Tag: California
Attorney allegedly used ‘shoe camera’ to look up girl’s dress at Apple store
A 66-year-old licensed Bay Area lawyer was arrested Sunday after he allegedly taped a camera to his shoe and then “moved his shoe so that the camera was under a female juvenile’s dress” at an Apple Store in Walnut Creek, Calif., police said.
Jacques Bloxham, who is a personal injury attorney, was reportedly confronted by the girl’s father and fled the store. Officers said they found various cameras and recording devices in the suspect’s car in addition to the one attached to his shoe.
Bloxham was arrested around 3 p.m. and booked into Contra Costa County Jail on suspicion of using a camera to secretly record the undergarments of another person, along with annoying or molesting a child under 18, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. He later posted bail.
Police are investigating whether Bloxham recorded others and urge anyone with information to call the Walnut Creek Police Department.
Bloxham was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1986. He founded the Injury Law Center “in response to the public’s need for a personal injury attorney with honesty, integrity and a new understanding of the needs of injured clients,” according to his Yelp business profile.
Mom allegedly had sex with both her daughters’ teen boyfriends
A California mom may serve time after she had sex with both of her own daughters’ boyfriends — who were each high school freshmen when she stole them away from the girls, officials said.
Coral Lytle, of Tulare, pleaded guilty in March to 21 sex-related charges including unlawful sexual intercourse, oral copulation and contacting a minor for sex, news station KFSN reported.
But a disagreement over the 41-year-old mom’s sentencing Monday has caused a delay in the case and could now allow her to withdraw the plea, according to KFSN.
Lytle was accused of having sex on multiple occasions with the two Redwood High School students between September and October 2017.
Prosecutors said the mom provided alcohol and cigars to the underage boys, and would drive from her home to them for the raunchy rendezvous.
“The crimes in this case committed by the defendant involved great cruelty and callousness especially considering the defendant took advantage of a position of trust to molest two boys who she met when they (were in) teenage dating relationships with the defendant’s daughters,” prosecutors wrote in recent filings.
Authorities were initially notified when one of teen boys reported the “inappropriate relationship” with Lytle.
“[The victim] stated this was the last time he had sex with [Lytle] because he felt bad shaking [Lytle’s] husband’s hand knowing what he was doing with [Lytle],” prosecutors said.
Lytle appeared in court Monday, where the initial plea agreements collapsed as multiple judges disagreed over her sentence.
A judge indicated at a hearing in early March that she would likely be sentenced to three years in prison, but then a different judge who oversaw her enter the plea last month said he would offer her one year in county jail with a suspended six-year sentence.
Then a third judge said Monday he didn’t believe the sentence was appropriate and set another hearing for the following week.
The new hearing will enable the mom to withdraw her plea, prosecutors said.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/17/mom-allegedly-had-sex-with-both-her-daughters-teen-boyfriends/
Woman arrested after elderly dad found living with hundreds of rats
CALIFORNIA — A Southern California woman is in custody after deputies discovered her 96-year-old father and multiple pets living in a home stinking of feces and infested with up to 700 rats, authorities said Tuesday.
Catherine Ann Vandermaesen, 65, was arrested on suspicion of felony elder abuse and misdemeanor animal neglect, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. She was in custody and couldn’t be reached for comment.
Vandermaesen didn’t want to allow deputies inside the home during a welfare check last Wednesday in Ojai, a small city in a rural valley northwest of Los Angeles, the statement said.
A sheriff’s task force returned the next day and encountered multiple pets and urine and feces throughout the residence, authorities said.
The home was also filled with garbage, according to the release.
Eight dogs, two rabbits, a cat, a parrot and 55 pet rats were removed. Animal Control estimated the house was infested with another 200 to 700 rats.
Vandermaesen’s elderly father and her 74-year-old sister, whom deputies described as a “possible victim,” were taken by ambulance to a hospital. Their conditions were unknown.
County welfare authorities assumed custody of Vandermaesen’s father, who uses a wheelchair.
Officials also helped the sister get temporary housing services.
Vandermaesen had “willfully caused or permitted the health of her elderly father to suffer” by allowing him to live at the home, officials said.
The city declared the home “unlivable and a danger to the occupants and animals.”
via: https://nypost.com/2019/03/20/woman-arrested-after-elderly-dad-found-living-with-hundreds-of-rats/
California’s most famous butterfly nearing death spiral
An alarming, precipitous drop in the western monarch butterfly population in California this winter could spell doom for the species, a scenario that biologists say could also plunge bug-eating birds and other species into similar death spirals.
Only 28,429 of the striking orange-and-black butterflies were counted at 213 sites in California, an 86 percent drop from a year ago, according to the final tally of the annual Thanksgiving and New Year’s counts released Thursday by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
That’s a 99.4 percent decline since the 1980s, an all-time low for the Pacific Coast, where an estimated 10 million monarchs once blanketed trees from Marin County to the Baja California peninsula, providing, by all accounts, a spectacular winter display of color.
Scientists knew things were bad for the western monarch, but then “there was this other order of magnitude drop,” said Emma Pelton, a conservation biologist for the Xerces Society, an international nonprofit whose mission is to protect invertebrates and their habitats. “It’s mind-boggling. We’re now down below 1 percent of the historic population.”
The death of monarchs does not bode well for other insects, like bees, or bird species that make their living eating insects.
Monarchs in trouble
Western monarch butterflies spend the winter in more than 300 forested groves along the California coast, including large populations in Riverside and Los Angeles counties, Pacific Grove, Monterey and at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz. They can normally be seen from November to March.
With the number of butterflies declining rapidly, here are four things governments and the public can do to help:
Protect and manage California overwintering sites.
Restore breeding and migratory habitat in California, particularly habitat along the coast range, foothills and Sacramento Valley.
Stop spraying pesticides and herbicides near milkweed, their primary habitat.
Protect, manage, and restore summer breeding and fall migration habitat outside of California.
“It is very apt to say this is a canary in a coal mine for a lot of our native pollinators,” Pelton said. “There’s a tight link in a loss of insects and our songbirds, which rely on insects. We have declines in songbirds, and I think that links directly to declines in insects.”
The die-off has been blamed on a variety of things, including urban sprawl, the spraying of pesticides and herbicides on corn and soybean crops, and the plowing under of the monarch’s milkweed habitat along their migratory route.
A University of Michigan experiment published in July found that higher carbon dioxide levels have reduced a natural toxin in milkweed that feeding monarch caterpillars utilize to fight off parasites. The study showed a 77 percent reduction in parasite tolerance in the butterflies hatched on milkweed grown under high concentrations of carbon dioxide, which comes from car and factory emissions and is what scientists say is the primary cause of climate change.
If nothing is done, Pelton said, the California butterflies, first observed by a Russian expedition looking for a passage across the Arctic Ocean in 1816, could be on an “extinction vortex,” a time when there are not enough butterflies left to recover.
Nobody knows how low the monarch population can go before it’s too late, but a 2017 study funded by The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and published in the journal Biological Conservation calculated that the point of no return would likely come when there are fewer than 30,000 butterflies.
The more abundant eastern monarchs, which spend their winters in Mexico instead of California, are famous because they cover whole sections of forest in a kaleidoscope of color. It is the largest insect migration in the world, but it too is in trouble. The eastern monarchs have declined more than 90 percent since 1996, when scientists estimated there were 1 billion nesting in the trees.
The journeys of both populations are remarkable in that it takes several generations of butterflies to make the six- to nine-month-long trek south for the winter. When they head back, starting in February or March, the mothers will die after laying eggs on milkweed, where the caterpillars grow up. Once they are ready to fly, the young butterflies somehow know where to go, without ever having even seen their mothers.
The California population is declining at an average of 7 percent a year, according to the 2017 Fish and Wildlife study. At the time, there were about 300,000 monarchs in California. That’s slightly worse than the 6 percent drop seen in the eastern monarch population.
“If this prediction is true, we are now below the quasi-extinction threshold,” Pelton said. “This is a crisis.”
There are two major migrations of monarch butterflies — the eastern and western populations — which scientists believe divide themselves at the Rocky Mountains when they head south for the winter from their summer homes in Canada and the Pacific Northwest.
In all, monarch populations in North America have plunged more than 95 percent since the 1980s, researchers have said.
Article via SFChronicle
Robin Thicke and girlfriend lose home to California fires
Robin Thicke and girlfriend April Love Geary have lost their Malibu home as a result of the California wildfires. Taking to Instagram on Saturday, Geary, 23, posted a photo of what remains to be their front gate.
“Our house is gone,” the model shared to her story.
Both Geary and Thicke, 41, who are expecting their second child together, have been keeping fans up to date as fires continue to ravage California. On Friday, the singer revealed he and his family had been ordered to evacuate.
“Family is safe! Praying for everyone out here!” Thicke shared on social media.
“I’m so sad but so thankful that we all made it out safe,” Geary penned. “Praying for everyone in Malibu, our city is up in flames ?.”
Geary and Thicke are among a number of celebrities who have been affected by the wildfires, including Kim Kardashian, Martin Sheen and Caitlyn Jenner. As of Saturday, the death toll had risen to 25.
A rep for Thicke didn’t immediately return our request for comment.
Autistic teen’s body found in feces-filled room in parents’ house
A “severely autistic” woman weighed 45 pounds when her body was found locked in a feces-filled room in Southern California around seven months ago, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Authorities found the body of Kaylina Anderson, 18, on March 10 in a home in Mesa Verde in the most southeastern part of California, near the Arizona border.
Her stepfather, Steven Williams, 40, and mother, Jill Williams, 36, were both charged with murder, the Desert Sun of Palm Springs reported.
Anderson’s body was found in a room containing only an air mattress with “feces found everywhere,” Lisa DiMaria, a Riverside County deputy district attorney, told the paper.
“It appears she was confined to the room 24 hours a day,” DiMaria said.
Her parents were arrested March 14 and were being held on $1 million bail each at the Riverside County Jail, Palm Springs’ KESQ-TV reported.
The couple was also charged with abuse of a dependent adult and child endangerment, Palm Springs’ KMIR-TV reported.
Investigators said in March that the victim suffered “severe mental disabilities requiring her to have full-time care and supervision,” the Desert Sun reported.
“Due to her diminished physical appearance and substandard living conditions, investigators from the Blythe Station and the sheriff’s Central Homicide Unit responded to the scene and assumed the investigation,” the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office told KMIR.
Three boys no older than 6 also lived at the home, the report said. They were placed into the custody of Riverside County Child Protective Services.
DiMaria said the boys did not have any visible bruises or injuries, according to the paper.
A GoFundMe campaign called “Justice for Kaylina Anderson” was set up in her memory to lay her to rest.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/09/27/autistic-teens-body-found-in-feces-filled-room-in-parents-house/
Teen busted for breaking into home for Wi-Fi
A California teen broke into a home through an open window this week — to ask residents if he could use their Wi-Fi, cops said.
The Palo Alto couple in their 60s woke up around 12:30 a.m. Sunday to see the stranger standing in their bedroom, police said.
Instead of ransacking the joint, the intruder, a 17-year-old boy wearing a T-shirt around his face, asked the couple if he could hop on their Wi-Fi network, cops said.
But the homeowner threw up a firewall — bolting out of bed, and pushing the wannabe web-crawler outside.
Cops quickly arrested the teen, whose name wasn’t released because he’s a juvenile, and charged him residential burglary, a felony, as well as prowling and providing false information to an officer — both misdemeanors, authorities said.
The teen’s networking may have been a ruse — the couple reported that two kitchen knives were missing from a drawer.
Meanwhile, police said it wasn’t the teen’s only Wi-Fi request of the night.
About 45 minutes earlier, a Palo Alto woman in her 20s spotted the teen outside her bedroom window, standing in the yard and motioning that he wanted to talk to her.
When she approached, he asked for permission to use her network because he was out of data.
She refused and he sped off on a bicycle — which police believe may have been stolen.
He may face an additional misdemeanor petty theft charge.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/07/27/teen-busted-for-breaking-into-home-for-wi-fi/
High school soccer coach accused of pimping teen girls
A high school soccer coach who also worked as a rideshare driver was arrested for human trafficking after a 17-year-old girl called police and said she was being sold for sex, authorities in California said.
Elan Daniel Seagraves, 34, of Sacramento, was arrested on Christmas Day after the teen contacted the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department and said she was sexually assaulted and being forced into human trafficking, sheriff officials said in a news release.
The girl told deputies she was hiding in the back yard of a home in south Sacramento at the time and that the man responsible for forcing her into performing sex acts for money was waiting for her in a nearby vehicle, sheriff officials said.
Responding deputies then found Seagraves in a car with another girl who was also 17. Both girls were victims of human trafficking, authorities said.
Investigators learned that Seagraves had worked as the boys’ soccer coach at Kennedy High School in Sacramento, as well as a coach and referee for various local youth soccer leagues. He also worked as a driver for both Uber and Lyft, according to sheriff officials.
Seagraves, who was arrested on charges related to human trafficking and pimping of a minor, remained held on $2 million bail as of Monday, jail records show. He’s scheduled to return to court Thursday, the Sacramento Bee reports.
There’s no indication that the allegations are connected to Seagraves’ role as a soccer coach or driver, but authorities want to talk to anyone who had interactions with him, KTXL reports.
“It’s absolutely 100 percent alarming,” Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Shaun Hampton told the station. “We want to encourage, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of any other things they may be involved in, it’s important to come forward.”
School district officials, meanwhile, said they were disappointed in Seagraves’ “unacceptable” behavior.
“While he passed a background check and had no prior offenses when we hired him to coach soccer in our district, we expect more appropriate behavior from someone we trusted to work with our kids,” according to a statement released by the Sacramento City Unified School District. “Mr. Seagraves will no longer be allowed to work with our kids in any capacity.”
Seagraves also holds a teaching credential and has worked in the past as a substitute teacher and an instructional aide, according to the Sacramento Bee, citing a government watchdog group called Transparent California.
An Uber official also confirmed that Seagraves had worked as a driver and passed a background check in accordance with state law. He has since been removed from the rideshare service, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Seagraves’ Lyft account has also been “immediately disabled,” according to company officials.
“These allegations are incredibly disturbing,” Lyft officials told the newspaper in a statement. “Our concern is with the victims, and we stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way that we can.”
Anyone with information regarding Seagraves is asked to contact Sacramento County sheriff’s officials at (916) 874-8002.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/01/01/high-school-soccer-coach-accused-of-pimping-teen-girls/
11-year-old getaway driver busted with 10 teens in violent crime spree
A group of 11 juveniles, including a suspected 11-year-old getaway driver, were arrested after three high-speed pursuits stemming from a series of violent robberies, carjackings and burglaries in California, police said.
San Jose police announced Wednesday that the male and female suspects — ranging in age from 11 to 17 years old — were booked into Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall on charges of armed robbery, carjacking, possession of a stolen vehicle, reckless driving and resisting arrest.
The suspects are accused of committing more than a dozen robberies, carjackings and burglaries, including some at gunpoint, over the weekend in San Jose. The alleged spree started at 11 p.m. Friday, when a woman was carjacked, and continued for the next six hours, the Mercury News reports.
At least 15 victims have been identified, according to the newspaper, and investigators believe there may be others who have yet to contact police.
“I have a lot of concern about the rise of juvenile crime in the city, and the violent crime that has been occurring,” San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia told the newspaper. “We’re not talking about graffiti or knocking down garbage cans or having loud parties. These are adult crimes. These are not kids crimes.”
Investigators are still working to piece the alleged crime spree together. The suspected drivers in the high-speed pursuits with cops were ages 11, 14 and 17, police said.
The rash of crime marked the second high-profile arrest of a group of teens in San Jose in as many months, according to the newspaper. Police in October arrested an 18-year-old man along with four minors after a 12-hour crime spree that allegedly included a homeowner shot during a botched burglary, several home invasions and a carjacking.
“This is happening almost every other week,” Lt. Paul Joseph told the newspaper. “It’s different groups and different kids each time. Another group springs up as soon as we arrest the last group.”
Real Housewives of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes clapped back at a heckler – stating she hopes her Uber driver rapes her.
“Real Housewives of Atlanta” star NeNe Leakes clapped back at a heckler during a stand-up comedy show at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, wishing sexual assault upon the woman in question. Now some fans are saying she crossed the line.
“I ain’t even gonna tell you about the goddamn Uber driver. I hope he rape yo’ a-tonight when he take you home, b—h,” Leakes retorted. “And steal yo’ funky Hello Kitty, b—h.”
It’s unclear what the heckler said to Leakes to prompt her outrage. A Facebook user who shared video from the incident stated that the woman in question may have been booing Leakes’ performance.
The reality star, who returned to Bravo after three seasons away from “Real Housewives,”issued an apology on Facebook. She claimed that she didn’t intend for her words to “cut deep.”
“I truly regret and apologize for what I said from the stage in Oakland over the weekend. Sometimes words can cut deep and hurt when you have no intentions of them doing so,” she wrote.
“As a woman and someone who has survived abuse, I regret the words that I used. I made a mistake and I should have known better. I hope people accept my deepest and sincerest apologies. I am sorry.”
This isn’t the first time loose lips have gotten Leakes into trouble in recent weeks. The 49-year-old recently found herself in the midst of an ugly, public feud with “Real Housewives of Atlanta” co-star Kim Zolciak and her 20-year-old daughter, Brielle Biermann.On October 6, after a Snapchat video shot by Biermann featuring what appeared to be a cockroach in Leakes’ house surfaced, the former “The New Normal” star responded in an expletive-filled Instagram rant.
“We don’t have roaches! If you found 1, u brought it with u or it fell outta yo funky p—y!” she said, calling Biermann and her mother “racist trash.”
The post has since been deleted.
Zolciak wasted no time responding, stating that it was “so sad and offensive” that Leakes would “stoop so low.”
“Everyone in my life knows that I am far from racist and unfortunately NeNe Leakes has tried for the last 10 years to paint that picture because that’s her last resort. (It’s convenient that I’m not racist when we are getting along.)” she wrote.
The Daily News reached out to Leakes’ representation for comment, but did not hear back.