The Los Angeles City Council approved two rewards Wednesday in hopes of generating tips that lead to the killers of a 78-year-old woman strangled in her apartment and a teenage boy gunned down on New Year’s Day.
Freddie Brandon’s body was found March 30 inside her ransacked Hyde Park apartment in the 5900 block of West Boulevard, south of Slauson Avenue and east of Crenshaw Boulevard. Firefighters responded about 4 p.m., then called police, who determined she had been killed about a half-hour earlier.
Mia Brandon begged her mother’s killer to come forward.
“My mom should have died of old age,” she told CBS2.
Rashanda Jones, who lived in the apartment with her grandmother, was the first to discover the body.
“I feel numb. That was all I knew, to be honest. She was all I had,” Jones told the Los Angeles Times.
Police said they found nothing stolen from the residence, and were unsure of a motive for the attack.
Derek Schaefer, 17, was killed in a drive-by shooting in the Harbor Gateway area of Los Angeles on Jan. 1. He was gunned down at 12:40 a.m. at 205th Street and Denker Avenue while walking with a friend, who was wounded but survived, police said. According to the motion seeking the reward, an SUV, possibly a 2001 to 2007 Toyota Highlander, approached the victims and someone got out of the vehicle and began firing.
Both rewards, approved on 11-0 votes, are being offered for information leading to the identification, apprehension and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the killings.