San Bernardino Ca

On the West Side of San Bernardino, most everyone knew Johnny and Gilbert Agudo. They'd grown up in the tight-knit barrio. Handsome and charismatic, they were the presidents of two cliques of the West Side Verdugo street gang: Johnny, 31, of 7th Street Locos and Gilbert, 27, of the Little Counts. United, they led their gangs in feuds with rivals from other parts of town. But then things took an unexpected turn.

Hillwood Investment Properties, a company owned by the Perot family, bought more than 1 million square feet of vacant new warehouse space near the former Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino as part of a strategy to take advantage of the depressed real estate market. The Plano, Texas, developer and landlord said Wednesday that it acquired two empty buildings from New York asset manager BlackRock in a deal valued at more than $20 million. The warehouses were built last year by a competitor of Hillwood's next to Hillwood's Alliance California development in San Bernardino, said John Magness, a senior vice president.

In case anyone is confused, Ryan Welty likes to point out that the Flesh Club is not a Christian Science Reading Room, nor is it a church or high-minded civic organization. "We are not a sympathetic member of society," the club owner concedes. "There are naked ladies in there. It's a very sexually charged atmosphere." That's putting it mildly, San Bernardino officials say. They allege the strip club is little more than a front for a brothel. Patrons go there for sex, they say, not to see a show.

A San Bernardino man was shot and killed by police after he attacked an officer and pointed a stun gun at him during a traffic stop, San Bernardino police said Tuesday. About 6:30 p.m. Monday, officers spotted a man running from their police car toward a vehicle parked in an alley on North Wall Avenue, Lt. David Harp said. Police approached the vehicle and asked the four occupants to step out. One of the men, identified as Cedric James May, 22, emerged from the back seat, tried to grab an officer's baton and gun, and finally got hold of the officer's Taser and pointed it at the officer's face, Harp said.

A 33-year-old science teacher from San Bernardino and one of her male freshman students have been missing since Monday and may have fled together as far as Canada, according to police. Tanya Hadden, a teacher at Cajon High School, and Richard Pena, 15, disappeared after police questioned the teacher Monday about giving alcohol to several male students at a house in Rialto on April 26.

San Bernardino's most notorious strip club was ordered shut down by police late Wednesday, giving the city at least a brief victory in its years-long effort to close up the Flesh Club. Vice officers who entered the club were enforcing an injunction from a local judge who ruled last month that dancers were selling sexual services at the club with the approval of management. The order closed the business at the stroke of midnight for eight months. City Atty.

Before the Army deploys troops to Iraq or Afghanistan, they are often sent to Ft. Irwin in the Mojave Desert to get combat-ready. And before traffic arrives on base, it rumbles down Ft. Irwin Road, past 42 white wooden crosses. The memorials are not for those who have paid the ultimate price in combat, but for the lives lost along the road since the early 1980s.

Dequwan Wells' family tells him that being bilingual will help him get a good job one day. But the 7-year-old has his own motive for wanting to learn Spanish along with his native English. "I can have more friends if I can talk two languages," the first-grader said, playing with a Spanish-speaking classmate during recess at Lincoln Elementary School in San Bernardino.

Convicted molester Dean Eric Dunlap was found guilty Tuesday of the kidnapping and murder of a 9-year-old San Bernardino girl whose slaying went unsolved for seven years. Sandra Astorga disappeared while she walked to San Bernardino's Roosevelt Elementary School in January 1992. Weeks later, a hiker found her body covered by a bedspread and oily tarp in a field near Devore.

A San Bernardino man suspected of killing his 90-year-old grandmother was arrested Friday on suspicion of murder, authorities said. Derrick Mitchell Hassett, 25, was arrested less than 24 hours after his mother found the body of Josephine Frances Kelley inside her San Bernardino home, which had been ransacked. By early Friday, San Bernardino police investigators established that Kelley's slaying was "not an act of random violence," department spokesman Brian Boom said.

The mother of a kidnapped 3-year-old boy made a desperate plea for his release Tuesday before draping herself over his picture and sobbing. "Please, I am asking them to release my son and give him back to me," a distraught Maria Rosalina Millan implored in Spanish during a news conference at the San Bernardino County sheriff's station. "He doesn't owe anything. I don't owe anything. He's a good boy."

A 43-year-old patient at a troubled state-run psychiatric hospital has died in what appears to be a suicide, coroner's officials said Friday. Augie Solez, who was in long-term commitment at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, was found unresponsive at 11:34 a.m. Thursday, said San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Sandy Fatland. He appeared to have hanged himself, Fatland said, but an autopsy has not been completed and a cause of death has yet to be determined.

On the West Side of San Bernardino, most everyone knew Johnny and Gilbert Agudo. They'd grown up in the tight-knit barrio. Handsome and charismatic, they were the presidents of two cliques of the West Side Verdugo street gang: Johnny, 31, of 7th Street Locos and Gilbert, 27, of the Little Counts. United, they led their gangs in feuds with rivals from other parts of town. But then things took an unexpected turn.

The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a new trial be held to determine if the city of San Bernardino intentionally misled a judge during its battle to close down a notorious strip club that officials said was actually a brothel. The Flesh Club closed in 1995 for nearly five years, after a judge issued an injunction banning nude dancing in the establishment. The judge used information from the city that later turned out to be wrong. The ruling put on hold the nude cabaret's demand for $1.

Two San Bernardino teenagers were charged with murder Tuesday in the death of an 87-year-old woman who was beaten into a coma with hammers while her mobile home was being robbed. Investigators say Cesar Pulido and Mike Garcia, both 16, crawled through Storma Del' Andrae's window Feb. 11 and used hammers to pummel her in the head. Del' Andrae was left bloody and unconscious while the suspects stuffed a suitcase with jewelry and other valuables, officials said.

After his 1991 videotaped beating by four white Los Angeles police officers whose acquittal touched off the 1992 riots, Rodney G. King became an overnight celebrity who symbolized for many the perception of unfair treatment of young black men by police. But, since then, the spotlight has shifted to King's long series of run-ins with police and domestic disputes.

For years, San Bernardino International Airport has seemed more fiction than fact, a vast sheet of concrete with a grand title where the chirp of crickets is often louder than the roar of jet engines. The very things that make an airport an airport -- passengers, terminals, scheduled flights -- are missing here. The control tower is impressive but empty. But years of quiet building, ambitious starts and frequent failures might finally be paying off.

A 16-year-old boy and his father were shot to death in the parking lot of a San Bernardino bargain mall Monday, only hours after the father had been released from jail. San Bernardino police investigators, armed with a videotape of the shooting and statements from numerous witnesses, said that a 17-year-old male gang member was the suspected shooter and that they have launched a regionwide search for the youth. "We know who we're looking for," said Sgt.

San Bernardino's most notorious strip club was ordered shut down by police late Wednesday, giving the city at least a brief victory in its years-long effort to close up the Flesh Club. Vice officers who entered the club were enforcing an injunction from a local judge who ruled last month that dancers were selling sexual services at the club with the approval of management. The order closed the business at the stroke of midnight for eight months. City Atty.

San Bernardino may not be the Eden the early inhabitants stumbled upon, but the creeks and river are still inviting, and snowcapped mountains grace its backdoor in the wintertime. Sports and cultural events abound in this storied city where the McDonald brothers opened the restaurant whose name became synonymous with fast food. Beginnings Mormon pioneers from Salt Lake City arrived in San Bernardino in 1851, drawn to a valley rich in water, willows and sycamores.