2000 The year in review

May 15-31, 2000

May 15

WASHINGTON - Somewhere among the tens of thousands of mothers marching on the nation's Capitol on Sunday was Quartz Hill resident Pat O'Keefe. O'Keefe, along with her husband, Mike, and their 12-year-old son, Jason, accompanied thousands of other families in sight of the Capitol on Sunday to demand stricter control of handguns while memorializing loved ones and strangers felled by bullets.

May 16

ANCHORAGE - Aviation legend Dick Rutan of Mojave and four other people aboard a Russian-designed biplane were stranded Monday when the plane landed at the North Pole and sank into the ice.

The others were identified as Ron Sheardown, John Pletcher and Jim Bowden of Anchorage and Jan Haugsad of Norway.

LANCASTER - Former sheriff's sergeant and Palmdale City Councilman Kevin Carney has posted bail, but the accused child molester was still awaiting release from his downtown Los Angeles jail cell early Monday evening.

Defense attorney Mike Paxton confirmed Monday that bail had been raised and posted for Carney by Saturday night.

May 17

PALMDALE - The friends and family of round-the-world Voyager pilot Dick Rutan regarded his temporarily marooned status at the North Pole as just another in the free-spirited adventurer's lifelong list of exciting escapades.

"I guess he got a little bit more than they bargained for on this trip, but in these days of (global positioning satellites) and all the technology, being stranded on the North Pole is not quite the remote thing that it once was," George Rutan said.

PALMDALE - If the Northrop Grumman High Bay building is big enough to assemble a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers, it's big enough to house the Oct. 7 Gala 2000, the Antelope Valley's swankiest fund-raiser of the year.

A Tuesday press conference staged just outside the High Bay complex, also known as Building 401, announced the Antelope Valley Hospital Gift Foundation gala's attractions. For organizers, the massive hangar is the biggest appeal of all.

May 18

PALMDALE - The business horizon in the Antelope Valley is on the verge of a boom of historic proportions, a Valley business leader said during the awarding of "Business of the Year" honors. The Palmdale and Lancaster chambers of commerce joined the Antelope Valley Board of Trade in making the honors to a half-dozen local firms that are making history of their own, according to Steve Taylor, who will become the next Board of Trade president.

May 19

LANCASTER - The former executive director of the Antelope Valley High Schools Education Foundation has been arrested in connection with allegations of money missing from the organization. Jill Harris, ousted from her $70,000-a-year post as foundation director late last year, confirmed the arrest on Wednesday, saying the arrest warrant cited an allegation of theft of more than $400.

May 20

LANCASTER - The Antelope Valley offers a kind of promised land to many, one of the last remaining areas in Southern California with affordable land for commercial and industrial development, affordable housing and a bounty of skilled workers. And like the popular Kevin Costner movie of some years back, to achieve the "Field of Dreams" scenario, some of it is going to have to be built to get the right sort of growth to come.

May 21

LANCASTER - Another Valley school board president is under fire from angry voters who are threatening recall action.

Two representatives from the OldTown Homeowners Group appeared at Wednesday's Antelope Valley Union High School District Board meeting to demand that board President Bill Olenick resign his position or face a recall.

May 22

LITTLEROCK - A 79-yearold Littlerock man is due in Antelope Valley court Tuesday to answer charges that he brutally murdered his 71-year-old wife with an ax Saturday.

Hollis Medford, who is being held at the Twin Towers Correctional facility in Los Angeles on $1 million bail, reportedly called authorities just after 4 a.m. Saturday to say he had killed his wife.

May 23

LITTLEROCK - Homicide detectives arrested two standout athletes from Littlerock High School for their alleged role in the beating of a Desert Winds High School student that left the youth clinging to life after a weekend party.

Desert Winds student Christopher O'Leary, 18, was on life support in critical condition at Northridge Hospital Medical Center Monday evening. He was attacked leaving a Friday night party shortly after midnight, according to Deputy Rick Martinez, a Sheriff's Department spokesman.

LITTLEROCK - The potentially deadly fracas that allegedly involved area athletes Marcus Raines and Richard Newton rocked the Littlerock High campus Monday. Both young men under investigation for an alleged role in the assault on Desert Winds student Christopher O'Leary are prominent members of the Lobos' football and track teams.

May 24

LITTLEROCK - Christopher O'Leary and Stacy Holzer dated for three years. They were planning to get married and live life together. When 18-year-old O'leary was attacked allegedly by Marcus Raines and Richard Newton at a Fridaynight party, O'Leary was only showing up to pick up Holzer for a date, according to Julie Homner, Holzer's mother.

PALMDALE - Two Littlerock High School star athletes face the prospect of murder charges after the Desert Winds student they allegedly beat at a Friday night party died of his injuries.

Christopher O'Leary, 18, was pronounced dead at Northridge Hospital Medical Center at half past noon Tuesday. The preliminary cause of death was attributed to "massive head injuries," said hospital spokeswoman Kate Preston. An autopsy must be conducted by the county.

LANCASTER - Jill Harris, ousted executive director of the Antelope Valley High Schools Education Foundation, pleaded innocent Tuesday to a single charge of grand theft by embezzlement.

Harris' attorney, Donald R. Wager of Century City, entered the plea on Harris' behalf before Judge William Seelicke.

May 25

MOJAVE (AP) - Eight Union Pacific freight train cars, some carrying flammable material, derailed Wednesday in a mountain pass between Tehachapi and Mojave. A train conductor who inhaled some toxic fumes was hospitalized.

This is the second derailed train this month in the Antelope Valley area. On May 11, several railroad cars - some carrying hazardous chemicals - derailed at the Mojave rail yard where it intersects with State Route 14. No one was injured.

PALMDALE - Detectives arrested a third Littlerock High School athlete in the killing of 18year-old Chris O'Leary on Wednesday, and prosecutors filed murder and assault charges against the other two, Marcus Raines and Richard Newton.

Rodney Woods, 17, was arrested late Wednesday afternoon and held for investigation of murder. He was the third standout athlete from Littlerock High to be arrested for an alleged role in the fatal beating of O'Leary at a weekend party in Palmdale.

LANCASTER - Supporters of keeping the 99¢ Only Store on Valley Central Way are not giving up without a fight - and the troops came out in force Tuesday to help get their message across.

More than 120 people - most of them employees of 99¢ Only Stores in the Los Angeles area - showed up at Tuesday's Lancaster Redevelopment Agency meeting to protest the city's plan to force the store out of the shopping center to make room for a Costco expansion.

May 26

SYLMAR - Before going into court Thursday, the parents of Richard Newton and Marcus Raines joined hands in a circle for a quiet prayer.

Newton and Raines, both 17 years old, were scheduled to be arraigned Thursday morning on murder charges stemming from the death of Desert Winds High School student Christopher O'Leary, who was 18.

PALMDALE - The first thing the parents of Christopher O'Leary wanted to get straight was that their son was 18 years old - not 19 as in early reports - and that he was a gentle youth with friends across the ethnic and color spectrum.

Both parents - Kathleen Harris and her former husband Michael O'Leary - blinked through raw, red eyes and wore red lapel ribbons as they moved through funeral arrangements Thursday.

May 27

PALMDALE - The attack that caused the death of 18-yearold Christopher O'Leary was one of at least three fights at a weekend party, and sheriff's detectives are investigating one of the other fights as a criminal assault. Events described by witnesses paint a picture of sudden eruptions of youthful violence happening at an apparently unsupervised party attended by up to 100 young people.

May 28

PALMDALE - Upon entering St. Mary's Church on Saturday for the funeral of Christopher O'Leary, one could tell something unique was at hand.

There was no church organ playing traditional hymns. Instead, the gentle sounds of a rainforest - birds, insects, chirping frogs and rainstorms - poured out of the PA system. Those were the sounds friends of Christopher O'Leary said he would sit in his room and listen to until just more than a week ago. That was before he died as a result of blows inflicted to his head at a weekend party in east Palmdale.

May 29

LANCASTER - The Antelope Valley is not a dumping ground for parolees, state parole officials said last week.

Not everyone agrees with that.

When state parole agents placed high-risk sex offender Eldon West in central Palmdale late last month, citizens and political leaders expressed outrage.

May 30

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The county's health-care system, saved from collapse five years ago by a $1 billion federal bailout, is in danger of a relapse. The nation's second-largest public health system, which treats nearly 3 million uninsured patients a year, has fallen short of cost-saving restructuring goals. Negotiations with the state and federal government to keep the system afloat have stalled.

May 31

LOS ANGELES - The Board of Supervisors froze all hiring, contracts and other new expenditures within the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Tuesday as it prepared for life without $1 billion in health-care aid from the federal government.

Uploaded December 22, 2000