Jury Questions LAFD Captain in Murder Trial

A day after he testified that he is not guilty of murdering a 42-year-old San Gabriel woman whose body was found two blocks from his Eagle Rock home, former LAFD Capt. David Del Toro answered a string of clarification questions from jurors who wanted to know everything from whether he drank alcohol regularly to the time he was interviewed by LAPD detectives as a suspect in the homicide.

Sitting tight-lipped in the witness box, with his head occasionally bowed, Del Toro told the jury that he drank on his days off and did not use alcohol as an aid to sleeping. In answer to a question about whether he could have chosen not to work overtime for the fire department, thereby avoiding the exhaustion that he claims contributed to his alcohol-induced stupor on the night of Flores’ murder, Del Toro said he could have made that choice but that firefighters can sometimes be “forced to stay” on the job if there’s nobody to replace them.

(Firefighters also maybe obliged to travel long distances to attend any number of events, said Del Toro, referring somewhat wistfully to the funeral of an LAFD veteran that was underway at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels near the court building this morning. The firefighter, Glenn Allen, died Feb. 18 after being injured on duty when the roof of a building that had caught fire in Hollywood Hills collapsed. Scores of LAFD fire trucks lined Temple Street outside the Superior Court building in tribute to Allen.)

But the question that led to the issue of Del Toro’s guilt—or its absence—had to do with a set of ropes that he used to secure a new water heater in his truck while transporting it from a Home Depot store to his house on Vincent Avenue. In a written note from a juror that Superior Court Judge Lance Ito read aloud, Del Toro was asked why he chose to tie several smaller ropes together instead of using one long rope to secure the water heater.

Del Toro replied that he had a lot of ropes of different lengths in his house, including numerous small ones, which he decided to put to good use by stringing together. After the jury finished with their questions, Deputy District Attorney Robert Grace asked Del Toro where he stored the ropes after unloading the water heater. Del Toro replied that he stored them in the back of his truck—but confirmed, upon being asked by Grace, that he left one short piece of white rope on the counter by the sink in his kitchen.

Because strangulation with a soft ligature—along with blunt-object wounds to the head—is the official cause of Flores’ death, the presence of a single rope in the kitchen raises the suspicion that it might have been used to kill her, especially given that large amounts of her blood were found in the living room next door.

Moreover, in his testimony on Thursday, Del Toro said that he used a set of colored ropes to secure the water heater—and he conceded when Grace confronted him today that he did not mention using a white rope.

“So you left the multicolored ropes in the back of the truck but you left the white rope by the sink?” asked Grace. “Yes,” replied Del Toro.

In another attempt to focus on Del Toro’s possible guilt, prosecutor Grace asked Judge Ito if he could call as a witness an employee of the LAFD Credit Union, Melissa Duchaineau, who received a phone call from Del Toro four or five days after Flores’ body was found on Aug. 16, 2006. Grace informed the judge that Del Toro told Duchaineau that he wanted to withdraw all his funds in the union account and asked her to issue a cashier’s check in his name. He told her further that he would not be able to pick up the check in person because he would be out of the country, said Grace, adding that the Credit Union felt this was an improper request and that it therefore alerted the District Attorney’s office. Clearly, Del Toro, who was on bail at the time, was a flight risk, said Grace—and that “speaks to his consciousness of guilt.” Del Toro had about $20,000 in his Credit Union account, Grace said.

But Ito disallowed Grace’s request to produce Duchaineau as a witness partly because of an objection by defense attorney Joseph Gutierrez that any testimony by the Credit Union employee would prejudice jurors, who might be led to believe—falsely—that the prosecution's flight-risk theory is linked to the fact that Del Toro has been in custody since November 2006. That, said Gutierrez, could create an impression that Del Toro has somehow been guilty all along.

The trial will resume Monday, when Judge Ito will instruct the jury about the evidence admitted in the case as well details of the law in deciding their verdict. Del Toro faces a panoply of possible charges, ranging from involuntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years, to first-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 25 years to life.