1999 The year in review

May 1-15: PostColumbine shooting jitters continue to hit Valley

May 1

LANCASTER - They dug up the dirt again at the Lancaster city Public Works yard, but this time the FBI wasn't the one out there with the shovel.

Unknown to FBI agents and the U.S. Attorney's office, city workers dug up enough "slightly contaminated" dirt from the Lancaster city yard Thursday to fill four tractortrailer loads.

SYLMAR - Two Quartz Hill High School freshmen who allegedly concocted instructions on how to make bombs and maps of their campus were arraigned Friday on felony charges of making terrorist threats.

Four students from Antelope Valley area high schools have been charged this week with making terrorist threats in the wake of last week's massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.

PALMDALE - Across the Antelope Valley, many parents took their children out of school amid a rash of unfounded rumors that a massive attack would befall area high schools on Friday. Similar incidents occurred nationwide.

Since the deadly shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., more than a week ago, Valley high schools sustained a rash of bomb threats and copycat rumors that made many parents afraid to send their children to school. None of the threats materialized.

ROSAMOND - A 15-year-old Rare Earth Continuation High School student was arrested Friday and booked into Kern County's juvenile hall for what officials understood to be a threat to blow up his school.

Kern County Sheriff's deputies arrested the boy at the Glendower Street campus after a teacher reported receiving what was believed to be a bomb threat on the back of a homework assignment.

May 2

BALDWIN PARK - Family members of Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Ramirez, one of three U.S. servicemen held in Yugoslavia, expressed joy Saturday after learning the Yugoslav president intended to release the soldiers.

Standing before hordes of reporters at a news conference outside City Hall, the soldier's mother, Vivian Ramirez smiled, wearing yellow ribbons and a white Tshirt bearing a picture of her son.

May 3

BALDWIN PARK - The mother of one of three U.S. soldiers freed after being held captive for more than a month in Yugoslavia promised Sunday to give him hugs and hamburgers when they reunite in Germany.

"I'm just going to hold him, hug him, squeeze him," said Vivian Ramirez, mother of Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Ramirez. She said she will bring him his favorite treat: "double-double" burgers from In-N-Out Burger, a popular fast-food restaurant.

PALMDALE - Hoping to drum up support for the planned veterans home in Lancaster, Sen. William J. "Pete" Knight appeared Sunday at the Palmdale Playhouse to speak with audience members gathered for a performance of "A Piece of My Heart."

Part documentary, part drama, the two-act play is a study of six women who served during the Vietnam War as nurses, entertainers and military personnel.

RAMSTEIN, Germany - Three U.S. servicemen walked jubilantly into Croatia on Sunday, celebrating their freedom after more than a month as prisoners of war in Yugoslavia and chanting, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last!"

The soldiers were then flown to a U.S. military base in Ramstein in southwest Germany, where they were greeted with salutes from their Army buddies and wild cheers from a flag-waving crowd.

May 4

OKLAHOMA CITY - Tornadoes tore through Oklahoma and Kansas on Monday night, wiping out whole neighborhoods, killing at least 18 people and injuring hundreds.

LANCASTER - The turmoil that besieged high schools across the Valley last week and caused record low attendance on Friday appears to have waned, ushering a return to campus normalcy Monday.

In the two weeks following the deadly shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., Valley high schools were plagued with bomb threats and copycat rumors, prompting nervous parents to pull their children from school Friday.

PALMDALE - Not too very long ago, in a few toy stores not so very far away . . .

Blaster sounds screeched through crowded aisles, while the occasional low hum of a poised lightsaber echoed through the air just after midnight Monday, marking the onslaught of Star Wars mania.

May 5

PALMDALE - The Best Buy manager who was fired for chasing shoplifters is back to work this week, in a new job, with a 50% raise in pay and more free time to spend with his family.

Larry Burkey was the operations manager of the Palmdale Best Buy until the company fired him March 31 for violating company policy when he followed two shoplifters out of the store and directed sheriff's deputies to their whereabouts.

OKLAHOMA CITY - Rescue crews looking for signs of life picked through shattered homes, twisted trees and mangled cars Tuesday after a swarm of astonishingly powerful tornadoes chewed up entire neighborhoods in Oklahoma and Kansas and killed at least 43 people.

LANCASTER - The city of Lancaster gained 3,146 new residents in 1998, while Palmdale gained 3,017, according to statistics released late Monday by the state Department of Finance.

The influx widened Lancaster's numerical lead by 129, giving it a new population of 125,858 as of Jan. 1, 1998, an increase of 2.56% over its adjusted base of 122,712 as of Jan. 1, 1997.

LOS ANGELES - The Antelope Valley is at the heart of a countywide cleansing effort to purge hate crimes from schools.

The focus is on diminishing Valley hate crimes, and that effort continues despite a report that shows a sharp decline - about 40% - in area hate crimes last year. It was the second year in a row that showed such a drop.

LANCASTER - Lockheed Martin Skunk Works has reached peak production in development of one of its two joint strike fighter demonstrators, the X-35.

With final assembly under way, Gary Ervin, the Skunk Works X35 program manager, said the melding of two key fuselage components has gone off without a hitch.

May 6

PALMDALE - A search for an alleged parole violator turned into a standoff with police early Wednesday morning when the wanted man ran from deputies and parole officers.

The standoff began around 5 a.m. on 12th Street West near Avenue N-8, when four people standing in the front yard of a home ran from deputies and parole officers.

PALMDALE - A three-week manhunt ended Wednesday afternoon when Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide detectives arrested Paul Louis Romando for the stabbing murder of a local television personality.

Romando, 17, has been arrested for allegedly stabbing to death Field Terry Simes on April 14 in a room at the Tropic Motel on Sierra Highway.

LANCASTER - In the wake of the shooting at Columbine High school in Colorado two weeks ago, Antelope Valley legislators, superintendents and law enforcement authorities are setting school safety strategies.

PALMDALE - Diana BeardWilliams, ousted public relations director for the Palmdale School District whom the board of trustees voted to terminate last month, is appealing her firing to the district's personnel commission.

May 7

VAN NUYS - The judge in the murder trial of Michael and Kathleen Gentry, the Lake Los Angeles couple accused of starving their disabled daughter to death, declared a mistrial Thursday after the jury reported it was hopelessly deadlocked in the case.

LAKE LOS ANGELES - An 11-year-old Wilsona Elementary School student and his mother were arrested Thursday after the boy brought a loaded .25-caliber handgun to school, allegedly to hurt a female student.

The arrest was prompted by an alert teacher who searched the unidentified boy Thursday morning after learning he threatened a girl in his class.

The boy reportedly brought the loaded gun to school in his backpack. When the teacher searched him, she discovered it in his pocket.

May 8

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - In a strike likely to complicate peace efforts, NATO bombs damaged the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and set it ablaze early Saturday. Amid conflicting reports, the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry said there had been some deaths.

PALMDALE - After five years of wrangling, a housing-development plan giving Antelope Valley College the land it needs for a Palmdale campus was given landmark approval by the Planning Commission on its way to a City Council vote.

College President Linda Spink said she was delighted with the vote. "I know this is the best thing to happen to the city of Palmdale in a long time."

JUNIPER HILLS - More than two dozen deputies and drug cops raided an isolated compound in Juniper Hills and a home in Lancaster on Thursday, arresting six people and seizing chemicals and components used to make methamphetamine.

The home was stockpiling and sending chemicals to the Juniper Hills compound where authorities found meth lab components hidden in a bunker, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Tony Hollins, who heads the North County Meth Lab Task Force.

LOS ANGELES - Staff Sgt. Andrew Ramirez returned home Friday night after more than a month as a prisoner of war in Yugoslavia, arriving at Los Angeles International Airport from Germany along with family members.

Ramirez and two fellow soldiers were freed over the weekend after an American religious delegation led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson negotiated their release.

May 9

TULSA, Okla. - A strip-club bouncer won't face trial again on a manslaughter charge stemming from the death of a Lancaster man.

Robert Mark D'Errico, a longtime Antelope Valley resident, died from suffocation in September 1996 on the floor of the exotic nightclub, Lady Godiva's.

May 10

LITTLEROCK - Representatives of the Rev. Henry Hearns Charter School of Academic Excellence have withdrawn their petition to open a charter school in Littlerock - at least temporarily.

Officials said they withdrew the petition in order to have more time to address issues raised by members of the Keppel Unified School District board of trustees.

WASHINGTON - During the epic battles over buying the B2 bomber, contractors and lawmakers marched on Capitol Hill with charts showing how a pair of the radar-evading planes could do the work of 55 conventional aircraft.

The sales pitch: only four B-2 crewmen put in harm's way compared with as many as 116 in a standard bombing mission.

LANCASTER - Sometimes you have to walk before you can run. Sometimes you have to take a breath when you're reaching for the stars.

With recent technical problems on the X-33 rocketplane and the need for a successful X-33 launch, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works has applied the brakes to the VentureStar program.

May 11

MOJAVE - It huffed, and it puffed and it knocked down 27 power poles.

It was no fairy tale in this tiny desert town on Sunday night, where gale-force winds played the Big Bad Wolf to several thousand electric customers, unleashing gusts that some residents believed to be a tornado.

PALMDALE - Deputies cleaning up loose ends from the "Men In Black II" undercover operation found a cache of drugs, stolen guns and cellular phones at a Palmdale liquor store where they arrested the owner Monday.

"Men In Black" was the recent six-month undercover sting operation in which Antelope Valley deputies arrested dozens of suspects from whom they bought $70,000 in drugs, guns and contraband.

SYLMAR - The District Attorney's Office has filed charges against the 11-year-old Lake Los Angeles boy who allegedly brought a loaded handgun to school last week and threatened two classmates.

The boy, whose name has not been released because of his age, is scheduled to be arraigned in Lancaster juvenile court today. He faces one charge of being in possession of a gun on school grounds and two charges of making terrorist threats.

May 12

LANCASTER - A Littlerock woman pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter Tuesday and avoided a second trial for the 1993 death of her husband, a retired police officer. The bargain enabled her to gain freedom.

Joy Hooker was convicted in 1996 of murder and arson and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. But an appeals court threw out that conviction last November, saying detectives improperly obtained Hooker's confession and the judge erred by letting the statement into the trial.

New Mexico's congressional delegation is making a pitch to keep an experimental rocket program in southern New Mexico.

The five-member delegation plans to meet Wednesday with acting Air Force Secretary Whitten Peters, who has recommended moving the X-34 reusable rocket program from Holloman Air Force Base to Edwards Air Force Base.

PALMDALE - Serious crimes dropped nearly 30% in both Palmdale and Lancaster during the first three months of 1999.

The drop in crime is based on a comparison to the first three months of 1998, according to sheriff's statistics released Monday.

May 13

LANCASTER - A few weeks after the horror in Colorado and the school panic that followed in the Antelope Valley, school officials, authorities and parents are pondering questions and answers about campus safety.

On Tuesday evening, L.A County sheriff's deputies addressed steps people can take to reinforce campus safety, raising the issue at the first of three public forums. A second forum will be presented tonight at Highland High School.

PALMDALE - City officials from Palmdale and Lancaster lined up alongside Antelope Valley developer R. Gregg Anderson Wednesday, taking ceremonial golf-club swings in the vicinity of what will be the fourth green of an 18-hole public golf course by Labor Day 2000.

Behind that line of officials were Phil and Mary Wood, who in 1990 were at odds with Anderson over plans for his 1,200-acre Rancho Vista housing development.

A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY - The Force was strong with Jared Simmons and Brad Auckerman on Wednesday.

The two 15-year-olds conquered 300 other Star Wars fans to be the first Antelope Valley residents to buy advance tickets for "The Phantom Menace."

VAN NUYS - Nearly a week after the judge declared a mistrial, Michael and Kathleen Gentry, the Lake Los Angeles couple accused of starving their disabled daughter to death, still don't know if they face a retrial.

That question was supposed to be answered during a court hearing Wednesday morning. But Deputy District Attorney Kathleen Cady told Superior Court Judge John Fisher she had not yet conferred with her superiors about whether to retry the couple.

LANCASTER - Authorities say Desert Christian Middle School teacher Daren Robertson crossed the line, moving from close confidant to sexual predator, when he allegedly kissed and fondled a former student, who is now 16, and sent her a provocative e-mail message.

Robertson, 32, appeared in Antelope Municipal Court Wednesday morning, pleading not guilty to five charges - one count of genital penetration by a foreign object, three counts of molestation and one count of sending an e-mail with the intent to seduce a minor.

May 14

LANCASTER - The Antelope Valley Union High School board agreed to pay a fired Highland High School teacher who is facing more than a dozen criminal sex charges a sum of $40,000 in order to avoid litigation, the Valley Press has learned.

Craig Fulladosa is the Highland High teacher fired in May 1998 after a district investigation revealed he was keeping pornographic materials from the Internet on his school computer.

PALMDALE - Skaters can continue to use the Antelope Valley's only skate rink for free after the Palmdale City Council rejected charging a fee.

Under the slate of proposed fees, nonresidents would have paid $10 a day, or $40 a year, to use the skateboard rink at Marie Kerr Park, 30th Street West and Rancho Vista Boulevard.

May 15

VAN NUYS - Michael and Kathleen Gentry, the Lake Los Angeles couple accused of starving their severely disabled daughter to death, will face a new trial despite a 10-2 vote for acquittal that triggered a mistrial.

This time, the District Attorney's Office will try the Gentrys for involuntary manslaughter for the 1996 death of their daughter, Lindsay, who was 15 years old when she died.

Uploaded December 20, 1999