The Los Angeles Police Department just started looking into officers’ responses in two San Fernando Valley homes where they checked out reports of violent assaults but didn’t find the victims because they didn’t go inside. In both cases, callers reported hearing or seeing a violent assault to 911 dispatchers, and later a body was found at each place. On Tuesday, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell spoke about the incidents during a meeting of the city’s civilian police commission, the department’s oversight board. McDonnell admitted officers didn’t enter either home right away and mentioned he’s investigating their responses.
Menashe Hidra’s body got found on April 26 inside his fifth-floor Valley Village apartment after someone broke into a neighboring unit, jumped from the balcony to his, and attacked him. Three days before that, neighbors called cops to say they heard screaming, then a man yelling, “I am going to die. I am going to die,” according to sources in law enforcement. Officers went to those calls, knocked on the door, and left without seeing anything. On the same day Hidra’s body was discovered, they also found the body of Aleksandre Modebadze, who got beaten to death inside his Woodland Hills home. In that situation, a woman inside the home called 911 and reported the assault, but the officers who arrived knocked and left. They only found Modebadze, severely injured, when they came back later.
At the meeting on Tuesday, Commissioner Rasha Gerges Shields asked the chief how the department figures out whether a call is a possible fake call, often called a “swatting” call, meant to get a big police response to the victim’s address, or a real call where “someone who may need your help” is inside. It’s tough, the chief said. When officers get there and no one talks to them, 911 operators will try to call back the original caller for more info and check out past incidents at the same address to help officers decide. Officers will also try talking to neighbors before going into a place, McDonnell said. “There’s a sensitivity to not kick in a door and go into a place,” he said. “So we’re doing a pretty deep dive on that.” Right now, the two homicides don’t seem connected, the chief added.
Even though they caught the suspects in the Woodland Hills homicide, the man seen on Ring door camera footage wandering the halls of the Valley Village apartment complex where Hidra was killed is still out there. Investigators think they know who the attacker is, and he has a history of violent offenses. Hidra’s body was found inside his top-floor apartment at the Ashton Sherman Village complex around 2:30 p.m., by Van Nuys division officers doing a welfare check after a friend got worried. He was pronounced dead at the scene. He had a puncture wound to the head, and there was blood next to him on the floor, according to sources familiar with the police report.
Officers got called to the apartment three days earlier by neighbors. In a recording of a police dispatch call before 4 a.m. on April 23, a dispatcher is heard reporting the call to officers in the field: “Van Nuys units, possible ADW [assault with a deadly weapon] in progress … caller hears two males fighting and wrestling, banging and yelling.” Multiple law enforcement sources say police officers showed up at the scene but never went into the apartment. A day before they found Hidra’s body, LAPD officers checked out a burglary at the vacant apartment next door. Inside, they found a shattered skylight and dried blood, according to two sources not authorized to talk about the investigation.
Investigators think the killer might have broken into the vacant apartment next to Hidra’s through a skylight, then moved from the unit’s balcony to his. There were bloody handprints and marks on the wall between Hidra’s balcony and the vacant apartment afterward when a reporter visited with residents last week. Blood was also on the door handle of a stairwell exit, where the attacker is seen running out of the building in a video released by police. The suspect was wearing a dark hooded jacket, a white shirt, and blue jeans on the day of the crime.
On the same day they found Hidra’s body, in Woodland Hills, Modebadze, 47, suffered a fatal head injury. Three attackers broke in during the early hours of Saturday, according to Los Angeles police. A woman called LAPD around 12:30 a.m. and reported three people had broken into her home and were beating her partner before the call suddenly cut out, according to sources in law enforcement. The 911 operator tried to call back multiple times without success. Shortly before 1 a.m., officers got to the home but no one answered the door, there was no noise inside, and the blinds were down, the sources told The Times. Modebadze was later found by officers badly beaten with a traumatic head injury and eventually died from his injuries. The woman filed a complaint with the LAPD against its officers for their response. LAPD Marshal’s Taskforce officers, with the help of the FBI, found suspects in Modebadze’s killing within hours and arrested them.
