Results tagged “colton” from News 24/7

Colton firefighters are fighting a fire at a two-story apartment complex building.

The fire, reported at 2:26 p.m., is in the attic of Building 7 of the Nova Pointe Apartments at Washington Street and RV Center Drive, said a county fire dispatch supervisor.

The second floor is fully involved, he said.

There are no known injuries so far.

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved an appropriation of $23.2 million from a tobacco tax settlement for the construction of a new three-story medical office building at the northwest end of Arrowhead Regional Medical Center.

Construction on the 65,000-square-foot building is set to begin in May and is expected to take less than a year to complete, said Patrick Petre, the hospital's chief executive officer.

"We'd like to be occupying the new facility in May of next year," Petre said.

The City of Colton will hold two open houses to discuss proposed utility rate increases next week. The city is considering increasing water and electric rates.

The meetings will be held Wednesday, March 11 and Friday, March 13 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Wednesday's meeting will be held at the Luque Community center at 292 E. O St. Friday's meeting will take place at the Gonzales Community Center at 670 Colton Ave.

The city will also provide tours at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. of the Agua Mansa Power Plant before the open houses. The city will provide transportation from the open house sites to the power plant.

Anyone who wants to go on a tour should call (909) 370-6132.

What's in a name?

A lot, apparently, for many Grand Terrace residents.

The Colton Joint Unified School District asked the public to come up with names for the new high school in Grand Terrace.

District officials conducted a two-week campaign in early February to solicit names for the
campus, which is expected to break ground in April and open in 2011.

Inland Empire police and firefighters will face their Ventura County counterparts on the gridiron Saturday to raise money for the Special Olympics.

The second Cops-N-Jocks Bowl will be held at Colton High School's stadium at 4 p.m., according to a Redlands news release.

The game will feature the Inland Empire Enforcers playing full-contact football against the Ventura County Badgers. Colton police Chief Bob Miller will be the announcer, and there will be K-9 demonstrations at halftime.

The cost to attend is $5, though high school athletes with a varsity jacket or a jersey and children less than 12 years old can go for free. There will be fun activities for children and a number of prizes in the raffle, including a weekend in Las Vegas for two people.

The Enforcers include police from Redlands, Colton, Beaumont, San Bernardino, Chino, the Sheriff's Department, Probation, members of the Orange County Fire Department and Hesperia Unified School District Police.

The Ventura Badgers have players from the Ventrua and Santa Barbara County sheriff's departments, the California Highway Patrol, Oxnard and Ventura police departments, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army, American Medical Response and Gold Coast Ambulance.

Colton High is located at 777 W. Valley Blvd. For more information or to purchase tickets ahead of time, call Colton Officer Rich Randolph at (909) 370-5000.

A fire at a Colton apartment complex Tuesday morning displaced four people, officials said.

The bedroom fire at 936 Fairway Dr. was reported at 8:57 a.m. and under control by 9:11 a.m., said a county fire dispatch supervisor.

The cause of the fire and the extent of the damage were not known.

Of the four people displaced, two were adults and two were children.

No injuries were reported.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- California cities and investor-owned utilities should get refunds on electricity costs now that an appeals court has determined that power generators unfairly backdated increases from 2006 to 2007.

In 2005, a group of wholesale electricity generators filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission arguing that they were undercompensated for some services. The FERC decided on Feb. 23, 2007, that the new rates were reasonable and
made them retroactively effective to June 1, 2006.

Six cities including Anaheim, Azusa, Banning, Colton, Pasadena and Riverside contested the decision allowing the new rates to be put into effect early, arguing that applying the increase retroactively was not permitted.

The United States Marshals Service will be extraditing a suspect in a May 2006 Colton murder back to the United States form Mexico Thursday, according to a Marshals news release.

Jonathan Ramirez, 30, will be arriving at Los Angeles International Airport almost three years after authorities say he and his 27-year-old brother, Omar Ramirez, beat 72-year-old Enrique Bermudez to death at La Veranda Family restaurant in Colton.

Marshals arrested Omar in 2008 while he was working at a car wash in Colima, Mexico. In September, "America's Most Wanted" featured Jonathan, leading to tips that sent investigators back to Colima.

Marshals arrested Jonathan Oct. 17. The brothers had been living together.

The men's mother, Maria Amaya, has already pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the murder.

Three people were charged Tuesday in the attack on a 31-year-old Moreno Valley man
early Sunday morning at Colton's La Villa Restaurant.

The attack, during which a Colton police officer Tased one suspect and shot another, is being investigated by the Sheriff's Department.

Prosecutors charged Armando Jesus Soto, 21 of San Bernardino, with attempted, willful, deliberate, premeditated murder. Soto was recovering at the hospital after being shot by police. They also charged Jay Rainard Figueroa, 21 of San Bernardino, with attempted, willful, deliberate premeditated murder. Figueroa was being held at Central Detention Center in San Bernardino on $500,000 bail. Both men were also charged with assault with a deadly weapon, as was Highland resident Rudolph Sebastian Gallardo, 21. Gallardo was booked at Central Detention Center on $50,000 bail.

Supervising Deputy District Attorney Rick Young said about 10 people were beating on the victim at La Villa, located at 195 W. Valley Boulevard.

The Colton officer was put on a standard paid administrative leave to recover following the shooting, Colton police Lt. Chuck deDianous said earlier this week.

Colton officials say the business practices of Inland Memorial, the operator of the city-owned Hermosa Gardens cemetery, are creating a massive unfunded liability for the city.

While delivering a report at the Jan. 20 City Council meeting, Assistant City Manager Mark Nuaimi said Inland Memorial is in violation of several of the terms of its lease agreement with the city.

The top concern is that Inland Memorial does not set aside money in a trust account or purchase burial insurance when it enters a burial contract with a customer, Nuaimi said.

A man shot by Colton police early Sunday morning was expected to recover at a local
hospital, officials said Monday.

At 1 a.m. Sunday, a Colton police officer came upon a beating involving three people outside La Villa Restaurant at 195 W. Valley Boulevard, said Colton Lt. Chuck Dedianous.

The officer, who Dedianous said is on a standard paid administrative leave to recover, Tased one of the men beating the victim and shot the other man one time in the torso.
Police are not releasing the name of the 31-year-old Moreno Valley victim of the
beating or the name of the 21-year-old San Bernardino man who was shot for their safety, Dedianous said.

The man who was tased, 21-year-old San Bernardino resident Jay Figueroa, was
arrested and booked at Central Detention Center in San Bernardino.

Dedianous said he did not know what caused the fight, which started inside the
restaurant.

"I have no indication that the beating victim knew these other two guys," he said.
The victim refused to be taken to the hospital, despite "severe" head injuries and
against the recommendations of public-safety officials, Dedianous said.

The two men were pounding on the other with their feet by the time police arrived,
he said.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's officials will investigate the officer-involved shooting and the crime itself.

What appeared to be a simple receive-and-file of a city report turned into a lengthy, heated discussion at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

Assistant City Manager Mark Nuaimi, who delivered the report, said Inland Memorial, the operator that maintains the city-owned Hermosa Gardens Cemetery, is in violation of several of the terms of its lease agreement with the city.

Inland Memorial has failed to report proper sales figures, make payments into a required endowment fund for certain burial contracts, pay certain utility costs and purchase burial insurance, Nuaimi said.

Testimony began today in a re-trial for Jimmy "Slim" Edward Cotinola in the deadly shooting nearly a decade ago of a Colton woman he had a relationship with, as she laid in bed with her then two-year-old son.

Prosecutors say Cotinola tapped on a bedroom window of an O Street home, where 29-year-old Anna Garcia lived with her three children, in September 1999. When Garcia told him to leave, Cotinola walked in through the back door, went into the bedroom and shot Garcia in the head.

Garcia's 5-year-old son was in a nearby bedroom, and the woman's 8-year-old daughter laid on the couch when the gunfire rang out. The oldest child called 9-1-1 for help.

Patients are not in danger at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton because of a gas leak there, officials said.

A nursing supervisor said the leak should be repaired shortly.

It isn't clear if the leak is related to the earthquake.

jannise.johnson@inlandnewspapers.com

Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton had a gas leak following tonight's earthquake, but it isn't clear if the leak was the result of the quake, San Bernardino County fire officials said.

The hospital currently doesn't have any gas.

jannise.johnson@inlandnewspapers.com

If President-elect Barack Obama's near-trillion-dollar economic stimulus package is approved by Congress in the coming weeks, city officials hope to nab about $71 million from the pot.

City staff has prepared a list of 21 projects they hope will get stimulus money.
A letter with the details and cost of each project has been sent to the city's local, state and federal representatives.

"I don't know that we'll get the full amount we've requested, but we do have quite a few projects that are sensible enough that I think we'll get a good chunk of what we will need," Mayor Kelly Chastain said.

Colton police arrested a parolee at large who led police on a half-hour chase that
ended after police rammed the man's car with a patrol car today, authorities said.

Around 11:47 a.m., A Colton police officer pulled over 32-year-old Rialto resident
Edmund Ceballos, said Colton Cpl. Curtis Bayer. Bayer said he did not know why
Ceballos was pulled over.

Once the officer who pulled him over learned he was wanted as a parolee at large
and a second unit came to help, Ceballos took off from the stop at Mt. Vernon
Avenue and Mill Street in San Bernardino.

The pursuit, which included Colton police, Rialto police, San Bernardino police, state parole units and a sheriff's helicopter, reached speeds of more than 60 miles per hour while blowing stops, Bayer said.

After a failed police pit maneuver intended to stop the car, Ceballos pulled into a Rialto shopping center at Foothill Boulevard and Riverside Avenue and then intentionally drove into a Rialto police car, but didn't injure the officer, Bayer said.

After another pit maneuver, police were able to stop the car around 12:20 p.m.
Police found methamphetamines and money in the car, Bayer said.

Ceballos was arrested on suspicion of possession of narcotics for sale, failure to yield, being a parolee at large and assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.

His cousin, 22-year-old Rialto resident Evelyn Gonzales, was in the car and arrested as well on suspicion of possession of narcotics.

Authorities have released the name of a 25-year-old Lake Forest woman who died late Tuesday after she was hit by a pickup truck as she was crossing the 10 Freeway.

Pooneh Sue Siadat was heading south across the eastbound lanes just west of Pepper
Avenue at 11:55 p.m. when a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck hit her, according to a coroner's news release.

Siadat was pronounced dead at the scene.

The clock is ticking on plans to start construction on a new high school in Grand Terrace.

Colton Joint Unified School District officials are finalizing negotiations with a lumber company that sits on the property where the high school is proposed.

The district is working to reach a settlement with the company, Inland Timber, for the land it acquired through eminent domain to build the school.

In the 12 years she has worked at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, Christine Humbert has helped hundreds of mothers bond with their babies from the moment the infants are born.

The dedicated nurse, who is so respected that one mother even named her daughter for her, is one of many working around the clock to earn a "Baby-Friendly" designation for the Colton hospital.

"Making sure the mother's entire stay at the hospital is educational is so important," said Humbert as she helped make a new mother more comfortable. "And I go home every day with such a sense of accomplishment."