The Sheriff’s office reports arresting a couple on multiple crimes after reports in the Brooktrails area of Willits of someone stealing gas containers. The post on social media a couple weeks ago of a video circulating of a man and woman stealing gas containers in a white Uhaul truck with the stickers removed, the truck stolen. Deputies say someone had been living in the truck, where they found the gas containers, a cooler, chainsaws, and a climbing rope. Plus mail, ID cards, debit cards and a gun. Shevelle Perkins and her boyfriend, Christopher Brockway were located and arrested with a ghost gun and ammo. There were various charges against each of them, Brockway booked on $65,000.00 bail and Perkins on $35,000.00.
A man in Covelo’s been arrested for having ammunition while not allowed. Deputies found Charles Whipple after reports of two people in some sort of altercation or disturbance, plus possible shooting in the area. Deputies found the ammo on the ground in front of a home and found Whipple in a small one room cabin on the property. They searched and found a whole lot more ammo and arrested him for having ammunition by a prohibited person. He was held on $15,000.00 bail
After a routine traffic stop of a Honda Civic in Willits, deputies arrest a man on various charges. The car pulled over for deputies, then took off, driving too fast on city streets in poor weather conditions. Deputies stopped following for their own safety, but looked up the Honda and found Rafael Paz was the driver and went to his house. There they found the car, not registered, and found Paz laying in a bed in a small shed. He was arrested for reckless driving while evading. They also saw a bunch of meth and fentanyl in the shed and got a search warrant. Paz was out of jail on bail at the time, so he was further charged with possession of a controlled substance for sale (11351 HS, and 11378 HS), Transportation of a controlled substance (11352 HS and 11379 HS) and committing a felony offense while on bail (12022.1 PC) and held on $35.000.00 bail.
A missing elderly man in Potter Valley has been found safe. Report on Sunday by a neighbor that their 77 year old elderly neighbor who has dementia was gone. They say they saw his front door open and that he had not been seen since Saturday. Deputies canvassed the neighborhood and one neighbor reported finding a shoe, a pair of glasses and a metal walker about a ¼ mile from the elderly man’s home. Search and Rescue were called to the area due to the cold weather and the man’s dementia, they found him tangled up in some wire fencing and bushes. They say he was incoherent and may have had hypothermia, so he was flown by air ambulance to a nearby hospital.
A giant forest fire has been squelched finally, 3 months after starting. The KNP Complex hadn’t grown much in the last several weeks after burning nearly 140 square miles, but it was just 100% contained Thursday after a bunch of rain in the Sierra Nevada. The National Park Service reported the huge fire in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks that burned giant trees after starting September 9th was started by lightening. Two fires merged into one and burned roughly 30% of the groves of giant sequoias, burning between 2,300 to 3,600 sequoias.
The top coastal regulators in the state have given the green light for the federal government to poison invasive mice on the Farallon Islands. The California Coastal Commission voted 5-3 for the plan to drop nearly 3,000 pounds of rodenticide – laced pellets on the islands about 27 miles off the coast of San Francisco and Marin County. They say there are tens of thousands of human-introduced mice which have been taking over the habitat from the islands’ seabirds. The Farallons have the largest seabird breeding colony in the lower United States.
The Humboldt County Jail has been inundated with COVID cases. Kym Kemp reports speaking to a number of inmates who have tested positive for the coronavirus over the last week. They report there are more than 50 cases after a laundry worker first got infected from a staff member, then they kept testing more and more positive cases. The positive cases were taken in small groups out of the holding areas. The news site reports all of the inmates they spoke to gave them pretty much the same story, but the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office did not respond at press time to their calls. The news site reports of all of the inmates they spoke to, none had been vaccinated. The news site also says inmates are given one mask only and they are not mandated to wear them.
The Lake County Board of Supervisors has a lot on its plate for the last session of 2021. At their regular meeting tomorrow, they’ll tackle the latest on the pandemic, hear about the potential to divide up the Public Works and Water Resources departments, consider a plan for federal recovery dollars and hear a resolution on environmental reviews for cannabis projects. Public Health Staff will be the first to present. The agency sent out a statement over the weekend about the omicron strain and the holidays, so we should hear more on that matter.
A big oops for a group of Calif. universities who could have received almost $50 million dollars more in coronavirus aid if they would have asked a different federal agency. That’s according to a state audit that says some students missed out on support and equipment during online learning. There were two different places to apply for money, one from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the other by the U.S. Department of Education, called the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF). Six University of California and Cal State University campuses were audited, and four didn’t go to FEMA, Chico State, Cal State Long Beach, UC Merced, and UC San Diego.
The deadline is fast approaching for workers to be vaccinated or companies will start to get into a pickle. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration said though they won’t give citations for the coronavirus vaccination mandate before Jan. 10th. And OSHA also reported no citations for companies on their testing requirements before Feb. 9th. This comes after a federal appeals court in Cincinnati ruled the mandate for large employers could go forward. OSHA says it will hold off on the citations only if “an employer is exercising reasonable, good faith efforts to come into compliance with the standard.” The mandate was supposed to go into effect Jan. 4th.
