The brutal home invasion and murder of a 47-year-old Israeli-American businessman last week led to the arrest of three suspects. The latest twist? How they got into the country.
You guessed the twist already, didn’t you?
Yeah, they were illegal aliens.
First responders found Aleksandre Modebadze beaten to death at his home in Woodland Hills on April 26. Two days later, police arrested three illegal Georgian nationals — 38-year-old Paata Kochyashvili, 46-year-old Zaza Otarashvili, and 52-year-old Besiki Khutsishvili.
“In their investigation, homicide detectives determined three suspects had entered the home. After gaining entry, Modebadze was held captive and assaulted,” according to a local TV news report.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons confirmed to Fox News this weekend that two of the suspects were previously caught and released at the border during the Biden administration. The third “overstayed a tourist visa and had two ICE detainers on him ignored in the past due to sanctuary policies.”
Please note that Los Angeles is a sanctuary for illegal aliens and not for Los Angelenos like Modebadze.
There’s an Obama-era program that lets visitors from “trusted” countries enter the U.S. for up to 90 days without a visa — a loophole Latin American gangs have exploited to rob luxury homes across Southern California. Georgia isn’t on that list, but “Modebadze” is a Georgian name, so my first thought was whether the murder might be tied to similar Georgian mob activity.
And Another Thing: The Fox News report said Modebadze’s killers were from Eastern Europe. I hate to be pedantic, but Georgia is in the Caucasus — the mountainous borderland between Europe and Asia. “Eastern Europe” most often refers to the non-Soviet parts of the Cold War’s Warsaw Pact, and not the Caucasus nations about 1,200 miles away. They are geographically, geologically, and culturally distinct, and mistakes like that one do nothing to dispel Ben Rhodes’ notion that the typical reporter is 27 and knows nothing.
We don’t yet know much about Modebadze, so there’s no telling. According to that same KTTV report, “the suspects were located and taken into custody with the help of the FBI” within 48 hours, so it would at least seem like there was some prior connection between the victim and his killers. But this is all conjecture for now.
What we do know for sure is what Lyons said to Fox about L.A.’s status as a so-called sanctuary city.
“Had those sanctuary jurisdictions worked with ICE, this person would have been in our custody and removed from the United States, yet they were still allowed to stay here in the U.S. and commit crimes,” Lyons said. “So, you have three individuals from the nation of Georgia who didn’t know each other, who have now met up in the sanctuary state of California, in Los Angeles, and killed an innocent person.”
“So, for these elected officials, I say shame on you,” he concluded.
The three suspects are in custody in lieu of $2 million bond each. But since authorities had failed to turn them back at the border or return them to Georgia before they could murder someone, now all three are likely facing long prison stays at California taxpayers’ expense.
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