Representatives broke into a party where party organizers had broken into an empty house on Saturday night, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said the event was “a blatant violation of the governor’s health order”. Authorities recovered six guns from the scene and rescued a 17-year-old girl who Villanueva said had been sexually exploited commercially. “If we had taken the normal approach, the same victim would have been taken to the next place if the party had broken up, so this really got her out of it,” Villanueva told a news conference on Tuesday. “He would have been sent to the next party.” Authorities arrested 120 adults and 38 children, including a “full regulatory network,” Villanueva said. He described the group as “elusive”. The sheriff said the organizers entered the house and moved their party equipment using a rental truck. “How shameful this move is,” Villanueva said. Parties are always an issue, but during an outbreak, they can “become a deadly source of contagion and a super-spreader event,” the sheriff said. “The outside temperature was 26 degrees. If we hadn’t broken it at that event there would have been 500 people above,” the sheriff said. He said that even without health order, the activities of the participants were criminal in nature. About 10,500 patients have been hospitalized in the state, California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Galli said Tuesday. As the number of daily cases has doubled in the last two weeks, so has the number of new infections. “Moving forward, we will carry out target enforcement in super-spreader events,” the sheriff tweeted Thursday. Palmdale is a city in northeastern Los Angeles County. CNN’s Theresa Waltrobe and Cherie Mosborg contributed to the report. .
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