A late report reaching the Sentinel today is that John Schubert, the chief financial officer with the Ontario International Airport Authority since 2019, has been relieved of his position.
Efforts to confirm Schubert’s termination and learn the reasons for his departure were unsuccessful at press time.
On April 1, 2019, Schubert, who had been the been senior director of finance for the Tucson Airport Authority since 2008, was installed as the overseer of the financial end of operations at Ontario International Airport
An Illinois native, Schubert holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of Arizona where he majored in accounting. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, American Association of Airport Executives and the Government Finance Officers Association. He was formerly licensed as a certified public accountant in Arizona.
Prior to relocating to California, Schubert’s career involved more than two decades within the fields of financial management, operations and technology. Prior to his employment with the Tucson Airport Authority, Schubert managed audit and consulting services for a variety of nonprofit clients in his work for a Tucson-based certified public accounting firm. Previously, he had been controller of a software development start-up and chief operating officer of two social service agencies with more than 1,000 employees and annual budgets totaling $35 million. Continue reading →

Chris Carrillo, who previously worked as James Ramos’s assistant chief of staff when he was Third District San Bernardino County Supervisor, has committed to running against the current Third District supervisor, Dawn Rowe, in 2024.
In 2018, after Ramos was elected to the California Assembly, he made a recommendation to his board colleagues just before he resigned to head off to Sacramento that they appoint Carrillo as his board replacement for the two years then remaining on his supervisorial term. Nevertheless, the remaining members of the board of supervisors – Curt Hagman, Robert Lovingood, Josie Gonzales and Janice Rutherford – elected to invite applications for the post, to which 48 Third District residents responded, including Carrillo.
Despite Ramos’s recommendation, the board skipped over Carrillo, winnowing the field of 48 to 13 semi-finalists, those being former Third District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, then-Barstow Mayor Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre, former Twentynine Palms Councilman James Bagsby, Loma Linda Councilman Ron Dailey and then-Loma Linda Mayor Rhodes Rigsby, former Chino Councilman/then-current Big Bear Councilman William Jahn, former Assemblyman/then-State Senator Bill Emmerson, Congressional Candidate Sean Flynn, then-Republican Central Committee Chairwoman Jan Leja, former San Bernardino Councilman Tobin Brinker, former Westlake Village Mayor Chris Mann, then-San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis and former Yucca Valley Councilwoman/Mayor Dawn Rowe.
Not surprisingly, because Hagman, Lovingood and Rutherford were Republicans, 12 of those 13, all except Dailey, were Republicans. While local elected offices under California law are officially nonpartisan, in San Bernardino County, party affiliation is a major factor in who holds political office. Ramos, a Democrat, was spurned in his recommendation of Carrillo, who is also a Democrat.
The 13 semifinalists were reduced to five finalists – Rowe, Jahn, Emmerson, Flynn and Rigsby, Republicans all. Gonzales, the only Democrat on the board, made an appeal to her colleagues that at the next public hearing where they were to interview those five that they make up for the previous sleight to Carrillo by making a special arrangement to interview him. Hagman, Lovingood and Rutherford agreed to do so, but the session with Carrillo had all the earmarks of an afterthought. The momentum was clearly moving in Rowe’s direction. Gonzales, the lone Democrat remaining on the board, consigned herself to the inevitable and voted with her colleagues to have Rowe replace Ramos for the two years remaining on his term.
Carrillo contemplated and even began to prepare to run against Rowe in the 2020 election. Nevertheless, he pulled out of that race after his mother suffered a serious health challenge in 2019.
Carrillo’s mother was an attorney, as is Carrillo. They were working on some of the same cases when she grew ill. In 2020, she passed away. That same year, Rowe was elected to continue to serve as Third District supervisor.
Next year, Carrillo vowed, Rowe will not have the political cakewalk she had in 2020.
In his quest to represent the Third District, Carrillo said, he will “Put people first, family first, community first and politics last.”
A member of the board of the East Valley Water District Board, Carrillo represents Highland and a portion of San Bernardino. He was appointed to the board in 2014, and elected to the board in his own right in 2015 and reelected in 2020. In his capacity as a water board member, he championed the construction of the Sterling Natural Resource Center, which was designed to treat up to 8 million gallons of wastewater daily, which is then used to recharge the local Bunker Hill Groundwater Basin.
“Throughout my career in public service, I’ve made it a commitment to deliver for people and improve lives,” Carillo said. “Too many families in San Bernardino County are being left behind by politicians who put themselves ahead of residents. From Redlands, Yucaipa, and Yucca Valley to Barstow, Crestline, and Big Bear Valley, our communities face unique challenges. I’m running for supervisor to put people first and stand up for common sense solutions.”
Carrillo was first appointed to the East Valley Water District Board of Directors in 2014. He ran for election in his own right in 2015. Carrillo gained reelection in 2020.
As an attorney, in 2016 Carrillo represented former San Bernardino County Deputy Fire Chief George Corley in an action against the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District in which it was alleged Corley was terminated because of age discrimination. After trial, the jury rendered a verdict in which it found that Corley’s age was a substantial motivating reason for the district’s termination of his employment and awarded damages for lost earnings. When the county appealed the case, Carrillo continued to represent Corley before the state appellate court, prevailing when that panel returned a published decision upholding the trial court in Corley v. San Bernardino County Fire Protection.
As a consequence, Carrillo is on excellent terms with the union representing the county’s firefighters.
The San Bernardino County Professional Firefighters, International Association of Firefighters 395, which represents over 600 firemen and firewomen with San Bernardino County, Big Bear City, Big Bear Lake, Colton, Loma Linda, and Montclair fire departments, has endorsed Carrillo in the 2024 election.
In announcing the endorsement, Jim Grigoli, president of IAFF Local 935, stated, “Chris’s knowledge of county government will provide the experience needed to end the disastrous financial mismanagement that has cost San Bernardino County taxpayers millions of dollars in lost federal funding. Chris understands the concerns of District 3 and will be ready on day one to deliver results for local communities. The residents of District 3 deserve a new representative who will restore competence and integrity to the county board of supervisors. That’s why Local 395 is proud to support Chris Carrillo for supervisor and we look forward to helping him win.”
A Georgetown University graduate with a Master of Applied Psychology degree from Claremont Graduate University and a juris doctorate from Loyola Law School, Carrillos primary focus as an attorney is on employment litigation. He has experience in real estate and public vs. private possessory and nonpossessory law.

By Mark Gutglueck
The office of San Bernardino County Counsel has found “significant exposure to actual risk,” along with “significant exposure to potential litigation” arising out of the action of both former County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez and the woman he appointed to serve as the county’s chief of administration, Pam Williams, in the weeks and months prior to Hernandez’s departure in August, well-placed county officials have told the Sentinel.
Those risks yet exist, the Sentinel was told, though county officials have been scrambling to redress the circumstance at their core for several weeks now. The board of supervisors will take on the issue during its closed executive session at its September 12 meeting, one of those county officials said, where it is expected several strides toward a solution will be effectuated.
The Sentinel was requested and agreed to refrain from providing explicit details with regard to the underlying and continuing situation to allow current acting County CEO Luther Snoke, who is being advised by county counsel, to formulate with key elements of county staff a solution that can be executed upon. The office of county counsel is the county’s stable of in-house lawyers led by County Counsel Tom Bunton. Continue reading →

San Bernardino will welcome Salinas City Manager Steven S. Carrigan, who is currently serving as Salinas’ top administrator, as its city manager on October 4.
Carrigan’s selection has taken place in a series of steps over the last month, the Sentinel has learned. He was among a select group of “about four” finalists among a bevy of applicants for the position who signaled their interest in the position.
Beginning in April and for the next four-and-a-half months, Berkeley-based Gallagher Benefit Services, which is also known as Koff & Associates, evaluated the applicants. The city’s acting city manager, Charles McNeely, who was San Bernardino’s city manager from 2009 until 2012 and was city manager in Reno prior to that, has been doing a parallel evaluation of those interested in taking on his role. Continue reading →

The recall effort launched earlier this year by a core group of Yucaipa residents that targeted the council majority that forced the resignation of longtime City Manager Ray Casey has wound down without success, having been short-circuited by a legal challenge ostensibly raised by the city clerk put into place by the same council majority that was responsible for Casey’s exit.
With that lawsuit having effectuated the purpose for which it was filed – stymieing the recall – its sponsors are looking now to decommission it.
Nevertheless, the impetus that inspired the recall remains, and the collective animus against what passes for the political establishment in the city of 55,547 remains alive.
Eleven months ago, as the 2022 election approached, the Yucaipa City Council consisted of Greg Bogh, who had been in office since 2010; Bobby Duncan, who had been on the city council since 2012; David Avila, who was first elected in 2014; and Jason Beaver and Jon Thorp, who had been on the council since 2020. Bogh and Avila had opted out of running for reelection and were not on the following month’s ballot. Bogh, Avila and Thorp were more than pleased with the performance of Ray Casey, who from 2003 until 2008 had been the city’s municipal engineer and public works director and since 2008 onward city manager. At the last city council meeting in October 2022, they had scheduled a vote on ensuring his retention as city manager, extending Casey’s contract at least until June 30, 2024 and providing him with a 3 percent salary increase that would jump his annual salary to $299,420, such that he would be making, when his benefits and perquisites were consider, $422,901.50 in total annual compensation, putting him among the 25 highest-paid city managers in California. When that item came up, Duncan and Beaver joined with Bogh, Avila and Thorp in unanimously passing it. Continue reading →

San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Thomas Garza on Wednesday, September 6 granted the State of California a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Chino Valley Unified School District from enforcing a policy approved in July requiring school faculty to notify the parents of students in the district’s schools if they reidentify their gender beyond that indicated for them on their birth certificates.
Judge Garza scheduled a hearing for October 13 relating to the underlying case filed August 28 by California Attorney General Rob Bonta in San Bernardino County Superior Court, calling for the Chino Valley Unified School District to be permanently enjoined from enforcing the policy which was passed by a 4-to-1 vote of the school board at a raucous meeting on July 20.
Bonta asserted that the need to prevent “mental harm, emotional harm and physical harm” to those students who are products of families who are not accepting of their choice to deviate from their birth or biological gender trumps the right of all parents to be informed of their children’s identity choice. “This policy is destructive,” he said. “It’s discriminatory and it’s downright dangerous. It has no place in California, which is why we have moved in court to strike it down.” Continue reading →

Arthur Thomas Davies, who has been in continuous custody since the February 2018 death of 17-month-old Parker Lee Schumacher, was acquitted of first-degree murder charges after a trial in which Deputy District Attorney Charles Tsuei consistently and repeatedly asserted Davies had deliberately killed the child.
The jury split on the alternate charges that were at play in the trial presided over by Judge Christopher Pallone, those being a 10-to-2 finding in favor of second-degree murder and an identical 10-to-2 vote determination of a fatal assault on a juvenile.
Judge Pallone declared the now-concluded proceedings to have been a mistrial and set a retrial for October 16.
Young Schumacher died in February 2018 after being severely injured inside a trailer in Yucca Valley, where he was living with his mother, Karissa Caccavari, and Davies.
In Tsuei’s narrative, Davies cruelly and deliberately slammed the back of the child’s head against a hard surface, most likely the top of a counter. The prosecutor presented testimony and contestable evidence to suggest that Davies resented the child because his presence, first in the home where Caccavari previously lived with Parker’s father, Eric Schumacher, and then later in a trailer in Yucca Valley, interfered and interrupted his relationship with Caccavari .
Davies met Caccavari in December 2017. After Caccavari and her child relocated from Joshua Tree to a trailer in Yucca Valley in January 2018, Davies moved in with them. Text messages presented during the course of the trial demonstrated that Davies was disapproving of Parker’s behavior and his mother’s indulgence of the child, who was not yet a year-and-a-half old. Disagreements between Davies and Caccavari, essentially over the child, including Davies’ contention that Parker was “manipulating” his mother, led to Caccavari and Davies parting as a couple, with Davies moving out of the trailer.
Davies, however, was involved in a singular vehicular mishap on the evening/early morning of February 7/February 8, 2018. Instead of Davies moving back to his parents house as he had been purposed to do, he resumed residing in the trailer, as Caccavari, seemingly concerned about Davies after the accident, fatefully consented to him returning.
While Caccavari was not at the trailer on February 10 and Davies was there alone with the child, Parker suffered severe head trauma. Davies contacted Caccavari to inform her of the child’s injury and after Caccavari returned, the child was taken by ambulance to the Hi-Desert Medical Center in Joshua Tree and then flown to Loma Linda University Medical Center. There, physicians determined that the child had multiple injuries, including compound fractures to the back of his skull, extensive bleeding in the brain, swelling on one side of the brain and hemorrhaging in both eyes.
The child, who was having difficulty breathing, was placed on a ventilator. He died on February 11, 2018.
The medical professionals at Loma Linda contacted authorities, believing that the child’s injuries were not from a simple fall.
An autopsy determined that Parker had a previous fracture to his skull. It is surmised that this occurred on January 21, when the child fell off a couch and was observed vomiting. Caccavari took him to the Hi-Desert Medical Center after that incident but medical staff there did not do a head or brain scan at that time because it was determined the child had the flu, which was treated.
There was conflicting expert testimony about the extent and nature of the child’s injuries at trial. The plausibility/implausibility of that testimony appears to have created a circumstance which resulted in lingering doubt that resulted in an acquittal on the first degree murder charge and made it impossible for the jury to reach a consensus on the remaining charges.
Tsuei in making his case relied heavily upon the testimony of Dr. Melissa Egge, a forensic pediatrician. Egge contradicted and sought to dismiss the accuracy of Davies’ account that Schumacher was injured when he launched himself from Davies’ arms while the adult was holding him, hitting his head on the trailer’s linoleum floor.
Defense attorney Zulu Ali ridiculed Egge’s contention that a baby or toddler could fall from the height of a two-story window on its head and not be injured as Parker was injured.
Ali seriously wounded Egge’s credibility as well by attempting to lead the jury to the conclusion that she had committed perjury when she claimed to have done extensive examination of child injuries relating to a child falling out of an adult’s grasp.
For his part, Tsuei sought to impeach Ali’s expert witness, Dr. Marvin Petruszka. The prosecutor first implied and then outright stated that Petruszka’s testimony was purchased for the price of $7,500. Petruszka was incompetent, Tsuei said, being unable to distinguish between the front and back of the child’s skull in photos and x-ray depictions of the injuries. Petruszka was so intellectually dishonest, Tsuei asserted, that he avoided entirely moving to the most logical scientific conclusions about what had caused Schumacher’s death.
The case against Davies was reminiscent of a now-four-decade old case, perhaps the most infamous of child abuse death cases out of San Bernardino County, that one brought against Bryan Mincey, who was accused and convicted of the beating death of five-year-old James Brown Jr in the unincorporated county area of Fontana in December 1983. James Brown Jr was the son of Mincey’s live-in girlfriend, Sandra Brown. Then-Prosecutor Raymond W. Haight III convinced a San Bernardino jury in 1985 that Mincey killed the child because he resented the child’s interference with his relationship with Sandra Brown. Another child who was the product of the relationship between James Brown Sr and Sandra Brown, Wendy, survived the ordeal with Mincey.
Ali argued that there was no testimony or evidence to indicate Davies was abusive and that, indeed, the opposite was the case, in that Davies, who was 34 at the time of Schumacher’s death, had a previous relationship with a woman with children from a previous relationship and that Davies had not been abusive toward those children.
Ali successfully convinced all members of the jury that Davies had not premeditated the killing of young Schumacher. He also convinced two of the members of the jury that Davies had neither willfully nor negligently injured Parker.
Tsuei at one point engaged in a round of hyperbole he might have later regretted when he told the jury that Ali was arguing that Parker Schumacher had killed himself. Ali pointedly contested that when Judge Pallone acceded to a request by the still-deliberating jury to allow the prosecutor and defense attorney to restate and embellish on their closing arguments.
Davies, who has been in custody for more than six-and-a-half years, remains incarcerated.
Tsuei, who has continuously committed to the scenario of deliberate murder of the child by Davies, gave indication he will seek second-degree murder and assault of a minor convictions against the defendant, arguing, essentially, that there was no premeditation on Davies’ part but that he killed Parker in a momentary fit of anger, resentment and desperation.
-Mark Gutglueck

Legal action brought by four environmental groups has interrupted plans by the United States Forest Service to do controlled burns in sections of the San Bernardino Mountains rangers consider to be overgrown with vegetation that could serve as the kindling to trigger a catastrophic wildfire.
The use of fire to fight fire has been put on hold by a ruling from a federal district court judge handed down on August 11. The plaintiffs in the case, The Friends of Big Bear Valley, the John Muir Project, Earth Island Institute and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, brought suit to prevent the U.S. Forest Service from proceeding with the North Fuels Project.
According to that suit, the U.S. Forest Service has not exhausted all of its options short of engaging in the clearing of areas in the forest that serve as protective habitat for a number of species. Moreover, the Forest Service’s controlled burn plans are not exactly safe and represent a risk that what is intended as a narrowly focused burn of brush could grow into a major conflagration. Continue reading →

After a Chino police motorcycle officer encountered a Rialto resident recklessly operating a vehicle in the extreme southern end of Chino on Wednesday and was knocked from his bike, the officer’s department colleagues obtained a warrant from a judge to confront the motorist at a residence he had retreated to some 29 miles away from the incident. Upon serving that warrant, the officers gunned the man down when, according to the Chino Police Department, he used a gun in his possession to fire upon them.
“On September 6, 2023, at approximately 9:55 a.m., a Chino police motor officer attempted to stop a vehicle for a traffic violation in the 15800 block of El Prado Road,” according to Chino Police Department Spokeswoman Vivian Castro. “The offender failed to yield, and then deliberately caused a collision with the motor officer. The offender then sped away on El Prado Road. The officer was transported via ambulance to a regional hospital, where he was treated for moderate injuries and then released.”
According to Castro, “Chino detectives followed numerous leads and, with the assistance of the Fontana Police Department, were able to track the suspect to a residence in Rialto. At approximately 5:30 p.m., the Chino Police Department SWAT team served a search warrant. During the service of the search warrant, the suspect attempted to flee the location and was confronted by officers. The suspect shot at officers, and two officers returned fire. The suspect was shot and succumbed to his injuries at the scene. No officers were injured during the confrontation.”
According to information assembled by the Sentinel, the now-deceased man was driving in front of the motorcycle officer, whose effort to effectuate the stop commenced at 9:56 p.m. The motorist stopped abruptly by braking hard, and the motorcycle rear-ended the car.
Though the motorist drove off, the officer’s body camera captured the license plate number of the car, which allowed the department to determine the likely identity of the motorist, tentatively identified as John Angel of Alta Loma. Further investigation involved coordinating with other agencies to trace the vehicle’s progression using license plate readers and coordinating the retrieval of information of geo-positioning data from Angel’s cell phone provider.
Members of the SWAT team, clad in protective gear including bulletproof vests and helmets, entered the a residence in the 3200 block of Amberwood in Rialto, where Angel was surmised to be holed up. When the officers came into the home, Angel fled into the backyard, and had made it to the rear fence. It was then, according to the Chino Police Department, that the man opened fire with a handgun.
Just in advance of the shooting, the Amberwood neighborhood was “locked down” and an effort to evacuate residents from houses proximate to the suspect’s home were made.
A resident of Amberwood, Michael Gonzales, said that “About 20 armed officers with assault rifles in full riot gear” descended upon the home in question around 5:30 p.m.
Another nearby resident, Eric Strausborger, said SWAT team members could be heard ordering the suspect to get down. This was followed, Strausborger said, by at least five audible shots. Members of the household could also be heard telling the officers that they were not who the police were seeking. Residents of the home crawled from the home out the front door after the shooting, according to Strausborger.
Nearby residents said they did not believe Angel was a resident of the home where the shooting took place.