Woman who drowned autistic son gets prison time

A 37-year-old San Diego woman who told police she killed her son because of the burden of caring for an autistic child was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.

Patricia Corby drowned her 4-year-old son, Daniel, in the family bathtub March 31 while her husband was at work, according to evidence submitted in court.

"I hate you with all my heart and soul," Duane Corby told the woman before San Diego County Superior Court Judge Charles Gill sentenced her for the death of the boy.

After killing her son, she tried to commit suicide but failed, according to evidence.

She wrapped the boy in a blanket and took his lifeless body to a police substation responsible for their Carmel Valley neighborhood.

Under Gill's sentence, Corby will not be eligible for a reduced sentence due to good behavior while in prison. Corby's husband told investigators that he had never seen any signs of mental illness in his wife.

The family had spent $70,000 trying to find help for their son, according to evidence in court.

Corby kept her head bowed in court as relatives told the judge about the pain caused by the boy's death, including an aunt who said the boy is probably looking down from heaven and asking, "Mama, why did you kill me?"

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Manti Te'o hoax: Diane O'Meara says she was hounded for photos

Latino kids disproportionately victimized by teachers, lawyer says

Frank Ocean wants Chris Brown prosecuted in clash over parking spot

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: Patricia Corby at arraignment. Credit: Fox-5 San Diego

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The Lede Blog: Fire at a Nightclub in Southern Brazil

Medics in Brazil rushed to care for the victims of a deadly fire at a nightclub on Sunday.

Last Updated, Monday, 3:36 p.m. An intense fire ripped through a nightclub crowded with university students in southern Brazil early on Sunday morning, leaving behind a scene of horror, with bodies piled in the club’s bathrooms and on the street. At least 233 people were killed, many of them students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs at a local university, police officials said. By Sunday evening, the authorities had released a preliminary list of the dead.

As Simon Romero reports, a flare from a band’s pyrotechnic show ignited the fire in the nightclub, called Kiss, in the southern city of Santa Maria. Rescue workers continued to haul bodies from the still-smoldering building on Sunday.

Extremely disturbing video uploaded to YouTube by witnesses showed scenes of chaos in a makeshift morgue and on the street outside, as medics scurried over the bodies of victims who appeared to be unconscious, checking for signs of life.

Victims of the fire are attended by medics — this video contains very disturbing images.

Officials and witnesses say that security guards at the club had locked some exits, sowing panic as people attempted to flee the flames and smoke.

“Only after a multitude pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, said in comments posted on Facebook.

Shortly before the fire, a club D.J. posted a photo on Facebook from inside the crowded club apparently showing the pyrotechnic display on stage.

A short time later, another photo that was said to be taken outside the club and widely disseminated through social media showed smoke billowing from the front entrance.

BOATE KISS PEGANDO FOGO! http://t.co/tdV2DO4q

— Boatos SM ® #LUTO (@BoatoSM) 27 Jan 13

The fire quickly engulfed the building.

Firefighters and volunteers who used T-shirts to protect themselves from the smoke struggled to pull people from the burning building.

Firefighters and volunteers tried to pull people from the burning building

Photos from the scene showed frantic friends and family members gathered outside the club and a hospital.

As Mr. Romero reports, witnesses said the fire started about 2 a.m. after the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, took the stage. At least one member of the five-person band, which is based in Santa Maria and advertised its use of pyrotechnics, was said to have been killed in the fire.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the nightclub said that its operations are on hold and that it would assist the authorities with an investigation. “We would still like to reiterate that our staff has the highest technical qualifications and was properly trained and prepared for any contingency,” it added.

Overcrowding and a disregard for fire safety codes have led to deadly blazes at nightclubs in the past, though Sunday’s tragedy in Brazil is among the worst.

In 2003 in Rhode Island, also fire set off by a pyrotechnic display at a club killed about 100 people. A fire that erupted under similar circumstances in Russia left almost as many dead in 2009.

And in Luoyang, China in 2000, 309 people were killed in a fire that broke out at a dance hall, forcing some to leap from high-rise windows.

---

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 28, 2013

An earlier version of this post included video of a fire that was not recorded in Brazil on Sunday, but had been mislabeled and uploaded to a fake BBC News channel on YouTube.

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Crucial, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

TORONTO (AP) — The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone is promising a speedy browser, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone, the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the Canadian company.

Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd., will reveal the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday. Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices.

Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has nearly tripled to about $ 16.30 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.

Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability.

“The old models are becoming obsolete quickly,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said. “There is still a big user base but it’s going to rotate off. The question is: Where do they rotate to?”

The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people. Corporate information-technology managers like the phones because they’re relatively secure and easy to manage.

The BlackBerry has also crossed over to consumers. President Barack Obama couldn’t bear to part with it when he took office. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her “favorite things.” People got so addicted that the device was nicknamed “the CrackBerry.”

But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. They can play games, music and movies. Android came along to offer even more choices. Though IT managers still love BlackBerrys, employees were bringing their own devices to the workplace — a trend Heins acknowledged RIM was slow to adapt to.

Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.

Even as BlackBerry sales continued to grow in many parts of the world, many BlackBerry users in North America switched to iPhones and Android devices. BlackBerry’s worldwide subscriber based peaked at 80 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 1, before dropping to 79 million in the most-recent quarter. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.

RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.

Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that.

RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today.

“Historically there have been areas that have not been our strongest points,” Rick Costanzo, RIM’s executive vice president of global sales, said in an interview. “Not only have we caught up, but we may even be better than some of the competition now.”

Costanzo said “no one else can touch” what RIM’s new system offers.

The new operating system promises better multitasking than either the iPhone or Android. Simply swipe a finger across the phone’s display screen to switch to another program.

All emails and notifications from such applications as Twitter and Facebook go to the BlackBerry Hub, a nerve center accessible with a finger swipe even if you have another application open. One can peek into it and open an email, or return to the previous application without opening the email.

“You are not going in and out of applications; you’re flowing through applications with one simple gesture of your finger,” Costanzo said. “You can leave applications running. You can effortlessly flow between them. So that’s completely unique to us.”

That said, multitasking will be limited and won’t allow for extensive use of apps side by side, as is typically permitted on traditional computers. If you’re watching a video, it will still run while you check for email. But it will pause if you decide to open an email and resume when you are done.

The BlackBerry’s touch-screen keyboard promises to learn a user’s writing style and suggest words and phrases to complete, going beyond typo corrections offered by rivals. See the one you want, and flick it up to the message area. Costanzo said that “BlackBerry offers the best keyboard, period.”

Gus Papageorgiou, a Scotiabank financial analyst who has tried it out, agreed with that assessment and said the keyboard even learns and adjusts to your thumb placements.

The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said it will release a version with a physical keyboard soon after that. That’s an area RIM has excelled at, and it’s one reason many BlackBerry users have remained loyal despite temptations to switch.

Another distinguishing feature will be the BlackBerry Balance, which allows two personas on the same device. Businesses can keep their data secure without forcing employees to get a second device for personal use. For instance, IT managers can prevent personal apps from running inside corporate firewalls, but those managers won’t have access to personal data on the device.

With Balance, “you can just switch from work to personal mode,” Papageorgiou said. “I think that is something that will attract a lot of people.”

RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10′s browser will be speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers. According to Papageorgiou, early, independent tests between the BlackBerry 10 and the iPhone support that claim.

Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Papageorgiou said the initial group will include the most popular ones such as Twitter and Facebook. But RIM will have to persuade others to make a BlackBerry version, when they are already struggling to keep up with both the iPhone and Android.

Like many analysts, Papageorgiou recently upgraded RIM’s stock, but cautions that longtime BlackBerry users will have to get used to a whole new operating system.

He said RIM can be successful if about a third of current subscribers upgrade and if the company can get 4 million new users overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained popular. IDC said smartphone shipments grew 44 percent in 2012. If those trends continue, it will be possible for the BlackBerry to grow even if iPhone and Android users don’t switch.

“This doesn’t have to be the best smartphone on the planet to be a success for RIM,” he said. “I think the big question though is, if it fails, is it just too late? Are the other two ecosystems just so advanced that no one can catch up? That’s a big risk.”

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Drew Barrymore: Why I Have Embraced Judaism

lberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

Drew Barrymore has finally found her Ever After — and she’s not about to let her fairytale ending slip away.

During a Friday appearance on The View, the actress admitted her relationship with husband Will Kopelman is one she will never take for granted.

“You know me, I would never have messed this up. This is the most important thing I’ll ever do with my life,” she said. “I chose well, I’m so lucky he loves me back. It’s fantastic.”

Sharing that the art consultant is “a nice Jewish man from a nice Jewish family,” Barrymore has happily embraced Kopelman’s religion, and plans to raise the couple’s daughter Olive in the faith as well.

“I’m a shiksa. I do the seders and we do Passover. I haven’t converted yet, [but] Olive will be raised traditionally,” she explains. “We had a very traditional wedding ceremony with Rabbi Rubenstein and I did the ketubah. We wore the yamakas and we did the chuppah.”

Her decision to delve into practicing Judaism has brought an inner peace to the new mom. “I’m there, I love it! It’s a beautiful faith and I’m so honored to be around it,” she says. “It’s so family-oriented … The stories are so beautiful and it’s incredibly enlightening. I’m really happy.”

But while Barrymore is continuing tradition in some ways, she’s adamant that history will not be repeating itself in others — especially when it comes to her daughter’s happiness.

“I was such a hippie growing up, but I’m like the least loosey-goosey parent. I’m like bedtime, structure, feeding time because this baby is so happy knowing when everything is happy,” she notes.

“And I as a parent succeed and thrive knowing when everything is happening [under] that type of structure.”

Although she is without “a shred of remorse” over her own upbringing — “I celebrate my journey [because] I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t done everything I did,” she explains — Barrymore, 37, is not willing to take any risks with Olive’s childhood.

“I grew up very differently … which was really fun, but I think kids need structure so I would not just throw caution to the wind and hope everything works out,” she states. ”I will make sure that it does in a very timely manner.”

– Anya Leon

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

The first soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq war has received a double-arm transplant.

Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco, who is from New York City, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009.

He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.

The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.

"He was the first quad amputee to survive" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there have been four others since then, said Brendan Marrocco's father, Alex Marrocco. "He was really excited to get new arms."

The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.

Surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference with the patient on Tuesday.

The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins, and is the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States. Lee led three of those earlier operations when he previously worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.

Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms, Lee said.

"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.

While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the novel immune suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.

Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants. Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it.

Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.

Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new minimal immune suppression approach.

Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been living with his older brother in a handicapped-accessible home on New York's Staten Island built with the help of several charities.

The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from a tube in his throat during the long surgery, decided that he sounded like Al Pacino, and started doing movie lines.

"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.

___

AP writer Alex Dominguez contributed to this report.

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Unarmed man killed by deputies was shot in the back, autopsy says

A Culver City man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after a pursuit in November was struck by bullets five times in the back and once each in the right hip and right forearm, also from behind, according to an autopsy report obtained by The Times.

Jose de la Trinidad, a 36-year-old father of two, was killed Nov. 10 by deputies who believed he was reaching for a weapon after a pursuit. But a witness to the shooting said De la Trinidad, who was unarmed, was complying with deputies and had his hands above his head when he was shot.

Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating the shooting.

De la Trinidad was shot five times in the upper and lower back, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's report dated Nov. 13. The report describes four of those wounds as fatal. He was also shot in the right forearm and right hip, with both shots entering from behind, the report found.

DOCUMENT: Jose de la Trinidad autopsy report

"Here's a man who complied, did what he was supposed to, and was gunned down by trigger-happy deputies," said Arnoldo Casillas, the family's attorney, who provided a copy of the autopsy report to The Times. He said he planned to sue the Sheriff's Department.

A sheriff's official declined to discuss specifics of the autopsy report because of the ongoing investigation. But he emphasized that the report's findings would be included in the department's determination of what happened that night.

"The sheriff and our department extend its condolences to the De la Trinidad" family, said Steve Whitmore, a sheriff's spokesman.

"Deadly force is always a last resort," he said. "The deputies involved were convinced that the public was in danger when they drew their weapons."

On Saturday, relatives of De la Trinidad and about 100 other people marched through the streets of Compton, shouting, "No justice, no peace! No killer police!"

His widow, Rosie de la Trinidad, joined the march with the couple's two young daughters.

"He was doing everything he was supposed to," she said of her husband, fighting back tears. "All we're asking for is justice."

Jose de la Trinidad was shot minutes after leaving his niece's quinceañera with his brother Francisco. He was riding in the passenger seat of his brother's car when deputies tried to pull them over for speeding about 10:20 p.m., authorities said. After a brief car chase, De la Trinidad got out of the car in the 1900 block of East 122nd Street in Compton and was shot by deputies.

The Sheriff's Department maintains that the deputies opened fire only after De la Trinidad appeared to reach for his waist, where he could have been concealing a weapon.

But a woman who witnessed the officer-involved shooting told investigators that De la Trinidad had complied with deputies' orders to stop running and put his hands on his head to surrender when two deputies shot him. The witness said she watched the shooting from her bedroom window across the street.

"I know what I saw," the witness, Estefani — who asked that her last name not be used — said at the time. "His hands were on his head when they started shooting."

According to the deputies' account: De la Trinidad jumped out of the passenger seat. His brother took off again in the car. One of the four deputies on the scene gave chase in his cruiser, leaving De la Trinidad on the sidewalk and three deputies standing in the street with their weapons drawn.

The deputies said De la Trinidad then appeared to reach for his waistband, prompting two of them to fire shots at him. The unarmed man died at the scene.

Unbeknown to the deputies at the time, Estefani watched the scene unfold from her bedroom window. A short while later, she told The Times, two sheriff's deputies canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses came to her door.

The deputies, she said, repeatedly asked her which direction De la Trinidad was facing, which she perceived as an attempt to get her to change her story.

"I told them, 'You're just trying to confuse me,' and then they stopped," she said. Authorities later interviewed Estefani a second time.

Whitmore said the two deputies involved in the shooting were assigned desk duties immediately after the incident but returned to patrol five days later. He said this was standard practice for deputies involved in shootings.

Although such investigations typically take months, Whitmore said the department has given special urgency to this case and hopes to complete its probe in a timely manner.

"We want to have answers about what happened that night soon rather than later," he said. "Even then, we know it doesn't change the grief the family is experiencing."

As with all deputy-involved shootings, De la Trinidad's killing is subject to investigation by the district attorney, the sheriff's homicide and internal affairs bureaus and the Sheriff's Executive Force Review Committee.

wesley.lowery@latimes.com

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The Lede Blog: Fire at a Nightclub in Southern Brazil

Victims of the fire are attended by medics.

An intense fire ripped through a nightclub crowded with university students in southern Brazil early on Sunday morning, leaving behind a scene of horror, with bodies piled in the club’s bathrooms and on the street.

At least 232 people were killed, many of them students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs at a local university, police officials said.

As Simon Romero reports, a flare from a band’s pyrotechnic show ignited the fire in the nightclub, called Kiss, in the southern city of Santa Maria. Rescue workers continued to haul bodies from the still-smoldering building on Sunday.

Amateur videos posted to YouTube showed scenes of chaos as medics scurried over the bodies of victims who appeared to be unconscious, checking for signs of life.

Medics rush to care for victims of the fire.

Officials and witnesses say that security guards at the club had locked some exits, sewing panic as people attempted to flee the flames and smoke.

“Only after a multitude pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, said in comments posted on Facebook.

Shortly before the fire, a club D.J. posted a photo on Facebook from inside the crowded club apparently showing the pyrotechnic display on stage.

A short time later, another photo that was said to be taken outside the club and widely disseminated through social media showed smoke billowing from the front entrance.

BOATE KISS PEGANDO FOGO! http://t.co/tdV2DO4q

— Boatos SM ® #LUTO (@BoatoSM) 27 Jan 13

The fire quickly engulfed the building.

Firefighters and volunteers who used T-shirts to protect themselves from the smoke struggled to pull people from the burning building.

Firefighters and volunteers tried to pull people from the burning building

Photos from the scene showed frantic friends and family members gathered outside the club and a hospital.

As Mr. Romero reports, witnesses said the fire started about 2 a.m. after the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, took the stage. At least one member of the five-person band, which is based in Santa Maria and advertised its use of pyrotechnics, was said to have been killed in the fire.

Overcrowding and a disregard for fire safety codes have led to deadly blazes at nightclubs in the past, though Sunday’s tragedy in Brazil is among the worst.

In 2003 in Rhode Island, also fire set off by a pyrotechnic display at a club killed about 100 people. A fire that erupted under similar circumstances in Russia left almost as many dead in 2009.

And in Luoyang, China in 2000, 309 people were killed in a fire that broke out at a dance hall, forcing some to leap from high-rise windows.

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Adam Levine & Friends Have 'Laid Back' Lunch in N.Y.C.

Caught in the Act

01/27/2013 at 03:30 PM EST

Before Adam Levine proved he was hilarious when he hosted Saturday Night Live, he kept his friends in stitches in New York on Monday.

Levine was spotted at The Mercer Kitchen around 2 p.m., an onlooker tells PEOPLE.

"He looked really laid back and seemed to be in a great mood," the source adds. "He was laughing a lot and was really enthralled in the conversation the whole table was having."

Joined by a group of guys and one girl – who was wearing a very big hat – Levine, 33, kept things casual in a gray hoodie and jeans.

– Jennifer Cress

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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West

New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.

Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.

There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.

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CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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Teacher accused of molesting 20 student may have more victims, police say

This story has been corrected. See note below.

An Orange County investigation into a former Los Angeles elementary school teacher is being reopened after the man was charged with molesting a dozen students at a Wilmington grade school.

The earlier investigation into the relations between Robert Pimentel and four youths – one from Newport Beach, three from Long Beach – was dropped because of “insufficient evidence, lack of corroboration, problems with the availability of witnesses and other evidentiary issues," the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

But in light of Pimentel’s arrest, the case will now be forwarded to the Los Angeles County district attorney.

Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the Orange County district attorney’s office, said prosecutors in L.A. had requested that they handle “all of our charges as well as their charges.” No details of the earlier Orange County investigation were made public.

Pimentel’s attorney, Richard Knickerbocker, said the former teacher is “absolutely innocent” and cautioned that the accusations are just that.

The Newport Beach resident and former youth soccer coach is being held on $12-million bail. He is charged with molesting a dozen elementary school students in 2011 and 2012, though Los Angeles police allege there are a total of 20 child victims and one adult.

Schroeder said Newport Beach detectives first submitted a case involving the four children in 2005 and that her office twice returned the case to police for further investigation. Ultimately, it was decided not to file charges, she said.

Pimentel volunteered for AYSO for six years as a referee and about one year as a coach in the Newport Beach area. He was suspended last March after he told the soccer organization that he was under investigation by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Pimentel coached boys and had a child who played youth soccer, said George Passantino, an AYSO spokesman.

Although neither the district nor law enforcement contacted AYSO at the time, Pimentel's volunteer privileges were suspended immediately after the league learned of the investigation, as is standard any time allegations arise, he said.

"AYSO takes this very, very seriously, and when any type of a concern of this sort comes up, it is addressed," Passantino said. "It's not casting judgment, but we're making sure those kids are safe. You've got 500,000 kids. That's a big responsibility, and we're proud of the reputation we have in that arena."

No players or parents have reported abuse by Pimentel to AYSO, but the league is encouraging players' parents to contact authorities if they have any relevant information.
In the statement, the league also said it is "prepared to work closely" with law enforcement, should that become necessary.

[Updated, Saturday, 1 p.m.: This story initially said that  Pimentel coached youth soccer for seven years. He volunteered for AYSO as a referee for six years and as a coach for about a year.]

ALSO:

Man is arrested on suspicion of twice evading CHP in pursuit

Secret jail tapes of Seal Beach murder suspect must be handed over

After several hours, burglary suspect climbs down from East L.A. roof

--Jill Cowan and Richard Winton

Photo: Robert Pimentel in court Thursday. Credit: Associated Press.

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