampment Suspects in Court Today

Long Beach police say gang members killed 5 homeless people at the L.A. River.

The gang members charged with killing three men and two women at a Long Beach homeless encampment are expected in court Wednesday afternoon for the resumption of a preliminary hearing.

At 1:30 p.m., a preliminary hearing is scheduled to resume for Max Eliseo Rafael and David Cruz Ponce, alleged gang members who were arrested in January 2012 and charged in the November, 2008, slayings of five people at a homeless encampment in Long Beach.

The pair, alleged members of a Watts-based street gang, were charged in Jan. 2012 with murder for the shooting deaths of three men and two women at a homeless encampment in Long Beach in November 2008.

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The murder charges against them include special circumstance allegations of murder during a kidnapping, murder of witnesses to a crime and murder while participating in a criminal street gang. The allegations made the pair eligible for the death penalty.

They are accused of killing Hamid Shraifat, 41, of Signal Hill; Vanessa Malaepule, 34, of Carson; and Frederick Doyle Neumeier, 53, Katherine Verdun, 24, and Jose Lorenzo Villicana, 44, all of Long Beach. Their bodies were found about 8:30 a.m. Nov. 2, 2008, at an encampment near at the Santa Fe Avenue offramp from the San Diego (405) Freeway.

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``I'd like to make it clear that these victims were not targeted because they were homeless,'' Long Beach Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said upon their arrest. ``This encounter stemmed from a personal vendetta of one of the suspects as the result of an ongoing dispute with one of the victims over narcotics. The other victims were killed to ensure that there were no witnesses to this crime.'' 

--City News Service contributed to this report


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