People v. Gonaway

YORK, P. J. Defendant was charged by information with the crime of burglary. A jury trial having been waived, the trial court found him guilty of burglary of the second degree. This appeal is prosecuted from the judgment of conviction on the ground that the evidence is insufficient to support the same.

The prosecution’s case was submitted on the transcript of the preliminary examination; the defendant took the stand and several witnesses testified on his behalf. An examination of such evidence discloses that Mr. Earl Lovett, owner of the Lovett Service Station at 990 East Slauson, closed and locked his station at 6 on Christmas Eve of 1946, leaving $130 in the safe which was set in cement in the floor of a building, “eight by ten” with a ceiling between 7 and 9 feet in height, [405]located “between the pumps.’’ Thirty to fifty feet to the rear of the service station and on the same lot was a garage or repair shop which did not belong to Mr. Lovett. This service station was patrolled and watched by the Golden State Detective Bureau and its special officers endeavored to make two trips there before midnight and two trips after midnight. Special Officer Pruitt of said detective bureau inspected all the doors and windows and the safe on his trip at 2 or 3 in the morning of December 25th and saw no one in or about the premises. On his next trip around 5 he parked his car in front and heard hammering like “someone was breaking into something,” whereupon he told his partner, “Something is wrong around here,” and observed a broken window in the garage. Officer Pruitt told his partner to keep guard while he called the Los Angeles Police Department, and as Officer Pruitt passed the service station he saw that the lights were out and the front door was broken, whereupon he opened the door, flashed his light on the defendant and said, Come out. We got you covered. ... As I opened the door, the defendant kneeled down near the floor and he sprung up there like a rabbit and meanwhile he threw the fire extinguisher at me. . . . And knocked me down, and while I was down I got my gun and fired” ,• that defendant also threw a hammer which missed the witness; that defendant then ran out of the service station, across Slauson and climbed over a fence 8 feet high; that defendant was dressed in a light hat, light overcoat, dark trousers and black shoes. When the Los Angeles police officers arrived, Officer Pruitt gave them a description of defendant, and Officer De Moulin arrested him about 5:30 on Christmas morning on the west side of Central Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, or about a block and a half from the Lovett Service Station; that at the time of the arrest, said officer observed another man across the street who was dressed the same as the description given by Mr. Pruitt, so Officer De Moulin took both men to the Lovett Service Station where Officer Pruitt identified defendant as the man he had seen coming out of the service station and who threw a fire extinguisher and a hammer at him. Defendant said, “You must be mistaken. . . . That’s a lie.” When it got daylight, the officers examined the premises where the defendant climbed over the fence, which was a foundry or something similar thereto, where “they have a lot of casts and aluminum dies and airplane rivets and airplane metal”; pieces of planed-off aluminum, the purpose of this examination.