Local News in Brief : 2 Arrested in Slaying of Security Guard

Two Wilmington men were arrested Thursday in last month’s killing of a security guard who was shot through a door after he locked pipe-wielding gang members out of a party at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, police said.

Los Angeles police homicide detectives arrested Arthur Sierra Jr., 23, who had been paroled from prison on a narcotics offense three days before the Jan. 21 incident, and Vernon Shawn Beers, 19, said Detective Larry Kallestad.

Beers was arrested at the home of a 16-year-old whom police believe fired the fatal shots from a semiautomatic weapon. The juvenile already was in custody on an unrelated drug matter, Kallestad said.

The security guard, David Eugene Ryan, 41, was killed, and a 16-year-old youth and 5-year-old girl were wounded when nearly a dozen shots were fired through the door of a VFW hall in Wilmington--a door Ryan had just closed to keep out party-crashers, police said.