July 21, 2025 • 27 mins
Investigation is ongoing regarding the cause of the East LA explosion that resulted in the deaths of three LASD detectives. Meanwhile, LA police are searching for a man suspected of shooting a driver in a crash in East Hollywood that injured over 30 people. Additionally, a California cloud-seeding company has become the focus of a conspiracy theory related to flooding in Texas. In other news, an Altadena couple believes that coyotes and bears can coexist as friends.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I realized that yesterday we hadn't seen each other for
a month because you were gone, and then you were
in the Bay Area. We're doing the show for a while.
And then I was gone, oh yeah, so it was
a month. It was a nice month, wasn't it. I
mean that it was like, yeah, that was fed up. No, no,
(00:28):
and everyone knows it. No, it was fine, And it
was also nice to see you at the Dodgers game yesterday.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
We went and so I'm not going to fix this.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We saw the Dodgers lose to the Brewers, but we
were there with Brian and Danielle, who won the postathon
auction to go check out the game with us.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
They're a good time. They were light time. Yeah. The
beautiful weather yesterday, it.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Was I that was insane, like we should have all
been sitting there in our ass sweat. Like the weather
has been so moderate this July. It's been crazy. And
it out at Dodgers Stadium late July. I mean it
was beautiful walking out of there, it was so comfortable,
it's just it's odd. It just means that we're probably
(01:11):
gonna get screwed later in the year.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, August, in September, it canna be flaming hot.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Hey, Gary, I don't know how often you go to Maui,
but when we go, we stay up on the west
side and we go to Lahina a lot. There's a
restaurant we like there a lot called Chemos if you
know about it. They say they're going to be reopening
later in the year.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
What's the rebuilding like in Loahina?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
By the way, I go to Maui about once every
fifty two years, so right, that was the first time.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I'd ever been to Maui.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
The rebuilding in Lahina is there there As you drive
into that west side in too, like the Canapoly area
on a poly area and all that. There is a
memorial alongside what they call now the Lahina Bypass, which
is a road that takes you around what's left of Leahina.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
And it is.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Sobering, to say the least, just in terms of the
amount of stuff that is not there, the amount of
construction that is gone as a result of those fires
from two years ago, almost two years ago now but
that they have begun rebuilding and some of those sections
of Lahina have reopened, some of the stores have reopened.
(02:24):
But as you drive around sort of that front street
area which isn't technically even open, and that highway that
goes right through it is it is pretty devastating. And
to have gone through Malibu and palas Age just a
few weeks ago also, it was pretty stunning to see
how there there is some rebuilding going on. I mean
(02:44):
there's open framing and there's there's homes that are being rebuilt,
but it's it's got a ways to go.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
So well.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
We have been following all of the news coming out
of the tragedy at the Sheriff's department over the week
and one of the questions swirling around I first heard
Conway ask it on Friday, is if they can trace
these explosives that killed these three veteran detectives for the
Lakennty Sheriff's Department back to somebody, could they be found
(03:15):
criminally liable in this case? And it's one of the
possibilities that remains on the table. They've zeroed in on
a storage unit and an apartment complex in Santa Monica
of course, this explosive blast occurred Friday morning at the
training center there off Eastern when the three detectives, Deputies
(03:36):
Joshua Kelly Ecklund, Victor Limis and William Osborne were killed
while moving this undetonated ordinance. Now, the explosives may have
been connected to this operation in Santa Monica that took
place last Thursday, the day before they were killed. They
were called to this apartment building on Bay Street to
help out Santa Monica PD with an investigation into these
(03:59):
explosive device found in a storage unit. Apparently the woman
who lives there now found these things bag of grenade
something like.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
That alerted the police to it.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Apparently they were left behind by the person who had
lived there before, is the report at this point. So
they're still looking into that scene right now.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
What's the last time somebody found grenades in a bag
in a storage unit? Does that happen on a regular
basis that people find these things? And I mean obviously
the bomb squad and the explosives teams like this deal
with these things, but regularly every day, every week.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
This guy was apparently ex military who lived there before.
The woman that had control of this storage unit.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
You mentioned that these three detectives seventy four years collective
service between them and sixteen children. Detective Kelly Ecklund first
joined the department of two thousand and six. He worked
at Pitchis and North County correction moved to Lennox and
South La stations. Detective Limas joined the department in two
(05:07):
thousand and three, initially worked at Twin Tower Correctional Facility.
He was known for his mentorship of younger deputies. Detective
Osborne joined the department way back in ninety two, served
as the men's central jail, moved to Industry Station where
he went up to detective and a couple of these
by the way, Detective Limis survived by his wife, who
(05:30):
is also a detective in the Sheriff's Department, and Detective
Osborne survived by his wife who is also a detective,
and as you mentioned, the sixteen children between them. We
don't know a lot about the specifics for memorial services,
but those will be announced in the coming days. The
prospect of whoever it is being held responsible for this,
(05:56):
it almost seems like it would be a hard a
hard prosecution just in terms of they don't even know
exactly what it was that caused this explosion in the
first place. Was it just simply one of these things
that went off. Was it mishandling in some way. That's
kind of what's going to be determining how it is
(06:18):
they're going to go about.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
A prosecution if it in fact exists.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So the Sheriff's Department has said that this was by
far the worst day that they've had in decades, the
deadliest day since eighteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I meant to look up what happened, just out of curiosity,
and then I never did. But yeah, when you think
about all of the kids among those three guys and
the number of families that this just forever in one moment,
in one moment like that, you've been doing this your
whole life. And like we mentioned on Friday, these are
the before even May news. You know the Sheriff's Department,
(06:57):
you live in La County, you know that these are
the best to the best, especially when you talk about
the specialized units in the Sheriff's Department. Adds insult to
tragedy there, all right, when we come back that car
versus the crowd in Los Angeles, this guy had quite
the past. Well, of course he does some a hole
he gets booted from a club. Who knows if he's high, drunk,
or just angry or all of the three, or what
(07:20):
have you. But there's a certain guy that does this
kind of thing, just plows into a crowd willy nilly,
And it's the kind of person who tells you who they.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Are long before they do that. And that was exactly
the case. Here.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
The driver who intentionally plowed into a crowd early Saturday,
early Saturday, outside of club. And I stumble on that
because when you say intentionally plowed, it sometimes makes it
sound like and the reason why this got so much
coverage that he was like a domestic terrorist, the kind
that we've seen use their cars to inflict as much
(07:58):
of injury and death as possible. This seems just to
be an a hole, But this was a guy who
was previously convicted of a hate crime in Orange County.
Apparently he has been up to no good in Orange
County for quite some time. His name's Fernando Ramirez and
when he was twenty three back in June of twenty nineteen,
(08:21):
he went into a Whole Foods in Laguna Beach and
sucker punched a twenty six year old black employee who
had been on the lunch break.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
When asked by an officer why he did that, he
said it was because the guy was black and that
he hates all black people. That's just part of this
criminal record that this guy has. Prosecutors in Orange County
said they filed eleven criminal cases over the last eleven
years against this guy, including several violence charges.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Now I'm shocked that Orange County hasn't just locked him
up and thrown away the key.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah. Yeah, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
He was thrown out, like we said, of that Vermont
Hollywood club before coming back to the area about two
am on Saturday, where he hit several street vendors and
dozens of people in the street. Several people landed in
critical condition. Nobody has died, No one's going to die,
but obviously a very chaotic and dangerous scene there.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Again, the sidelight to this and I don't actually think
it's getting very much coverage, and to be honest, I'm
not going to cry about it. Is they're still looking
for the guy who shot this guy in the ass
after he was pulled out of his car and beaten
to within an inch of his life.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
A lot advocates, I love that. Not advocating, I.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Am, but I suggesting it's probably not at the top
of the list of things to go for.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Put me on your jury, sir, I will vote not guilty.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
But Fernando was sentenced to four years in prison back
in twenty twenty after a jury found him guilty of
battery with serious injury for that for that attack on
the Laguna Whole Foods, an appeals court overturned part of
the verdict after the court found a recorded conversation with
an officer that violated his Miranda rights. The appeals court
(10:12):
reversed the civil rights violation and the hate crime enhancement,
vacated the sentence, but upheld the aggravated battery conviction. He
was convicted also that year of battery upon a police
officer and resisting arrest and got six months in jail,
and then a year later convicted of assault great bodily
injury to counts of resisting arrest and received a sentence
of another six months plus in jail and a year
(10:32):
of probation, and also in twenty twenty one, pleaded guilty
to corporal injury upon a spouse, sentenced to three years
of probation and two hundred and thirty four days in jail.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
A spokesperson for ocda's office said there was also a
dui charge that was pending a separate domestic battery charge
that was pending, including a violation of a protective order
stemming from a twenty twenty two incident, all of it
down in Orange County. If I got popped for let
(11:07):
me just pick one. If I got popped for assault
with great bodily injury, two counts of resisting arrest, do
I get one hundred and ninety four days in jail?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
You have no priors, You have a responsibility in your
family and your job. Yeah, you would have no problem
getting that willy nilly.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Again because it's just too crowded. It's just the arrest.
I'm just just too crowded, Okay.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
But I like how you framed that if you got
in I like though, how you frame that if I
got popped and so there you're insinuating.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
That, like you've done this, but you haven't been caught right.
I mean, I haven't been convicted.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You haven't been arrested for it. You've been landing GBI everywhere?
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Is that a thing? Great? Bodily injury? Brain injury TBI?
Traumatic traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
You've been handing out TBIs to people for fifty two years,
but you've never been popped for it.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
You get one, and you get one. It just does
not seem like my character. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Hawaii does things to a man. It changes you. You
could have come back a complete felon. No, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I will say this though, the smell of the Kahului
Airport right there on the on the north end of Maui, right,
It's just it's flowers and glory, and there's birds that glamaria.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It's just beautiful.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
The nies you get at Lax, especially terminal faceha are
there still an exhaust and cigarettes jet exhaust and the cigarettes?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, while you're waiting, it's wild.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Nobody even smokes cigarettes, but Lax still smells like cigarettes.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
It smells like I remember when.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
I moved here twenty years ago and I had quit
some up in Seattle. I landed Lax and the first
thing I thought, I remember this so clearly. The first
thing I thought is I got out of that terminal
was God, I want a cigarette.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
It's true story. And I picked it up again.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Have you seen those robot wheelchairs at Lax No, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Each terminal I think has it. I definitely saw them
in Terminal four. I haven't seen the wheelchair. I've seen
the robots.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
You could sign up for it where you sit in
the chair and you don't need a human behind you.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
The wheelchair knows where to go.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
M wow, M that is not that's going to be
probably you in twenty years, thirty years.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I also saw something very funny, and I'll make this quick.
Wife and I in the TSA line at Lax leaving
right first day of vacation.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
We're happy.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
There's a mom, a father, and a little boy who's
probably five or six behind us. She's not happy. They're
also clearly going on vacation, kids dressed like in beach gear.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
They're they're leaving. They're right, they've had a morning and.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Mom said, I don't want anybody touching my body and
I don't want anybody speaking to me.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
And we had to.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Laugh quietly because she would have been pissed if she
were laughing at her.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
But I bet like there was a time when you
were young parents that felt the same way.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Our kids were really well behaved. I mean for the
most part.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yes there were moments, but in situations like that, they
were very We were so blessed to have well behaved
kids there because.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
My gosh, well, and I mean, how many times does
a mom think that in her mind and to hear
it come out loud, It.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Come out loud. It's very public place. Yeah, I mean, oh, say,
that's so uncomfortable. But so I don't think her son
heard her say that, even he was two one hundred
other people did so good.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
All right, cloud seating is a real thing. It is.
It's for real.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
And there is a California company that may have something
to do with cloud seating over Texas which doesn't need it.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
We'll explain.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Law enforcement sources have told Channel five that deputies cut
a grenade in half as part of a training exercise
after they X rayed it and believed that it was inert.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
So I don't know anything about grenades, but my question
is this are. Is it a possibility that this was
a type of grenade that they had not ever handled
before and that an X ray would not show it
being inert?
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Is that a possibility, I guess, But I could imagine
that they would simply say, we're not going to touch
it until we know for sure if it was something
that they hadn't seen before.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
And what I believe they mean by inert is that
whatever gunpowder or explosive materials in it would have been removed,
because I mean army surplus stores. I don't know if
they do still sell them, but you used to be
able to buy inert grenades that had any explosives that
would have been in them taken out of it. So
(16:30):
I don't know exactly how this happened. But again we
told you at the top of the hour that the
explosives were found in a storage unit for an apartment
on Thursday now, and they still are developing the exact
chain of custody to see if those that came from
that storage unit in an apartment in Santa Monica, if
(16:52):
that was in fact what blew up on Friday morning.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
People who live there now say that the guy who
lived there once and left this stuff behind was an
ex military guy. Now, according to this source, had spoke
to KTLA. The grenades had been stolen by a member
of the US military during their training. The deputies loaded
them into their unit and took them back to East La.
(17:19):
On the following day, the deputies cut one of the
grenades in half as a training exercise in order to
examine what was inside of it, thinking it would not explode.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
That's when it detonated.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
According to the source, it was a tragic mistake or accident.
Apparently this is one of Eric Spillman's sources there at KTLA.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Well, that's uh, that doesn't make the story any better.
Nothing well, yeah, nothing. Well.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
A couple of days before the flooding along the Guadalupe
River on the fourth of July in Kerk County, Texas,
engineers with a company called Rainmaker took off in an
airplane about one hundred miles away and dispersed seventy grams
of silver iodide into a cloud.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
It kind of did what it was supposed to do
at the time.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
This is one hundred miles away, and these were clouds
over a very drought stricken farmland that had not seen
rain for quite some time, and it did what it
was supposed to do, but then news of the forecast
came in and they called off the operation.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Now, there were some suggestions right away that this cloud
seating had something to do with the devastating flooding that
ended up killing dozens of people. I think one hundred
and thirty five is the latest number, including a bunch
of those girls at the day camp. Now, the idea
(18:48):
is far fetched. It's been debunked over and over again.
That means nothing these days. That means nothing in the
age of the Internet, where this kind of a conspiracy
theory will live for a long time.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Well, and this is nothing new.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Cloud seating, as we've talked about, has gone back to
the forties. This is something that's had several different iterations
with several different versions of success. But this was a
government sanctioned cloud seating. This wasn't some weird fringe company
going out and creating the weather that caused the flooding
that killed other little girls.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
No, this was a local.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Government agency that brought in this company to create rain
over those drought drought stricken fields.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Now Rainmaker has come clean with their project that they
did that day July second. They said they were working
in Rungi, Texas, I think is how you say it,
about one hundred and twenty five miles southeast of where
the Guadalupe River flooded. They flew their plane to an
elevation of sixteen hundred feet. They dispersed about seventy grams
of silver iodide, which is described as small an amount
(19:58):
smaller than a handful of skittles. And what that silver
iodide does is latches onto some of those water droplets
that are already in those clouds, sometimes converts them into
ice crystals that could fall as rain or snow, depending
on the temperature that they go through. And then soon
after that flight, the meteorologists that work with rain Maker
(20:19):
identified an inflow of moisture to the area and said,
we don't need to do this anymore. You can suspend operations.
And about one in the morning the next day is
when the National Weather Service issued its first flash floodwatch
for the for the Kirk County briefing. So this is
also one of those things, is it. Cloud seeding doesn't
make clouds.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It doesn't make new clouds. It just uses the water
that exists in the clouds currently and makes water droplets
large enough that they would they would actually fall to
the ground and survive all the way down.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Do have good news?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, We've got a great story coming up. It's one
of my favorite types of stories. It's an unlikely friendship story,
a friendship between a coyote and a bear.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Six forty later we're going to be talking about this story, specifically,
a phenomenon called AI sycophancy, where these AI chatbots tell
you exactly what you want to hear.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Now, I wonder people are falling in love with them.
There's no pushback. I cannot get that story out of
my head.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
The story that we did three weeks ago now of
the journalist who invited couples, oh yeah, over to like
a summer house retreat, and the couples were one human,
one AI, and how that interaction was and how far
along I mean, if you want to know how far
(21:57):
along companies in the world are in terms of using
AI and integrating it with everyday tasks, it must be
so much further down the road than you and I
can even wrap our heads around. If normal everyday people
are this far into relationships with chat GP two.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
There was a time a couple of years ago, and
I remember we started talking about on a regular basis.
We would do topics about AI, when chat GPT came out,
when grock came out, and things like that. These large
language models where you could basically just say, write whatever,
write a poem about sharks and make it funny or
something like that, and it would come up with something
(22:37):
in seconds. It would not perfect, somewhat rudimentary, but still
it would do it. And it was a little bit
terrifying that that existed. There was a fear I think
at that point that it's only a matter of time,
it's only six months, and we're you know, it's going
to be terminator or something like that. Well it didn't
happen like that, but there are some of those researchers
(23:01):
and some of those probably less scrupulous companies that are
developing models like this that would be so manipulative. I mean,
just think to the technology of people falling for AI.
Scam Phone calls now, yeah, that are hard to tell
apart from reality.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I've gotten three calls in the past week and they
leave voicemails I haven't listened to the voicemail, but I
see the transcription and it's you know, press one now
to verify that you just spent nine and ninety nine
dollars on the iPhone sixteen like you're leaving voicemails about
this and three different times they called last week. That's
(23:43):
not a new phone. No, And who's pressing one? And
what does that mean? What does that mean for you?
If you do press.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
One, they only have to be right one. Oh god,
it's so terrifying.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
This video looked like a Disney movie. The coyote and
the bear rolling through Alta Dina.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
They've been spotted multiple times together. It is the story
of an unlikely friendship. Where I live, you see coyotes
all the time and you see bears all the time,
but you do not see them together walking around. They
go and they go out to eat together. They munch
on the garbage, They patrol the foothill streets, left mostly
(24:21):
desolate by the eating fire. By the way, they say that,
like the deputy said Andrew Garza, this is not an
unusual site to see the two, but it is weird
to see them all together, just hanging out.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
They say that because of the fire.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Both animals have lost their natural habitat, so they're just
down there with the same goal water and food.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
I guess I didn't think about that.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I mean, obviously, when we talk about the fires from
back in January, we talk about the loss of lives
and homes, but there was plenty of natural area that
also burns.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
And the thing about is, you know the bears they eat,
they're not gonna It's not like the bear wants to
eat the coyote like they want to eat each other.
They both want They're both looking for the same stuff.
Old pizza, plants, water, rodents, cats, cats, small dogs, small dogs,
(25:21):
smaller dogs. Did you miss your dog? He yeah, tell
me about that. That was the longest you've been separated. Well,
I didn't have a dog for a long time. No,
you and this particular dog. Oh, by the way, Keanna
brought up Peter while you were gone, and I was like,
who's Peter? Like I completely forgot about your dog, because
(25:41):
that's how dead to me you were.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
He did.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
He had a great time at summer camp. Oh he
went to summer camp. Yeah, that sounds expensive. He was
way out in the No, it wasn't bad. He was
way out in the hills. But the trainers, did you
actually pay someone or you just leave them in the hills.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yes, they say, this is camp. I paid someone at
least keep an eye on I enjoy, prevent him from
being eaten by rattlesnakes or something like that. But he
was he he was very excited to see me when
I went to go pick him up.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Oh so he recognized you. Was there a little bit
of a fear that he wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, sure, because he was having fun, was playing with
other dogs and peacocks and animals and things like that.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
That's how fun. It's going to be bored. He's going
to be so bored. But there was a the first
couple of days he just slept. He had a lot
of fun.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
Yeah, you got to bring in a peacock there, but
he didn't care after a while.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
The day I went to go pick him up, there
were two or three peacocks. They were in the art.
He didn't even looking out for this peacock and a round.
I'm ready to go back to the silence. Simply didn't care.
Peace yep, all right, we've got swamp watch on deck
when we come back. You've been listening to the Gary
and Shannon Show.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I realized that yesterday we hadn't seen each other for
a month because you were gone, and then you were
in the Bay Area. We're doing the show for a while.
And then I was gone, oh yeah, so it was
a month. It was a nice month, wasn't it. I
mean that it was like, yeah, that was fed up. No, no,
(00:28):
and everyone knows it. No, it was fine, And it
was also nice to see you at the Dodgers game yesterday.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
We went and so I'm not going to fix this.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We saw the Dodgers lose to the Brewers, but we
were there with Brian and Danielle, who won the postathon
auction to go check out the game with us.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
They're a good time. They were light time. Yeah. The
beautiful weather yesterday, it.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Was I that was insane, like we should have all
been sitting there in our ass sweat. Like the weather
has been so moderate this July. It's been crazy. And
it out at Dodgers Stadium late July. I mean it
was beautiful walking out of there, it was so comfortable,
it's just it's odd. It just means that we're probably
(01:11):
gonna get screwed later in the year.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, August, in September, it canna be flaming hot.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Hey, Gary, I don't know how often you go to Maui,
but when we go, we stay up on the west
side and we go to Lahina a lot. There's a
restaurant we like there a lot called Chemos if you
know about it. They say they're going to be reopening
later in the year.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
What's the rebuilding like in Loahina?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
By the way, I go to Maui about once every
fifty two years, so right, that was the first time.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I'd ever been to Maui.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
The rebuilding in Lahina is there there As you drive
into that west side in too, like the Canapoly area
on a poly area and all that. There is a
memorial alongside what they call now the Lahina Bypass, which
is a road that takes you around what's left of Leahina.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
And it is.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Sobering, to say the least, just in terms of the
amount of stuff that is not there, the amount of
construction that is gone as a result of those fires
from two years ago, almost two years ago now but
that they have begun rebuilding and some of those sections
of Lahina have reopened, some of the stores have reopened.
(02:24):
But as you drive around sort of that front street
area which isn't technically even open, and that highway that
goes right through it is it is pretty devastating. And
to have gone through Malibu and palas Age just a
few weeks ago also, it was pretty stunning to see
how there there is some rebuilding going on. I mean
(02:44):
there's open framing and there's there's homes that are being rebuilt,
but it's it's got a ways to go.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
So well.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
We have been following all of the news coming out
of the tragedy at the Sheriff's department over the week
and one of the questions swirling around I first heard
Conway ask it on Friday, is if they can trace
these explosives that killed these three veteran detectives for the
Lakennty Sheriff's Department back to somebody, could they be found
(03:15):
criminally liable in this case? And it's one of the
possibilities that remains on the table. They've zeroed in on
a storage unit and an apartment complex in Santa Monica
of course, this explosive blast occurred Friday morning at the
training center there off Eastern when the three detectives, Deputies
(03:36):
Joshua Kelly Ecklund, Victor Limis and William Osborne were killed
while moving this undetonated ordinance. Now, the explosives may have
been connected to this operation in Santa Monica that took
place last Thursday, the day before they were killed. They
were called to this apartment building on Bay Street to
help out Santa Monica PD with an investigation into these
(03:59):
explosive device found in a storage unit. Apparently the woman
who lives there now found these things bag of grenade
something like.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
That alerted the police to it.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Apparently they were left behind by the person who had
lived there before, is the report at this point. So
they're still looking into that scene right now.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
What's the last time somebody found grenades in a bag
in a storage unit? Does that happen on a regular
basis that people find these things? And I mean obviously
the bomb squad and the explosives teams like this deal
with these things, but regularly every day, every week.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
This guy was apparently ex military who lived there before.
The woman that had control of this storage unit.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
You mentioned that these three detectives seventy four years collective
service between them and sixteen children. Detective Kelly Ecklund first
joined the department of two thousand and six. He worked
at Pitchis and North County correction moved to Lennox and
South La stations. Detective Limas joined the department in two
(05:07):
thousand and three, initially worked at Twin Tower Correctional Facility.
He was known for his mentorship of younger deputies. Detective
Osborne joined the department way back in ninety two, served
as the men's central jail, moved to Industry Station where
he went up to detective and a couple of these
by the way, Detective Limis survived by his wife, who
(05:30):
is also a detective in the Sheriff's Department, and Detective
Osborne survived by his wife who is also a detective,
and as you mentioned, the sixteen children between them. We
don't know a lot about the specifics for memorial services,
but those will be announced in the coming days. The
prospect of whoever it is being held responsible for this,
(05:56):
it almost seems like it would be a hard a
hard prosecution just in terms of they don't even know
exactly what it was that caused this explosion in the
first place. Was it just simply one of these things
that went off. Was it mishandling in some way. That's
kind of what's going to be determining how it is
(06:18):
they're going to go about.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
A prosecution if it in fact exists.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So the Sheriff's Department has said that this was by
far the worst day that they've had in decades, the
deadliest day since eighteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I meant to look up what happened, just out of curiosity,
and then I never did. But yeah, when you think
about all of the kids among those three guys and
the number of families that this just forever in one moment,
in one moment like that, you've been doing this your
whole life. And like we mentioned on Friday, these are
the before even May news. You know the Sheriff's Department,
(06:57):
you live in La County, you know that these are
the best to the best, especially when you talk about
the specialized units in the Sheriff's Department. Adds insult to
tragedy there, all right, when we come back that car
versus the crowd in Los Angeles, this guy had quite
the past. Well, of course he does some a hole
he gets booted from a club. Who knows if he's high, drunk,
or just angry or all of the three, or what
(07:20):
have you. But there's a certain guy that does this
kind of thing, just plows into a crowd willy nilly,
And it's the kind of person who tells you who they.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Are long before they do that. And that was exactly
the case. Here.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
The driver who intentionally plowed into a crowd early Saturday,
early Saturday, outside of club. And I stumble on that
because when you say intentionally plowed, it sometimes makes it
sound like and the reason why this got so much
coverage that he was like a domestic terrorist, the kind
that we've seen use their cars to inflict as much
(07:58):
of injury and death as possible. This seems just to
be an a hole, But this was a guy who
was previously convicted of a hate crime in Orange County.
Apparently he has been up to no good in Orange
County for quite some time. His name's Fernando Ramirez and
when he was twenty three back in June of twenty nineteen,
(08:21):
he went into a Whole Foods in Laguna Beach and
sucker punched a twenty six year old black employee who
had been on the lunch break.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
When asked by an officer why he did that, he
said it was because the guy was black and that
he hates all black people. That's just part of this
criminal record that this guy has. Prosecutors in Orange County
said they filed eleven criminal cases over the last eleven
years against this guy, including several violence charges.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Now I'm shocked that Orange County hasn't just locked him
up and thrown away the key.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah. Yeah, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
He was thrown out, like we said, of that Vermont
Hollywood club before coming back to the area about two
am on Saturday, where he hit several street vendors and
dozens of people in the street. Several people landed in
critical condition. Nobody has died, No one's going to die,
but obviously a very chaotic and dangerous scene there.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Again, the sidelight to this and I don't actually think
it's getting very much coverage, and to be honest, I'm
not going to cry about it. Is they're still looking
for the guy who shot this guy in the ass
after he was pulled out of his car and beaten
to within an inch of his life.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
A lot advocates, I love that. Not advocating, I.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Am, but I suggesting it's probably not at the top
of the list of things to go for.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Put me on your jury, sir, I will vote not guilty.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
But Fernando was sentenced to four years in prison back
in twenty twenty after a jury found him guilty of
battery with serious injury for that for that attack on
the Laguna Whole Foods, an appeals court overturned part of
the verdict after the court found a recorded conversation with
an officer that violated his Miranda rights. The appeals court
(10:12):
reversed the civil rights violation and the hate crime enhancement,
vacated the sentence, but upheld the aggravated battery conviction. He
was convicted also that year of battery upon a police
officer and resisting arrest and got six months in jail,
and then a year later convicted of assault great bodily
injury to counts of resisting arrest and received a sentence
of another six months plus in jail and a year
(10:32):
of probation, and also in twenty twenty one, pleaded guilty
to corporal injury upon a spouse, sentenced to three years
of probation and two hundred and thirty four days in jail.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
A spokesperson for ocda's office said there was also a
dui charge that was pending a separate domestic battery charge
that was pending, including a violation of a protective order
stemming from a twenty twenty two incident, all of it
down in Orange County. If I got popped for let
(11:07):
me just pick one. If I got popped for assault
with great bodily injury, two counts of resisting arrest, do
I get one hundred and ninety four days in jail?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
You have no priors, You have a responsibility in your
family and your job. Yeah, you would have no problem
getting that willy nilly.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Again because it's just too crowded. It's just the arrest.
I'm just just too crowded, Okay.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
But I like how you framed that if you got
in I like though, how you frame that if I
got popped and so there you're insinuating.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
That, like you've done this, but you haven't been caught right.
I mean, I haven't been convicted.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You haven't been arrested for it. You've been landing GBI everywhere?
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Is that a thing? Great? Bodily injury? Brain injury TBI?
Traumatic traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
You've been handing out TBIs to people for fifty two years,
but you've never been popped for it.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
You get one, and you get one. It just does
not seem like my character. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Hawaii does things to a man. It changes you. You
could have come back a complete felon. No, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I will say this though, the smell of the Kahului
Airport right there on the on the north end of Maui, right,
It's just it's flowers and glory, and there's birds that glamaria.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It's just beautiful.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
The nies you get at Lax, especially terminal faceha are
there still an exhaust and cigarettes jet exhaust and the cigarettes?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, while you're waiting, it's wild.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Nobody even smokes cigarettes, but Lax still smells like cigarettes.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
It smells like I remember when.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
I moved here twenty years ago and I had quit
some up in Seattle. I landed Lax and the first
thing I thought, I remember this so clearly. The first
thing I thought is I got out of that terminal
was God, I want a cigarette.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
It's true story. And I picked it up again.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Have you seen those robot wheelchairs at Lax No, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Each terminal I think has it. I definitely saw them
in Terminal four. I haven't seen the wheelchair. I've seen
the robots.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
You could sign up for it where you sit in
the chair and you don't need a human behind you.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
The wheelchair knows where to go.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
M wow, M that is not that's going to be
probably you in twenty years, thirty years.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I also saw something very funny, and I'll make this quick.
Wife and I in the TSA line at Lax leaving
right first day of vacation.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
We're happy.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
There's a mom, a father, and a little boy who's
probably five or six behind us. She's not happy. They're
also clearly going on vacation, kids dressed like in beach gear.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
They're they're leaving. They're right, they've had a morning and.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Mom said, I don't want anybody touching my body and
I don't want anybody speaking to me.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
And we had to.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Laugh quietly because she would have been pissed if she
were laughing at her.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
But I bet like there was a time when you
were young parents that felt the same way.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Our kids were really well behaved. I mean for the
most part.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yes there were moments, but in situations like that, they
were very We were so blessed to have well behaved
kids there because.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
My gosh, well, and I mean, how many times does
a mom think that in her mind and to hear
it come out loud, It.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Come out loud. It's very public place. Yeah, I mean, oh, say,
that's so uncomfortable. But so I don't think her son
heard her say that, even he was two one hundred
other people did so good.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
All right, cloud seating is a real thing. It is.
It's for real.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
And there is a California company that may have something
to do with cloud seating over Texas which doesn't need it.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
We'll explain.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Law enforcement sources have told Channel five that deputies cut
a grenade in half as part of a training exercise
after they X rayed it and believed that it was inert.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
So I don't know anything about grenades, but my question
is this are. Is it a possibility that this was
a type of grenade that they had not ever handled
before and that an X ray would not show it
being inert?
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Is that a possibility, I guess, But I could imagine
that they would simply say, we're not going to touch
it until we know for sure if it was something
that they hadn't seen before.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
And what I believe they mean by inert is that
whatever gunpowder or explosive materials in it would have been removed,
because I mean army surplus stores. I don't know if
they do still sell them, but you used to be
able to buy inert grenades that had any explosives that
would have been in them taken out of it. So
(16:30):
I don't know exactly how this happened. But again we
told you at the top of the hour that the
explosives were found in a storage unit for an apartment
on Thursday now, and they still are developing the exact
chain of custody to see if those that came from
that storage unit in an apartment in Santa Monica, if
(16:52):
that was in fact what blew up on Friday morning.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
People who live there now say that the guy who
lived there once and left this stuff behind was an
ex military guy. Now, according to this source, had spoke
to KTLA. The grenades had been stolen by a member
of the US military during their training. The deputies loaded
them into their unit and took them back to East La.
(17:19):
On the following day, the deputies cut one of the
grenades in half as a training exercise in order to
examine what was inside of it, thinking it would not explode.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
That's when it detonated.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
According to the source, it was a tragic mistake or accident.
Apparently this is one of Eric Spillman's sources there at KTLA.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Well, that's uh, that doesn't make the story any better.
Nothing well, yeah, nothing. Well.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
A couple of days before the flooding along the Guadalupe
River on the fourth of July in Kerk County, Texas,
engineers with a company called Rainmaker took off in an
airplane about one hundred miles away and dispersed seventy grams
of silver iodide into a cloud.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
It kind of did what it was supposed to do
at the time.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
This is one hundred miles away, and these were clouds
over a very drought stricken farmland that had not seen
rain for quite some time, and it did what it
was supposed to do, but then news of the forecast
came in and they called off the operation.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Now, there were some suggestions right away that this cloud
seating had something to do with the devastating flooding that
ended up killing dozens of people. I think one hundred
and thirty five is the latest number, including a bunch
of those girls at the day camp. Now, the idea
(18:48):
is far fetched. It's been debunked over and over again.
That means nothing these days. That means nothing in the
age of the Internet, where this kind of a conspiracy
theory will live for a long time.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Well, and this is nothing new.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Cloud seating, as we've talked about, has gone back to
the forties. This is something that's had several different iterations
with several different versions of success. But this was a
government sanctioned cloud seating. This wasn't some weird fringe company
going out and creating the weather that caused the flooding
that killed other little girls.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
No, this was a local.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Government agency that brought in this company to create rain
over those drought drought stricken fields.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Now Rainmaker has come clean with their project that they
did that day July second. They said they were working
in Rungi, Texas, I think is how you say it,
about one hundred and twenty five miles southeast of where
the Guadalupe River flooded. They flew their plane to an
elevation of sixteen hundred feet. They dispersed about seventy grams
of silver iodide, which is described as small an amount
(19:58):
smaller than a handful of skittles. And what that silver
iodide does is latches onto some of those water droplets
that are already in those clouds, sometimes converts them into
ice crystals that could fall as rain or snow, depending
on the temperature that they go through. And then soon
after that flight, the meteorologists that work with rain Maker
(20:19):
identified an inflow of moisture to the area and said,
we don't need to do this anymore. You can suspend operations.
And about one in the morning the next day is
when the National Weather Service issued its first flash floodwatch
for the for the Kirk County briefing. So this is
also one of those things, is it. Cloud seeding doesn't
make clouds.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It doesn't make new clouds. It just uses the water
that exists in the clouds currently and makes water droplets
large enough that they would they would actually fall to
the ground and survive all the way down.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Do have good news?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, We've got a great story coming up. It's one
of my favorite types of stories. It's an unlikely friendship story,
a friendship between a coyote and a bear.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Six forty later we're going to be talking about this story, specifically,
a phenomenon called AI sycophancy, where these AI chatbots tell
you exactly what you want to hear.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Now, I wonder people are falling in love with them.
There's no pushback. I cannot get that story out of
my head.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
The story that we did three weeks ago now of
the journalist who invited couples, oh yeah, over to like
a summer house retreat, and the couples were one human,
one AI, and how that interaction was and how far
along I mean, if you want to know how far
(21:57):
along companies in the world are in terms of using
AI and integrating it with everyday tasks, it must be
so much further down the road than you and I
can even wrap our heads around. If normal everyday people
are this far into relationships with chat GP two.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
There was a time a couple of years ago, and
I remember we started talking about on a regular basis.
We would do topics about AI, when chat GPT came out,
when grock came out, and things like that. These large
language models where you could basically just say, write whatever,
write a poem about sharks and make it funny or
something like that, and it would come up with something
(22:37):
in seconds. It would not perfect, somewhat rudimentary, but still
it would do it. And it was a little bit
terrifying that that existed. There was a fear I think
at that point that it's only a matter of time,
it's only six months, and we're you know, it's going
to be terminator or something like that. Well it didn't
happen like that, but there are some of those researchers
(23:01):
and some of those probably less scrupulous companies that are
developing models like this that would be so manipulative. I mean,
just think to the technology of people falling for AI.
Scam Phone calls now, yeah, that are hard to tell
apart from reality.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I've gotten three calls in the past week and they
leave voicemails I haven't listened to the voicemail, but I
see the transcription and it's you know, press one now
to verify that you just spent nine and ninety nine
dollars on the iPhone sixteen like you're leaving voicemails about
this and three different times they called last week. That's
(23:43):
not a new phone. No, And who's pressing one? And
what does that mean? What does that mean for you?
If you do press.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
One, they only have to be right one. Oh god,
it's so terrifying.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
This video looked like a Disney movie. The coyote and
the bear rolling through Alta Dina.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
They've been spotted multiple times together. It is the story
of an unlikely friendship. Where I live, you see coyotes
all the time and you see bears all the time,
but you do not see them together walking around. They
go and they go out to eat together. They munch
on the garbage, They patrol the foothill streets, left mostly
(24:21):
desolate by the eating fire. By the way, they say that,
like the deputy said Andrew Garza, this is not an
unusual site to see the two, but it is weird
to see them all together, just hanging out.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
They say that because of the fire.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Both animals have lost their natural habitat, so they're just
down there with the same goal water and food.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
I guess I didn't think about that.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I mean, obviously, when we talk about the fires from
back in January, we talk about the loss of lives
and homes, but there was plenty of natural area that
also burns.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
And the thing about is, you know the bears they eat,
they're not gonna It's not like the bear wants to
eat the coyote like they want to eat each other.
They both want They're both looking for the same stuff.
Old pizza, plants, water, rodents, cats, cats, small dogs, small dogs,
(25:21):
smaller dogs. Did you miss your dog? He yeah, tell
me about that. That was the longest you've been separated. Well,
I didn't have a dog for a long time. No,
you and this particular dog. Oh, by the way, Keanna
brought up Peter while you were gone, and I was like,
who's Peter? Like I completely forgot about your dog, because
(25:41):
that's how dead to me you were.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
He did.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
He had a great time at summer camp. Oh he
went to summer camp. Yeah, that sounds expensive. He was
way out in the No, it wasn't bad. He was
way out in the hills. But the trainers, did you
actually pay someone or you just leave them in the hills.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yes, they say, this is camp. I paid someone at
least keep an eye on I enjoy, prevent him from
being eaten by rattlesnakes or something like that. But he
was he he was very excited to see me when
I went to go pick him up.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Oh so he recognized you. Was there a little bit
of a fear that he wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, sure, because he was having fun, was playing with
other dogs and peacocks and animals and things like that.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
That's how fun. It's going to be bored. He's going
to be so bored. But there was a the first
couple of days he just slept. He had a lot
of fun.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
Yeah, you got to bring in a peacock there, but
he didn't care after a while.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
The day I went to go pick him up, there
were two or three peacocks. They were in the art.
He didn't even looking out for this peacock and a round.
I'm ready to go back to the silence. Simply didn't care.
Peace yep, all right, we've got swamp watch on deck
when we come back. You've been listening to the Gary
and Shannon Show.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap
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