Former LA cop admits to murder

[Man]

Former LA cop admits to murder of former USC basketball star

Associated Press

Last updated 09:52 PM, EST, Thursday, November 08, 2001

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A former police officer pleaded no contest
Thursday to
the murder of a former University of Southern California women's
basketball
player.

Angela Maria Shepard, 37, will face 15 years to life in prison in
exchange
for her second-degree murder plea, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman
for the
Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Sentencing was
scheduled for
Dec. 6.

Shepard was charged in the Aug. 24 shooting death of Audrey Gomez, 28,
of
Los Angeles. Gomez, the career scoring at St. John Vianney High School
in
Holmdel, N.J., played for both Notre Dame and Southern California in
the
early 1990s before a knee injury ended her career.

She was the day supervisor at the Girls and Boys Town facility for
troubled
youth in Los Angeles' mid-city area, where Shepard was her boss.

Police said the shooting took place at Shepard's Whittier home. They
said
she then took Gomez's car to a nearby park and left it in a parking
lot with
the body in the back seat, where it was found by a park warden. A Los
Angeles County sheriff's bloodhound then led police to Shepard's
house.

Shepard worked as a Los Angeles Police Department patrol officer from
1989
until she was fired in December 1995. Internal police documents
revealed
that she threatened a fellow officer with a gun, according to the Los
Angeles Times. She later pleaded no contest to a felony charge of
making
terrorist threats.

In exchange for Thursday's plea, other charges, including possession
of a
firearm by a felon, will be dropped, Robison said.