Ruiz-Keyes (left) and Cudney. | Booking photos.
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Judge Kelly Neel set bail at $190,000 today for a Eureka teen charged with attempted murder after allegedly firing a semiautomatic handgun at a driver in Arcata on Dec. 23.
Neel appointed the Public Defender’s Office to represent 18-year-old Daniel Robert Logan Fernandez-Ralls, accused of firing from his car at another vehicle near the intersection of Highways 101 and 299. The California Highway Patrol arrested Fernandez-Ralls later that day in McKinleyville.
This afternoon Fernandez-Ralls was arraigned on charges of attempted murder and firing at an occupied vehicle. He also faces the special allegation of personal use of a firearm. No one was injured during the incident, which was reported to the CHP about 8:25 a.m.
Deputy Public Defender Casey Russo entered not guilty pleas on Fernandez-Ralls’s behalf. A bail hearing is scheduled for Thursday, and a preliminary hearing for Jan. 9.
About 10 of Fernandez-Ralls’s family members and friends were in the courtroom audience for the arraignment.
Deputy District Attorney Jessica Acosta was in court for the prosecution.
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Earlier today, Neel issued an arrest warrant for vehicular manslaughter suspect Gary Joel Cudney, who didn’t show up to enter his expected plea of guilty.
Neel issued a $35,000 warrant for Cudney, 66, after defense attorney Manny Daskal said he hadn’t heard from Cudney and didn’t know where he was. Cudney was planning to plead guilty this morning to vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated for the December 2017 death of Dwight “Dirty Dave” Davis.
Cudney, who no longer lives in Eureka, was originally scheduled to plead guilty last week. At that time he arrived at the Humboldt County Courthouse but was too ill to make it upstairs to court. Cudney received medical treatment in the courthouse lobby because he couldn’t breathe.
On Dec. 14, 2017, Cudney was driving with a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when his Dodge Durango struck Davis on West Harris Street near the Eureka Mall. Davis, 71, died in the hospital shortly afterward.
Deputy District Attorney Whitney Timm is the prosecutor on the case.
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Also in Neel’s courtroom this morning, Arcata resident Javier Ruiz-Keyes was sentenced to six years in state prison on drug and weapons charges, along with one count of pandering.
Neel sentenced Ruiz-Keyes to four years for pandering (persuading a person to become or remain a prostitute), four years for possession of a controlled substance while armed with a firearm and two years for committing a crime while out of jail on bail.
The two four-year sentences will run concurrently, with the two-year term running consecutively. Ruiz-Keyes received credit for 452 days in Humboldt County Correctional Facility.
Ruiz-Keyes originally was charged with human trafficking. Three admitted prostitutes testified at his lengthy preliminary hearing. In the end, Neel held him to answer on pimping and pandering charges but not on for human trafficking.
In a separate case, he was arrested for cocaine possession while armed with a loaded firearm.
Today Neel scolded Ruiz-Keyes for his lifestyle, making a living “on the backs” of women while he did nothing.
“You don’t work,” Neel said. “You send (women) out to work at all hours to have sex with people … that’s not what a good person does.”
Ruiz-Keyes, 31, has two young daughters of his own.
“Don’t think for a moment that those babies don’t know exactly what’s going on,” the judge said. “They know Mommy is skipping from motel to motel while Daddy does nothing.”
Neel told Ruiz-Keyes he has not only expressed no remorse or acknowledged wrongdoing, “You come into court as though you have been a victim of the system and nobody understands. That’s laughable.”
Deputy District Attorney Carolyn Schaffer is the prosecutor on the case. Deputy Public Defender David Celli appeared today for Ruiz-Keyes.