U.S.-Mexico drug-smuggling tunnel closed in California

1 of 4. U.S. attorney Laura Duffy speaks during a news conference about a newly discovered drug smuggling tunnel in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, California October 31, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Denis Poroy

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO | Thu Oct 31, 2013 10:35pm EDT

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - U.S. authorities have shut down a secret underground tunnel equipped with electricity, ventilation and a rail system for smuggling drugs between a San Diego industrial park and Tijuana, Mexico, officials said on Thursday.

Border control and drug enforcement agents seized more than 17,000 pounds (7,700 kilograms) of marijuana and 325 pounds (147 kg) of cocaine from the tunnel, a rented warehouse where the passageway ended on the U.S. side and arrested three men arrested in a night raid on Wednesday.

The bust marked the first time cocaine has been found in connection with more than 75 cross-border smuggling tunnels that have been uncovered since 2008 along the Southwest border between the United States and Mexico, officials said.

Tunnels discovered earlier were used mainly for marijuana, which because of its bulk is harder to smuggle inside cars and trucks, said William Sherman, Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in charge in San Diego.

The tunnel, which was shut down on Wednesday, was built with one access point in a warehouse in the Otay Mesa industrial park of San Diego and another in Tijuana, Mexico, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy described the latest passageway as a "super tunnel," saying it was equipped with an electronic rail system, hydraulic doors and a ventilation system.

The Sinaloa drug cartel is believed to have built and operated the tunnel, which ran 1,760 feet from Mexico to the United States.

"The tunnels take hundreds of thousands of man hours and millions of dollars to complete," Sherman said.

U.S. prosecutors filed charges of possession with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana against the three men arrested in connection with the tunnel. If convicted, each faces a mandatory sentence of 10 years to life in prison.

Ironically, the entrance to the warehouse at the terminus of the tunnel is two doors down from the Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce. Chamber officials declined to speak to the media about the warehouse.

(Reporting by Marty Graham; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Steve Gorman and Christopher Wilson)

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Santa Monica sues for control over historic California airport

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES | Thu Oct 31, 2013 10:05pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The city of Santa Monica filed a lawsuit on Thursday to wrest control of its municipal airport from the federal government, marking the latest chapter in a decades-long dispute over the future of the historic general aviation hub.

Filed against the Federal Aviation Administration in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the suit comes weeks after the fiery crash-landing of a small business jet killed four people and reignited a debate over safety at the 86-year-old facility.

Critics of the airport, where various Hollywood celebrities and show business executives keep their private planes, seized on the September 29 wreck as a wake-up call to hazards they say the facility poses to densely populated surrounding communities.

The crash occurred about 150 feet from homes nearest the airport in the seaside town west of Los Angeles.

The site's unusually close proximity to homes stems from a real estate boom that coincided with the airport's development during and after World War Two, when the property was leased to the U.S. government and Douglas Aircraft Co. expanded its airplane manufacturing there.

The property was turned back to the city after the war, but the FAA has insisted that the city must keep the site open as an airport in perpetuity, under the terms of the 1948 transfer agreement.

Santa Monica officials said they are challenging the FAA claims as unconstitutional and seeking a court declaration that the city holds clear title to the airport property, which some local groups have long sought to convert into a public park.

FAA officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying they do not discuss pending litigation as a matter of policy.

Homeowners and municipal officials have battled for decades to curb flight activity at Santa Monica Municipal Airport or to close it altogether, facing stiff opposition from the FAA, aircraft owners, pilots and businesses connected with the site.

The contingent of well-heeled, celebrity aircraft owners said to have kept planes there include Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

In addition to neighborhood objections to noise and air pollution, city officials have complained the airport's single 5,000-foot (1,524-meter) runway is too short to safely accommodate some of the larger, faster jets allowed to take off and land there.

The Santa Monica City Council adopted a resolution in 1981 seeking to close the airport when legally possible, triggering an FAA lawsuit. The parties later settled in a deal the Santa Monica officials say obligates the city to keep the airport open only through 2015.

The FAA has taken the position that the city is required to keep operating the airport until at least 2023 under assurances it gave in exchange for federal airport improvement grants.

The FAA also asserts that the city must keep the airport open indefinitely because it acquired the property cost-free from the government after World War Two under terms of the federal Surplus Property Act. (By Steve Gorman; Editing by Paul Simao)

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California woman who killed pimp as teen is free on parole

Sara Kruzan, 35, is seen in a handout photo from the California Department of Corrections taken July 8, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/California Department of Corrections/Handout

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES | Thu Oct 31, 2013 6:17pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California woman who served nearly two decades in prison for killing her pimp at age 16 was released on parole on Thursday, after becoming the face of a campaign to reform the treatment of young offenders.

Sara Kruzan, 35, left the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla before dawn, state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Luis Patino said in a statement.

Kruzan was taken to Orange County in Southern California, where she will live, and processed at a parole office, Patino said.

Earlier this week, when California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, upheld her parole, the decision was hailed as a watershed moment by lawmakers and activists who had fought on her behalf for more than five years.

State Senator Leland Yee called Kruzan the poster child for a bill that became law this year, allowing offenders sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed before age 18 the chance to petition for a new hearing on their sentence.

Kruzan, who advocates say was raised by an abusive, drug-addicted single mother, said in a 2009 Human Rights Watch video that she was sexually assaulted at age 11 by George Howard, the man she would later kill.

Within two years, Howard had her working as a child prostitute. In March 1994, then 16-year-old Kruzan shot him to death in a motel room in Riverside, California.

Kruzan lost a bid to stand trial as a juvenile and a Riverside County jury found her guilty of first-degree murder.

A judge sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Human Rights Watch video, in which she expresses remorse for the crime and describes her grim life as a prostitute, drew widespread attention to her case.

The year after the video was released, then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, commuted her prison sentence to 25 years to life, which made her eligible to be considered for parole.

Earlier this year, the California Board of Parole Hearings found her suitable for release, sending their recommendation to Brown, who notified the board on Monday that he would not intervene to stop her from being released.

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Scott Malone and Gunna Dickson)

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California man agrees to plead guilty to extortion of Miss Teen USA

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES | Thu Oct 31, 2013 7:55pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 19-year-old California man has agreed to plead guilty to charges he hacked into the webcams of Miss Teen USA and other young women to take nude pictures in an extortion scheme, court papers revealed on Thursday.

Jared Abrahams agreed to plead guilty to charges of unauthorized access of protected computers and extortion linked to the case, the documents said.

Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf, also 19, came forward to media organizations in September identifying herself as one of the targets of the hacking, which ensnared at least 12 young women between 2012 and June 2013. Wolf told NBC's "Today" program she had gone to high school with Abrahams in the Southern California city of Temecula.

The women, who were only identified by initials, were in their late teens or early 20s and one lived in Ireland and another was in Canada, a statement of fact in the plea agreement said.

Abrahams, who lived in Riverside County at the time, would gain access to the Facebook and other social media accounts of the women and remotely take pictures of them by accessing their webcams, the plea agreement said. Many of the photos he took were of them nude, the document said.

He would then threaten to post the pictures on the women's social media pages unless they sent him more naked photos or videos or spoke to him by video chat on Skype and did what he demanded for five minutes, the court papers said.

Abrahams signed the plea agreement with federal prosecutors on October 22 and, amid media reports of the deal, a representative for the U.S. Attorney's Office on Thursday sent out an electronic copy of the document.

Abrahams faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison and a fine of $1 million, but in exchange for a guilty plea the U.S. Attorney's Office agreed to ask a judge to sentence him to between 27 and 33 months behind bars.

He is expected to formally enter his plea at a court hearing within the first two weeks of November. Alan Eisner, an attorney for Abrahams, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

In September, Eisner said his client and his family want to "accept the responsibility" and "apologize to the victims, not only the girls, but their families."

Abrahams until recently attended college and is on the autism spectrum, which "affects his ability to engage in reciprocal communications," Eisner said at the time.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

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