The shooter remains at large after a man was found dead with a gunshot wound in Highland, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said Thursday, April 11. On Wednesday at 3:12 a.m., sheriff’s deputies responded to a shooting at an apartment complex in the 7300 block of Sterling Avenue in Highland. Officials said Garron Hathale, 41, of Highland, was pronounced dead with a gunshot wound. “Detectives conducted a neighborhood check but did not locate any witnesses,” officials said a statement Thursday. The investigation is ongoing, and the suspect remains at large. A motive remains unknown ..read more

SAN JACINTO — It was the big finish in the first meeting and the explosive start this time. Either way, Liberty’s softball team got where it needed to be against their closest rivals. Racing to a nine-run lead in the opening three innings Tuesday, the Bison held off San Jacinto, 12-9, sweeping the season series and moving to the brink of clinching the Mountain Pass League title. Liberty (16-5 overall, 7-0 in league) holds a two-game lead over San Jacinto and Tahquitz with three games remaining. In the teams’ first matchup, in March, the Bison broke open a close game by scoring eight runs over ..read more

Santa Ana police officers are not criminally culpable for the September 2022 death of a 73-year-old man taken into custody two days earlier after being wounded by less-lethal projectiles and bitten several times by a police K-9 dog, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a report released Thursday. The OCDA’s custodial death report clears the officers of wrongdoing in their encounter with Miguel Chavez, who died in a hospital bed on Sept. 15, 2022 after the officers, in their effort to detain him following a pursuit along Santa Ana streets, fired less-lethal rounds at him and dep ..read more

In presidential elections, domestic issues such as the economy are typically the preeminent issue, but with war raging in the Middle East, and U.S. intelligence agencies warning of an “imminent” Iranian attack on Israel in response to an alleged Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria, which killed several high ranking Iranian officers, the chaos in the Middle East will likely play an outsized role in this year’s election. In that same vein, a prolonged or expanded conflict poses a considerable risk to President Biden’s reelection chances, as the longer a war goes on, the more public op ..read more

LOS ANGELES — There is always a red-lettered release, words crafted in remembrance and in glory, when a prominent Trojan dies. When former USC assistant coach Dave Levy – a four-time national champion a part of the legendary John McKay’s staff – died in November at age 91, it came with an announcement from USC, words honoring Levy as “one of the brightest and most innovative assistant coaches in USC football history.” When former USC wide receiver Rod Sherman – a captain on McKay’s 1966 team – died in February at age 79, it came with an announcement from USC, words honoring Sherman as the man ..read more

“It was the beginning of hell,” the father of Blaze Bernstein recalled during testimony Thursday about learning in January 2018 that his son was missing, leading to a massive search that ended nearly a week later with the discovery of the young man’s body in a makeshift grave at the edge of a Lake Forest park. Bernstein’s mother and father took the stand Thursday in a Santa Ana courtroom in the midst of the Orange County Superior Court trial of Sam Woodward, a former Orange County School of the Arts classmate accused of stabbing Bernstein to death because Bernstein was gay. Woodward’s attorney ..read more

After three newcomers joined the Riverside City Council on Tuesday, April 9, the council looks a lot different than before. In the last two council elections, three Latinos won seats on the dais, along with the city’s first two LGTBQ councilmembers. RELATED: Riverside City Council meeting includes ‘Muppet Show’ guests It was a change from previous years, when the seven-member council included seven men — six of them White. After the 2019 and 2021 elections, the council included three White men; a Latino man; and three women, two of whom were Latina and two of whom were LGBTQ+. The makeup more ..read more

On the gambling books, Ippei Mizuhara was known by the account number “35966.” Using that handle, Mizuhara made 19,000 illegal wagers with an Orange County bookmaker, averaging 25 bets a day, from $10 to $160,000, indicating the level of his alleged addiction. In one day in October, he made three bets totaling $233,386, authorities said. Related: Ohtani’s interpreter charged with bank fraud, stealing $16 million from ballplayer The former translator for Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani did his share of winning, to the tune of $142.5 million, in little more than two years. But it was ..read more

Caltech on Thursday, April 11, restored its standardized testing requirement for entering students, only four years after disbanding it, joining Harvard on the same day in bringing back the policy. Officials say the requirement — effective immediately — “reflects the judgment that standardized testing provides admissions officers and faculty reviewers useful information about academic preparedness as part of a holistic consideration of all prospective students,” according to a statement from the Pasadena-based science and engineering institute. The announcement came just hours after Harvard re ..read more

Jim Alexander: What a news day this has been. We have Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, as the subject of a Justice Department complaint in connection with his gambling with an illegal bookmaker – and we’ve learned, according to the paperwork, that he bet somewhere in the neighborhood of $325 million from December 2021 through January 2024, and lost more than $40 million more than he won. And we also learned that the feds have determined there was theft from Ohtani’s accounts, and it wasn’t the $4.5 million previously reported but more like $16 million. And that’s not even th ..read more