Riverside Ca

Riverside on Tuesday launched a free wireless Internet network that will eventually cover the entire city -- a move designed to help Riverside become a more tech-savvy, business-friendly community. The announcement that all city residents would soon enjoy free wireless Internet access came outside City Hall, and followed a successful two-month limited launch and trial of the WiFi network.

California health regulators have taken action against a Riverside Planned Parenthood clinic for failing to report an abortion patient's death in a timely manner, but did not fault the medical care provided at the facility. Edrica Goode, 21, of Riverside died Feb. 14 of toxic shock syndrome at Riverside County Regional Medical Center. In a lawsuit, her mother, Aletheia Meloncon, alleges that the Planned Parenthood clinic and medical center showed negligence in treating Goode.

A fire broke out at a plastics recycling company in Riverside late Tuesday afternoon, sending dark plumes of toxic smoke billowing over the city's downtown. Authorities temporarily shut the major downtown freeway interchange close to the fire, creating long traffic back-ups. Interstate 215, between Spruce and Blaine streets, remained closed for more than three hours after the blaze began about 5 p.m.

Twenty-five years ago this month, Jackson Daniels shot and killed two Riverside police officers who had come to arrest him. Daniels, a career criminal, had two years earlier been shot and left paralyzed as he tried to flee a bank robbery. While his court case was pending, Daniels was recovering at a friend's house and kept a gun near his bed, apparently waiting for police to come for him.

In a victory for the disabled rights movement, a federal judge Wednesday ordered Riverside to pay a wheelchair-bound man $221,000 damages and to fix 189 curb ramps within four months. The award is the largest in a state case involving disabled access. U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson granted the award to John Lonberg, 69, who has battled the city for almost two decades to improve hundreds of curbs, sidewalks and driveways. "It couldn't get much better than this," Lonberg said.

Invest in a little down time for yourself with a spring spa package at Riverside's historic Mission Inn Hotel & Spa. The deal: The Inn's Spring Forward package costs $220 a night and includes accommodations, overnight valet parking, $50 credit for dining at one of the four Mission Inn restaurants and a $50 Kelly's Spa gift card, which can be used for any spa treatment or retail purchase. The package runs through June 1.

The preschoolers piled on stage, girls wearing poodle skirts made of paper and wiggling their hips while the boys adjusted their sunglasses. The performance was part of Wednesday's festivities at Sunshine Early Childhood Center, a preschool for special needs children in Riverside that is celebrating 60 years in the community. When Sunshine opened in 1947, it had 12 pupils. The public school now serves 250 children ages 3 to 5 in the Riverside Unified School District.

Police arrested two men and two women Thursday on suspicion of murder in the death of a man who was beaten with an angle-iron bar and wooden sticks just before 2 a.m. near a gas station at Tyler Street and Arlington Avenue. Police said the unidentified victim had spoken with two women earlier in the night and then got into a fight with two men on Gould Street.

The 16-year-old driver who crashed his parents' car into a Riverside light pole, killing a 14-year-old passenger in what police said was an impromptu street race Sunday night, has been charged with one count of vehicular manslaughter and three counts of felony street racing causing injury. Police said the unlicensed driver had seven passengers in the car as he raced another car at 100 mph into oncoming traffic on Tyler Street.

Riverside County sheriff's deputies shot and killed a suspected drunk driver late Tuesday as he allegedly accelerated toward them after a brief chase, authorities said. Deputies tried to stop the man about 11:20 p.m. after he drove onto a curb and ran a red light and a stop sign in Home Gardens, an unincorporated community near Corona, according to sheriff's investigator Jerry Franchville.