Victorville Ca

Curtis Forrester moved into a brand-new house in Victorville last week, but there was little time to enjoy the Jacuzzi and designer kitchen. He was there only to see it destroyed. Just a few days after his arrival, the two-story residence and three other luxurious model homes were crushed and hauled off for scrap, the latest fallout from Southern California's real estate crash. The homes were part of a planned 16-unit project in this community 100 miles north of Los Angeles.

Curtis Forrester moved into a brand-new house in Victorville last week, but there was little time to enjoy the Jacuzzi and designer kitchen. He was there only to see it destroyed. Just a few days after his arrival, the two-story residence and three other luxurious model homes were crushed and hauled off for scrap, the latest fallout from Southern California's real estate crash. The homes were part of a planned 16-unit project in this community 100 miles north of Los Angeles.

With the economy in a tailspin, aircraft "boneyards" across the country are filling up with Boeing 747s and other jetliners no longer needed to ferry passengers. Call it airline limbo. Air carriers are grounding planes at a rate not seen since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and industry experts say this year is likely to set a record for planes sitting on the ground.

With the economy in a tailspin, aircraft "boneyards" across the country are filling up with Boeing 747s and other jetliners no longer needed to ferry passengers. Call it airline limbo. Air carriers are grounding planes at a rate not seen since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and industry experts say this year is likely to set a record for planes sitting on the ground.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. has bought 53 acres in Victorville, where it will build a large-scale bottling plant and distribution center, the company said Wednesday. The Texas-based soft-drink maker will start work shortly on a $120-million facility to produce such beverages as 7UP, A&W root beer, Sunkist orange soda and Hawaiian Punch for customers in the Southwest. After the plant opens in spring 2010, it is expected to pump out as many as 40 million cases of drinks a year.

It's happy trails for the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum, which will leave Victorville next year and relocate to Branson, Mo., curator Roy "Dusty" Rogers Jr. announced Monday. The move was prompted, Rogers said, by the drop in attendance since the deaths of his father and stepmother, legendary stars of movie and television westerns in the mid-20th century. Attendance at the museum on the edge of the Mojave Desert has fallen below 50,000 visitors a year, said Rogers.

When Trudy Sherburne returned to her desert home near Victorville after a short trip on Easter weekend in 1998, she thought her house was on fire. Government vehicles with flashing lights surrounded the place. She quickly realized her mistake. The house was being raided.

A Victorville man was sentenced Monday to life without parole for murdering his brother and sister-in-law while living in their La Habra home. Alfred Renteria, 60, was convicted in May of shooting his 71-year-old brother, James Renteria, and 67-year-old sister-in-law, Bernice Renteria. Alfred Renteria had been living with the couple for three months to care for them as they got older. In April 2005, prosecutors said, he became angry when they asked him to leave.

Two high desert men have been arrested on suspicion of killing a Victorville man who has been missing since last week. Steven Jones, 19, of Victorville and Kenneth Davis, 19, of Phelan were arrested last weekend in the death of David Van Fleet, 62, a department spokeswoman said. Investigators believe Van Fleet had been a homicide victim and his body dumped in the California Aqueduct, she said. Jones lived in a room at Van Fleet's Victorville residence in the 12400 block of Quanah Court.

The idea has been kicked around for years -- a high-speed train to zip passengers from SoCal to Sin City and then boomerang them back, bypassing the sea of brake lights flooding the highway to and from Las Vegas. Originally, even the most farfetched scenarios didn't include Victorville -- a desert pit-stop for thousands of gamblers en route to Las Vegas -- as the starting point for such turgid dreams.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. has bought 53 acres in Victorville, where it will build a large-scale bottling plant and distribution center, the company said Wednesday. The Texas-based soft-drink maker will start work shortly on a $120-million facility to produce such beverages as 7UP, A&W root beer, Sunkist orange soda and Hawaiian Punch for customers in the Southwest. After the plant opens in spring 2010, it is expected to pump out as many as 40 million cases of drinks a year.

A Victorville man was sentenced Monday to life without parole for murdering his brother and sister-in-law while living in their La Habra home. Alfred Renteria, 60, was convicted in May of shooting his 71-year-old brother, James Renteria, and 67-year-old sister-in-law, Bernice Renteria. Alfred Renteria had been living with the couple for three months to care for them as they got older. In April 2005, prosecutors said, he became angry when they asked him to leave.

A late-night canoeing expedition turned deadly last weekend when the craft, carrying four young men on Spring Valley Lake near Victorville, capsized shortly after 2 a.m. and one of the men disappeared into the chilly water, authorities said. San Bernardino County sheriff's officials said residents who live along the man-made lake began calling 911 around 2:20 a.m. Saturday to report calls of distress coming from the water.

Two high desert men have been arrested on suspicion of killing a Victorville man who has been missing since last week. Steven Jones, 19, of Victorville and Kenneth Davis, 19, of Phelan were arrested last weekend in the death of David Van Fleet, 62, a department spokeswoman said. Investigators believe Van Fleet had been a homicide victim and his body dumped in the California Aqueduct, she said. Jones lived in a room at Van Fleet's Victorville residence in the 12400 block of Quanah Court.

The idea has been kicked around for years -- a high-speed train to zip passengers from SoCal to Sin City and then boomerang them back, bypassing the sea of brake lights flooding the highway to and from Las Vegas. Originally, even the most farfetched scenarios didn't include Victorville -- a desert pit-stop for thousands of gamblers en route to Las Vegas -- as the starting point for such turgid dreams.

Atop Cajon Summit, where Interstate 15 empties into the high desert, signs of development abound: Billboards trumpet new subdivisions; gleaming new offices of Frontier and KB Homes flank the freeway; a galaxy of twinkling city lights illuminates the dusk. Growth is spilling beyond suburbs and up and over the San Bernardino Mountains and into the Mojave, with more than 300,000 people now residing in the so-called Victor Valley.

Highpointe Communities Inc. in Tustin has acquired a long-unfinished Brentwood master-planned community in Victorville, a recession casualty where more than half the 1,686 lots are still raw land. The bet is that the surging economy will create demand for affordable housing among workers in places such as Ontario and the eastern San Gabriel Valley. That could mean good times again for developers in the high-desert home of Roy Rogers and the Joshua tree.

Responding to complaints from commuters, the California Department of Transportation has adjusted a freeway construction schedule for Interstate 15 in Devore to keep more lanes open during the week and close some during the weekend. Originally, the 3.4-mile project was to begin Sept. 13, with around-the-clock construction Monday through Thursday. The four lanes in each direction would have been reduced to two in each direction.

Hoping to prevent a recall, Victorville school trustees renegotiated their contract with the district's longtime superintendent, cutting the value of the four-year deal by a quarter to slightly less than $1 million. But the action, taken late Wednesday, did not assuage some parents and teachers who were outraged by Supt. Ralph Baker's compensation package, which was on a par with that of school chiefs in Los Angeles and New York City.

A new contract that will boost the salary of Victorville's elementary school superintendent to $250,000 a year -- the same as school chiefs in Los Angeles and New York City -- has infuriated parents and teachers in the High Desert district, with some clamoring for a recall of trustees who approved the deal. The package, which will pay Supt. Ralph Baker a little more than $1.