How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
News
NORTH COAST, Calif. – A three-vehicle crash near Willits on Thursday killed three people and resulted in a lengthy closure of Highway 101.
The California Highway Patrol's Ukiah Area office is investigating the fatal collision, which occurred at 12:40 p.m. on Highway 101, south of Hollands Lane.
The CHP said Thursday evening that it was withholding the names of the three victims pending notification of family.
According to the CHP's report, a 75-year-old Sebastopol man was driving a 1998 Toyota Camry southbound on Highway 101 in the rain when, for unknown reasons, he crossed over the double yellow lines and collided head-on with a 2010 Toyota Prius, which was traveling northbound.
The CHP said the Toyota Prius was driven by an 89-year-old woman who had a 62-year-old man riding with her in the front passenger seat. The cities of residence of both of those individuals were not available Thursday.
As the Prius came to a rest, the front of a 2001 Acura driven by 21-year-old Stephen Delatorre of Kelseyville collided with the rear of the Prius, the CHP said.
The male driver of the Toyota Camry, the female driver of the Toyota Prius and the male passenger of the Toyota Prius all died of their injuries at the scene, the CHP said.
The CHP said Delatorre was uninjured in the collision.
With the exception of Delatorre, all parties were utilizing their lap and shoulder harness and all appropriate airbags were deployed, the CHP said.
The CHP said the collision is still under investigation.
The crash site was closed for several hours for investigative purposes, with traffic detoured by Caltrans around the collision site utilizing Hollands Lane, the CHP said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
The California Highway Patrol announced that it is receiving a federal grant to help improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety across California, furthering the department’s mission to help save lives.
“Far too many Californians are killed or injured while walking or bicycling on our roadways,” said CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow. “This grant will promote awareness, respect, and tolerance, specifically, striving to show how Californians can safely interact with each other while sharing the road.”
The California Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Enforcement and Education Project II grant began on Oct. 1, 2014, and will continue through September 30, 2015.
During this 12-month campaign, CHP officers across the state will conduct enhanced-enforcement patrols and participate in a public awareness campaign.
The educational efforts will include traffic safety rodeos, educational presentations relating to good pedestrian, bicyclist, and motorist behavior, and the distribution of materials as it relates to pedestrian and bicyclist safety.
According to the CHP’s Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System, in 2012 there were more than 800 bicyclists and pedestrians killed and over 27,000 injured in traffic collisions in California.
Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif – The state Board of Parole Hearings has denied parole for the seventh time to a man convicted of the 1979 kidnapping, robbery and near-fatal beating of a Clearlake man.
William Clark Elwood, 53, was denied parole at a hearing last Thursday at California State Prison in Corcoran.
Lake County Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff attended the Nov. 6 lifer hearing to argue against Elwood’s release.
Elwood – who was prosecuted by then-District Attorney Robert L. Crone Jr. – was convicted by a jury in February 1980 of kidnapping for robbery and assault with intent to murder and was sentenced by Judge John G. Hauck to nine years to life on Feb. 27, 1980.
Elwood’s minimum eligible parole date was April 17, 1997. He has had six previous parole hearings.
According to investigation reports, at 4 a.m. Nov. 8, 1979, a citizen saw the victim walking along Morgan Valley Road east of Lower Lake in the dark with his head covered in blood and bruises. The citizen took the victim to the hospital and the sheriff’s office was called.
The victim told investigators he was at home about 8 p.m. when Elwood and Thomas Botkin came by his home in Clearlake.
After awhile Elwood and Botkin suddenly started hitting and kicking the victim in the face, then got a big kitchen fork and started stabbing him.
They bashed his head into the wall hard enough to break the sheet rock. They then took his wallet, which only contained $20 or $30.
The victim then went outside to try to get away and Elwood and Botkin caught him and started beating him again. They kicked him in the face and head and chest multiple times while he was lying on the ground.
Elwood and Botkin then forced the victim into his own vehicle and drove him to the cemetery in Lower Lake.
They drug him out of the car at the cemetery and started beating him again by hitting and kicking him repeatedly. Then they got him back in the car and drove a few miles out Morgan Valley Road, pushed him out of the car into a ditch, and started beating him again.
The investigation found that Elwood and Botkin beat the victim with a rock that weighed about 15 pounds.
They then stood over him, laughing and making fun of him, while the victim was begging them not to hit him anymore. The suspects responded by saying they were going to kill him.
The victim heard one of them finally say, “I think he’s dead now,” before they drove off and left him for dead.
The victim said each time he was being beaten Elwood and Botkin kept saying they wanted to kill him. They then returned to the victim’s residence and tried to clean up the blood.
Officers later located two large rocks on Morgan Valley Road that were covered in blood and hair, and large amounts of blood inside victim’s residence.
A Department of Justice criminalist determined that the two rocks investigators found that had been used to beat the victim had been one rock that broke in half.
When the two defendants were arrested and placed in a patrol car together for transportation, they were recorded expressing extreme surprise and displeasure that the victim had lived.
A witness advised investigators that after Elwood and Botkin returned from the beating that Elwood told her that they had done something big, adding, “You would be proud of what we did.”
On Nov. 15, 1979, Elwood’s parole officer interviewed him, and he told his parole officer he knew he was going to prison, and he said of the victim that he hoped “the son of a bitch dies.”
Elwood claimed he was high on whiskey, tequila, reds and LSD when he committed the crime.
The victim had so much swelling and hemorrhaging in the mouth and throat that a tracheotomy had to be performed to save his life.
He also had multiple bone fractures to the face that were so severe that the facial bones were completely separated from the remainder of the skull.
Bones forming the lower part of both eye sockets were so severely crushed that they had fallen into the sinus cavities. Numerous teeth were missing. The lower jaw was broken in several places. A doctor told investigators that it would take 150 Gs of force to cause damage that serious.
The victim suffered multiple stab wounds and had to undergo numerous surgeries. He also received internal injuries and his pancreas was severely damaged.
During Elwood’s time in prison he has had 71 serious disciplinary actions, including 20 that were violence-related, six that were drug- or alcohol-related, and for possession of a cell phone in prison.
In 1983 he was found in possession of an inmate stabbing weapon and was prosecuted and sentenced to an additional two years.
At the parole hearing Hinchcliff submitted a letter from the victim asking that Elwood be denied parole.
Hinchcliff asked the Board of Parole Hearings commissioners to deny parole on the ground that Elwood still presented an unreasonable risk of danger to the public if released, and failed to sufficiently participate in prison rehabilitation programs that would alleviate that danger.
The Board of Parole Hearings commissioners agreed and issued a seven-year denial of parole.
Elwood’s next parole hearing will be in 2021.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – A special fundraiser planned for this weekend will benefit a Lakeport Police officer who has been dealing with significant health issues over the past year.
The Lakeport Police Officers Association will host the fundraiser to benefit Officer Jarvis Leishman from 5 to 11 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15, at the Lakeport Senior Center, 527 Konocti Ave.
Leishman is a 12-year veteran of the Lakeport Police Department. During his time with the agency he's served both as a school resource officer and a patrol officer.
He and his family – wife Jessica and 8-year-old son, Cameron – have faced serious challenges since he began his battle last year with a debilitating illness that led to several hospital stays and left him unable to work.
Doctors discovered a benign mass in his chest that was life-threatening and surgery was needed to remove it.
The result is that the Leishmans have been hit by medical bills that are impossible to pay without him working.
At the same time, his benefits from the city of Lakeport are now coming to an end due to him being off work for close to one year, and they are struggling to keep their home.
In an effort to help him, his fellow officers are hosting the spaghetti dinner, which will feature a raffle, silent auction and full bar.
Among the items offered for auction at the event will be a chainsaw sculpture and a Smith & Wesson model 642 .38 Special +P.
Tickets are available at the Lakeport Police Department, 916 N. Forbes St.; the Meals on Wheels Thrift Store, 120 N. Main St.; Linda's Hallmark, 991 11th St., in the Safeway shopping center; the Lake County District Attorney's Office, 255 N. Forbes St.; and from Christina Basor, telephone 707-489-3600.
The price for tickets is $20 per adult and $3 per child under age 12.
If you are unable to attend the event but would like to contribute, an online fundraiser also is under way at http://www.gofundme.com/ggx5ro .
Since it began two weeks ago, the online fundraiser – which has a goal of $5,000 – had raised $3,120 as of early Thursday.
In response to this growing incidence of distracted driving, the California Highway Patrol has launched a yearlong, adult distracted driving traffic safety campaign in partnership with the Office of Traffic Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
A minimum of 80 distracted driving enforcement operations and at least 500 traffic safety presentations will be completed statewide by the end of September 2015.
Another component of this grant is the monthlong distracted driving awareness education and enforcement campaign the CHP engages in during April.
The heightened awareness and increased enforcement throughout the month is an effort to encourage drivers to recognize the dangers of distracted driving and reduce the number of people impacted by this reckless behavior.
“It is important to note that the success of this campaign is not measured by the number of enforcement actions taken by officers, but measured by the number of lives we save,” said CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow.
Illegal text messaging while driving qualifies as a manual, visual and cognitive distraction.
An individual uses their hands to type, their eyes to look at what they are typing, and their mind to think about the incoming or outgoing messages.
From an officer’s standpoint, a driver who is texting and talking on a cell phone looks a lot like a motorist who is driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Violators weave, speed up, slow down – making this behavior unsafe while operating a vehicle.
“Drivers need to ask themselves, ‘Is that phone call or text message worth my life or the lives of those around me?’” added Commissioner Farrow. “The answer is simple, it’s not worth it. Every distraction affects a driver’s reaction time, and things can change without notice.”
Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
After more than a decade traveling through space, a robotic lander built by the European Space Agency has made the first-ever soft landing of a spacecraft on a comet.
Mission controllers at ESA's mission operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, received a signal confirming that the Philae lander had touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, Nov. 12, just after 8 a.m. Pacific Time.
“We congratulate ESA on their successful landing on a comet today. This achievement represents a breakthrough moment in the exploration of our solar system and a milestone for international cooperation. We are proud to be a part of this historic day and look forward to receiving valuable data from the three NASA instruments on board Rosetta that will map the comet’s nucleus and examine it for signs of water,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
“The data collected by Rosetta will provide the scientific community, and the world, with a treasure-trove of data,” Grunsfeld said. “Small bodies in our solar system like comets and asteroids help us understand how the solar system formed and provide opportunities to advance exploration. We look forward to building on Rosetta's success exploring our solar system through our studies of near earth asteroids and NASA's upcoming asteroid sample return mission OSIRIS-Rex. It’s a great day for space exploration.”
The lander is expected to send images from its landing site, named Agilkia. These will be the first images ever taken from a comet's surface.
Philae also will drill into the surface to study the composition, and witness close up how a comet changes as its exposure to the sun varies.
With its primary battery, Philae will remain active on the surface for about two-and-a-half days.
Philae's mothership, the Rosetta spacecraft, will remain in orbit around the comet through 2015. The orbiter will continue detailed studies as the comet approaches the sun and then moves away.
In addition to their well-deserved reputation as beautiful cosmic objects, comets hold vital clues about our solar system's history. They are considered primitive building blocks of the solar system that are literally frozen in time.
Comets may have played a part in “seeding” Earth with water and, possibly, the basic ingredients for life.
More information about Rosetta is available at http://www.esa.int/rosetta .