Sacramento mass shooting: Suspect arrested as search continues for gunmen in the killings
The Chronicle, Lauren Hepler/Jessica Flores: "The toll of a deadly mass shooting in Sacramento early Sunday morning began to come into focus on Monday after officials announced the arrest of one “related suspect” and named the six people killed.
Dandrae Martin, 26, was arrested and booked for assault and illegal firearm possession charges, the Sacramento Police Department said Monday. Though few other details have been confirmed about how the shooting unfolded in a crowded downtown corridor, police said search warrants were served at three residences in the area, and at least two handguns were recovered.
Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said in a statement that police were still pursuing multiple shooting suspects, and that Martin had been arrested for narrower firearm and a gun-related charged."
Column: ‘Why do we do this to ourselves?’ The pandemic supercharged easy access to guns
ANITA CHABRIA, LA Times: “Father Michael O’Reilly stood on the steps of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in his long, purple robes, looking at a crime scene just feet away where more than a dozen evidence markers were laid out.
It was surreal, he told me, and he felt bad that one of his first thoughts was whether the church would be able to welcome parishioners that morning, with a mass shooting shutting down streets for blocks around us.
But people were already wandering into this grand cathedral that lies within sight of the state Capitol, unaware of the shooting or maybe needing comfort because of it. Life goes on, even with six bodies still on the pavement. We accept the unacceptable, or at least endure it.”
California setting up statewide medical data-exchange grid
SETH SANDRONSKY, Capitol Weekly: “California is developing a long-sought statewide health information exchange for providers and payers to deliver better care for patients.
The health information exchange, or HIE, has received little public attention. But it would cover 40 million people in California’s 58 counties, and would in part quickly inform emergency room doctors and nurses of a patient’s medical history, e.g., a preexisting condition.
It marks the first time California has begun putting together such an exchange. The data exchanges in the past have often been fragmented and limited to the local or regional levels, experts say. A statewide network does not yet exist in California, leaving a gap in the provision of services.”
Is it possible to overdo it with COVD-19 vaccine boosters?
JOHN WOOLFOLK, Mercury News: “First, it was one or two COVID-19 vaccine shots. Then it was get a booster shot after eight months, until they changed it to six, then five months. Now, federal health authorities have approved yet another shot four months from your last one if you’re at least 50 or in poor health.
But is it possible to overdo it on COVID-19 vaccine boosters? Could it end up like the overuse of antibiotics that medical experts now warn is breeding superbugs resistant to them?
There’s no evidence of that yet, most experts say. But the boosting-too-much questions are fueling a growing debate among scientists as an expert panel meets April 6 to advise the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine booster doses and updates tailored to emerging variants.”
A journalist killed for his reporting found his life’s work through reading
THOMAS PEELE, EdSource: “The subscriber to the Hayward Daily Review used a racial slur to complain about the Black child delivering his newspaper. The circulation manager told the man that if he wanted to keep getting the paper, he should get used to his new carrier.
Later, the manager pulled the tall, skinny paperboy aside and told him the caller didn’t like him, or anyone like him. He told him the vile word the man used. It was the early 1960s and no one was yet substituting “the n-word” for it.
The paperboy, whose name was Chauncey Bailey, didn’t say anything, his younger half-brother, Mark Cooley, who witnessed the scene, told me in 2010. But as they walked home, Bailey told Cooley that if the subscriber “doesn’t like a little (n-word) delivering his paper, wait until one’s writing for it.”
Thousands of Californians could be due a tax refund from 2018. Here’s how to find out
DAVID LIGHTMAN, SacBee: “More than 148,000 California taxpayers may be due hundreds of dollars in refunds from the Internal Revenue Service, refunds on taxes withheld in 2018.
The median refund is estimated to be $776, meaning half the refunds would be lower and half would be higher, according to the IRS.
The agency estimates as much as $139.6 million could be due to Californians. The amounts are based on 2018 federal income tax returns. People qualifying for the money did not file returns in 2018.”
Capitol Weekly Podcast: The California Housing Speculation Act
Capitol Weekly Staff: “We are joined today by San Diego Assemblyman Chris Ward. Ward represents the 78th District, which like most of the state, has been hard hit by the lack of affordable housing. While most housing affordability advocates approach this problem by focusing on strategies to increase supply,
Ward has introduced a bill, AB 1771, that aims to keep prices in check by deterring house-flippers: AB 1771 would impose a tax of up to 25% on a house flipper’s net capital gain from purchase until final sale.
The bill is currently scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee on April 25; We chat with Ward about his proposal, and as always, we tell you who had the Worst Week in California Politics.”
Trial begins for Wildomar family suing Orange County for coroner’s mx-up in body identification
SCOTT SCHWEBKE, Press Enterprise: “A cacophony of errors and missteps by the Orange County Coroner’s Office led to the unthinkable in 2017 — a grieving father and daughter buried a stranger thought to be their loved one, who was still alive, an attorney said Monday, April 4, during opening arguments in a civil trial to determine if the county was negligent for the mix-up.
Frank J. Kerrigan, 86, of Wildomar and his 60-old-daughter, Carole Meikle of Silverado, are suing Orange County, accusing the Coroner’s Office of intentional misrepresentation for erroneously telling them Kerrigan’s son, Frankie, was dead. They are seeking unspecified damages at trial, which is expected to last as long as two weeks.
The Coroner’s Office told Kerrigan his son, who was 57 at the time and suffers from schizophrenia, had been found dead May 6, 2017, behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley. Coroner’s officials told him the homeless man had been positively identified through fingerprints.”
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "When a mining company proposed to expand its coal operations in Montana, President Donald Trump's Interior Department said no environmental study was needed because the mine would have only a “minor” impact on climate change, discharging 0.04% of the earth’s total greenhouse gas emissions each year..
What the department left out, however, was the amount of planet-heating gases that would be spewed when the coal reached overseas ports, in Japan and South Korea, and was burned for fuel — 97% of the mine’s total emissions during 11 1/2 years of scheduled operations, a federal appeals court said Monday.
“For each year of its operations, the coal from this project is expected to generate more GHG emissions than the single largest source of GHG emissions in the United States,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 ruling ordering a federal judge to re-examine the project."
This is the ‘crazy’ average income needed to buy a home in the Bay Area today
The Chronicle, LAUREN HEPLER: "It may pay more to work in the Bay Area compared to other regions of the U.S., but for middle-class residents, new research shows it’s a trade-off that increasingly means giving up buying a home.
Households earning around $80,000 to $165,000 qualify as “middle income” here, depending on the location and family size, compared with a national median income of $67,521. Even before pandemic bidding wars, it wasn’t enough to keep up with soaring home prices: Just 24% of homes sold in 2019 in San Francisco fell into price brackets that middle-class buyers could afford, according to a report released Monday by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
Metallica donates $500,000 to feed Ukrainian refugees
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "Metallica is doing its part to help the developing humanitarian crisis in Eastern Europe.
The Bay Area rock group has donated $500,000 to World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit organization run by philanthropist and chef José Andrés, to help feed Ukrainian refugees driven out of their homes by the invasion of Russian forces.
The donation, which was delivered through the band’s All Within My Hands charitable foundation, comes on the back of a previous $100,000 grant to the cause."