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Daily Archives: November 22, 2010

by John Dee | November 22, 2010

2 year old boy falls to his death at Staples Center

I have sat in the Staples Center suites many times. Its situated like this. There is sort of a hotel room that you walk into overlooking the basketball court. There are couches and chairs and flat screen televisions on the walls. The suites are VERY nice.

In front of the suite are three rows of seats. In the image above, those are my feet on the wall of the front row of seats in front of the suite. There is nothing to prevent a person from falling over the edge. This is to allow an unobstructed view of the court.

Now I don’t know the parents of this kid, but I do know that I would never take a small child to a laker game, put him in a suite and leave him unattended. I have at times had to ask friends at games to please stay away from the edge when they are drinking a bit too much out of fear of them falling over the side. JD

Inside a Staples Center suite.

A young boy fell to his death from a luxury suite at Los Angeles’ Staples Center on Sunday night, according to a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

The boy, who was between 2 and 3 years old, fell from the suite around 10 p.m. local time, Sgt. Frank Alvelais told CNN. The boy was transported to the USC Medical Center, where he later died, Alvelais said.

The boy fell from the suite a few minutes after the conclusion of a NBA game between the Los Angles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors, CNN affiliate KTLA-TV reported.

The third deck of the Staples Center — where the luxury suite is located — has a roughly 50-foot drop, according to KTLA.

A Witness said the boy was still moving his legs and arms as he was being put on a stretcher, KTLA reported.

Authorities are investigating details of what the boy was doing and how exactly he fell, Alvelais said. The boy’s name has not been released.

88-year-old husband after shooting wife at nursing home

SEAL BEACH, Calif. – An 86-year-old woman was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in her bed at a Southern California nursing home Sunday, and her husband of nearly seven decades was found sitting next to her and arrested on suspicion of murder, police said.

The couple’s daughter told the Los Angeles Times the shooting a month before their 70th anniversary was “a mercy killing” by a husband who had long fed and bathed his wife as she suffered from dementia and decline.

Reports of gunshots at Country Villa Healthcare Center came at about noon, and within a few minutes officers arrived from the California Highway Patrol, Orange County Sheriff’s Department and three local police departments, Seal Beach police Sgt. Steve Bowles said.

A tactical team surrounded the facility and soon entered. Inside they found Clara Laird dead of a single gunshot wound to the head, and found her husband Roy Charles Laird in a nearby chair, Bowles said. Officers recovered a .38 caliber revolver from Roy Laird.

“It was in his pocket,” Bowles said, and added Laird gave no trouble to officers who arrested him.

Laird was being held at Seal Beach jail Sunday night.

The scene at the nursing home was “chaotic” on a weekend afternoon with many visitors in addition to patients and staff, Bowles said.

Bowles could offer no information on the motive or health of the couple, nor say whether any trouble had been reported between them.

The couple’s daughter, Kathy Palmateer, 68, told Times that Roy Laird had insisted on helping dress and feed his wife as dementia took hold.

He reluctantly agreed three months ago to check her into Country Villa — near their home in the retirement community of Leisure World — after she took a bad turn and was unable to walk, sit up in a wheelchair, feed herself or recognize many of those around her.

“Her mind was gone,” Palmateer told the Times as she waited outside the police station to see her father. “It was a mercy killing.”

Palmateer briefly met and talked to her father, the newspaper said, and discussed his getting a lawyer and getting his medications in jail, she said.
Bowles said prosecutors would decide on charges this week.

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Tagged as dementia, Kathy Palmateer, Orange County, Roy Charles Laird, Roy Laird, Seal Beach, Southern California