The Eureka Police Department has announced that formal charges have been filed in the case of Jennika Suazo, an 18-year-old Eureka girl who was found dead inside her home five years ago today. More details in the EPD release below:
5 years ago, 18-year-old Jennika Lee Suazo was found deceased in her residence on the 300 block of P Street in Eureka. For years, Eureka Police Department Detectives interviewed dozens of people, analyzed evidence, and waited for DNA results. After a thorough investigation, the Eureka Police Department completed its case in May of 2021 and forwarded it to the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office with a request that 34-year-old Anthony Lee Hamilton be charged for the murder of Suazo.
Anthony Lee Hamilton, seen here during a 2014 arrest
Earlier today, Hamilton was formally charged for the murder of Jennika Lee Suazo. Hamilton has been in custody since 2017, on unrelated charges. Senior Detective Cosetti said, “Thank you to Jennika’s family and friends for their patience over the last five years. Your love for Jennika was strong throughout the entire investigation.”
Paz Dominguez followed up with the Outpost to say her office did notify the two affected employees “as soon as we confirmed it was fraud. That is 100% accurate.”
The Outpost has heard from multiple sources that the county employee who fell for the paycheck scam was a recent hire working in the Human Resources Department.
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2nd UPDATE, Dec. 9, 11:40 a.m.:
Another county employee contacted the Outpost Thursday morning to say she also was not “immediately notified” about her misdirected paycheck and, in fact, only got paid after she and her boss reached out to the Auditor-Controller’s Office (to no avail), the County Administrative Office and a union representative.
This employee, who also requested anonymity to avoid retribution, said the delay in getting paid got progressively more stressful as the day wore on.
“I basically had a breakdown over lunch,” she said. “Honestly, this whole payroll fiasco has made me want to terminate [my employment] with the county. Just the fact that it took numerous heads of departments to even get ahold of payroll — for me that was the hardest part, the fact that there’s so much disconnect with the Auditor-Controller.”
She was eventually paid on Friday afternoon, she said — still payday but hours later than usual.
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UPDATE, Dec. 9, 10:10 a.m.:
One of the affected employees, a union member, contacted the Outpost after this post was published to dispute Paz Dominguez’s account, below. The worker, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation and on the advice of her union boss, said she was not “immediately notified.”
“I had to bug them for two weeks to get a check,” she said. She was told she needed to fill out a form testifying to the fraudulent activity before she could get her check, but she felt that was not her responsibility.
“This isn’t my doing,” she said. “The check should have been in my account. The fact that one of our departments fell for a fraudulent scam is their responsibility.”
The scam, she said, entailed requests to have employee paychecks diverted onto Green Dot brand prepaid Visa cards.
“They had no documentation to say how they verified this change with me, which they didn’t,” the employee said. She told the Outpost that she finally got paid Monday morning, more than two weeks after it was due, and only after notifying the Human Resources Department, the Auditor-Controller’s Office and the IT Department that she was filing a complaint with her labor union.
“They fell for a scam, essentially, and that’s not my responsibility,” she said.
A nefarious attempt to steal county employee paychecks was uncovered last week by the Auditor-Controller’s Office and Human Resources Department, and the matter has been referred to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office.
Details on the scam remain a bit scant, but here’s what we know: The Outpost got a confidential tip early Wednesday saying an as-yet-unidentified villain had emailed fiscal staffers in several departments. Impersonating county employees, this person claimed to have a new bank account and asked to have their bank routing numbers for direct deposits changed.
In other words, the alleged scammer was trying to divert employee paychecks into his or her own account, and apparently it worked well enough to reroute at least one or two payments — so we heard, at any rate.
We reached out to Auditor-Controller Karen Paz Dominguez and Deputy County Administrative Officer Sean Quincey for more information. Paz Dominguez responded via email:
Regarding direct deposit fraud –
On Friday, 12/3/2021, the A-C Office, in collaboration with the Human Resources department, identified and confirmed a small number of fraud instances related to employee direct deposits. The matter has been referred to County IT as well as the Sheriff department for further investigation.
The affected employees were immediately notified, made whole, and had their profiles corrected. The fraud was identified and confirmed rather quickly and we will continue examining and strengthening the County’s internal controls related to the safekeeping of public funds.
A claim has been filed with US Bank to have the funds returned to the County. As it is now an open investigation, I am not able to provide further comment.
Quincey told the Outpost that the county is actively investigating the matter.
“It’s definitely something we’re taking seriously,” he said. “It rose to that level where law enforcement needed to be brought in.”
We’ve reached out to the Sheriff’s Office for more information but have yet to hear back.
This marks the second payroll-related kerfuffle in less than three weeks. As previously reported, some sort of systems error wreaked havoc on the county’s Nov. 19 payroll, causing most employee paychecks to be delayed. The autopsy on that disaster hasn’t been fully completed, though Paz Dominguez said the error proved difficult to fix due to “a series of unfortunate events,” including a time-sensitive software “hotfix” and some inter-departmental miscommunication related to the payroll function’s migration from the Human Resources Department to the Auditor-Controller’s Office.
Weekend rain and snow. | Graphics provided by the NWS.
Rain, wind and snow are in the weekend forecast.
Eureka’s National Weather Service predicts that rain will fall across the county throughout the day on Saturday, with the heaviest rainfall occurring on Saturday night and Sunday.
“A period of moderate to heavy rain and mountain snow are forecast for this weekend,” the NWS said. “Additional rain, wind, and snow are expected early next week.”
Most of Humboldt County is expected to receive 1 to 2 inches of rain between Saturday and Sunday. Lower mountain passes like Berry Summit are expected to see less than an inch of snow. Higher elevation areas in trinity County like Buckhorn and Scott Mountain Summits could see between 8 and 18 inches of powder.
“The potential for heavy rain will increase this weekend for the remainder of the area,” the NWS said. “The rain will generally be beneficial, however brief heavy rain will reduce driving visibility and traction. Make your travel plans this weekend accordingly.”
Winds are also expected to increase through the day on Saturday. Eureka is forecast to see winds as strong as 35 mph. Gusts up to 49 mph will be possible around Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and Crescent City.
LoCO has obtained security footage, which you can watch above, that appears to show a vehicle running a red light before plowing into Don’s Rent-All at the corner of Broadway and Washington Street sometime after 8 p.m. on Tuesday night.
The Eureka Police Department tells us they still have not located the driver of the vehicle who seemingly fled the scene.
As for the rest of us, it sounds like traffic on Broadway might be a little hairy for a while while crews ensure that the building doesn’t pose a risk to the public. “The property owner is working with their contractor and an engineer to temporarily shore the building,” said Brian Gerving, Director of Public Works with the City of Eureka.
As crews pulled the wreckage from the corner of the building Wednesday, LoCO spoke to Don’s Rent-All co-owner Meredith Biasca about the bummer situation, but she wanted to express how grateful she is for the support she’s received from her community. Hear her take in the clip above.
Murder suspect Ryan Anthony Tanner is scheduled for a preliminary hearing next month on 10 felony counts involving a separate alleged victim who claims Tanner kidnapped him and assaulted him with various weapons.
Tanner.
The reported crimes occurred in March and April of 2019, about a year before Tanner, now 34, was arrested and charged with murdering Jason Todd Garrett in an Ettersburg-area home.
In the case now set for preliminary hearing on Jan. 18, Tanner is accused of kidnapping, threatening and assaulting Devin Timothy Stebbins.
According to the criminal complaint, the 31-year-old Stebbins claims Tanner kidnapped and then falsely imprisoned him. During the episode, Stebbins reported, Tanner assaulted him with a sawed-off shotgun, a rifle, a sword and a hammer.
Tanner also is charged with battery with serious bodily injury and with threatening Stebbins with death or great bodily injury.
This morning, before Judge Larry Killoran, defense attorney Russ Clanton asked that the preliminary hearing be delayed until after Tanner’s murder trial. Clanton said the trial could go on for months and involves “one of the most complex homicide cases I have seen in many years.” He said he didn’t see the point of taking up the lesser case at this time.
But Deputy District Attorney Jessica Acosta said the kidnapping and assault case is aging, and as time goes on memories begin to fade. She expects to call “live” witnesses, meaning civilians rather than police officers, and predicted that “without interruptions,” the hearing will last a week. Preliminary hearings ordinarily take a few hours at most.
Tanner’s murder trial is scheduled for March 21. He has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. He allegedly forced Garrett into a bathtub and then shot him with an assault rifle. The body was found buried under a water tank on Tanner’s property.
In other court news, the preliminary hearing was rescheduled this morning for convicted murderer Demetrius Coleman and his girlfriend Alma Ahumada-Mendoza, both charged with felony welfare fraud, grand theft, perjury and conspiracy.
The hearing was set for today but Judge Kaleb Cockrum agreed to delay it until Feb. 8 at the request of the defense.
Coleman.
According to the written criminal complaint, Coleman and Ahumada-Mendoza made fraudulent statements between July and December of 2020 in order to receive financial and medical benefits. During that time Coleman, 41, was already in custody for the August 2019 murder of Johnny Mack Renfro in Rio Dell.
Ahumada-Mendoza has a child from a previous relationship, and she and Coleman have a child together.
A jury convicted Coleman more than a year ago of special-circumstance murder, meaning he is looking at life in prison without possibility of parole. He is now represented by attorney Zack Curtis, although Andrea Sullivan was his trial lawyer.
Coleman still has not been sentenced.
Although Ahumada-Mendoza was also charged with Renfro’s murder, Judge Timothy Canning dismissed charges against her at the couple’s preliminary hearing. She is out of custody but has come to court for both appearances scheduled in the fraud case.
Ahumada-Mendoza is represented by attorney Joe Judge.
Well, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is pretty pumped to let us all know that they have acquired a new K9 Deputy that will soon be taking a bite out of crime, as they say.
One problem though: this police pooch needs a name (other than just “Police Pooch,” which is too good). Thus, because the internet provides such tools, you the community member gets to weigh in on the what this hound of justice will henceforth be called. HCSO has selected the following four choices “submitted by HCSO staff” and “inspired by our Humboldt community.” Here we go:
Red
Knox
Denali
Uno
Hmm. Think hard on this one, Humboldt community. If you’d like to participate in this process, click over here.
A bad crash at Don’s Rent-All last night ruined the traffic signals at Broadway and Washington, and the city tells us they aren’t going to be fixed by this morning.
Expect delays in your morning commute, and treat the flashing red lights like you would a stop sign.
On Tuesday night, a collision damaged the traffic signal at Broadway and Washington Street. Until repairs can be made, the signal will be flashing red.
Remember, even if additional stop signs aren’t placed as a reminder, a flashing red signal means the same thing as a stop sign. Please pay extra attention while driving in the vicinity and avoid the area if you can, especially during the Wednesday morning commute.
