Post by Scumhunter on Feb 4, 2016 14:24:10 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: Vimeo from LA Most Wanted airing)
Nine years have passed since 59-year-old Frutoso Anguiano was stabbed to death in a botched robbery while working as a security guard at a La Puente market. But to his daughter, it feels like it was only yesterday that she lost her father forever.
“It just broke our family,” said Sandra Anguiano, 30, who moved with her mother and two sisters away from the San Gabriel Valley soon after her father’s death. “I just pray every night for justice.”
Despite wide distribution of surveillance footage in the media of four men suspected of killing Anguiano, a Los Angeles’ Most Wanted episode and a Crime Stoppers video, no arrests have been made in the murder of the father of three on the night of May 4, 2006 at Northgate Gonzalez Market.Anguiano’s slaying was among 11,244 homicides recorded by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010, and one among 4,862 that remain unsolved from the same time period, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles News Group.
Sgt. Bill Cotter of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide bureau said detectives still have no idea who killed Anguiano when he went to the second floor of the market at 831 N Hacienda Blvd. close to the end of his shift.
But, Cotter said, there was no reason for the four men to kill the man.
“They outnumbered him and it’s very clear he didn’t know what he was walking into,” Cotter said. “He was just a hard-working man just trying to get his daughters educated and help them in life.”
The surveillance footage shows two young Latino men dressed in black wearing white hats enter the market and go through the back of the store to a flight of stairs. Later on, two other young Latino men, one wearing a red shirt and the other wearing a tan brown hoodie, come into the market and appear to shop for a while before heading to the same flight of stairs. The four then hid upstairs and put on masks and gloves with the intent of robbing the store, Cotter said.
The footage shows the four men later ascending another flight of stairs and accost a female employee before they left. The woman was not injured and could not provide descriptons of the suspects, Cotter said.
Anguiano was found in the upstairs break room in a pool of blood. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
“He was a true victim,” Cotter said. “It just should not have happened.”
Sandra Anguiano remembered her father as the most hard-working person she has ever known. At the time of his death, Frutoso Anguiano had recently taken up the security job in addition to working full-time at a manufacturing warehouse in Industry because the family had been struggling financially, his daughter said.
He was working about 16 hours a day and planned to retire in the near future.
“He was the one providing for the family and in order to make ends meet he had to get a second job,” Sandra Anguiano said.
Since her father’s death, Sandra Anguiano has tried to support her family emotionally and financially, all while working to find her father’s killers. In 2012, she worked with Los Angeles Regional Crime Stoppers to produce a video about her father’s case.
“It’s just frustrating because I feel like my hands are tied,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Sandra Anguiano occasionally calls detectives asking for updates, but they never have new information to share.
“We’ve done several things, but people just don’t recognize or haven’t to date recognized the suspects,” Cotter said. “Obviously, the goal is for (the surveillance footage) to generate information and unfortunately it has not panned out for this one.”
Still, Cotter said he believes the case is solvable.
“There were four men that went in there and did this and in the eyes of the law all four are equally culpable,” he said, adding that the suspects, if charged, could face the death penalty. “I’m confident that there’s people that know about it.”
Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to call Sgt. Bill Cotter at 323-890-5500.
www.sgvtribune.com/general-news/20150829/do-you-recognize-these-men-from-a-fatal-2006-la-puente-botched-robbery (surveillance video included in link)
Thoughts? This case was aired on Los Angeles Most Wanted, but also had a web-exclusive page on AMW's old website, hence the Unsolved on TV section. Let's hope the 10th year will be the charm. Hard to believe there's a surveillance video and this case still isn't solved. Also here's the AMW archive (his name I believe is mispelled as Frutso but it's still a good summary):
web.archive.org/web/20100602133726/http://www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=38759#case
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