Some come to La Tuna Canyon to eliminate what they don’t need.
Strewn throughout the hillsides simply off the Foothill Freeway, among the many scrub and some cussed timber blackened by wildfire, are damaged furnishings legs, containers of motor oil, a child provider, tires, orange buckets stuffed with damaged glass and ground tiles.
Some come right here to search for worth in what others discard. Somewhat earlier than 8 a.m. on Jan. 19, somebody choosing by means of the trash got here throughout the physique of a younger man.
Bryan Cojon Tuyuc, 20, died, it appears, as he lived — innocently. Believing he was going to fulfill a lady he’d been messaging on-line, he drove his uncle’s minivan from the house he shared along with his father and right into a lure. A development employee with no felony file, he was robbed and stabbed to loss of life, then dumped within the canyon, detectives say.
His life stands in stark distinction to that of one of many individuals accused of taking it. For Gabriel Orellana, his arrest final month on suspicion of killing Cojon Tuyuc was the end result of a string of violence and distress.
Over the course of a yr, Orellana, whom police have recognized as a member of the road gang MS-13, has been implicated within the beating of a transgender girl in MacArthur Park, a kidnapping and tried homicide in Griffith Park, and a violent liquor retailer theft in Fontana. With no obvious ties to household or anything past the gang, the 19-year-old lived as an indigent on the streets of Los Angeles.
The portrait of Orellana gleaned from courtroom information and interviews illustrates the untethered and precarious existence shared by MS-13 members, one outlined by crude, subsistence-level crimes and punctuated by flashes of utmost violence.
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Many members of MS-13 know each other solely by their nicknames. In each clique, or subset, of the gang, there'll virtually absolutely be a Grumpy and a Dopey, a Flaco (Skinny) and a Pelon (Bald). There are additionally Killers and Diablos.
Orellana, in response to courtroom information, was often called Chaparro and Ordinario. Shorty and Odd.
Born in El Salvador, it isn’t clear when or how Orellana, 19, got here to america, a probation officer wrote in a report. He lived at totally different instances in tents close to MacArthur Park and a row of makeshift shacks on Park View Avenue, mentioned Officer Christabel Youssef, who has investigated MS-13 as a part of a gang element within the Los Angeles Police Division’s Rampart Division.
MS-13 traces its roots to the Eighties, when Salvadorans, dislodged by civil warfare and poverty, settled within the Westlake, Pico-Union and Rampart districts simply west of downtown Los Angeles. In these neighborhoods — among the poorest and most crowded within the metropolis — Salvadoran teenagers and younger adults with a standard curiosity in heavy metallic music and a necessity to guard themselves towards entrenched Mexican American gangs banded collectively into “stoner” teams, authorities say. In time, the teams coalesced right into a single gang, La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.
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Orellana has given police totally different names throughout varied arrests: Gabriel Orellana in some circumstances, Antonio Orellana or Juan Hernandez in others, in response to probation information. Detectives used his fingerprints to substantiate his identification. Sooner or later in his brushes with the legislation, Orellana was labeled with a “particular dealing with code” of being “mentally disturbed,” his probation report says.
His lawyer didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The primary time Orellana seems in courtroom information was January of 2021, when LAPD detectives had been monitoring a telephone taken from a person who had been kidnapped in South Los Angeles.
After forcing him right into a automotive at knifepoint, the abductors realized they'd taken the improper individual, Det. Christian Mrakich wrote in an affidavit in search of a search warrant. They drove the person, a prepare dinner at a Mexican restaurant, to Griffith Park, the place they stabbed him within the abdomen and beat him with a baseball bat, in response to the affidavit. Considering he was useless, they left the prepare dinner on a hillside, taking his telephone with them.
Detectives tracked it to a block of Ardmore Avenue in Koreatown, in response to the affidavit. At 10 a.m. on Jan. 7, they had been staking out a makeshift shelter coated in a blue tarp when Orellana and a teenage boy emerged. Orellana was carrying the prepare dinner’s telephone, which had images of the prepare dinner certain and gagged saved on it, Mrakich wrote.
Orellana wasn’t charged with the kidnapping, and police haven't put forth any proof indicating he was concerned past possessing the telephone.
Ten weeks later, two LAPD officers had been referred to as to a hospital, the place a lady was having stitched shut a reduce on her head.
The lady, who's transgender, mentioned she was strolling in MacArthur Park when Orellana and one other individual requested what she was doing within the park, in response to a probation report. Orellana demanded that the girl go away, then punched her a number of instances within the face, the report says. She fell to the bottom, and he kicked her earlier than fleeing, the girl reported.
Police discovered Orellana in a tent on the western fringe of the park and arrested him. Prosecutors charged him with assaulting the girl, alleging it amounted to a hate crime.
The lady was attacked across the time when members of MS-13 had been extorting cash from transgender ladies in MacArthur Park. 5 months earlier, a lady who mentioned she paid the gang $20 per week to be allowed within the park, was stabbed practically to loss of life by three MS-13 members.
Orellana’s sufferer, nonetheless, advised the police she’d been overwhelmed “basically for no cause,” mentioned Youssef, the Rampart officer who investigated the assault.
Orellana sat in jail for 3 months. On July 6, he pleaded no contest to a diminished cost of false imprisonment, in response to a transcript of the listening to. A decide gave him credit score for the 108 days he’d been locked up and launched him to a residential drug remedy program. He was ordered to remain 100 ft away from MacArthur Park and his sufferer, to enroll in a program at Homeboy Industries, and to finish 12 hours of “transgender cultural and sensitivity coaching” offered by the Los Angeles LGBT Heart, the transcript reveals.
It was not the punishment a probation officer had really useful. Although Orellana had no prior felony file and “could have psychological well being points that must be addressed,” his crime was “dedicated because of hate” and his sufferer was “significantly susceptible,” the officer wrote in a report submitted to the courtroom.
“The defendant made the choice to ignore the protection of the sufferer and must be held accountable for his heinous actions,” the report says. If convicted, Orellana must be despatched to jail, the probation officer wrote.
In an interview, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Ceballos, who prosecuted the case, mentioned he had little selection however to scale back the cost towards Orellana as a result of the sufferer wouldn't testify.
Ceballos mentioned he had agreed to the proposal by Orellana’s lawyer that he go to the drug remedy program and enroll within the coaching partially as a result of it provided Orellana a spot to sleep. He knew Orellana had been homeless and, absent a court-ordered various, would most likely return to dwelling in MacArthur Park.
“The one factor I didn’t need was for him to be close to the park,” Ceballos mentioned. As for the rehabilitation efforts, “you form of hope and pray it is going to work,” he mentioned.
4 months after he was launched from jail, Fontana police arrested Orellana on suspicion of robbing a liquor retailer within the Inland Empire metropolis, mentioned Sgt. Christian Surgent, a spokesman for the Fontana Police Division. A buyer was pistol-whipped and a clerk was shot within the face with a BB gun throughout the Nov. 23 holdup, in response to Surgent. Orellana and the opposite suspects — three juveniles — had been dwelling in a Motel 6 in Fontana after they had been arrested, he added.
A spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County district lawyer’s workplace mentioned Orellana has not been charged with a criminal offense.
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Bryan Cojon Tuyuc advised his father he was going out for a bit and can be again quickly. He didn’t say the place he was going, however he appeared comfortable, enthusiastic about one thing, his father, Edgar Cojon, recalled in an interview.
Somebody had hit his pickup a number of weeks earlier, so Bryan borrowed his uncle’s Honda Odyssey and drove off.
About an hour and a half later, Cojon referred to as his son. Bryan had lately landed a job on a development crew serving to construct the Metro practice line to the airport, and wanted to go away for work at 4 a.m. Cojon didn’t need him staying out late.
The decision went to voicemail. He referred to as once more half an hour later. This time, the telephone was off.
“He by no means does that,” Cojon thought. “He at all times solutions me.”
Cojon had left his native Guatemala for america when his son was 7. Bryan remained in Guatemala along with his mom and brother earlier than getting down to be a part of his father at 12. Caught making an attempt to cross into the U.S., he was allowed on account of his age to hitch his father in South L.A., the place they lived in a modest three-bedroom house.
Bryan spent his time like many youngsters, taking part in soccer with associates, skateboarding, tinkering with vehicles and driving vans and four-wheelers within the desert, his father mentioned. He spoke practically daily along with his mom and brother again in Guatemala. After graduating from Locke Faculty Preparatory Academy in 2020, he advised his dad he wished to work in development, like him. He labored at varied websites till getting a job on the airport venture late final yr.
Jan. 17 was a Monday. It wasn’t like Bryan to remain out when he had work the subsequent morning, Cojon thought. He dragged a chair in entrance of their home. He waited there all night time.
The following morning, he drove to the development web site at LAX. “I hoped in my coronary heart that he can be there,” he mentioned.
Cojon went to the LAPD’s Southeast station. The officers there mentioned it was frequent for teenagers to remain out and never inform their dad and mom, he recalled. They requested if his son smoked or drank alcohol. Cojon mentioned he didn’t, that it wasn’t like him to not come house or reply his telephone. The officers wouldn’t take a missing-persons report, he mentioned, however they did take down the Honda Odyssey’s plate quantity and outline. They prompt that he examine at hospitals to see if his son had been in a crash.
Over the subsequent two days, Cojon went to eight hospitals in and round Los Angeles, he mentioned, begging individuals on the entrance desk for info. Every time he was advised his son wasn’t there, he felt “muerto en vida,” he mentioned. Alive, however useless.
An worker at one hospital advised him to submit a photograph of his son, so they might add it to an inside system and notify him if he checked in. As Cojon was getting ready to ship the photograph, two detectives and two cops knocked on his door. His son had been lacking for 2 days.
For about an hour and a half, he mentioned, they questioned him: What was his son sporting when he final noticed him? Did they get alongside? Did his son use medicine? Solely when Cojon advised them that he deliberate to maintain looking at hospitals, he recalled, did one of many detectives say he didn’t must look any longer. His son had been discovered useless in a canyon.
On the final night time of his life, Bryan had pushed his uncle’s minivan to the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Terra Bella Avenue in Pacoima, Det. Sharon Kim mentioned in an interview. He had been exchanging messages on social media with Kathia Julissa Coreas Lopez, an alleged MS-13 member, Kim mentioned.
Coreas Lopez, 20, is nicknamed “Traviesa,” or Trickster, in response to courtroom information. Her lawyer declined to remark.
Based mostly on the messages, it appeared that she was “honey-potting” Cojon Tuyuc — luring him right into a lure with the promise of sexual favors, Kim mentioned. As soon as he acquired to the intersection in Pacoima, Coreas Lopez, Orellana and a 17-year-old tried to rob Bryan of his cash, Kim mentioned.
Detectives consider that he fought again and was stabbed within the wrestle. His assailants loaded him into the minivan and drove about 10 miles, to an space of La Tuna Canyon close to the 210 Freeway that's used as an unlawful dumping floor, and left his physique on a hillside, Kim mentioned. Detectives consider Bryan was useless by the point they acquired to the canyon.
Two days later, somebody choosing by means of the dumpsite for issues to salvage discovered his physique. Police discovered his uncle’s minivan later that day, about half a mile from the place he’d pushed to fulfill Coreas Lopez, Kim mentioned.
Coreas Lopez, Orellana and the teenager had been arrested six days later. Kim declined to explain the proof that led detectives to establish them as suspects.
In reserving information, Coreas Lopez and Orellana reported having no job and dwelling at a house in Pacoima across the nook from the intersection the place Cojon Tuyuc thought he was going to fulfill Coreas Lopez.
One of many suspects indicated to detectives that they believed Cojon Tuyuc was a member of 18th Avenue, MS-13’s bitter rival. Kim, nonetheless, mentioned she’d seen no proof that he was affiliated with a gang and that he had no felony file.
Coreas Lopez has pleaded not responsible to costs of homicide and theft. Orellana, who's charged with the identical crimes below the title Antonio Orellana, has but to enter a plea.
Cojon sat on a latest night in entrance of his house, in the identical spot the place he had waited by means of the night time for his son. He scrolled by means of the images on his telephone. One confirmed his son standing proudly in entrance of his pickup. One other was a selfie that Cojon had taken within the desert, father and son smiling into the digital camera.
“He’s all I had right here,” he mentioned quietly. “He was every thing to me.”
Occasions workers author Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.
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