2008-03-10

The vital signs of a man beaten unconscious in a Moreno Valley home-invasion robbery improved Monday, but the female victim was still in critical condition, authorities said. Investigators have not been able to speak to the victims, who are in their 20s, Moreno Valley police Sgt. Ken Paulson said by phone. The attack took place March 1. Police are continuing to look for a second suspect. Officers do not have a description to release "at this time," said Moreno Valley Police Sgt. Ken Paulson. No new information was available Monday on the 13-year-old boy arrested in connection with the attack in the apartment complex in the 13900 block of Pride Lane. Juvenile court records are confidential. The Riverside County district attorney's office has not decided whether to charge the teenager as an adult, spokeswoman Ingrid Wyatt said. The attack took place in a part of Moreno Valley that suffered from serious crime in the past. Firefighters needed police escorts to respond to calls there, and pizza parlors refused to deliver to the neighborhood during the 1990s. The City Council subsequently built a park there and renamed several streets during the mid-1990s in an effort to help the area shed its troubled reputation. In recent years, city officials also have sought to rehabilitate the housing, working with nonprofit organizations such as Riverside Housing Development Corp. or asking judges to place properties neglected by absentee landlords into receivership so they can be fixed up. "That area is a lot better today than it used to be," Paulson said.

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