Parking Violation

An elderly man was found dead late Tuesday in a parked car that had been ticketed earlier in the day on a street in an unincorporated industrial area near Pico Rivera. Exactly how much was that ticket? The LA Times spills it:

A passerby noticed the man in the driver's seat of the black Lincoln Town Car near Peck and Rooks roads about 7:50 p.m. and notified employees at a nearby truck shop. A maintenance worker from the shop who went to investigate said a parking ticket on the car was marked as being written about 11 a.m., said Chantelle Amaya, assistant manager at L.A. Freightliner."The poor man was out there all day," Amaya said.

Amaya said workers at the shop called for help after knocking on the window of the locked car and getting no response.

Authorities were not immediately able to say whether the man was in his car at the time the ticket was issued or if he had returned to it later. Street signs forbid parking on that side of the street from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays to allow street cleaning, and overnight parking is prohibited.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy David Zarda said he was not sure when the car was ticketed or why the man was not spotted in the car earlier. He said the street has become congested because of growing businesses and big rigs tying up multiple parking spaces.

Workers said it is not uncommon to see cars parked illegally during the day or left overnight. Truckers from the port often park their big rigs on the street or leave their cars there temporarily while they work, they said. The Peck Road entrance to the southbound 605 Freeway is less than a block from where the man's body was found.

Tow truck companies also tow wrecked cars from the nearby freeway and abandon them on the street for days at a time, said Tony Simpson, operations manager at Whittier Transfer and Storage Co. Simpson, 36, said he has been e-mailing sheriff's officials weekly to complain about cars illegally parked in his lot or those that appear abandoned, which are often broken into.

Zarda said he has received only one report of tow trucks dumping cars on the street and none about car break-ins.

Simpson, who arrives for work at 6 a.m., said he did not notice the man in the car Tuesday, although he did see the car later in the morning but did not notice anyone in it. He found out that the man was found dead Wednesday morning, after an employee called him asking if he knew whether the road was still blocked because of investigations.

The area receives a moderate amount of foot traffic because a horse trail is nearby, but it is unusual to see people sitting in their cars, Simpson and other local workers said. "It's just very deserted here," said Angie Villanueva, a secretary at Whittier Transfer, which is across the street from where the car was found.

Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said the man was in his 70s. His identity has not been released because relatives have not been notified.

It was unclear how long the man had been dead or what caused his death. Authorities plan an autopsy no sooner than Thursday, Winter said. The case is being investigated by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department homicide detectives, which authorities said is routine given the circumstances. There were no obvious signs of foul play, sheriff's officials said.

In December, an elderly woman was found in the front passenger seat of a crumpled car in a San Fernando Valley tow yard. The woman had been left in the car for a day after paramedics removed her son from the same vehicle after a crash.

Simpson said that after he learned that the body had been found in the car near Pico Rivera, he wondered about a noise he heard about noon shortly after the street sweeper passed through: repeated honking from a nearby car. Uncertain of which direction it was coming from, Simpson said he went back to work without looking around for the source of the honking. At his job Wednesday, Simpson said he wondered now: "God, what if it was the man honking for help?"

All I can say is if they ticketed the car while he was dying in it, that is the most hardcore. Meter maids, FTW.