The chief of the Los Angeles Police Department said he has ordered an internal review into reports that a desk officer at the Topanga Division station in Canoga Park turned away day laborers who were attempting to tell police about being handed trash bags filled with body parts outside a Tarzana home where police believe a woman and her parents were murdered by her husband.
In an interview with NBC4, the laborers said the husband, Samuel Bond Haskell, 35, hired them on Tuesday, Nov. 7 to carry away garbage bags from his home that he told them were filled with rocks. But when the workers took the bags, they said they felt that there were body parts in them. When they looked inside, they saw a torso.
In a Police Commission meeting this week, LAPD Chief Michel Moore told commissioners the laborers took the garbage bags back to Haskell’s home and left them in the driveway. They went to two police stations to report what they saw: First, they went to the California Highway Patrol station in Woodland Hills, where officers directed them to the Topanga LAPD station. But when the workers got there, they said the officer behind the desk told them to go outside and call 911.
Officers did arrive to talk to the workers, and they later went to Haskell’s home to investigate the report. But they were unable to locate the bags.
It wasn’t until the next day when a homeless man told police he found a torso in a garbage bag inside a dumpster in Encino that officers began to piece together what had happened.
Moore told commissioners LAPD was looking into the desk officer’s actions.
“Officers are expected that when citizens or community members come to report a crime, they are either to take action immediately or have the person stand by while they summon field officers,” he said. “If (what the laborers said) is found to be accurate, we will take corrective actions.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office on Monday, Nov. 13 charged Haskell with three counts of murder. He’s accused of killing his wife, Mei Haskell, 37, and her parents, Yanxiang Wang, 64, and Gaoshan Li, 72. All three victims were reported missing prior to the discovery of the body parts.
All three lived with Haskell at the Tarzana home along with the couple’s three children. Police previously said the children were in the custody of the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services.
Haskell is being held in L.A. County jail without bail as he awaits a potential trial.
