Hotel Evacuated After Grenade Is Found in Raid

Nearly 400 guests at an eight-story Motel 6 near Los Angeles International Airport were rousted from their beds and evacuated early Friday as sheriff’s deputies disabled a hand grenade found in one of the rooms.

The evacuation of the motel at 5101 Century Blvd. in Inglewood began about 1:15 a.m. Most of the guests, some still in pajamas, huddled in their cars in the motel’s parking lot, witnesses said.

“They told us to come downstairs and to leave our belongings,” Tony Oliveiera said. “I threw on my shorts and shirt and I ran down as fast as I could.”

About 150 of the guests were bused to a nearby casino but returned shortly after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arson-explosives detail disabled the grenade at 2:30 a.m, authorities said.

The grenade was found during an investigation into stolen credit cards, Sgt. Brenda Cambra said. Deputies who went to Room 622 to arrest the suspects found three men flushing PCP down the toilet and bathtub drain, Cambra said.

In addition to the live grenade, deputies found 2.2 pounds of heroin, some marijuana, large amounts of cash, a loaded machine gun with a silencer and stolen credit cards, Cambra said.

Five men and a juvenile were arrested. The men are Naeroshaw Smith, 27; Alberto Gutierrez, 22; Joseph Acevedo, 20; Demetri Madden, 19; and Jibri Howard, 24.

Afterward, some guests decided they couldn’t go back to bed.

Oliveiera, who had stopped over in Los Angeles on his trip from Texas to Hawaii, decided he would rather spend the rest of the morning at the airport.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, “not after someone tells you there was a bomb scare.”