SoCal Man Killed by Cops Was 2004 Murder Suspect

Paramedics and SWAT team officers carry out a boy on a stretcher after being rescued from the a...

Paramedics and SWAT team officers carry out a boy on a stretcher after being rescued from the a Chinese restaurant where an armed man had been holding him hostage in El Monte, Calif. yesterday. A camouflaged gunman, subsequently identified as 38-year-old Manuel Benitez, was been killed during a standoff with police that began when he held his 7-year-old son hostage in a suburban Los Angeles restaurant.

(AP Photo/Courtesy FBI)
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A call to police to investigate a gaunt, seedy-looking man with a boy was the beginning of a deadly end to four years on the run for Manuel Benitez, a former child actor who authorities say used a dumbbell to beat his girlfriend to death in 2004.

Benitez was shot and killed by police Tuesday night about two hours after he holed up in the back of a Chinese restaurant where he'd taken his 7-year-old son hostage. He was armed with two handguns and had threatened to harm the boy, police said.

Benjamin Everett, whose mother was slain when he was 3, was shot in the thigh as a SWAT team burst into the locked bathroom, but his wound was not considered life-threatening. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which was investigating the incident, released no information on who wounded the boy.

He was listed in stable condition at County-USC Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Adelaida De La Cerda said.

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Benitez, 38, was a child actor who had small roles under the name Mark Everett in such 1980s fare as "Galactica 1980" and "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure." He was credited as "heavy metal boy" in the 1988 movie "Stand and Deliver."

However, his career went nowhere and so did his life.

In 2000, he was arrested on drug charges and in 2003 he was arrested for hiding loaded guns in his son's stroller, leading to his conviction and a sentence of probation, according to the TV show "America's Most Wanted," which obtained videos of his questioning by authorities in those cases and repeatedly featured his case.

Benitez vanished with the boy after his girlfriend and Benjamin's mother, Stephanie Spears, was beaten to death with a dumbbell on June 21, 2004, in their home in Hawthorne, a Los Angeles suburb.

He was charged with murder and a state arrest warrant was issued in 2005. The next year a federal arrest warrant was issued after he was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

After Spears' killing, photographs of Benitez and the boy were placed on milk cartons and on the Web site of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller.