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The first, at 4:38 p.m., occurred on Sulphur Bank Drive at North Drive in Clearlake Oaks, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Two vehicles collided head on, the CHP reported. At least one person had major injuries, while three others escaped uninjured. No information was available from the CHP on the names of the people involved.
One individual was reportedly being arrested for driving under the influence or drugs.
A second collision involving a solo vehicle occurred on Highway 29 just south of Twin Lakes near Lower Lake at 9:28 p.m., according to the CHP.
The CHP reported that a man drove a white SUV into the embankment, where the vehicle ended up against some trees just off the roadway.
An ambulance responded to the scene, where the male driver was reported to be covered in blood, according to the CHP.
No further information on that crash was available Monday evening.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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NICE – A woman driving into Robinson Rancheria Bingo and Casino was not injured after she drove her minivan into an ornamental rock area.
The accident occurred at 1:39 p.m. according to the California Highway Patrol incident logs.
The CHP reported that the woman was 66-year-old Virginia Steiner of Nice.
She was driving westbound when she turned into the casino but missed the roadway and went into the rocks, high-centering the vehicle.
CHP Officer Adam Garcia said Steiner was not injured, but she was subsequently was arrested for DUI.
E-mail Harold LaBonte at
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KELSEYVILLE – I have no doubt that just about everyone reading this has held at least one job that for whatever reason caused him or her to exclaim, “This job is a joke!”
Those of us who have made this claim did so out of frustration and anger and most found good reason to re-think our path to future prosperity. For one Lake County resident, a joke was just the beginning. In fact for him it was the beginning, the middle and may last right up to the end.
Driving-instructor-turned-comedian Marc Yaffee of Kelseyville is one person who chose to reevaluate his path to prosperity decades later than most. After spending several years with the Department of Motor Vehicles, Yaffee and his wife began a driver education/traffic school as well as a driving instruction school.
Both businesses did well and he was able to support his family, a wife and two daughters, horses and several purebred dogs. The Yaffees could afford to buy a home and were able to enjoy their share of the American dream, Lake County style.
Then for some strange reason, just three years before reaching the age of 40, Yaffee entered into the very competitive field of live, stand up comedy.
He didn’t jump in headfirst. He tested the waters at comedy competitions throughout the Bay Area and east to Sacramento. It went slowly at first, as he needed to develop an act.
Where does a driving instructor get the idea he may be funny at all?
“I remember my fifth grade teacher, she let us put on a little show ... I think we were about 10 or 11 years old, we lived in Van Nuys, California,” recalled Yaffee. “I never forgot the feelings inside when I made a bunch of grownups laugh, I think it’s still in me today.”
Where the DMV and driving schools didn’t take him comedy has: 100,000 miles a year in the sky and easily 30,000 in rental cars alone, reported Yaffee. He replaced his personal transportation – not the family car – every 18 months.
Bahrain, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore and the island of Guam are just a handful of the “out-of-town gigs” he hits each year since he went full-time as a stand up comedian two years ago. Toss in 130 nights in the USA and the frequent flier miles pile up quickly.
Is he doing well? “Well, enough to go full time,” said the former state employee with a Cheshire cat like grin.
But he quickly added that without the support and encouragement of his wife Lindsey for the past 18.8 years, his dream of headlining a big room in Las Vegas, which may not be that far off, would never had a chance.
Yaffee, a self-described comedian and court jester, just recently returned from the semifinals of the world renowned San Francisco Comedy Competition. He's awaiting the results of several of the other comics’ performances before he knows his eventual standing in the semifinals.
Initially, 300 amateur and touring comedians audition tapes were accepted out of thousands of entries. The field has been reduced through several levels of live performances held in various venues.
Yaffee waits for no single audience and promotes himself and a few of his fellow comics in various manners. The Trail of Laughs POW WOW Comedy Jam, a group of four, multi-ethnic comics tours upwards of 30 major Native American casinos each of the past two years.
His television credits include Comics Unleashed, Ci TVs Latino Festival, specials on Gala Vision’s Que Locos and coming in 2008 a special on PBS titled, “Crossing the Line,” a look at multi-ethnic comics working in America.
Yaffee wraps up his view of live comedy in America in these words: “In a world gone crazy, as it may be, the beauty of stand up comedy is that we can confront and comment on the most controversial topics, we can share with the audience our concerns in such a manner that at the end of the night only those to blame should feel insulted.”
Marc Yaffee’s Web site can be found at www.trailoflaughs.com.
E-mail Harold LaBonte at
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LAKE COUNTY – October is the beginning of fall. And there are popular songs that remind us of some of October’s celestial events.
First there is “Moondance” by Van Morrison (‘… it’s a marvelous night for a Moondance, with the stars up above in your eyes, a fantabulous night to make romance neath the cover of October skies’).
And while October skies might be a bit chilly for romance outdoors at night, there are certainly some bright stars overhead (see the star chart at the end of this article).
Our old friend, the Summer Triangle of 3 bright stars is slowly sinking into the west. But taking its place is the constellation of Pegasus, the great winged horse. The huge square that makes up the body of Pegasus can be seen dominating the southeastern part of the sky.
Attached to Pegasus is the constellation Andromeda, a beautiful princess in Greek mythology. In Andromeda there is a galaxy similar to our own – the Great Andromeda Galaxy. Through a telescope it is very big and bright – the light we see from Andromeda started its journey 2.5 million years ago. When we look at this galaxy, we are, in effect, looking back in time 2.5 million years!
Speaking of beautiful princesses, check out the constellation Cassiopeia on our star chart. This bright, “W”-shaped group of stars overhead is hard to miss.
In Greek mythology, Cassiopeia became the queen of Ethiopia. She was very vain, and a picture of her shows her seated brushing her hair. The ‘W’ represents the chair she is seated on.
And let’s not forget the moon, as suggested in our “Moondance” song. The moon will be at its fullest on Oct. 25.
If you think the moon looks larger when it is low on the horizon, it isn’t. That’s just an optical illusion – it’s the same size no matter where it is in the night sky.
To wrap up our musically inspired October skies, how about that old hit “Venus” by Frankie Avalon?
If you get up an hour or so before sunrise and look to the east, that very bright star is the planet Venus. Venus is the second planet from the sun. It has an atmosphere of almost pure carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide traps all of the sun’s heat inside the planet’s atmosphere, and the result is a surface temperature that is higher than that of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
If you believe in global warming, Venus may provide a glimpse of the earth’s future if the trend is not stopped.
For more information about astronomy and local astronomy-related events, visit the Taylor Observatory Web site at www.taylorobservatory.org.
John Zimmerman has been an amateur astronomer for 50 years. He is a member of the Taylor Observatory staff, where, among his many duties, he helps create planetarium shows.
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San Francisco attorney Stuart Hanlon told Lake County News this week that he has filed a motion to have District Attorney Jon Hopkins and his department recused from the case.
Hanlon's 23-year-old client is accused of the homicides of friends Rashad Williams and Christian Foster.
Hopkins alleges that the three men broke into the Clearlake Park home of Shannon Edmonds and Lori Tyler in the early morning hours of Dec. 7, 2005, and assaulted the family while attempting to steal marijuana Edmonds claims to have a medical recommendation to use.
Hughes didn't shoot the men – Edmonds shot them as they ran from his home, according to case records.
However, Hopkins alleges Hughes is responsible for their deaths under a provocative act law, which holds a person responsible for the death of accomplices in a crime that is likely to result in a lethal response.
In this latest action, Hanlon is asking that Judge William McKinstry – the retired Alameda County judge who will preside over the trial – remove Hopkins.
The basis of Hanlon's request is his allegation that the district attorney is refusing to file charges against Edmonds for trying to force Tyler, his common law wife since 2001, to take a pill overdose as part of a suicide attempt on Aug. 3.
Tyler told police that Edmonds divided up about 300 pills of various types – including Methadone and Seroquel – and forced her to take about half of them. She said he threatened that if she didn't take them “something else was going to happen.” Edmonds also made her write out a suicide note.
“It really reads like an attempted murder,” said Hanlon.
The two survived because Edmonds later drove himself and Tyler to Redbud Community Hospital's Emergency Room.
In an interview with police Tyler said that Edmonds has been increasingly angry and isolated. “He's pushed everybody so far away from us since the home invasion,” she said.
Tyler also told police that Edmonds has threatened her before, and once had used a gun to shoot out a door, which scared her older son so badly he stopped coming to see them.
She further stated to police that she wanted Edmonds prosecuted for the incident.
Edmonds told police the suicide attempt was Tyler's idea, although friends of the couple interviewed by police said Edmonds – not Tyler – had been talking about suicide.
On Aug. 20 Edmonds made a second suicide attempt, again with pills, according to court records.
A police report said Hopkins asked to review the police report prior to an arrest being made.
Hanlon said Hopkins isn't filing a case against Edmonds because he's trying to protect him, since he's a major witness in the Hughes trial.
“He has a lot of discretion but it can't be abused,” said Hanlon.
If he can get Hopkins removed from the case Hanlon said he plans to subpoena him as a witness on why Edmonds wasn't prosecuted.
Hanlon's motion also hints that he may seek a delay in the trial, saying he won't know until the hearing if he will have “sufficient time to gather evidence and investigate this matter so that I can proceed adequately prepared and competent to trial in October of this year.”
Hopkins dismissed Hanlon's motion as just another maneuver to stall the trial.
He said his office is investigating the case and no decision has yet been made, but he contradicted Hanlon's claims that he was dismissing the case.
“He's a little premature in arriving at his conclusion,” said Hopkins.
Hopkins didn't want to reveal his plans for arguing against Hanlon until court, and said he is in the process of filing a brief in response.
He said the Attorney General's Office also will file a brief in opposition to Hanlon's motion to have the District Attorney's Office removed.
“There's no legal basis for the motion at all,” said Hopkins.
The motion will be heard at 9 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 11, in Department 3 at the Lake County Courthouse in Lakeport.
Earlier this year Hanlon appealed to both the state First Appellate Court and the state Supreme Court to throw out Judge Arthur Mann's March 2 decision to take the trial out of Lake County. The appellate court upheld Mann's decision, and the Supreme Court would not hear the case.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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A report from Chief Deputy Coroner Russell Perdock said that an autopsy conducted Friday confirmed that the man was 22-year-old Matthew Zanoni.
Zanoni went missing in the lake on Saturday while a passenger on a pontoon boat in the area of Shag Rock, located near Buckingham Point and east of Lakeport, as Lake County News previously reported.
His sister, Jennifer Zanoni, said he had come to Lake County that afternoon to attend BoardStock.
Perdock reported that the autopsy revealed no signs of trauma, injury or foul play.
The cause of Zanoni's death, said Perdock, was drowning.
Zanoni's body was discovered by a group of searchers that included his father, Mike Zanoni, Supervisor Rob Brown and Skip Simkins of Lake Countys' Lakebed Management division, as Lake County News reported Thursday.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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