Trucker ordered to stand trial for murder

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A Canyon Country truck driver wanted for murder in the May 2015 shooting death of a Lancaster man, and brought back to California two months later after he was nabbed in New York at a toll booth near the Pennsylvania state line, was ordered Thursday to stand trial for murder.

He is also suspected of shooting a woman in Canyon Country.

Michael Joe McGlothan, 51, appeared Thursday in San Fernando Superior Court for a preliminary hearing during which prosecutors presented their evidence in the case; after which a judge decides is the case should go to trial.

Prosecutors summed up their case in less than a day on Thursday, convincing a judge to order McGlothan to stand trial for murder.

“The defendant was held to answer on all counts,” Ricardo Santiago, spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office told The Signal Thursday.

McGlothan was arrested in the May 6, 2015, shooting death of 21-year-old Ledarion Allen Jr. of Lancaster.

The truck driver is also suspected of shooting and wounding 30-year-old Shatari Shene Cooks inside an apartment on Sierra Highway in Canyon Country.

McGlothan and Cooks reportedly shared the apartment. And Cooks and Allen were shot inside the unit.

At the time, deputies scoured a wide area around the apartment complex looking for McGlothan.

During the manhunt, detectives received many tips indicating the wanted man was in the San Gabriel Valley and the west side of Los Angeles, Lt. Eddie Hernandez with the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Homicide Bureau said at the time of the arrest.

“But then we tracked him circling the area near the Pennsylvania-New York border,” he said in June 2015. “Once we got a feeling he was heading north to Canada, we decided to take him down.”

New York State Police followed McGlothan, driving a Volvo big rig, to the New York State Thruway toll barrier on Interstate 90 in the town of Ripley some 60 miles southwest of Buffalo.

The day after he was arrested, LASD homicide detectives filed an extradition warrant to begin the process of having their sole suspect in the murder returned to Los Angeles for trial.

Once McGlothan was placed in custody in Los Angeles, his bail was set at $3.03 million.

 

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