A Cypress Park woman pleaded for help Wednesday in finding her husband's killer as authorities offered a reward for information in a case with few leads.
The murder of 27-year-old LA County Sheriff's Deputy Juan Abel Escalante left Celeste Escalante a widow with three young children.
Escalante said anyone with information should come forward so that her children know that justice was done. Escalante said her three year old son Julian often asks about his father.
"When’s daddy coming home when is he going to get done at the cemetery, how am I going to explain to a three year old that his dad’s not coming home," she said.
The award will be $95,000, the Los Angeles Times reported before the news conference.
When Escalante was gunned down outside his boyhood home in Cypress Park on Aug. 2, theories abounded on possible suspects and a motive.
The early focus of LAPD detectives was whether the slaying was related to Escalante's job at the Men's Central Jail, where he guarded the county's most dangerous inmates, including members of the Mexican Mafia, according to The Times. Investigators also combed for clues in Escalante's personal life.
But, so far, those trails have led to dead ends.
Now, authorities have begun to consider a new scenario: that Escalante was slain by local gang members -- perhaps by assailants who didn't even know he was a lawman, according to The Times.
Detectives have been looking more closely into gang activity in the neighborhood where the 27-year-old deputy grew up and lived. They are especially interested in the long-running feud between the notorious Avenues Gang and rival Cypress Park gang, whose territory includes the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood where Escalante was killed, The Times reported.
