A man who was caught, convicted and sentenced for trying to get into a car in a busy intersection in Studio City last week was sentenced to 90 days and was released from jail after only one day, according to Los Angeles Police.
The victim of the crime wasn’t happy about the news.
“It makes me nervous to think that he was sentenced and taken to jail, and he’s already out,” the woman told Studio City Patch. “It’s just really hard to believe.”
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Hard to believe, indeed, but Studio City Senior Lead Officer Mike Lewis, from the North Hollywood Division of the LAPD said he wasn’t surprised of the outcome. With jail overcrowding in Los Angeles right now, people convicted of minor crimes are released from jail rather quickly—even if they are convicted of the crimes or admit to them, as in this case.
“This is becoming the norm, more and more,” Lewis said. “But it is important to report these kinds of incidents anyway.”
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At some point, Lewis pointed out, the revolving door can stop.
On the morning of Aug. 6, the single woman in the car was driving in a residential area near the Los Angeles River only a few blocks from the CBS Radford Studios at Valleyheart Drive. She was turning right onto the busy Laurel Canyon Boulevard during the morning rush hour.
“Suddenly this guy tried to get in my car,” said the woman, who asked to remain unidentified. “Thank God I had the passenger door locked. He was trying to jump in.”
The victim called police and after she calmed down at work, called Studio City Patch because she feared that he may try to do the same thing to someone else. She described the suspect as a young Latino man about 18 to 20, wearing black shorts and a black sweatshirt. She said, “He looked like a gangbanger."
She also clearly saw a teardrop tattoo underneath one eye. Police said the tattoo often means that the suspect has been in jail before—or possibly even killed someone.
Within two hours of Patch’s story going up on the site, and filing the police report, police asked the victim to identify the suspect. Police used a neutral location away from her place of work.
“He brought the guy in a squad car and I was inside a coffee shop with another officer and I identified him,” the victim said. “It was definitely him.”
Police said they had no other reports of a similar incident, and the area was not a crime-ridden part of Studio City.
Alberto Alejandro Delatorregarcia was arrested, but not for carjacking.
“He never actually got into the car, and he didn’t harm her, so we had to see what we could charge him with,” Lewis said.
Delatorregarcia told police that the woman in the car was offering him a lift—that’s all.
On Aug. 6, Delatorregarcia was taken to Los Angeles County Jail.
On Aug. 7, the City Attorney's Office filed two misdemeanor counts against him: Charge section 10853 Malicious Mischief to a Vehicle and 10854 Vehicle Tampering. It was give a case number: LAV-3PY04098-01.
On Aug. 9, Delatorregarcia plead guilty to the first charge, and the second charge was dismissed. In the Van Nuys Courthouse West, he was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
On Aug. 10, Delatorregarcia was released.
Neither the media relations people at LAPD nor the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department would release a booking photo to Patch to show what Delatorregarcia look like in case he is in the area again. Both police departments said that the crime wasn't big enough nor serious enough to release his mugshot.
"The police thanked me for reporting this because they said that a lot of people don’t want to report things like this, or they don’t want to give their names, and this is the only way they could get people like this off the street,” said the longtime Studio City resident. “Of course, now it makes me wonder if it was worth it all, I mean, look, he’s out again."
But Lewis said that he hopes the story about the revolving door doesn’t discourage others from reporting similar crimes. “At least they are off the streets for a while,” he said. "We can arrest them, but we can't keep them in jail."
It may have been a minor crime for the suspect, but not for the victim.
“I was terrified, I still am, I’ll never forget it,” she said.
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