News
On Sept. 13, 25-year-old Daniel Williamson was shot multiple times in an incident that occurred near the Mormon Church on Bay Street, as Lake County News previously reported.
Lt. Mike Hermann of the Clearlake Police Department said Monday that police have identified individuals who they believe were responsible for the assault on Williamson.
“It appears that he was accidentally shot,” said Hermann. “The shooting was intentional but we don't believe he was the initial target.”
Hermann said the incident may have been drug-related, not gang-related. That question arose because of Williamson's previous gang ties.
Hermann confirmed that Williamson was the target of an Aug. 28 countywide enforcement operation in which paroles with gang contacts were the targets of parole searches.
Williamson is still in the hospital, Hermann reported, recovering from the gunshot wounds he received.
“He was hit in the right side of his chest and also the right side of his head,” said Hermann.
The shot to Williamson's head, added Hermann, didn't penetrate his skull.
The chest wound appears to have damaged Williamson's spine, said Hermann. The result is that Williamson may be paralyzed from the waist down.
Hermann said the main suspect in the case is in custody on a parole violation.
He did not say if that suspect was John Franklin Smith, 20, a man who police contacted early in the investigation and arrested on a parole violation Sept. 14. Smith no longer is in custody in the Lake County Jail, although parole violation arrests often result in suspects being transported out of county.
Det. Martin Snyder is leading the investigation. Anyone with information on the case is asked to call Snyder or Officer Michael Ray at 994-8251.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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The Center for Biological Diversity on Aug. 28 filed a formal notice of intent to sue the Department of the Interior over the species. A statement from the center said the notice “initiates the largest substantive legal action in the 34-year history of the Endangered Species Act.”
The suit comes in the wake of a scandal involving former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Julie MacDonald, who resigned this spring after an Inspector General investigation found she had interfered with science and violated the Endangered Species Acts.
But while MacDonald has been the one Interior Department official drawing most of the blame, the Center for Biological Diversity said she's not alone.
The suit notice alleges that, while MacDonald engineered many of the illegal decision, some decisions also were ordered by her boss, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Craig Manson, his special assistant Randal Bowman and Ruth Solomon in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Lower-level bureaucrats also reportedly were involved in some decisions.
Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the lawsuit “puts the Bush administration on trial at every level for systematically squelching government scientists and installing a cadre of political hatchet men in positions of power.”
Suckling added, “The Bush administration has tried to keep a lid on its growing endangered species scandal by scapegoating Julie MacDonald, but the corruption goes much deeper than one disgraced bureaucrat. It reaches into the White House itself through the Office of Management and Budget.”
The species at the heart of the suit include 24 in California, among them, the California red-legged frog, which is believed to have habitat in Lake County, as Lake County News reported during coverage of the MacDonald case earlier this summer.
Other species listed include the arroyo toad, California least tern, marbled murrelet and snowy plover.
The Center for Biological Diversity reported that the heart of the suit is the illegal removal of one animal from the endangered species list, the refusal to place three animals on the list and proposals to remove or downgrade protection for seven animals.
The group also alleges that 8.7 million acres of critical habitat across 28 states has been stripped from protection because of those Interior Department decisions.
Suckling said government and university scientists carefully documented the editing of scientific documents, overruling of scientific experts and falsification of economic analyses in many of the disputed decisions.
“By attacking the problem systematically through this national lawsuit, we will expose just how thoroughly the disdain for science and for wildlife pervades the Bush administration’s endangered species program,” Suckling said.
Valerie Fellows, a spokesperson for U.S. Fish and Wildlife, told Lake County News that the agency had announced at the end of July that they were going to review endangered decisions due to MacDonald's involvement in those decision making processes.
Some of those decisions went back to 2001, said Fellows, and involved MacDonald changing science “which ultimately changed the outcome.”
The agency's California-Nevada Operations office decided to review eight decisions, said Fellows, including the California red-legged frog, which already is under way.
California, noted Fellows, has many endangered species petitions currently in litigation.
Fellows said the agency had no formal response to the lawsuit.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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