The trial of Jason Halstenberg began in earnest this week, with the prosecution wasting no time in laying the foundation for and then constructing the first stories in a high rise of circumstantial evidence to prove that he was the instigator of the Line Fire, the fourth most destructive wildland conflagration in San Bernardino County history.
As boldly, Halstenberg’s two defense lawyers at the earliest opportunity undertook to eat away at the edifice of evidence being erected against their client, moving rapidly to deconstruct the assumptions upon which the theory of Halstenberg’s guilt is based and to deride the flimsiness of certain items of evidence gathered by the investigators, who were looking into suspicions of arson-associated activity in the area around the area of the Line Fire’s origin even before that fire was set and within the first hour of the blaze, just as it was growing beyond the possibility of early containment.
Established during the first three days of testimony, eight witnesses were called, including two arson investigators employed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Those investigators indicated they are absolutely convinced the Line Fire was the product of an arsonist who at least twice previously on September 5, the day the inferno began, used a distinctive ignition device to set the fires, one so rare that the lead arson investigator on the case testified he had not encountered such an implement in more than 500 fires he had previously worked on. The individual responsible had thus left what was tantamount to his calling card at the scene of Line fire’s origin, prosecutors through those investigators and one of the witnesses suggested.
Using the testimony of others who took the stand this week and submitted to questions regarding their own observations and/or footage caught on security videos installed at their homes or on their vehicles, the prosecution as testimony wrapped up this week had begun to lay out but had not quite cinched up its argument that Heustenberg and his equally distinctive dual cab, white short bed Chevrolet pickup truck was present in Highland, in close proximity to all three of the fires that had been set in the crucial time frame prior to and during the fires being lit, and that he is thus unmistakably identifiable as the firebug.
The defense team fought to keep pace, suggesting that the evidence being presented by the prosecution as damning of Halstenberg, while no doubt consisting of artifacts found at the scene of the three lit fires, was in multiple respects too fragmentary to paint a reliable snapshot of actual events. Furthermore, the defense contended, the state’s expert witness consisting of the arson investigators had not gathered evidence and then evaluated and analyzed it non-prejudiciously in accordance with scientific method to reach a determination a posteriori but had formed a conclusion a priori and then selectively focused on certain artifacts remaining in the wake of the fire to support a finding of Halstenberg’s guilt while discounting or ignoring evidence that pointed to some other factors unrelated to the defendant having sparked the blaze. The investigators, the defense sought to suggest to the jury, had postulated the existence of an ignition device they had never seen, of which no intact example exists and which they had not bothered to recreate, to offer up speculation that Halstenberg had used it to touch off the fire.
Read the full article in this week’s edition of the Sentinel, available at newsstands throughout San Bernardino County.

The trial of Jason Halstenberg began in earnest this week, with the prosecution wasting no time in laying the foundation for and then constructing the first stories in a high rise of circumstantial evidence to prove that he was the instigator of the Line Fire, the fourth most destructive wildland conflagration in San Bernardino County history.
As boldly, Halstenberg’s two defense lawyers at the earliest opportunity undertook to eat away at the edifice of evidence being erected against their client, moving rapidly to deconstruct the assumptions upon which the theory of Halstenberg’s guilt is based and to deride the flimsiness of certain items of evidence gathered by the investigators, who were looking into suspicions of arson-associated activity in the area around the area of the Line Fire’s origin even before that fire was set and within the first hour of the blaze, just as it was growing beyond the possibility of early containment.
Established during the first three days of testimony, eight witnesses were called, including two arson investigators employed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Those investigators indicated they are absolutely convinced the Line Fire was the product of an arsonist who at least twice previously on September 5, the day the inferno began, used a distinctive ignition device to set the fires, one so rare that the lead arson investigator on the case testified he had not encountered such an implement in more than 500 fires he had previously worked on. The individual responsible had thus left what was tantamount to his calling card at the scene of Line fire’s origin, prosecutors through those investigators and one of the witnesses suggested.
Using the testimony of others who took the stand this week and submitted to questions regarding their own observations and/or footage caught on security videos installed at their homes or on their vehicles, the prosecution as testimony wrapped up this week had begun to lay out but had not quite cinched up its argument that Heustenberg and his equally distinctive dual cab, white short bed Chevrolet pickup truck was present in Highland, in close proximity to all three of the fires that had been set in the crucial time frame prior to and during the fires being lit, and that he is thus unmistakably identifiable as the firebug.
The defense team fought to keep pace, suggesting that the evidence being presented by the prosecution as damning of Halstenberg, while no doubt consisting of artifacts found at the scene of the three lit fires, was in multiple respects too fragmentary to paint a reliable snapshot of actual events. Furthermore, the defense contended, the state’s expert witness consisting of the arson investigators had not gathered evidence and then evaluated and analyzed it non-prejudiciously in accordance with scientific method to reach a determination a posteriori but had formed a conclusion a priori and then selectively focused on certain artifacts remaining in the wake of the fire to support a finding of Halstenberg’s guilt while discounting or ignoring evidence that pointed to some other factors unrelated to the defendant having sparked the blaze. The investigators, the defense sought to suggest to the jury, had postulated the existence of an ignition device they had never seen, of which no intact example exists and which they had not bothered to recreate, to offer up speculation that Halstenberg had used it to touch off the fire.
What became known as the Line Fire began in a field of dry vegetation north of Baseline Road in east Highland on September 5, 2024,  a sweltering day near the end of the hottest summer in Southern California in the last 130 years. Continue reading →

A split Redlands City Council this week moved to, in the words of one City Hall insider, “permanently shut up” Deputy Police Chief Travis Martinez by paying him $871,956 plus a buyout of his accrued sick, vacation and staff privilege leave to discontinue his statements critical of his political masters and administrative overlords and retire before the end of the month.
Martinez, the second-highest ranking member of the Redlands Police Department, has claimed that decisions made by council members, the current and immediate past city manager and other senior department heads at Redlands City Hall has saddled the police with an inferior police chief and inadequate leadership of the police department and created physical and procedural circumstances within the city that have been and remain a continuing hazard to the public.
Martinez was highly thought of for the quality of his police and investigative work and his ambition and industriousness on the job. Those qualities, combined with the Redlands’ community’s desire as it advanced into the Third Millennium to promote Hispanics into high profile positions of authority, resulted in Martinez achieving the second highest ranking position in the Redlands Police Department.
Nevertheless, what was either his insensitivity to or disregard for political implications, a personality trait uncommon in most individuals who make it to management positions in the law enforcement profession, resulted in complications for the city, its political and administrative leadership and ultimately Martinez himself.
Martinez, grew up in Redlands as the grandson and grandnephew of the first two Latino members of the Redlands City Council, Norman and Odie Martinez. At the age of 22 in 1995, after graduating from the University of Redlands the previous year with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management and then attending the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Academy, he was hired by the Redlands Police Department. Continue reading →

A good cross section of Chino residents have expressed discomfiture with the city council’s indulgence of the Newport Beach-based Orbis Development Company in what they anticipate will be redound to the disadvantage of existing residents in the Euclid Schaefer District.
Utilizing a limited liability offshoot, Orbis and its principals, Grant Ross and Tom Money, were able to successfully obtain the cooperation of the city’s planning division to get its acquiescence in conceptually accepting the subdivision of 10.3 acres at the northwest corner of Euclid and Schaefer avenues into a 267-apartments on 5.1 acres, a 1.4-acre fast food restaurant site, a 1.5-acre fast food restaurant site, a 1.5-acre storage facility and a 0.7-acre 18,600-square foot retail complex with an accompanying parking lot.
Orbis’s intended use of the property is of far greater intensity than that on the surrounding properties. The projects have been presented to the city as a package deal under the guise of a single project. Dubbed Eden by Orbis, the project signals a wave of development proposals by investors and development companies now on the drawing boards which will seek to use the leverage of state efforts to facilitate the construction of affordable housing, which is to ultimately manifest as densely packed multi-story structures. This has run head on into the expectations of those who in recent years and decades have located in Chino and are now residing in neighborhoods built upon wide swaths of land previously utilized for agricultural purposes and which currently feature suburban bungalows and two-story single-family residences.
On September 19, 2022, Orbis Real Estate Partners of Newport Beach acquired the 451,281.6-square foot – 10.36 acre – Zivelonghi property at the northwest corner of South Euclid Avenue and Schaefer Avenue within the confines of the now-defunct Chino Agricultural Preserve. Orbis paid Margaret Zivelonghi $12,100,000 for the acreage, translating to a cost of $26.59 per square foot or $1,158,301.16 per acre for the property. The sale did not invite the scrutiny of, nor alarm, the vast majority of those living in the area. A handful of residents, however, were aware of the transaction, and several of those understood the sale’s implication. Those more informed and sophisticated with regard to real estate and land development issues recognized that the price paid and other considerations such as zoning and pressure the State of California through its Department of Housing and Community Development is putting on cities throughout California to facilitate the creation of low income housing to ease the perceived housing crisis in the Golden State meant that the property was destined to be developed to a greater density than other property in the general vicinity and the property within the former Chino Valley Agricultural Preserve that had already been built upon in general. Continue reading →

Emboldened by a few recent victories it has experienced with regard to related issues and a political shift in Washington, D.C. away from the so-called wokeism that predominated during the immediate past presidential administration, the Chino Valley Unified School District on April 17 directed the district’s lawyers to prepare lawsuits challenging the State of California’s imposition of policies relating to transgender students.
One of the suits, which had already been tentatively drafted, allege the State of California through policies put in place and advocated by California Superintendent of Schools Tony Thurmond, ones advocated by Governor Gavin Newsom, a lawsuit filed against the district by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and legislation passed by the California legislature violated a federal act protecting families. The other propounds that the California Interscholastic Federation violated Title IX by allowing transgender athletes in female sports.
The Chino Valley Unified School District over the past decade-and-a-half has demonstrated itself to be on the cutting edge of challenges to the predominant philosophical orientation in California, where the Democrats and in particular the liberal wing of the Democratic Party hold the upper hand in the state capital, as the Democrats hold supermajorities in the California Assembly and State Senate and occupy the governor’s mansion and hold the lieutenant governorship, and the offices of California attorney general, superintendent of public education, California Secretary of State, Insurance Commissioner, State Treasurer, State Controller.
Early in the second decade of the Third Millennium, a three-member majority on the Chino valley Unified School District Board of Trustees, consisting of Sylvia Orozco, James Na and Andrew Cruz, Republicans all, sought and for a short time succeeded in permitting prayer in an academic and district board meeting setting. That policy was undone, when the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation challenged the prayer policy in court. For a short time thereafter, with Sylvia Orozco’s departure from the board following her unsuccessful electoral bid for the Chino City Council, a secular controlling majority on the council centered around Democratic lawyer Christine Gagnier, asserted itself. Gagnier was being groomed by forces within the Democratic Party as a future legislator at either the state or federal level or both. In 2022, despite intensive Democratic support, Gagnier was voted out of office and Sonja Shaw, a standard bearer of both the religious right and the Republican Party in the Chino Valley community, was voted into office, taking Gagnier’s place. Continue reading →

On Monday, April 14, the Yucaipa City Council unanimously voted in a closed session to appoint Jennifer Crawford as Interim City Manager. Crawford is the Assistant City Manager. She has been Acting City Manager since Chris Mann was placed on administrative leave on March 3. Mann and the Council agreed to a mutual separation on March 11, effective March 31.
Crawford will serve as Interim City Manager while the Council searches for a permanent city manager. Her contract will be presented for approval at the next City Council meeting on April 28.
“I’m honored to serve as Interim City Manager and to continue working with our dedicated City staff, City Council and community,” said Crawford. “I look forward to working with the Council to ensure our city remains strong and well-run. Together, we’ll focus on moving Yucaipa forward.”
Crawford brings 26 years of experience with the city. She began her career in 1999 as a management analyst and was promoted to director of general services/city clerk/mobilehome rent administrator in 2004. In 2015, she advanced to deputy city manager/city clerk/mobilehome rent administrator, and in 2020, she was promoted to assistant city manager.
Throughout her tenure, Crawford has managed the design and construction of five city facilities, oversaw software implementation, and handled contract management for public safety, solid waste, and animal control services. She has also led emergency operations, implemented Community Emergency Response Team and affiliated programs, managed grants risk management, and coordinated community projects, among many other responsibilities. Her new role ensures that Yucaipa remains in capable hands during this transition. Continue reading →

The two Mongols Motorcycle Club members who confronted a member of the Vagos, a rival motorcycle gang, at an Ontario bar on March 4 and then killed him when that encounter escalated into personal insults and violence, have both been arrested, one charged with assault and gang activity and the other with murder.
Julian Pulido, 35, of Upland, was taken into custody some eight to nine hours after the death of a member of the Vagos, whom federal law enforcement officers identified by the initials V.S. Pulido was charged by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office in San Bernardino County Superior Court on March 6 with murder, felony discharging a firearm and causing great bodily injury, possessing a gun while being a felon and engaging in a serious felony while on parole in connection with V.S.’s death.
Clifford Michael Lavoy, 51, of Montclair, who authorities say was involved in the incident that led to the death of V.S. but did not participate in his shooting, was arrested shortly after the killing, but subsequently released. On Tuesday, federal law enforcement officers once again took him into custody. He is charged with the assault on V.S. that preceded his death, as well as gang-related activity.
At approximately 12:30 a.m. on March 4, V.S., wearing a black sweatshirt and gold chain that identified him as a member of the Vagos, came into the Firewater Bar & Grill at 1528 West Holt Avenue in Ontario.
Lavoy, who is also known among Mongols as “Buckshot,” and Pulido, whose Mongols monicker is “Juls,” had been inside the Firewater Bar & Grill for roughly two-and-a-half hours prior to V.S.’s arrival, having been there with Lavoy’s accompanying female since 10 p.m. or earlier on the evening of March 3. Continue reading →

In a surprise move, the Yucaipa City Council has apparently signaled that it now prepared to extend City Attorney Steven Graham’s tenure as the city’s legal advisor.
For months, a sizable segment of the Yucaipa community has been saying that Graham, who now uses the last name of Pacifico, is to be a logical casualty in the purge of Yucaipa city employees who either arrived during or prospered under the Chris Mann administration in the city.
In Graham’s/Pacifico’s case, he is the city official most visibly connected and closely associated with Mann.
Graham/Pacifico worked with Mann at Canyon Lake, where Mann was the city manager prior to his hiring by Yucaipa in January 2023. It has been widely assumed and stated publicly that Graham/Pacifico was hired in Yucaipa upon Mann’s advent and that Mann made his acceptance of the Yucaipa city manager’s position conditional upon the city council agreeing to accept the hiring of multiple personnel he was handpicking to serve with him. The same night – January 9, 2023 – that the three-member council majority of Justin Beaver, Bobby Duncan and Matt Garner forcibly persuaded former City Manager Ray Casey to resign and then moved to approve the hiring of Mann, it also voted to fire then-City Attorney David Snow, who had served as city attorney with Casey since 2012.
Others hired into key city posts by Mann’s edict Ana Sauseda, who had been city clerk in Canyon Lake and then came to Yucaipa to serve in that role, and Joe Pradetto, one of Mann’s associates who was given the position of director of governmental affairs and public information officer after he came to Yucaipa.
One difficulty it did not previously seem that Graham/Pacifico would be able to over come was the role he played in Mann’s formulation of a strategy to stymie a grass roots effort in Yucaipa to question, protest and perhaps even countermand the city council decision to get rid of Casey and replace him with Mann. In reaction to the abrupt forced exit of Casey, 194 Yucaipa residents in the districts represented by Beaver, Duncan and Garner filed paperwork with Sauseda’s office declaring their intent to circulate petitions to qualify ballot initiatives asking whether each of those three should be removed from office. Mann then quarterbacked a set of plays that included hiring, at taxpayer expense the attorneys Bradley W. Hertz and Eli B. Love of the Los Angeles based Sutton Law Firm’ to represent Sauseda in making a legal challenge of the recall effort by asserting that one of the grounds cited for seeking to removed Beaver, Duncan and Garner – violations of the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law – was untrue. In responding to Sauseda’s suit, some of the recall proponents were able to establish the accuracy of the Brown Act violation claim and that they had a constitutional right to proceed with the recall. Nevertheless, the legal challenge threw the recall effort into disarray, and the original attempts to recall Beaver, Duncan and Garner failed.
Virtually all 194 recall proponents came to bitterly resent the tactic of having the city clerk file a lawsuit against them to desist in their effort to redress what they felt was a miscarriage of governance in their city. There is an even larger contingent of those recall proponents’ supporters who feel the same way. Many feel that Graham/Pacifico failed them when, as city attorney, he stood by while Beaver, Duncan, Garner, Mann. Sauseda, Hertz and Love trod on their rights.
Ultimately a recall vote against Garner was put on the ballot, and the voters in his district overwhelmingly voted to remove him from office in the November 1994 election. Duncan, sensing the ire of voters in his district over the Casey sacking and Mann hiring, decided against running for reelection in the same contest. Of the members on the council that was in place following the 2024 election, Beaver was the only member of the ruling majority that had cashiered Casey in January 2023. Remaining on the council were Jon Thorp and Chris Venable, who had been opposed to getting rid of Casey. In December 2024, Bob Miller was appointed by the four members of the council to replace Garner.
Thorp, Venable and Miller by January were moving full speed ahead toward relieving Mann as city manager. They sought to do this by holding performance reviews of the city manager in closed sessions, which enabled them to openly discuss with Beaver and Judith Woolsey, who had been elected to replace Duncan, the advisability of having the city part with Mann and who might replace him. At its February 24 meeting, the council during one such closed session performance evaluation, debated whether it should fire Mann, citing cause for doings so, and therefore avoiding the contractual obligation it had with him to confer on him a severance payment equal to his annual salary – $233,535.92 – if it did not give a reason for simply firing him without an explanation. Ultimately, roughly a week later, it was announced that the troika of Thorp, Venable and Miller had decided to provide Mann with a payout of $279,045 and provide him and his family with one year of health benefits in exchange for his making a clean departure from the city.
Two weeks prior to the February 24 meeting, on February 10, the city council had met in closed session to evaluate the performance of both Mann and Graham/Pacifico. After adjourning out of that closed-door executive session and into its public meeting that evening, Thorp, as the mayor, stated that the council was directing staff to put out a request for proposals with a 30-day timeframe for city council attorney candidates. Graham had not termination clause in his contract that would require the city to provide him with a severance.
Thorp’s announcement on February 10 was taken as an indication that Graham was on his way out of Yucaipa.
On Monday night, April 14, however, the city council in closed session voted to extend the city’s contract with Graham Pacifico to provide attorney services for at least another year. That vote was unanimous. The council will take up at its April 28 meeting the financial terms in that 12-month arrangement, meaning whether he is to be provided with a strict hourly rate for billable hours or is to be paid a capped yearly salary for his work on behalf of the city.

Today marks the 83rd Anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, April 18, 1943.
As planned, the sixteen Army Air Corps B-25 medium range bombers, led by then-Major James Doolittle, were to take off from the deck of the U.S.S. Hornet at around 5 p.m. while the naval task force that brought them across the ocean from San Francisco was some 500 miles distant from Tokyo and other areas on Honshu, putting the planes over their targets for a night raid before they would continue west to China, where they were to be guided to an airfield in Chuchow by a radio signal, where they would land just as the sun was rising on the morning of April 19.
It turned out, however, that storms over the Himalayas prevented the radio signal equipment the pilots were to rely on for direction finding from being delivered to Chuchow. Worse, at 7:38 a.m. on April 18, the task force encountered a Japanese picket boat some 730 miles from Japan. The picket boat was sunk, but not before it radioed an attack warning to Japan.
At that point, a decision was made to launch the five-man crew planes at once, between nine and ten hours earlier and more than 200 miles further from their target than was originally planned. As the planes reached a point roughly 300 miles from Japan, they flew in a single file at wave-top level to avoid detection. Upon reaching Honshu, the planes peeled off to their several various targets, including ten military and industrial targets in Tokyo, two in Yokohama and one each in Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka.
After climbing to 1,500 feet, fifteen of the planes, which encountered for the most part light anti-aircraft fire and only sporadic interference by enemy fighter or pursuit aircraft, were able to open their bomb bays and drop their payloads over or close to their planned targets. One B-25 did come under heavy attack by fighters and, with its gun turret malfunctioning because of mechanical or electrical failure, dropped its bombs before reaching its target.
Fifteen of the planes gamely headed toward China after completing the raid. The pilot of one, which was severely low on fuel, elected to head toward Russia, which at that point was not involved in hostilities with Japan. That plane alone was able to land intact, at Vozdvizhenka. That crew was interned by the Soviets, who transported them across the country before releasing them in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkmen, some 20 miles from the Iranian border, where they were able to walk to Iran, then allied with the United States and Britain.
The remaining fifteen planes continued westward across Japan, turning southwest upon passing over the Japan’s southeastern coast, making a determined effort to cross the East China Sea to eastern China. As the planes neared 13 hours in the air, they were extremely low on fuel. Twelve of the fifteen were aided by a tailwind, which put them over China. Three were forced to ditch at sea, two off the coast near Changshu, China and one near Wenzhou, China. The twelve that made it over Chinese air space all crashed in the dark of night, six at various points north, northeast, southeast and southwest of Quzhou, China; two in or near Ningbo, China; two near Nanchang, China; and two southeast of Shangrao, China.
Two of the raiders were drowned when their plane ditched in the sea. Another was killed during his bailout attempt over China. Eight of the raiders, including the entirety of one of the crews that crashed south of Ningbo and the three survivors of one of the crew that ditched in the ocean near Wenzhou, were captured by the Japanese. Those eight were sentenced to death by a Japanese war crimes tribunal. Five of those sentences were commuted, but the pilots in those crews, 1st Lt. Dean E. Hallmark and 1st Lt. William G. Farrow, along with Cpl. Harold A. Spatz, who was an engineer and gunner on the B-25 piloted by Farrow which ditched near Wenzhou, were executed. Another captured flyer, Lt. Robert Meder, the navigator on the plane flown by Hallmark which crashed near Ningbo, died of starvation in captivity.
Doolittle and the remainder of his men were able, with the assistance of Chinese soldiers and civilian, to avoid capture by the Japanese and return to the United States by June 1942.
While the raid was not a spectacular success in tactical or operational terms and Doolittle was concerned after the landing in China that he was going to be court martialed for having inflicted so little damage on the enemy while losing all 16 aircraft, as the first attack on the Japanese home islands it registered as a huge strategic gain for the United States, as the Japanese abandoned some of its more aggressive elements of its strategy and instead devoted resources to protecting the country itself. President promoted Doolittle two ranks to brigadier general, skipping over those of lieutenant colonel and colonel, while he was yet in China. Roosevelt thereafter awarded him the Medal of Honor.
-Mark Gutglueck