LANCASTER - Ufracio "Frankie" Gutierrez, who brutally murdered his wife last year as she sat in her car with the couple's three children, pleaded no contest Thursday to charges of second degree murder and child endangerment and was sentenced to serve 29 years to life in a state prison.
AGUA DULCE (AP) - A single-seat experimental helicopter crashed on a remote road here Thursday night, leaving the pilot in fair condition, a sheriff's department spokesman said.
CALIFORNIA CITY - The financial future of California City took a turn for the better Thursday when officials in Sacramento announced plans for construction of a privately operated prison. The facility would bring much-needed jobs and sales-tax revenues to a city that faces a $1.4 million deficit for fiscal 1998.
Aug. 2
PALMDALE - A representative of American Airlines talked with Antelope Valley officials Friday to hear more about what's here for the airline and to assess the growing Antelope Valley market.
PALMDALE - A church with a predominantly black congregation suffered about $10,000 in damage after vandals plunged a garden hose into a wall and left the water running for hours overnight Thursday and Friday.
Aug. 3
PALMDALE - McDonnell Douglas and Boeing Company officials Monday will speak to workers, including those at Air Force Plant 42, about the future of the new company that results from the merger. But both companies have had a presence here for many years, and the merger isn't expected to have any immediate impacts on projects in the Antelope Valley, company spokesmen said Friday.
LOS ANGELES - High Desert Hospital in Lancaster could do an extra $1 million in business each year, starting this month, with a proposed plan for providing fee-for-service health care for its neighbors - California State Prison Los Angeles County, which is directly south of the county-run hospital, and residents of an Immigration and Naturalization Service holding facility at the former Mira Loma Jail, just north of the hospital.
Aug. 5
WASHINGTON - The new Boeing Co. celebrated its first full day of operations since the $16 billion takeover of McDonnell Douglas on Monday with company officials seeking to reassure nervous workers they shouldn't be threatened by a reorganization of the company's defense and space divisions.
The small story: Brian Ellis might lose his house.
He didn't have the money to send off his mortgage payment last week, after being laid off from his job as a full-time package driver for United Parcel Service of America Inc. in Lancaster. The larger story: So are thousands of other workers since the International Brotherhood of Teamsters went on strike against UPS at midnight Sunday.
Aug. 6
PALMDALE - Attempts to stay cool amid record temperatures helped set a new high for power usage Tuesday and gave many people a reason to window shop at the mall. In Palmdale, the mercury reached 112 degrees during the fifth day of a heat wave that began Aug. 1. The day's high broke a record of 109 degrees set in 1966.
SACRAMENTO - Assemblyman George Runner was celebrating two milestone victories Tuesday: The governor signed the first Runner-authored legislation ever to make the jump into law, and that law authorizes a first-ever hard look at splitting up Los Angeles County.
Now in its third day, the strike at United Parcel Services of America Inc. is affecting more than just the delivery company and its employees. Local businesses say the strike is beginning to touch just about everyone.
HESPERIA - A private plane struck a 500-kilowatt power line Tuesday afternoon, snarling street traffic in the Antelope Valley and leaving some residents without electricity during the fifth day of a summer heat wave.
The plane, a single-engine Piper Arrow, crashed about 1:47 p.m. some 3 1/2 miles southwest of Hesperia in San Bernardino County. The crash killed the pilot and two passengers.
Aug. 7
PALMDALE - Record temperatures continued to soar in the high desert Wednesday, as the mercury hit an all-time high in Palmdale, 113 degrees, and broke a record for the date in Lancaster. Southern California Edison Co. customers also broke a record of their own for electrical use - a record set just a day earlier.
LANCASTER - Sensitivity training in Lancaster School District came under fire Tuesday night from a teacher who blasted the sessions as social engineering and asked trustees to kill the Cross Cultural Language and Academic Development (CLAD) training.
Aug. 8
LANCASTER - City and county dignitaries dedicated the Antelope Valley's $4.2 million, 10-month-old firefighting training center Thursday.
PALMDALE - An "excessive heat warning" was called off for Southern California Thursday, but eye-stinging, throat-choking misery from brush fire smoke offset any small comfort from a modest temperature drop.
SACRAMENTO - Assemblyman George Runner introduced a constitutional amendment Thursday that would change California's annual budget to a spending plan adopted once every two years. If Assembly Constitutional Amendment 27 passes, California would join 19 other states already adopting two-year budgets.
LOS ANGELES - Visiting Nurse Association (VNA), the nonprofit provider of home health care to more than 20,000 people in Los Angeles County, including at least 4,000 in the Antelope Valley, is being sold to a for-profit company based in Tustin. June Simmons, chief executive officer of the Visiting Nurse Association of Los Angeles, said Thursday, "A purchase agreement has been signed and the closing will be soon - probably next week, if I have to put a date on it" for the sale of the VNA to Regency Health Services Inc.
Aug. 9
SACRAMENTO - The Legislature's two-house budget committee wrapped up its work early Friday, approving a long-stalled budget for the 1997-98 fiscal year that includes new funds for cops on the street and food stamps for legal immigrants.
LANCASTER - High Desert Hospital and Edwards Air Force Base are the top contenders for the location of a new Veterans Affairs clinic to serve residents of the Antelope Valley. Sites were discussed by VA officials and veterans Friday afternoon in a conference room at the state Employment Development Department office on Avenue I in Lancaster. Health care service is set to begin Oct. 1.
Aug. 12
PALMDALE - Tipped by an anonymous phone call, authorities discovered a man's body buried in a shallow grave in the back yard of an abandoned house.
Homicide detectives took eight hours Monday to excavate the body, carefully sifting through mounds of dirt searching for clues into the man's death.
LANCASTER - California's new welfare-reform package landed like a comedy routine at the doors of the Los Angeles County welfare office in Lancaster Monday afternoon. When recipients heard the new law will limit future assistance to two years and require the ablebodied on the welfare roles to work for their checks, all they could do was laugh.
Aug. 13
LANCASTER - Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies suspect foul play in the case of a woman reported missing since early Sunday and investigators are asking for the public's help in finding Renee Elizabeth Mullins, who was last seen early Sunday morning.
KALAMAZOO, Mich. - Time stood still twice Tuesday afternoon. Just long enough for the Park View Senior League All Stars to enjoy the view.
And just long enough to make Time Corners Little League wish it could turn back the clock. That way, the Central Region champions from Fort Wayne, Ind., wouldn't have to see Ashlie D'Errico go from first to third on a sacrifice bunt one inning, then stand around and watch Kellie Cox pull the same stunt an inning later.
Aug. 14
LANCASTER - Authorities said the remains of a woman discovered earlier this week snagged on an aqueduct gate in the rising and falling water was that of Renee Elizabeth Mullins, the 34-year-old Lancaster woman whom friends, family and law enforcement officials have been searching for since her disappearance Sunday.
