faulty press release
A press release issued by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department claiming a Guido’s restaurant kitchen worker had been murdered last week turned out to be false.
By Knowles Adkisson / Associate Editor
Officials from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department apologized Monday for issuing a press release last week that incorrectly blamed the death of a local restaurant worker on foul play.
Carlos Ivan Rodas, 32, was found by a co-worker lying in a pool of blood outside Guido’s restaurant at about 8:30 p.m. on Sun., March 18. An initial press release circulated by the sheriff’s department almost four hours later claimed that Rodas had been beaten to death.
However, the department later confirmed in a March 21 press release that Rodas died of what has been called an upper respiratory illness, and sheriff’s officials acknowledged they issued the initial press release without inspecting Rodas’ body for evidence of trauma.
Mention of an upper respiratory illness caused concern in the community about an infectious disease, and a county sheriff’s official on Thursday last week told The Malibu Times that it could be between one and six weeks before lab testing on Rodas’ body came back. The Los Angeles Department of Public Health then issued a press release the next day stating that at that point, visiting Guido’s caused no danger to the public health
Captain Joe Stephen of the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriffs Station apologized for the incorrect initial press release at the City Council’s meeting Monday night at Malibu City Hall, and brought along Lt. Eddie Hernandez, one of the investigators who arrived at the scene the night Rodas died.
“I apologize if there was any perceived misinformation or fear that the LASD brought to this community,” Stephen said. “Safety and security is our number one priority in the City of Malibu.”
Stephen added that the Dept. of Public Health had assured him the lab testing into Rodas’ illness would be “fast-tracked.”
Hernandez, along with Sgt. John O’Brien and Det. Mark Lilienfeld, was one of three investigating officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau who responded to the scene. He told the City Council what had happened that night.
Hernandez said witnesses at the scene told investigators they thought Rodas had been beaten or shot, based on the amount of blood around his body. A tablecloth had been laid over the top half of Rodas’ body, and investigators did not look under it because, Hernandez said, it was the coroner’s jurisdiction to do so.
Hernandez said one of the witnesses, a woman, spotted a suspicious man walking behind the Banana Republic store, near the trash dumpster area where Rodas had been going before he collapsed. Hernandez said the woman was “an exceptional observer,” a schoolteacher whose husband was shot in a parking lot several years ago. The woman’s past experience made her testimony “acute,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez also said the high volume of blood surrounding Rodas’ body suggested massive internal bleeding similar to that caused by blunt force trauma to the chest or back.
Based on those facts, Hernandez said the investigators reported to their headquarters that Rodas had been beaten to death by an unknown number of assailants.
Several hours later, a coroner’s investigator arrived on the scene, Hernandez said, and determined that Rodas had not been beaten. The next day, the sheriff’s department began to backtrack from the initial press release, and on Wednesday it issued the press release stating Rodas’ death was not the result of a violent crime.