2000 The year in review

June 1-14: Community gasps at the fatal beating of teen

June 1

LITTLEROCK - School officials said the three athletes involved in the fatal beating of Christopher O'Leary did not have a history of violent activity on the campus. Littlerock High School students Richard Newton, Marcus Raines and Rodney Woods, all 17, face charges of homicide and assault in connection with their alleged participation in an attack on O'Leary at a party on the weekend of May 19 and 20.

June 2

A member of one of the Valley's prominent pioneer families died Thursday.

Mary Godde, wife of Francis Godde, succumbed at her home.

Her husband preceded her in death on Dec. 3, 1999, at the age of 87.

June 3

LANCASTER - Los Angeles County firefighters discovered the body of a 70-year-old man inside a Lancaster condominium that burned Friday evening.

The fire damaged the living room, bedroom, kitchen and garage of the single-story condominium in the 2900 block of West Avenue J-4, according to Capt. Don Kanallakan of Fire Station 130 in Lancaster. Firefighters stopped the blaze before it could reach an adjoining two-story unit.

SACRAMENTO - Efforts to include $12 million in the state budget for the Lancaster Veterans Home were crushed late Friday.

The funding was placed in the 2000-01 state budget by Assemblyman George Runner, R-Lancaster, but was voted down Friday by the Budget Conference Committee.

Runner is one of six legislators on that committee.

The committee vote was 4-2 against including the funding, with all four Democrats voting no. Gov. Gray Davis also had indicated he won't support the expenditure.

June 4

LANCASTER - Information supplied by Jill Harris, ousted executive director of the Antelope Valley High Schools Education Foundation, showed she raised at least $7,036,660 in grant funding for organizational efforts between February 1997 and November 1999.

Of that sum, about 54% was earmarked for the AV Union High School District, about 15% for the foundation's operations and expenses, and about 31% for local agencies or groups - some with programs related only marginally to high school education.

June 5

PALMDALE - Palmdale School District's highly touted remedial center for at-risk students will cost more than double the publicly stated $3.6 million price and has become a source of friction between officials and two trustees who are opposed to the project.

Calling it an attempt to turn an "albatross into a swan," board members Fred Thompson and Sheldon Epstein contend that the money for the Pueblo Learning Center at 47th Street East and Avenue S could have been better spent to build a full-sized school - that could have included 30 classrooms, fenced-in fields, a full cafeteria, multi-purpose room, computer lab and library, they say.

June 6

PALMDALE - Matt Harrington, surrounded by parents, friends, classmates, former teammates and his Palmdale High School baseball coach, got the news just as he headed toward geometry class.

As of 10:32 Monday morning, Harrington traded his Palmdale High baseball cap for one with a Colorado Rockies logo.

LANCASTER - A Utah mother had a tearful and longawaited reunion Monday with her two daughters, who were allegedly kidnapped by their father six months ago. Phyllis Jayne Shaughnessy was reunited with her girls, ages 12 and 8, after two sharp-eyed Lancaster Sheriff's Station patrol deputies remembered the photograph they saw in an FBI alert about a federal fugitive.

June 7

VAN NUYS - Guilty.

That was the verdict delivered by a jury in the second trial of Michael and Kathleen Gentry, accused of causing the 1996 starving death of their 15-year-old daughter, Lindsay.

June 8

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A federal ruling ordering the breakup of software giant Microsoft is good news for consumers, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Wednesday.

California is among 19 states taking part in an antitrust lawsuit against the software giant. A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Microsoft must be broken into two companies.

June 9

SYLMAR - The trio of Littlerock High athletes charged in the beating death of Christopher O'Leary were charged in a second, related assault Thursday, and a fourth teen was arrested for his role in that second assault.

Rodney Woods, Richard Newton and Marcus Raines, all 17, are charged with murder and assault in the May 19-20 beating of O'Leary.

O'Leary's death occurred following an unsupervised party attended by about 100 young people, in which there were at least three eruptions of violence during the course of the night.

June 10

LANCASTER - The board of the Antelope Valley High Schools Education Foundation on Friday blamed ousted executive director Jill Harris as the cause of the group's financial tangle. Speaking at a news conference, Tom Ward, president of the volunteer foundation, said the group has largely put its house in financial order, and eventually will hire a new executive director.

June 11

LITTLEROCK - More than 200 worshipers turned out Saturday night to lend prayer and sympathy to the family of Christopher O'Leary and to raise funds for the legal defense of the Littlerock High School athletes charged in his killing. The churchgoers gathered at First Missionary Baptist Church agreed in unison that they did not turn out to assume the guilt or innocence of the youths charged in the killing of O'Leary, an 18-year-old Palmdale nature enthusiast who died from injuries inflicted during an unsupervised party.

June 12

LANCASTER - Sheriff's deputies from the Lancaster Sheriff's Station spent Sunday fishing on the aqueduct - fishing for illegal trash dumpers, that is. The result, however, was that the illegal dumpers - and the fish - didn't want to be caught.

Deputies spent 12 hours Sunday on the shores of the aqueduct posing as fishermen and keeping an eye on the desert.

June 13

SACRAMENTO - The Legislature's Democratic leaders say they will try to pass a $99 billion state budget on time for the first time in 14 years, but they may not have the Republican votes to do it.

"To me, 99.99% of the work has been done and now, as in any deal, there are a couple of remaining points," Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg said Monday. "We will try to close them."

A two-house conference committee approved a budget bill late Sunday night, clearing the way for votes on the spending plan on Thursday in the both Senate and Assembly.

June 14

SYLMAR - A string of long, and sometimes arduous court hearings began Tuesday for three Littlerock High School athletes accused of murdering 18-year-old Christopher O'Leary at a May party in Palmdale.

On Tuesday in Sylmar Juvenile Court, defense attorneys agreed to a hearing to determine whether the teen-agers should be tried as adults.

The defense complained about delays in receiving key investigative documents from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

PALMDALE - The Fort Worth, Texas-based president of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. is saying that he wants the Skunk Works to thrive again as a cutting-edge research and development outfit, and he's promoted some Palmdale men to make it happen. Lockheed Martin President Dain Hancock told the Valley Press on Tuesday that Richard Baker, former vice president of Combat Weapons System Programs, will be the new vice president and site general manager in Palmdale.

Uploaded December 26, 2000