Possible human remains found on Kanan

By Jonathan Tamayo

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Drivers on Kanan-Dume Rd.

 

Homicide detectives are investigating car wreckage that may contain human remains off of Kanan-Dume Road in Malibu.

Hikers came across the wreckage this afternoon.

Investigators and rescue crews were sent to the upper part of Zuma Canyon, where the vehicle sits partway down a 500-foot high hillside. The area is near the heavily traveled section of Kanan between Malibu and Agoura Hills.

Dispatchers could not say how far down the cliff the car fell, or whether any human remains have been found, however, body recovery experts have been sent to the site.

The wreckage is down a steep hillside, about one quarter mile north of Tunnel 1 and five miles north of Malibu (that’s the first tunnel when you turn onto Kanan from PCH).

Turn off the lights…the party is just starting.

By Jonathan Tamayo

Missing Call Letters

LA Times Building is shutting off their exterior lights tonight

Earth hour is tonight. It’s a global event with tens of millions of people in cities all over the world turning off their lights for an hour, all in the name of energy consciousness and combating climate change.

I think its pretty cool. Cities like Las Vegas, Baghdad, Istanbul, Paris, Sydney, London, and hundreds more are all participating. Can you imagine Las Vegas without its neon lights; or the Birds Nest and Water Cube in Bejing completely dark for an hour? 

“Turning off the lights is just the beginning,” WWF Chief Executive Carter Roberts says in a news release. “We’re asking everyone to also make commitments to reduce their energy use during the rest of the year, and to ask their elected representatives to do the right thing because we need climate legislation now.”

It’s happening all over the Southland too. Dozens of buildings and restaurants all over LA are shutting off their lights from 8:30 to 9:30 pm. Here’s a link to a complete list of everything going on in Los Angeles. earhhour.org

Marijuana Geenhouse found in OC.

By Jonathan Tamayo

Missing Call Letters

Firefighters came across a marijuana growing operation after putting out a fire at a commercial building in Santa Ana.

Santa Ana firefighters were dispatched to 1100 block of East Walnut Street Thursday night and extinguished the non-injury blaze in 15 minutes. Afterward firefighters went to nearby units in the complex to see if any other fires were breaking out.

“Since this was a multi-unit building, our crews then began opening multiple units in the structure to check if any fire had spread,” said Ben Gonzales, Santa Ana Fire Capt.

A couple of building down authorities found what could be called a pothead’s fantasy forest: four-foot high plants with leaves still attached, and four 4-foot high stalks with their leaves stripped off.

Body found in HB identified.

By Jonathan Tamayo

Missing Call Letters

Photo courtesy of DMV

Authorities are saying the body found face-down with a head wound in Huntington Harbour early this morning belongs to Anna Krivenkoff, a 45-year-old La Habra resident. 

The coroner’s office who performed the autopsy, however, declined to release the cause of death pending further testing, according to Jim Amormino of the Orange County Sheriff’s Dept.

The body way found around 4 am Thursday at the entrance to Huntington Harbour adjacent to Anderson Street, said HB police Lt. Craig Bryant. 

Authorities found the body after a someone reported an injured woman outside Turc’s bar on PCH in Sunset Beach. 

When police arrived there was no woman to be found, only drops of blood on jagged rocks alongside the bar. Authorities followed a trail of blood from the bar to the harbor across the street. The body was found floating in the water near one of the docks, said Bryant.

Twenty-four earthquakes hit the Southland. Signs of the Big One?

By Jonathan Tamayo

Missing Call Letters

There’s been a slew of minor earthquakes the last couple of months and this morning there was a whopping 24 quakes recorded near the Salton Sea with a magnitude of 4.8, including one that could have caused moderate damage. 

The scary part isn’t that there were 24 earthquakes within a 15 minute period, but that it comes at a time when scientists are watching to see if small faults are transferring energy to the more dangerous San Andreas Fault,  inevitably causing the Big One.

The quakes occurred early this morning around 5 am. The epicenter was 3 miles south of Bombay Beach and 90 miles east-northeast of San Diego, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. 

Geologist Graham Kent of UCSD told the LA Times that scientists are particularly interested in this area because an earthquake that starts in Bombay Beach in Imperial County and ripples northwest along the San Andreas fault could be the Big One that devastates Los Angeles.

Montana & Tokyo plane crashes

By Jonathan Tamayo

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The FAA is saying that at least 16 people have been killed in a single-engine airplane crash near Butte, Montana Sunday.

A photograph of the crash site broadcast on CNN showed a fireball blazing in a grove of trees near a cemetery close to the crash site.

The Pilatus PC-12 left Orville, California, at 11 a.m. The pilot filed a flight plan that showed Bozeman, Montana as the final destination, but rerouted to Butte instead, FAA spokesman Mike Fergus said. The plane crashed 500 feet short of the runway at Bert Mooney Airport.

According to The Montana Standard newspaper, a fireman said the plane may have been carrying several children on their way to a ski vacation.

Kenny Gulick, 14, who lives near the airport, told the Montana Standard newspaper that the plane was clearly in trouble.

“All of a sudden the pilot lost control and went into a nosedive,” Gulick told the newspaper. “He couldn’t pull out in time and crashed into the trees of the cemetery.”

Obama coming to Orange County

By Jonathan Tamayo

Missing Call Letters

Update: 3/16/2009 3:15 PM (PST)

You can pick up free tickets at OC Fair & Event Center starting 10 am Tuesday (3/17). It’s a first-come-first-serve type of deal and there’s a two ticket limit per adult and one per child. Photo ID required.

Here’s the address: 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA. Enter at Gate 1 (Fair Dr.). Park in Lot A.

_____________________________________________________

Barack Obama is cruising on Air Force One and making a visit to Costa Mesa Wednesday. I haven’t been following politics for that long, but this is the first time I’ve ever noticed a President visiting Orange County, especially in the first 100 days.

The president will hold a town hall meeting in Costa Mesa and tour the Edison International Vehicle Electrics Plant in Pomona on Thursday, the White House announced today.

UPDATE: $50,000 arrest warrant out for Lindsay Lohan.

By Jonathan Tamayo

Missing Call Letters

UPDATE: 3/16/2009

 Told you someone made a mistake. A Beverly Hills judge found that Lindsay Lohan was in compliance with a court-ordered alcohol-education program, and quashed the warrant she issued last Friday k for the arrest of the 22-year-old
actress.

“Miss Lohan has been complying with certain aspects of the program that
the program was unaware of,”  said Judge Marsha Revel during this
morning’s hearing, which lasted about two minutes.

The hearing followed a discussion the judge had in chambers with lawyers.

3/14/2009

Poor Lindsay Lohan. The Mean Girls star is making headlines again, this time for a possible probation violation and a $50,000 warrant out for her arrest, authorities said.

Teachers fighting back: ‘Pink Friday’ protests in HB.

By Jonathan Tamayo

Missing Call Letters

Student protester outside Ocean View High School in Huntington Beach March 13, 2008. Photo by Jonathan Tamayo

On my way home Friday, I was passing by Ocean View High School in Huntington Beach and saw at least a hundred people dressed in black and pink shirts waving signs that said “Save our Schools,” “No More School Cuts,” and “Save Our Teachers.”

I decided to dust off my reporter hat and do some hardcore investigating. 

The protest was part of a statewide effort called “Pink Friday,” symbolizing the pink slips teachers are receiving to notify them they might be laid off. This comes after California makes the largest single cut to public education in California’s history, according to the California Teachers Association.

The West OC United Teachers coalition which consists of the HB Elementary Teachers Association, the District Educators Association, and the Ocean View Teachers Association were leading  a rally at the high school by the time I got there.

Afterward, they broke off into several street teams and marched to the corner of Warner and Beach Boulevard, prompting drivers to honk their horns to show support.

Marijuana: the savior of our budget problems?

Jonathan Tamayo

Missing Call Letters

Asm. Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco)

Legalizing Marijuana seems to be slowly burning its way back into the mainstream media lately. 

Both sides of the argument are blowing smoke rings across all media outlets to gain attention two weeks after CA State Assembly member Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) introduced legislation to legalize the drug.

On Feb. 23, Ammiano outlined a plan that would regulate the cultivation and sale of marijuana and would more importantly, tax it. The lawmaker, sometimes called the hippie-democrat, sees the green in giving people greens.

Ammiano argues that legalizing pot could be California’s biggest crash crop, with annual sales reaching $14 billion. This number far surpasses California’s second hottest agricultural product, vegetables, which takes in a mere $5.7 billion, not to mention California’s famous grapes which make a pathetic $2.6 billion in comparison. 

Legalizing marijuana could also save a lot of money the state doesn’t have. The cost for catching and keeping these non-violent criminals in prison totals in the billions. The Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that $2 billion to $10 billion could be saved per year  if marijuana were legalized.

With California facing a ballooning deficit of over $42 billion and the national debt now around $10 trillion, legalizing pot could be the savior of our budget woes.