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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. – A major wildland fire burning for nearly a week in Lake County is expected to be fully contained on Saturday.
Cal Fire said Friday evening that the Wye Fire's containment was at 95 percent, with firefighters holding the size at 7,934 acres.
The Wye Fire includes two incidents burning east of Clearlake Oaks – the Wye, near Highway 20 and Highway 53, and the Walker, burning near Walker Ridge Road in Lake and Colusa counties. The fires started last Sunday afternoon.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Cal Fire said.
With the fire about to be fully contained, Cal Fire said it was demobilizing fire crews and engines.
Cal Fire said 719 fire personnel remained on scene Friday evening, along with 82 engines, 20 fire crews, two helicopters, seven bulldozers and nine water tenders.
Highway 20 east of Highway 53 has a strictly enforced speed limit of 45 miles per hour. Drivers are asked to use caution while driving near Spring Valley due to fire personnel and equipment use in the area.
Cal Fire has set up a public information hotline on the Wye Fire; call 707-967-4207 or 707-967-4208.
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – A Clearlake man was arrested on Thursday for allegedly kidnapping and assaulting a female acquaintance, and two other suspects in the case are still being sought by police.
Ike Frederick Mitchell, 43, was arrested for kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault with a deadly weapon, battery with serious injury and theft of an access card, according to Sgt. Nick Bennett of the Clearlake Police Department.
On Thursday, Clearlake Police officers responded to St. Helena Hospital Clear Lake in response to a female victim who was reporting she had been kidnapped and assaulted, Bennett said.
The subsequent investigation revealed that on Monday the female had been contacted by Mitchell, a casual acquaintance, in Clearlake Park, Bennett reported.
Bennett said Mitchell allegedly wanted the woman to help in a transaction involving marijuana. When she refused and left, Mitchell and two other individuals allegedly followed the woman, assaulting her and forcing her into the trunk of a vehicle.
The alleged victim was able to open the trunk and jump onto the roadway. She was recaptured and again placed into the trunk and driven to a residence on Third Street in Clearlake Park, where she was kept for three days while the suspects attempted to obtain information from her so they could access her ATM account, Bennett said. During this time she was periodically assaulted by the suspects.
Bennett said the woman finally was able to free herself and climb over fences and flee the immediate area where she had been held and obtain a ride to the hospital.
When officers arrived at the hospital and interviewed the alleged victim, they found her injuries were consistent with what she had described had occurred, Bennett said.
Officers responded to Third Street in Clearlake Park and contacted Mitchell, who they subsequently arrested.
Mitchell was booked in the Lake County Jail, with bail set at $300,000.
Bennett said police are still looking for the two additional suspects in this case.
Anyone with additional information in this case are requested to contact Officer Winslow at 707-994-8251.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The fields for the fall city council races in Lakeport and Clearlake are now set, with 15 candidates running for a total of six open seats on the two councils.
The deadline for filing papers for both races was 5 p.m. Wednesday.
There are three seats on each council that will appear on the Nov. 6 ballot.
In Clearlake, nine community members are seeking election this fall, according to City Clerk Melissa Swanson.
They include Bunnie Carter; Gina Fortino Dickson, who serves on the Clearlake Planning Commission; Charles O’Neill-Jones, a retired facilities manager; small business owner Denise Loustalot; incumbent Joyce Overton; Bruno Sabatier, a data maintenance programmer; businessman Alvaro Valencia; Michael J. Walton; and business owner Melinda Young.
Swanson said Walton’s nomination signatures are still being verified.
Council members Judy Thein and Curt Giambruno decided not to run again.
In Lakeport, City Clerk Janel Chapman said six candidates have qualified to run for the council’s three open seats in the Nov. 6 election.
Qualifying candidates include incumbents Robert “Bob” Rumfelt and Suzanne Lyons, Kenneth “Kenny” Parlet, Marc Spillman, Mary Nolan and Martin Scheel.
Councilman Roy Parmentier is not seeking reelection.
To qualify, candidates had to have been nominated by not less than 20 voters registered and must reside within the city of Lakeport, Chapman said.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKEPORT, Calif. – A Lakeport man convicted of stabbing his neighbor to death also is the first person to be convicted of using information from the state’s sex offender registration Web site in the commission of a crime.
Ivan Garcia Oliver, 34, was convicted of first-degree murder, burglary and special allegations including causing great bodily injury and personally using a deadly weapon for the Nov. 20, 2007, stabbing of 67-year-old Michael Dodele at Western Hills Mobile Home Park outside of Lakeport.
There also was another special allegation the jury found to be true – that Oliver had used information from the Megan’s Law sex offender registration Web site to commit a felony.
On Thursday, the California Attorney General’s Office – which administers California’s Megan’s Law Web site, www.meganslaw.ca.gov – confirmed to Lake County News that Oliver’s conviction on the special allegation involving the Megan’s Law information was a first in the state.
When Oliver is sentenced on Wednesday, Aug. 29, he faces 32 years to life in prison, according to Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff.
“Vigilantism based on the Megan’s Law Web site is a really bad thing for the public,” Hinchcliff said Thursday after Oliver’s guilty verdicts had been returned.
Oliver’s defense attorney, Stephen Carter, said he plans to file an appeal of the conviction at the Aug. 29 sentencing.
Law establishes Web site
California – the first state in the nation to have a sex offender registration law – has required registration of convicted sex offenders since 1947, according to the California Attorney General’s Office. The agency reported that California has the most registered sex offenders of any state.
In 1996 California enacted Megan’s Law, named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka. The first grader was raped and murdered in 1994 by a known child molester who had moved into the New Jersey neighborhood where she lived with her family.
At that time, there were no requirements to notify families of the presence of sex offenders in their communities. Since then, various forms of Megan’s Law have taken root in every state.
AB 488 – authored by Assemblywoman Nicole Parra (D-Hanford) and sponsored by then-California Attorney General Bill Lockyer – authorized the Megan’s Law Web site listing of the state’s most serious sex offenders.
The bill was signed in September 2004; as a result, the new Penal Code Section 290.46 required the California Department of Justice to create the state’s Megan’s Law Web site on or before July 1, 2005.
In December 2004, Lockyer unveiled the new site six months ahead of the deadline, with 63,000 sex offenders listed, as well as the home address of the most serious offenders, which then numbered 33,500.
In addition to establishing the Web site, Penal Code Section 290.46 also set forth penalties for misuse of the site.
It states that any person convicted of using the information to commit a misdemeanor can face fines of between $10,000 and $50,000; for a felony, the penalty is five years in prison.
The Web site carries a disclaimer on the use of the information – which it warns may be incomplete or incorrect, with the potential for mistaken identities – and requires users to click on a box to acknowledge the disclaimer before moving into the main part of the site.
Once in the site, users can search by name, address, city, zip code and county, and proximity to parks and schools.
Misinterpreting information
Hinchcliff had presented evidence during the trial that, several days before Dodele was fatally stabbed more than 65 times, Oliver had gotten a printout of the Megan’s Law sex offender registration Web site from Lacey Kou, manager of the Western Hills Mobile Home Park.
Oliver had said on the stand that he had become fearful after seeing a stranger near the park calling to his son.
So he went to speak to Kou, who pulled up the Web site – which Oliver said he had never seen before – to determine if there were any sex offenders in the neighborhood. Dodele came up in the search.
Dodele’s entry included the wording of PC 288A(C), forced oral copulation. The statute reads: “Any person who commits an act of oral copulation upon a minor who is 14 years of age or older, when the act is accomplished against the victim's will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury on the victim or another person, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for 6, 8, or 10 years.”
For someone not aware of the circumstances of Dodele’s conviction, it may have appeared that he had been convicted of molesting a child, however, he was registered for a 1980s rape of an adult female victim, who he had threatened with a knife. He also had several previous convictions for rape and attempted rape.
Oliver testified that he had not seen the conviction’s wording on the Web site, and claimed it was Kou who told him, incorrectly, that Dodele was a child molester.
Oliver used the printout – which he said on the stand did not include Dodele’s specific conviction information – to warn neighbors about Dodele, who was killed inside his trailer. During the trial that printout was presented as an exhibit.
At trial Oliver said when he spoke to neighbors about his concerns, they didn’t seem to care.
His girlfriend, Cathleen Ferran, also testified to telling Oliver that she didn’t think the listing was accurate, and that the matter needed to be left up to law enforcement.
Following Dodele’s fatal stabbing, Oliver told detectives that Dodele touched his son, an allegation he had never shared with his girlfriend or anyone else. He also made statements about his hatred of child molesters.
Hinchcliff said the Web site’s purpose is to assist the public in figuring out who their neighbors are.
He suggested that if more cases of vigilantism occurred, “the public is going to lose the Megan’s Law Web site.”
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