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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Oscar Rosas, 45, turned himself in a day after the crash, which occurred Wednesday night on Highway 20 east of Bridge Arbor Drive near Upper Lake.
The pedestrian who was injured was identified as 27-year-old Omar Romero of Lakeport, according to the California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office.
The agency said its officers responded to a report of a hit and run collision between a vehicle and pedestrian shortly after 8 p.m. Wednesday, during rainy and dark conditions.
The CHP said its preliminary investigation indicated a blue SUV struck Romero, who was walking south and was within the eastbound lanes of Highway 20.
After hitting Romero, the vehicle fled the scene on eastbound Highway 20, the CHP said.
Romero was transported to Sutter Lakeside Hospital in Lakeport with major injuries, which the CHP said included various blunt force trauma and a broken neck.
The CHP’s initial investigation efforts led officers to an address associated with the blue SUV, but no vehicle was located at that time.
At 5:25 p.m. Thursday, the CHP’s Ukiah Communications Center received a phone call from Rosas, who wanted to turn himself in to law enforcement, stating that his blue 2007 Ford Escape was involved in the collision.
The CHP said its officers responded to Rosas’ address in Clearlake where the Ford Escape was located with damage consistent with the hit and run traffic collision.
Rosas subsequently was arrested for felony hit and run just after 6:30 p.m. and transported and booked into Lake County Jail, the CHP said.
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- Written by: DENNIS FORDHAM
In California, people who own real property generally establish a revocable living trust, as settlors, and transfer title to their assets to themselves as trustees to avoid probate when they die.
While alive, a settlor retains the separate powers to revoke and amend their living trust, so long as they have the mental capacity to do so.
Trust amendments range from minor modifications to complete restatements of the entire trust itself.
Typically trust amendments may involve changes to who acts as successor trustee and/or who inherits what assets and/or share of the trust at the settlor’s death. To be valid, the trust amendment must be properly executed.
Sections 15401 and 15402 of the Probate Code say how a trust can be revoked or amended. Section 15402 provides that, “unless the trust instrument provides otherwise, if a trust is revocable by the settlor, the settlor may modify [amend] the trust by the procedure for revocation [in section 15401]." Trusts typically say how the settlor can validly revoke or amend the trust and typically require that the amendment be acknowledged by a notary public.
Until now, there was a longstanding disagreement amongst California’s appellate courts regarding whether a settlor had to follow the procedure stated in the trust itself to amend the trust or, alternatively, could follow the statutory procedure in section 15401 to revoke a trust that also applies to amending trusts.
Section 15401 provides that, “(a) A trust that is revocable by the settlor or any other person may be revoked in whole or in part by any of the following methods: (1) By compliance with any method of revocation provided in the trust instrument. (2) By a writing, other than a will, signed by the settlor or any other person holding the power of revocation and delivered to the trustee during the lifetime of the settlor or the person holding the power of revocation. If the trust instrument explicitly makes the method of revocation provided in the trust instrument the exclusive method of revocation, the trust may not be revoked pursuant to this paragraph.” Again, the rule in section 15401 applies to amending a trust and, importantly, does not require that the amendment be acknowledged by a notary public.
In Brianna Mckee Haggerty, v. Nancy F. Thornton S271483 (Cal. Feb 08, 2024) the California Supreme Court resolved the aforementioned legal disagreement — whether the amendment procedure in the trust must be followed to the exclusion of the statutory procedure in section 15401 — on a statewide basis.
The Supreme Court held that, “… under section 15402, a trust may be modified via the section 15401 procedures for revocation, including the statutory method, unless the trust instrument provides a method of modification and explicitly makes it exclusive, or otherwise expressly precludes the use of revocation procedures for modification.”
Typically speaking the statutory method in section 15401 is more easily fulfilled as the methods typically found in trusts all require an acknowledgement (as was the true in the Haggerty case) to be valid.
Of course, a trust may be drafted to require that its stated procedure for amending the trust is the only procedure that can be used and exclude the section 15401 statutory procedure which does not require a notarization of the amendment.
The foregoing brief discussion is not legal advice. Consult a qualified attorney for guidance.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
As part of its evaluation of the Wolf-Livestock Compensation Pilot Program, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is posting outstanding wolf depredation reports dating back to August 2023.
The depredation reports confirm 16 wolf depredations totaling a loss of 18 livestock. With this posting, CDFW can now finalize review of existing program applications and eligibility of livestock producers to receive payments for direct losses.
The Wolf-Livestock Compensation Pilot Program is the first of its kind in California and has thus far provided support to livestock producers in compensating for direct loss of livestock due to confirmed wolf depredation; supported non-lethal deterrence techniques such as the use of range riders, electrified fencing and flags (turbo fladry), camera surveillance, motion lights and guardian dogs; and compensated livestock producers for the impact of wolf presence on livestock.
CDFW received $3 million in funding from the Budget Act of 2021 and began receiving applications in February 2022. As of January 12, 2024, CDFW had received a total of 102 applications. At that time, CDFW notified the public that the applications received were projected to exhaust the current fund.
The efforts to implement the pilot program have been important to wolf conservation and supporting livestock producers in the state. Once the program is complete and evaluated, CDFW will make a summary public on its Gray Wolf webpage.
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- Written by: Chelsea Gohd
A glowing cosmic cloud has revealed a cataclysmic collision.
Even within our own solar system, scientists have seen evidence of giant, planetary collisions from long ago.
Remaining clues like Uranus’ tilt and the existence of Earth’s moon point to times in our distant history when the planets in our stellar neighborhood slammed together, forever changing their shape and place in orbit. Scientists looking outside our solar system to far off exoplanets can spot similar evidence that, across the universe, planets sometimes crash.
In this new study, the evidence of such an impact comes from a cloud of dust and gas with a strange, fluctuating luminosity.
Scientists were observing a young (300-million-year-old) sun-like star when they noticed something odd: the star suddenly and significantly dipped in brightness.
A team of researchers looked a little closer and they found that, just before this dip, the star displayed a sudden spike in infrared luminosity.
In studying the star, the team found that this luminosity lasted for 1,000 days. But 2.5 years into this bright event, the star was unexpectedly eclipsed by something, causing the sudden dip in brightness. This eclipse endured for 500 days.
The team investigated further and found that the culprit behind both the spike in luminosity and the eclipse was a giant, glowing cloud of gas and dust. And the most likely reason for the sudden, eclipse-causing cloud? A cosmic collision between two exoplanets, one of which likely contained ice, the researchers think.
In a new study detailing these events, scientists suggest that two giant exoplanets anywhere from several to tens of Earth masses crashed into one another, creating both the infrared spike and the cloud. A crash like this would completely liquify the two planets, leaving behind a single molten core surrounded by a cloud of gas, hot rock, and dust.
After the crash, this cloud, still holding the hot, glowing remnant of the collision, continued to orbit the star, eventually moving in front of and eclipsing the star.
Fun facts:
This study was conducted using archival data from NASA’s now-retired WISE mission – the spacecraft continues to operate under the name NEOWISE.
This star was first detected in 2021 by the ground-based robotic survey All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, or ASAS-SN.
While this data revealed remnants of this planetary collision, the glow of this crash should still be visible to telescopes like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. In fact, the research team behind this study is already putting together proposals to observe the system with Webb.
The study, “A planetary collision afterglow and transit of the resultant debris cloud,” was published Oct. 11, 2023, in Nature by lead author Matthew Kenworthy alongside 21 co-authors.