For more on these stories, go to www.VVDailyPress.com.
San Bernardino County Animal Control officials said on Friday that no further action can be taken in the case of a pit bull that attacked and killed a small dog in unincorporated Apple Valley last week.
“A report was taken, but since both dogs were on their owners’ property, there’s nothing much else we can do,” County Animal Control Program Manager Greg Beck said. “More could be done if the dogs were off the property.”
Veronica Espinosa said her niece’s dog, Tiny, was in the backyard of her niece’s home on Tuesday morning in the 10000 block of Kiowa Road when the pit bull that lives next door bit Tiny and killed her.
•
Desert Knolls Elementary School was briefly locked down Thursday due to confusion surrounding the arrest of a felon nearby, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Trish Hill said.
According to authorities, undercover Sheriff’s detectives were in the 18000 block of Symeron Road around 1:50 p.m. Thursday attempting to make contact with Blaze Weaver, 42, of Apple Valley, who was wanted on felony warrants.
As deputies were trying to make contact, Weaver was sitting in a black Mercury. Weaver attempted to flee in the car and ended up crashing into an unmarked sheriff’s vehicle parked near him.
•
The attorney for Dan’te Parker’s family told the Daily Press on Thursday that he intends to file a lawsuit against San Bernardino County, the Sheriff’s Department and the deputies involved in taking the Victorville man into custody the day he died.
The announcement came the day after the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department released the Riverside County Coroner’s autopsy report on Parker. A coroner’s panel convened Wednesday and ruled Parker’s death was accidental and was primarily caused by acute phencylcidine intoxication (commonly known as PCP).
Contributing factors included cardiovascular disease, obesity and the physical confrontation he had with deputies on Aug. 12, including being stunned with a Taser.
“What’s curious about this is no one knew him as a drug user,” attorney Mark Eisenberg said Thursday. “Bianca (his wife) and his children, his extended family, his friends, his co-workers, didn’t know him to use drugs. In fact, his wife was with him up until 11 a.m. that day.”
Eisenberg said even if the PCP finding is correct, the problem, and most likely the lawsuit, will revolve around Parker’s treatment after he was stunned.
•
Candidates for local offices may be seeing more assaults on campaign signs in this election cycle, but veteran campaigners say a certain amount of losses is not unusual.
Candidates for Hesperia City Council, Hesperia Recreation and Park District and Hesperia Unified School District and are seeing their signs tagged, hit with graffiti, vandalized, run down, gone missing and apparently stolen.
“It always happens,” veteran campaigner and Apple Valley Councilman Scott Nassif said. But this year, “It’s a little different than normal.”
•
A man from Pennsylvania traveled 3,000 miles to the High Desert in search of “a rock” where a family member once drew the attention of the nation.
Rod Arndt, 53, said his uncle, Jim Coble, used to tell him tales of the West, including the time that he once sat on a 60-foot-high rock for three months straight in the town that Roy Rogers put on the map.
It turns out that rock was Dead Man’s Point, a locally well-known butte just east of town where Bear Valley Road meets Highway 18 on the way to Lucerne Valley.