Against what appears to be the wishes of at least some members of the city council, Chino Hills Mayor Cynthia Moran has agreed to schedule a discussion regarding term limits for politicians in San Bernardino County’s southwesternmost municipality.
Whether that discussion will translate into the council’s willingness to use its authority to put a measure on the November ballot to allow the city’s voters to decide whether members of the city council, who also rotate into the mayor’s position, should be limited to one, two or three terms is by no means certain.
Nevertheless, a group of the city residents who are committed to the term limitation concept and are calling themselves by the rather predictable name of “Term Limiters” see Moran’s willingness to give the idea a public airing as a significant step forward. Continue reading →

In action that firmed up a radical departure from a policy steadfastly adhered to over the last quarter of a century, the Fontana City Council voted on January 23 to grant a permit to a business trafficking in marijuana and other cannabis products.
On occasions too numerous to recount, both past and the current Fontana City Councils refused to entertain or abruptly denied efforts by entrepreneurs to obtain licensing to operate medical marijuana dispensaries in the 43.07-square mile city in the years after Propositions 215, the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act of 1996, was passed or permits to sell marijuana or marijuana-based substances to be used for intoxicative effect following the 2016 passage of Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act. At several points, members of the city council vowed that Fontana would remain a commercial Marijuana free zone, no matter what liberalizations of the law there were or changes in societal norms.
Last week’s 4-to-1 vote, with Mayor Acquanetta Warren and councilmen John Roberts, Phil Cothran Jr. and Pete Garcia prevailing and Councilman Jesse Sandoval dissenting, was all the more remarkable, given the political affiliations of the council members. Warren, Roberts, Cothran and Garcia are all Republicans. Sandoval is the panel’s lone Democrat. Continue reading →

It has now been confirmed that a young man and a middle-aged man who disappeared into San Bernardino County’s wilderness last year and this year perished in unrelated circumstances of misadventure.
Trammell Evans, a 26-year-old from Florida, who went into the Black Rock area of Joshua Tree National Park April 30, 2023 for an ill-advised solo trek to clear his mind and body and exorcise some personal demons, did not reach, the point where he had arranged to be picked up on May 5.
An effort to find him, including trying to spot him from the air using helicopters, airplanes, and drones, while on the ground bloodhounds, volunteers and members of the sheriff’s department’s search and rescue team ensued, but was unsuccessful.
Evans was an experienced hiker with some familiarity with Joshua Tree National Park. Hope that he might belatedly arrive at the designated spot faded, with some of those closest to him suspecting the worst and yet others believing he had used the hike in the vast 1,234 square mile National Monument as a type of ruse to disappear and take on a new identity to evade certain realities of his own life that had become too complicated and self-suffocating.
On January 25, human remains were found near Covington Flats, not too far from Black Rock.
On January 14, 55-year-old Christian Alan Petrie, was last seen near his home in Crestline in the San Bernardino Mountains. His family noted his absence later that day, but had not involved authorities until the sheriff’s department was called on January 20.
On January 23, during a search and rescue effort, sheriff’s personnel came across Petrie’s lifeless body in…

So you say Continue reading →

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME CASE
NUMBER CIVSB2400010
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS: Petitioner: MAMOON JAMAL MATLAB filed with this court for a decree changing names as follows:
ELYAS MAMOON MATLAB to ADAM MAMOON MATLAB
THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.
Notice of Hearing:
Date: 02/27/2024
Time: 08:30 AM
Department: S17
The address of the court is Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino San Bernardino District-Civil Division 247 West Third Street, San Bernardino, CA 92415 IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that a copy of this order be published in the SBCS Ontario in San Bernardino County California, once a week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing of the petition.
Filed: 01/02/2024
Brianna Johnson, Deputy Clerk of the Court
Judge of the Superior Court: Gilbert G. Ochoa
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on January 12, 19, 26 and February 2, 2024.

FBN 20240000243
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
SUPREME CONSTRUCTION GROUP 7083 OREGON STREET FONTANA, CA 92336
ALEX FERNANDEZ
Business Mailing Address: 7083 OREGON STREET FONTANA, CA 92336
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL.
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: JANUARY 10, 2024.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ ALEX FERNANDEZ
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 01/10/2024
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy J7550
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on January 12, 19, 26 and February 2, 2024. Continue reading →

In the largest mass killing in the county since the December 2015 massacre in San Bernardino, at least six people were gunned down in a remote area of the Mojave Desert about three miles east of the Shadow Mountain Ghost Town.
A San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy found five of the six dead in and around two vehicles near the intersection of Shadow Mountain Road and Lessing Avenue at 8:35 p.m. on the evening of January 23, 2024 after the sheriff’s dispatch center received a call at 8:16 p.m. requesting a welfare check from a location about a half mile from that location. The deputy was assisted in finding the vehicles, a blue Chevrolet Blazer SUV with Oregon plates and a silver Dodge Caravan van 9HUW954 with a blue 2024 expiration tag one hour and 17 minutes after sundown with assistance from a California Highway Patrol helicopter. The body of one of the five decedents was inside the Blazer. Another body was near the Caravan.
In the sheriff’s department’s initial survey of the scene, five victims, all of whom had been felled by gunfire, were found. The following morning, the body of another victim, one who had apparently been able to ambulate a yet-undisclosed short distance from the spot of the killings, was discovered.
According to available information, the shootings took place proximate to the El Mirage off-road trail 4652 marker not far from the Shadow Mountain Road/Lessing Avenue intersection. Shadow Mountain Road and Lessing Avenue are dirt roads. That intersection is roughly three miles east of the Shadow Mountain ghost town, where a no-longer active mining operation once flourished, and about three-and-a half miles west of Highway 395, 10 miles northeast of the center of El Mirage, 12 miles west of Helendale, 15 miles west of Silver Lakes, 18 miles north-northwest of Adelanto and 26 miles northwest of Victorville and 50 miles north of San Bernardino.
A fire department paramedic crew with advance life support gear was dispatched to the scene at 8:38 p.m., but upon arrival was unable to offer any positive assistance to the five victims discovered at that time, all of whom were pronounced dead.
Four of the five bodies encountered by the responding deputies were on the ground outside the vehicles, all bearing obvious signs of trauma including open wounds, torsos covered at least in part with blood, with signs of profuse bleeding on the ground around them.
An apparent attempt, one which was ultimately unsuccessful, had been made before the sheriff’s department arrived to set the Blazer afire. At least two of the corpses were partially burned.
The department was able to secure the crime scene and maintain its integrity throughout the night. The following morning, a bevy of investigators, including ones from the homicide detail of the sheriff’s specialized investigations division, forensic technicians and photographers descended upon the scene, at which point the sixth victim was found. Throughout the morning and into the afternoon, efforts to locate and gather evidence were made, in many cases using hovering helicopters to avoid disturbing potential footprint, vehicle tracks and other evidence.
Once the investigation had begun in earnest, no one outside the department was able to approach the crime scene, as the closest entrance onto the dirt Shadow Mountain Road from the pavement was barred with yellow evidence marking tape and a deputy manning that chokepoint.
Investigators had gauged a time of death as occurring within a one-and-a-half-hour window on Tuesday but were not specific as to what that parameter was beyond that it was sometime during daylight January 23.
By the early afternoon of January 24, ten standard department vehicles along with a Freightliner MT-55 mobile command post and two other smaller van-type technical equipment and analysis vehicles were parked along Shadow Mountain Road roughly a tenth of a mile from the crime scene. The presence of the roomy mobile command post afforded technicians an opportunity to process or begin processing some of the evidence turned up on the spot and to upload any data gleaned to laboratories elsewhere for further analysis, some of which provided instantaneous or rapid feedback to investigators yet involved in fieldwork.
Light recent precipitation may have been of assistance in allowing investigators to recognize vehicle tracks or footprints near the scene that did not match those of the vehicles on the spot or the footwear of the victims.
Data feeds allowed footage from any video cameras or license plate readers in the area or at various chokepoints that lead to the location to be mined by investigators aboard the command post for what information they might provide about vehicles that transited into or out of the area on January 23, key evidence that might be used in identifying and locating suspects.
The victims located on Tuesday night near the vehicles had been stripped of their identification, according to one reliable source, with no wallets or similar possessions found on their persons. As of today, at least two of the victims had been identified by investigators, who did not publicly release that information. No one with the department was willing, at this point, to release the genders, nationalities or ages of the victims nor their last known places of residence.
Around 5 p.m. on January 24, individuals claiming to recognize one of the vehicles were permitted to proceed to the scene of the shooting and were interviewed by investigators. Another person, said to have been a family member of one of the victims, was a walk-in at the sheriff’s department station in Adelanto, the Sentinel was informed. At least one of the victims was from the Adelanto area, according to an informed source.
As of Thursday, according to the sheriff’s department, the identity of the initial caller was unknown. No update on that issue had been issued as of today, Friday January 26.
The area where the shooting occurred, proximate to a flat, dry lake bed, is virtually uninhabited, with what was identified as a single residence within two miles of the crossroads.
While what was described as a “thorough” search of the area had been conducted, including a close and methodical scanning of the landscape from above by eagle-eyed scouts in helicopters, the department was unable to rule out the possibility that there were other victims.
As of early Thursday, the department had identified, according to Sheriff’s Department Spokeswoman Mara Rodriguez, no suspects. When Rodriguez was asked early Friday for any further updates on the case and whether the victims would be identified publicly, Rodriguez stated that the press should “not expect identification today. The investigation is continuing. Currently, no updates are available for release. A press conference is expected to be announced next week if further information becomes available. We thank the public and our media partners for their patience as we conduct a careful and thorough investigation to bring justice to the families of those affected.”
According to the department, “Some information may not be available at this time. Either it is unknown or it may jeopardize the integrity of the investigation.”
There was recurrent media and social media speculation that the killings were gang-affiliated or foreign drug cartel-related, but investigators offered no confirmation of that.
In 2021 and 2022, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department engaged in an extended effort, dubbed Operation Hammerstrike, to find and eliminate unlicensed marijuana farms located throughout the county, most of them in the Mojave Desert. A significant percentage of the more than 1,200 outdoor cultivation facilities that were raided featured perpetrators who were foreigners both legal and illegal, that is documented and undocumented, primarily from Mexico and China. According to the sheriff’s department, at least some of those had cartel connections.
Some social media chatter featured conjecture that the victims might have happened upon one such operation, leading to their unfortunate fate. There was no indication from the sheriff’s department, however, that any marijuana farms had been located in the area recently. The marijuana growing cycle, when using natural sunlight, normally does not begin until February at the earliest, with the germination of unplanted seeds taking place in January.
The sheriff’s department went so far as to withhold whether the deaths were in fact caused by gunfire.
There was, nonetheless, strong indication that a shootout utilizing massive firepower had taken place. The Blazer had been riddled with bullet holes, with at least two bullet holes in the driver’s side front window. Both a driver’s side passenger compartment window and the rear window were blown out entirely, photographs of the vehicle taken early in the day on January 24 show. Late on January 24, possibly because of evidence processing that took place that afternoon, the driver’s side front window, which initially had bullet holes but was essentially intact otherwise, was largely shattered.
It appears that the shooting that did take place occurred from different spots. In one relatively small area of no more than 70-square feet to 100-square feet – a circumscribed patch of ground of not more than ten feet by ten feet – which appeared to be roughly equidistant from either vehicle, markers on the ground corresponding to shell casings that were recovered indicated that no fewer than 34 shots were fired from that point alone. There were lesser numbers of shell casings on the ground elsewhere.
The department appealed to anyone with information about the crime to contact investigators.

A honeymoon of unknown duration has begun between David Carmany and the Rialto Mayor and City Council as Carmany is returning to a role in governance with a municipality in San Bernardino County where his public management career began almost four decades ago.
Rialto has burned through a half-dozen of generally experienced and established city managers in the last decade. Carmany fits the bill in terms of experience in comparison to his many predecessors.
In January 2011, Henry Garcia, who had been steadily in place as Rialto city manager for a decade, left abruptly to become city manager in Moreno Valley. Rialto Police Chief Mark Kling was tapped to fill in for Garcia. Thereafter, the city council settled on elevating Mike Story, a 27-year city employee who at that time was Rialto’s director of development services, to city manager. Story remained until the end of 2017, whereupon he was replaced by a succession of the city’s department heads who served in the interim top city managerial role. In June 2019, Rod Foster, who had been the titular assistant city manager/de facto city manager in Hesperia and Upland under Robb Quincey in both of those municipalities and then the city manager in both Colton and Laguna, signed on as city manager. In 2020, it became public knowledge that an internal audit into $200,000 in federal funds provided to Rialto that were directed to an organization led by Deborah Robertson’s daughter Milele Robertson, the Bethune Center-National Council of Negro Women, which operated rent free out of a city-owned building at 141 South Riverside Avenue in the city going back to 2011 was being conducted. At that point, Robertson faulted Foster for that exposé. Rather than hang onto his managerial post in an atmosphere in which the tension between the city’s top staff member and political leader was at a fever pitch, Foster in October 2020 resigned. He was temporarily replaced by Police Chief Kling, while the city council carried out a city manager recruitment that involved 85 applicants. In June 2021, Marcus Fuller, the assistant city manager of Palm Springs who had been Rialto’s public works director from 2012 to 2014, became city manager. Ultimately, however, that didn’t work out, and Fuller departed in January 2023. He was replaced by Arron Brown, the director of information technology in Palm Springs who had likewise acceded to deputy city manager in that city and then accompanied Fuller to Rialto as to serve as deputy city manager.
Despite the way in which he had left Rialto in the lurch more than a dozen years previously, Garcia was was brought back as an interim replacement in July 2023, supplanting Arron Brown as acting city manager. Because Garcia was at that point retired and participating in the California Public Employees Retirement System’s pension program, he was eligible to work only 960 hours per fiscal year. His time having now expired, the city council settled on Carmany, another journeyman city administrator.
After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in public affairs with a minor in public administration and a focus on urban and regional planning from USC, Carmany went to work as an assistant to City Manager Seth Armstead in Grand Terrace. In 1981 he went to work in Alhambra as the community development director, and then promoted to assistant city manager. In 1987 he was hired as city manager in Agoura Hills, a relatively small city north of Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains. He remained there six years, and in 1983, was hired by recently incorporated Malibu to serve as city manager there. In 1997, he left Malibu to become the city manager of Pacifica in San Mateo County. In 2003, he was terminated as city manager in Pacifica, and he left the public sector to become an employee with Public Agency Retirement Services, which offers administrative services to public agencies in managing their pension systems. In 2007, he reinitiated his public agency management career as city manager with the City of Seal Beach and in 2010 became the city manager of the substantially larger City of Manhattan Beach. In 2014 he became manager of La Puente and in 2019 was hired as the city manager of West Covina.
Carmany has, as is common among city managers, been terminated or been forced into resigning more than once.
In 2003, Carmany was terminated as city manager in Pacifica “for cause,” which obviated the provision of his contract requiring that he be given severance pay. Carmany sued, which resulted in a settlement in which he was provided with $175,000.
Manhattan Beach City Council members unanimously dismissed Carmany as that city’s top administrator in November 2013, citing the need to “move in a new direction.” In doing so, Carmany was terminated without cause. The firing came within the context of a contretemps with a former Manhattan Beach employee who was alleging Carmany forced her to alter figures in staff reports, shred documents and falsify financial disclosure forms. The suit also had a sexual harassment component, with the former employee alleging that Carmany would stand over her while she was at her desk and stare down her blouse. She filed a lawsuit against the city in 2014, one which was settled two years later, with the woman receiving $1.5 million to drop the matter, with both sides paying their attorney fees and the city making no admission of further liability or wrongdoing.
When Carmany was hired by West Covina in 2019, it was done on a bare miniimum 3-to-2 vote, with then Mayor Lloyd Johnson and Councilwoman Jessica Shewmaker opposed to his hiring. He did, though, at that time have the enthusiastic support of Councilman Tony Wu, who endorsed Carmany as the kind of “common sense” public official capable of methodically working through difficulties facing public agencies.
Carmany’s time in West Covina, which has had nearly as unstable of a relationship with city managers as Rialto has had with its top administrators, was star-crossed from the outset. When he came into the city manager position, West Covina was wrestling with an $8.7 million deficit, which had in turn created unrest within the professional ranks at City Hall over deferred raises and benefit increases. Over time, Carmany was able to balance, or come close to balancing, the city’s finances. Nevertheless, in the arena of personnel management and maintaining civil working relations with his political masters, Carmany was severely challenged.
By his second year in West Covina, Carmany’s relationship with Wu grew testy. This was despite Carmany’s efforts at supporting retrenchment with regard to some of the city’s long-term employees.
At the time Carmany became city manager, some members of the city council, including Wu, had designs on forcing West Covina Fire Chief Larry Whithorn, who had started as a firefighter/paramedic with the department in 1991 and was promoted to fire chief in 2014, into retirement. Indeed, before Carmany arrived, the city was moving in that direction. After Whithorn took an extended leave medical leave in 2017 and then took further leave in 2018 to look after his ailing father, an effort to force him to retire ensued. Whithorn resisted and in the midst of the fire chief controversy, with the West Covina Firefighters Association issuing a vote of no confidence against Whithorn and Whithorn seeking to demote union members or changing their schedules and duties in reaction to their picketing City Hall, the situation deteriorated. Some of the department’s firefighters, who stood a chance at promotion with Whithorn’s departure, became further embroiled in the bureaucratic fisticuffs. Then-City Manager Chris Freeland and Human Resources Director Edward Macias, at the bidding of Wu and Planning Commissioner Glenn Kennedy, were pressuring Whithorn to retire throughout 2018. In March 2019, Freeland, Macias and Finance Director Marcie Medina abruptly resigned. The city’s effort to depict Whithorn as distracted and an “absentee” fire chief was in full swing when Carmany arrived shortly thereafter. Carmany took up where Freeland and Macias had left off, carrying out what he recognized as the city council’s imperative to get rid of Whithorn. He proffered Whithorn a resignation letter, which the fire chief refused to sign. When Whithorn did not go quietly into the good night, Carmany terminated him.
Whithorn responded with a lawsuit in which he alleged a hostile work environment, age discrimination, harassment, defamation and both constructive and unlawful termination.
Wu, despite having been a prime mover in the effort to get rid of Whithorn, and at least one other member of the city council blamed Carmany for his hamfisted approach in firing Whithorn, believing he should have used greater skill and politesse in cashiering him and not giving the fire chief the basis upon which to file suit.
The deterioration of the relationship between Wu and Carmany gave rise to a deeply untoward circumstance, one that was not handled very gracefully.
In the Spring of 2022, Carmany went to the West Covina Police Department, alleging that during a meeting, Wu physically threatened him. The police department, declaring a conflict of interest, passed the complaint along to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. That matter was still being investigated when, on May 5, 2023, a Los Angeles County jury found in favor of Whithorn in his suit against the city.
If, up until that point, Carmany had majority support on the city council to remain as city manager, his credibility and ability to function as the city’s top administrator was irretrievably compromised. The council met in closed session on May 16, 2023, taking no action but making clear that Carmany had to go, or else. On May 18, he resigned as city manager. The city council unanimously accepted his resignation and conferred upon him an as yet undisclosed severance payment. Both he and Wu, biting their tongues, offered amicable statements regarding Carmany’s departure.
“I have been privileged to work with David Carmany,” Wu said, before praising him for having “turned our city from almost bankrupt in 2018 to today [being] financially healthy. No matter what happened, he is always my friend and I want to thank him for his service and wish him all the best.”
Carmany said, “I have decided to resign as City Manager effective immediately. It has been my honor to serve the community of West Covina.”
The Rialto City Council voted to hire Carmany at its Tuesday evening, January 23 meeting, effective the next day.
Rialto announced yesterday, Thursday January 25, that they are pleased to bring Carmany aboard.
Mayor Robertson referenced his “impressive track record, leadership skills, and commitment to community engagement,” which she said will “make him the perfect fit for our city. We are confident that under David’s leadership, Rialto will continue to thrive and prosper.”
In proof thereof, the city signed Carmany to a five-year contract, which is to provide him with a $354,994 annual salary, together with pay add-ons and perquisites of $43,936, benefits of $74,227 plus an $89,454.48 contribution toward his pension for a total annual compensation of $562,611.48. That is a substantial increase over what he was making in West Covina, where he was being paid 218,780.24 in salary, $30,283 in pay add-ons and perquisites, $24,685.15 in benefits and a $55,130.15 contribution toward his pension for a total annual compensation of $328,878.54.
“I want to thank the mayor and city council for their confidence in me and look forward to proactively engaging with the community, getting to know my team and collaborating with the council to develop progressive and innovative initiatives,” Carmany said.