Prominent child psychiatrist William Hamilton Ayres, who is facing a slew of child molestation charges, returned to San Mateo County jail this morning after a judge raised his bail to $750,000.
Ayres, 75, is facing 18 counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child under the age of 14 for allegedly fondling five boys who had come to him for counseling in the early 1990s.
This morning prosecutors sought to increase his bail amount to $1.5 million. Ayres had been out of custody after posting $250,000 bail on Monday.
This morning, Holm continued the case for two weeks so Ayres could find an attorney. Ayres is scheduled to appear again on April 27 at 9 a.m. to possibly enter a plea, Wagstaffe said.
According to authorities, Ayres had a thriving practice treating children from the 1960s to 2006, as well as being called upon to evaluate hundreds of cases, including sex offenders, in San Mateo County juvenile court.
Authorities are searching for a critical eyewitness to a fatal collision on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge last week, California Highway Patrol Officer Trent Cross said today.
Cross identified the eyewitness to the accident as 35-year-old Concord resident Jacob Christopher Scott. Scott goes by the name Jake and is believed to spend time in Oakland, he said.
Investigators believe Scott knows the owner of a black 1990, four-door Honda thought to have fatally struck 52-year-old motorcyclist Timothy Haagensen, of Concord, and that the Honda and Scott's pickup truck were traveling together, Cross said.
Scott was driving in front of the Honda when the Honda apparently struck Haagensen's motorcycle as it headed westbound across the bridge around 5 a.m. on April 2, according to Cross.
Scott was driving a blue 1991 Ford F-150 with the California license plate 4S93143, according to Cross. The license plates on the Ford are not registered to the truck, according to Cross.
The fatal crash occurred after the Honda had reportedly made an unsafe lane change on westbound Interstate Highway 80 just east of the toll plaza right in front of Haagensen, which caused the front end of the motorcycle to strike the Honda's driver's side door and Haagensen to lose control of his bike.
The search for an 83-year-old man who went missing from his family's Oakley home Wednesday morning has been suspended, but investigators are still following up on leads, Contra Costa County sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee said today.
The Contra Costa County sheriff's search and rescue team had been looking for Felipe Capistro around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to the sheriff's office.
"They searched last night until about midnight in the city of Oakley, primarily," Lee said. "They searched the whole city and could not locate him."
Capistro, who has diabetes and dementia, was last seen around 10 a.m. Wednesday when he walked away from his family's home at 4670 Duarte Ave., according to sheriff's investigators.
Capistro is 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighs 170 pounds and has gray hair and brown eyes. He had lived with his family at their home for only about a week and doesn't speak English or know the area.
He left Wednesday morning wearing a black sweater, black pants and a blue baseball cap with the word Teamsters written on it, investigators said.
The San Francisco medical examiner's office has released the name of a 43-year-old man who crashed a car into a Sunset district home late Wednesday after he was fatally shot.
Police learned of the incident after receiving reports of shots fired in the area of 29th Avenue and Santiago Street at 11:24 p.m. Wednesday, Sgt. Steve Mannina said.
Responding officers soon realized that several cars on the block had been hit and that a block away from where the shooting occurred a car had collided with a home.
A small fire that ignited in the home and in the vehicle was quickly extinguished, but emergency crews were not able to revive the driver of the vehicle and he was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police.
Bay Area real estate sales remained at their lowest levels in 11 years in March but those homes that did sell garnered higher prices, according to the real estate information service DataQuick.
More than 8,300 houses and condominiums were sold in the nine-county Bay Area in March, a drop of almost 20 percent from the same period last year. Sales last month were the lowest for any March since 1996.
The median price for a Bay Area home was $639,000, an increase of 3.1 percent from February's median of $620,000 and an increase of 2.1 percent from the March 2006 median of $626,000.
Solano, Marin and Santa Clara counties saw the biggest drop in number of homes sold with 36.4 percent, 24.7 percent and 22 percent declines respectively. The only county that experienced a gain in the number of homes sold was San Francisco, with a minor 1.4 percent increase, according to the DataQuick statistics.
A Piedmont oncologist who was arrested during a sexual predator sting operation in Petaluma last summer will return to court April 20 for the setting of a new hearing date and a motion to suppress evidence.
Wolin was among 30 men arrested for attempting to commit a lewd and lascivious act on a child under age 14. Petaluma police said the suspects thought they were communicating with children on the Internet when they allegedly arranged to meet them for sexual gratification at a Petaluma house.
Instead, members of the Perverted Justice organization posed as children on Internet chat rooms and the suspects were arrested when they showed up at the residence. The arrests were filmed and later broadcast on the NBC Dateline "To Catch a Predator" segment.
Discarded smoking materials in a sleeping area near a bedroom are suspected of causing a fire that caused $450,000 to a Bennett Valley home Thursday afternoon, the Santa Rosa Fire Department reported today.
The fire at the two-story, single-family dwelling at 2355 Morningside Circle was reported at 4:38 p.m. Firefighters found heavy fire throughout the downstairs spreading up the stairwell, Pforsich said.
The fire burned out the rear of the home, spreading to fences and up the exterior wall and onto the shake roof. Two adjacent homes were smoking but were spared any further damage by quick and aggressive efforts, Pforsich said. A second alarm was called seven minutes after the fire started.
Firefighters stopped the fire from spreading up the interior stairway but the home and nearly all furnishings and belongings were heavily damaged by blaze, Pforsich said.
One of the occupants of the home had been called away to visit a friend across town and discovered the fire when he returned, Pforsich said. His efforts to put out the fire with a garden hose were unsuccessful.
As next week's deadline to file tax returns approaches, a group of spiritual leaders is embarking on a national campaign to urge Americans to consider how giving money to others can help achieve security at home and abroad.
The Bay Area will be one of several locations across the U.S. Sunday where the Network of Spiritual Progressives, headed by Rabbi Michael Lerner, will hold events to ask Congress and Americans to consider dedicating at least 1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product to combating poverty and global environmental degradation, according to organizers.
"The best way to achieve national security is to boldly demonstrate America's highest values," Lerner said in a statement. "Robust steps to end poverty, promote human rights, improve education, prevent violence and cure disease around the world would make us safer in two key ways: It would heal the conditions that are fertile soil for terrorist recruitment, and it would restore our reputation, reducing support for those who wish to harm us."
"On Generosity Sunday we'll ask people to consider the notion that they can be safe by standing in solidarity with others rather than by keeping everyone else down," national organizer Nichola Torbett said in a statement.
Teach-ins and lectures are scheduled at the First Congregational Church in Oakland, where Lerner and New College law professor Peter Gabel will speak at 2 p.m. Sunday.
Fremont police are looking for the suspects in a gang-related shooting that injured a 17-year-old boy and a 30-year-old man, Fremont police Inspector Bill Veteran said today.
The incident happened around 5:30 p.m. Thursday on Blacow Road in front of Irvington High School. Classes were not in session at the time and there is no indication the suspects or victims were students at the school, Veteran said.
The incident began when three Sureno gang members in a vehicle pulled up to a group of six or seven Nortenos standing on the sidewalk, Veteran said.
One of the Norteno gang members then fired multiple rounds into the vehicle with a small caliber handgun, Veteran reported, striking the 17-year-old driver in the knee and the 30-year-old front passenger in the stomach.
A San Francisco resident was attacked with a baseball bat and robbed as he walked near his Outer Sunset neighborhood home early this morning, police reported.
The victim was walking in the area of 26th Avenue and Noriega Street at 12:54 a.m. when two men walking in the opposite direction struck him in the head with a baseball bat, police said.
The victim fell to the ground and the suspects continued to beat him, breaking his left hand. The two men then grabbed the victim's belongings and ran away, police reported.
An idea sparked by the mother of a disabled child has turned into a massive community effort to build the largest playground in Concord -- and organizers say more help is needed to realize the dream.
The project, called "Matteo's Dream: A Playground for Children of All Abilities," is spearheaded by Liz Lamach, whose son Matteo is blind and uses a wheelchair. Lamach, a member of the Concord Parks, Recreation and Open Space Commission and the Lions Club, organized the campaign.
The city of Sunnyvale is working to keep dangerous chemicals out of watersheds by paying closer attention to large carwash fundraising events that send large amounts of suds down city drains.
Officials from Sunnyvale have purchased two Sudsafe storm drain kits for the safe disposal of wastewater that will soon be available for nonprofit groups to borrow when they want to use a carwash as a fundraiser, according to statement from the city.
The water that runs into storm drains can contain soaps, detergents, exhaust residue, gasoline, motor oil and other heavy metals, which can run into and pollute creeks and the San Francisco Bay.
The new Sudsafe kits contain a drain block and pump to divert wash water to nearby landscaping or sanitary sewers for treatment and discharge. A brochure listing proper car wash practices is also available, according to the city.
Today is expected to be sunny across the Bay Area with high temperatures ranging from the 60s to low 70s. Northwest winds of 5 to 15 mph are anticipated, stronger at the coast.
Tonight is expected to be partly cloudy across the Bay Area with a chance of showers after midnight. Low temperatures are expected to be in the upper 40s to low 50s. Mild west winds are expected to turn south after midnight.
This is cache, read story here
