Crews repair ruptured water pipe at UCLA
LOS ANGELES -- Crews on Saturday finished major repairs on a nearly century-old water main that burst and poured 20 million gallons of water onto the University of California, Los Angeles campus, ruining the new court at Pauley Pavilion.
Workers completed replacing the ruptured pipe junction on Sunset Boulevard, welded it and installed a pair of 36-inch butterfly valves that weigh two tons each, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said.
The new section will be reinforced with concrete blocks and extra steel plating to protect the joint, the agency said. The section next will be tested and slowly brought back to its regular water pressure.
"Crews will carefully adjust valves in the area to return flow to the pipeline. This puts stress on pipes in the local water distribution system, which could potentially lead to leaks or pipe breaks," the department warned in its statement.
3-year-old's fatal shooting leads to arrest
PHILADELPHIA -- The shooting death of a 3-year-old girl sitting on a front porch was decried as senseless violence Saturday, with one family friend saying, "No baby deserves to die like that."
Police on Saturday identified the girl as Tynirah Borum. She was hit in the chest by a stray bullet while getting her hair braided about 9:40 p.m. Friday in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia, police said. Officers put her in their patrol car and rushed her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Three adults were injured, one critically.
"She was everything to us," Renee Bradford, a friend of Tynirah's mother, told WCAU-TV. "She didn't deserve this. She was simply trying to get her hair done. For her to get shot in the chest? She's a baby. No baby deserves to die like that."
Police said Saturday that they were speaking with a person of interest. No arrests have been made.
Police said the gunfire broke out during an argument between a man on a bicycle and a 24-year-old man. The cyclist fired three shots from a handgun, shooting the other man in the head, police said. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
Stray bullets hit Tynirah, a 28-year-old female bystander shot in the left arm and a 21-year-old male bystander shot in the right leg.
Gunman killed after 8-hour standoff in LA
PICO RIVERA, Calif. -- A wanted parolee who took a woman hostage and held sheriff's deputies at bay for eight hours was killed Saturday along with the woman's husband, who died in a shootout, authorities and witnesses said.
Cedric Ramirez, 24, died after a Los Angeles County sheriff's SWAT team stormed the home in the Los Angeles suburb of Pico Rivera about 1:30 a.m., a Los Angeles County sheriff's office statement said.
Ramirez, a gang member with local ties, was wanted for car theft and being an ex-felon in possession of a gun, authorities said. He ran when deputies tried to arrest him about 5:30 p.m. Friday.
Ramirez went to the back of a nearby home, where he traded gunfire with deputies, then broke a window and crawled inside, authorities said.
Thousands fight 6 wildfires in California
SAN FRANCISCO -- Thousands of federal, state and local firefighters were attacking at least six major wildfires in central and far northern California on Saturday, five of which had grown rapidly overnight and prompted evacuations.
The scope and intensity of the blazes, three of them sparked by dry lightning as the state copes with a severe drought, was comparable with the fire activity California doesn't usually see until September, California Department of Forestry and Fire protection Dennis Mathisen said.
The fires are burning as far south as the Sierra National Forest, about 70 miles from where another fire sparked evacuations in and around Yosemite National Park last week, and as far north as the state border, where a blaze that began in southern Oregon had consumed 5.5 square miles in California's Siskiyou County.
One of the most dangerous fires was burning in Modoc County near the Day community, where about 150 homes were under a mandatory evacuation order.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 08/03/2014