EE FR
FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2003
Volume 2, Issue 146
Santa Monica Daily Press A newspaper with issues
L O T T O
Death penalty may be sought for man accused of killing local woman
Getting their kicks
FANTASY 5 05, 14, 17, 22, 26 DAILY 3 Afternoon picks: 8, 2, 0 Evening picks: 6, 4, 8
DAILY DERBY
BY CAROLYN SACKARIASON
1st Place: 07, Eureka 2nd Place: 09, Winning Spirit 3rd Place: 11, Money Bags Race time: 1:47.14
Daily Press Staff Writer
Officials will determine in the next month whether to seek the death penalty for a convicted felon who is accused of murdering a Santa Monica woman nearly five years ago. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office last year charged David Thomas Wright, who was homeless and living on the streets of Santa Monica, with capital murder for allegedly killing Aviva Labbe on June 14, 1998. Labbe’s murder had been classified as a “cold case” and remained unsolved for nearly four years. There were no suspects in the homicide until a sampling of Wright’s DNA linked him to the murder through the U.S.
NEWS OF THE WEIRD by Chuck Shepard
■ Jerry Thomason, 41, was charged with aggravated assault in San Antonio, Texas, in April after police found his 45-year-old wife at home with a heavy chain and padlock around her neck. According to a witness, Thomason said he loves his wife and so regularly chained her at home to keep her from leaving. QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Happy is the child whose father died rich.” — Jean Paul Marat
INDEX Horoscopes Take a nap, Gemini. . . . . . .2
Local Cinco de Mayo festivities . .3
Opinion The pier has problems . . . .4
State More surfer disputes . . . . .8 USS Lincoln returns . . . . . .9
International What to do with N. Korea 10
Sports Baseball numbers rise . . .11
Classifieds $3.50 a day . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Calendar Movie listings . . . . . . . . . . .15
Del Pastrana/Daily Press
A class of kids in the Police Activities League martial arts program practice sidekicks Thursday afternoon at Virginia Avenue Park.
Alert system could give brief, advance notice of quakes BY ANDREW BRIDGES AP Science Writer
Scientists have proposed a means of interpreting the initial, feeble tremors that herald the arrival of a large earthquake to give residents of Southern California advance warning of more violent shaking to come. The system theoretically could give anywhere from seconds to tens of seconds of advance notice — enough time to send school children diving below their desks or to cut the flow of gas through pipelines vulnerable to rupture, scientists said. Details appear today in the journal Science. The alarm system would not predict or forecast earthquakes. Instead, it would exploit the staggered way in which energy trav-
els from the underground source of quakes to the surface. The first indication at the surface that a large earthquake has occurred is typically the jolt caused by the arrival of a fastmoving but low-energy wave called the primary or P wave. It is followed by the more energetic but slower moving shear, or S wave, that causes far more violent shaking. Richard Allen of the University of WisconsinMadison and Hiroo Kanamori of the California Institute of Technology developed a way to determine the location, origin, time and — most importantly — magnitude of an earthquake from as little as four seconds of measurements of the frequency of the energy in the P wave. The system See QUAKES, page 7
Department of Justice’s database system, police said. Wright, 48, was found in the California state prison system serving a 6-year sentence for battery of a Santa Monica police officer during an unrelated incident, authorities said. In January of 2002, a jury found Wright guilty of battery and resisting arrest. He also failed to register himself as a sex offender stemming from a prior conviction in another state. The murder case against Wright is considered a “special circumstance” and eligible for the death penalty because Labbe was sodomized. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Ellen Aragon See CHARGES, page 7
Fourth of July celebration canceled in Santa Monica Fireworks latest victim of SMC’s budget deficit BY JOHN WOOD Daily Press Staff Writer
There will be no fireworks in Santa Monica this Fourth of July. Santa Monica College announced Thursday that a looming budget deficit has forced the cancellation of this year’s “Celebrate America” Independence Day festival. The event, which for more than a decade has been the only Fourth of July celebration in Santa Monica, attracted 20,000 people last year. It has been held every year since 1982 and has grown into a community-wide celebration and festival complete with music and other entertainment. “This is not the year,” said Herb Roney, chair of SMC’s board of trustees. “We’re just going to hold off and next year hopefully bring it back bigger and better. “I just loved it,” he added. “It’s been a wonderful program.”
“We’re facing historically high cuts. In the face of that, it just wouldn’t be right to be launching a celebration.” — BRUCE SMITH SMC spokesman
The celebration at SMC’s Corsair Stadium has been one-ofa-kind since the city canceled its popular Fourth of July event in 1991, citing liability concerns. Controlling the hundreds of thousands of revelers that converged each year on Palisades Park and the beaches became too difficult, they said. SMC spokesman Bruce Smith said the school simply can’t afford to put on the $50,000 event this year, even though much of the bill See BUDGET, page 7