Leila Fowler 911 Call Released, Brother to Appear in Court

ABC News | Calaveras Unified School District(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- In the 911 call from the day 8-year-old Leila Fowler was stabbed to death, her father's girlfriend, who was not home, didn't appear to know that Leila has been hurt. She told the operator that Leila was "freaking out" after her brother said he had allegedly seen an intruder in the house.

The brother has since been arrested and charged with second-degree murder with special circumstances for using a dangerous weapon in the killing. He is expected to make his first court appearance Wednesday, though his name has not been released because he is a minor.

On April 27, Leila's 12-year-old brother told Valley Springs, Calif., authorities that he found his sister stabbed to death after an intruder broke into their home. There were no adults at the house when the stabbing occurred. The boy said he called his parents, who alerted sheriff's deputies.

"My children are at home alone and a man just ran out of my house. My older son was in the bathroom and my daughter started screaming," the panicked woman said in the 911 call released by the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office. "When he came out, there was a man outside my house. I need an officer there."

The woman calling was Leila's father's girlfriend, according to ABC News' Sacramento affiliate KXTV.

When the dispatcher asked if the children had seen the intruder, the woman said, "They did see him. My daughter is freaking out right now."

She also said the children were "really scared" and that she was trying to get home.

The boy told authorities the intruder, whom he described as a tall man with a muscular build, fled the scene. The boy's description launched a 15-day manhunt that included door-to-door searches and divers in a reservoir.

The Calaveras County Sheriff's Office in Northern California announced the arrest of the 12-year-old boy on May 10.

Mark Reichel and Steve Plesser, attorneys from a firm hired by the boy's family to represent him, told KXTV that they met with him Wednesday at a juvenile detention facility.

"He's actually doing very well right now," Plesser said. "As well as can be expected in these really difficult times."

The two attorneys said they plan to ask the court to allow the boy to return to his family.

Neighbors in Valley Springs said they feared all along that Leila's brother -- not a mystery man the boy described -- might be responsible for the girl's stabbing death.

"It made us sadder, because he's just 12 years old," Barbara Barron told ABC News. "The family has lost two children now."

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Weather May Aid Crews Fighting California Wildfires

Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) -- Wildfires raging through Southern California have tripled in size to 28,000 acres as firefighters work to bring the blazes threatening nearly 4,000 homes under control.

More than 2,000 firefighters and structure protection crews from across the region worked tirelessly to protect buildings, including a naval training facility, from the raging fires in Camarillo, Calif.

Even residents have joined in to quell the early season flames. Eighteen year-old Brittany Smolarski used a bottle of water and her riding boots to stomp out a sudden spot fire while helping to evacuate horses.

"I've never been that close to a fire," Smolarski told Good Morning America. "That smoke is pretty deadly. I'm trying to protect everything that I can. I don't want my barn to burn up."

With red-flag warnings lifted on Friday, weather conditions may be turning in favor of the firefighters, reports the Los Angeles Times. The weekend's weather is expected to be cooler and more humid. Inland areas could temperature drops of 15 to 20 degrees along with potential rain showers that would aid efforts to control the flames.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Judge Defies Victim's Family by Sending DUI Driver to Prison

iStockPhoto/Thinkstock(FRESNO, Calif.) -- The judge who sentenced a Fresno, Calif., man to jail for his role in a deadly drunk driving accident, defied the wishes of the victim’s family who had asked that the driver not receive jail time.

Judge Alan Simpson sentenced 25-year-old Brian Cappelluti to a year in jail after Cappelluti pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter and DUI charges on Thursday.

In 2011, Cappelluti was arrested after driving drunk with a blood alcohol level of .21 and crashing into a traffic light. The accident took the life of passenger 23-year-old J.W. Pardini, a close friend of Cappelluti’s.

Before Cappelluti’s sentencing, the Pardini family wrote a letter to the judge asking that Cappelluti not be given jail time.

“JW is gone forever. Brian has to live with the thought of this accident every day for the rest of his life,” the family wrote in a statement. “We suggest that probation for Brian is the proper corrective action.”

Another passenger in the car, Marion Walker, was severely injured during the crash. But she also spoke out for Cappelluti and asked the judge for leniency in his sentencing.

“All of us will pay for this accident for the rest of our lives,” Walker said. “We all understood what could happen and it did. I ask you not to take away my surviving support.”

While Simpson’s sentence of one year in jail is more than the defense wanted, it is far less than the five years in prison the prosecutors had asked for.

“I think the outcome was fair and just and everybody can feel that justice was done,” defense attorney Rick Berman told ABC News affiliate KFSN-TV in Fresno after the sentencing.

An earlier plea bargain fell apart in February after Cappelluti refused a deal that could have resulted in his spending six years in prison. During that hearing, Judge Houry Sanderson chided Cappelluti for relying on the kindness of Pardini’s family.

“If he was not related at all to these victims at all, total strangers, I am very sure that the position of these families would have been very different,” Sanderson said.

Cappelluti could be released from jail after eight months.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Denied Money, Panhandler Lights California Man, Car on Fire

KABC-TV/DT(LONG BEACH, Calif.) -- Police arrested a panhandler who reportedly lit a man on fire outside a convenience store in Long Beach, Calif. after not receiving money.

The 63-year-old victim was hospitalized with third-degree burns. He is in critical condition.

ABC's Los Angeles affiliate KABC reported on Friday that a panhandler approached the victim walking into a 7-Eleven store and asked him for money. The victim said no.

When the victim left the store and got into his SUV, the 37-year-old transient reportedly doused him and the inside of his vehicle with a flammable substance and lit it on fire, engulfing the truck in flames with the man inside, KABC reported.

"With the door open you could see the entire insides were ablaze," one eyewitness told Good Morning America. "He came out and he was horrifying. His entire shirt was on fire, his head was on fire."

Authorities called the incident a random act of violence. The two men did not know each other, police said.

"It's a horrific crime to think that somebody's, really no motive, just sitting there, minding their own business and then to be lit on fire," Long Beach Police Sgt. Aaron Eaton told KABC.

KABC reported the transient was arrested and will be charged with arson and attempted murder.

Police have not released the names of the two men.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Police Locate Missing 10-Year-Old Girl in California

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(LOS ANGELES) -- A young girl who disappeared from her bedroom late Tuesday night was found in Woodland Hills, Calif., according to police.

The 10-year-old girl had apparently disappeared from her bed at  approximately 3:30 in the morning.  After a house-to-house search she re-appeared -- seemingly out of nowhere -- close to 12 hours later at a Chevron gas station.  

According to the Los Angeles Times, there was no sign of forced entry at the girl's home. However, the back door was left unlocked and a side gate was found to be open.

According to LAPD Captain Chris Pitcher, a suspect took the girl from her home and later dropped her off.

This young girl was taken to an area hospital to be checked out, as she has cuts and bruises. Police are now investigating multiple crime scenes and searching for the person who took the young girl.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Sea Lion Caught Lounging at California Hotel

ABC News(LA JOLLA, Calif.) -- A sea lion with a taste for luxury, or perhaps just in a state of confusion, made its way out of the Pacific Ocean, up a beach and across a road before finding itself poolside at a California hotel.

The sea lion, a female pup, was first spotted around 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday by the overnight front desk worker at Pantai Inn, an all-suite hotel in La Jolla, Calif., hotel manager Shane Pappas told ABC News.

“I received an email while I was getting ready for work stating that we had a baby sea lion in our courtyard,” Pappas said. “I called and said, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Pappas had reason to be surprised because the hotel is located across the street from the beach, meaning the pup had to slither up a set of stairs to reach the road from the beach, then cross the road and then find its way into the courtyard.  Video captured by the hotel’s surveillance cameras show the pup did, in fact, make that trek.

When Pappas arrived at the hotel, he found the front desk attendant frantically calling officials from SeaWorld in nearby San Diego to come help, and the pup enjoying her poolside perch.

“The sea lion was sleeping on our chair in the courtyard and looking pretty relaxed,” he said.

When a SeaWorld official arrived less than an hour later, he and Pappas scooped her into a net and loaded her into a SeaWorld truck.

The whole rescue, according to Pappas, took less than 25 minutes, but it took that long because of the attention the unusual sight garnered.

“We had to stop for photo ops and the SeaWorld official did a Q&A with the kids staying on the property,” he said.

Now that the sea lion’s 15 minutes of fame have wound down, she will stay under the care of SeaWorld for the next six weeks to ensure she is in good health before being returned to the sea.

“We have a lot of seagulls and an osprey who visits but, outside of that, no, we’ve never had anything like this,” Pappas said.  “It was pretty unique.” 

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California Police Investigating Jewelry Allegedly Found in Sewage

ABC News(MODESTO, Calif.) -- Sanitation workers in Modesto, Calif., received an unexpected surprise Wednesday on a routine cleaning expedition: gold, worth $2,500.

“[It was] from the city sewer traps, and they cleaned it up,” Modesto Gold, Jewelry and Coins employee Yvonne Brawley told ABC affiliate News 10. “And some of it wasn’t gold and some of it was.”

The majority of the gold jewelry appeared to be in twisted fragments, stained and discolored from being submerged in the sewer, which spans 641 miles beneath the city.

Modesto police told News10 they are investigating the workers who sold the gold to explore whether the jewelry was really found in the sewer, or if it came from somewhere else. A routine audit of the pawn shop led the police to begin an investigation earlier this year, prompted by the sales that occurred over the course of a couple of months.

Brawley said the three employees, two men and one woman, came into her store wearing their City of Modesto uniforms. She said the woman had sold jewelry several times over the course of a couple of years and that she has also sold jewelry at a pawn shop in Oakdale, Calif. The two men sold jewelry at Modesto Gold, Jewelry and Coins one time last month, she said.

According to police, the investigation is nearing completion. Officials said they will not comment on the identity of the workers because the investigation has not been completed.

Either way, Brawley said she hopes the employees get to keep the money received for the jewelry.

“They should be able to keep it if they found it.  Nobody’s going to want it.  It took a lot of work trying to get that out,” she said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

ABC News Exclusive: Cat Haven Employee Recounts Deadly Lion Attack

A male lion (pictured here) killed a person at the Sierra Cat Haven in Dunlap, CA on March 6. ABC News(DUNLAP, Calif.) -- An employee at a big cat California sanctuary where a volunteer intern was fatally attacked last week called the attack an unfortunate mistake, saying that nobody was to blame.

Employee Meg Pauls was performing her regular cat feedings and enclosure cleanings with intern Dianna Hanson right before the 24-year-old Hanson was attacked and killed last week.

Hanson was two months into an internship at the Cat Haven in Dunlap, a small town in Fresno County near King's Canyon National Park, when she was killed.

Each woman had taken a separate enclosure trail, but when Pauls got to the end of her trail, she didn't see Hanson or her golf cart where they should have been.

"I came around the corner and saw her behind a bush on the ground, and I called to her, and Cous Cous [the lion] was near her and I called to her and it looked as if she was unconscious," Pauls said. "I stopped my cart and ran up there to find out why she wasn't where she should be at that point."

When Pauls got to Cous Cous' enclosure, she found a door within the enclosure was open when it should have been closed. It is still unclear what exactly caused the attack.

"She was in the main enclosure under some bushes in an opening," Pauls said. "I could see her lying down there, and I was calling to her. There was no response."

Pauls couldn't secure the lion and get to Hanson, so she kept Cous Cous next to her while she called 911. Less than 30 minutes after Hanson entered the cage, Cous Cous was shot by a Fresno County sheriff's deputy who had responded to the call, authorities said.

Dale Anderson, Cat Haven's founder, said that at this point nothing on the enclosure appears to have been broken or malfunctioning. Everything was in place and operating without violation for 15 years.

The enclosure has four separate areas inside, three for the cat and one for a person. Anderson believes the lion was in the food area inside his enclosure, but the door to keep him away from Hanson had been left open.

Anderson also shot down reports that Hanson had been on her cell phone at the time of the attack. She had a walkie-talkie on her but did not use it for assistance at the time of the attack.

"How and why he [Cous Cous] did that is kind of a mystery," Anderson said. "He came out of the cage and saw somebody. Did he run in to her? Did he hit her? We don't know. When you say attacked, it sounds gruesome, but it sounds like he just knocked her down and broke her neck."

Anderson started raising Cous Cous when he was 8-weeks-old. Anytime you are dealing with a 500-pound cat, he said, there is risk of an accident.

"Dianna and I had dinner the night before and were talking about cat philosophy. Cats mean a lot to us," he said. "When you do that kind of stuff, there's an inherent risk and we accept that because we love it. Worst case scenario, there's a death involved, and that's what happened here. Again, the risk that's involved is less than what's involved satisfaction wise."

Hanson's family members knew their daughter loved Cat Haven, and they don't want anything to happen to the sanctuary as a result of their daughter's death, Anderson said.

"We've been telling stories about Dianna," Pauls said. "She still makes us laugh. She was an incredible person. Cous Cous is not to blame. He wasn't doing anything to cause that. That's not at all what I think. He was just being a cat. He was just being a lion."

Pauls said she never questioned her training or the way the cat enclosures are set up. She has never feared the animals and feels safe at her job. Anderson said Hanson's death was an unfortunate accident and didn't want people to think any less of her.

"We've all ran a red light or a stop sign, but sometimes it's a fatal incident," he said. "It wasn't anything about her work. She had an accident. She left a door open.

"Nobody's to blame in this. It was a terrible accident and we lost two good friends."

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Did California Teacher Put Sleeping Pills into Toddler’s Sippy Cups?

Morgan Hill Police Department(MORGAN HILL, Calif.) -- A teacher at a Morgan Hill, Calif., preschool has been arrested after the school accused her of slipping sleeping pills in sippy cups of children under the age of 2.

“We do not know the quantity, but we believe she was breaking the pill into smaller pieces and putting it into the children’s sippy cups,” Morgan Hill Sgt. of Investigations Troy Hoefling told ABC News.

The school told ABC News it had “terminated” Debbie Gratz, 59, last Friday “for failure to follow Kiddie Academy standards and processes.”

“Ms. Gratz was witnessed adding a substance to the water cups for her classroom of 10 children,” Morgan Hill Kiddie Academy added in a prepared statement.  “The cups were confiscated before they came in contact with any children prior to the academy opening for business that day.”

A fellow employee saw Gratz place an unknown substance in the toddler’s sippy cups on Friday and notified school officials, according to Morgan Hill Police -- though police apparently weren’t told until Monday.

“They made notifications internally.  Unfortunately, the problem with that is not only do we not get on the case right away but we lose precious evidence,” Hoefling told ABC News.  “We only found out those cups had been washed out and rinsed.”

Police said they had no plans to charge the school regarding the delay in reporting the incident, but the district attorney could review the matter.

The school’s statement said it now was “actively working with the authorities and California State Childcare Licensing to aid in their investigation.”

Gratz was charged with two counts of child endangerment and released on her own recognizance.  She was set to appear in court later this month, police said.

She did not return telephone calls from ABC News.

Gratz was responsible for 10 children, all under the age of 2, Hoefling said.

After the witness told school officials about Gratz apparently putting a substance in the sippy cups, facility administrators confronted Gratz, who then allegedly admitted to those administrators that she slipped sleeping pills into the toddlers’ cups, a police news release said.

“The pills that she said were used were Sominex, which is over-the-counter sleep aid medicine,” Hoefling said.

Police said they were notified on Monday, when they arrested Gratz and served a search warrant at her home.  While the teacher allegedly admitted to the accusations, police said, she had not yet commented on a motive.

“We’ve contacted all 10 parents [of the children] that were under her care.  We’ve received 30 to 35 phone calls, either past or present parents at the Kiddie Academy, so we’re still trying to determine if this has been going on for some time,” Hoefling said.  “We don’t think it’s a one-time occurrence.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

California City Bans Gun Shows

David De Lossy/Thinkstock(GLENDALE, Calif.) -- Glendale, Calif., has told the organizers of an annual gun show to find a new home after the City Council on Tuesday voted to approve a ban on the possession and sale of firearms by private dealers on city property.

The vote, a reaction to the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., was attended by supporters of the ban and members of the National Rifle Association, who opposed it.

The Glendale Gun Shows have generated about $158,000 in revenue over the last three years and was projected to have brought in another $57,000 in 2013 if the ban was not put in place by a three to two vote.

Gun enthusiasts spoke passionately against the prohibition that goes into effect on April 19.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio