Encino neighborhood leaders on Thursday requested Mayor Karen Bass to extend safety following a lethal house invasion and a string of different break-ins within the San Fernando Valley hillside neighborhood.
“American Idol” music supervisor Robin Kaye and her rock musician husband, Tom DeLuca, have been killed of their Encino house by an intruder earlier this month. The Hayvenhurst Avenue house of “The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Teddi Mellencamp was additionally focused final week by three intruders who jumped a fence and entered the property.
Two different burglaries occurred in latest weeks, together with an incident on Ostrom Avenue, the place a house owner shot a 14-year-old intruder, in response to residents.
The Los Angeles Police Division has responded to the uptick in violence by growing patrols and including measures equivalent to officers on horseback.
However some neighbors are nonetheless too scared to depart their properties, mentioned Rob Glushon, president of the Encino Property House owners Assn. “Individuals are afraid,” he advised reporters. “Individuals are indignant.”
Rob Glushon, left, President of Encino Property House owners Affiliation, joins Encino neighborhood leaders at a press convention to ask metropolis leaders for assist following latest murders, house invasions and burglaries in Encino in entrance of Van Nuys Metropolis Corridor on July 31, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
Glushon and others leaders need Bass and the LAPD to create a real-time crime monitoring middle at an area police station, just like one in Beverly Hills. Additionally they desire a new police substation in Encino, drones to trace suspicious automobiles and crime, license plate readers at main intersections, and weekly public conferences with LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell.
Bass spokesperson Clara Karger mentioned a few of the requests sought by Encino neighborhood leaders have already been added. Along with growing patrols, the town has deployed license plate readers, and is working with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Division’s Housebreaking/Theft Taskforce on concentrating on organized crime rings, she mentioned.
“Final yr we took pressing motion to efficiently tackle a spate of crime within the Valley and our response efforts helped. We’ll proceed to do all we are able to to maintain Angelenos protected,” Karger mentioned. “Crime was down final yr and murder totals are on monitor to be the bottom in 60 years.”
A Zoom assembly with Bass, Councilmember Nithya Raman, state Sen. Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles) and Glushon and different neighborhood leaders is deliberate for Thursday evening.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman met with Encino residents final week throughout a crowded city corridor on the latest violence. He advised the group final week that as a lifelong Angeleno, the dual killings have been private to him.
Rob Glushon, President of Encino Property House owners Affiliation, proper, speaks with Roy Nwaisser, President of Encino Neighborhood Council, middle, and different Encino metropolis leaders who collect earlier than a press convention on July 31, 2025. They need police to open a substation on Van Nuys Blvd., to clear homeless encampments and take different measures to carry a couple of safer neighborhood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
“The federal government owes you one factor and that’s security,” Hochman mentioned. “Robin and Tom didn’t expertise security that evening. Security failed them.”
Kaye and DeLuca, who have been each 70, had been useless inside their house for 4 days when officers discovered their our bodies throughout a welfare test after a neighbor referred to as police involved that they hadn’t seen or heard from them for a couple of days.
It marked the third time in latest months that LAPD officers went to a location within the San Fernando Valley after receiving a 911 name and left, solely to return later to a murder.
Menashe Hidra’s physique was discovered April 26 inside his fifth-floor Valley Village house after an assailant broke right into a neighboring unit, jumped from the balcony to Hidra’s unit and attacked him, investigators mentioned.
Neighbors referred to as 911 and reported listening to shouting and a wrestle coming from the house. Officers responded to these calls, knocked on the door and left with out discovering something. A 27-year-old man was later charged with killing Hidra.
The identical day that Hidra’s physique was found, police discovered the physique of Aleksandre Modebadze, who was overwhelmed to demise inside his Woodland Hills house. In that case, a lady inside the house referred to as LAPD about 12:30 a.m. and reported three individuals had damaged into her house and have been beating her important different earlier than the decision all of a sudden lower out, in response to legislation enforcement sources.
Shortly earlier than 1 a.m., officers arrived on the house however nobody answered the door, the sources advised The Instances. Authorities discovered Modebadze’s suspected killers hours after the incident.
Glushon mentioned Thursday that the LAPD wants to look at its coverage for getting into properties. “There’s clearly an issue,” he mentioned.
Locals additionally mentioned Thursday that also they are involved a couple of well-known “social gathering home” subsequent door to the place Kaye and DeLuca lived, and described seeing a number of automobiles with out license plates within the space.
Encino resident Vlad Gold, 49, mentioned that burglaries in Encino are frequent, however he’s now contemplating getting a guard canine after the couple’s homicide. “It’s simply horrible,” he mentioned.
Instances workers author Richard Winton contributed to this report.
