Riverside County

FBI agents have filed subpoenas for the personal and office records of three members of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors in a political corruption probe of Torrance-based Western Waste Industries, it was learned Friday. The subpoenas were served earlier this week on Supervisors Bob Buster, Kay Ceniceros and Roy Wilson, as well as members of their staffs, according to county government sources. Ceniceros said she was "more than happy to cooperate" with the FBI and had nothing to hide.

As a 9-year-old boy watched in horror, his father shot and killed his mother Tuesday morning outside a family law court building where they were to have a custody hearing, authorities said. The gunman was then shot to death by sheriff's deputies. Witnesses said there was little warning before the shooting erupted. It was the latest incident of a volatile domestic dispute turning deadly in courthouse confrontations.

Embattled Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Tracy Watson's lawsuit against his bosses, alleging that he was coerced into writing an incriminating report about his involvement in the baton beating of two illegal immigrants, is "absurd," according to the county's response filed Monday. Watson's federal lawsuit should be dismissed, the county argued, because the deputy was not deprived of his constitutional rights when he was ordered to write his report about the incident.

A Riverside County sheriff's deputy was arrested Friday by his own department on suspicion of robbing eight motorists--all Latinos--after confronting them while he was in uniform, authorities said. The deputy, identified as Paul Davidson, 29, a five-year veteran of the department, was arrested after a search of his Moreno Valley home, said Sgt. Mark Lohman, spokesman for the department. Davidson, who is assigned to the department's Banning station, was being held on $500,000 bail.

While his attorneys filed lawsuits in state and federal courts seeking damages for his injuries, an illegal immigrant involved in a violent encounter April 1 with Riverside County sheriff's deputies made a brief public appearance. Lawyers for Enrique Funes Flores, whose beating by Riverside deputies after a high-speed chase that ended in South El Monte was captured on videotape and generated international attention, said his treatment at the hands of the officers amounted to torture.

Whipped by hot summer winds, a brush fire raced up the steep, dry canyons bordering the Riverside Freeway in east Orange County on Saturday, burning more than 150 acres and narrowly missing a century-old hillside ranch. As hundreds of frustrated motorists crept past the billowing black smoke at the Riverside County-Orange County line, five helicopters circled overhead, scooping buckets of algae-green water from ponds on the nearby Green River Golf Course to douse the flames.

Richmond American Homes of California Inc.: In a deal that expands its holdings in Riverside County, the Irvine company has purchased Mesa Homes of Riverside for about $12 million. Mesa, which is owned by a subsidiary of Kemper Corp., has about 200 homes under construction or planned in Riverside County. Mesa had $50 million in revenue and sold 372 homes in 1994. Richmond is a subsidiary of publicly traded M.D.C. Holdings Inc. of Denver.

An easygoing government stock clerk who promoted car-pooling and concocted savory chili at office picnics was convicted Wednesday of murdering a dozen Riverside County prostitutes in a serial killing rampage that baffled authorities for 2 1/2 years. William L.