Spaccia was making $376,288, and four of the five City Council members were paying themselves nearly $100,000 a year.

“I seen them take out Mirabal in handcuffs,” longtime resident Hassan Mourad said after the arrests. “I seen them drag him out.”

At the mayor’s house, police briefly used a battering ram when Hernandez didn’t immediately come to the door.

Former Police Chief Randy Adams, who was also scrutinized in the salary scandal, was not arrested.

Cooley, who knew Adams when he was the police chief in Glendale, said there was no evidence Adams illegally obtained his $457,000 annual salary. The figure was $150,000 more than the Los Angeles chief of police gets paid.

“Being paid excessive salaries is not a crime,” Cooley said. “Illegally obtaining those salaries is a crime.”

Authorities said Rizzo made $4.3 million by paying himself through different employment contracts that were not approved by the City Council. Meanwhile, council members paid themselves a combined $1.25 million for what Cooley called “phantom meetings” of various city boards and agencies.

Rizzo also was accused of giving $1.9 million in loans to himself, Spaccia, Hernandez, Artiga and dozens of others.

Cooley said his investigators have pored over more than 60,000 pages of documents and more people could be arrested.

His office began investigating last March, Cooley said, four months before the Los Angeles Times reported the salaries, which brought national attention to the small city of 40,000 people.

Since the scandal broke, public officials, city managers and others have said the situation in Bell showed why people must insist that elected officials communicate honestly and openly with them.

“One of the problems that was obvious with Bell was the lack of transparency and the lack of involvement on the part of the public,” Dave Mora, West Coast regional director of the International City/County Management Association, said recently.

SEREMBAN: Three teenagers have pleaded guilty to two counts of committing mischief by throwing bottles into a surau in Taman Pulai Impian Indah and splashing red paint on its walls.

The three friendsaged between 16 and 17 yearslooked remorseful as they were brought to the Childs Court here yesterday at about 3.10pm and were quickly whisked into the courtroom by policemen.

Reporters were not allowed into the courtroom, which was packed with family members of the three accused.

The teenagers, from Ulu Temiang and Sikamat near here, were charged under Section 427 of the Penal Code, read together with Section 34, for throwing bottles into the compound of the surau in Taman Pulai Impianhere between between 3am and 4am on Monday.

Two of the accused were also facing a second charge of having splashed red paint on the exterior walls of the recently completed surau while the other was accused of having abetted them.

All three boys face jail time of up to two years or a fine or both.

Another 18-year-old teenager, who was detained together with the three boys hours after the incident on Monday night, has since been released.

Magistrate M. Mageshwary later released the teenagers on RM2,000 bail each and fixed Sept 22 for a mention of the case, pending a report from the Welfare Department.

The three boys were represented by Lee Kong Fei while Mahmud Abdullah prosecuted.

On Monday, residents had a shock when they turned up at the surau and found it had been vandalised.

Negri Sembilan police chief SAC I Datuk Osman Salleh had said the teenagers had probably retaliated after being scolded for playing with fireworks in the suraus vicinity.

On Wednesday, the parents of the teenagers had publicly apologised for the boys actions.

KATMANDU, Nepal — A small passenger plane carrying 14 people, including some foreigners, to the Mount Everest region crashed into the hills outside Nepal’s capital in heavy rain Tuesday, officials said.

A witness said there were no survivors, but there was no immediate word from officials on casualties.

The area’s police chief, Ram Bahadur Shrestha, said the plane went down near Shikharpur village, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Katmandu.

The German-built Dornier airplane was carrying 11 passengers and three crew members when bad weather forced it to try to return to Katmandu. Rescue coordinators at the police headquarters in Katmandu said six foreigners were on board but could not give details.

Initial reports said there were 15 passengers and three crew members on board.

Shrestha said rescuers have not been able to reach the crash site and villagers were trying to help out. The area has no roads and is only accessible by foot, but the route from the nearest town is blocked by a river flooded by monsoon rainfall.

Ram Bahadur Gole, a villager who witnessed the accident, told Avenues Television network that there were no survivors.

He said the crash impact broke the plane into several pieces that were scattered on a hillside, and that continuing rain and flooding had made many of the area’s foot trails unpassable.