Judge: Former councilman to face molestation trial

March 1

MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich. - In a school shooting made especially disturbing by the age of the youngsters, a 6-yearold boy pulled a gun from his pants and shot a little girl to death in their first-grade classroom Tuesday in front of their horrified teacher and classmates.

March 2

LOS ANGELES - Ex-Palmdale Councilman Kevin Carney must stand trial on all 18 child-sex charges filed against him, a judge ruled Wednesday at the former sheriff's sergeant's preliminary hearing. It took the prosecution only three hours to present enough evidence to demonstrate to a judge's satisfaction that a full trial is warranted.

March 3

LANCASTER - A Lancaster High School cheerleader dropped her books to defend herself when confronted by an angry classmate and her mother, who slipped onto the campus Tuesday. Accounts vary as to who landed the first slap in the altercation on the Lancaster High campus, but deputies from the Lancaster Sheriff's Station detained the two 14-year-old girls involved and arrested the mother of one of the girls, 37-year-old Julia Arburtha.

March 4

LANCASTER - The election game for two Valley judicial seats got down and dirty in the week before the election, with some contenders hurling charges and counter-charges about alcohol consumption and truth-bending. In the race for Office No. 2, candidate Bill Clark, a Lancaster attorney, is denouncing comments reportedly made by incumbent Judge Pamela Rogers about Clark's alleged drinking habits - comments Clark says are untrue and Rogers asserts she never made.

March 5

California's gay community is insulted by Proposition 22, and not just because it's going to keep them from marrying their partners. It's the undertone they feel from the language of the initiative's supporters. Verbs like "protect" and "defend" are used to justify the ballot measure.

March 6

PALMDALE - Voters could turn out in record numbers for Tuesday's California primary election. But several thousand voters who applied for absentee ballots may not get them in time for the election because of mail delivery problems.

March 7

ACTON - Kids and parents have a sixth sense about snow days. That sense was tuned in to Old Man Winter on Sunday night when thousands of people in the upper-elevation towns of Acton, Agua Dulce, Lake Hughes and Elizabeth Lake hoped freezing temperatures and wet weather arriving from the west would ice up the roads.

That's exactly what happened, and school superintendents followed suit in Acton and Lake Hughes, calling off school Monday.

March 8

LANCASTER - Incumbent Judge Pamela Rogers and Deputy District Attorney Chris Estes were leading their races for two judicial seats at Antelope Municipal Court, based on early returns. Rogers left the gate with a commanding lead, attracting nearly 47% more ballots from absentee voters than her nearest competitor.

March 9

LANCASTER - One of the oldest continually operating feed stores in the Valley became the first such store in the state to be busted under a new law aimed at restricting the sale of chemicals used to manufacture the illegal drug methamphetamine.

Robert "Bob" Granicy, 64, and Armitta "Mim" Granicy, 59, own and operate Granicy's Valley Wide Feed Store on a ranch at 43040 20th St. East - the fifth generation of Granicys to live on the ranch.

PALMDALE - Palmdale school district trustees have rejected a $10 million wrongful-death claim filed by Mary Corson, the mother of 13-year-old Juniper Intermediate School student Stephan Corson, who died from injuries suffered during a November fistfight on campus.

March 10

PALMDALE - Slightly more than halfway through her first term in office, councilwoman Shelley Sorsabal was notified Wednesday that she is the target of a recall campaign.

March 11

LITTLEROCK - Some folks in Littlerock don't want any part of plans to expand the road that runs through their town. And they aren't a bit shy about letting the state know how they feel. State Route 138, which bisects the town, is to be expanded from two to four lanes, and some Littlerock residents fear their slow-paced rural ambience will be shattered by fastpaced driving.

March 12

LANCASTER - Thousands of resumes and business cards were swapped Saturday at the Aerotech Expo Job Fair as the nation's talent-hungry aerospace firms feasted on the Antelope Valley's human resources.

March 13

PALMDALE - Los Angeles County Sheriff's homicide detectives are still looking for clues in three separate brutal killings that have happened in the Antelope Valley since Jan. 1. The families of two of the slain, Timothy Navarro and Michelle O'Keefe, have posted rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers.

March 14

KISSIMMEE, Fla. - Eric Cole and Mike Rose stared at each other in shock - tape over their mouths and zip ties binding their ankles and wrists. Cole, an Antelope Valley High School and Antelope Valley College graduate, and Rose were among six Houston Astros minor league baseball players held at gunpoint by two masked robbers who invaded their Kissimmee, Fla., second-floor hotel room Sunday night.

March 15

LANCASTER - A Palmdale High School athlete, Cory Hodge, 16, whom a judge found to be on his best behavior, will be swinging his bat for the Falcons on Friday despite allegations that he aimed his car like a weapon at a Highland High coach.

March 16

EDWARDS AFB - The new stealth jet flew in from Georgia without fanfare. With Lt. Col. Bill Craig at the controls, it glided toward Runway 22 over a soggy Rogers dry lake, landed and taxied to a hangar where it joined the world's other two flyable F-22 Raptors.

March 17

PALMDALE - A federal aviation bill awaiting the signature of President Bill Clinton "is a huge, huge step" toward the development of Palmdale Regional Airport, former City Councilman David Myers said. The bill, the Air Transportation Improvement Act, was approved Wednesday by the House of Representatives after this past week's passage by the U.S. Senate.

PALMDALE - The meter was running on Crystal Angelica Stahl's life. Stahl was just beginning to turn around her rollercoaster life when her former underage lover allegedly burned her to death inside her taxicab.

March 18

LAKE ELIZABETH - A 10year-old Lake Elizabeth girl apparently saved her younger sister from the hands of a would-be kidnapper Wednesday afternoon. Los Angeles County Sheriff's investigators are searching for leads in the kidnapping attempt, which occurred between 4 and 4:30 p.m. near the intersection of Peekaboo Road and Sunnydale Avenue.

March 19

EDWARDS AFB - Meet the Road Hogs and the Moonlighters. They're the ones making all that helicopter noise. The 300 men and women of Marine Aircraft Group 46, Detachment B, 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, have been at Edwards Air Force Base since June 1999. They arrived from the El Toro and Tustin Marine air stations closed by reductions in the federal budget.

March 20

PALMDALE - Apparently, some folks think there's a right way and a wrong way to tip a cow. Eight people were arrested Sunday morning after a Saturday night fight over cow-tipping in Lake Elizabeth resulted in the vandalizing of a vehicle and a 17-year-old being hit with a metal object, according to deputies with the Palmdale's Sheriff's Station.

March 21

LANCASTER - Paracelsus Healthcare Corp., which operates Lancaster Community Hospital, is struggling to put its financial house in order, according to letters delivered to hospital employees. That struggle has led PHC Finance Inc., a subsidiary of the Paracelsus corporation, to voluntarily file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

March 22

PALMDALE - Lt. Col. Bob Catlin, commander of Air Force Plant 42, will swap airplanes for satellites when he leaves his post next month for a job with the National Reconnaissance Office in Washington, D.C. Catlin is leaving Palmdale to become the director of contract policy at the office, which manages the nation's highest-priority reconnaissance satellite systems.

March 23

LANCASTER - A 17-yearold Desert Winds High School student died Wednesday morning, the second fatality of a Tuesday night accident that sent a car crashing into the living room of a house on Gingham Avenue. Piedad Stone had just stepped away from her dinner table to warm a tortilla in the kitchen when the car came through the wall where her back door was.

March 24

PALMDALE - The longawaited opening of the Palmdale School District's Pueblo Learning Center is nearing. School officials and property owners near the 47th Street East and Avenue S school site are trying to hammer out a settlement about the use of the property as a school.

March 25

LANCASTER - While Antelope Valley Union High School District teachers and administrators remain at an impasse over teacher contracts, trustees have settled one bone of contention. Board members Wednesday unanimously rescinded a policy that grants lifetime medical, dental and vision benefits to trustees who serve at least three terms.

March 26

LANCASTER - Silence hung heavy over the hundreds who gathered Saturday in remembrance of Mysha R. Pierce, the 16-year-old who died last Sunday in a car crash on the Antelope Valley Freeway.

March 27

Among the mess of numbered ballot initiatives that appeared in the March 7 primary election, two of them - Propositions 12 and 16 - will have a distinct impact on the economy, appearance and even quality of life in the Antelope Valley.

March 28

PALMDALE - Classrooms at Cottonwood Elementary School will be void of students on Thursday and Friday if parents have their way. Parents of children at the school, upset about Westside Union School District teachers working without contracts for nearly two years, are planning to keep their children out of school this Thursday and Friday.

March 29

PALMDALE - The reward for the capture of Michelle O'Keefe's killer climbed to $15,000 last week and may climb to over $20,000 before the month's end.

March 30

BARSTOW - Prosecutors filed criminal charges Tuesday against a truck driver for a highway accident in which massive concrete pipes fell off his rig and killed a California family of four and a Nevada couple. Richard Sommerville, 59, was charged with six counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and two counts of operating his truck while intoxicated.

March 31

PALMDALE - Spring break came early for students in several Westside schools as parents apparently kept them home to protest the district's ongoing contract dispute with teachers. With spring intersession set to begin on Monday, 743, or nearly 12%, of the district's 6,273 students were absent - more than twice the usual number. Many of the absences apparently were because of a two-day protest by parents aimed at pressuring district administrators into giving teachers a 7% salary increase - 3.5% for the 1998-1999 school year and 3.5% for 1999-2000.