Travis Pennington, who bore the brunt of local outrage last year when the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transferred a reported 39 prisoners from California’s Death Row at San Quentin Prison to the California Institution for Men at Chino, has departed as warden for a higher responsibility position with the state penal system.
He is being replaced by Eric Mejia, who has now assumed the title of acting warden in Chino.
Pennington is a fast-rising star in the world of corrections. In October 2021, he was a senior ranking – captain – prison guard. The following month, he was promoted to chief deputy warden. Two years later, in November 2023, while he remained in the rank of chief deputy warden, he was made the acting warden at the California Institution for Men. That turned into an eventful 14-month assignment.
Governor Gavin Newsom, who shortly after taking office enunciated his opposition to the death penalty and in 2020 initiated a pilot program to move a portion of the state’s condemned inmates – 104 of them – out of their traditional holding place at San Quentin Prison, decommissioned the death chamber their entirely in late 2023 and early 2024. In March 2024, he began one of his legacy programs, which called for dispatching the remaining 189 inmates at San Quentin who were sentenced to death and 20 from the women’s facility in Chowchilla to other prisons. In formulating that plan, Newsom seized upon Proposition 66, what had been proposed by its sponsors as a more hardnosed reform of the penal system as applied to capital punishment in the Golden State. Proposition 66 called for speeding the process of capital trials and executions, limiting the challenges to death sentences and eliminating objections and obstructions to the death penalty by those claiming it was a cruel and unusual punishment by prescribing a choice of four barbiturates for lethal injection: amobarbital, pentobarbital, secobarbital and thiopental. Proposition 66 also allowed those sentenced to death to work, with 70 percent of their pay to go toward restitution to their victims, insofar as they were housed in an institution which offered work programs and provided a level of security to prevent them from harming other inmates or escaping. The proposition authorized the state to house death row inmates in any prison, rather than the one death row prison for men and one death row prison for women. Continue reading →

There is concern that the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office may have engaged in inadequate follow-up after the Redlands Police Department’s Community Engagement Team collared two women believed to be key members of a regional retail theft ring.
On January 30, officers with the Redlands Police Department blanketed the Mountain Grove and Citrus Plaza shopping centers in a coordinated effort that also involved store employees, store security/loss prevention officers and retail theft investigators.
With both uniformed public law enforcement and undercover private personnel monitoring the malls in a casual manner, they were able to nab 11 individuals and recover of $7,600 in stolen merchandise in and around several stores, including Target, Kay Jewelers, Burlington, Lane Bryant, Sephora, Ross, Designer Shoe Warehouse, Old Navy, Victoria’s Secret, TJ Maxx, Famous Footwear, Ulta, World Market, Banana Republic, Kohls, Gap, and BevMo.
Among those 11 were two in particular, whose reputation for thievery proceeded them. One of these was Maria Isabel Torres, 28 of Los Angeles, who was recognized from photos taken of her during the commission of similar acts of larceny throughout Southern California in retail establishments in San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside County as well as her believed affiliation with others whose thefts range from simple shoplifting such as the type she engages in to more aggressive acts, some of which involve violence and aggressive destruction as both a means of effectuating the theft and as a diversion. Torres, who had earlier that day been identified as having looted a Nordstrom Rack in Riverside in broad daylight and thereafter swiftly making a getaway, was recognized by members of the retail theft prevention team virtually as soon as she came into the Ross store in the Mountain Grove center. The theft-prevention team had been alerted by a Nordstroms loss prevention agent with an accurate description of how Torres was dressed. That information was followed up with a security camera photo of Torres at the Riverside location. Upon surveilling Torres for more than ten minutes, satisfying themselves as to her identity and observing her in action and that she was about to dash off, members of the community engagement team moved quickly to take her into custody. Arrested with her was Maria Isabel Hernandez, 53 and also of Los Angeles, who acted as a lookout while Torres filled a suitcase with merchandise shed did not pay for and then left the store. The pair communicated via Bluetooth, while Hernandez observed her partners from various angles and distances as much as 75 feet away. Hernandez did not detect any of the community engagement team in the area. Continue reading →

NOTICE OF PUBLIC LIEN SALE
Notice is hereby given that personal property in the following units will be sold at public auction pursuant to Sections 21701-21716 of the California Self-Service Storage Facility Act. A public lien sale will be conducted by www.storagetreasures.com on the 25th day of February 2025, at or after 9:00 am. The property is stored by All American Storage Ontario located at 505 S. Mountain Avenue, Ontario, CA 91762.
Purchases must be made in CASH ONLY.
Items are sold AS IS WHERE IS and must be removed at the time of sale. All American Storage Ontario reserves the right to refuse any bid or cancel auction. The items to be sold are generally described as follows: miscellaneous personal and household goods stored by the following persons:
Unit Name
D148 Jesus Yepez
D025 Daniel Fricke
E040 Victor Acevedo Dominguez
B029 Chelsey Wiedenbeck
Dated: 2/5/2025
Signed: Garrett Gossett
storagetreasures.com
Sales subject to prior cancellation in the event of settlement between Owner and obligated party.
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on February 7 and 14, 2025.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME
CIV SB 2500116
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS:
Petitioner MICHAEL ANTHONY WARD filed with this court for a decree changing names as follows:
MICHAEL ANTHONY WARD to MICHAEL ANTHONY CHAVEZ
THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.
Notice of Hearing:
Date: FEBRUARY 26, 2025
Time: 8:30 a.m.
Department: S22
The address of the court is Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino, 247 West Third Street, San Bernardino, CA 92415
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that a copy of this order be published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel in San Bernardino County California, once a week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing of the petition.
Gilbert G. Ochoa
Judge of the Superior Court.
Filed: January 15, 2025 by Abrianna Rodriquez, Deputy Court Clerk
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on January 24 & 31 and February 7 & 14, 2025.

Continue reading →

The Replenish Big Bear water reclamation project which appeared to be on the ropes if not down for the count entirely since August recaptured its potential viability pursuant to a key reversal by Kendi Segovia at the January 22 Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency Board of Directors meeting.
The community of Big Bear Valley, including the City of Big Bear Lake, the even larger unincorporated county area of Big Bear City, the local tourist industry, locally-based commercial enterprises and the lake itself face serious existential challenges from drought conditions and intensifying demands for water as a consequence of development and population growth.
The Replenish Big Bear program is an innovative proposal to utilize what is essentially a bundle of advanced technologies to process the communities wastewater to recover a large enough volume of purified water to offset the loss of water from the lake from diminished natural rain recharge, evaporation and use. While that approach has the enthusiastic support of a fair number of the community’s members, some but not all of its elected officials and what appears to be the overriding majority of the area’s water infrastructure and sewage/sanitation district professionals, there is yet reluctance to go along with and resistance to the proposal, based upon the project’s cost and skepticism over whether what is, in the final analysis, an unproven technique to reclaim sewage that might end up failing spectacularly and leave the lake and its environs in a putrefied state that would destroy Big Bear’s image and reputation and from which it and the local community might never recover. Continue reading →

Se recomienda a quienes tengan razón, o necesidad, de acudir al Consulado de Guatemala o Consulado de México en San Bernardino que sean prudentes antes, durante y después de sus visitas, ya que se sabe que los agentes del Servicio de Inmigración y Naturalización están monitoreando tanto los accesos como las vías desde ambos lugares en el centro de San Bernardino.
Esos empleados del gobierno de los Estados Unidos están acumulando y recopilando información sobre sujetos que creen que están en los Estados Unidos sin autorización. Los agentes del Servicio de Inmigración y Naturalización (INS, por sus siglas en inglés) tienen la costumbre de rastrear a aquellos que han entrado en cualquiera de las instalaciones y, una vez concluidos sus asuntos allí, se van. Los agentes observarán a los sujetos mientras se dirigen a sus vehículos y luego, finalmente, regresarán a sus domicilios. De esta manera, los agentes del INS determinan dónde viven sus objetivos. Continue reading →

Kept On Ice Without Treatment For 230 Days

A 77-year-old man arrested in May 2024 on attempted murder charges after he began fighting with a co-resident of a senior citizen care facility in Hesperia and was held in sheriff’s custody for nearly eight months without release died on January 22 from a cause or causes that have yet to be disclosed.
According to a member of the department working the detention detail, Stanley Eugene Brabant had mental health issues that were apparent from the time of his booking and which were not being adequately addressed or addressed at all while he was under the supervision of department. Both the district attorney’s office and the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health dropped the ball in following through with proper evaluation and treatment for Brabant, according to the individual who saw him on a continuous basis, four to five days per week for months.
San Bernardino County Superior Court records indicate that Brabant languished in custody for months on end and was not given proper medical care and mental health treatment his condition required at least partially because of the discontinuity in his legal processing, as an inadequate concentration of attention to his circumstance attended the suspension of criminal proceedings against him and what ultimately proved to be a drawn-out and unresolved determination of his placement in a facility that could properly deal with his physical and psychological issues. Continue reading →

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on January 28 arrested Ronalee Barrett Stanberry, who has been identified as the assailant who killed Fontana business owner Fritz Mendoza by clubbing him about the head with a decorative miniature baseball bat.
After Stanberry’s apprehension, he was turned over to the Fontana Police Department, which had issued an all-points bulletin in the aftermath of Mendoza’s slaying.
On January 10, the 79-year-old Mendoza and his son went into their Allstate Insurance office, located at 9782 Sierra Avenue around 8:45 a.m. Stanberry had gained access to the premises, it is believed, the previous evening, having come through the roof. He dropped through the ceiling and once inside could not leave as the doors were locked and he had no key.
When Mendoza’s son went to the back of the office, he saw that ceiling panels were on the floor. Moments later both Mendozas saw Stanberry, who by that point had donned a white and blue pinstriped United States Postal Service button-up shirt that Mendoza had at the office. The younger Mendoza confronted Stanberry and sought to escort him out of the office. As he was doing so, Stanberry seized a baseball bat was imprinted with the Allstate insurance logo and Mendoza’s grandchildren’s initials. He then used it to inflict a fatal blow to the elder Mendoza’s head, according to police. Continue reading →