CBS Los Angeles
BURBANK (CBSLA) — A veteran corrections officer killed in the Las Vegas massacre was welcomed home in true hero fashion Saturday.
Family and colleagues of Lt. Derrick “Bo” Taylor gathered at Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport, where his body was flown Saturday morning.
On the tarmac, members of the color guard draped a flag over his casket; corrections officers then carefully loaded it into a van as part of a procession in his honor.
Taylor’s neighbor, Sara Martin, paid tribute with her husband; they were among the many supporters who stood with firefighters on various overpasses to salute Taylor as his motorcade drove from Burbank to a mortuary in Grover Beach.
“We’re pretty shocked, you know, it’s hard,” Martin said. “It hits really close to home because it’s literally next door and it’s just so awful.
Taylor was a 29-year veteran of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
He recently worked at the Ventura Conservation Camp, where he led inmates fighting wildfires. Co-workers, who declined to go on camera, described him as an esteemed colleague and friend.
His neighbors described him as someone anybody would want to live next door to.
“He was a very nice man, and he’d always speak in passing by,” Vernell Reese said.
Taylor and his girlfriend, Denise Cohen, of Carpinteria, were among the 59 people shot and killed at the country music festival in Las Vegas.
Taylor is survived by two sons.
CALIFORNIA PRISONS
By Esmeralda Bermudez
Down past the prison yard, where blue lilies grow near a fence topped with barbed wire, the men who manage one of the nation's only inmate-run newspapers were mourning.
The front page of their next edition would mark the death of Arnulfo Garcia, who had been their editor in chief — and so much more.
Garcia had come to San Quentin State Prison as a heroin addict and burglar. He had transformed himself over more than 16 years into a beloved leader and living, breathing symbol of hope and redemption.
At the prison, they called him jefe because he ran the San Quentin News. They called him pachuco because in his youth he used to walk with such swagger. They loved his dry chili peppers, which he carried in his pocket and passed out to them like candy.
And they felt such hope for him when he walked out to freedom in July, full of big plans for not just his but their future.
He was deep into those plans two months after his release when he got in a car with his sister. She was driving. They were in a crash. Both were killed.
Garcia was a three-striker whose sentence was cut for good behavior from 65 years to 16. He used to tell men serving decades for robberies, assaults and murders to focus not on getting out of the infamous penitentiary but on becoming better men — men who moved forward and thought big.
"It takes a team to make it to the moon,” he used to say.
And they had faith in his goals, no matter how grandiose — to reform the criminal justice system, to end gang violence, to turn a fledgling newspaper into an award-winning publication.
Out in the yard, prisoners divide by color — blacks with blacks, whites with whites — but in the old laundry room turned newsroom, Garcia led a mix of men whose sole focus was telling stories and putting out the paper.
That work continued on a recent afternoon.
Jesse Vasquez, a staff writer serving 30 years to life for attempted murder, placed a thermos with Garcia’s favorite tea out on the pavement near the newsroom’s front door to ferment in the hot sun, the way Garcia taught him. Jonathan Chiu, in for first-degree murder, pieced together the paper’s crossword puzzle. And Richard Richardson, long and lanky like Snoop Dogg, bent over his computer pushing himself to finish his toughest assignment yet: Garcia’s obituary.
Richardson, who goes by Bonaru, serving time for home robbery, took over as editor after Garcia left. The two were best friends, he said.
“He taught me how to be a man, how to be a father, to be responsible and accountable for my actions.”
‘Drop that monkey off your back’
Garcia, who was 65 when he died, was in and out of jail for nearly 50 years.
He spent part of his childhood picking prunes on a farm in Northern California and as he grew up became a heroin addict. When he was busted for home robbery in the 1990s and faced 123 years in prison, he skipped bail and fled to Mexico.
His mother pleaded with him. Quit drugs, have a child, settle down.
“Drop that monkey off your back,” Carmen Garcia told him. “Then I can die in peace.”
Garcia did what his mother asked in the countryside of Mexico, working on a farm, staying clean. He met someone, and they had a daughter and named her Carmen.
But eventually his past caught up with him. He was arrested and sent to San Quentin.
In his 6-by-10 cell, he started writing. He told his life story and the stories of other inmates expelled from society because they killed their wives, shot up gang rivals, robbed gas stations, peddled drugs.
Garcia wrote thousands of words — now scattered in notebooks, on flash drives and pieces of toilet paper.
“He was a listener, someone you could talk to about your secrets and your sadness and the harm that you’ve done to others,” said his brother Nick, who also served time at San Quentin.
For years, Garcia had brushed aside his mistakes. “I blamed my father, the police, the probation office, the D.A., the judges,” he wrote in a 2014 column. “I blamed everyone but myself.”
Writing, he said, brought a new kind of clarity. “I came full circle to the realization that the person responsible for my situation was me.”
When he and Richardson began working in the prison’s print shop, Garcia didn’t even know how to turn on a computer. But they used to listen to the chatter of reporters and editors nearby in the newsroom.
“They’d be arguing about what story to run on the front page,” Richardson said. “And we’d get in there and tell them our opinion.”
The prison newspaper was just revving up again then. A prison warden had brought it back to life, after more than 20 years. It ran on donations, as it does now, and the help of journalists on the outside.
Garcia was hired on as a writer in 2009 and began spending more and more time there. Two years later, he was editor in chief.
He saw in the San Quentin News an opportunity not just to give prisoners a voice but to educate them about prison programs they could use to improve themselves. He published stories about inmates doing yoga, putting on Shakespeare plays, getting paroled after participating in rehab programs, showing remorse for their crimes.
He once wrote about how three inmates saved a correctional officer as he choked on a piece of steak.
Garcia’s paper featured soul-searching profiles and editorials critical of budget cuts and prison conditions. He invited in district attorneys and judges, for forums to update them on life at the prison.
Bob Ayers, the warden who brought back the newspaper, said Garcia didn't just want a publication that squashed prison gossip. He wanted to do serious, respected journalism.
“While I may have plugged in the lamp, which was the resurrected San Quentin News,” he said. “Arnulfo tweaked it until it became a beacon."
Garcia did so under strict supervision. The newsroom had no internet access. Each story was carefully vetted.
By the time he left prison, the San Quentin News was printing 28,000 copies, distributed to 35 prisons run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“Wall City,” the quarterly magazine he dreamed up, was nearly a reality. The first volume, full of inmates’ stories, was just about to go to press.
A brave new vision
The morning of the crash, Nick Garcia, who had also been paroled, spoke to his brother on the phone.
Arnulfo was at a gas station in Hollister. He sounded excited.
His biggest plan was to build a reentry home with a full treatment center, somewhere in the countryside, a place where newly freed prisoners could acclimate themselves to life outside the walls.
He had the support of officials at public safety agencies, social workers and several prosecutors, including those who had once locked him up. His family planned to help him pay for it.
He and his sister Yolanda were on their way to check out a possible property.
The crash occurred minutes after the brothers hung up. Police say Yolanda Garcia missed a stop sign. Her car was hit first by an SUV, then by a big rig.
Brother and sister died at the scene.
‘This one’s hard to take’
At San Quentin, a weekly support group helps prisoners manage their day-to-day anger.
Garcia once led the group. Now those who came were grief-stricken.
In a high-ceiling room that was nonetheless airless, they sat in a circle and took turns saying goodbye.
“Arnulfo, you pulled one on us, man,” said one inmate, his face slick with tears. “This one’s hard to take.”
“Many times I wanted to quit,” said another, staring at the floor. “You told me, ‘Come on, let’s go’”
“I appreciate you,” said Fateen Jackson, 41, “because you saw value in me.”
Lucia de la Fuente, one of the group’s coordinators, told the inmates that Garcia had squeezed every last bit of his two months of freedom. Barbecues, shopping trips with his daughter. Food — lots of great food.
De la Fuente said it made him so happy, he texted her photos of his beans, his scrambled eggs and Mexican sausage.
“He was abundant in every single way,” de la Fuente said.
She got her final text from him three days before the crash, she said.
He was coming over the Bay Bridge at sundown.
The light, he told her, was so beautiful.
Joanne Elgart Jennings, KQED
It isn’t often that an inmate is able to touch the lives of people both in and out of prison. But that was the case for Arnulfo Garcia.
Before his release, Garcia was editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News, a paper produced, written and edited by inmates. During his tenure from 2012 to 2017, he transformed the paper from a small internal prison publication to one that does serious journalism and is distributed to 69 prisons across the United States.
He changed the tone of the paper to cover stories like a prisoner hunger strike in protest of solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison. He formed the first and only chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists inside a prison. He inspired fellow inmates to produce TV and radio stories. He also organized forums inside San Quentin that brought together inmates, judges and prosecutors. Garcia and his team of inmate journalists did all of this without cellphones or access to the internet.
Garcia, a three-striker, was serving a life sentence for residential burglary, possession of heroin and a firearm, but he used his time in prison to reform himself. Authorities noticed his transformative work, and at 65 years old, Garcia was released from prison.
Two months later, on Sept. 23, he and his sister, Yolanda Hernandez, were killed in a car crash southeast of Gilroy.
The week after Garcia’s death, I visited San Quentin to talk with inmates and staff about his legacy.
Kevin Sawyer, now associate editor of the San Quentin News, first met Garcia in a creative writing class.
“He wrote about his childhood trauma. And he kept on coming back till he got it right. And once he got it right, he wanted everyone else to get it right,” Sawyer told me while putting the finishing touches on an article about solitary confinement which Garcia had encouraged him to write.
Aly Tamboura also worked with Garcia at the San Quentin News. Tamboura was paroled last year and is now a software engineer in San Francisco. He said Garcia’s commitment to prisoner rehabilitation was the glue that kept the paper thriving.
“One of the things he was really, really adamant about was people who took responsibility for what they were incarcerated for, being accountable,” Tamboura said. “Once you’re accountable, OK, now what are we going to do to move forward? Then, what are we going to do to carry this message throughout the whole prison system? The newspaper became a vehicle for that.”
Garcia believed his own transformation was possible because of prison programs like GRIP, which stands for “Guiding Rage Into Power.”
At their first meeting since Garcia’s death, about 20 members of GRIP gathered in a circle to remember their friend. Each inmate took turns caressing a small river rock that had belonged to Garcia. One after another, they spoke to their departed friend, whose photo was propped up in an empty chair.
“Arnulfo, thank you for giving me the honor to do some time with you and learn from your teachings. I’m going to miss you and I promise you that I’m going to continue dreaming big,” said one inmate.
“I just want you to know that each day that we are moving forward, we will carry on your legacy in the proper way, and do everything we can to change the social construct of the prison in your name,” added another inmate.
One of the social constructs Garcia worked hard to chip away at was racial segregation in prison. Even though the U.S Supreme Court ordered California to end its long-held policy of racially segregating inmates back in 2005, to this day inmates strictly self-enforce an unwritten rule in common areas like the recreational yard and the chow hall.
“It’s prison rule that’s met with some really severe violence, if you don’t adhere to it,” explained Tamboura, adding that during his 12 years in prison, inmates of different races were not permitted to eat with one another in public.
“The chow halls are racially segregated,” said Tamboura. “It’s so terrible that if a black man touches a white guy’s tray, he can’t eat from the tray.”
But Tamboura, an African-American, wanted to break bread with his closest friend and colleague, Arnulfo Garcia, who was Mexican-American.
“If I went and tried to sit in the Mexican section or he came and tried to sit in the black section, it would be ugly,” said Tamboura. “It could spark a riot.”
So, Garcia came up with a workaround. He hosted “spreads” in the newsroom where inmate journalists of different races could eat with one another.
Tamboura explained how it worked: “One of us would buy tortillas from the canteen. The other one would buy refried beans. One guy might smuggle some rice out of the kitchen and some chicken. I’d say probably twice a week we would roll up about 40 burritos and feed the whole newsroom. That was a tradition.”
Garcia’s colleagues at the San Quentin News produced a video about these famous “spreads.” Here’s an excerpt:
Tamboura says one of the greatest joys he and Garcia had in their two short months together outside prison was dining together freely. “Getting out and standing next to the barbecue with Arnulfo and sitting there eating, it was like carrying on that tradition,” he said.
Tamboura tried to savor these memories as he buried his friend. He had to charge the funeral and burial fees to a credit card but didn’t have enough for a tombstone, so he started a GoFundMe campaign to help the Garcia family cover the costs. Any leftover funds will be donated to Garcia’s 17-year-old daughter, Carmen.
CALIFORNIA INMATES
Nate Gartell, Bay Area News Group
MARTINEZ — A man who prosecutors say kidnapped women at gunpoint, forced them into prostitution and shaved their heads and raped them as a form of punishment was sentenced to 287 years to life in prison.
Derrick Harper, who was convicted of conspiracy, human trafficking, and several other offenses in one case — and murdering a man in another — was sent to San Quentin prison last month. The way the sentence is written, Harper will be eligible for parole after he serves 287 years in prison.
Harper, 39, was originally charged in 2013 for his involvement in what prosecutors described as the worst human trafficking case in Pittsburg’s history. His co-defendants, Eric Beman and Roy Gordon, have accepted plea deals, but haven’t yet been sentenced. Beman is looking at a maximum of 32 years, and Gordon could get a sentence similar to Harper’s, as he is a three-strikes defendant, records show.
Earlier this year, a jury convicted Harper in the human trafficking case. Then, in August, he was convicted of a special circumstances murder and robbery, in the killing of 35-year-old Jesse Saucedo. Jurors hung on similar charges against his co-defendant in that case, Joseph Bradshaw, leaning heavily toward acquittal. Prosecutors have moved to re-try Bradshaw.
Senior deputy district attorney Mary Knox praised the women who testified against Harper, many former sex workers, about the “sadistic depravity” they’d witnessed firsthand. She said Pittsburg police deserve credit too, for making human trafficking investigations a priority.
“These women were determined not to continue to be victimized and deserve to be commended for their strength and bravery in coming forward,” Knox said, adding they helped Harper’s “reign of terror” in Contra Costa to an end.
Nate Gartell, East Bay Times
SAN QUENTIN — A condemned murderer who was one of just 16 inmates on California’s Death Row to have exhausted his appeals died of unknown causes, prison officials have announced .
San Quentin officials are investigating the death of Fernando Belmontes, 56, but say there was no obvious cause. More details about his death earlier this month have not been released.
Belmontes was sentenced to die at 20 years old, a year after he murdered 19-year-old Steacy McConnell during a 1981 burglary. It started when he and two others broke into McConnell’s home in San Joaquin County, just east of Lodi.
Belmontes, who was living in a halfway house at the time, bludgeoned McConnel 15-20 times with an iron dumbell, crushing her skull. In 1979, he had been convicted of being an accessory in a voluntary manslaughter, and he attacked his pregnant girlfriend months before the murder.
California has executed only 13 death row inmates since 1978, including the controversial 2005 execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, a Crips gang dropout convicted of a double-murder who’d written books to steer youth away from gang life. The most recent execution was in 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen was executed for organizing three murders while serving a life sentence for another murder conviction. Allen Spent 23 years on Death Row.
By contrast, 71 condemned inmates have died from natural causes, and 25 have committed suicide since 1978. In November, voters rejected a measure to overturn the death penalty, and passed a measure designed to streamline the execution process.
Belmontes’ death sentence was overturned in 2003, then reinstated in 2006. Belmontes lost his final attempt at a commuted sentence in 2010. Prison officials say they are conducting an autopsy to determine how Belmontes died.
Nate Gartell, Bay Area News Group
VACAVILLE — A California inmate who was serving a life sentence for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 21-year-old Chabot College student died of natural causes this week, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Inmate James Reece, 73, who dodged a death sentence when he appealed his 1976 murder conviction, died Tuesday in a hospital nearby Vacaville’s California Medical Facility, where he had been serving his sentence.
Reece, who was also referred to as “James Riece” in media reports, was tried and convicted in May 1976 of murdering Hayward resident Debra Ann Rebiejo. The day after the murder, he drove to Woodland in Rebiejo’s car, raped a wig store clerk, and shot her in the back of the neck, but she survived.
Rebiejo was reported missing on Sept. 16, 1975, when she did not return home from an evening class at Chabot College. The next day, her body was found in a drainage ditch near a tomato field. She’d been shot five times in the back of the head, authorities said.
Authorities arrested him the next day. His case received national attention when it was revealed less than two months before, he’d been paroled while serving a life sentence for first degree robbery and escape from county jail. Rebiejo’s family made public calls for a restructuring of California’s parole system in the wake of that revelation.
Reece was initially sentenced to death for murdering Rebiejo, but he was re-sentenced to seven years to life by an appeals court in 1978. He had been denied parole 12 times since, according to prison officials.
CALIFORNIA PAROLE
ABC7
DUARTE, Calif. (KABC) -- A suspect wanted in connection with a shooting in Pasadena has died following an officer-involved shooting in Duarte on Friday, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials say.
The suspect, described as a 28-year-old armed parolee, engaged in a shootout with officers shortly after 1 p.m. at Encanto Park in the 700 block of Encanto Parkway, LASD-Homicide Bureau officials said.
Detectives said a U.S. Marshals Task Force, which included the Pasadena Police Department, Glendale Police Department and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation personnel, were actively searching for the suspect when they found him sitting in a car with a woman.
Possible undercover units appeared to have trapped the suspect's car in a parking lot before the officer-involved shooting occurred. The suspect vehicle's back window was seen shattered, apparently from the gunfire.
The suspect was shot at least once and airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he later died, officials said. The 36-year-old woman was also struck but is expected to survive, officials said. She was in possession of narcotics and arrested for the charge.
Four officers were involved in the shooting: one from California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, two from the Pasadena Police Department and one from the Glendale Police Department, according to a press release from the LASD. One of the officers was treated for minor injuries.
Officials said the unidentified suspect was wanted for attempted murder in connection with a shooting that occurred Thursday night in Pasadena.
Encanto Parkway was temporarily closed between Royal Oaks and Huntington drives as officials investigated the scene.
LASD-Homicide Bureau officials were assisting Pasadena police in the investigation.
Mt. Shasta News
The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office reported that a Dunsmuir man was arrested and charged with felony burglary after two cash registers and approximately $2,100 in cash were stolen from Yaks restaurant in Dunsmuir after closing time Monday night, Oct. 2.
Sheriff Jon Lopey, in a news release, described the investigation that led to the arrest of Lamont Darnell Brown, Jr., age 25, as “brief but intense.”
The Sheriff’s Office reported the following information in its news release:
On Oct. 3 at about 7:40 a.m., Deputy Mike Burns responded to a call of a burglary at Yaks Restaurant, located on the 4900 block of Dunsmuir Ave. Evidence at the scene and statements from restaurant employees indicated an unknown suspect entered the business after closing time and absconded with two cash registers and approximately $2,100 in cash.
Investigative follow-up conducted by Deputies Burns, Kubowitz, and Whetstine located a “person of interest” in the case, later identified as Lamont Darnell Brown, Jr., 25 years-old, of Dunsmuir. Brown was located at a residence on the 4300 block of Branstetter Street in Dunsmuir. Evidence of the crime was also located behind the Dunsmuir Community Health Clinic, including a tray that was suspected to have been attached to one of the stolen cash registers. $40-worth of coins were also located at the scene. Later, one of the cash registers was also recovered at another location. A questioning of Mr. Brown and recovery of evidence at his location, including $1,538.55 in cash, led to his arrest for the burglary.
Assistance was also received from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Parole Office.
Brown was arrested for felony burglary and transported to the Siskiyou County Jail for booking. He was later placed on a CDCR parole hold.
“This was a good piece of police work on the part of all involved deputies,” Sheriff Lopey states in the release. “Our business owners work hard to earn a living and I am grateful these fine deputies worked diligently to solve this case in such an expeditious and proficient manner. I would also like to thank the citizen-witnesses and CDCR parole agents who contributed to the favorable outcome of this felony investigation. There is still work to be done on this case and anyone with information about this crime is urged to contact the SCSO’s 24-hour Dispatch Center at (530) 841-2900.”
CORRECTIONS RELATED
Elizabeth Larson, Lake County News
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Firefighters are working to contain a wildland fire in a remote area northeast of Clearlake Oaks.
The Ridge fire is located in the 18000 block of Bartlett Springs Road, just west of Indian Valley Reservoir, according to Cal Fire.
The fire, first reported just before 2 p.m. Friday, was reported to be 85 acres with zero containment shortly before 5:30 p.m., Cal Fire said.
No structures have been damaged or destroyed, and no evacuations or road closures are in effect, Cal Fire said.
Cal Fire said the fire is burning at a moderate rate of spread in grassy oak woodland and steep terrain with difficult access.
Resources assigned to the incident early Friday evening included 155 personnel, 15 engines, five air tankers, five fire crews, four bulldozers, four helicopters, three water tenders and three overhead personnel, Cal Fire reported.
Cooperating agencies include the Bureau of Land Management, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Indian Valley Fire Department, Northshore Fire, South Lake County Fire, Williams Fire and the US Forest Service, according to Cal Fire’s report.
Cal Fire said the fire’s cause is under investigation.