The Arcadia Police Department has stationed three officers in a special trailer outside the Santa Anita Fashion Park mall. They anticipate and increase in shoplifting incidents as Christmas approaches.
Police were still searching for suspects in the murder of Arcadia resident Katherine Skinner, age 19. Miss Skinner was a telecommunications major at Pasadena City College and was employed at Fashion Park.
A nationwide forgery scheme uncovered by the Arcadia Police Department has resulted in the arrest of three men at the Santa Anita Avenue branch of the Bank of America.
Arcadia police arrested two Arcadia High School students 16, and 15, in connection with a December 11 racial incident in which a cross was burned and anti-Asian epithets were scrawled on the front yard of a home in the 200 block of Arbolada Drive. The two boys were booked for damaging property based on ethnic origin and were released to the custody of their parents.
Police are looking into possible connections between 2 murders of elderly women that occurred January 7. Lillian Lehman, 91, was found dead at her Fashion Park Villas condominium in Arcadia, while Dora Peyton, 78, was beaten to death at her Duarte home.
One robbery was foiled at Arcadia's Southland Bank, but earlier the same day another man got away with just over $1,000 from the First Interstate Bank on South Baldwin Ave.
Arcadia police, working with other law enforcement agencies, uncovered a major auto theft ring operating in the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys. Two men were arrested and four cars were recovered from a warehouse in Arcadia.
Crime statistics for the first six months of 1980 show an increase in all categories. There have already been five bank robberies this year. According to Police Chief Charles Mitchell, "We're taking a beating."
According to the Arcadia Police Department's monthly activity report for the month of December, which reports statistics for the entire year, daytime burglaries increased while night burglaries decreased. Also, there were no murders, 3 rapes, 2 attempted rapes, 36 assaults with a gun and 13 arrests for indecent exposure in 1987.
Police detained four teenagers Tuesday for questioning about a lunch time melee Monday involving a dozen youths at Arcadia High School in which a teenager was hit on the head with a lead pipe.
Police have arrested a 16 year old Arcadia High School student on suspicion of firing a gun Monday afternoon at two teenagers involved in an on-campus brawl several hours earlier.
Vatar Kilbashian, of Huntington Jewelers, and his family have vanished. They left, supposedly on vacation, stating their intention to return on January 5. They did not return. A half million dollars in jewelry in missing. Kilbashian also left behind thousands of dollars in bad checks.