O.C. couple plead guilty to faking death to get benefits

Santiago and Rosa Carrasco. (Orange County district attorney's office)

A Santa Ana husband and wife pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of faking the man’s death to steal more than $400,000 in death benefits, authorities said.

Santiago Carrasco, 52, and Rosa Carrasco, 54, were accused of traveling to Mexico in the summer of 2004 to obtain a phony death certificate stating that he died of a heart attack there, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

In September 2004, Rosa Carrasco began collecting death benefits on behalf of her husband, according to prosecutors. She was charged with receiving the money while the couple were living together in Santa Ana.

Rosa Carrasco worked at a retail store in South Coast Plaza, while Santiago Carrasco was a truck driver based out of Fontana.

Prosecutors said the Carrascos were collecting the benefits up until their arrest Aug. 1, 2011.

Each was sentenced to two years in custody and two years of mandatory supervision after they are released, the district attorney’s office said. The couple was also ordered to pay more than $413,000 in restitution.

— Robert J. Lopez, Los Angeles Times

Police move search for two boys’ bodies to Irvine landfill

The bodies of two young boys believed to have been killed by their father more than a month ago still have not been found, and police are now focusing  their attention on an Irvine landfill.

Investigators believe that Shazer Fernando Limas, 31, is responsible for the death of his girlfriend and their 1-year-old and 3-month-old children. He was arrested May 3 after leading police on a high-speed chase for more than an hour and was later charged with three counts of special circumstances murder, which make him eligible for the death penalty.

His girlfriend’s body was located in the L.A. County morgue April 25 after being found in a gutter in La Puente. Prosecutors believe that Limas stabbed his girlfriend and the children in their upscale apartment in Orange on April 14.

Police originally scoured the Brea landfill for the children’s bodies, but began searching an Irvine landfill  Tuesday morning after investigators learned that trash from Limas’ apartment complex is funneled to both locations, said Sgt. Dan Adams with the Orange Police Department.

He said it was likely that cadaver dogs will continue the search until Friday, but cautioned that it will be difficult.

“The trash from a month ago could be 20 feet deep,” he said.

–Nicole Santa Cruz, Los Angeles Times

Parolee convicted in sex assault of girl

Matthew Castaneda

A parolee was convicted Monday of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old Santa Ana girl he met on MySpace.

Matthew Castaneda, 35, was charged with meeting the girl on MySpace in November 2009 and attacking her at an Anaheim motel, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

Castaneda, an Anaheim resident, was a professional wrestler who went by the name of Chippy Sanchez, according to a report in the L.A. Weekly.

In February 2010, Castaneda met the girl near South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa and took a bus with her to Anaheim, according to prosecutors. After walking in various parks, he was charged with taking the victim to Zaby’s Motor Lounge near Disneyland and attacking her.

The girl left the motel and asked to be taken home by a traffic controller with the Anaheim Police Department. She had been reported missing in Santa Ana.

Castaneda was on parole for a 2007 felony domestic violence conviction and restraining order violation, the district attorney’s office said in a statement. In the latest case, he was convicted of one felony count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one felony count of lewd acts on a child under 14. A jury was unable to reach a verdict on two other felony counts.

Castaneda faces a maximum sentence of 24 years to life in state prison and mandatory sex offender registration. He is scheduled for a hearing June 22 at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana.

— Robert J. Lopez, Los Angeles Times

H.B. native among 3 dead in New Zealand accident

405 Freeway closed in both directions in Orange County

Both sides of the 405 Freeway in Orange County have been closed after power lines fell on several cars.

The incident occurred at Magnolia Street, near Huntington Beach and Westminster, and it’s unclear how long the freeway will be closed.

According to the CHP website, several vehicles were hit by the falling lines, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Vehicles were being diverted onto surface streets, and officials said the traffic was quickly backing up.

The CHP website said the freeway will be closed for at least 30 minutes.

–Los Angeles Times

Man suspected of arson tackled by witnesses in Costa Mesa brush fire

A man suspected of lighting a small brush fire in Costa Mesa on Wednesday night was tackled to the ground by witnesses as the blaze burned through heavy brush in Talbert Regional Park.

The fire broke out about 7 p.m., prompting a response by firefighters and a water-dropping helicopter from the Orange County Fire Authority, officials said.

At least two witnesses tackled a man they suspected of sparking the blaze. “His face was really bad. There was blood all over,” a resident told KCAL TV Channel 9.

The man was taken to a local hospital, where he was being treated for minor burns, fire officials said.

“He is a possible suspect,” Capt. Marc Stone of the Orange County Fire Authority told The Times. “He is being interrogated by arson investigators.”

Fire crews were mopping up hot spots late Wednesday.

– Robert J. Lopez, Los Angeles Times

Southwest passengers resume trip after bomb scare at John Wayne

VIDEO: Bomb threats at JWA

Courtesy KTLA

Air travelers stranded overnight in Orange County by a bomb scare were on their way to Phoenix on Wednesday morning after being rebooked on Southwest Airlines flights beginning at 6:45 a.m.

Their trip on Flight 811 was interrupted about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday when authorities received threats against it and an earlier Southwest flight from Orange County that arrived at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport about an hour earlier.

The FBI is investigating the incidents to determine who made the phone threats and if there is a link between them, spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said Wednesday morning.

Passengers were taken off Flight 811 and the plane was moved to an isolated area of John Wayne Airport, where it was searched by a bomb squad and canine units from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Orange County Fire Authority, Eimiller said.

A similar search was conducted of Flight 1184 in Phoenix, but no explosives were found aboard either jet, authorities said. Passengers and baggage were re-screened and the flights were cleared to leave.

The Phoenix flight flew on to Tulsa, Okla., on Tuesday night, but a noise curfew prevented the Orange County flight from leaving.

Southwest put up the passengers in hotels Tuesday night and re-booked them on flights this morning, airline spokeswoman Ashley Dillon said. She said that the incidents did not prompt any enhanced security measures at either airport.

–Los Angeles Times

San Onofre nuclear plant backs away from reopening date

San Onofre nuclear plant. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Southern California Edison backed off from comments made last week by one of its executives, who said the company hopes to have the San Onofre nuclear plant — shuttered due to equipment issues — back online and operating at a reduced capacity in June.

In a written statement, the company said, “SCE and the [California Independent System Operator] have maintained throughout the SONGS outage that nuclear safety has no timeline and the units will only be returned to service when SCE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are satisfied it is safe to do so.  SCE has not filed a request with the NRC seeking to restart the plant.”

Edison said in its statement it provided the June planning dates to the ISO in March only for administrative purposes.

Stephen Pickett, the company’s executive vice president of external relations, said last week Edison was preparing to submit a plan to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that could have the plant back online running at 50% to 80% capacity in June.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko released a statement Monday, saying the agency has yet to receive a written statement from Edison to say the required steps have been taken to investigate and make a plan to fix the issues at the plant and “any discussion of a date for the restart of Unit 2 or Unit 3 is clearly premature.”

The plant has been shuttered for more than three months because of problems with excessive wear in steam generator tubes.

On Tuesday, Edison reported it has taken about 1,300 tubes out of service because of wear — 510 in Unit 2 and 807 in Unit 3 — representing a little more than 3% of the total number of tubes in the plant, and a higher number than the company had previously reported.

Edison and ISO officials appeared at the Irvine City Council meeting Tuesday night to reassure the public that contingency plans are in place to ensure the plant’s outage will not result in blackouts over the summer. The plans include speeding up transmission upgrades, bringing retired generating units at a natural gas plant in Huntington Beach back into service, and giving incentives for customers to conserve energy.

Threats made to 2 Southwest flights with ties to O.C., Phoenix

Two Southwest Airlines flights with ties to Orange County and Phoenix were stopped Tuesday night after threats were made to the planes, authorities told The Times.

The first incident began about 7:30 p.m. after flight 1184 arrived at Sky Harbor International Airport from John Wayne Airport, the FBI said.

The plane was taken to an isolated area of the airport after authorities received an unspecified threat, said Special Agent Manuel Johnson of the FBI’s Phoenix division.

He said the plane was searched, passengers were screened again and the flight was cleared. It was headed to Tulsa, Okla.

About an hour later, Southwest flight 811 at John Wayne Airport was taken to an isolation area after authorities received a bomb threat, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Lt. Joe Balicki told The Times the “phone threat was received by an outside agency.”

“It was preparing to take off,” he said. The flight was bound for Phoenix.

Bomb squad members searched the plane Tuesday night but found no explosive device.

The FBI was probing both incidents. “As to whether the two were related, clearly that’s under investigation,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller in Los Angeles said.

Southwest spokeswoman Ashley Dillon said that no passengers were injured and that the flight leaving Orange County was cleared for takeoff. However, the flight was cancelled because of a noise curfew at the airport, she said.

–Los Angeles Times

Body of captain in yacht race accident identified

The body found near the Coronado Islands has been identified as the boat captain of the 37-foot sailboat that sank during the Newport Beach to Ensenada regatta.

A daughter of Theo Mavromatis, 49, of Redondo Beach, told the Long Beach Press-Telegram that the San Diego County medical examiner notified the family Monday that her father’s body had been recovered.

The bodies of three other crew members were found April 28 near the wreckage of the ship Aegean. Mavromatis’ body was discovered Sunday by fishermen; he was skipper of the boat.

The Coast Guard is investigating the sinking. One theory is the sailboat was struck by a larger vessel, another theory is it hit rocks on the shoreline of one of the Coronado Islands, about 15 miles south of San Diego.

The boat disappeared about 1:30 a.m. April 28.

–Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times