May 13, 2007

Man Sentenced in Attack on Radio Reporter

LOS ANGELES – A Boyle Heights man accused of attacking a KABC Radio reporter outside a Boyle Heights charter school was sentenced today, the District Attorney’s office announced.

Ramon Flores, 32, was sentenced to 400 hours of Caltrans service and ordered to pay $174 in restitution to reporter Sandy Wells by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan. He also was placed on three years formal probation.

In exchange for his no contest plea to one count of robbery that he entered on Tuesday, prosecutors dropped the assault with a deadly weapon – an automobile – charge.

On June 1, 2006, Wells had gone to the Academia Semillas del Pueblo Charter School to interview an administrator. There had been news stories on KABC and in other media about the school, its programs and its education philosophies. Flores was dropping off a child at the school when he spotted the reporter. He allegedly chased Wells with the defendant’s rather distinctive Dodge Magnum vehicle, forcing Wells to jump out of the way. Flores took a tape cassette out of the reporter’s recorder during a confrontation on the street.

Flores was arrested on Sept. 21 by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division after one of the detectives working on the case saw a vehicle and driver matching the description of the attacker at the school.