The Brief

Just after 11:30 on a Monday night last October, Latauriisha O’Brien, better known as Half Ounce, pulled up to a curb near his Koreatown apartment. The 32-year-old rapper was on a video chat with his wife as he parked his Mercedes-Benz on New Hampshire Avenue.

As he kept chatting with his wife, O’Brien and a friend in his vehicle didn’t seem to notice the dark SUV parked directly behind them.

When he and his friend got out of the car and walked toward O’Brien’s apartment, they also apparently didn’t notice as the same SUV made a U-turn, drove past them, parked, and turned off its lights before letting out a passenger who appeared to hide behind another car.

An ambush had been set — an ambush in which the killer would make sure O’Brien saw his face before executing him with a volley of point-blank gunshots.

Chilling details emerge in court filings

These chilling new details of Half Ounce’s slaying come from police documents that have never before been made public. Those documents describe surveillance footage of the shooting, as well as interviews with friends and family of the slain rapper.

The documents also lay out law enforcement’s initial theory of the case. That theory revolves around a robbery and a subsequent online feud, and it led to murder charges for Anthony King, 37, and Dennis Risinger, 38. Both men have pleaded not guilty to all charges, and the first hearing in the case is set for Nov. 6.

King’s legal team had no comment. LAist left a phone message and email for Risinger’s attorney and did not hear back by the time of publication.

A storied history complicated by street violence

The revelations in the case come as hip-hop is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Many of its stars have succumbed to the street violence that the music often portrays, and greater Los Angeles is one of the deadliest places for rappers, according to an analysis by L.A. TACO. Since 2019, Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke, Slim 400, Drakeo The Ruler, Earl Swavey, Kee Riches, and PnB Rock have all been killed in L.A., Inglewood or Compton.

Half Ounce portrayed a gangster lifestyle in his music, social media, and videos, such as the single “Roll Call.” He would also regularly showcase his affiliations with the Pirus and Bloods street gangs in his artistry, and court records document his numerous run-ins with the law from 2008 to 2014.

But O’Brien had not been in serious legal trouble since his early 20s, and his family has said in public-facing comments that the father of four had left street life behind to pursue rapping. His wife said that he was working at UPS to support their family in addition to recording new music. O’Brien’s mother also told KTLA he was studying heating and air conditioning at UEI College with the intent of starting his own business.

Account of a robbery and a feud

O’Brien and King were once friends, according to an affidavit submitted to obtain a search warrant for King’s Instagram account. O’Brien’s mother, according to the affidavit, said King was her son’s “play brother.”

That changed over the summer of 2022, O’Brien’s mother told detectives, around the time Half Ounce released the single “GANGBANGIN.”

According to the account O’Brien’s mother gave police, her son asked King to give him a ride to the Ladera shopping center in Los Angeles so O’Brien could loan her a few hundred dollars. She told detectives that when she met with her son he was carrying between $50,000 to $60,000 in cash and was wearing expensive jewelry.

According to the police documents, his mother said O’Brien later told her that soon after they left the plaza, King made a stop at a secluded Baldwin Village alley in South Central. Her son also said that a man carrying two handguns ran up to his car window and demanded his cash at gunpoint. O’Brien’s mother said he told her that he believed King was involved with the robbery because, after handing over the money, the robber started walking away — yet King urged O’Brien to also surrender his jewelry anyway because it “was not worth his life.”

After the robbery, according to the documents, King and O’Brien began to trade barbs over Instagram, with O’Brien telling members of their circle that King set him up and circulating edited pictures of King with a penis in his mouth. King would describe O’Brien as a “snitch” and allegedly send him pictures of his mother’s apartment.

In the affidavit, detectives said that O’Brien appeared “to forgive King for the robbery” in text messages. Detectives say King responded by telling O’Brien to “Stop playing baby boy and go run and hide.”

When O’Brien asked King why he had sent him a picture of his mother’s home, King texted him “Never tell someone you gone kill them. And then take yo word back.”

Those messages led to police identifying King as a suspect in Half Ounce’s murder, and he and Risinger were arrested separately just after Christmas in Long Beach. Both were charged with O’Brien’s murder and the attempted murder of his friend, while King faces an additional weapons charge.

A Los Angeles police spokesperson told LAist that officers would not speak about the killing this close to the trial. A voicemail and text message from LAist to the prosecutor in the case was not returned by the time of publication.

King had been previously convicted of robbery in 2005 and sentenced to 13 years in state prison. Police documents say he was on parole at the time of Half Ounce’s murder.

Risinger served several jail stints prior to his arrest, court records show. Most recently, in 2017, he had been sentenced to two years for assault and 11 months for violating a protection order.

Both men have been held without bail since their arrest.

Half Ounce’s final moments

O’Brien, still on the phone with his wife, continued walking toward his apartment with his friend. As they passed the car where the assailant apparently hid, surveillance video recorded muzzle flashes, police documents state. O’Brien, appearing wounded according to the police account, ran toward another apartment building. His friend escaped unharmed into a nearby alley.

On the phone, O’Brien’s pregnant wife heard the gunshots. She wasn’t looking at her screen right then, and when she did, the call had ended. She left her home, which was separate from O’Brien’s apartment, to check on her husband.

Meanwhile, the wounded O’Brien apparently tried to hide in a planter in front of an apartment building.

Location where O'Brien was found by police.

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Courtesy Apple maps

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The masked assassin, according to surveillance footage described in the documents, followed O’Brien to the planter. The killer then lifted his ski mask to show the wounded rapper his face, then stood over O’Brien before shooting him repeatedly, leaving him with nearly a dozen bullet wounds before running back to the waiting SUV.

O’Brien’s wife and mother, who also rushed to the scene, were not able to locate him. But an officer responding to a 911 call reporting the gunshots was canvassing the area and noticed a pair of black boots sticking out of the planter. The officer tapped on the boots but didn’t receive a response. It was O’Brien’s dead body.

L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.

The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.

Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.

“ We haven’t gotten anything,” said Erum Shahnawaz, LAHSA’s chief internal auditor, referring to the lack of response from LAHSA management at a meeting of the agency’s audit committee on Monday.

“That’s the only thing that's holding us from issuing the final report,” Shahnawaz said of the underspending audit.

That audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous, external audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.

Shahnawaz flagged management’s delays to the LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa, Szlasa said. He chairs the commission’s audit committee, and has repeatedly called out LAHSA executives’ delays in providing information about taxpayer spending over the past year.

“ I've been trying to intervene and use whatever I can to try to help provide support,” said Szlasa as he described his attempts to get the auditor the answers needed to complete the report.

Szlasa was appointed to the commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

 “It shouldn't take us two months to receive a…management response to an internal audit,” Szlasa said at Monday’s meeting. He said the industry standard for internal audits is eight or nine weeks from start to finish. That compares to the two years — and counting — for LAHSA’s federal underspend audit.

“We haven't had a single internal audit completed here in the last couple of years, which is nuts,” Szlasa added. He called for internal audits to happen much more frequently.

Long delays to LAHSA audits also are not new. In November 2024, the county issued a widely-seen audit that included findings that LAHSA was failing to complete internal audits.

Half of LAHSA’s governing commission is appointed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and half appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass is also the only elected official on the commission. She served on the audit committee for several months last fall. Records show she was absent for all of the meetings during that time.

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said management’s responses to the audit on underspending haven’t been provided yet because LAHSA leadership did not have clearly defined roles for who is supposed to coordinate responses to internal audits.

“ We need to work on clarifying that role internally,” Lim said.

 “The last two months have been probably some of the most stress-filled two months that we've had at LAHSA,” said Paul Rubenstein, chief of staff to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neil, pointing to mass layoffs.

Szlasa said there’s not that much in the audit for management to respond to.

“It's like, six pages or less,” he said.

Szlasa said  another option is to “just say we've asked management for responses and we're awaiting management response. We can publish the results.”

In response, Shahnawaz said that if management doesn't have an updated timeline for a response, then she’ll go ahead and issue the report without the response.

Once they floated that idea, Lim committed to providing the responses by next Tuesday.

LAHSA’s leadership has downsized the internal audit team — dropping from a staff of three to just one in the agency’s proposed budget up for approval Friday.

Delays in getting access to financial records

The delayed responses from management are not the only thing that’s been slowing down audits, Szlasa said at the meeting.

LAHSA policy, approved by its governing commission, says internal auditors are “ authorized to access all organizational records, personnel, and systems necessary for conducting audits,” he said.

But the auditor has faced challenges in actually getting that access, Szlasa said — including delays in being allowed to view LAHSA’s databases that show contracts and financial payments.

 ”We finally were granted access, but it wasn't, it wasn't easy, it wasn't immediate. It was slow,” Szlasa said.

Many failed outside audits

The delays on the internal audit come even after LAHSA failed multiple external audits in recent years, which have found the agency — overseen by city and county elected officials — has neglected to properly track billions of dollars in spending.

Largely in response to earlier audits, L.A. County supervisors pulled funding from LAHSA and are having the county instead oversee it directly. L.A.’s mayor and City Council have continued to have LAHSA manage the city’s homeless spending while the council delays plans to start studying a possible plan to transition away city tax dollars.

Signatures under scrutiny

LAHSA is also in the midst of a different internal audit — expected to finish in late August or early September — examining whether top officials followed requirements when signing contracts and letting others sign. It was launched in the wake of LAist reporting that found LAHSA’s then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s signature finalized a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer.

LAist also discovered Adams Kellum’s signature, as LAHSA’s CEO at the time, finalized a quarter-million-dollar contract between LAHSA and a longtime service provider she led up until two months earlier.

That contract was signed so soon after she left the service provider — St. Joseph Center — that the contract paperwork still listed her as one of St. Joseph Center’s points of contact and authorized signers.

She is currently under a state ethics investigation into whether her actions were an illegal conflict of interest.

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Wono Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.

Topline:

Why it matters: Museum officials said you will “likely experience high demand and long wait times in the queue" and thanked people for their patience.

LAist saw estimated wait times up to 6 hours, and it took a little more than 4.5 hours for this reporter to get through. On the bright side, there were still plenty of tickets left, including for the first day. Do not refresh the page or you may lose your spot.

The details: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children, members, active-duty military, personal aides or attendants and EBT cardholders have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program will also be free, with that pass opening in August.

But how do I buy: Each person is limited to nine tickets, and you’ll have 20 minutes to check out once they’re added to your cart, according to the museum. You can find the link here.

What's next: The grand opening is Sept. 22.

Go deeper: How to secure Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets ahead of the fall opening

Inglewood officials are working on a full rewrite of the city map for the first time in nearly 40 years, laying out how they want the city to grow and change for the next two decades.

Along part of Manchester Boulevard, city planners are setting up an option for developers to rebuild rows of small storefronts with a mix of homes and commercial space. On La Brea Avenue, south of Centinela Avenue, they envision the possibility of dense housing and business blocks as high as six stories.

Jerome Johnson, an Inglewood local, said he’s lived through three decades of change in the city. He recalled watching a “raggedy market” at the corner of La Brea and Centinela make way for the two-story shopping center that’s there today. He said the potential developments around the intersection could be a catch-22.

“There’s a shortage of housing,” Johnson said. “But you don’t want it to turn into New York City.”

It’s all part of the ongoing process for Inglewood’s new general plan, the foundational guide that governs things like what kind of buildings can be built where in the city and how they need to look. A draft land-use plan will go before the Inglewood City Council on Tuesday, then go into the environmental impact review process.

“This is really a historic milestone for the city,” Bernard McCrumby, Inglewood development services director, told The LA Local. 

McCrumby said planners are aiming to open up room for new housing and to revitalize some of the city’s flagging business corridors, without changing the city’s existing residential blocks or sacrificing the grocery stores, barbershops and local restaurants that make neighborhoods tick.

“The stadiums and arenas are here, they’re not going anywhere,” McCrumby said. “Now we can plan around those.”

The last time the city did a full update of its general plan was 1987, when horses were still racing at Hollywood Park and the “Showtime” Lakers were winning championships at the Forum. Edward Vincent Jr., the city’s first Black mayor, had only been in office for four years. 

The city has made intermittent updates to its planning guidelines since then — notably remapping a band of Inglewood along the Metro K line before it opened — but city documents indicate planners spent the past couple years working on a comprehensive rewrite. 

The new update to the general plan could set the city’s direction until 2050.

Planners hope to change some of the city’s commercial corridors into mixed-use zones that allow for housing and businesses alongside each other or even stacked on top of each other.

Those zones could go in place along Century Boulevard and Arbor Vitae Street as well as Manchester, Centinela and La Brea.

The rest of the update, McCrumby said, is aimed at lining the city’s zoning regulations up with state law and the city’s current reality on the ground.

City staff held several community meetings over the last year as they put together the draft and still aren’t done gathering feedback. 

The next year will see at least one more community meeting and a 45-day public review period, according to city documents. McCrumby said that, with the anchor of the land-use map in place, planners will continue to work on the rest of the general plan, targeting final City Council approval of the plan and accompanying environmental impact report next spring.

You can get all the details on the general plan at nextlevelinglewood.com and attend the City Council meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to give a public comment.

We also want to know what you think of the proposed changes. Email isaiah@thelalocal.org with your questions or thoughts.