A Sacramento man who was arrested and freed after police suspected him of leaving a pipe bomb near an elementary school was taken into custody once again following a court appearance this week.
Gustavo Aguilar, 57, was initially booked into Sacramento County jail after police accused him of leaving a pipe bomb and a home-made gun near an elementary school earlier this month.
Aguilar was freed on $25,000 bail, only to be re-arrested following a court appearance on Thursday, during which a judge agreed to increase the man’s bail to $150,000.
The bail was re-set after prosecutors with the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office claimed Aguilar was a flight risk and a danger to the community.
Aguilar is once again in county jail, but Sacramento criminal defense attorney and legal expert Mark Reichel says if he can find a bail bondsman willing to post his bail, he could be set free a second time while he awaits further criminal proceedings.
“If you have $150,000 bail, and you’ve got a bail bondsman willing to post it, you really just have to pay [the bondsman] their costs,” Mark told CBS13 News.
That fee usually works out to around 10 percent of the bail figure, Mark noted, which in this case would be $15,000.
As of Friday, it was not known if anyone had agreed to post Aguilar’s bail for a second time.
Prosecutors say they linked Aguilar to a pipe bomb that was placed outside of Ethel Baker Elementary School earlier this month after reviewing names and other writings on the device.
A Sacramento mother is heartbroken after her three sons were asked to leave a private Catholic school earlier this month following the discovery of the parent’s adult-themed social media account.
Crystal Jackson is a popular model on the website OnlyFans, an online platform where people can publish and sell uncensored photos and videos.
Like thousands of other people who use the platform, Jackson makes a decent living from visitors who are willing to subscribe to see the photos and videos she takes.
When word got out about her account, Jackson sent a letter to Theresa Sparks, the principle of Sacred Heart Parish School, a private Catholic institution for learning. Jackson said she didn’t intend for her accounts to create a distraction or besmirch the name of the school, and she and her husband offered to withdraw her three sons from the school if there were any problems, according to FOX40 News.
Earlier this month, Sparks sent a letter to Jackson informing her that the three children would no longer be welcome at Sacred Heart. In the letter, Sparks said the school tried their best to insulate the children from the effects of the account and the ensuing discussions that took place both online and offline, but that Jackson’s decision to not only continue her account and “promote it widely” was creating too much of a distraction for the school.
“We therefore request that you find another school for your children and have no further association with ours,” Sparks wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by FOX40 News. Sparks also said Jackson, her husband and her sons were not welcome on campus “for any reason.”
Mark Reichel, a legal expert retained by Jackson, said he feels the school is in the wrong, but said the California Education Code protects the private school when it comes to their decision-making in this case.
“There’s a contract that says, we reserve the right to disqualify your students — your children as students — if we think it violates something that we don’t like or is inconsistent with the mission of the school,” Reichel told FOX40 News.
In this case, Sacred Heart says the conduct of the parent violated a parent-student handbook that is issued when students are enrolled. That forms the basis of a contract between the parent and the school that governs acceptable behavior and other policies that all parties are expected to adhere to as a condition of allowing a child to attend school there.
In an interview with People Magazine, Jackson said she learned the school was updating the handbook to include a condition that requires parents to remove blogs, websites or social media accounts that go against the teachings of the school.
A Sacramento neighborhood has installed automated license plate readers in an effort to combat crime, but some are concerned the technology could interfere with the privacy of residents.
A homeowners’ association in a neighborhood known as The Hamptons confirmed the license plate readers will capture information about every car within the community, but the information won’t be transmitted to police automatically unless a crime is reported.
“It’s got a very narrow field of vision, so it’s not capturing the lady walking the dog in the park — it’s looking for a license plate,” Ed Perez, the president of the homeowners’ association, told CBS13 in an interview.
Sacramento attorney and legal expert Mark Reichel said the technology is fine to use, as long as it’s in a public space — not on private property — and as long as it’s not allowing law enforcement to compile wholesale databases of information.
“The police can know it exists, and you can use it in your neighborhood, and you can use it when there’s a crime — you just can’t send [wholesale data to the police] so they can keep compiling data,” Reichel said.
Some residents say the license plate readers are a good thing, a tool that will help prevent crime from happening where they live.
“Having these in the area, I think, will deter people from at least coming into our community to do that,” resident Amy Gidding-Mora said.
The owner of a Granite Bay mansion has issued an apology after a New Year’s Eve party drew more attendees than he expected.
Gabriel Watters owns the mansion where hundreds of people attended a New Year’s Eve party last week. The party became a viral sensation after photos and videos from inside were posted to YouTube and SnapChat, which drew condemnation on other social media platforms after people began noticing many of the attendants weren’t wearing masks or social distancing.
The party has been deemed a “super spreader” event by critics, though there’s no evidence that anyone at the event had the novel coronavirus COVID-19 or contracted it in connection with the event.
Still, Watters said the party was supposed to be a small affair and quickly ballooned in size after word of the event spread on social media.
In a statement released through his attorney Mark Reichel, Watters apologized for the event and said he worked hard to end it once he learned about what was taking place at his mansion:
“Mr. Watters had invited close friends to a planned small gathering at the very large house for New Year’s Eve. The notoriety of the house caused those invited to broadcast the party and invitation across social media. He never intended for this event to be this big and he apologizes for how things got out of hand.”
At one point during the party, deputies with the Placer County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched following a noise complaint by a neighbor in the gated Los Lagos community. Deputies asked participants to turn down the music but did not make any arrests or citations. The sheriff’s office told a local newspaper that around 100 people were in attendance.
Placer County is part of the Sacramento area region, which is under a mandatory stay-at-home order issued by state health officials in early December. The order prohibits individuals from non-essential travel and in-person gatherings. The party as depicted in the videos and photos posted to social media would qualify as “non-essential” under the health order.
A grand jury indictment connected to the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old ambulance technician proved disappointing for activists who for months have called for criminal charges against the officers accused of killing her.
Earlier this week, officials in Lousiville, Ky. announced an officer had been indicted by a grand jury for allegedly firing through a door and window, with bullets from his gun striking the wall of an apartment neighboring that of Breonna Taylor.
Taylor was killed after being struck by crossfire as officers executed a “no-knock” search warrant on her apartment where she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, lived.
The primary targets of the police investigation were two men suspected of selling drugs out of a home more than 10 miles away. The men did not live at Taylor’s apartment, but police suspected one of them occasionally visited her home.
On March 13, officers used a battering ram to break down Taylor’s door. Startled, Walker assumed someone was breaking into their apartment and fired a single shot, which struck and injured an officer.
Officers returned fire. At least five bullets struck Taylor. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
An investigation into what happened that night took place only after intense public pressure from activists in the United States and elsewhere around the world, demands that grew following several other fatal police encounters, including that of Minneapolis resident George Floyd.
On Wednesday, Kentucky’s attorney general announced there would be no charges against the officers involved in the March shooting that led to Taylor’s death because his agency concluded they acted appropriately during the incident.
Legal experts disagree.
“I think this one is a slighted, biased prosecution,” Sacramento criminal defense attorney Mark Reichel said in an interview with FOX40 News. “In this case, there’s a lot that was not given to the grand jury…some of the reports were backdated, were altered and there were complete lies in some of the reports.”
Mark said existing law in Kentucky tends to favor police officers in criminal probes like this one, but a prosecutor still has the ability to act independently of a grand jury and bring charges if they feel there is sufficient evidence of a crime.
“You can say, well, look, the grand jury didn’t do this, but I’m a prosecutor, I’m going to file a criminal complaint,” Mark said. “With a certain period of time, [suspects are] entitled to a preliminary hearing…where a judge reviews the evidence.”
As far as the state’s criminal investigation goes, Mark said he believes Wednesday’s announcement to be the end of the line there. But federal prosecutors could launch their own civil rights investigation into the death, though any such action would depend on the outcome of the November election.
“That could happen, but it will only happen if the Democrats take the White House…with a new attorney general,” Mark said. “Attorney General Barr has indicated he will not get involved in this case.”
Short-term vacation rental website AirBNB will sue a Sacramento-area customer after a house party at one of its vacation rental homes ended in a violent shooting last week.
The pending lawsuit marks the first time AirBNB has taken legal action against one of its customers in connection with their service.
AirBNB connects homeowners who want to rent rooms to vacationers on a short-term basis. Some homeowners list their entire property for rent on the website, something the service allows.
But what AirBNB doesn’t allow is for customers to book homes for “open-invite parties” or other ragers that aren’t sanctioned by a property owner. The company has cracked down on renting homes for parties since the start of the coronavirus health pandemic.
This week, AirBNB provided media outlets with a statement that accused the Sacramento-area customer of booking a home in the Arden-Arcade neighborhood under false pretenses. The company said the guest, who was not named in their statement, violated numerous county health codes as well as the company’s community standards policy.
That won’t be the last step in the saga: This week, AirBNB said it would initiate legal proceedings against the customer and donate money received through the lawsuit to a Sacramento-area non-violence organization.
Legal expert Mark Reichel said the pending lawsuit comes at a time when AirBNB is preparing to file an initial public offering or I.P.O., and that such a filing normally requires them to have a squeaky-clean image.
“AirBNB is being very proactive in this case and that is an image issue for the company,” Mark told local TV station CBS13 News. “They are planning to go public very soon, and they want to come off as a very clean, by-the-book type of company.”
Mark said the pending lawsuit is also intended to shield AirBNB from certain types of liability in anticipation of separate lawsuits being filed against the company by as many as three victims who were reportedly shot during the party.
“They are getting ready for the rounds of lawsuits that are coming, as if to say, we agree, we’ve already sued this guy, we had nothing to do with it” Mark said.
Deliberately coughing on other individuals could lead to criminal charges if the victim becomes infected with a deadly disease like the novel coronavirus COVID-19, according to legal expert Mark Reichel.
Late last month, police in Nevada County said they were trying to track down two individuals who are accused of doing just that.
In at least one case, a woman said two unknown individuals were upset after she encouraged them to wear face masks while shopping at a local grocery store. The two people eventually did put on masks, but one of the two chased the woman into the parking lot of the store, started shouting at her and made coughing noises.
The woman reported the incident to the Grass Valley Police Department. An investigation is now under way into what happened. Officers said if the woman is able to identify the man and it can be proven he acted the way she described, the man could face misdemeanor assault charges.
In an interview with FOX40 News, Mark said that might not be the worst of it for people who deliberately cough on or otherwise try to infect people.
“If it’s an offensive conduct that puts you in reasonable fear of harm, that’s an assault,” Mark said. “If it can be proven somehow that they got it from that person, that they got it from that exposure and they die, the question is do we have a murder case on our hands?”
In California, state law requires individuals to wear face masks, take social distancing measures and engage in other safety practices to curb the spread of COVID-19. More than 10,000 people in California have died from the disease since state officials began tracking it in early March.
