Emma G. Gallegos

Get out so you can go to the Cherry Blossom Festival, see fabulous midcentury furniture and enjoy a youth festival.

A 19-year-old Riverside man has been sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting a 9-year-old boy with a toy light saber, according to KTLA. Javier Enrique Perez was found guilty on four felony counts, including "sexual penetration by foreign object by force."

It's the beginning of autumn and you know what that means: we're sliding into fire season. Tonight it's not wind but dry lightning storms that are raising red flags in mountain communities, according to the Los Angeles Times.

A woman is claiming in a lawsuit that a Huntington Beach Police officer hit her while she was crossing the street last May — allegations that the police department vehemently denies, according to the Huntington Beach Independent. The woman Catherine Sanchez, 47, says her son Christopher Sanchez saw a police car speeding and pulled her out of the way. The lawsuit says that the police stopped but yelled at them to get out of the way instead of offering any help.

A deputy managed to stop a runaway car hurtling through La Crescenta at 50 mph. The only damage was a scratch on the patrol car's bumper. The woman driving the runaway car made a panicked signal as she was heading south on Foothill Blvd. By that time, the Ford Focus she was driving had already plowed through five red lights.

In tonight's edition of Extra, Extra, Carlos Santana is not only a guitarist but an academy, hundreds of squid wash ashore and Montebello city officials got caught misusing public funds. Plus: Keep up with us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter: @LAist @LAistFood @LAistSports.

The Great Tecate Heist of 2011 started simply when three 19-year-old boys from Covina decided that they needed a 30-pack of beer on a Wednesday afternoon. It ended with the arrests of Andy Huynh, Nicholas Kalscheuer and Nicholas Fiumetto, who were charged with robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest.

This month there will be a 1.6-mile gleaming green streak painted on 1st Street in East Los Angeles. The paint are supposed to be skid- and slip-resistant and the transportation departments hopes to see more cyclists claiming the lane, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Brace yourselves, loft dwellers: there's not going to be a downtown Trader Joe's in the near future. If you want shrink-wrapped veggies and Charles Shaw wine, you're going to have to continue hiking up to Silver Lake or Pasadena for your fix.

A man driving a U-Haul pick-up truck was shot in the head and killed shortly after midnight in South Gate Tuesday night. The victim, Randy Telles, 23, of Bell Gardens was identified today and police are releasing a description of the alleged shooters. After Telles was shot, his truck rammed into a car, took out a gate and crashed through a carport.

A 23-year-old German man who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident will become the first to test a stem cell treatment developed in UC Irvine. Developed by husband-and-wife researchers Brian Cummings and Aileen Anderson, the couple says the treatment has reversed paralysis in the limbs of laboratory mice, The Orange County Register reports.

Elizabeth Taylor's famous jewels and threads are set to be auctioned off to some really rich people this December, but for four days this October they will be on display for you to gawk and admire in West Hollywood.