Jake Haro, in an unanticipated move during a court hearing to finalize arrangements for his preliminary hearing and that of his wife and co-defendant, pleaded guilty this morning, Thursday October 15, in Riverside Superior Court to second degree murder in the death of his infant son.
The plea provides some but not all of the answers to a set of evolving questions that have been extant for more than two months. It seemingly confirms what investigators and prosecutors and a significant portion of the public has believed and alleged for some time, which is that the original story about the disappearance of 7-month Emmanuel Haro told by the child’s mother, Rebecca Haro, was patently untrue.
In that version of events, provided to members of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department on August 14, she, her husband, Jake, Jake’s two-year-old sister and his ten-year-old half brother had driven to Yucaipa from the Haro home in Cabazon in Riverside County so the ten-year-old could partticipate in a football scrimmage/practice at the large sports facility there. According to Rebecca Haro, she went to the Big 5 Sporting Goods Store several blocks from the sports facility to purchase a mouth guard for her stepson, where in the parking lot she stopped to change Emmanuel’s diaper. As she was doing so, sometime 7:44 p.m. and 7:54 p.m., with the 7-month-old on the backseat of the family vehicle, she said, she was sucker-punched by a man who had greeted her in Spanish. When she came to on the ground moments later, she said, Emmanuel was gone.
Initially, her story was lent credibility by the consideration that she had a blackened right eye. An all points bulletin went out as an intensive search was initiated, which resulted in a report that the child had been sighted in Kern County near Bakersfield.
Within a few days, however, contradictions in Rebecca Haro’s story emerged, as video footage from cameras in the area either did not confirm her version of events or seemed at odds with it. A social media frenzy ensued, which entailed the relatively new brand of citizen journalists, among whom were both amateur and professional videographers, staking out the Haro’s home, following them and tracing their previous movements in the days and weeks prior to Emmanuel’s disappearance. Some of those efforts churned up information that went beyond what sheriff’s department investigators were able to obtain, such as indications that Rebecca Haro’s eye was blackened as early as August 3.
Both of the Haros were confronted with this information and other details gleaned by detectives when they were interviewed, reinterviewed and interrogated over the course of the next three days, at which point Rebecca Haro grew uncooperative. The investigation at that point made a crucial shift, with the parents now suspects in what was believed to be the death of their child.
Late in the evening on Sunday, August 18, an identification of Jake Emmanuel Haro and Jake Mitchell Haro as being one and the same was received through a backchannel to several media organizations and social media outlets. Riverside County Superior Court records showed that a conviction against Jake Mitchell Haro had been entered against him in June 2023, stemming from his arrest on charges of child cruelty in Hemet four years and 8 months previously. Both Haro and his then wife, Vanessa Avina, were arrested on October 13, 2018 after their 10-week-old daughter, Carolina Rose, was admitted to Hemet Valley Hospital. Doctors reported to police that the girl had a “fresh” and “acute” fractured rib, six previously fractured ribs, a previous leg bone fracture and a previous skull fracture, all of which were in a state of “healing,” swelling of the neck and a brain hemorrhage.
Carolina Rose, who was severely disabled after having had to undergo a tracheotomy and was rendered blind, unable to walk or speak, with three to seven percent brain function because of the beating to her head, making her entirely dependent upon her caregiver, was adopted by Vanessa’s sister, who changed the child’s name to Promise Faith.
A criminal case against Jake Mitchell Haro and Vanessa Avina was pursued by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office and dragged out for nearly five years, which concluded with his 2023 conviction for willful cruelty to a child.
It was incidentally mentioned that Haro had been arrested while in possession of a gun, and was yet facing charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The already pointed suppositions on multiple social media sites that were suggesting the parents were involved in the child’s disappearance reached a cacophonous crescendo thereafter, at which point the involved law enforcement entities echoed those accusations, albeit in less sensationalistic terms, and without disclosing the basis for that conclusion. A wide cross section of the traditional press and media, hamstrung by the standard limitations relating to sourcing and the production of verified specifics, while taken aback by Jake Haro’s criminal history that consisted of extreme abuse of a child, noted, without publishing as much, that the presumption of the Haros’ guilt was unaccompanied by any specific hard evidence to support the inferences being drawn.
Yet another corner on the case was turned when both Jake and Rebecca were rousted at 6:59 a.m., on August 22 by San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputies and detectives, who arrested them on suspicion of the murder of their son. They were entrusted to the custody of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, which delayed in booking them. Rebecca was not booked into official custody at the jail until 12:32 p.m., more than a half hour after noon, five-and-a-half hours after her arrest. Jake was not booked until 5:33 p.m., a full ten-and-a-half hours after his arrest.
During that time, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department used the opportunity to place undercover officers into the inmate population in the holding cells where both were being detained. Those officers, in the guise of individuals who had just been arrested themselves, attempted to befriend the Haros in an effort to gain their confidence and thereby obtain statements from them that further implicated them in the murder of their son, together with possible hints with regard to where the child’s remains were located.
Within days, word of the undercover operation became public knowledge, as did investigators inability to locate the body of the child. Whereas previously, the detectives with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in investigating the matter had embraced the opportunity that the widespread public interest and accompanying social media scrutiny provided them in pressuring the Haros to further their effort to learn what the actual circumstances surrounding Emmanuel’s disappearance were, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and in particular Sheriff Chad Bianco, with the couple in their custody, proved to be far less adept at harnessing the glare of attention that attended the case for any positive effect. The public, expectant as a consequence of the arrests of the parents that at minimum an explication of the facts with regard to the killing of the child by his parents would be provided and anticipating an even more comprehensive detailing of what had occurred, found themselves stonewalled as the Riverside Sheriff’s Department showed itself to be far less forthcoming than the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Bianco and his crew grew even more coy when it was pressed about the most basic element of the murder, i.e., how the child had died. It was at that point that it was intimated that the child’s body had not been found. Two days after the arrests, amid reports that Jake Haro was cooperating with his jailers, what was hoped would prove to be a succesful shaping of the narrative, news outlets and agencies were tipped off about an out-of-jail excursion that Jake Haro was taking to the badlands outside Moreno Valley…

Cody Holmes, whose greed and the position of trust bestowed upon him at the age of 27 combined to  threaten the viability of two of the more promising homeless rehabilitation programs undertaken in San Bernardino County and, indeed,  the state of California, has been charged by federal authorities with fraud, more than two years after the extent of the embezzlement and other depredations he engaged him became publicly known.

        Cody Holmes, 31, of Beverly Hills, was arrested this morning on a federal criminal complaint charging him with mail fraud, a felony offense that carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

          Holmes is expected to make his initial appearance this afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles. No plea will be taken today.

          According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, in October 2022, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), a state agency, paid approximately $25.9 million in grant money – for a state homelessness project called “Homekey” – to Shangri-La Industries LLC, a downtown Los Angeles-based developer of affordable housing. The grant funds were sent with the provision that the money be used to purchase, construct, and operate homeless housing in Thousand Oaks.

These payments followed many millions of dollars HCD had already paid to Shangri-La to buy, build, and operate housing for the homeless in Redlands (in San Bernardino County) and King City (in Monterey County), among other California cities.

Holmes – as Shangri-La’s CFO – knowingly submitted fake bank records to HCD that purportedly showed approximately $160 million supposedly controlled by Shangri-La and its affiliates to prove that Shangri-La had the capacity to fulfill the homeless housing projects for which it had coapplied for grants from HCD, including the Thousand Oaks project. In fact, the bank accounts Shangri-La and Holmes said contained these funds did not exist.

Holmes and Shangri-La also submitted to HCD balance sheets falsely representing that Shangri-La-affiliated entities held millions of dollars in cash that these entities did not actually have on deposit in the known accounts for those entities. Holmes and Shangri-La submitted these fake bank statements and false balance sheets with the intent that HCD should rely on them and release grant money to Shangri-La.

After these documents were submitted to HCD, HCD paid millions of dollars more in grant money to Shangri-La, including for the Thousand Oaks project.

Some of the Homekey money paid to Shangri-La for homeless housing was used to pay credit card bills for American Express accounts associated with Holmes. In November and December of 2022, more than $2.2 million was transferred from a Shangri-La account to a Holmes-controlled account. Afterwards, from November 2022 to May 2023, more than $2 million was paid towards American Express cards. The charges on those credit card accounts included purchases at well-known luxury retailers. Law enforcement believes these payments were made at least in part for Holmes’s benefit.

The announcement of Holmes’ arrest and the charges against him were made simultaneously with the arrest and filing of charges against Steven Taylor, 44, of Brentwood, who defrauded lenders to aid his property-flipping business, including a Cheviot Hills home that he sold to a homeless housing developer for more than double his original purchase price.

          “Accountability for the misuse of billions of tax dollars intended to combat homeless starts today,” said Acting United States Attorney Bill Essayli, “The two criminal cases announced is only the tip of the iceberg and we intend to aggressively pursue all leads and hold anyone who broke any federal laws criminally liable.”

          “In both of these cases, defendants took advantage of funds allocated to assist the homeless, some of the most vulnerable people in society and many of whom may be suffering from myriad conditions, including addiction,” said Akil Davis, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “The FBI is committed to the Homelessness Fraud & Corruption Task Force to find perpetrators of this insidious fraud and build cases to hold the offenders accountable in court. It is my hope that the charges we’re announcing today send a message to others who may be contemplating similar criminal behavior.”

          “IRS-CI is proud to be an inaugural member of the Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force, which was formed to ensure that funds which were committed to aiding California’s homeless population were spent as intended,” said Special Agent in Charge Tyler Hatcher of IRS Criminal Investigation’s Los Angeles Field Office. “Today’s actions show our commitment to ensuring the public that we will investigate missing funds that were intended to benefit some of the most vulnerable Californians.”

By Anthony Serrano and Mark Gutglueck
Congressman Jay Obernolte finds himself under withering scrutiny and, in some cases, relentless attack for what some of his most ardent political supporters and members of his staff acknowledge was his “uninformed” support for the San Manuel Indian Tribe’s swap of 1,460 acres it has acquired in the San Bernardino National Forest at various locations and altitudes ranging from approximately 5,200 feet to 7,000 feet in the San Bernardino Mountains for two parcels of federal land consisting of 1,475.9 acres located near the Arrowhead Springs Hotel at the approximate 2,000-foot elevation in the San Bernardino Mountain foothills.
At issue are the water rights that can be construed as being associated with the lower-lying land and the potential that the tribe’s future diversion of that water will severely impact a major source of water for 450,000 people and remaining agricultural uses in the greater San Bernardino Metropolitan area and the watershed along the Santa Ana River as it progresses toward the Pacific Ocean, which is a primary and secondary source of water for another 300,000 Southern California residents.
Two identical federal bills, House Resolution 3925, sponsored by Congressman Jay Obernolte, and Senate Bill 2796, sponsored by Senator Alex Padilla and Senator Adam Schiff, are intended to effectuate the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation Land Exchange Act, which facilitates the land swap between the U.S. Forest Service and the Yuhaaviatam of the San Manuel Nation. The stated purpose of the proposed legislation, placing the 1,475.9 acres of federal property into the hands of the tribe in exchange for title on 1,460 acres of fee land now owned by the tribe being transferred to the federal government, is, ostensibly, to assist the Yuhaaviatam Nation improve management of its reservation, protect cultural sites, and enhance wildfire prevention. Continue reading →

The prospect that American Medical Response can hang on to the virtual monopoly it has enjoyed as the dominant provider of ambulance service in geographically expansive San Bernardino County over the last two decades has narrowed significantly in the last several months. Indeed, it appears that the company may soon be driven out of business in this neck of the woods entirely.
The powers that be in the regional, county and municipal governmental structure were once so enamored with American Medical Response that they conferred favored status upon the company, which is known by the initialism AMR. Those fickle politicians, however, have now taken up with a consortium of governmental agencies and its selected corporate partner to create a quasi-public, quasi-private emergency medical transportation program that is being touted as the wave of the future.
More than a year-and-a-half ago, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors moved vigorously to end AMR’s ambulance service franchise. AMR’s corporate officers felt the county had done so a little too spiritedly and responded by suing San Bernardino County in both state and federal court.
Rulings made this year in the federal court case and the reaction to those rulings by the judge hearing the matter in state court do not bode well for American Medical Response, as those in the know and interested parties now appear to be preparing for AMR’s near-monopoly to be handed over to the consortium.
Somewhat ironically, despite American Medical Response having previously enjoyed a near-monopoly in San Bernardino County by virtue of having secured exclusive operating franchises across a wide swath of the region, its lawyers had argued that the county governmental structure controlling those franchises was illegally endorsing a monopolistic system. Judge Kenly Kato, who is hearing the matter in federal court, ruled the anti-trust principle cited by the law firm representing American Medical Response in the federal suit is inapplicable. Earlier this year a panel of three judges with the U.S, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals – consisting of Justices Consuelo Callahan, Roopali Desai, and Ana De Alba – upheld Judge Kato. As a result, the legal challenge to San Bernardino County’s December 2023 decision to confer a franchise for emergency medical response throughout most of the county’s desert region on Consolidated Fire Agencies – otherwise known as CONFIRE – resides now in San Bernardino County Superior Court under the scrutiny of Superior Court Judge Jay Robinson. Continue reading →

By Carlos Avalos and Mark Gutglueck
San Bernardino County Board of Education Member Ryan McEachron’s vitriolic reaction to county residents’ public records requests has triggered alarm among his constituents and a complaint to the district attorney’s office, as citizen efforts to monitor spending priorities by regional education officials continue, spurred on by curiosity over the basis of McEachron’s animus.
At two separate points during the September 8, 2025 meeting of the San Bernardino County Board of Education, McEachron took exception to the intensive examination members of the public have in recent weeks and months been making of the decision-making engaged in by the county board of education, San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Ted Alejandre and school boards of several districts throughout the county.
At issue in multiple instances is how elected educational officials, including Alejandre, have created or otherwise participated in arrangements involving the expenditure of educational program funds that have profited their friends, business or political associates, family members or themselves personally. In the same timeframe, there have been associated revelations demonstrating the political interconnections between the county’s elected educational officials, consisting primarily of school board members and Alejandre himself making donations to one anothers’ electioneering funds.
McEachron found himself provoked in the early stage of the meeting, after the preliminary and ceremonial items were dealt with and the board was hearing public comments. A former instructor with the Etiwanda School District, Antoinette Jensen, made some critical observations with regard to the county’s educational establishment, including the assertion that the county superintendent of schools office had engaged in “pay-to-play” practices with regard to contracting, a nepotistic arrangement in which Alejandre’s wife had been provided with a contract exceeding $200,000 per year and other conflict-of-interest entanglements. Jensen referenced the funneling of campaign money to and between elected educational position candidates with whom Alejandre or board members are aligned and concerted efforts to remove individuals in office who are not in line policy-wise or politically with the prime movers in the county’s educational establishment. “Independent voices get in the way of your power,” Jensen asserted. Continue reading →

By John Berry
Never in my two decades in the newspaper business have I ever seen elected officials so viciously attacked as three members of the Redlands school board.
I don’t say that lightly. In my reporting days in Florida and California, I’ve covered multiple levels of elected officials, from fire and community college district trustees to county commissioners and state legislators.
A group calling itself Together For Redlands spearheads vicious and vile attacks on Redlands Unified School District board members Candy Olson, Jeannette Wilson, and Michele Rendler. At meetings, needlessly lasting past midnight, numerous Together For Redlands supporters would typically call the trio “Nazis,” “fascists” and “white Christian nationalists.”
And that’s just for starters. Often, attackers – including current and former Redlands students – would flip middle fingers and drop F-bombs as well as scream primal profanity at the board. Police escorted the worst out of the meeting. The protesters were undaunted. They picketed and leafleted Rendler at her church.
Further, the Ark Church in Redlands – the members of which and pastor actively support Olson and Wilson – was singled out for vitriol.
Violence and vandalism targeting the church and its members are nothing new. The latest attack took place in April when, after a particularly contentious school board meeting, swastikas suddenly appeared on Ark Church signage. Local, regional and state media covered the crime, and the FBI questioned suspects. No arrests were made, but vandalism has since ceased. Continue reading →

In a rare demonstration of division between two of California’s otherwise closely-aligned Democrats, Governor Gavin Newsom on October 1 vetoed State Senator Sabrina Cervantes’ bill aimed at limiting the use and retention of information gleaned by license plate readers.
A license plate reader, variously known as an automated license plate recognition system and their respective acronyms LPR and ALPR, consists of a camera and accompanying software used to automatically capture photos of vehicle license plates. The accompanying software system, which is coordinated to link up with various data storage and processing banks utilized by law enforcement and other agencies, converts the images to electronic text, which then can be compared with or matched to license plate numbers registered with the California Department of Motor Vehicles or the vehicle registrations gleaned from other states’ information banks.
The readers, mounted on poles along roadsides or at intersections, generally make a recording of the plate number, date, time, and location of the vehicle bearing the plate.
Police agencies have applied the information in multiple contexts to identify stolen vehicles or track the whereabouts of individuals known or suspected to have engaged in criminal activity.
While the devices have proven of substantial value in documenting certain crimes, locating suspects and stolen vehicles, providing evidence that has been used in obtaining convictions, the data collected by an ALPR is routinely stored and provides a comprehensive record of vehicle movements and the whereabouts of the state’s citizens, the vast majority of whom are not involved in criminal activity. Continue reading →

A governmental decision made halfway around the globe yesterday has brightened immeasurably the prospects that a San Bernardino County mining operation will recapture its former glory.
The unincorporated community of Mountain Pass in San Bernardino County’s extreme northeast corner is host to what was in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the world’s most productive rare earth element mine. Rare earth metals, also referred to as lanthanides, are a set of 17 minerals – specifically scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, gadolinium, europium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, lutetium and ytterbium. They serve as niche ingredients in the components of high-tech devices, including mercury-vapor lamps, high-temperature superconductors, lasers, microwave filters, high refractive index glass, electrical vehicles, flint products, battery-electrodes, camera lenses, carbon arc lighting, didymium glass used in welding goggles, ceramic capacitors, nuclear batteries, specialized magnets, semi-conductors, red and blue phosphors, x-ray machines, infrared lasers and computer chips.
The mine was closed down in the 1990s because of environmental concerns. During its hiatus, the Chinese leapt into the breach and became the owners and operators of mines producing in excess of 80 percent of the world’s rare earth elements. In the same timeframe, over the last three decades, with scientific advancements, rare earths became more and more crucial to the economy as modern products increasingly utilized components containing lanthanides. Continue reading →