How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
News
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Three Sonoma County Hells Angel Chapter members have been ordered to stand trial for allegedly attacking club rivals during a June 2011 tattoo convention at Konocti Vista Casino.
Judge Andrew Blum ordered Josh Johnson, 36; Nicolas Carrillo, 33; and Timothy Bianchi, 34, to stand trial for their alleged part in the fight with Michael Burns, a validated Vagos motorcycle gang member, and Kristopher Perkin on June 4, 2011.
All three are facing a felony charge of participation in a criminal street gang, and misdemeanor counts of disturbing the peace and battery. Bianchi is facing an additional felony count of assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm, and Johnson and Carrillo each face a second misdemeanor battery count.
David Dabbs, another Hells Angel member alleged to have been in the fight, still remains at large.
The day of testimony began with Deputy District Attorney Art Grothe calling to the stand Lake County Sheriff's Det. John Drewrey.
Drewrey briefly testified regarding sheriff's reports related to a fatal collision on July 27, 2011, between a vehicle and a small child.
Sheriff Frank Rivero, during the first day of testimony on Wednesday, has testified to getting video surveillance from Konocti Vista Casino immediately after the fight on June 4, 2011.
He had testified to having a working relationship with Tribal Chair Tony Jack, who he said had come to him about the crash involving the child. However, that fatal crash had actually occurred nearly two months after the fight, not before it, as Rivero had indicated.
Grothe had requested Rivero be available to retake the stand and be subject to further cross-examination, explaining that he wanted to correct any inaccuracies that may have occurred during testimony.
Later in the morning, however, the defense would decide that they did not need Rivero to make another appearance, as the attorneys believed Rivero's statements would not be relevant to the core of the case. They also want to see a full transcript of his testimony.
Carrillo's attorney Michael Clough instead wanted to call to the stand Deputy Gary Frace, who provided testimony that contradicted other statements made on the stand Wednesday by Rivero.
“We are calling this witness because of testimony that was given regarding the videotapes,” Clough said.
Clough explained that Rivero had given conflicting testimony about the video, stating on Wednesday that no other members of his department had viewed the video before he did. However, Frace had, in fact, viewed them prior to Rivero obtaining them, Clough said.
“His testimony is absolutely crucial to answering a whole series of questions,” Clough said of Frace, adding that Frace also originally had been on the witness list.
Jai Gohel, Bianchi's defense attorney, made a different offer of proof, stating he thought there were serious credibility issues with Rivero's testimony.
Rivero had not been sure of what was on the video but yet rushed to get it, Gohel said. “I think there's credibility problems with that.”
Frace's report, said Gohel, stated that he saw the videos on the afternoon of the fight, before Rivero became involved. The defense wanted to inquire if Frace had reported seeing the videos to Rivero.
Gohel added, “The sheriff realized that there was going to be some difficulties, potentially, in getting a warrant for these tapes.” He said it seemed “incredible” that Rivero would not know one of his staff had seen the videos.
Clough asked Blum for a five-minute recess in order to ask Frace some questions and ascertain if his testimony was truly necessary. Blum agreed.
Frace, the defense attorneys, Grothe and Sgt. John Gregore went into the jury room and had a brief closed-door discussion. After they returned, Grothe – who initially had objected – agreed that it was appropriate to call Frace to the stand.
Clough added that Frace had knowledge of exchanges with the sheriff that would impeach Rivero's testimony on the previous day.
Deputy explains work on the case
Frace was called to the stand, but before he began to testify Grothe said issues needed to be addressed, particularly, that he had been informed that based on the June 2011 fight the sheriff's department had initiated and still held open an internal affairs investigation on Frace.
Grothe said Frace had been ordered not to talk to anyone about the incident. “I believe he's got conflicting orders,” and Grothe suggested the court would need to order Frace to testify.
Blum asked if there was a possible Fifth Amendment issue regarding self-incrimination. Both Grothe and Frace said they didn't believe so. Clough suggested that out of an abundance of caution Frace should be advised that he's entitled to counsel.
Blum advised Frace of his Fifth Amendment rights, and asked if he wished for counsel, to which Frace said no. At Grothe's request, Blum said Frace was under oath and required to answer questions.
As Clough began to question Frace Grothe asked for a brief interruption when Capt. Chris Macedo of the Lake County Sheriff's Office arrived in the courtroom. Grothe asked that Macedo be allowed to make a statement on the record, which Clough didn't object to although he noted it was “highly unusual.”
Macedo told the court that he was releasing Frace from his admonition not to speak about the situation in responding to questions about the incident in court.
Frace told the court he had arrived on the scene of the fight within minutes of the call, which occurred shortly before 1:30 p.m. Saturday, June 4, 2011.
He said a security guard told him about the fight, with Deputy Walter White – who also responded and testified about doing so on Wednesday – contacting Burns as he was attempting to leave in a vehicle. The Hells Angels Club President told Frace nothing had happened.
Later that afternoon, Frace wrote a report on the incident, retrieved a copy of a surveillance video request form from the sheriff’s office and returned to submit it to the casino, where he also was allowed to view footage of the fight. Another deputy later had to resubmit the form because it had the former sheriff’s name on it and the casino wouldn’t accept it.
Frace said he spoke to Sgt. Chris Chwialkowski about seeing the video. By the end of Frace’s shift that day, Chwialkowski told Frace that Rivero was immediately ordering him not to talk to Deputy Walter White or then-Deputy Elvis Cook about the incident. He said he asked Chwialkowski to put it in writing and he did.
Clough asked him if he had ever been ordered not to talk to other deputies about a case. “No, I have not,” said Frace.
Officer discusses gangs
During the remainder of the day, Lakeport Police Officer Norm Taylor, who is his department’s gang expert and is on the county’s gang task force, testified about the Hells Angels, their rules and activities around the area, and the June 2011 fight.
The defense questioned him at length and wanted him disqualified, but Blum ruled Taylor was qualified. “He knows vastly more than the average person on the street and quite a bit more than the average officer.”
Taylor testified that a fellow Lakeport Police officer encountered Burns in the months before the June 2011 fight in downtown Lakeport, after he had apparently been assaulted during another confrontation with Hells Angels members who appeared to be from the Sonoma County chapter.
He said Hells Angels have long claimed California as their own. At one point in Lake County there were no active motorcycle gangs, then the Vagos set up a chapter in the county in 2006. He said that the Sonoma County Hells Angels chapter considered that complete disrespect.
Taylor testified that the assault at Konocti Vista of Burns and Perkin was for the purpose of showing dominance in Hells Angels territory. He said the Hells Angels are no different than any other street gang. He said they derive fear from assaults and violence; people don’t want to cross them and don’t want to contact law enforcement due to fear of retaliation.
Patrick Ciocca, Johnson’s attorney, asked if it was possible that during the fight Johnson had just responded to aid a brother. “Based on the entire circumstances, I don’t believe so,” said Taylor.
The defense attorneys argued that the charges, even at a preliminary hearing level, didn’t stand up, and that at the very least all charges should be reduced to misdemeanors.
Grothe, however, said that Burns suffered a broken bone, which meets the statutory guidelines of “great bodily injury,” and that the fight took place in the middle of day in front of numerous innocent “civilians.”
Blum ruled there was a strong suspicion – which is all that’s required at preliminary hearing – that the three men committed the crimes with which they’re charged, and ordered them to stand trial.
He watched the videos closely and said it was clear to him that all three were involved in the fight, although he was not sure that Johnson or Carrillo ever laid a hand on Burns. Bianchi, however, was hitting Burns and “using great force.”
Bianchi, Carrillo and Johnson have been ordered to return for arraignment on April 16.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKEPORT, Calif. – A young woman who was shot and seriously wounded in a June 2011 attack that claimed the life of her 4-year-old son took the stand on Thursday in the trial of the two men accused of the crime.
Desiree Kirby testified for a few hours in the trial of Paul William Braden, 22, and Orlando Joseph Lopez, 24, who on June 18, 2011, are alleged to have shot into a crowd at the Lakeshore Drive home in Clearlake that Kirby and boyfriend Ross Sparks shared along with her 4-year-old son, Skyler Rapp, and the couple’s baby daughter.
Braden and Lopez are facing 15 counts including murder for the death of the child, who was shot and died at the scene, and numerous attempted murder, mayhem and other charges for injuring Kirby, Sparks, Andrew Sparks, Joey Armijo and Ian Griffith.
Braden is represented by attorney Doug Rhoades, and Lopez by attorney Stephen Carter.
Kirby described the events of the evening, and under questioning by District Attorney Don Anderson she described her own serious wounds, which have left her with permanent injuries to her right arm and right leg.
She was struck by a barrage of shotgun fire that has led to multiple surgeries, and left her with still more pellets yet to be removed from her arm, leg and knee cap. She said she was supposed to have surgery a week ago on her reconstructed arm, where a metal rod is about to push out.
Her arm, right hand and lower leg have suffered permanent nerve damage, and she no longer has a full range of motion with her right arm.
She said she can no longer take care of herself or her young daughter.
“It just ruined my whole life,” Kirby said.
Although only in her early 20s, Kirby’s injuries have left her with an arthritic knee and difficulty walking.
Recalling muzzle flashes
Andrew Sparks followed Kirby to the stand on Thursday afternoon.
He said he had known both Lopez and Braden from school, and had never had problems with them until the June 2011 shooting.
On the day of the shooting, Sparks said he had been home most of the day, and about 5 p.m. was called by his brother, Ross Sparks, and asked to come to the Lakeshore Drive residence.
“He just asked me to come over because he had some problems with some guys,” said Andrew Sparks, explaining that he got to his brother’s home about 6 p.m.
He recalled about 12 people were at the home at various points. During the afternoon, he said his brother was on the phone on and off.
“I could hear him yelling and arguing with someone but I really wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying,” Sparks said.
His aunt, Crystal Pearls, also was on the phone arguing with someone at one point, Sparks said.
Sparks said he hung out, had four to five beers and some shots of Jack Daniels. “I was probably a little intoxicated.”
Later that night, Skyler was roasting marshmallows and Sparks was talking to Kirby near the barbecue when he heard the first shot.
When Anderson asked how many shots he heard, Sparks responded, “I couldn’t even tell you. It sounded like a lot.”
The shots were coming from the fence separating Sparks’ and Kirby’s residence from that of neighbor Curtis Eeds, Andrew Sparks said.
Sparks said he saw a man sitting on the top of the fence – or, as he described later, standing on a washing machine in Eeds’ backyard – and saw muzzle flashes through a notch in the top of the fence.
“I could tell that he had no hair,” he said of the first shooter.
He also saw muzzle flashes coming from an area of the fence where a board was missing.
Sparks ran and hid behind a vehicle parked in the yard until the shooting stopped. He said he then tried to pick up Skyler.
“He wasn’t breathing. He was pretty much gone already,” Sparks said.
He said he left the child where he fell. “His mom told me to leave him alone.”
Sparks said he went to the home, where several people were piled on top of each other in the doorway. His brother was helping Kirby.
“She had blood all over her. She was screaming for help,” he said.
Armijo was on the floor as well. “He was pretty messed up, too,” said Sparks, recalling seeing wounds on Armijo’s arm.
Sparks himself also was shot. “I knew I got shot but I didn’t know how many times or where,” he said.
In all, he said he suffered 12 wounds to his leg and five to his arm. Anderson asked him to show his scars to the juries, which he did.
Rhoades asked Sparks about his statement that he could see a person shooting who had a bald head, which Rhoades pointed out differed from Sparks’ statements in the case’s preliminary hearing last fall, when he said the person had short hair.
Sparks, who has very short hair, said the person’s hair was about the length of his. He said he couldn’t tell much about the second shooter.
The trial will reconvene at 9 a.m. Wednesday, April 4.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) will conduct its fourth manual snow survey, Monday, April 2, at 11 a.m. near Echo Summit off Highway 50.
It is expected that manual measurements of snowpack water content will corroborate the low electronic readings from remote sensors up and down the state’s mountain ranges.
Electronic readings on Thursday indicated that statewide, water content in the snowpack is only 51 percent of normal for the date, and 50 percent of the average April 1 measurement when the snowpack is normally at its peak before the spring melt.
Surveyors from DWR and cooperating agencies today will fan out to numerous sites for the fourth of five manual snow surveys made each winter to forecast the amount of frozen water that will trickle into streams, reservoirs and aquifers when the snow melts this spring and early summer.
This winter’s unusually dry conditions to date have principally been caused by a high pressure ridge along California’s coast that has diverted most storms to the north.
One bright spot this year is the state’s good reservoir storage, due to conserved runoff from last winter’s storms.
Lake Oroville in Butte County, the State Water Project’s principal storage reservoir, is at 106 percent of average for the date (82 percent of its 3.5 million acre-foot capacity), Lake Shasta north of Redding, the federal Central Valley Project’s largest reservoir with a capacity of 4.5 million acre-feet, is at 99 percent of its normal storage level for the date (81 percent of capacity).
San Luis Reservoir in Merced County, an important storage reservoir south of the Delta, is at 94 percent of average for the date (86 percent of its capacity of 2,027,840 acre-feet).
San Luis is a critically important source of water for both the State Water Project and Central Valley Project when pumping from the Delta is restricted or interrupted.
Statewide, reservoir storage is 106 percent of normal for the date.
Electronic snowpack readings are available on the Internet at http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/snow/DLYSWEQ .
Electronic reservoir level readings may be found at http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action .
See DWR’s new Water Conditions page at http://www.water.ca.gov/waterconditions/ .
EDITOR'S NOTE: The second paragraph has been corrected to reflect that silver bars and gold coins – not gold bars and silver coins, as originally reported – were seized as part of the operation.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris on Thursday announced the arrests of 14 individuals across three states and the seizure of 1,300 pounds of processed marijuana as part of a multi-state illegal drug trafficking ring.
The operation also resulted in the seizure of eight firearms, $415,855 in cash, $35,000 in silver bars and gold coins, and three generators valued at $20,000.
"At the California Department of Justice, our special agents target criminal enterprises running drugs, guns and human beings up and down California," said Attorney General Harris. "In this case, we have shut down a large-scale drug trafficking operation that went beyond California's borders."
On March 8, a California Department of Justice drug task force, the Mountain and Valley Marijuana Investigation Team (MAVMIT), received a tip regarding a large crate being shipped from a private shipping company in West Sacramento to Chicago.
As part of a parcel interdiction investigation, MAVMIT agents recovered approximately 80 pounds of high grade marijuana.
The empty crate was shipped to Chicago, where law enforcement officials followed two individuals, Dillon Hudson and Jon Stansfield, to Milwaukee, WI.
The team arrested the two men and recovered an additional 120 pounds of marijuana and $300,000 in cash.
MAVMIT executed a search warrant on Dillon Hudson's ranch in Placerville and seized 946 pounds of processed marijuana, 2 pounds of hash, 8 firearms, $100,000 in cash, $35,000 in silver bars and gold coins, three generators and two all terrain vehicles.
Hudson and Stansfield were arrested in Milwaukee. Eleven other adults arrested in California were employed to trim and process the marijuana, and were paid $250 to $400 per pound.
Those arrested face felony charges of cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sales, sales and trafficking of marijuana, conspiracy, and being armed in the commission of a felony, and were booked in the El Dorado County Jail. Hudson and Stansfield were booked in Chicago pending federal charges.
Additionally, a second large ranch in Pilot Hill was identified through the investigation as belonging to the Hudson drug trafficking organization.
Agents served a search warrant at this location, and recovered an indoor marijuana grow and over 73 pounds of processed marijuana and packaging materials for shipping the marijuana.
During the search in Pilot Hill, agents identified Kenneth Hayes as being involved in Hudson's drug trafficking organization.
Hayes was arrested at the Sacramento International Airport by MAVMIT agents without incident upon his return to Sacramento from Wisconsin.
Hayes was arrested on felony charges of cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sales, sales and trafficking of marijuana, and conspiracy and booked into the El Dorado County Jail.
Also seized were the property in Pilot Hill, with an estimated value of $450,000, the property in Placerville, estimated value $300,000, a condo in Indonesia belonging to Hayes with estimated value $17,000, and several bank accounts.
MAVMIT is seeking federal indictments on the 13 individuals who were arrested. Currently they are being held on state charges at the County Jail. The investigation is ongoing.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Investigators are assessing the cause of a Thursday morning fire that damaged a Clearlake home.
The fire, which occurred in a single family home in the Meadowbrook Drive area, was first reported at about 6:46 a.m., with firefighters on scene five minutes later, according to Lake County Fire Chief Willie Sapeta.
Four engines, two medic units, a chief and battalion chief responded, with mutual aid from Northshore Fire and South Lake County Fire also called. Sapeta said a total of 20 personnel were on scene.
Firefighters were able to secure two nearby structures that were exposed to the fire, he said.
Downed wires complicated the firefighting effort, Sapeta added.
Sapeta said the fire was contained just after 7:30 a.m.
Sixty percent of the home was damaged, and the residents were displaced. Sapeta said the Red Cross responded to assist with temporary housing.
He said the fire is still under investigation.
“They're still out there processing,” he said of investigators.
John Jensen contributed to this report.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The third outing for Lake County Live! proved once again that there is talent galore all around us.
Lake County Live! was performed Sunday, March 25, at the Soper-Reese Theatre in Lakeport to an appreciate audience both in the theater and on the air via Lake County Community Radio KPFZ 88.1 FM.
The show is produced live on stage and broadcast in real time, as well as streamed on the Internet at www.kpfz.org .
Musical guests included Uncorked! a quintet of performers including Don Coffin, Andi Skelton, Eleanor Cook, Dan Harris and Dennis Hadley.
The provided two sets of music, both from Ireland and contemporary folk, as well as traditional tunes that had the audience clapping along and dancing in their seats.
In between their two sets, Andy Rossoff took the stage to perform on the theater's grand piano with several songs that included the audience with singing.
Uncorked returned to close the show with another signature part of the program, a sing-along.
Cast and audience joined together in the night’s final song, “Goodnight, Irene.”
Lake County Live! was conceived by Doug Rhoades, who is the show’s producer and host.
The show features music, comedy, audience participation and lots of humor.
Several running features include the “Dogs of Clearlake” and “Ladies of the Lake.”
Cast members for these and other sketches amidst the music include Richard Smith, Suna Flores, Pam Bradley, Kris Andre, Vicky Parish Smith, Mitchell Hauptman and Nick Reid, who also acts as the show’s stage manager.
Backstage assistance was provided by Donna Herndon, Jane Ruggles, Nancy Rhoades, Mike Stempe and Nick Biondo.
Lake County Live! is performed and broadcast from the Soper-Reese Community Theatre on the last Sunday of each month at 6 p.m.
Next month’s show will feature Three Deep, a county/folk trio, the flamenco guitar duo Austin and Owens, and the keyboard talent of David Neft.
Tickets for the performance on April 29 are available at the theater box office, open Fridays from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and at the Travel Center in Lakeport.
The program is supported by the theater, KPFZ, and Lake County News at www.lakeconews.com .
For more information on the program, performers and sponsorship, visit www.lakecountylive.com or go to www.facebook.com/lakecountylive .
