The San Bernardino City Council this week kicked the can down the road for two more weeks, discussing but taking no action with regard to firing now-suspended City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller or, alternatively,  reinstating her to her active role  as the county seat’s top municipal administrator.
Since December 19, Travis-Miller’s continuing tenure with the city has been in jeopardy. That day former Third Ward Councilman John Valdivia was elevated to mayor following his November electoral victory in which he turned out the city’s immediate past mayor, Carey Davis. Valdivia was joined on the dais by newly elected First and Second Ward council members Theodore Sanchez and Sandra Ibarra. At Ibarra’s urging, the council that day took up an evaluation of Travis-Miller’s continuing performance in her role as the city’s top staff member. That evaluation took place behind closed doors after a public session during which a cross section of the community, including Davis, voiced confidence in Travis-Miller.
That day in December, as again in January and again in February and then once more in March during similar closed door meetings, the council considered the wisdom and efficacy of leaving Travis-Miller in place as the city’s top administrator. Reliable sources inform the Sentinel that the most pointed criticism of Travis-Miller emanated from the mayor, who is not empowered under the city’s current charter to vote on issues that come before the council under normal circumstances. At that point, there was not sufficient support for cashiering Travis-Miller, as she enjoyed the solid backing of councilmen Fred Shorett and Jim Mulvihill as well as the confidence, if less than fully enthusiastic endorsement, of Councilwoman Bessine Richard and Councilman Henry Nickel.
Playing out at that time was a power struggle in which Valdivia, Mulvihill, Shorett and Travis-Miller were principals. Valdivia’s ascension to the mayoralty was spoiled in no small measure by the charter reform that had taken place with a citywide vote in 2016 that scrapped the municipal charter that had been in place since 1905. The revamped charter had significantly attenuated the mayoral power that had existed under the 1905 charter. For more than 110 years, the mayor had significant political power and administrative reach to match it. While the 1905 charter did not give the mayor a vote on the council, it did provide him with the power to veto any vote that passed by a 4-to-3 or 3-to-2 margin, translating in actuality to the mayor possessing two votes. The mayor wielded the gavel at council meetings, conferring upon him the power to control the ebb and flow of debate, and the power to recognize both members of the council and of the public during public discussions leading up to council action. As significantly, the mayor under the previous charter had the power to hire and fire city personnel, which put him on a par with the city manager in terms of administrative reach.
The 2016 charter reform, in addition to transforming the positions of city attorney and city clerk from elected ones to appointed positions, dispensed with the mayor’s administrative role, such that he was no longer empowered to hire or fire city personnel and no longer had the status of being with the city manager the co-regent of the city.
Upon coming into office, Valdivia was casting about for a way to infuse the mayoralty with some or all of the power that had been taken away. This included beefing up the support staff the council then had – consisting of four city employees who were as answerable to the city manager as they were to the elected leadership – into 13 positions, including the mayor’s chief of staff who would oversee eight staffers serving at the mayor’s pleasure.
When he assumed office, Valdivia had the backing of what appeared to be a sure majority of the council – consisting of Nickel, Richard, Ibarra and Sanchez. But by looking to consolidate power too soon and more than triple the depth of the mayoral/council staff in a way that appeared to empower himself further, Valdivia generated resistance that has complicated his tenure. That included a measure of pushback from Councilman Nickel, who over the previous four years had evolved to become Valdivia’s strongest and most reliable ally on the council. Nickel balked at going along with the mayoral staff increases. Valdivia’s maneuverings to overcome Nickel’s defection from the Valdivia reservation created more tension still. This included an episode in which Nickel, Shorett and Mulvihill simply walked off the dais in the middle of a meeting to prevent the council, which is already functioning at six-sevenths strength because of the vacancy in the Third District as a result of Valdivia’s resignation from that post to assume the mayoralty, from maintaining the requisite quorum to be able to vote. That matter, relating to hiring the staff Valdivia wanted, appeared to be headed toward a 3-to-3 deadlock with Nickel, Shorett and Mulvihill opposed and Richard, Sanchez and Ibarra in favor. Valdivia would then have been eligible to vote, as in addition to veto power the mayor also carries tie-breaking authority.
Early last month, five months after the November election and a decent interim for the city to acclimate to its new political reality, Richard evolved to a willingness to support Valdivia in forcing Travis-Miller’s exit. During a closed session on April 3, she joined with Ibarra and Sanchez in voting to place the city manager on paid administrative leave, resulting in a 3-to-3 deadlock, with Shorett, Mulvihill and Nickel on the other side of the question. Valdivia, using his tie-breaking authority, tipped the scales to suspend Travis-Miller.
An issue facing Valdivia in orchestrating Travis-Miller’s sacking is that when she was hired in August 2017 as a replacement for the previous city manager, Mark Scott, the council unanimously voted to confer upon her a $253,080 annual salary and $93,000 in yearly benefits and a three-year contract. Those terms require that unless a city council majority can cite cause for terminating her at any point before the three years elapse, she must be paid the balance remaining on her contract. Only by firing Travis-Miller for cause can the city avoid having to pay her the $425,000 she would now otherwise have to be paid as a severance.
The Sentinel has learned that those advising Valdivia believe there are bulletproof grounds for cashiering her that could be publicly cited. Whether or not public disclosure of that rationale might carry with it certain complications, procedural and political, is another matter. In addition, the city would want to make a clean break of the relationship with Travis-Miller, meaning that doing so on a 3-to-3 deadlock decided by the mayor’s action could cloud the circumstance, subjecting Ibarra, Sanchez and Richard to potential obloquy down the line they would rather not deal with.
Next week, on Tuesday, the mail polling in the race to fill the gap left by Valdivia’s departure from the council ends when the city’s post office’s close at 5 p.m. No latter than Friday, then, after the last of any straggling ballots have arrived to be counted, it will be known whether the voters in the Third District will have chosen Anthony Aguirre, who initially signed up for the contest but then withdrew after it was too late to remove his name from the ballot, or Juan Figueroa or Treasure Ortiz will take a place on the council dais later this month.
The election results should have some impact with regard to Travis-Miller, as Juan Figueroa is closely allied with Valdivia. Figueroa’s ascendancy to the council would likely mean curtains for Travis-Miller, including a vote to state a public reason for her firing. Ortiz is reportedly far more favorably disposed toward Travis-Miller. Ortiz’s presence on the council, assuming Travis-Miller would want to remain in place as city manager under circumstances that include a sharply divided elected city leadership in which four of those leaders have expressed a lack of confidence in her, might restore Travis-Miller to her post and keep her in place for another two years.
Wednesday night, May 1, after the city council filed into the city’s meeting chambers just before 7 pm after adjourning out of its closed session that had started at 5:30 pm, the first item on the panel’s agenda following the invocation and pledge of allegiance was a closed session report in which the city attorney was to tell whether or not any reportable action had been taken with regard to seven issues enumerated on the closed session agenda, those being conferences with legal counsel relating to three existing lawsuits  – People of the State of California v. MJ Dispensary, Inc; Redevelopment Agency of San Bernardino v. DMC Investment Holdings, LLC; Placo San Bernardino, LLC v. City of San Bernardino, a conference with legal counsel relating to one unspecified case of anticipated litigation, the employee evaluation of the city manager, the dismissal of the city manager, and a conference involving real estate property negotiations relating to a portion of the surface parking lot area of the former Carousel Mall. Upon the conclusion of the pledge of allegiance, however, Valdivia skipped over the closed session report and went directly to the next item on the agenda, entailing presentations and the issuance of proclamations. Neither councilmembers Sanchez, Ibarra, Shorett, Nickel, Richard nor Mulvihill protested. Acting City Manager Teri Ledoux, elected City Attorney Gary Saenz, appointed Assistant City Attorney Sonia Carvalho and elected City Clerk Georgeann Hanna acceded to Valdivia’s parliamentary legerdemain, and there has been no official reporting of what action or non-action took place in the council’s closed session.
-Mark Gutglueck

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the April 26 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 04-26-19

Steve Dukett

Steve Dukett’s exit as Upland’s development services manager earlier this year was proceeded by a verbal dispute that escalated into a physical altercation with the city’s senior information technology technician.

Dukett is a notable and controversial personage in local government in San Bernardino County and elsewhere in California. For the last dozen years he has functioned primarily in the role of consultant to governmental entities through his employer, Urban Futures.

A longtime governmental employee, Dukett worked with a number of municipal entities in management, including stints as the redevelopment director with the cities of Redlands, Upland, Hesperia, Ontario, Lancaster and San Bernardino. He was briefly, in the late 1990s, the interim city manager in Hesperia. His employment in Upland took place during the reign of then-Mayor John Pomierski. At present he pulls a $168,128.36 public pension consisting of $114,920 per year provided to him by the California Public Employees Retirement System based on his 29.43 years with various municipal entities including Upland and Hesperia, as well as $53,208.36 from the retirement system Los Angeles County has for its public employees based on 12.42 years he worked there, including within the county administrative office.

Dukett is one of three managing partners with Urban Futures, a full service municipal consulting firm that carries out contractual work for cities, counties, school districts and special districts. The company consists of public finance advisors and functionaries, public management advisors, as well as individuals engaged in economic development and real estate advisory and analytics. Dukett’s range of expertise extends to all of these categories, and his profile put out by the company credits him with the planning and implementation of economic and community development, affordable housing, asset management, public facility, public infrastructure financing and grant programs. No fewer than 81 California cities, counties, districts or agencies utilize the services of Urban Futures, including Adelanto Barstow, Grand Terrace, Highland, San Bernardino and Upland in San Bernardino County.

Urban Futures’ client list exists as a virtual who’s who list of California cities that have been pushed to extremity by the vicissitudes of the economy or internal poor management. In this way, the actions taken by these cities in accordance with the company’s direction is periodically extreme or ruthless. In some cases, such as in Upland, Urban Futures has assisted the city in making arrangements for the issuance of special tax bonds ultimately to be born by the purchasers of the residential properties within the subdivisions against which those bonds were issued under the city’s authority, so to provide the developer of those residential projects with the funding to create the infrastructure needed to allow the development to proceed. Such arrangements grow out of the city’s desire to facilitate development as well as the unwillingness of the developer to shoulder, ultimately, the cost of that infrastructure. This results in the purchasers of the residential units to either learn or realize, often after they have made the purchases, that in addition to their mortgage payments and normal property tax burdens, they have been saddled with an extra $3,000 to $4,000-per-year bond debt service payment as a consequence of their home ownership. Urban Futures insists such arrangements are entirely legal and that the minimal legal disclosure of the financing arrangements are made to the residential property purchasers.

Urban Futures often involves itself in providing services, including advisory, document preparation and application assistance for the refinancing of a city’s bonded indebtedness. Virtually all of the bond debt refinancings undertaken in accordance with Urban Futures’ advisal entail a lowering of the interest rates, resulting in an immediate reduction in the city’s ongoing payments to service that debt. Those refinancings, however, generally involve extending the period of bonded indebtedness many years into the future well beyond the original life of those bonds, such that overall, the cities doing the refinancings pay substantially more to retire the original debt than would be the case if no refinancing had been made. Urban Futures’ critics have suggested that in these cases, the company’s advice to it clients is driven more by the interest the company has in securing for itself fees associated with doing the refinancings than the actual long term financial interest of the city and its taxpayers.

Perhaps Urban Futures most controversial engagement in San Bernardino County in the last decade relates to the work it did for the City of San Bernardino.

In 2012, after nearly a decade of consistent deficit spending, the City of San Bernardino found itself in an intractable financial crisis, with $80 million in unfunded liabilities and $49 million more in annual operating costs than income. After then-City Manager Charles McNeely resigned, his assistant, Andrea Travis-Miller, assumed the city’s helm, and after huddling with then-Finance Director Jason Simpson, they generated a report to the city council in which the duo recommended that the city seek Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection. In compliance with that recommendation, the city council gave authorization to do so, and the filing was made in August 2012. Travis-Miller and Simpson remained in place for six more months, but then departed the city just before the onset of spring in 2013. At that point, Urban Futures was retained to oversee the city’s fiscal affairs, to provide, in essence, the services of the city’s finance director and the finance department’s senior staff.

In addition to serving as the city’s finance department, Urban Futures was also enlisted to serve among the bevy of advisors to the city – including itself, the law firm of Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth; Management Partners Inc.; Bartel Associates, LLC; Bienert Miller & Katzman PLC; the Law Office of Linda Daube; Rust Omni; and McDermott Will and Emery – with with regard to its bankruptcy and the effort to make an exit from that status.

The city lingered in bankruptcy for nearly five years, during which time Urban Futures, Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth; Management Partners Inc., Bartel Associates, LLC; Bienert Miller & Katzman PLC; the Law Office of Linda Daube; Rust Omni; and McDermott Will and Emery formulated a strategy to saddle the city’s residents with higher taxes without holding a vote and finding a creative way to stiff a multitude of its creditors and slip out the backdoor without paying its debts.

One part of that formula was a plan to save money by closing out the city’s 137-year-old fire department, have the county fire department take on fire protection in the city, and pocket the savings from the closure while having all residents and businesses pay a $143 fire service assessment to the county to pay for a service the residents and entrepreneurs were already paying for with their sales and property tax. The city city also simply skipped out on much of what it owed to the city’s vendors and creditors, such as Luxembourg-based EEPK, holders of the city’s pension bonds, and Ambac Assurance Corp, which indemnified some of those bonds, who were given 40 percent of what they were owed. Others the city owed money to fared even more poorly, such as litigants and claimants against the city, including ones who had prevailed in certain lawsuits, among them those alleging they had endured civil rights violations relating to excessive use of force by the police department. Those entities and the lawyers representing them were given just a penny on the dollar for the first $1 million in judgments against the city.

Nevertheless, Urban Futures, Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth; Management Partners Inc., Bartel Associates, LLC; Bienert Miller & Katzman PLC; the Law Office of Linda Daube; Rust Omni; and McDermott Will and Emery – the entities who helped formulate the game plan of having the city not pay its debts – were provided with 100 percent remuneration for those services, which ran to more than $25 million – $25,193,340 to be precise. Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, which represented the city in bankruptcy court, was paid in full on the $19,470,878 it billed the city. Urban Futures, Inc. was paid $2,327,665 for bankruptcy related services, including refinancing loans and bond financing and managing the disposition of various municipal assets. Management Partners Inc. received $1,466,190. Bartel Associates, LLC, was paid $214,050. Bienert Miller & Katzman PLC was paid $441,340. The Law Office of Linda Daube was paid $644,317. Rust Omni was paid $284,646. McDermott Will and Emery was paid $283,103.

In the early 2000s, while John Pomierski was mayor, city management in Upland made a series of concessions to the city’s employee unions, lessening the work week to four days a week, increasing salaries and upping benefits. Because the formula for calculating benefits, particularly pensions, include as a multiplying factor the top annual salary a retiree received as an employee, the city has made hefty commitments to its current and former employees in terms of pensions, such that the present projected future pension liability, which grows with each passing year, now stands at more than $121 million. The city must make ongoing payments into the California Public Employee Retirement System to stay abreast of this cost, which at this point means that of the city’s roughly $42 million annual general fund budget, more than $8 million – exceeding 19 percent – must go to the California Public Employee Retirement Fund.

In 2012 and 2013, Upland was teetering on the abyss of bankruptcy, with Standard and Poor’s downgrading the city’s credit rating and the certified public accounting firm of Mayer Hoffman and McCann stated in its auditor’s opinion from 2012 that serious questions with regard to the Upland’s solvency had emerged to the point that there was a serious question as to whether the city “will be unable to continue as a going concern.” Hence, the city’s management felt, given the overly generous concessions that had been made to the city’s employee unions previously, that maintaining existing salary levels without salary increases going forward were in order.

Over the last two years, the city’s employees’ bargaining units have sought substantial salary increases in collective bargaining exchanges with city leaders. In recent months, the union members have taken to wearing pins emblazoned with “11,” symbolic of the number of years they have worked since having last had a contract or cost of living adjustment.

Last November, Jeannette Vagnozzi, who was formerly the city’s deputy city manager, city clerk, administrative services director and head of human services, was promoted to city manager. Vagnozzi is decidedly unpopular with a small but quite vocal and active group of citizen activists. The city’s employees’ union leaders, reading the strong sentiment against Vagnozzi, have likewise intensified their efforts to achieve a new contract by personalized attacks upon Vagnozzi.

Vagnozzi, meanwhile, is caught between three hostile forces, consisting of two members of the city council – Rudy Zuniga and Janice Elliott – who would fire her if a third vote among their colleagues materializes to do so; city resident activists calling for her head; and the city’s municipal employee union leaders and members who believe that their continuing pressure on Vagnozzi will pay dividends. The union leaders and the union members hope Vagnozzi will cave under the pressure and simply provide them with the raises, said to be in the five to six percent range, they are demanding. If Vagnozzi holds the line on that issue, then her firing could yet benefit them, since her replacement would come to the bargaining table knowing that his or her predecessor had lost her job, at least in some measure, because of not being able to keep peace with the city’s employees.

Last year, with the departure Jeff Zwack as Upland’s development services director, the city hired Steve Dukett on a contractual basis to fill that void while seeking out Zwack’s replacement. As part of the city’s management team, Dukett worked closely with Vagnozzi. As no permanent replacement for Zwack materialized, Dukett remained in place.

In January, 77 of 83 members of the Upland City Employees Association taking part in a poll expressed no confidence in Vagnozzi, a pointed stb at her for her toleration of maintaining the city’s pay grade status quo, given that the city employees had gone more than a decade without a cost of living adjustment. At the January 14, 2019 Upland City Council meeting, Rami Asad, the former president of the Upland City Employees Association, and April Flores, the president of the Upland City Employees Association, spoke during the public comments forum, announcing the no confidence vote against the city manager and articulating what they said was the union members’ collective disdain for Vagnozzi.

Eight days later, on January 22, 2019, Dukett buttonholed Asad, who works within the city’s informational technology division, and made clear that in the divide between management and labor, he came down on the side of management. Dukett’s line of authority as the city’s contract development services manager did not extend to supervision of Asad. Dukett offered his prediction that the union’s tactics would not succeed, saying that they could count on having to invest in union pins with the number 12. The exchange grew heated, and according to witnesses and a video of the incident caught on the cell phone of a city employee, Dukett tapped Asad several times on the chest with his index finger as he expressed his views.

According to a letter dated Februaryyyy 20, 2019 from Joan Heithoff, a labor representative with the Long Beach-based City Employees Association, to Richard Jeganathan, the City of Upland’s information technology division manager, “Mr. Asad asked Mr. Dukett to stop harassing him. When Mr. Asad told Mr. Dukett to act professional and not get involved in negotiations issues, Mr. Dukett told Mr. Asad that he was the one who was not acting professionally. Mr. Dukett persisted in physically poking and verbally harassing Mr. Asad, including invading Mr. Asad’s personal space, in regard to Mr. Asad’s union activities.”

Accounts of what occurred next vary somewhat.

The next day, January 23, 2019, Asad emailed Vagnozzi, indicating that he found Dukett’s presence near his workstation intimidating and that he therefore intended to leave work that day. Vagnozzi summoned Asad to her office, where she informed him that Dukett would remain with the city until the expiration of his contract on January 31, but would be departing thereafter. She said that for the interim until Dukett departed, Asad would be provided with temporary work quarters outside of City Hall at another city facility. Asad characterized that as an unacceptable solution, as it was Dukett, he maintained, who had created the hostile work environment. Asad said his being forced to abandon his normal workplace to accommodate Dukett implied that Asad was being deemed responsible for what he characterized as an assault by Dukett. Being forced out of his workstation, even for the relatively short duration of a week, Asad insisted, was tantamount to being disciplined. Vagnozzi said she was doing her best to work through a difficult situation, while seeking to maintain a safe, peaceful and productive work environment. She said that all parties needed to meet each other halfway. She said that Dukett would apologize for his action and any misunderstanding, and that everyone could then get back to work.

Asad stated that he was not interested in nor would he accept an apology from Dukett, and he would not leave his own office. That being the case, Vagnozzi said, Asad must prepare himself to work in close proximity to Dukett, as Dukett would not be leaving his assigned office until his contract was expired. Asad then accused Vagnozzi of gender bias, saying she would be taking steps to protect him if he were a woman. He reiterated that he was not comfortable having to try to avoid Mr. Dukett as he worked. Vagnozzi offered her view that the atmosphere of intimidation at City Hall included action by union members and the union itself, of which Asad was the immediate past president. As city manager, she said, she was herelf subjected to a hostile work environment, and that she felt she needed to remain clear of certain employees who were hostile toward her.

At one point, Vagnozzi told Asad he could avoid having to deal with Dukett by not coming to work, and that he would yet get paid.

According to Heithoff, the City Employees Association employee representative for Upland, Asad was given to understand based upon what Vagnozzi said, that she was going to arrange for that day, January 23, to be Dukett’s last day at City Hall.

Either Asad misunderstood, Vagnozzi had deliberately misled him or she lost her nerve in having to execute upon her statement and failed to convey to Dukett that he should make himself scarce at City Hall because the next day, January 24, 2019, Dukett was again present at his workplace near Asad’s workstation.

Asad filed a report with the city’s human resources department, which under the city’s policy should have triggered an inquiry by the city’s human resources director in conjunction with the city manager, chief of police, city clerk and the city’s labor law counsel, a group known as the workplace crisis management team. With Dukett’s departure from the city to take place in any event as of January 31, the matter was deemed moot and the team was not assembled.

According to Heithoff, “On January 28, 2019 Mr. Asad also was told by a witness to the incident, Jaime Davidson, that Mr. Dukett had contacted her and the other witness and told them that an investigator would be contacting them. In a text message to Mr. Asad, Ms. Davidson alleged that Mr. Dukett said to both witnesses that he was their manager and friend and that Mr. Asad was lying.”

After Dukett’s departure, Asad, Heithoff and the union pressed the matter, doubling down on allegations that Vagnozzi had failed to respond appropriately, and seeking an independent outside investigation of the incident. According to Heithoof, because the city currently does not have a human resources director on staff, “the city manager is currently the acting human resources director, which we believe is a conflict of interest, considering her involvement in the case. Due to the chain of command for human resources staff, we do not have confidence in human resources to conduct a fair and thorough investigation.” Heithoff demanded that the city hire a “neutral investigator” to conduct an inquiry and report the findings to the police chief, public works director and the city council.

It does not appear that the city went to the expense of hiring an investigator, but the Sentinel is informed that Police Chief Darren Goodman somewhat reluctantly had his department look into the matter. Reportedly, Dukett told investigators he had not been disciplined, chastised or in any way questioned by Vagnozzi about his exchange with Asad. A well-placed source said Goodman considers the matter to be one involving “workplace politics” that was inappropriate for his investigators to have become involved in, and the department has made no recommendation regarding any further action in the matter.

Dukett told the Sentinel it was Asad who was acting inappropriately and not he.

“I am aware of this person’s conduct,” he said. “My answer is really simple: Not one thing of what you said is true. I can’t explain why the person has alleged such things and I don’t know why that is happening. I don’t know why he has said what he said. Typically, he sometimes gets angry. I can’t explain what his motivation is to make allegations that are untrue.”

Told that the report to the Sentinel was that he had confronted Asad over the union’s beef with the city manager, Dukett said, “That is interesting. I hardly ever shared words with this person. I’m not saying he doesn’t believe in his own opinion, but I don’t know what makes him tick.”

Dukett said he was not caught up in nor interested in the union’s activity, one way or the other. “I wasn’t an employee,” he said. “I was a consultant; I was never involved with the employees. I wasn’t involved and I am not going to psychoanalyze anyone. As far as I am concerned this whole thing is one of the most bizarre things I have ever experienced. It’s not my intent to put any more meat on the bones.”

Dukett continued, “I know what has been alleged, and those allegations are not true. There has not been any contact between me and Jeannette Vagnozzi relating to any employees or anything at all since I left. Now that my contract has expired according to the terms, I told her thanks for the opportunity and wished her well. I was there longer than anyone expected because it took them longer to hire a permanent director. I was originally going to be there three or four months. Ultimately, I was there for a little more than six months. It’s all taken care of, and the city’s new director is very capable. As to what is being said about me, I absolutely deny all of the allegations.”

San Bernardino County saw a 23.1 percent increase in the number of homeless individuals counted in the census specifically targeting the dispossessed in January 2019 than was counted in a similar survey done in January 2018.
According to the San Bernardino 2019 Homeless Count and Subpopulation Survey Final Report released this week, “There were 2,607 persons who were homeless on Thursday, January 24, 2019. The previous homeless count and subpopulation survey was completed in 2018 when 2,118 persons were counted. A comparison of the last two counts reveals that 489 more persons were counted in 2019, which represents an increase of 23.1 percent.”
Dennis Culhane, Ph.D., a social science researcher with primary expertise in the area of homelessness and assisted housing policy, said the higher number of homeless counted this year was a reflection of the improved tallying and surveying methodologies used during the January 2019 count. Culhane said. “The most recent year included a number of improvements intended to increase coverage, and efficiency. These improvements no doubt contributed to the increase in observed persons who were unsheltered on the night of the enumeration. Simply put, broader coverage alone will yield a higher count, if one uses a known location methodology, as San Bernardino County has done, and as is an approved method by HUD.” The improved methods included targeted mapping, closer monitoring of undocumented areas, and an increase in the number of volunteers making the counts.
The report’s executive summary states, “Of the 2,608 persons counted in 2019, 1,920 or 73.6 percent were unsheltered, which is defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as “An individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, meaning: (i) An individual or family with a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.”
The summary continues, “HUD also requires that the total number of unsheltered and sheltered adults be broken down by various subpopulations including age, gender, race, and ethnicity. Of the 1,920 unsheltered persons counted, 1,873 were adults, five were unaccompanied youth under age 18, and 42 were children under age 18 in families.”
The county seat again led all of the county’s cities and jurisdictions with the number of homeless, 890, followed once again by Victorville, with 333, which had the second highest total.
According to the figures released, San Bernardino had a total of 890 homeless; Victorville 333; followed by Redlands with 183, Rialto with 133, and Ontario with 128.
The cities hosting the top five highest totals of homeless in the county this year was different than the list tallied last year when San Berrnardino, Victorville and Redlands likewise were the three cities at the top of the list, followed by Upland and Barstow. In 2018, Ontario was in sixth place and Rialto in eighth.
This year, in those unincorporated county areas without an association to a particular district or community, there were 115 homeless. The City of Fontana had 94; Highland 72; the Town of Yucca Valley, which is incorporated, had 72; Barstow 62; Colton 58; Upland 58; Rancho Cucamonga 58; Twentynine Palms 40; and incorporated Big Bear Lake had 39.
The unincorporated community of Joshua Tree had 30. Needles had 29 homeless living within its city limits; and Loma Linda 25. The unincorporated community of Bloomington had 24. Hesperia had 24; Montclair 24; the incorporated Town of Apple Valley 23; Chino 23; Yucaipa 16; Adelanto 14; Chino Hills had four; and Grand Terrace one. Among remaining unincorporated county areas, Muscoy had 13; Crestline seven; Lake Arrowhead six; Mentone/Crafton three; the unincorporated area of Big Bear/Sugarloaf two; Cajon Canyon two; Running Springs one; and Yermo one.
It thus appears that the greatest saturation in terms of homeless in ratio to a specific area’s population was incorporated Big Bear, where the population is 5,019 and the homeless tally 39, a ratio of 1 to 129. In Joshua Tree, with a population of 7,414 there was a ratio of one homeless person to 247 residents. In Yucca Valley, where the total population has reached 22,900, the ratio is 318 to one. In San Bernardino the ratio is roughly 247 to one. In Redlands, the ratio is one to 391.
Of the total homeless population, 1,342 or 71 percent are male, 503 or 71. 6 percent are female; four or 0.2 percent are transgender; 16 or 0.9 percent are gender non-conforming and the gender/orientation of eight or 0.4 percent was unknown. There was one unaccompanied male under the age of 18. There were four unaccompanied females under the age of 18. There were 554 homeless individuals or 29.6 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, 1,249 or 66.7 percent identified as non-Hispanic or Latino, and 70 or 3.7 percent of unknown ethnicity.
By race, 986 or 52.6 percent were white; 357 or 19.1 percent were black or African-American; 46 or 2.5 percent were American Indian or Alaskan Native; 13 or 0.7 percent were Asian; 11 or 0.6 percent were Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; 348 or 18.5 percent were of multiple race ancestry; and 112 or 6 percent were of unknown race.
There were 729 children living with their families who were homeless.
Among adults and unaccompanied children, five or 0.3 percent, in total, were under the age of 18; 135 or 7.2 percent were aged 18 to 24; 612 or 32.6 percent were aged 25 to 39; 394 or 21 percent were aged 40 to 49; 247 or 13.1 percent were aged 50 to 54; 277 or 14.7 percent were aged 55 to 61; and 145 or 7.7 percent were over the age of 62. The age could not be determined for 63 or 3.4 percent.
The report noted a “significant” increase in the number of people who have become homeless for the first time and that a “significant number of persons are aging on the streets.
According to the report, “Particular attention should be given to those persons who are languishing on the streets and who have life-threatening chronic health conditions. During the recent point-in-time count, persons counted were asked ‘Has a doctor or other medical professional ever told you that you have a chronic health condition that is life-threatening such as heart, lung, liver, kidney or cancerous disease?’ Three hundred and forty-six (346) unsheltered persons or 18.5% of all unsheltered adults stated ‘yes.’ Particular attention should also be given to persons aging on the streets. There is a significant number of persons who are aging on the streets. In 2019, the number of persons counted as unsheltered who were age 55+ was 422. In 2018, the number of persons counted as unsheltered who were age 55+ was 246. This represents an increase of 176 persons or 71.5%. According to the preponderance of research in this area, the growth of elder homelessness can be attributed to the aging of existing chronically homeless individuals. Thus, targeting the needs of the elderly homeless by making sure that housing that is accessible with persons with disabilities and transportation to medical appointments is available is important.”
-Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
Over three days during the 15th week of the Charles Merritt murder trial, the defense pressed to further unravel that element of the state’s case pertaining to the defendant’s presence at the McStay family home on the night of the gruesome murders.
Charles “Chase” Merritt is charged with killing the McStay family – Joseph McStay, Sr., 40, his wife Summer, 43, and the couple’s two sons, Gianni, 4, and Joseph, Jr., 3 – an event that prosecutors say occurred in the evening of February 4, 2010.
Merritt, the prosecution maintains, driven by financial desperation that grew out of his unbridled gambling addiction and utter lack of fiscal discipline, engaged in a series of thefts from Earth Inspired Products, a company owned and operated by his business associate, Joseph McStay, Sr. Through that company, Joseph McStay was selling high end decorative water features – artificial waterfalls and fountains – which he and Merritt designed and which Merritt manufactured out of steel, glass, rock and other components based upon the specifications outlined by the company’s customers and passed along to Merritt by McStay. The prosecution’s theory, presented during the initial nine weeks of the trial that began on January 7 of this year, is that Merritt fraudulently obtained access to the QuickBooks accounting system McStay had set up for the Earth Inspired Products enterprise and on February 1 and February 2, 2010 wrote himself $7,495 worth of checks.
When he learned of what Merritt was up to, either shortly before or perhaps even on February 4, 2010, Joseph McStay traveled to Rancho Cucamonga, where Merritt was then living, and confronted him about his larceny, threatening to alert authorities, prosecutors allege. After Joseph McStay returned to the home he shared with his family in Fallbrook in north San Diego County, the prosecution’s theory continues, Merritt that evening drove to the McStay residence, where he slaughtered the McStays, using a three-pound sledgehammer to bash their skulls in.
Merritt then secreted the bodies for two days, in the meantime again fraudulently accessing Joseph McStay’s QuickBooks account for Earth Inspired Products, the prosecution maintains, and on February 4, 2010, February 5, 2010 and again on February 8, 2010 issued himself checks made out to himself for a total of $23,855.
On February 6, 2010, Merritt transported the corpses up into San Bernardino County’s High Desert, an area with which Merritt was familiar from having grown up in Hesperia where he attended Apple Valley High School for three years in the 1970s, according to prosecutors. There, in a remote area between Victorville and Oro Grande he buried all four of his victims along with murder weapon in two six-foot long, two-foot wide and 18-inch deep graves he dug in a wash off a rarely-traveled dirt road, according to the prosecution. To confuse the situation, throw authorities off his track and delay a serious investigation into the matter, the prosecution maintains, Merritt then drove the McStay family’s 1996 Isuzu Trooper, which yet contained the child seats for Gianni and Joseph, to San Ysidro, where he left the vehicle in a shopping center parking lot roughly a quarter of a mile from the Mexican border.
In formulating its narrative of Merritt’s guilt, the prosecution wedded itself to the assertion that Merritt drove from his residence in Rancho Cucamonga to the McStay family’s residence in the late afternoon or early evening of February 4, 2010, where, inside that home he carried out the murders.
From the outset of the trial, which began with opening arguments on January 7, the defense has seized upon that assertion, controverting at every opportunity the prosecution’s contention that Merritt was at the McStay home the night of February 4, the strongest evidence for which is a grainy video from a neighbor’s security camera, which at 7:47 pm captured an image of a vehicle coming out of the McStay home’s driveway the district attorney’s office says was Merritt’s work truck. The defense maintains that assertion does not hold up under an exacting technical analysis of the video, and it has further excoriated the prosecution and several of its witnesses over the lack of any physical evidence to support the contention that the family was killed in the Fallbrook home.
Using two expert witnesses, both of whom boast impeccable credentials as former law enforcement officers or associated professionals themselves, including one who spent three decades with the agency that investigated the McStay homicides, the defense sought to reinforce with the jury the contention that the homicidal scenario at the core of case against Merritt is not only implausible but inconsistent with the evidence the prosecution itself has presented at trial.
To controvert the prosecution’s supposition that the McStay family was killed within the premises of their home, located at  3473 Avocado Vista Lane in Fallbrook, the defense summoned Randolph Beasley to the witness stand on Monday. The founder and owner of Seekfirst Forensic Consulting,  Beasley was employed for 30 years as a forensic and crime scene specialist with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in its scientific investigations division, colloquially known as the department’s crime lab. Beasley processed hundreds of homicide cases in addition to other crimes and officer involved shootings, and his testimony was instrumental in obtaining convictions against hundreds of criminals. His skills included crime scene reconstruction, photography, latent fingerprint processing and comparisons, collection and preservation of physical evidence, shooting scene reconstruction and bloodstain pattern analysis. During the latter half of his career with the sheriff’s department, Beasley trained the technicians and specialists working for the department’s scientific investigations division and administered proficiency tests for the department’s crime scene personnel in the disciplines of crime scene processing and bloodstain pattern analysis. Since 2001, he has taught various courses and workshops related to crime scene analysis and forensic science on behalf of the International Association for Identification, the California Department of Justice, California Association of Criminalists, and for assorted law enforcement agencies.
More than a week after the family vanished, Joseph McStay’s brother, Michael, sojourned to Fallbrook on February 13, 2010 to rendezvous with Merritt and go to the McStay family home, into which the family had moved in November 2009. There, he and Merritt intended to see if the family, from whom they had not heard for nine days, was perchance there or otherwise see if they could locate something to indicate where they might be. After crawling through a closed but apparently unlatched window at the the rear of the house, Michael McStay encountered an eerily abandoned house from which it appeared the family had made an abrupt and perhaps unexpected exodus, which included having left the family’s dogs unattended in the backyard for days. Hopefully thinking the family might have departed for an impromptu and unannounced vacation for the Valentine’s Day weekend, Michael McStay elected to let two further days pass before alerting the authorities. On February 15, Michael McStay contacted the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and again drove to Fallbrook, meeting with then-Deputy Michael Tingley. After again gaining access to the home, Michael McStay and Tingley went through the house room by room, while Tingley used his cell phone to take seven photos of the internal premises. Four days later, the family had yet to return. By that point, San Diego County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Detective Troy DuGal, who was investigating the matter ostensibly as a multiple missing persons case, had obtained a warrant and with a team of sheriff’s department investigators and evidence technicians, augmented by investigators from the State of California’s Department of Justice, searched the home, looking for clues as to what had happened, any evidence that might be useful, while making an extensive photographic documentation of the house.
Unremarked by the law enforcement professionals while they were at the scene, but noticed by by a member of the San Bernardino County investigative/prosecutorial team years later, indeed after Merritt had already been charged with the homicides, was that when a close-up spection was made of certain photos of the round wooden table in the McStay family dining/family room on the ground floor of the house near the kitchen, there were round splotches visible on its top surface, as well as on the table’s wooden legs. By the time Merritt’s trial began early this year, the contents of the McStay home, including its furnishings, were no longer available, which obviated the possibility of determining if the splotches visible in the photos were above or below the varnish. Also lost was the opportunity, if they were indeed on top of the table’s finish, to subject those splotches to an analysis to determine whether they were blood.
During the initial stages of the trial when the prosecution was presenting its side of the case, during the testimony of DuGal as well as the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department evidence technician who had gathered evidence from the McStay family home during the February 19, 2010 search, Denys Williams, enlarged photos of the table were displayed, during which questioning ensued that was meant to suggest to the jury that the red spots were blood spattered during Merritt’s homicidal frenzy.
This week, with Beasley on the witness stand as a defense witness, Merritt’s co-defense counsel, James McGee, asked him if he looked into how furniture is stained and then varnished.
“I did an investigation – I did an experiment on or actually checked into research of how furniture staining is done specific to how spatter effect becomes a part of a furniture finish like I noticed and observed on my wood dining room table,” Beasley said.
Beasley indicated, while side by side comparisons of the photo of the McStay family dining table were made with his household furniture, that splotches – which Beasley referred to as spatters – of stain are a common element of wood staining, and that the stain is not applied in a uniformly even coat. Beasley’s furniture appeared to be stained with a slightly lighter color than the McStay family’s table, which was coated with a reddish brown stain. Upon a close-up examination, the splotches on the McStay family table appeared to be similar in color as the stain, though of a darker shade.
Beasley said he determined that when the wooden circular family room/dining room table was viewed under “certain lighting conditions,” the splotches were apparent.
Beasley said in his analysis he “began with the possibility it could be blood,” but said that without the ability to actually carry out presumptive tests using reagents and then further more exacting tests he could not say with any certainty whether they were blood or not.
With a close focus on one of the photos of the table displayed on the courtroom’s overhead monitors, Beasley identified 33 reddish brown stains visible on a portion of the table top, seven on the left leg of the table and eight on the leg to the right. On the white floor below the table or next to it, Beasley pointed out, there were no reddish brown spatter stains visible. He further noted that there were no stains observed on any of the items on the table, which included a knit hat, a remote control, a dog leash and a calculator.
That the spatter did not extend beyond the wood of the table was an indication that it was likely not blood, Beasley said.
“I would expect to see [blood] spatter on the floor unless there was something obstructing that area of the floor or of course the floor had been cleaned up.”
Beasley said that “based on the consideration there was dirt and grime on the floor beneath and around the table, the floor had not been cleaned sufficiently to remove any stain pattern that would have been on the floor.”
Moreover, there was no visual evidence to suggest the chairs that were seen in photographs around the table had any splotches or spatters on them. Those chairs, which had cushions, were otherwise made of wood stained with a much lighter non-reddish brown pigment. No spatter was visibly evident on the cushions.
Beasley said the splotches were “more visible in photos where glare does not obscure it.” He used a photo of a wood chair he owns that was stained and varnished to demonstrate the phenomenon of stain spattering.
“On my own personal wood furniture, I have the same stains on a chair which again appear to be similar in size and appearance,” he said. Under differing lighting schemes, he said, the splotches or spatters grew more apparent or disappeared altogether. When an intense source of light reflected off the glossy varnish, Beasley said, the glare obscured the splotches. This was an indication, he said, that the dark red-brown spatter was below the varnish, and was therefore stain, not blood.
“Based on this glare, did you start to develop a hypothesis of what you were seeing on the chair?” McGee asked about Beasley’s observations of the spattering he had seen on his own furniture.
“The hypothesis was that when the chair was manufactured as a piece of wood furniture, as I have most often investigated furniture, a topcoat of polyurethane or some other type of substance is used to coat the surface,” Beasley said. “Therefore any stain antiquing-type spatter is underneath that topcoat of polyurethane or whatever and then the glare of light, whether it’s sunlight or any other light, the glare is going to reflect on the surface of the polyurethane of that topcoat and therefore, as observed not cause anything underneath that topcoat to be visualized.”
To test his hypothesis Breasley said he then exposed his chair to a substantial spatter of a liquid which replicated the color, viscosity and characteristics of blood when dried, spattering this ersatz blood onto his chair from a distance of approximately two feet, thereafter noting that under lighting conditions in which there was no glare the replicant blood spatters were visible on the surfaces of the chair as was wood stain spatter that was part of the wood stain finish. Thereafter he photographed the chair in lighting conditions that included glare, whereupon the photos showed that the fake blood spatters above the topcoat of the finish were yet visible in the glare but the stain spatters underneath the chair’s finish were not.
“So based on your review of the photographs from the McStay home, the experiment you did on your own furniture that had similar red stains, were you able to draw a conclusion as to the reddish brown stains that were seen on the table inside the Fallbrook house?” McGee asked.
“Yes,” said Beasley.
“And what is your conclusion and opinion?” McGee asked.
“My opinion after doing all of these experiments and making my observations is that it is not blood that’s on the surface, it’s not anything that’s on the surface, it’s underneath the topcoat, which is why it’s not visible,” Beasley said. “I did not see the red brown stains in the reflection through the glare.”
During his direct examination of Beasley, McGee dealt with other issues relating to whether the murders had occurred inside the Fallbrook house.
“You earlier said you saw no signs of damage to the house with the doors, walls, windows, no sign of blood, there was no sign of blood spatter. Do you have an opinion of whether or not any violent acts occurred within that house?” McGee asked.
“No violent acts that would have caused bloodshed in a way that would be consistent with blunt force trauma,” responded Beasley. “There could be other violent acts, but just not that would cause bloodshed.”
“There are different places of the walls that are bare of pictures or drapes or anything,” said McGee. “There was paint in the house. What if someone just painted over blood spatter? Is that still detectable?”
“Potentially it is, yes,” said Beasley.
“And how’s that?” asked McGee.
”Using an alternate light source, there is a potential of blood, if there’s enough blood on the surface, and it’s painted over, the alternate light source on its own could have that blood absorb the light so it could be visible, potentially, underneath the paint itself,” Beasley said. “You can see that shadowing through the paint.”
McGee asked Beasley, “In reviewing the pictures that were taken on February 19 [2010], did you highlight some for what you felt they do not show?”
Beasley said he had, and thereafter McGee displayed on the courtroom’s overhead monitors 20 photos taken during the San Diego Sheriff’s Department serving of the search warrant for the McStay home on February 19, 2010 along with the seven photos taken by Deputy Tingley on February 15.
Those photos were taken at various spots around the house, including Joseph McStay’s home office, the bedrooms, a large walk in closet, a bathroom, the family room/dining room area as viewed from a position on the stairs, the dining room, the home’s entryway, the living room, the kitchen and the garage.
“Did you notice some things you were not seeing in these photographs?” McGee asked. “Yes,” responded Beasley.
“Please describe to the jury some things you are not seeing you would look for,” McGee said.
“Blood evidence, and specific to really any kind of blood pattern, wipe stains, swipe stains, impact patterns, along with drip stains and a drip trail to indicate that either someone was bleeding at a scene or someone had suffered blunt force trauma within the house somewhere,” Beasley said. “I did not observe any of that type of blood.”
“Did you see any damage to the walls?” McGee asked.
“No,” said Beasley.
“The door?” McGee asked.
“No,” said Beasley.
The windows?” McGee asked.
“No,” said Beasley.
“Flooring?” McGee asked
“No,” said Beasley.
“Anything on the surfaces that were consistent in your experience with major blunt force trauma?” McGee asked.
“No,” Beasley said.
“Anything in that house stand out as a clear indication of extensive violence occurring in that home?” McGee asked.
“No,” Beasley said.
With three photos of the garage in which a multitude of items were stored and stacked displayed on the courtroom’s monitors, McGee asked, “Did you see any kind of swipe pattern or transfer stain or drip trail inside the garage?”
“I did not,” Beasley said.
“If an individual is struck in the skull and the skull injuries would cause lacerations and blood loss, and someone is struck in the head again, with the same item, the same object, would blood spatter result from the secondary or consecutive strike?” McGee asked.
“Yes,” said Beasley. “The first blow that causes a laceration would then result in blood on that person’s head. The second, third, fourth and fifth impacts, I would expect to see impact patterns. As long as it’s close enough to a wall, it will be [on] the wall, or furniture. If it’s in the middle of the room, it may only be on the floor, but I would expect it to go several feet based on the object used and the severity of the laceration.”
“Would you also expect cast-off spatter?” McGee asked, referencing blood from the weapon that would be flung when the weapon was wielded for follow-up strikes.
“Cast-off is possible,” said Beasley. So, I would certainly expect it, but it doesn’t always occur.”
And where would you generally look for cast-off blood evidence?” McGee asked.
“I would look for cast-off on items of furniture, on the walls and even on the ceiling, because I have seen cast-off stains on all of those surfaces,” Beasley said.
“And if an individual suffered the injuries as I described, if they were moved after suffering those injuries, would you expect to see things like the drip trail?” McGee asked.
“Yes, I would.
“And if a body were bleeding extensively from head wounds, and they’re placed inside a vehicle, would you expect to see blood transfer inside the vehicle?” McGee asked.
“Yes, I would,” said Beasley
In the case of a bludgeoning attack of the like that was inflicted on the McStay family victims, Beasley said he would have expected blood spatter on the perpetrator “from head to toe” and most prominently on the assailant at a spot “closest to the victim’s chest and stomach area.” Beasley said someone wielding a sledgehammer to beat someone else about the head would likely also have blood on his “sleeves, pants, shoes.” He said the murderer’s feet or shoes would come into contact with blood that would be tracked around and would very likely end up inside any vehicle the perpetrator then got into. “I would expect to find blood on the door handle, the floor board, the seat, gearshift, steering wheel,” he said. “Blood can be transferred to anywhere that is touched in the operation of that motor vehicle.”
Beasley had prepared a video to show the fashion in which blood spatter occurs, lining the walls of a ten foot-by-ten-foot room with butcher paper and then affixing on two-by-four pedestals at varying heights sponges soaked with red colored liquid to replicate the appearance of blood. He then struck the sponges with a three-pound sledgehammer to illustrate how far and it what direction the spatter would project. Judge Michael A. Smith denied the defense’s motion to play the video for the jury. Judge Smith nonetheless ruled that Beasley could explain different types of blood patterns that occur and, based on his training, experience and expertise along with the photographs of, or descriptions of the scene at, the McStay family home, offer an opinion if the types of blunt force known to have been administered to the McStay family is consistent with the injuries the victims suffered having occurred at the house. Judge Smith also allowed Beasley to make a series of physical demonstrations of examples of contact, cast-off, wipe, swipe, drip and impact spatter within the courtroom in front of the jury box.
Under cross examination by Supervising Deputy District Attorney Sean Daugherty, Beasley testified he was charging $175 per hour for his work and $87.50 per hour for his travel time, and had billed $22,400 for his work for 128 hours between 2015 and October 2018, and had yet to bill for the approximately 157 hours of work done on the case since October 2018. Since retiring from the sheriff’s department, Beasley testified, he had not renewed his licensing as a crime scene analyst and a blood stain examiner.
Daugherty, picking up on the drift of McGee’s questioning of Beasley with regard to what he did not see in the photographs of the McStay home in the near aftermath of the family’s disappearance, explored the degree to which he viewed or did not view the presence of towels, bathmats and robes in the home to be significant, given that fabric around Joseph McStay in the grave was similar to a towel, bathmat or robe.
The presence of that material in the grave was an indication that the family was killed in the home, Daugherty endeavored to suggest.
Daugherty tested whether Beasley recollected previous expert testimony during the trial provided by Diana Wright, a forensic examiner and chemist with the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Virginia as to whether paint found on a bra presumed to be that of Summer McStay in her grave matched paint on the sledgehammer also found in the grave which is presumed to be the murder weapon. Beasley responded that he could not remember.
“The fact that the paint on the hammer is consistent with the paint on the bra, you don’t remember that as you sit here today,” Daugherty said.
“I don’t remember what the expert’s opinion is, since it may be consistent with and maybe it’s included as something that could be the same,” Beasley said. “I remember hearing her testimony but I don’t know what her opinion was. I’m sure it’s in her report.”
“You don’t remember, right?” Daugherty said.
“Correct,” Beasley said.
“Because it’s not consistent with nothing happening in the home,” Daugherty said.
“Objection, argumentative,” protested McGee.
“Sustained,” said Judge Smith.
“That could be consistent with something happening in the home,” Daugherty persisted.
“Objection, argumentative and speculation,” McGee said.
“Overruled,” Judge Smith said. “He can answer if he has an opinion.”
“So, specifically something happening in the home related to someone with paint on their hands making contact with the sledgehammer?” Beasley responded, the inflection of his voice at the end of the sentence transitioning the statement into a question.
“Well, the fact that the same paint on the bra matches the paint on the hammer,” Daugherty said.
“Objection, misstates the testimony,” McGee said.
“Sustained,” Judge Smith said.
“That’s what the FBI person testified to, Your Honor,” Daugherty said.
“She did not,” McGee said sharply. “She never said it was a match and I move to strike counsel’s question.”
“Objection is sustained,” Judge Smith said.
“My apologies,” Daugherty said. “So, let’s say the paint on the hammer and the paint on the bra are consistent with each other, and we know the McStay family was painting at the time of their murder. That would all be consistent with something happening in the house potentially, right?”
“Potentially, yes,” Beasley said. “Specifically, it’s just something with paint on it made contact with the sledgehammer. It could have been anything with paint on it.”
“Is the drip pattern consistent with her standing when the paint was applied to the bra?” Daugherty asked.
“Objection,” said McGee. “Assumes facts not in evidence, that she was wearing it.”
“Overruled,” said Judge Smith. “He can answer if he has an opinion.”
“I would not want to make an opinion,” Beasley said. “To me it would not be correct unless I looked at the bra to confirm the flow pattern of paint as it relates to location on the bra.”
“But you looked at the bra in person,” said Daugherty.
“I did,” Beasley said
“Objection as argumentative,” interjected McGee.
“Overruled,” Judge Smith said.
“So, why didn’t you make that determination?” Daugherty asked.
“Why didn’t I?” Beasley said.
“Yeah,” said Daugherty.
“I wasn’t requested to do so,” Beasley said.
To Daugherty’s questions, Beasley acknowledged that a mass of material extracted from one of the graves appeared to have blue painter’s tape intertwined in it and that he had noted in photographs of the McStay home that there was blue painter’s tape there. He acknowledged as well that a paintbrush and a child’s robe depicted in photographs entered as evidence in the case appeared to be consistent with items found in the graves. To Daugherty’s questions, Beasley acknowledged that all of those items were things that could have been missing from the McStay home.
“So, when you were asked, when you were looking for something that’s missing, you didn’t mention those items we just went through, right?” Daugherty asked.
“Objection, misstates his testimony and also goes beyond the scope,” McGee said.
“Objection sustained as misstating his testimony,” Judge Smith said.
“Well, you looked at photographs of the McStay residence, right?” Daugherty asked.
“Yes,” said Beasley.
“And you saw items in person and you saw items from the grave in this case, right?” Daugherty asked.
“Yes,” Beasley acknowledged.
“You didn’t note the items in the grave that are consistent with what would have been in the McStay home,” Daugherty said.
“Objection, argumentative,” McGee said.
“Overruled,” Judge Smith said.
“Did you?” Daugherty prompted the witness.
“I did not mention that in my testimony, no,” Beasley said.
“You didn’t mention it in your report, either,” Daugherty said.
“Correct,” said Beasley.
“So we’re clear,” Daugherty said, “your final conclusion is there’s no evidence of violence that would cause bloodshed in the home.”
“Correct,” Beasley said.
“You are aware that most of – all of – the photos you relied upon were taken February 19 [2010],” Daugherty said.
“I believe some were taken February 15 from Deputy Tingley, I believe,” Beasley said.
“That’s correct,” Duagherty said. “In any event, some were on the 15th and some were on the 19th.”
“Correct,” Beasley said.
“And the ones taken February 19, it’s fair to say there are more of them, right?” Daugherty asked.
“Yes,” Beasley said.
“And those were taken after the house had been straightened up, correct? said Daugherty.
“Correct,” Beasley said.
“Your conclusion assumes that the person who did this or person who did this along with someone else, or someone else didn’t have adequate opportunity to clean up, right?” Daugherty asked.
“No,” Beasley said. “I’m not assuming that. I’m just making the observation that it did not appear that there was blood evidence in the house, and it certainly potentially could have been cleaned up, yes.”
“How much time would be needed to clean up?” Daugherty asked.
“To be more specific, to clean up exactly what?” Beasley responded. “having three people, let’s say…”
“Well,” Daugherty said. “You tell me. There’s no evidence of bloodshed. Let’s assume…”
“In my opinion,” Beasley resumed. “If three people or four were bludgeoned to death inside the McStay home, there would be blood spatter everywhere within whatever room they were killed in. It would be really difficult – of course, nothing’s impossible – but really difficult to clean up all of the blood spatter, not just what is spattered on walls and furniture, but once spattered, the pooling of blood that’s also either on the floor or carpet. It would be a massive clean-up endeavor if that occurred as you asked me.”
Daugherty sought to suggest that the children might have been cleaned up in the bathtub of the upstairs bedroom, given that there were items of children’s clothing on the floor in the master bathroom.

Daugherty observed that there was a variance in the shade or darkness in some of what Beasley had opined were the spatter spots on the table, in what seemed to be an effort to suggest that some of the spots might be blood and others furniture stain spatter.
“Some are darker than others, which would also be consistent with more volume of liquid within the stain,” Beasley said. “Whatever the substance is, if it’s thicker, then it will be darker.”
“Is it your testimony, based on all you reviewed, that nothing happened in that house that night or early morning?” Daugherty asked.
“No,” Beasley said. “My testimony is there’s no evidence of a violent blunt force trauma event in the house that would have caused blood being spattered,” Beasley said.
“Assuming there wasn’t sufficient time to clean up,” Daugherty said.
“Yes,” Beasley said. “Is there a potential someone could have cleaned up all of that? The answer is ‘Yes, there’s a potential.’ It would be a major, major project is all I can say.”
“You can’t say nothing happened in the house, right?” Daugherty asked.
“Nothing happened as far as what, exactly?” Beasley came back.
“Well, anything,” said Daugherty. “Can you say with any degree of certainty that nothing happened in the house?”
“What is the definition of ‘nothing?’” asked Beasley. “Is it blunt force trauma?”
“Sure,” Daugherty said. “Blunt force trauma.”
“Okay,” Beasley said. “It could have happened in the house, but there is no evidence, in my opinion, to support that it did happen in the house, the murders, itself.”
Under redirect examination, Beasley was asked by McGee, “You were asked multiple times – you didn’t do this, you didn’t do that, correct?”
“Correct,” Beasley said.
“Are you on the investigative team for the sheriff’s department?” McGee asked.
“No,” responded Beasley.
“For San Diego [County] or San Bernardino [County]?” McGee asked.
“No,” Beasley said.
“They didn’t do a lot of stuff either, did they?” McGee asked.
“Correct,” Beasley said.
“Did the house appear to [have been] cleaned after four bodies were murdered as described by Dr. Changsri?” McGee asked.
Dr. Chanikarn Changsri is the pathologist with the San Bernardino County Coroner’s Office who performed the autopsies on the McStay family corpses after they were recovered in 2013. She testified earlier in the trial.
“Objection, calls for speculation, assumes facts not in evidence,” said Supervising Deputy District Attorney Britt Imes.
“Overruled,” Judge Smith said.
“There was no evidence of that type of a clean-up that I observed,” Beasley said.
“And why do you say that?” McGee said
“Because the clean-up that would be needed, in my opinion, to remove that type of blood spatter and pooling of blood would have been more thorough, so that there would not have been the dirt and dust or whatever other debris I observed on the photographs taken at the McStay home.”
Also testifying this week was Gregg Stutchman, a forensic analyst specializing in the examination, enhancement and clarification of recorded audio and video evidence. At one time a police officer with the Calistoga Police Department who subsequently served as a captain with the Pacific Union College Police Department, Stutchman has cultivated an expertise in the evaluation of images and photographic evidence, including photometric analysis. He is the owner of Napa-based Stutchman Forensic Laboratory.
The primary reason the defense retained Stutchman was to contest one of the basic elements of the prosecution’s case, consisting of the postulation that Merritt was at the McStay residence the evening of February 4, 2010. The strongest evidence in support of that proposition is that at at 7:47 pm that evening, two video cameras that were part of the home security system Jennifer Mitchley had installed at her home located across the street and a door-and-a-half down from the McStay residence caught a fleeting and partial electronic glimpse of a vehicle which the prosecution maintains was that belonging to Charles Merritt at that time. In actuality, the prosecution’s experts stopped short of stating unequivocally that the image on the Mitchley video matches Merritt’s truck, stating rather that they could not rule out such a consistency. The first of those, Dr. Leonid Rudin, one of the world’s leading experts in the field of photogrametry, initially basing his analysis on the camera installed beneath the eave above the Mitchley home’s front porch, stated in the data he provided and his testimony during an evidentiary hearing outside the presence of the jury that he could not exclude Merritt’s 2000 Chevrolet truck which had been augmented with cargo boxes on its bed as a match for the vehicle captured on the Mitchley video. Prior to actually testifying before the jury, however, Rudin was provided by the defense with images taken from the video camera located on Mitchley’s side yard, which provided an angle on the back portion of the vehicle as it drove off that the porch video did not provide. At that point, Rudin, who had been paid nearly $20,000 for his work on behalf of the prosecution, indicated he would have to make a finding excluding the vehicle on the Mitchley video system as a match to Merritt’s truck. The prosecution then made a command decision and elected not to call Rudin as a witness.
Instead, prosecutors enlisted Eugenio Liscio, a professional forensic visualization specialist, three dimensional analyst, professor at the University of Toronto and the president of the International Association of Forensic and Security Metrology, to replace Rudin. Utilizing just the porch video to inform his report, Liscio generated findings and then testified to the effect that based on that evidence, he could not rule Merritt’s truck out as matching the vehicle depicted on the Mitchley video.
In doing so, Liscio stopped short of saying images of the vehicle seen in stills from the video positively matched three dimensional images San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Scientific Analysis Division Technician Michael Russ had captured of Merritt’s truck. Nevertheless, Liscio spoke with authority in saying that the vehicle had no characteristics which would have forced him to a finding that they were not photos of the same object. In reaching that conclusion, Liscio offered his opinion/interpretation that what appeared to be a light on the passenger side and toward the back of the vehicle seen on the Mitchley video, was not necessarily a light but rather could be the glare of ambient light in the neighborhood such as a streetlight or porch light reflecting off the handle\latch of the truck’s rear storage box/compartment. Merritt’s truck has no such feature. Liscio supported his assertion by noting that as the car begins moving forward the light dims and then disappears altogether for two frames of the video before reappearing and gradually brightening. This was a possible indication that convinced him, Liscio said, the bright spot was not an actual light but something mirroring light.
Under cross examination by McGee, Liscio stood by his conclusion that the cargo box handle/latch could be what was seen on the video and he defended his decision not to include data extracted from the side yard video as a legitimate one because there was nothing important in the side yard video that would aid in his analysis.
McGee was originally slated to question Stutchman. On Tuesday afternoon, however, McGee suddenly took sick and was absent from the courtroom. Stutchman’s direct examination was handled by defense co-counsel Raj Maline.
Stutchman testified that he had looked at the video the sheriff’s department had made of Merritt’s truck and then compared features of the truck captured in that video’s still frames with the features of the vehicle images he had isolated from the Mitchley video “to see what characteristics were in common and what were not.”
Stutchman said he had reviewed a video of Liscio’s testimony and analyzed Liscio’s report.
“What were some of the things you encountered with the Mitchley video in doing your job?” Maline asked.
“The video is very dark; you couldn’t see details of the side of the actual body,” Stutchman said. “There was a beam [roof beam above the Mitchley home porch] that was in the way and cut off anything that was above the hood level. You could see some headlights and some shadows when the brake lights were applied.”
“So it was grainy and poor quality?” Maline asked.
“Yes,” Stutchman said, adding that there was “very limited information available” from the Mitchley video.
In making his analysis, Stutchman was provided with a nighttime video prepared by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in 2014 that captured Merritt’s truck driving by with its lights on, providing a product that was clearer and had greater resolution than the Mitchley video.
Stutchman said the front of the vehicle shown in the sheriff’s department video could be distinguished in certain respects from the front of the vehicle seen in the video captured by the camera mounted above the porch of the Mitchley home.
Stutchman noted that the headlights of Merritt’s vehicle were reflected on the bumper and that in between the headlights and the bumper reflection what throughout the trial have been referred to variously as parking lights or running lights or driving lights were visible and clearly distinguishable from the headlights. He noted that the “driving lights are wider than the headlights and it goes around to the side.”
“In this video, we can clearly see the running lights clearly separated from the headlights,” said Maline. “Is that correct?”
“We can,” Stutchman said.
“The running lights are clearly visible and distinct from the headlights, is that correct?” Maline asked.
“True,” said Stutchman. “You see those headlights and above the reflection [of the headlights on the bumper] is the dark spot, but there is no lights present as you would see in the parking lights or turn signals in the video we just watched.”
The video Stutchman referenced was that one shot by Russ in 2014.
Stutchman continued, “In the truck owned by Mr. Merritt you can clearly see the very prominent driving lights, signal lights beneath the headlights and above the reflection. On the truck that drives through the video there is no corresponding light there. In fact there’s a dark spot between the bottom of the headlights and the top of the reflection.”
“But that Mitchley video has poor quality,” Maline said.
Stutchman acknowledged the Mitchley video was of poor quality but that objects on it could still be discerned.
“So even with this poor quality, we should still see that running light extending out and being a separate light piece,” Maline said.
“Yes,” Stutchman said.
“Would that be a factor for exclusion?” Maline asked.
“It would be,” Stutchman said.
“So based just on that, would you be able to exclude Mr. Merritt’s truck?” Maline asked.
“That would certainly be an exclusion factor,” Stutchman said.
Stutchman next turned his attention to a marker light at the back of and near the top of the truck’s rearmost cargo box. He said that because the Mitchley video’s visual field is blocked by the porch beam, that tail light would not show up on the video if it were Merritt’s truck.
Stutchman said he had made measurements of the height – that is, the distance from the ground – of the vehicle’s various lights.
“The measurements of how high the headlights are and this side light are, those are important factors?” Maline asked.
“Yes,” Stutchman responded.
“And did you note the measurements of this side light on Mr. Merritt’s vehicle?” Merritt asked.
In response, Stutchman rattled off the pertinent data.
According to measurements of Merritt’s truck made by San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Scientific Analysis Division Technician Michael Russ on August 6, 2014, from the top of the headlight to the ground is 39 inches; from the middle of the headlight to the ground is 35 inches; from the bottom of the headlight to the ground is 32.5 inches. Furthermore, Stutchman said, the top of the side marker light at the extreme back of the utility bed is 61 inches from the ground and the bottom of the marker light to the ground is 60 inches.
Stutchman said he had extrapolated the dimensions of the vehicle on the Mitchley video using available tools and technology. “I used a Adobe Photoshop CS 5 Extended which has a measurement tool, very accurate measurement tools, to create a custom scale.” Stutchman said. “So that now gives us a custom scale to calculate other dimensions. So using that custom [tool], what I’ve done here is use photogametry to do measurement calculations of the clip from the Mitchley video.” He said the “bottom of the headlight is 32 inches; the top of the headlight from the ground is 39 inches.
Stutchman thus contrasted the “six-and-a-half inches” of depth for Merritt’s known headlight with the seven inch depth of the headlight in the Mitchley video.
Furthermore, according to Stutchman, the back of the vehicle depicted on the Mitchley video is substantially different from the back of Merritt’s truck.
Images of the vehicle in the Mitchley video and the sheriff’s department video stills of Merritt’s truck were displayed to show that the side marker light is substantially below the level of the 60-inch high side marker light at the top of the cargo box on Merritt’s truck.
“It can’t possibly be the marker light on Mr. Merritt’s vehicle,” Stutchman said.
The side marker light on the vehicle in the Mitchley video, which was characterized by Liscio as possibly being a reflection, is 39 inches from the ground “precluding it from being the marker light on the truck owned by Mr. Merritt,” Stutchman said.
Maline asked if the back light of Merritt’s truck being 60 inches above the ground as opposed to the 39 inch height of the illuminated spot toward the back of the vehicle on the Mitchley video was “an individual characteristic you can use for exclusion?”
“Yes,” Stutchman said.
Stutchman also testified that the height of the illuminated spot seen toward the back of the vehicle on the Mitchley video which Liscio characterized as a possible reflection, at a height of 39 inches above the ground, did not match the height of the cargo box latch/handle, being off by about an inch.
The following day, Wednesday, with McGee yet under the weather, Maline resumed the defense’s direct examination of Stutchman. During Wednesday’s testimony, Maline played on the court’s overhead monitors the side yard and porch videos, left to right respectively in coordination, side-by-side. The side yard video, shot from a slightly different height than the porch video and at a slightly more downward angle, captured even less of the top portion of the vehicle than its porch-based counterpart. Nevertheless, because the side yard camera was laterally angled slightly rightward with regard to its orientation toward the street while the porch camera was laterally angled slightly leftward with regard to its orientation in relation to the street, the side yard camera offered a fuller perspective on the back of the vehicle as it drove past the Mitchley residence, traveling left to right from the cameras’ perspectives. In this way, the vehicle’s taillight, which is at a height roughly on a line with the headlights – calculated at between 32 inches and 39 inches by Stutchman – is entirely inconsistent with the taillight height on Merritt’s truck documented by the sheriff’s department, which has stated the bottom of his truck’s taillights were at a height of 54.6 inches from the ground, 16.1 inches above the level of the top of the headlights.
In cross examining Stutchman, Supervising Deputy District Attorney Britt Imes sought to exploit the consideration that the illuminated spot on the passenger side of the vehicle, which Liscio had said could be a reflection of a streetlight or porch light, fades in intensity and disappears entirely for two frames before reappearing and gradually brightening. This, Imes suggested, was an indication it was not a light.
“You would agree that if that’s the sidelight on that model truck, it should stay illuminated throughout the entire video, correct?” Imes asked.
“To the extent that it’s visible to the camera throughout the entire video,” Stutchman said.
“Well, it starts being visible at this frame, correct?” Imes asked, running the frames one by one.
“Yes,” said Stutchman.
“Okay,” said Imes. “Are you aware of a speed bump in front of the Mitchley residence?”
“I am not,” responded Stutchman.
“A pothole?” Imes proposed
“No,” Stutchman said.
“Did it look like the vehicle drove up on the curb in any way?” Imes asked.
“No,” Stutchman said.
“So it did not change the perspective of the truck as it was driving down the roadway, correct?” Imes asked
“Not that I’m aware of,” Stutchman said.
“So it would be your assumption or reasonable conclusion that that light should remain constant since it’s now in view of the camera and progresses in front of that camera, correct?” Imes asked.
“Unless there’s something that obscures it,” Stutchman said.
“So as we progress to the next frame, where did it go?” asked Imes as the illuminated spot went dark.
“It looks like it went behind the beam,” Stutchman said.
“Oh, but there’s no speed bump there to raise the level of the truck, right?” Imes questioned.
“Correct, unless it’s the angle of the truck,” Stutchman said.
On Monday, the defense called California Highway Patrolman Jeffrey Addls, who testified that in February 2010 he was assigned to patrol the 15 Freeway in the Cajon Pass area.
On February 6, 2010, Addls said he was dispatched to the scene of a fatal accident that had occurred at approximately 7:18 am during heavy rain after a spinout left a Nissan Ultima that had been traveling on the southbound 15 just north of State Route 138 on or against the median. When a tow truck arrived and pulled in front of the car, another vehicle broke traction with the roadway because of the rain, Addls said, and hit the Ultima, which then rear-ended the tow truck, resulting in two fatalities.
Addls said he responded to the scene to take over the investigation of the accident, arriving at around 9 am.
Traffic conditions were light when he arrived and it was “drizzling down the hill” around the time he had been dispatched, he said. The rain had stopped by later in the morning and the weather cleared up later in the day, Addls said.
February 6, 2010 is significant to the case, as on that day the prosecution alleges Merritt transferred the bodies of the McStay family into the desert where he buried them.
Also testifying Monday was Michael Leonard, a
corporate attorney from San Diego. Leonard testified that in July 2011 he represented an entity, whom he did not identify, in the purchase of Earth Inspired Products. Leonard said he drafted a contract relating to that purchase, and that Daniel Kavanaugh was the seller.
The defense alleges Kavanaugh is the actual killer of the McStay family, and that Kavanaugh profited as a consequence of killing Joseph McStay and commandeering the Earth Inspired Products venture and accounts relating to the business.
Leonard indicated that under the terms of the acquisition, Kavanaugh had conveyed to his client rights to use the Earth Inspired Products name and website and “probably” its email address. “I’m going off of memory, but probably, yes,” Leonard said.
“What was offered in return?” McGee asked.
“An amount in cash,” Leonard said. “I think it was $20,000. I believe there was a percentage of the business ongoing after the cash payment.”
“As a part of the agreement did the buyer also promise to assume any liabilities of the company as well?” McGee asked.
“They did,” Leonard said.
“And those liabilities were detailed out by the seller?” McGee asked.
“That sounds correct, yes.” Leonard said. “I’m not sure how the buyer would have known what the liabilities were.”
After McGee detailed him to a specific area of the contract, Leonard testified that liabilities Kavanaugh specified were two lawsuits filed against the company. The buyer in purchasing the company took on the status of the defendant in those suits.
McGee asked if the assumption of liabilities included monetary debt. “Liabilities did include monetary amounts that were owed to third parties,” Leonard said.
Before Leonard’s testimony ended, McGee again referred him to a specific portion of the contract, after which Leonard indicated that the contract entitled Kavanaugh to 20 percent of the company’s net profit, based on sales amounts less cost of overhead, taxes and insurance, for a period of 12 months.

With Former Third Ward City Councilman John Valdivia’s victory in the November 2018 San Bernardino Mayoral Election and his resignation from his council position so that he could be sworn in as mayor on December 19, a vacancy on the city council was create. To fill the post, and bring the six-sevenths strength council up to full status, the council consequently opted to fill the post through a special vote-by-mail election which concludes May 7. Three registered voters in the ward signed on to compete for the council position: Anthony Aguirre, Juan Figueroa and Treasure Ortiz. Ultimately, Aguirre decided against running, but not before the ballots for the election had been printed. Consequently, the names of all three are on the ballots that have been mailed to registered voters.
Treasure Ortiz this week spoke with the Sentinel about her candidacy.
“We need strong effective leadership,” Ortiz said. “We need someone on the dais who understands how government operates, how budgeting works, what the implications of decisions they are making are on the city and on the citizens they are making those decisions on behalf of.”
The major issues facing the city at present, Ortiz said, are “fiscal responsibility and the stability of the city council, mayor and the city manager in terms of maintaining infrastructure, our roads and water system, homelessness and providing services identifying areas so sheltering can take place, policing as far as community policing and the topheavyness in department brass as opposed to patrol officers, along with the animal shelter and the outsourcing of animal control services.”
With regard to the issues roiling in the Third Ward specifically, Ortiz said, “I have spent a lot of time speaking to the residents of Ward Three. One of the issues people in my ward have that those in the other wards do not is they have a real fear of the police. This is a highly Hispanic community and there are some people who want a large police presence and others who are very concerned about ICE [Immigration and Customes Enforcement] and the suspension of DACA [the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, which allows the children of immigrants to the Unitied States to avoid deportation], and they don’t want to get involved beyond making anonymous phone calls. We have a heavy and large language barrier. We have people who do not primarily speak English. We need to have translators so they can feel more comfortable in their own city.”
Ortiz said she would make a better council member than Figueroa or Aguirre because “I have actual knowledge and experience in municipal government, and an understanding of how government conducts itself and is run is so vital and necessary. You should never walk into a management position without understanding the principals of management and what the issues are. Someone who does that will always fail. I am familiar with the issues in the city, I have experience in government and I have an understanding of the work that needs to be done, the dynamics between the council the mayor and the city manager and how they are supposed to operate. That is invaluable.”
Ortiz said, “My campaign is what I call a promotion from within. It is about the community and the citizens of the city coming up and making decision on their own so everybody feels involved and that they have a voice. Residents have come to me with their thoughts and concerns. They have all been heard and if I am elected they are going to be addressed. I want the residents to know that when I am elected we will be seeking to put things and issues together as a city as a whole, ward to ward. I will be mindful of Ward 3, but so much of what needs to be done is for the elected leadership to lead the city as a whole, while they are dealing with the things internally in their individual wards.”
A graduate of Big Bear High School and Cal State San Bernardino from which she has a bachelor’s degree in public administration and a masters’ degree in general public administration with a focus on budgeting and overall management, Ortiz is now working toward a doctorate in public administration relating to public policy and media communications.
A former employee with the City of San Bernardino, she is currently working as a substitute public school teacher and owns her own social media firm.
-Mark Gutglueck

By Sheann Brandon
Doctors at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital recently conducted the institution’s first stem cell transplant in a sickle cell disease patient, effectively curing her of the inherited blood disease. The successful procedure offers hope and accessible treatment to those suffering from the disease in the Inland Empire and surrounding regions.
Children’s Hospital doctors had worked for nearly a year to build a program focused on helping hematology patients, specifically those with hemophilia and sickle cell disease.
Akshat Jain, MD, pediatric physician specializing in hematologic disorders at Children’s Hospital, said he is pleased with the outcome of the transplant and what it means for future patients suffering from sickle cell disease.
“We created a successful program so children and their families suffering from this disease don’t need to look elsewhere for treatment — it’s available to them right here in the Inland Empire,” Jain said.
The procedure was also Children’s Hospital’s first haploidentical transplant, meaning the stem cells donated — by the patient’s father — were only half a genomic match to the patient’s own stem cells. The transplant team infused the father’s cells directly into the patient after conditioning chemotherapy to replace the unhealthy blood-forming cells.
The patient, 11-year-old Valeria Vargas-Olmedo, had lived with sickle cell disease since birth. Her family began seeking treatment last year after she became incapacitated, unable to continue daily activities such as attend school, get in a car or even walk. Doctors said she had debilitating chronic pain, bone loss and bone necrosis.
“She is now disease free and can go back out into the world to do what an 11-year-old should be doing,” Jain said.
Clara Olmedo, Valeria’s mother, said, “Firstly, we want to thank God. We also want to thank Dr. Jain and his entire transplant team. Finally, thanks to Valeria’s father — he did everything he could in order to save her life and give her health through being a donor. My daughter is much more animated now — she’s begun walking, she’s eating and gaining weight, she’s happy. Little by little she is living a normal life like before.”
Sickle cell disease causes a shortage of red blood cells and thus an oxygen deficiency in one’s body. This can cause chronic pain and other serious complications, such as infection, acute chest syndrome and stroke. Without oxygen, any organ has a high likelihood of dying off.
Jain said the disease is generally found in populations like those in the Inland Empire, such as Hispanic and African American populations.
Jain said he and his team treat approximately 250 to 300 sickle cell patients in Children’s Hospital’s comprehensive sickle cell program — more patients than in some of the largest programs on the west coast.
The Vargas-Olmedo family wants to encourage other families who are struggling with sickle cell disease. “For the parents who see the news of this transplant and deal with this sickness, I hope they are encouraged and know that Children’s Hospital is a great hospital,” Clara Olmedo said. “There are many good doctors, professionals and excellent nurses. I encourage them to ask more questions about this procedure and our experience. They’ve helped us tremendously, and we have our trust in them.”

Sheann Brandon is a management resident at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital.

SAN BERNARDINO–Twenty-four members of the Westside Verdugo street gang and their associates were taken into custody this week upon being charged in eight federal indictments, one of which alleges they deliberately got themselves arrested in order to smuggle narcotics and syringes hidden in their body cavities into San Bernardino County jails.
The Westside Verdugos are one of the two most violent street gangs in San Bernardino, with its members being responsible for more than two dozen killings in the last decade.
The defendants arrested are among 35 charged in the indictments unsealed Thursday. A total of 10 defendants are already in state custody and are expected to be brought to federal court in the near future.
Three of the indictments returned by a federal grand jury earlier this month name Carlos Antonio Aznaran, 24, of Rialto, as the central figure in separate narcotics-trafficking conspiracies. One of the indictments details how the gang distributed methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana inside San Bernardino County’s jail system from at least July 2017 until April 2019. Another indictment alleges that members and associates of Westside Verdugo – including Aznaran and his wife, Elisa Montes, 28, of Palm Desert – conspired to distribute methamphetamine within the City of San Bernardino. The third narcotics indictment charges Aznaran and others with conspiring to distribute heroin in San Bernardino County, as well as possessing firearms and ammunition in furtherance of their drug crimes. The remaining five indictments charge individual Westside Verdugo gang members or associates with being felons in possession of firearms and ammunition. Those indicted are Aznaran, aka Twin; Gustavo Jimenez, aka Flaco; Cristopher Gutierrez, aka Lil’ C; Jaime Garcia, aka Sapo; Santino Greenough, aka Primo; Gilbert Rodriguez, aka Downer; Arturo Perez-Medina, aka Factor; Arian Castillo, Crafty; Frank Palmer aka Pancho; Sonja Flores, aka Red; Arthur Quiroz, aka Lil Sleepy and Nite Nite; Ernest Madrid, aka Osito; Trevor Harris, aka Vice and Eminem; Paul Barragan, aka Grimes; Jorge Pelayo, aka Lil Ryder and Lil’ Nite Nite; Edward Passillas, aka Gunner; Clifford Ray; Ernesto Guerra; Elisa Montes, Ernie Contreras, aka Ern Dog; Jesse Duggins, aka Bullet; Joseph Garcia, aka Low-Key; Vickie Quijada, aka Vee; Jessica Romo, aka Batman; Raul Cervantes, aka Wiggles and Wigs; Henry Nunez, aka Grumps; Raymond Jeffers, aka Ray; Victor Perez, aka Vic and Sykes; Mario Garcia, aka Droopy; Angelina Jeffers, aka Candy; and Jose Manuel Galaviz, aka Jokes.
One of the indictments alleges that on July 2, 2017, Aznaran and other defendants planned for another gang member – Trevor Harris, a.k.a. “Eminem,” and “Vice,” 28, of San Bernardino – to get himself arrested purposely so he could smuggle narcotics to jailed co-conspirators. One week later, Harris was arrested for tampering with a vehicle and was taken to the Central Detention Center in San Bernardino. A search by law enforcement personnel, who had been monitoring telephone calls at the jail, recovered from Harris’s anal cavity approximately 43.33 grams of methamphetamine, approximately 49.7 grams of heroin, five syringes, and 20 packets of the opioid Suboxone, the indictment states. The narcotics allegedly were separated into multiple packets with monikers written on them to indicate who would receive the drugs.
On September 24, 2017, Ernest Madrid, 48, of San Bernardino, told another person that he was “trying to get busted right now” so he could smuggle narcotics into a custody facility, according to the indictment. Later that day, Madrid was arrested for a probation violation and was taken to the Central Detention Center, where approximately 78.2 grams of methamphetamine, approximately 12.12 grams of heroin, and five syringes – all concealed in his anal cavity – were seized. Authorities also found two telephone numbers, allegedly used by Aznaran, written in marker on Madrid’s legs.
“For more than 50 years, this gang has been responsible for spreading drugs and violence in this community, but today we have taken a major step to combat the group’s influence on the city of San Bernardino,” said United States Attorney Nick Hanna. “While this is not the first time federal authorities have joined with our local counterparts to fight this criminal gang, today’s arrests signal that we will continue to pursue street gangs until families in every Southern California neighborhood can lead safe and peaceful lives.”
“Collaboration with law enforcement at all levels of government is crucial in our continuing efforts to stem the tide of criminal activity by street gangs,” said Paul Delacourt, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “The arrests announced today are the latest example of that partnership and of our commitment to targeting the most violent of these gangs, such as the Westside Verdugo, whose members traffic in drugs and intimidate through violence.”
“Today, our department assigned four tactical teams to apprehend the suspects involved in this case. This is a significant step in interrupting this criminal enterprise so that they can be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney,” said Undersheriff Shannon Dicus of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. “On behalf of Sheriff John McMahon, we would like to thank all of our agency partners, especially the men and women who worked on this investigation for their commitment to protecting all of us.”
“This gang is and has been responsible for many crimes on our streets,” said San Bernardino Acting Police Chief Eric McBride. “We appreciate the work and collaborative effort done by our partnering agencies. This investigation has made strides in making our community a safer place.”
In addition to allegations of distribution of methamphetamine, one of the indictments also claims that two of the gang’s associates were found in possession of personal identifying information of dozens of unsuspecting victims, whose identities the defendants used to commit fraud.
In the third conspiracy case, the documents allege that law enforcement not only seized heroin, but also substances containing fentanyl, as well as loaded firearms stored with the narcotics.
The charge of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances carries a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
The investigation was led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, and the San Bernardino Police Department.
The Fontana Police Department; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement Administration; IRS Criminal Investigation; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, and the San Bernardino County Probation and Parole Departments provided substantial assistance.
This matter is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Justin R. Rhoades and Scott M. Lara of the Violent and Organized Crime Section.