Southeast : WINNING A ROUND

For Pico Rivera City Councilwoman Helen O’Hara, this has been a season of bad news. She’s faced a recall petition, a misdemeanor battery charge and then two more charges of vandalism and theft.

But the freshman councilwoman has finally won a round. A count of recall petitions has found insufficient signatures to force O’Hara into an election, reports City Clerk Christine Schaefer.

“This is just one more monkey off my back,” O’Hara said Tuesday as she prepared for her Aug. 17 pretrial hearing for the three misdemeanor charges. “Now we’re going to win in court. We will totally wipe the floor with them, rip their case to shreds.”

The battery charge stems from a June 5 incident in which O’Hara allegedly grabbed a sheaf of papers from an elderly constituent’s hands--wrenching the woman’s shoulder and wrist--in City Council chambers.

On July 9, prosecutors charged, O’Hara tore off a newspaper article taped to a campaign table after a dispute with residents manning the table, resulting in the misdemeanor theft and vandalism charges.