South L.A. frustrated by delays in building new King hospital

Earlier this year, Joane Austin rushed her elderly mother to the emergency room for fear she was having a heart attack.

Austin normally would have made the short trip to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the landmark hospital in South Los Angeles. But King/Drew has been closed for five years, so Austin drove several miles to the emergency room at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood.

"I prayed all the lights would stay green," she said. "It was scary."

Once they arrived, doctors determined that Austin's mother needed emergency surgery to remove scar tissue around her intestines.

For years, King/Drew provided emergency, trauma and inpatient care to residents from throughout South Los Angeles. After a series of medical errors resulted in patient deaths, Los Angeles County closed it in 2007. County officials promised the community a better, safer new medical center in a few years.

But the opening has been repeatedly delayed, and the community is still waiting. Originally, officials hoped to have the new facility ready by 2010. Then it was pushed to 2012. Now, officials say they plan to have construction completed next year and the hospital opening its doors in 2014.

Without a nearby hospital, patients have had to travel to such places as Bellflower, Inglewood and Long Beach for emergency room and inpatient care.

Several local hospitals — California Hospital Medical Center, L.A. County/USC Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center — received an influx of former King patients after the closure. The closest hospital, St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, reported an increase of 20% to 30% in emergency room visits since King/Drew closed, though other factors also may have contributed to the rise.

Getting to other hospitals has presented a challenge for many in the low-income neighborhood, said William Hobson, president and chief executive of the Watts Healthcare Corp. "Just the fact that it is a long way away may discourage them from going," he said.

The closure of King/Drew, which was born out of the Watts riots and opened in 1972, created a healthcare gap in a community where rates of chronic disease are high and vast swaths of the population lack insurance, said David Carlisle, president of the adjacent Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. South Los Angeles has a shortage of doctors, inpatient beds and outpatient services, according to both experts and research.

Despite King/Drew's many medical lapses, which earned it the nickname "Killer King," many in the community remained fiercely loyal to the hospital and the services it provided.

Studies examining the impact of King/Drew's closure found that it led to delays in care for elderly blacks and Latinos and a dramatic increase in patient admissions at other trauma centers. Physicians throughout the county also reported more overcrowding in other emergency rooms and said they saw sicker patients who didn't know where to go or couldn't afford transportation elsewhere.

"It is fearful to think about how many lives may have been saved had this thing been opened by now," said Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of the advocacy group Community Health Councils. "It shouldn't take five years to build a facility."

Patrick Wooten, 49, went to St. Francis when he had a dislocated kneecap a few years ago. Wooten, who is uninsured, said he received good care at the private hospital but then got a $3,200 bill. Wooten said he is frustrated that the new King hospital still hasn't opened and won't until 2014. "What you do until then, God only knows," he said. "Hopefully we can wait it out."

Last year, Sandira Gonzalez, 29, took her 5-year-old son to the Martin Luther King urgent care center when he had a fever. But when the center closed for the night, her son had to be taken by ambulance to Harbor-UCLA near Torrance, where he was treated for an infection.

Community members and advocates said they are disappointed by the long wait, caused by a combination of bureaucratic delays and the complexity of the project. But when it does open, they said, they are hopeful that it will be a better, and safer, hospital.

The county is building the hospital and will help support it financially but will not be responsible for day-to-day operations. Instead, an independent, nonprofit organization will run the facility, to be known as Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, and the University of California will help staff it and ensure the quality of patient care. Construction is progressing, but the grand opening may still be nearly two years away.

"It will be a significantly different kind of institution, with the right kind of accountability," said Robert K. Ross, president and chief executive of the California Endowment. "Now we just need the institution to open up on budget and on time."

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said it takes time to create a state-of-the-art hospital — and a whole medical complex — that could become a model for others around the nation. "A lot of eyes are on this," he said. "We want to do this well and we want to do it right.... Nothing else is acceptable."

The nonprofit's board recognizes how critical the facility is to the area, said board President Manny Abascal. "Every day this hospital is not open, people are suffering," he said. At the same time, he added, the board is committed to ensuring that the new hospital is a high-quality institution. "If you open it … and there are some of the same problems you had before, then it's going to be devastating," he said.

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U.S. seeks to protect 66 kinds of coral

The federal government on Friday proposed protecting 66 kinds of corals under the Endangered Species Act, an acknowledgment that these reef-building animals are suffering so many insults they are threatened with extinction.

The proposal, which covers corals in the Pacific and the Caribbean, lists 19 ways that corals are under assault. They include overfishing, pollution, heat-stroke, disease and dissolving in seawater that is turning more acidic.

A team of scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service spent more than three years reviewing the health of these reef-building corals before proposing their protection. Seven of the coral species can be found in U.S. waters off Florida and Caribbean islands. The other 59 are in the Pacific around the Hawaiian Islands, the Northern Marianas Islands, the Line Islands and American Samoa.

"Our science team found that these corals face many, many threats," said Lance Smith, a supervisory biologist in the fisheries service in Honolulu. "When you put them together, they act in ominous ways."

The government was prodded into action by the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit group that sued in federal court and forced a decision that must be completed within a year.

The world's oceans contain more than 700 species of stony corals, small animals that live in colonies and form elaborate and colorful structures with exoskeletons that resemble everything from the folds of a human brain to the horns of elk or deer.

A third of these reef-building corals are listed as threatened with extinction by the World Conservation Union, an international consortium of scientists. The Center for Biological Diversity used this international list to push for U.S. protection of those in American waters.

The fisheries service also proposed to reclassify staghorn and elkhorn corals from "threatened" to the more severe category of "endangered." These two fast-growing corals helped form the Florida Keys and the reefs around most islands in the Caribbean. About 98% of staghorn and 90% to 95% of elkhorn coral have disappeared since 1980.

These corals have become overgrown by seaweed when too many algae-eating fish are removed from the reefs. They have suffered from disease and suffocation when bathed in nutrient-rich sewage and farm runoff, particularly in South Florida.

Corals have been hit by periodic "bleaching" events, which is a sort of heatstroke, when waters get too hot. It's a result of rising global temperatures because of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — mostly from burning fossil fuels.

The oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the C02 accumulated since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, setting off a chemical reaction that makes seawater increasingly acidic. That poses another long-term threat to corals, which rely on alkaline seawater to provide them building materials to form their exoskeletons.

Federal scientists cited ocean acidification as one of the most serious threats to corals surviving to the end of the century. The worst threats, according to federal rankings, were hot water causing bleaching and the spread of disease. Farther down the list were more localized problems from overfishing, nutrient pollution, the discharge of sediments and toxic chemicals from the land, and destructive fishing practices.

All this raises the question of what federal protections might accomplish.

Smith said it's easy to be cynical about the future of corals, especially in the face of global warming. But, he said, the law can make a difference.

"If you reduce the local threats," Smith said, "corals are more likely to be resilient to the global threats."

ken.weiss@latimes.com

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Student scores may be used in LAUSD teacher ratings

After months of tense negotiations, leaders of the Los Angeles Unified School District and its teachers union have tentatively agreed to use student test scores to evaluate instructors for the first time, officials announced Friday.

Under the breakthrough agreement, the nation's second-largest school district would join Chicago and a growing number of other cities in using test scores as one measure of how much teachers help their students progress academically in a year.

Alarm over low student performance, especially in impoverished and minority communities, has prompted the Obama administration and others to press school districts nationwide to craft better ways to identify struggling teachers for improvement.

The Los Angeles pact proposes to do that using a unique mix of individual and schoolwide testing data — including state standardized test scores, high school exit exams and district assessments, along with rates of attendance, graduation and suspensions.

But the tentative agreement leaves unanswered the most controversial question: how much to count student test scores in measuring teacher effectiveness. The school district and the union agreed only that the test scores would not be "sole, primary or controlling factors" in a teacher's final evaluation.

"It is crystal clear that what we're doing is historic and very positive," said L.A. Supt. John Deasy, who has fought to use student test scores in teacher performance reviews since taking the district's helm nearly two years ago. "This will help develop the skills of the teaching profession and hold us accountable for student achievement."

Members of United Teachers Los Angeles, however, still need to ratify the agreement. Many teachers have long opposed using test scores in their evaluations, saying test scores are unreliable measures of teacher ability.

The union characterized the agreement as a "limited" response to a Dec. 4 court-ordered deadline to show that test scores are being used in evaluations and said negotiations were continuing for future academic years. The deadline was imposed by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant, who ruled this year that state law requires L.A. Unified to use test scores in teacher performance reviews.

In a statement, the teachers union also emphasized that the agreement rejected the use of the district's method of measuring student academic progress for individual instructors. That measure, called Academic Growth Over Time, uses a mathematical formula to estimate how much a teacher helps students' performance, based on state test scores and controlling for such outside factors as income and race. Under the agreement, however, schoolwide scores using this method, also known as a value-added system, will be used.

For individual teachers, the agreement proposes to use raw state standardized test score data. Warren Fletcher, teachers union president, said that data give teachers more useful information about student performance on specific skills.

Critics of using test scores in teacher reviews praised Los Angeles' proposed new system, saying it uses a wide array of data to determine a teacher's effect on student learning.

Deasy said he will be developing guidelines for administrators on how to use the mix of data in teacher reviews and has said in the past that test scores should not count for more than 25% of the final rating.

"This is a complex agreement and possibly the most sophisticated evaluation agreement that I have seen," said Diane Ravitch, an educational historian and vocal critic of the use of test scores in teacher evaluations. "It assures that test scores will not be overused, will not be assigned an arbitrary and inappropriate weight, will not be the sole or primary determinant of a teacher's evaluation."

Teacher Brent Smiley at Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth said: "I will vote yes. I have no doubt that my union leaders negotiated the best they could, given the adverse set of circumstances they faced."

Labor-relations expert Charles Kerchner called the agreement "a shotgun wedding," but added, "I think it's unabashed good news."

He said it's notable that value-added measures and test scores have been accepted in some form by the teachers union.

"UTLA has moved beyond a strategy of just saying no to a strategy of trying to craft a useful agreement," said Kerchner, a professor at Claremont Graduate University.

The district is currently developing a new evaluation system that uses Academic Growth Over Time — along with a more rigorous classroom observation process, student and parent feedback and a teacher's contributions to the school community. The new observations were tested last year on a voluntary basis with about 450 teachers and 320 administrators; this year, every principal and one volunteer teacher at each of the district's 1,200 schools are expected to be trained.

The teachers union has filed an unfair labor charge against the district, arguing that the system is being unilaterally imposed without required negotiations.

Some teachers who have participated in the new observation process say it offers more specific guidance on how they can improve. Other educators — teachers and administrators alike — complain that it is too time-consuming.

The tentative agreement, acknowledging the extra time the new evaluations would take, would extend the time between evaluations from two to as long as five years for teachers with 10 or more years of experience.

Bill Lucia of EdVoice, the Sacramento-based educational advocacy group that brought the lawsuit, said he was "cautiously optimistic."

But he expressed dismay that the union did not reach agreement a few weeks earlier, which he said would have given L.A. Unified a shot at a $40-million federal grant. The district applied for the Race to the Top grant without the required teacher union support and was eliminated from the competition this week.

Negotiations over the tentative pact, however, nearly fell apart. Earlier this week, the union pulled away from the deal on the table, L.A. Unified officials said. And the district discussed holding a Monday emergency school-board meeting to craft a formal response to the court order in anticipation that no deal would be reached. The options included adopting an evaluation system without the union's consent.

Some members of the Board of Education, who also will need to approve the pact, praised the agreement for taking student growth and achievement into account but gauging this growth through multiple measures. Steve Zimmer said that, just as important, this milestone was achieved through negotiation.

School board President Monica Garcia praised the tentative deal as "absolutely, by all accounts, better than what we have today."

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

howard.blume@latimes.com

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A slick stereotype: L.A. drivers unable to handle the rain

Far removed from the many SigAlerts and traffic accidents caused by the rain, umbrella-toting pedestrians stroll on the Huntington Beach Pier before dawn on Thursday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times / November 29, 2012)

By Kate Mather, Los Angeles Times

November 29, 2012, 7:56 p.m.

You know what they say: L.A. drivers can't handle the rain.

Many motorists didn't disprove the stereotype Thursday as rain slickened roadways and snarled the morning commute. The California Highway Patrol reported more than three times as many accidents (294) between 12:01 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Thursday than in the same time period a week ago (90), on Thanksgiving.

Although there were some morning crashes that shut down area freeways — including a jackknifed big rig on the 5 Freeway in Glendale and a fatal crash on the 134 in Toluca Lake — CHP Officer Ed Jacobs said most were single-car spinouts.

"People are driving too fast for the roadway," Jacobs said. "Slow down. It's really simple. There is no other thing to do."

Of the many jokes about the storm shared via social media, many focused on traffic.

"Los Angeles + rain = Carmageddon," @Nick_Favorite wrote.

"The only thing worse than LA drivers? LA drivers in the rain," @LiliannaEvelyn said.

But drivers, beware. More wet weather is in store for California through the weekend. Forecasters said scattered showers should persist as a series of storms passes through the area, the strongest of which should hit Sunday afternoon and evening.

Jacobs called the number of reported accidents "huge" but said it was typical for a rainy day in Los Angeles.

But is it proof L.A. drivers can't handle the rain?

"You'll have to draw your own conclusion on that one," Jacobs said.

kate.mather@latimes.com

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First marine wilderness in continental U.S. is designated

The federal government cleared the way Thursday for waters off the Northern California coast to become the first marine wilderness in the continental United States, ending a contentious political battle that pitted a powerful U.S. senator against the National Park Service.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar settled the dispute by refusing to extend a permit for a commercial oyster farm operating in Point Reyes National Seashore. Congress designated the area as potential wilderness in 1976 but put that on hold until the farm's 40-year federal permit ended.

As the expiration date approached, the farm became the center of a costly and acrimonious fight that dragged on more than four years, spawned federal investigations and cost taxpayers millions of dollars to underwrite scores of scientific reviews.

"I believe it is the right decision for Point Reyes National Seashore and for future generations who will enjoy this treasured landscape," Salazar said Thursday. The area includes Drakes Estero, an environmentally rich tidal region where explorer Sir Francis Drake is believed to have made landfall more than 400 years ago.

Salazar's decision drew a sharp response from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had championed the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. in its fight with the government. Feinstein said in a statement that she was "extremely disappointed" with Salazar's decision.

She had argued that the National Park Service contorted scientific studies to make the case that oyster harvesting operations caused environmental harm to Drakes Estero, a dramatic coastal sweep of five bays in Marin County north of San Francisco.

"The National Park Service's review process has been flawed from the beginning with false and misleading science," her statement said. "The secretary's decision effectively puts this historic California oyster farm out of business. As a result, the farm will be forced to cease operations and 30 Californians will lose their jobs."

Feinstein had attached a rider to an appropriations bill giving Salazar the unusual prerogative to extend the farm's permit. The company was seeking a 10-year extension of its lease.

Salazar said he gave the matter serious consideration, including taking into account legal advice and park policies. He directed the park service to develop a jobs-training plan for the oyster company's employees and to work with the local community to assist them in finding employment.

The company will have 90 days to remove its racks and other property from park land and waters. When that occurs, the 2,500-acre Drakes Estero will be managed as wilderness, with prohibitions on motorized access to the waterway but allowances for snorkeling, kayaking and other recreation.

The new wilderness will become only the second marine protected area in the national park system and the first in the Lower 48 states. The only current marine wilderness is 46,000 acres in Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.

Environmental groups applauded the decision, which they lobbied for.

"We are ecstatic that this ecological treasure will be forever protected as marine wilderness," said Amy Trainer, executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin.

The heart of the debate is an agreement that Kevin Lunny and his family inherited when they took over a failing oyster operation in the park in 2004. That lease with the park service stipulated that the business would cease operations in 2012.

Kevin Lunny has from the beginning sought to stay on the property and continue harvesting oysters. His farm has an extensive record of violating state and federal agreements and permits. The California Coastal Commission has fined the farm for various violations, issued two cease and desist orders and repeatedly requested that the Lunnys acquire a coastal development permit.

The state agency initiated another enforcement action against the farm earlier this month.

Lunny could not be reached for comment.

The farm's mariculture operation has found support among west Marin County's advocates for sustainable agriculture, who agreed with Lunny that federal and state agencies were unfairly hounding his operation.

His travails have caused alarm among the historic cattle and dairy ranches that operate within the national seashore in a designated pastoral zone. Park officials have repeatedly said they have no intention of curtailing ranching operations, and Salazar echoed that, adding that he wished to extend the terms of the ranch leases from 10 to 20 years.

The Lunny family also has a cattle operation in the park.

julie.cart@latimes.com

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Egypt passes rushed draft of constitution amid popular anger

CAIRO -- Egypt's Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly passed a rushed draft of a constitution early Friday to ease public anger against President Mohamed Morsi's expanded powers and preempt an expected court decision to disband it this weekend.

The proposed constitution states that the nation will be governed by the "principles" of Islamic law, the same wording that was in the constitution under deposed leader Hosni Mubarak. But critics argue that certain language was open to interpretation and could allow conservative Islamists to impose a more rigid version of sharia law.

The draft was sent to the presidential palace. The quick action was planned to head off an anticipated ruling by the nation's highest court to dissolve the assembly before its draft was complete. Morsi's promise to protect the chamber from judicial oversight led to his decree last week to broaden his powers, which ignited protests against his rule across the country.

It is unlikely the demonstrations will stop even if Morsi rescinds his declaration now that he has a constitution to put to a public referendum in coming weeks. Anger is already shifting from the decree to the constitution, which opposition leaders criticized as not reflecting the will of secularists, women, Christians and other non-Muslims.

"I am saddened to see this come out while Egypt is so divided," Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei earlier told a private TV channel. He added that the charter would end up becoming "part of political folklore and will go to the garbage bin of history."

Dozens of secularists and Christians had boycotted the assembly in recent months, leaving the majority Islamists with a relatively free hand. The draft constitution states that Egypt is a Muslim nation and that -- for the first time in the republic's history -- parliament must consult clerics at Al Azhar mosque, a revered institution in Sunni Islam, on legislation "related to Islamic sharia."

Ultraconservative Islamists, known as Salafis, were pressing for the document, which contains 230 articles, to explicitly state that sharia was the "primary source" of legislation. But moderates in the Muslim Brotherhood opted for less strict wording.

"Having the article that says only 'principles' of Islamic sharia and not 'sharia is the base of legislation' is unacceptable," Said Farag, a Salafi member of the Islamic Coalition for Rights Support, told Ahram Online news website.

The Supreme Constitutional Court was expected to rule Sunday on whether to dissolve the assembly amid accusations that it was unrepresentative. The court disbanded the original assembly in April on similar grounds. The case has become a test in the separation of powers between Morsi and his Islamist supporters and the courts and opposition parties over a document that sets the tone of the country's political future.  

"The only way to break the current impasse is to listen to the pulse of the street, as opposed to following a group [the Muslim Brotherhood] that has attempted to steal the revolution," said a statement from an alliance of opposition parties. "Morsi has exceeded Mubarak by attempting to drive the country into civil war, for which only he will be held responsible."

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Special correspondent Reem Abdellatif contributed to this report

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Kuang-hsun Ting dies at 97; bishop led Protestant church in China

Bishop Kuang-hsun Ting, who was one of the most influential Christian figures in China as the longtime leader of the country's government-sanctioned Protestant church, has died. He was 97.

Ting died Nov. 22 at his home in Nanjing, according to statements from religious organizations he led. A cause of death was not given.

For many years, Ting headed the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council, the two government-sanctioned Protestant organizations that together form the official Protestant church in China. He was also the longtime president of the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary and helped launch the Amity Foundation, serving as board president of that social service organization until his death.

Ting's close cooperation with China's Communist Party and central government earned him both praise and criticism throughout his long career. Supporters said he had helped protect and promote the interests of Protestants in China, while critics accused him of being too close to the government and at times even joining in the persecution of unregistered or "house" churches.

"He has a positive legacy in many people's eyes because he pushed forward Protestant Christianity and its interests in China, albeit under the scope of the government," said Carsten T. Vala, an expert on Chinese Protestant Christianity who teaches at Loyola University in Maryland. "But he was also a lightning rod, seen by those in the house churches as having compromised by leading the Communist Party-controlled church."

As head of the official church, Ting was often in a tough position as he balanced religious and political demands, said Fenggang Yang, director of Purdue University's Center on Religion and Chinese Society.

"He had to make compromises, otherwise the Protestants could suffer even more," Yang said. "Did he personally totally agree with the government or government policy? Maybe not. I think he also tried to help the government-sanctioned churches and some house churches. But many house churches don't see it that way."

Born Sept. 20, 1915, in Shanghai, Ting studied at St. John's University in that city and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1942. He served as mission secretary for the Student Christian Movement in Canada and later studied at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York.

In the early 1950s, he was on the staff of the World Student Christian Federation in Geneva, then returned to China. In 1955, he was ordained an Anglican bishop, a title he retained for the rest of his life.

Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and a friend, said Ting had helped create an indigenous Christianity in China.

"He tried to find a way in which the church could remain true to itself but be a partner to government and other cultural forces in China," Mouw said. He was "a deeply Christian person coping as best he could with the demands of government, while keeping alive the essentials of Christianity in China."

Ting's survivors include two sons.

rebecca.trounson@latimes.com

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Powerball's $550-million-plus jackpot inspires wishes, dreamers

Don't bother telling Wednesday night's Powerball winners -- if there are any -- that a lottery is just a tax on those who flunked math. With a winning ticket in hand, or even just the dream of one, who cares if the odds against them exceeded 175 million to 1? 

Last-minute ticket-buying pushed the jackpot beyond $550 million, which is how much a single winner would get if he or she took the money in annual payments over 30 years.  

The winning numbers: 5-16-22-23-29, and the Powerball:  06

Officials couldn't say immediately after the 8 p.m. drawing whether there were any winning tickets. But beforehand, officials had said there was a 75% chance that someone would win Wednesday night. 

No one had won since Oct. 6, causing the jackpot to roll over 16 times. It  grows at least $10 million every time no one wins, lottery officials said. 

To play Powerball, one must pick five unique numbers from 1 through 59, and a Powerball number from 1 through 35. The odds of winning are 1 in 175,223,510. 

Powerball tickets aren't sold in California, but some feverish residents reportedly drove or flew to one of 42 participating states  to buy a chance at a fortune. The District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands also participate. 

Maybe the next time the jackpot soars, out-of-state travel won't be necessary. On Thursday, the California State Lottery Commission is expected to adopt regulations to join the Powerball lottery. If so, California retailers could start selling the $2 tickets in April.

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Witness says victim of deputies' shooting did not pose threat

An 18-year-old woman who witnessed an officer-involved shooting of a Culver City man has told investigators that the victim was standing with his hands on his head when deputies shot and killed him.

Her account contradicts Los Angeles County deputies' statement that they fired only after Jose de la Trinidad, an unarmed 36-year-old father of two, seemed to reach for his waistband.

The witness told The Times she watched the Nov. 10 shooting — and the events that led up to it — from her bedroom window. She has been interviewed twice by sheriff's investigators, telling them that De la Trinidad complied with the deputies' orders to stop running and raised his hands to surrender. She contends that two deputies opened fire seconds later, seemingly without provocation.

"I know what I saw," said Estefani, who asked that her last name not be used out of fear of being harassed by media outlets. "His hands were on his head when they started shooting."

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department maintains that the deputies opened fire only after De la Trinidad appeared to reach for his waist, where he could have been concealing a weapon. Authorities did not comment on Estefani's account other than to say it would be included in the final report on the shooting.

Estefani, who lives directly across the street from where the shooting occurred, said that just after 10:20 p.m. Nov. 10, the sound of a car screeching to a stop jerked her attention away from music she was downloading at her small desk.

She turned to the bedroom window and pulled back her dark green curtains.

Then, she said, she saw an unarmed man, a handful of sheriff's deputies and, suddenly, the shooting that remains vivid in her mind.

Two sheriff's deputies had attempted to pull over De la Trinidad and his brother for speeding as they were leaving a family quinceañera. De la Trinidad's brother was driving the car and fled for a few blocks before the car came to a sudden stop in the 1900 block of East 122nd Street in Willowbrook, a residential neighborhood tucked just off the 105 Freeway.

According to the deputies' account, De la Trinidad jumped out of the passenger seat.

His brother, 39-year-old Francisco de la Trinidad, took off again in the car. One of the four deputies on the scene gave chase in his cruiser, leaving Jose de la Trinidad on the sidewalk and three deputies standing in the street with their weapons drawn.

The deputies said Jose de la Trinidad then appeared to reach for his waistband, prompting two of them to fire multiple shots into the unarmed man. He died at the scene.

Unknown to the deputies at the time, Estefani sat perched in her bedroom window, directly overlooking the shooting.

Estefani said De la Trinidad did jump out of the car after it came to a sudden stop. After he ran toward the deputies a few feet, they ordered him to stop and turn around — which he did immediately, she said.

Seconds later, the deputies opened fire, she said.

Estefani said that, frozen in shock, she did not count the number of shots fired by the deputies.

"As soon as I saw him hit the floor, I couldn't look up any longer," Estefani said. "Then I ran downstairs and started to cry."

She was still crying half an hour later when two sheriff's deputies canvassing the area for witnesses came to her door, Estefani said.

The deputies, she said, repeatedly asked her which direction De la Trinidad was facing, which she perceived as an attempt to get her to change her story.

"I told them, 'You're just trying to confuse me,' and then they stopped," she said.

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Substance-abuse counselor charged with murder

The substance-abuse counselor accused of killing a Torrance man while driving drunk was charged with murder and faces life in prison if convicted, prosecutors said.

Sherri Wilkins, 51, appeared in court Tuesday but postponed her arraignment until next month on felony charges of murder, gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, DUI causing injury, drunken driving while causing injury and leaving the scene of an accident, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

Wilkins has two prior burglary convictions and is a third-striker, prosecutors said. She is being held on $2.25-million bail.

Police said Wilkins' car hit Phillip Moreno, 31, as he tried to cross Torrance Boulevard on Saturday night and kept driving more than two miles with the man embedded in her car's windshield. Other motorists managed to stop her at 182nd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard and grab her keys, Torrance police Sgt. Robert Watt said.

Moreno had a pulse when officers arrived but was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Watt said Wilkins had a blood-alcohol level more than double the 0.08 legal limit.

Wilkins had a certification in drug and alcohol counseling and worked at a Torrance treatment center, where she led small group classes six evenings a week. She wrote in an undated Myspace profile that she "used to be into drugs very heavy" and "with that came terrible choices," but that she had been sober for 11 years.

In 2010, Wilkins faced charges of driving under the influence, hit and run and being under the influence of a controlled substance after she allegedly hit a power pole at the intersection of 182nd Street and Hawthorne Boulevard — less than two miles from where Moreno was pulled from her windshield.

Wilkins dragged the pole into the road, where a few other cars struck it and were damaged, said Patrick Sullivan, assistant city attorney for Torrance.

That case, however, was eventually dismissed. Sullivan said Wilkins' blood-alcohol level came back at zero and the levels of drugs were "so low" an expert couldn't testify there was an impairment. Wilkins reached a civil compromise with the other drivers.

kate.mather@latimes.com

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