Murder trial put off until later this year

A Canyon Country truck driver who keeps seeing his murder trial put off saw it delayed another month Wednesday.

More than two years after he was arrested for murder, 54-year-old Michael Joe McGlothan appeared Wednesday in San Fernando Superior Court where he was told to return in two months.

McGlothan is now scheduled to appear - not for his trial - but for another pre-trial hearing on Sept. 19, Ricardo Santiago, spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office told The Signal Wednesday.

McGlothan was arrested in the May 6, 2015, shooting death of 21-year-old Ledarion Allen Jr. of Lancaster.

The truck driver is also suspected of shooting and wounding 30-year-old Shatari Shene Cooks inside an apartment on Sierra Highway in Canyon Country.

McGlothan and Cooks reportedly shared the apartment. And Cooks and Allen were shot inside the unit.

Deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station began looking for McGlothan immediately after the shooting but could not find him.

During the manhunt, detectives received many tips indicating the wanted man was in the San Gabriel Valley and the west side of Los Angeles, Lt. Eddie Hernandez with the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Homicide Bureau said at the time of the arrest.

“But then we tracked him circling the area near the Pennsylvania-New York border,” he said in June 2015. “Once we got a feeling he was heading north to Canada, we decided to take him down.”

New York State Police followed McGlothan, driving a Volvo big rig, to the New York State Thruway toll barrier on Interstate 90 in the town of Ripley some 60 miles southwest of Buffalo.

The day after he was arrested, LASD homicide detectives filed an extradition warrant to begin the process of having their sole suspect in the murder returned to Los Angeles for trial.

Once McGlothan was placed in custody in Los Angeles, his bail was set at $3.03 million.