Press release from the District Attorney’s Office:
Today,
a Humboldt County jury found Daniel Forrest Rena-Dozier, age 42,
guilty of voluntary manslaughter for killing Mia Felder, age 30, as
well as guilty for felony assault with a semiautomatic firearm,
felony possession of a silencer, and misdemeanor possession of a
weapon with the serial number removed. The jury also found that Mr.
Rena-Dozier personally used a firearm, causing Ms. Felder’s death.
Rena Dozier.
The
homicide occurred on April 8, 2023, on Windy Road in McKinleyville.
Deputy
District Attorney Roger Rees prosecuted the case at trial, with
assistance from District Attorney Investigator Gregory Hill and
Victim Advocate Caitlyn LaHaie. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s
Office investigated the case, led by Detective Daniel Vickman with
assistance from Det. Jennifer Taylor, among others in the Humboldt
County Sheriff’s Office. Mr. Rena-Dozier was represented by local
attorney Andrea Sullivan. The Honorable Steven Steward, Judge,
presided over the three-week jury trial.
Mr.
Rena-Dozier, who faces a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison for
voluntary manslaughter with use of a firearm, is scheduled to be
sentenced by Judge Steward on July 8 at 8:30 in the morning.
District
Attorney Stacey Eads commented “Thank you to the jurors for their
time and thoughtful evaluation in reaching a just verdict in this
tragic case. My deepest condolences go out to all of the affected
family and other loved ones.”
Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is seeking the public’s assistance in identifying suspects involved in a violent carjacking, assault, and shooting incident that occurred in the Fortuna area.
On the evening of April 13, 2024, at approximately 11:15 PM, deputies responded to reports of a carjacking and shooting in the unincorporated area of Newburg Road, in Fortuna. Upon arrival, deputies discovered a local victim who had sustained multiple injuries from an assault and a gunshot wound. The victim was immediately transported to a nearby hospital and is currently recovering from major injuries.
Preliminary investigations indicate that the suspects, described as two males wearing dark clothing and masks, approached the victim’s vehicle, forcibly removed him from the car, and proceeded to assault and shoot the victim before fleeing the scene in the stolen vehicle.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is working diligently to gather more information and urges anyone who witnessed the incident or has any information related to the suspects or the stolen vehicle to come forward. The stolen vehicle is described as a white 2017 Toyota Tacoma with the license plate number 14709K2. The following photos were taken from the victim’s surveillance system.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251. Anonymous tips can also be submitted through the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip Line at (707) 268-2539.
The unanimous ruling, written by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, puts a coda on a debate that has in many ways been resolved for months. Last year, state lawmakers rushed to exempt UC Berkeley’s contentious housing project from legal challenge, resolving many of the thorniest legal questions in advance of the state’s highest court.
Though the case was about a single cluster of proposed housing developments on Berkeley’s counterculture-famous People’s Park south of campus, it caught the attention of housing and environmental advocates across the state, national news outlets, and state lawmakers.
The saga began in 2021, when UC Berkeley, as part of a broader development plan, proposed a new student housing complex at the site of the historic park, along with a supportive housing project for homeless Berkeley residents. Local historic preservation activists under the dual banners of the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group and Make UC a Good Neighbor, sued.
Their argument to the court: The noise certain to come from future collegiate residents amounts to a pollutant.
California’s Environmental Quality Act requires public agencies to study the environmental consequences of any project it embarks upon and to report those findings to the public in a comprehensive study. UC Berkeley, the suit argued, had failed to access the effect of student noise in that study.
After an appellate court judge ruled against UC Berkeley in 2023, legislators and Newsom whipped up a law which specified that “noise generated by project occupants and their guests” does not have “a significant effect on the environment for residential projects” for the purposes of CEQA. The law also exempted universities from having to consider alternative development sites to comply with environmental law, shielding UC Berkeley from a related legal challenge.
That all left California’s highest court with relatively little to decide in today’s ruling.
At oral argument before the Supreme Court last April, even Thomas Lippe, the lawyer representing the neighborhood groups conceded that the case “provides no platform to stop” the People’s Park housing. But, he argued, the new law made no mention of all the “social noise” that would result from the school’s overall development plan, which was meant to take into account projected student population increases and which included the People’s Park housing projects.
“It makes perfect sense for the Legislature to leave a broad requirement in CEQA to look at and investigate the social noise impacts of increasing population,” attorney Thomas Lippe argued to the court in April.
The court adamantly disagreed, arguing that whatever ambiguity exists in the new law signed by the governor last year, the intent of the Legislature was crystal clear: The People’s Park project should not be delayed based on concerns of noise. “The legislative history of Assembly Bill 1307 overwhelmingly establishes that the Legislature enacted the new law to abrogate the Make UC decision,” the opinion reads.
The idea of building housing on People’s Park has drawn condemnation from a wide array of Berkeley residents, including defenders of historic sites, opponents of dense housing and left-wing activists who celebrate People’s Park’s history as a magnet of political protest and, more recently, a sanctuary for people experiencing homelessness.
UC Berkeley’s proposed project would leave 60% of the site as a public park.
But the lawsuit also became a flashpoint in the statewide debate over CEQA, California’s five-decade-old environmental law that is frequently used to slow or kill large housing projects for reasons that are not always obviously connected to environmental protection.
Clangs from industrial machinery at a factory, music from loud speakers at a wedding venue and even the metallic squeaks of playground equipment have long been considered an environmental impact subject to state environmental law. But the Berkeley neighborhood groups were the first to suggest that the sounds emanating from the future residents of a project going about their day-to-day activities should also be taken into account by the state statute.
In pushing forward her bill to reverse last year’s appellate ruling, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks warned that such a legal argument would open the door to other forms of discrimination under the guise of concerns of noise. “This could be used as a tool to keep communities of color out,” the Oakland Democrat told CalMatters last year.
With today’s ruling, UC Berkeley spokesperson Kyle Gibson said in a statement that it will be “turning its attention to the timeline for resuming construction now that all legal challenges have been resolved.”
“We are grateful for the strong and ongoing support this project has received from the majority of Berkeley students, community members, advocates for the unhoused, the city’s elected leaders, the state Legislature, and the governor,” he said.
###
Mikhail Zinshteyn contributed to this story. CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
Before becoming a member of the California Assembly, Freddie Rodriguez spent 30 years as an emergency medical technician in the San Gabriel Valley. He’s wheeled untold numbers of patients on gurneys into hospital emergency departments.
And he’s seen all too often what happens when one of them tries to hurt caregivers. In fact, it recently happened to his daughter, Desirae, a respiratory technician. He told the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday that she was recently assaulted on the job.
“This violence is unacceptable,” Rodriguez testified. “But for many of the health care heroes, they view workplace violence as just part of the job.”
The issue prompted Rodriguez to introduce Assembly Bill 977, which would increase penalties to a year in jail for those convicted of assaulting California’s hospital emergency room doctors, nurses and other workers. But the bill has an uncertain future due to resistance from progressive Democrats who, for the past decade, have sought to shrink the numbers of inmates in its crowded jails and prisons. Indeed, former Gov. Jerry Brown, who faced a U.S. Supreme Court order to shrink the state’s prison population, vetoed an identical bill from Rodriguez in 2015.
Those tensions were on display when the bill narrowly passed the Senate Public Safety Committee earlier this week.
The safety committee’s liberal Democratic senators from the San Francisco Bay Area, Scott Wiener and Nancy Skinner, opposed the legislation. They sided with the California Public Defenders Association and prison-reform advocates who argue that increasing criminal penalties doesn’t deter crime and who say laws on the books already prohibit assault.
Former Gov. Brown made a similar argument in his 2015 veto message.
“If there were evidence that an additional six months in county jail … would enhance the safety of these workers or serve as a deterrent, I would sign this bill,” Brown wrote. “I doubt that it would do either.”
At this week’s hearing, the bill’s opponents also argued that many of the attacks in emergency departments are from patients having mental-health crises.
“We realize now that because of the lack of mental-health resources …ERs are where people who are having a crisis of mental health are brought,” Skinner said. “And punishments like this are not deterrents for people who can use no judgment.”
Skinner, however, didn’t vote on the bill, which counts the same as voting “no.” When Rodriguez’s bill passed the Assembly earlier this year, 12 members – most of them progressive Democrats who’ve been leery of increasing criminal penalties – didn’t vote. As CalMatters has reported, lawmakers regularly avoid voting on controversial bills to avoid angering colleagues or to eliminate a record of their opposition on sensitive matters. There is no distinction for legislators who abstain or are absent.
Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez addresses other lawmakers during a floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on April 4, 2024. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters
Wiener cast the lone “no” vote in the five-member committee. The influential California Medical Association, representing the state’s physicians, supported the bill. The opposition from Skinner and Wiener represented a significant break from the association’s positions on legislation. Skinner has historically sided with the doctors’ group 80% of the time; Wiener 86%, according to an analysis from CalMatters Digital Democracy database.
Murrieta Republican Sen. Kelly Seyarto, who has historically aligned with the California Medical Association only 45% of the time, was firmly on the doctors’ side this time around. He’s a former battalion chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, who has seen his share of violent medical calls.
He told his committee colleagues that the legislation is “long overdue.”
“I know personally a nurse that was disabled, (after) she was attacked and thrown to the ground,” Seyarto said. “She had a head injury and she could never go back to work. She could never go back to work. And the person that did that, there was nothing mentally wrong with them. He was just mad.”
###
CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
Creg
Hommey, aka “Spirit,” was an urban legend from the Rainbow Family
Gatherings. In Arcata
he was famously known for the bunny. But in the rest of the country
he was known famously as a permanent feature of just about every
Rainbow gathering and the thousands and thousands of personal stories
about him will live on. He will be missed by so many of us that loved
him.
He
didn’t do a lot.
He
was king of the bliss ninnies, and it was always speculated whether
he was more leprechaun or elf, and whether there really were
clones of him at other gatherings. But what thousands of his friends
can say for certain is that they met him in a remote location in a
national forest for their first Rainbow Gathering. And Spirit loved
them all.
Creg
Hommey was born April 12, 1966 in Orange County and passed April 28.
He is survived by his sister, Alexzandria Hommey
Spirit,
a magical creature who walked a path in the wild as one with nature.
Most people couldn’t
even imagine visiting as many beautiful remote places across this
country as Spirit has. Or knowing so many people from every state in
this country. As much as society had rejected him, he made up for it
by finding the people who accepted him. He never had a lot but he
always had love for us and Rainbow, and he will be remembered for
that. He’s climbed many a mountain, and celebrated many actual
rainbows.
He had the mind of a child, and the wisdom from being on
the road for decades. He listened to the stories told around the
heart fire and he really loved marijuana. If you had any, it was
common for him to just magically appear; “Gotta nug?” “right
on,’”
“gotta cig.” As lore would have it, if you said his name three
times
he would arrive shortly after. He was always appreciative, and he
always told us that he loves us.
Plans
are being made to bring him to his last Rainbow Gathering this summer
in California. May the four winds blow you safely home, brother.
https://gofund.me/c061c214
###
The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Spirit’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.
Tuesday’s Eureka City Council meeting. | Screenshot
Last night the Eureka City Council passed a resolution approving Danco Communities to construct the EaRTH Center, a large housing and transit development that will replace two parking lots in downtown Eureka. After a long stop-and-go process, the project could finally break ground by next year if all goes as planned.
The EaRTH Center (short for Eureka Regional Transit and Housing Center) will be between three and five stories tall and could include up to 99 units on its upper floors. The first floor will be dedicated to an intermodal transit center, plus a few commercial spaces for businesses.
The project has been controversial in the past due to the strain it may create on parking availability downtown. The Eureka “Housing for All” Initiative, which will go to Eureka voters in November, specifically seeks to stymie it.
At the meeting, City Manager Miles Slattery explained the winding history that led to the proposed partnership with Danco.
The two lots, located on Third Street between G and H streets, were initially considered for developments to house Cal Poly Humboldt professors and graduate students several years ago. Plans for the multi-story building evolved to include a transit center on its first floor, a project that the Humboldt Transit Authority received a $10 million grant to pursue. The City Council approved the construction company Servitas for the project in 2022, but the university and Servitas later left due to expenses.
Briefly, College of the Redwoods considered joining the project to gain student housing, but the slow approval process for securing the necessary grant funding led the City to look elsewhere. City staff then reached out to Danco, eager to get the ball rolling again (the Humboldt Transit Authority grant has a time signature on it, Councilmember Leslie Castellano said during the meeting).
Slattery said that the City of Eureka, Humboldt Transit Authority, and Danco will soon set up meetings to finalize the designs. “The intent will be to try to be consistent with what we were previously designing,” he said.
A visualization of the EaRTH Center plans approved in 2022. | Screenshot
The City Council was asked to consider a resolution to establish two things: first, declare the EaRTH Center exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), allowable due to its consistency with Eureka’s General Plan Environmental Impact Report, and second, authorize the City Manager to enter negotiations with Danco for a Disposition and Development Agreement.
During a public hearing, Danco Communities President Chris Dart said the company is well equipped to bring the project to life.
“If you do vote tonight, we appreciate your trust,” Dart said. “We will work diligently to design, permit, finance and construct this project. And as you know, that can take some time, but we will put all of our efforts in and make this a priority.”
Though a couple people passionately opposed the project due to parking constraints, most commenters urged the Council to finally build the EaRTH Center.
Colin Fiske, who is with the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, said that Eureka has long needed a transit center and accessible housing.
“This project is a great way to fill both of those needs,” Fiske said. “It’s a little unfortunate that there have been so many delays so far, but we would encourage you to do whatever you need to to move the project along.”
During discussion, all council members agreed that the benefits of affordable housing downtown outweigh the costs of parking inconvenience. Councilmember Scott Bauer said that affordable housing is the most critical need in the community, and Councilmember Renee Contreras-DeLoach said that “a lot of people are stuck in really subpar rentals that are not safe and not clean.”
Some said they themselves would have to walk more, but would be happy to.
“As someone who works in Old Town, has lived in Old Town, has had a small business in Old Town, I personally am thrilled,” Castellano said. “I do park in that parking lot, and will gladly walk an extra couple of blocks, or ride the bus, or walk to work […] in order to ensure that people have access to housing.”
Though the parking lots were once needed, “times change, and needs change” said Councilmember Kati Moulton.
“Choosing an underutilized parking lot over affordable housing – when people are sleeping on the streets, when families are living in their cars […] – choosing an additional parking space so that people can walk a little bit less in our vibrant and beautiful Old Town just seems inhumane,” Moulton said.
The affected parking lots in downtown Eureka. | File photos
In the past, folks have worried that losing the parking lots will harm local businesses, but some council members held that new housing downtown will have the opposite impact.
Renters who qualify for affordable housing are likely to invest money previously used for rent back into the community, Castellano said.
“I think it’s gonna make a big difference to have that many people who all of a sudden have a little more money to spend, who have been seeing like 50, 60 percent of their income they’re making every month go just to paying rent.”
Though parking facilities are not included in the EaRTH Center plans, some council members expressed interest in discussing possibilities for new parking developments down the line.
Following the discussion, Castellano made a motion and the resolution passed unanimously.
Elsewhere in last night’s meeting, the Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine Conflict. They also looked at the 2024-2025 proposed budget and heard the results of a homelessness survey from the Eureka Police Department.
Architectural mockup of a new play structure planned for Da’ Yas Park. | Image via City of Eureka.
###
Press release from the City of Eureka:
The City of Eureka is excited to announce construction has commenced at Da’ Yas Park (previously
20/30 Park) located at 2605 Pine Street. The key elements for upgrading the park includes a multi-sport court, various age play areas, inclusive play, ADA paths/walkways, open space field, picnic
areas, fitness stations, restroom building, new parking and upgrades to Jacob Haney ball field.
Construction activities began on Monday, June 3rd and the expected duration for construction is
approximately 5 months. The park will be fully closed to all pedestrian access and use. Road closures
will be in effect June 3rd through November 20th 2024. See the attached road closure map.
Authorized work hours will be Monday through Friday, 6 a.m.-6 p.m. Heavy equipment will not be
authorized until 7am.
Our contractor will make every effort to make this work as painless as possible for you, we are
asking for your patience, cooperation, and understanding during the construction work.
If you notice any illegal activity in or around the park during construction, we urge you to contact
EPD immediately. For emergencies, call 911. For non-emergencies, call (707) 441-4060. Your
diligence in helping monitor the work site will help ensure an efficient and interruption free project.
If you have any questions or concerns about this project, please contact the Community Services
Department at (707) 441-4241.
This project is made possible due to a grant from California State Parks Statewide Park Program.
Curious about the status of other Eureka parks?
Carson Park
Status: Phase 1 complete featuring new restroom and basketball court
