Redlands Ca

An alleged car thief caught sleeping in a stolen vehicle was arrested Wednesday, police said. James Daniel Spencer, 21, had parked in a shopping center parking lot in the 27400 block of Lugonia Avenue and was asleep in the car's backseat when Redlands police arrested him at about 1:30 a.m., police said. The Hyundai Sonata was stolen Dec. 27 from another downtown Redlands parking lot. Spencer was arrested on suspicion of car theft, possession of stolen property and possession of burglary tools.

Honest Abe usually is associated with Washington, D.C.; Springfield, Ill.; Gettysburg, Pa.; or Kentucky, his birthplace. But Redlands? The quaint San Bernardino County community houses the only Lincoln memorial west of the Mississippi, thanks to oil magnate Robert Watchorn. "There were many parallels in the lives of Lincoln and Watchorn," said Larry Burgess, historian and director of the A.K. Smiley Public Library and Lincoln Memorial Shrine.

Loma Linda University's Behavioral Medicine Center paid more than $2 million to settle allegations that it had fraudulently overbilled federal health insurance programs, the U.S. attorney's office said. The settlement, paid to the government, resolves a 1998 lawsuit that said a consulting firm helped the behavioral center seek reimbursement for unallowable charges from 1992 to 1996. The behavioral center paid the settlement Friday without admitting wrongdoing.

Loma Linda University's Behavioral Medicine Center paid more than $2 million to settle allegations that it had fraudulently overbilled federal health insurance programs, the U.S. attorney's office said. The center paid without admitting wrongdoing.

San Bernardino County Superior Court announced its Redlands District Courthouse will be closed for up to a month because a broken pipe flooded a portion of the building with sewage. The sewage emerged through a janitor's closet and interior walls will have to be replaced, said Presiding Judge Larry W. Allen. In the meantime, documents filed in the Redlands district should be taken to the San Bernardino Courthouse.

The San Bernardino County district attorney's office has launched an investigation into the operations of the city treasurer's office at the request of the chief of police, it was announced Thursday. Carl Baker, a spokesman for Redlands and its Police Department, declined to comment "because of the personnel issues involved" except to say that the city was cooperating fully with the investigation.

REDLANDS -- A 20-month-old boy died Wednesday afternoon after he was accidentally run over by his father's pickup truck, according to authorities. The father didn't realize the boy had followed him out as he left the family's apartment in the 600 block of The Terrace and went to his truck parked in the 700 block of 11th Street about 4:30 p.m., according to the Redlands Police Department. As the father pulled from the curb, he felt a bump, police said.

1891 * Friend's work is on display at the Michael Dawson Gallery, 535 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, through March 11 * Appealing to the 19th century's favorite California myth, Redlands developers named their new plan the Alessandro tract, after a character in Helen Hunt Jackson's "Ramona." This picture shows that Herve Friend, whom they had hired to photograph the area, entered into the romantic spirit of things.

The Redlands police station was evacuated Thursday after a woman came in with a pipe bomb she had found near an irrigation channel and kept in her apartment overnight. Police took the bomb, which had a fuse, to a back parking lot, where the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department bomb squad detonated it. The several dozen people evacuated returned within minutes. The woman discovered the bomb near the Zanja irrigation channel by Brookside Avenue and Ash Street.

A Redlands physician in danger of losing his license over allegations that he administered a lethal dose of morphine to hasten the death of a dying patient was cleared of the charge and can continue practicing medicine, the state medical board decided this month. Dr. Harold Luke was issued a reprimand for inadequate record-keeping when he increased the morphine dosage of his ailing 76-year-old patient, identified only as Morris E.