A lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who investigated the death of Carlos Ivan Rodas, a kitchen worker at Guido’s restaurant who was found dead outside of the restaurant Sunday night, said on Thursday that investigators did not examine Rodas’ body before the sheriff’s department issued an initial press release claiming Rodas had been beaten to death.
Rodas, 32, was found by a co-worker lying in a pool of blood outside the restaurant at approximately 8:30 p.m. Sunday night after he left the restaurant to take out garbage. According to sheriff’s officials, the co-worker ran inside the restaurant and told the restaurant manager, who has been identified in other media outlets as Tony Waldrop. Sheriff’s officials say the manager applied first aid to Rodas while 911 was called. Paramedics responded to the 911 call and pronounced Rodas dead at the scene.
Lt. Eddie 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.
Hernandez told The Malibu Times in a telephone interview Thursday that when the officers arrived, a blanket or table cloth had been laid over the top half of Rodas’ body by someone at the restaurant due to a large amount of blood around it. Two witnesses, whom Hernandez identified as the manager of Guido’s and another employee, told the officers they believed Rodas had been “shot and/or beaten to death” as he took out the garbage, a belief they came to because of the large amount of blood surrounding the body.
The investigators also found bloody shoeprints that appeared to match Rodas’ beginning at the garbage disposal area, which appeared to suggest that Rodas had staggered back to the front of the restaurant before collapsing.
Hernandez said the investigators did not look under the blanket or table cloth because inspecting bodies is the jurisdiction of the coroner, and he said it is not sheriff’s department practice to touch a body except in emergency situations where one has to be removed. Hernandez said investigators from the coroner’s office did not arrive until several hours later.
Instead of checking the body for injuries, Hernandez said investigators used the combination of the witnesses’ opinion that Rodas had been beaten or shot and the bloody footprints to conclude that Rodas had been attacked by unknown assailants. However, Hernandez said that although the two witnesses told investigators they thought Rodas had been beaten or shot, neither made any mention of assailants.
“What I reported to our sheriff’s headquarters was that we believe that at this point we believe he may have been assaulted by suspects or persons unknown, meaning, it could have been one, could have been 10, could have been 100,” Hernandez said. “So, that’s how we reported it. Now I don’t know how it was actually translated and sent out as a press release.”
At 12:21 a.m. Monday morning, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department issued a press release written by Deputy Tony Moore that stated:
“Detectives have learned that an employee of a nearby business was outside and to the rear of that business, when he was confronted by an unknown number of suspects and brutally beaten. The victim managed to escape the suspects and staggered to the front of the location before he collapsed.”
On Monday afternoon, sheriff’s department spokesperson Steve Whitmore backtracked from the press release in a telephone interview with The Malibu Times, stating that Rodas may have died from natural causes and that the cause of death could not be confirmed until an autopsy was performed.
Later that afternoon, an official in the Los Angeles Department of Coroner’s office told The Malibu Times, “He wasn’t beaten to death. We won’t know until we do the [autopsy].”
An autopsy was performed on Rodas by the Department of Coroner on Wednesday. The sheriff’s department issued a press release at 1:21 p.m. Wednesday which stated that Rodas’ death “was the result of an upper respiratory infection” and “it appears there was no criminal conduct related to his death.”
Hernandez said the initial sheriff’s department report filed on the night of the incident used the information that was available to them at the time.
“Like in any investigation we’re looking at ballistic evidence, any type of evidence we could find that this was a homicide, other than touching the body when the coroner got there,” Hernandez said. “That was our initial scene, and those were our initial statements from the witnesses. Once the coroner got there, and they said look, this guy doesn’t have any injuries at all, that’s where the updated information came from.”
The Malibu Times attempted to contact the Department of Coroner on Thursday for comment on the autopsy results. However, Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said a “hold” had been placed on the autopsy results by one of the investigating sheriff’s detectives, which prohibits anyone from the Department of Coroner from commenting on them.
Sgt. John O’Brien confirmed his office had placed the hold on the autopsy results.
“There was a lot of speculation going on, so we wanted to control that speculation,” O’Brien said. “And we basically, any information that we’re going to release on this is going to come out of our office, instead of coming a piece from here, a piece from there. So by us putting a hold on it, to get information you have to come for us and we can give one complete statement as [opposed to] the piecemealing things.”
The press release issued Wednesday stated that Rodas died from an upper respiratory disease. O’Brien confirmed that that information was based on results from the autopsy. He said the sheriff’s department is now awaiting testing from the coroner’s office to determine the nature of Rodas’s infection. O’Brien said the test results could come back in as soon as one week or as long as six weeks.
“[The coroners] actually physically have to grow a culture and test what it is, if there is anything,” O’Brien said. “There may be nothing, it may just be something he had already that they can’t determine.”