LOS ANGELES – A retired chef was arrested and jailed for two nights based on a federal indictment of a man with an identical name who is a suspected heroin dealer linked to a Southern California street gang.
Authorities are investigating how they mixed up 64-year-old Ramon Galves Huerta with the man who shares the same first, middle and last name and was indicted in a crackdown on the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.
Authorities arrested 63 people on attempted murder, kidnapping, firearms, narcotics and other charges in a racketeering investigation of the gang. The indictments allege members carried out racist attacks on black residents in Hawaiian Gardens, a small city in Los Angeles County.
One indictment alleged a man named Ramon Galves Huerta was recorded in wiretapped phone conversations speaking about heroin and conspiring to sell the drug. The text of the indictment gives no physical description or identifying details of the suspect.
The retired chef told the Los Angeles Times he was asleep last Thursday when agents pounded on the door of his home in Pico Rivera. He said police arrested him and no one told him why at the time.
He said prosecutors on Friday sought to have him held without bail because they considered him a flight risk. Huerta’s daughter e-mailed the Times that same day, triggering an inquiry by federal prosecutors.
Mrozek said prosecutors concluded Saturday that there was “a very real possibility that the wrong individual was arrested” and a judge then ordered Huerta’s release.
Huerta said he was freed so quickly that he was released in his jail-issue clothing and that the clothes he wore when he was arrested wouldn’t be immediately available.
“I told them to burn ’em,” he told the Times.
Mrozek said authorities still were seeking the indicted Huerta.
