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Local transit agencies offering free rides for Election Day

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Local transit agencies offering free rides for Election Day

Local transit agencies will be providing free rides and other offerings to make voting easier on Election Day.

LA Metro will provide free rides on all services, including buses, trains, bikes and the Metro Micro program in an effort to support voter turnout.

The free fare initiative, which runs from midnight to 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, is designed to ensure that transportation is not a barrier to voting on Election Day.

L.A. Metro buses in downtown Los Angeles. (Getty Images)

Metro’s services will be entirely free, with turnstiles at Metro Rail stations unlocked and fareboxes on buses displaying signage to reflect the no-fare day. Park-and-Ride lots will also be free to use, officials said.

Metro Bike Share will offer free 30-minute rides using the promo code “110524.” Riders can enter the code at any Metro Bike Share kiosk, online or in the app. A credit or debit card is required and additional time beyond 30 minutes costs $1.75 per half hour.

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Metro Micro, the agency’s on-demand ride-hailing service, will be providing free rides. Voters can use the promo code Vote24 when requesting a ride in-app or online, or by calling 323-466-3876.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation is also offering free rides across its entire fleet on Election Day. This includes the DASH and Commuter Express buses, and on-demand services such as LA Now and CityRide, which serves seniors and qualified persons with disabilities.

A DASH bus drives through the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles on May 25, 2023. (Getty Images)
A DASH bus drives through the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles on May 25, 2023. (Getty Images)

In addition to LADOT, several other regional transit systems are waiving fares for Election Day, including Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus, Culver City Bus, Long Beach Transit, and Foothill Transit, which serves the San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys.

Metrolink’s Arrow service, which connects downtown San Bernardino to the University of Redlands, will offer free rides, while regular fares will remain in place for its standard service and any codeshare connections with the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner.

Vote-by-mail drop-off locations

For those voting early or who don’t want to brave a polling location, LA Metro has installed secure Vote-By-Mail drop boxes at nine major transit locations, including:

  • El Monte Transit Center  
  • North Hollywood B Line  
  • Harbor Gateway Transit Center  
  • Los Angeles Union Station
  • Harbor Freeway C Line  
  • Hollywood/Western B Line  
  • Wilshire/Vermont B/D Lines  
  • Westlake/MacArthur Park B/D Lines   
  • Norwalk C Line 

Ballot boxes will remain open until 8 p.m. on Election Day. A full list of ballot drop-off locations across Los Angeles County can be found here.

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Los Angeles, Ca

LASD investigating early-morning deputy-involved shooting in East L.A. 

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LASD investigating early-morning deputy-involved shooting in East L.A. 

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is looking into the circumstances surrounding a deputy-involved shooting that occurred early Tuesday morning in East Los Angeles. 

Details remain scarce, but an LASD advisory indicates the shooting took place around 1:37 a.m. in the 6500 block of Olympic Boulevard. 

While responding, at least one deputy opened fire on the unidentified suspect for reasons currently not known. It is also unclear why deputies were dispatched to the location.

The suspect was struck and transported to a local hospital, LASD confirmed. Their condition was not disclosed. 

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No further details were released. 

Anyone with information surrounding the shooting is asked to contact the LASD’s Homicide Bureau by calling 323-890-5500. 

To provide a tip anonymously, call Crime Stoppers (1-800-222-8477) or visit this link. 

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Los Angeles, Ca

Wildfire erupts near Pepperdine University, evacuations underway

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Wildfire erupts near Pepperdine University, evacuations underway

Firefighters are battling a three-alarm brushfire, dubbed the Franklin Fire, in Malibu near Pepperdine University amid high-wind warnings, officials confirmed to KTLA.  

It’s unclear exactly how the fire started, but crews with the Los Angeles County Fire Department responded to reports of the blaze, located near Malibu Canyon Road and Station Boundary, at around 10:45 p.m.

Initial reports put the fire at 10 acres, though by 11:45 p.m., officials said the wildfire had grown to 100 acres, prompting mandatory evacuation orders east of Malibu Canyon Road and south of Piuma Road, along with the Serra Retreat area, fire officials said in a post to X, formerly Twitter.

Those at Pepperdine University are being told to shelter in place, while officials with California Highway Patrol have closed portions of Pacific Coast Highway in the area so that evacuees have easy access to leave.

Sky5 is overhead.  

This developing story will be updated as additional details become available.  

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Los Angeles, Ca

Convicted killer who twice avoided execution dies in California prison

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Convicted killer who twice avoided execution dies in California prison

A man who was twice sentenced to execution and twice avoided that fate died in a prison hospital over the weekend.

Darryl T. Kemp, 88, died of natural causes Saturday at the California Medical Facility in Solano County, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Kemp was one of more than 600 inmates in the California penal system who was sentenced to death but was instead made to wait out their natural life after the state put a permanent freeze on prison executions.

Convicted killer Darryl T. Kemp is shown in this prison photo from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on March 23, 2018.

Kemp, originally from Los Angeles, was convicted of first-degree murder in 2009, found responsible for the 1978 rape and killing of 40-year-old Armida Wiltsey at a reservoir in Contra Costa County.

For Kemp, it was the second time he’d been convicted of rape and murder and then sentenced to death.

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In 1960, he was found guilty of killing and raping Los Angeles nurse Marjorie Hipperson. He was sentenced to death following that trial, and waited execution for the next decade.

But in 1972, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional and his sentence was then modified to life with the possibility of parole.

In July, 1978, he was released on parole after serving his full sentence “as defined by the law.”

Weeks later, at Lafayette Reservoir, he would go on murder Wiltsey, who died by either strangulation or suffocation. A little more than two years after that, he fulfilled the terms of his parole and walked free.

He was connected to the Wiltsey’s long-unsolved killing decades later through DNA technology.

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During his 2009 trial, in an attempt to avoid the death penalty, Kemp’s defense attorneys argued that he suffered from mental illness that compelled him to rape, and that the killings were the accidental result of sexual assaults in which he restricted his victim’s airflow, according to reporting from the East Bay Times.

The gambit did not pay off and, despite his advanced age, a jury recommended he be executed—a sentence that twice was never fulfilled.

There are currently 611 remaining inmates on death row in California. For more information about the state’s capital punishment, click here.

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