LA Times Reports on Westlake Fire Set By an ... Illegal Alien!

In the previous post, we learned about a devastating fire which claimed five lives.

The Los Angeles Times the reported that the perpetrartor, Johnny Josue Sanchez, is an illegal alien from Honduras.

A Honduran citizen charged with murdering five homeless people in an arson fire was in the United States illegally and had been arrested three times in the months before the blaze in a vacant Westlake building where transients were squatting, officials said Friday.

Three times!

Johnny Josue Sanchez, 21, started the fire to avenge a beating he took in a dispute over occupying a room in the building, a law enforcement source said.

Incredible. The destruction eating up Los Angeles has gone from bad to worse.

Sanchez was among a group of people arrested by border patrol agents in 2012 for illegally entering the country at the southeastern California border, officials said. He was released a week later after agents determined that he had no previous immigration violations or criminal history, officials said.

He broke the law! He was in the country illegally! What more was needed?! He should have been deported immediately.

Parties, fights and trash fires: Signs of trouble seen weeks before arson at Westlake apartment

Sanchez was placed under supervision and ordered to report regularly to immigration authorities, though for “unknown reasons” deportation proceedings were never begun, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice.

DACA, perhaps?

He quit reporting to immigration officials in August 2014, Kice said, adding that the agency’s policy is “to focus on individuals who pose a public safety threat” and not search for those who fail to report unless they have a criminal background or a history of repeated illegal entry.

Wow. "only those who pose a public threat." Do we have to wait for more innocent citizens to die before our country, our state starts enforcing the immigration laws?

ICE generally does not issue requests to law enforcement to hold people like Sanchez who are in the country without legal authorization but have no criminal history, Kice said.

He had a criminal history the moment he entered the country illegally. How can anyone miss this?

The Los Angeles Police Department arrested Sanchez in January on suspicion of domestic violence, and again in May and June on suspicion of drug possession -- most recently on June 8, days before Monday’s blaze. He was released the next day.

He had committed numerous crimes. And yet the local police continued letting him go.

The Los Angeles Police Department stopped honoring immigration holds in 2014 unless a warrant is issued or a judge has vetted the request.  Federal officials at the time warned the policy could lead to the release of dangerous criminals, but police said it would build community trust and encourage citizens to report crime.

This disregard for the rule of law must cease. These crimes demonstrate an utter contempt for our country's safety and security.

Sanchez now faces murder and attempted murder charges, which could bring the death penalty. The fire came as city officials struggle to identify funding to house a growing homeless population, and street encampments stretching from the Tujunga Wash to San Pedro.

Notice how the Los Angeles Times focuses on the homelessness issue, but nothing about the lax border security as a key factor in these murders.

At several tent cities around Westlake, near MacArthur Park, homeless people said they and other friends had been holing up for months in the abandoned building, a former medical and acupuncture clinic, to sleep and use drugs. The fire was a chilling reminder of the hazards they face living in the streets, several said.

Abandoned buildings, high rents, difficult costs of living.

A sluggish economy, bad fiscal policies, lack of development.

And illegal immigration all sparked a terrible tragedy in Westlake.

“I don’t go in abandoned buildings; I don’t trust them,” said one woman, who gave her name only as “Honey Bunny.” “But when it comes to being homeless, there’s a certain desperation. Some people make it in tents, other people have to be inside, whether it’s to hide what they’re doing or just to say they have a place to live.”

Acquaintances and law enforcement sources said Sanchez confronted a transgender squatter who entered part of the building he considered his territory. After being beaten by the squatter. Sanchez became enraged and set several fires near his room, the sources said. Sanchez’s assailant and a companion escaped through a window, but five other homeless people — three men and two women — died as fire engulfed the building, authorities said.

Now transgenderism features in this urban horror, too? And this "transgender" beat up Sanchez.

Jerry Dean Clemons, 59, and Mary Ann Davis, 44, were found in a back room on the building’s second floor, and died either from smoke inhalation or by being crushed when the roof collapsed, authorities said. The bodies of another man and woman were also found in the room.

A close relative said Davis and Clemons were from Ottumwa, Iowa, a town of 26,000, and had come to Los Angeles just days before the fire to join her son. The son was tentatively named as a fire victim based on his ID card, but authorities are awaiting dental records for a positive identification.

Fallen debris blocked escape for a fifth person who burned to death in a hallway, authorities said. The person remained unidentified Friday.

Let this moral insanity sink in. Why do we have illegals wandering around in broad daylight then committing crimes at night in Los Angeles?

Homeless people in the neighborhood said they were mourning one of the arson victims, a Watts native they called “Jokerface” because of his broad smile.

“Jokerface was a very good-hearted person, very outgoing and very loud,” said Sahara McFadden, 30, who sometimes cared for his gray pit bull, Gucci.

These homeless people were ... people. They were in need. The city needed to do something more than ignore the rule of law.

McFadden said she had used drugs with Jokerface in the abandoned building in the days leading up to the fire.

At the site, purple bandannas were tied cowboy-style around a pole, a hand-made “RIP Jokeface” poster was decorated with grape clusters and loose grapes were scattered on the sidewalk, an apparent reference to the victim’s roots on Grape Street in Watts.

“I will remember him as laughing and joking with me, not as what happened,” Honey Bunny said. “I wouldn’t wish what he went through on anybody.”

Wake up, Los Angeles! Wake up, California! WAKE UP, AMERICA!