Bakersfield Ca

Shell Oil Co. said Monday that it would sell its Bakersfield refinery to one of the largest truck-stop chains in the U.S., giving a surprise reprieve to California motorists. The deal with Ogden, Utah-based Flying J Inc. came weeks before the facility's planned March 31 closure. It could spare supply-strapped California the loss of 2% of its gasoline supply and 6% of its diesel. Terms of the sale to closely held Flying J's refining subsidiary, Big West Oil, weren't disclosed.

On a dirt plot near Bakersfield where a massive refinery once churned out gasoline and asphalt, one of the world's largest oil companies is looking for something more green. On Monday, Chevron Corp. plans to reveal that it has transformed the 8-acre site into a sprawling test facility with 7,700 solar panels. The panels, in various sizes, represent seven cutting-edge photovoltaic technologies from seven companies that Chevron is checking out as possible candidates to power its operations worldwide.

Vincent Brothers will attend the funeral of his slain wife, mother-in-law and children here today as a man in limbo. To his lawyer, Brothers is a grieving husband and father. To the Bakersfield police, he remains the sole suspect in the killings, which they say are among the most gruesome in the city's history.

At least seven people were injured Friday when a woman seeking a flu shot accidentally drove her car into a line of waiting vehicles at a drive-through vaccination site in Bakersfield, according to police. The accident occurred about 10:30 a.m. at Bakersfield College, according to a Police Department news release. "While waiting in line to receive a vaccination, the driver suffered from an apparent medical condition," the statement read. The woman accidentally pressed the accelerator, sending her vehicle into several other cars, a bus and a tree, which was torn from the ground, police said.

It's lunchtime, and nearly every stool is taken at Happy Jack's Pie N' Burgers on the edge of downtown Bakersfield. A shoe salesman digs into a bowl of homemade chili. A couple of architects devour thick, juicy hamburgers. Their buddy orders a peanut-butter-and-chocolate pie, the house specialty, to take back to work. Frances Rosales, the proprietor, cuts it into a dozen slices. She finishes, and asks: "May I have everybody's attention?

New evidence about mass murder defendant Vincent Brothers' troubled history with women contains allegations that local authorities protected the school administrator because he was considered a civic role model. Documents released by court order show that Brothers, who is accused of killing five members of his family in what police have called the "most heinous crime" in this city's history, was repeatedly accused of intimidating and physically assaulting women as far back as 1988.

BAKERSFIELD -- In the days before his murder gripped this oil and farm town, Stephen M. Tauzer walked in fear for his life. But Tauzer, the No. 2 man in the Kern County district attorney's office, didn't request police protection or even share his concerns with colleagues. Instead, the 58-year-old prosecutor told a friend that he had received a phone call warning him that Chris Hillis, a former Bakersfield cop and district attorney investigator, was going to kill him.

As a foot-stomping, jubilant celebration of the lives of five slain people shook the floor of a Bakersfield church Friday night, the suspect in his family's deaths arrived at Los Angeles International Airport. More than 200 people crowded into the Compassion Christian Center for a 90-minute service a few blocks from the house where Joanie Harper, 39; her children Marques, 4, Lindsey, 23 months; and Marshall, 6 weeks; and Joanie's mother, Earnestine Harper, 70, were found slain early Tuesday.

Years before he was accused of killing a top prosecutor, then-district attorney investigator Christopher Hillis won a $50,000 stress retirement that was five to 10 times the usual award in tightfisted Kern County. When the decorated ex-cop was asked how he had pulled it off, Hillis told former colleague Kyle Beckman that he knew some "secrets" about the district attorney's office: " 'I know where the skeletons are buried.'

When I heard that country-music great Buck Owens had opened a $10-million restaurant, museum and nightclub in Bakersfield called the Crystal Palace, I wasn't surprised. Owens isn't just one of the most important country singers of the last 50 years, he's also one of its savviest businessmen, worth an estimated $100 million. But when I learned that he and his renowned Buckaroos band play two shows a night here virtually every Friday and Saturday, I knew I'd be making a visit soon.

A Bakersfield man with a history of drug abuse remained jailed Monday after allegedly biting out one of his 4-year-old son's eyes and mutilating the other. Angel Vidal Mendoza, 34, has been charged with mayhem, torture, child cruelty and inflicting an injury to a child in the alleged attack on his son. Bakersfield police said in a search warrant that the child told investigators, "My daddy ate my eyes." Police said Mendoza appeared to be under the influence of PCP after the April 28 incident.

One of the nation's worst-hit cities for foreclosures in 2007 -- Bakersfield -- became an epicenter of West Nile virus that year largely because of mosquitoes breeding in abandoned swimming pools, UC Davis and Kern County scientists reported Thursday. The Central Valley city had 140 diagnosed cases, up from 51 in 2006, or a 275% increase. Over the same period, mortgage delinquency notices went up by 300%.

This town of 6,700 sits amid the richest oil fields in California, but nobody would mistake it for Dubai. There are no gleaming towers. Empty storefronts line its downtown streets. One of its two car dealerships recently folded, and a church recently went into foreclosure. To make more money, the city wants to move its eastern border 17 miles and annex an auto raceway under construction beside Interstate 5.

Jerry Worthy is as much a product of this city as the oil pulled from its ground. He was born here 44 years ago. He attended its schools. Now an accountant, he owns a home in one of its newer subdivisions with his longtime partner, Gilbert Reyna, 46. Both men say that despite the city's image as a bastion of intolerance, revived most recently by the Kern County clerk's refusal to perform same-sex marriages, for the most part they are left alone. "We're just really boring," Worthy said.

Few moms get to see two daughters married within minutes of each other. Doris Weddell, 75, was ecstatic. "I'm on a high," she said. "This is way up there. It's like childbearing." On a tree-shaded patio outside the Kern County clerk's office, Whitney Weddell, 43, and Tracy Weddell, 48, each exchanged vows with their longtime partners. They had to use the outdoor venue and volunteer ministers, because Kern County Clerk Ann Barnett stopped all civil marriages in advance of Tuesday.

Two men intent on stealing back a flock of cockfighting roosters from a Bakersfield animal shelter Friday had their middle-of-the-night plan interrupted by California Highway Patrol officers, authorities said. The men were apprehended near the Bakersfield Animal Shelter carrying burlap sacks containing feathers, said Lt. Brad Wahl of the Bakersfield Police Department.

Mesa Marin Raceway, a fixture in NASCAR short-track racing in Bakersfield since 1977, will close at the end of the season, it was announced Thursday by General Manager Larry Collins, son of track founder Marion Collins. The final weekly race on the high-banked, half-mile asphalt oval, known as the "fastest half-mile in the West," will be Oct. 15.

Jerry Worthy is as much a product of this city as the oil pulled from its ground. He was born here 44 years ago. He attended its schools. Now an accountant, he owns a home in one of its newer subdivisions with his longtime partner, Gilbert Reyna, 46. Both men say that despite the city's image as a bastion of intolerance, revived most recently by the Kern County clerk's refusal to perform same-sex marriages, for the most part they are left alone. "We're just really boring," Worthy said.

Activist Dolores Huerta was supposed to talk to Catholic schoolchildren Thursday about her founding role in the United Farm Workers and the importance of public service. Instead, she was fielding calls from reporters after Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Bakersfield abruptly canceled her appearance. A parent at the school had complained that Huerta's public support for abortion rights makes her an unfit role model.

The day after Republican presidential candidate John McCain won the Florida primary, Scott Raab's phone was buzzing. Raab, leader of McCain's campaign in Kern County, was peppered with requests for yard signs, bumper stickers, campaign buttons -- the essential, eye-grabbing swag of neighborhood campaigning. But he didn't have any, despite his monthlong plea to the national campaign for supplies.