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In addition to the one death, another man is reported to be injured after being struck in the arm by a fragment of a bullet or another object.
A Clearlake Police officer responding to a call involving a fight at York's Mobile Park on Old Highway 53 shot and killed the man, Clearlake Police Chief Allan McClain said Tuesday.
The man who died was David Vestal, who was in his 60s, said park manager Lizbeth Alvarez. He had only lived at the park about a month, moving from Clearlake Oaks.
Three cars and four officers arrived at the scene at about 9:30 p.m., where several people were reported to be in the fight, said McClain. The area where the park is located has a high number of calls for police service, he said.
When the officers arrived on scene, McClain said Vestal was armed with a shotgun.
“That's what he pointed at the officers,” said McClain, resulting in the shooting.
He would not name the officer involved, who has been put on administrative leave according to department policy as the investigation takes place.
Alvarez, who said she heard three shots, disputed the police account.
“The police made a mistake,” said Alvarez.
Alvarez said the police shot Vestal without knowing what was going on. She didn't see the incident, but claimed Vestal had been holding a BB gun.
“It wasn't a BB gun,” said McClain.
Alvarez said she didn't know why police shot Vestal, who she described as a good person, when they arrived. “There was no shooting before that.”
Vestal's daughter and her husband had been arguing, which Alvarez said led to the police's arrival. His family, including his 4-year-old grandson, were standing nearby when it happened, she said.
A neighbor standing on his patio across the street from the incident was hospitalized after being hit in the arm by a fragment, possibly of the bullet or of something it had struck, said McClain.
“Doctors have just told us it was a fragment,” he said. “They won't know until they get it out.”
The man's injury is not life-threatening, McClain added. He's to undergo surgery to have the fragment removed.
Department of Justice criminologists arrived overnight to process the crime scene, said McClain.
Other subjects reported to have been involved in the fight were interviewed, he said. Some of them had warrants but he did not have immediate information on whether or not any had been arrested or cited.
The District Attorney's Office is now investigating the incident to determine if the shooting was justified under the law, said McClain. “At this point, while we're talking, they're still conducting interviews.”
Police investigators also will make a determination on whether or not any department policies were violated, he added. Six of his officers and investigators are working in conjunction with the District Attorney's Office.
Alvarez said the park had been closed down until about 1 p.m., with tenants not allowed to come or go. Vestal's body had remained on scene until about noon, when authorities finally removed it, she said.
Investigators have been on scene since the incident occurred Monday night, said McClain.
“They should be trying to wrap things up,” he said, at which point the tired officers will be sent home to get some sleep and continue work on the case Wednesday.
McClain said police records didn't show previous contacts with Vestal.
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LAKEPORT – Along N. Brush Street sits a new, tidy little cottage dedicated to protecting children and assisting law enforcement in prosecuting child sexual abuse cases. {sidebar id=89}
The District Attorney's Office Victim-Witness Division celebrated the opening of its new children's Multi-Disciplinary Interview Center – or MDIC – at a gathering on Monday evening.
The new interview center already is considered the best facility of its kind in the state, according to Sam Laird, administrator of Victim-Witness.
But the real story behind the little building is the amount of community effort that went into making a good idea a better reality, with men and women – and even children – from all walks of life pitching in to offer supplies, labor and a lot of love to make it happen.
The sentiment that best sums the effort up is on a plaque that Rian Sommerfield, president of the Kelseyville Sunrise Rotary, presented to the center, with the names of everyone who participated engraved on it.
The plaque begins with the words, “This house was built with love.”
District Attorney Jon Hopkins told the group of community members and local leaders that victimized children need a comfortable, safe place where investigators can interview them with the least amount of trauma. The new building will serve that purpose, he said.
Last year, Hopkins and Laird began discussing the idea of building the center behind the Victim-Witness main building, in the location of an old shed that once had been a chicken coop.
For years, abused or sexually molested children who were part of a criminal investigation have been taken to a cramped little room – a converted broom closet, according to Laird – in the Lake County Courthouse, just up the hill from Victim-Witness.
There, they are interviewed by an investigator while, next door in the District Attorney's Elder Abuse unit, other investigators would crowd around a closed-circuit television in one corner of the room to monitor the interview.
It hasn't been an ideal situation, but the worst part of it, in Laird's opinion, was the walk the investigator and the child would take up the hill to the courthouse. Along the way, there was a risk the child could be seen by their abuser or others who might recognize the law enforcement officer with them.
"It was kinda like the Walk of Shame, walking them up there and down," Laird said.
Hopkins took the idea of an interview center to a department head meeting where Supervisor Rob Brown happened to be sitting in. When Brown heard about the idea, he gave it his enthusiastic support.
Both Hopkins and Laird credited Brown with helping give the project the overwhelming momentum that has carried it to completion after about eight months.
"Without Rob's involvement, none of this would even have been a blip on the radar screen," said Laird.
Brown told Lake County News at the event that he didn't ask anyone for a donation, but simply shared the plan with community members and groups, including the Kelseyville Sunrise Rotary, of which he is a member.
"Everybody said, 'What can we do?'" he said.
He suggested the desire by so many to participate was their way of reaching out to help children who have gone through the worst kinds of abuse imaginable.
Hopkins added that he thinks the effort touched people because the need for the center was explained from the perspective of a child who has been abused.
Many businesses came forward to make outright donations of materials or else offer them at cost, said Brown. Others donated their labor for such essentials as plumbing, electrical and flooring.
Brown said the effort got under way last October. He and Laird were on the site a lot, especially on weekends, with Brown using an excavator for site preparation. After that came the foundation and pouring cement.
Then the building went up. “We raised it like an Amish farmhouse,” said Laird.
Inmate trustee labor also played a big part, said Laird, with the men doing landscaping and irrigation, laying graving pathways and other important work that saved an estimated $40,000.
Public Services Director Kim Clymire's crews came over and added another finishing touch, an attractive wood fence that runs along the interview center's side that faces N. Brush Street, offering another barrier of safety, said Laird.
In all, Laird said he and Brown estimated that the center's total construction costs ranged between $200,000 and $250,000, with most of it donated by the community, outside of the work Public Services put in, and a District Attorney's Office allocation of $10,000 to pay for the center's audio and video equipment.
On Monday, in addition to presenting the plaque, Sommerfield also had the honor of handing over the building's keys to Laird, who responded with an enthusiastic, “Right on!”
Building has unique touches
The building's construction is unique. Its framing has about twice the amount of lumber one would normally see in such a project. Laird explained that is because it allowed them to hang more sheetrock in order to insulate it for privacy.
The building, which is about 560 square feet in size and painted a shade of green called “alligator pear,” has two age-appropriate interview rooms, which have double windows, again, to create more of a sound barrier. There's also an area outside of the interview rooms where a flat panel television screen hangs on a wall next to camera controls and audiovisual equipment for monitoring the interviews.
The Lakeport Women's Civic Club made a $10,000 donation to the project, which Brown said paid for a nearly quiet heating and cooling system.
There's another special touch, completed on Monday afternoon. Walk into the little building, and one of the walls – formerly painted white – is now fabulously alive with color and life in the form of Disney characters.
The mural was the concept of 17-year-old Steve Herdt II, a Kelseyville High Senior and son of Sheriff's Deputy Steve Herdt.
The talented young artist and his high school art teacher, Deb Ingalls, started work last week drawing a grid for the mural, which is Herdt's first. After about five days of painting, it was completed at 1 p.m. Monday afternoon, just in time for its debut.
Ingalls credited Herdt with the design – “I just worked for him,” she said.
Herdt's assignment was to make the room less sterile and more welcoming to a child.
“I started with Nemo,” he said of the popular fish cartoon character.
Herdt's mural depicts Nemo and other characters such as the Little Mermaid, Snow White and the creatures from “Monsters Inc.” circling around the word “Believe” in gold letters.
Center prepares for service
Laird said it will be about two weeks before the investigations will be fully transitioned over to the new center.
The team of investigators who will work primarily at the center includes District Attorney's Office Investigator Von Morshed, Det. Mike Curran of the Lake County Sheriff's Office, Crystal Martin of Victim-Witness and prosecutor Ed Borg, who is taking over the child sexual abuse prosecution caseload from fellow deputy district attorney John DeChaine.
DeChaine said he has worked such cases for four years, and it was time to move on to other casework. “It's good to get out of it so you don't get burned out,” he said, explaining the high level of stress that goes with the assignment.
Prosecuting cases involving children is a complex and delicate business, DeChaine explained. The District Attorney's Office is involved from the beginning, working to safeguard the child, making sure they have medical care and supervising interviews with the child by qualified forensics interviewers. Both Morshed and Curran hold such qualifications, as does Officer Jim Bell of Lakeport Police, he said.
“It's all designed to minimize the impact on the child,” he said.
For those adults involved in the law enforcement side, it can be an unforgettable experience. Laird told Lake County News in a previous interview that hearing a child recount being victimized is something that a person never forgets.
Is law enforcement seeing more cases involving children who are abused, sexually and otherwise? “I think there's a growth in reporting,” Hopkins said.
He believes the center and its new approach to investigating such cases also will encourage more people to come forward, knowing children will have an extra measure of safety and security in the process.
It also will assist, they believe, in putting together the best cases possible. “When a good case is put together and there's no wiggle room for them, a lot of them will plead guilty,” said Hopkins.
Careful investigations, said DeChaine, also are crucial to clearing the innocent and preventing someone from being wrongly accused.
That's important because of the stigma associated with sexual abuse. “Just an arrest for something like this can follow someone,” added Borg.
“This is going to assist us in weeding out the nonprovable cases from the provable,” said Hopkins.
There's another goal for everyone, too. It's that, someday, the little green building won't be needed for its original purpose anymore.
To see a photos of the MDIC being built and its finishing touches, visit the gallery page at http://lakeconews.com/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,37/.
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California Highway Patrol Officer Adam Garcia reported that Robert Gescheider died in the crash, which occurred at 11:50 p.m. Friday.
Gescheider was driving a 1997 Dodge Pickup – registered out of Middletown – westbound on Highway 29 and west of the Dry Creek Cutoff when the crash took place, Garcia reported.
Garcia said Gescheider was unable to negotiate a curve in the road and traveled off the road's north edge, where his pickup struck a group of oak trees before it came to rest partially in the westbound lane.
Gescheider sustained fatal injuries as a result of this collision and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Garcia.
The collision investigation is still in progress but alcohol and speed is believed to have been a contributing factor in this collision, said Garcia reported.
Garcia said Officer Kory Reynolds is investigating the incident.
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The Lake County Air Quality Management District credited continuing southwest winds with causing air pollution levels to drop back into more normal range, after having exceeded state and federal air quality standards last week.
Some haze was still visible in the south county, where the Walker Fire is 100-percent contained and nearly controlled, according to Cal Fire.
Only a “couple dozen” fire personnel remained in the county Monday for the Walker Fire, which is largely finished, with most firefighters being released to other blazes elsewhere, Cal Fire reported.
The northern part of the county also had a smoky haze, which is coming from Mendocino County's lightning fires, which Cal Fire reported are 38-percent at 37,600 acres.
The Soda Complex, consisting of four fires burning on the forest's Upper Lake Ranger District, had reached 4,970 acres by Monday, according to a report from forest spokesperson Phebe Brown. The complex is 55-percent contained.
Another 2,000 acres is burning in the Yolla Bolly Complex in Mendocino and Tehama counties, according to Brown. That includes numerous fires previously referred to as the June ABCD Complex. Late last week, forest officials closed down that wilderness area due to the firefighting effort.
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