Riverside County (Calif)

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    As California Fires Burn, Some Residents Begin to Mourn Lost Homes

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    Firefighters are making progress against the Bridge, Line and Airport fires to prevent more destruction, but for some, the damage is done.Mazen Sheikhly’s heart was pounding on Thursday as he drove up a winding road to his one-bedroom home of nearly two decades outside the community of El Cariso Village in the Santa Ana Mountains in California. He could feel his blood pressure rising because of the uncertainty of what he and a friend would find.The Airport fire southeast of Los Angeles had exploded in the canyons of Orange County earlier in the week before crossing the mountains into Riverside County, forcing Mr. Sheikhly and thousands of others in the area to evacuate.Now, on his return, he opened the gates to the long driveway of his 20-acre property known for its glittering views of Lake Elsinore below. Then he saw the emptiness.There was “nothing left of the house,” Mr. Sheikhly said. “Completely gone.”A 2000 Indian motorcycle that he treated as his baby was now a gutted hunk of metal. Pictures of his mother and the designer clothes and jewelry that he had from his years working at Neiman Marcus were turned to ash. “It’s like a loss in your family and you can’t get it back. It’s death,” he said.Three major wildfires in Southern California — the Bridge fire, the Line fire and the Airport fire — have destroyed dozens of homes, scorched over 110,000 acres and displaced tens of thousands of people. Cooler, more humid weather has helped slow the fires’ spread and enabled firefighters to make progress trying to contain the blazes, allowing some evacuation alerts to be lifted or downgraded on Friday.But even as crews gain more ground, many residents must deal with the shock of seeing a lifetime of memories reduced to ashes, or the stress of not knowing what they will find, or when they will be able to go back.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lake Elsinore Serial Killer Confesses to 1986 Murder of 19-Year-Old Woman

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      William Lester Suff, 70, was already on death row for a dozen murders in Southern California. Now, he has confessed to killing a 19-year-old woman, shutting a 1986 cold case, officials said.A convicted serial killer on California death row for murdering a dozen people in the 1980s and ’90s confessed to the 1986 murder of a 19-year-old woman in Los Angeles County, the police announced on Tuesday.William Lester Suff, 70, confessed in May 2022 to stabbing Cathy Small to death and dumping her body on a South Pasadena, Calif., cul-de-sac, where her body was discovered by police on Feb. 22, 1986, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced at a news conference on Tuesday. Why the announcement came more than two years after the confession was not clear.Ms. Small’s body was found in the morning wearing a nightgown, and she died from multiple stab wounds and strangulation, Lt. Patricia Thomas said.Ms. Small’s body was identified three days later by a man who had read about the killing in the news and had called detectives to say he was concerned that the victim could be his roommate.He told detectives that she had worked as a prostitute in the Lake Elsinore area and had lived at his house for a few months, Lieutenant Thomas said.The man said that Ms. Small left their house on the night of Feb. 21, 1986 wearing a nightgown. Ms. Small, he added, told him that a man named Bill was paying her $50 to join him on a drive to Los Angeles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Riverside County Jail Death Lawsuit Is Settled for $7.5 Million Amid Inquiry

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      A violent encounter captured on video was part of a surge in jail deaths that spurred an inquiry into the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.Video from inside a Southern California jail shows a violent confrontation in October 2020 in which 10 sheriff’s deputies burst into the cell of a man who was having delusions and resisting medical care, restrained him and repeatedly shocked him, leading to his death days later.Officials in Riverside County did not bring charges against any of the deputies involved in the encounter with the man, Christopher Zumwalt, 39, but quietly agreed in December 2023 to pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by his family.Depositions from the case and video footage obtained by The New York Times show the frantic and violent minutes when deputies tried to force Mr. Zumwalt out of his cell as he paced and talked incoherently. In the video, deputies wearing helmets and shields toss canisters of pepper spray into the small concrete room, struggle with Mr. Zumwalt, and strap him to an emergency restraint chair. They cover his head with a spit mask and move him to another cell, where he sat unmonitored and appeared to stop breathing for at least five minutes. He died on Oct. 25, 2020, after experiencing cardiac arrest.Mr. Zumwalt, who was arrested near his home on Oct. 22, 2020, on suspicion of public intoxication, was never charged with a crime, and the arrest report indicates that he was to be released with a citation after he sobered up from the methamphetamine he admitted to taking the night before. On the day of his arrest, he was issued a citation for bringing drugs into a jail.In a statement Friday, Sheriff Chad Bianco said his deputies did nothing wrong and characterized the settlement as a business decision by lawyers that does not imply wrongdoing.“The facts of this case clearly show the actions of our deputies were appropriate and lawful,” Sheriff Bianco said, adding that actions taken by Mr. Zumwalt in a “methamphetamine-induced psychosis caused his death.” More