A suspected catalytic converter thief in the South El Monte area of Los Angeles found out the hard way that crime doesn’t pay early on Friday morning when a resident of the home walked outside and confronted multiple thieves in progress with a kitchen knife.
According to CBS News, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies found a man stabbed to death at the scene when the responded to a call at 2:37 in the morning on Friday.
The resident of the house reportedly told the sheriff’s deputies that he was sleeping when he heard people tampering with his car outside. He did the brave thing and walked outside to investigate what was going on and confront the suspected thieves. An altercation ensued in which one of the. suspected thieves was stabbed to death and the other suspects fled.
Describing what happened in an alert sent to the community, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said (the statement has been condensed into paragraph form):
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Investigators are continuing their investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of a male adult. Deputies from Temple Sheriff’s Station responded to the 11200 block of Thienes Avenue in the city of South El Monte regarding a stabbing at the location. The incident occurred on Friday, April 21, 2023, at approximately 2:37 AM.
When deputies arrived on scene, they located a Hispanic male, 45-50 years of age, suffering from a stab wound to his upper torso. The decedent was pronounced deceased at the scene by the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Investigators learned that the decedent along with possibly two other suspects were attempting to steal vehicle parts from a vehicle parked in the driveway of the location. During the incident, a resident from the home exited the front door and was confronted by the suspects when the stabbing took place.
That individual is currently being detained for further questioning. The remaining suspects were last seen entering a small compact vehicle and driving east on Thienes Avenue and out of view. The investigation is ongoing, and currently there is no additional information.
Instead of taking catalytic converter theft seriously as it increases in frequency, Nithya Raman, a Democrat Los Angeles councilwoman, voted against a measure that would unlawful possession of catalytic converters and instead blamed car manufacturers for making the part too easy to steal.
Speaking on that, she said, “In this case, I think one of the things that infuriates me, is that we have a company — whatever, Toyota — who makes the Prius, that essentially has a device on their cars which is super easy to remove. It’s basically the value of a MacBook, right?”
Continuing, the Harvard-educated leftist then added, “That is put in a place that is incredibly easy to access in your car and the thefts related to this issue have essentially — all of the costs of that — are given to us to bear instead of them [Toyota] having to manufacture a car that actually is not so easy to be stolen.”
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