Zuma Canyon

"Zuma Canyon" is the ninth episode of the revamped and renamed Law & Order spinoff, Law & Order: LA. The episode originally aired on April 11, 2011 on NBC. In this episode, the police investigate a quinceañera massacre; one of them may pay the ultimate price, and a district attorney is set to take the law back into his own hands. Plot When a normal quinceañera erupts in violence when several men masked in bandanas open fire on the party leaving multiple people dead, Detectives Winters and Jaruszalski quickly follow leads. During their search for answers, they find an eleven-year-old Yaqui Indian boy from Sonora, Mexico named Fernando (Quinton Lopez) protecting acres of marijuana in Zuma Canyon, and discover he is the only witness that can help the case, although he does not talk and tell them who he is because he fears the man with "snakes feet" – Caesar Vargas (Jose Pablo Cantillo), who owned the marijuana field. The police place him in Eastlake Juvenile Facility, under a pseudonym for his own protection. As the detectives begin to close in on the suspect, Winters receives a surprise visit at home where a car slows down in front of his house, just before a gunman opens fire, Winters getting shot in the side protecting his daughter Lily (Caitlin Carmichael). While Casey (Teri Polo) performs CPR, their telephone rings; Cesar's filtered voice leaves an ominous message on the answering machine – Winters dies in the hospital, causing everyone to grieve, even various police officers and members of the district attorney's office that were in the waiting area. Meanwhile, DDA Morales risks upsetting the Mexican government by prosecuting the guilty. Morales calls Deputy Ortega (Al Espinosa) of the Mexican consulate corrupt and accuses him of knowing Vargas and leaking information about Fernando's location to Cesar Vargas, which Ortega denies, although to keep the police off him he told Morales that Caesar was seeking refuge and asking to be repatriated. Morales later takes heat from D.A. Jerry Hardin (Peter Coyote), who initially insisted on waiting until Vargas was back in Mexico to formally extradite him.