A California Highway Patrol officer escaped serious injury when his motorcycle was struck by a suspected drunken driver on Monday, May 9, the Riverside Police Department said.
The officer suffered unspecified moderate injuries and had been released from a hospital by late morning, said Officer Javier Navarro, a CHP spokesman.
The officer was sitting at a red light at Adams Street and Indiana Avenue just before 5 a.m. when he saw a car approaching in his rear-view mirror, Navarro said. The officer maneuvered to his left just before the car struck the right rear of his motorcycle. The officer told paramedics that he was in pain, said Ryan Railsback, a Police Department spokesman.
The driver fled, but officers stopped her car on Lincoln Avenue near Monroe Street, Railsback said. Heather Fernandez Hernandez, 26, was arrested on suspicion of hit and run causing injury and driving under the influence causing injury, Railsback said.
She was being held in lieu of $50,000 bail at Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, jail records show.
When it comes to planning for your estate or business, never feel like it’s too late or the current situation is too hopeless to make a change.
Growing up in Hollywood in the 80s, most of our substitute teachers were “on-hiatus” actors who were happy to share their unusual life experiences. During our third-period class, one sub, a voice actor with a smokey tone, openly grieved about a bad breakup and his career failures. The way he described his life rivaled the craziness of what we have seen recently in the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard defamation case on TV.
While the lesson was probably too adult for public school, it contained a gem of advice I still use with my clients. He repeatedly asked us, “When you are on the wrong bus, do you stay on the wrong bus, or do you get off?” Each time our class responded with a shout, “Get off the bus!”
Here are two stories of clients who could only achieve what they wanted after altering their “route.”
Nancy and Daniel were a successful, married couple in their 60s with three grown kids and four grandchildren. Their home was paid for; they owned a profitable business and valuable real estate. As with many couples their age, cancer came as a surprise, and Nancy’s terminal diagnosis changed everything.
The couple assured me that all of their estate planning was complete. They had gone to a free seminar where they learned about living trusts, and the attorney prepared the documents in a large bound book at a very reasonable rate.
Nancy expressed concerns over what was going to happen when she was gone. She intended that her “half” would go to her children. She did not want her life savings to go to another woman. Nancy did not think her husband would wait long before starting a new relationship. She clearly stated she did not want any “harlots” moving into their family home.
I am not an attorney, but the trust had no provisions for any of Nancy’s wishes. She said she felt it was too late to do anything about it because she was ill. Since her mind was still clear, it was not too late. It took a few phone calls to find a qualified trust attorney who met with her at her home to discuss her wishes and sign new trust documents.
Nancy named her daughter trustee, and the daughter agreed to serve if I would be co-trustee since she lacked the confidence to manage the trust herself. We worked together so well that her father later asked me to be co-trustee for his trust. He confessed that his primary reason for asking me was that he could tell any girlfriends who asked for money that his “trustee” makes all his financial decisions (even though this was not true).
The end result was that the family home and Nancy’s remaining portion of the assets were held in a trust for her children. No “other woman” ever lived in her house.
Daniel eventually bought a new home with his new partner using his trust’s assets. They lived together happily for many years, and he ultimately gifted the house to her. The sweet and unusual ending was that the children were so happy with how well the partner had cared for their dad that they gave her a sizeable cash gift when he passed.
Lesson learned: It was not too late for Nancy and Daniel to seek a second opinion or amend their trust. Make sure your trust reflects your wishes.
Our clients, Marie and Peter, owned a small manufacturing business they referred to as “crummy.” They paid too much rent for a shop located in a poorly lit, dirty, tilt-up building adjacent to railroad tracks. Their equipment was old and in disrepair. They had high employee turnover and few repeat customers, even though there was nothing wrong with the products and Marie was a natural salesperson.
Unfortunately, they had charged up high-interest credit cards to finance the opening of the business. Most of the profits were eaten up by interest, taxes and spousal support to Peter’s ex-wife.
The couple planned to live frugally and slowly try to replace the equipment piece by piece. They figured they could save by paying as little as possible to their employees and by doing most of the work themselves. They said they just needed one big order to come in, and they could afford to lease a better location.
It was clear that the problem with Marie and Peter’s strategy was that they were trying to do everything themselves with little information. Here is part of the new plan I drafted.
— To better utilize debt, they hired a credit repair agency to increase their credit score and an equipment leasing company to finance new equipment that worked. We found a banker who gave them a small business credit line and later helped them finance the purchase of a new building.
— To increase their cash flow, Peter hired a divorce attorney to decrease the payments to his ex-spouse. We hired a business attorney to incorporate their company to help reduce taxes. We asked insurance brokers to review their policies and obtain better coverage at a lower cost.
— We hired a consultant who trained Marie on making sales over the phone to increase revenue. Marie was able to focus on sales and customer service after they hired a skilled bookkeeper.
A few years later, Marie was happy to tell anyone who listened that she and her husband were multimillionaires. Instead of waiting for a dream order to make everything better, Marie and Peter incorporated a plan that utilized all available resources.
Marie went with me to give an inspiring talk about her success to a class of teenage mothers, where I volunteered. It turns out she was once a teen mom who did not complete high school and could never have dreamed she would own her own business.
The 50 minutes that the substitute teacher spent with us all those years ago was not wasted. I hope he became a successful actor who found his soulmate and is happy. Remember, as long as we are here, it is never too late to change direction.
Michelle C. Herting specializes in tax planning, trust administration, and business valuations. She has three offices in Southern California.
A man was killed when struck by an apparent hit-and-run driver early Thursday morning, May 5, in Jurupa Valley, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said.
The collision occurred just before 1:30 a.m. on Mission Boulevard east of Pedley Road, the Sheriff’s Department said, with responding deputies finding him in the roadway.
The crash’s cause was under investigation, the Sheriff’s Department said.
The pedestrian’s identity was not released, pending notification of next of kin.
Deputies asked anyone who has any information about the incident to call them at 951-955-2600.
A suspected DUI driver from Fontana was arrested after a crash in Upland on Tuesday evening, May 3, that killed another driver, police said.
The crash happened around 11:43 p.m. on Campus Avenue just south of Foothill Boulevard, said Lt. Anthony Kabayan, spokesman for the Upland Police Department.
The suspect, Marcos Enriquez, 29, was speeding on Campus Avenue when he hit another car, police said. The driver of the other car died as a result of the crash, authorities said.
Enriquez was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and DUI, police said.
Last night we responded to a fatal crash on Campus Ave south of Foothill Blvd. Marcos Enriquez, 29, of Fontana was speeding on Campus Ave when he hit another vehicle, killing the driver of the other vehicle. Enriquez was booked for Vehicular Manslaughter while Intoxicated and DUI pic.twitter.com/d3NaaLSHqT
— Upland Police Department (@UplandPD) May 5, 2022
No information regarding the victim of the crash was immediately available.
The area of Campus Avenue between Mesa Court and Foothill Boulevard was closed until 9 a.m. Wednesday, police said.
A 23-year-old Menifee man was killed Tuesday, May 3, when his car went out of control and collided with a pickup in Winchester, the California Highway Patrol said.
The man, whose name was not announced, was driving a BMW north on Winchester Road, also known as Highway 79, at about 1:30 p.m. “at a high rate of speed,” said Officer Jason Montez, a CHP spokesman. A witness told the CHP that the BMW was driving recklessly and had cut her off.
As the BMW approached Patterson Avenue, it failed to make a right-to-left curve and went off the road before re-entering the two-lane road sideways, Montez said. A southbound pickup being driven by a 44-year-old San Bernardino resident at 50-60 mph then struck the right side of the BMW.
The driver of the BMW died at the scene. The pickup driver was hospitalized with minor injuries, Montez said.
Driving at an unsafe speed is the leading cause of crashes in the CHP’s San Gorgonio Pass area, Montez said.
Gunfire in San Bernardino caused a car to crash into a fence at a middle school and left bullet holes in that school’s physical education building on Monday morning, May 2, authorities said.
The crime happened at about 5:45 a.m., so instruction at Arrowview Middle School was not affected, according to a letter sent to parents by Principal Berenice Rios.
Maintenance workers repaired the bullet holes on Tuesday, said Maria Garcia, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino City Unified School District. Bullets struck a wall near a locker room, a door frame outside another locker room and a storage room, Garcia said. The fence also was repaired.
Several people reported hearing shots near the intersection of 23rd and D streets, said Sgt. Equino Thomas, a San Bernardino Police Department spokesman. Officers arrived to find a hatchback with a bullet hole in the windshield that had crashed through the chain-link fence. The driver accelerated after the car was hit and lost control, Thomas said.
A video posted on Instagram by Everything San Bernardino showed that portion of the fence destroyed and a geyser shooting up where a fire hydrant had been sheared off.
The driver and passenger were not hit by the gunfire but were in pain because of the crash, Thomas said. They said they could not provide a description of the shooter.
Also, a person in the area reported that his parked car was hit by gunfire.
Hank Lloyd had lost track of Zion Johnson until the plumber from his church mentioned the name while fixing the hose in Lloyd’s backyard.
“That name sounds familiar,” Lloyd said. “That sounds like this kid that I asked, could he play football? Why didn’t he play?”
Lloyd was the mystery school bus driver that Johnson credited during pre-draft interviews for getting him to play football as a junior at Riverdale Baptist High School in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
“Well, you must be the guy,” said the plumber, who heard the bus driver story from other church members.
A few weeks before last week’s NFL draft, Lloyd was made aware that the lanky golfer he encouraged to play football had transferred to Boston College and developed into a first-round prospect. In a span of seven years, Johnson went from being the “nerdy kid” who was clueless about football to the most NFL-ready offensive guard in the draft.
“What you don’t want to do is reach for a tackle and then you have an issue somewhere else,” Chargers coach Brandon Staley said. “We just really felt like (Johnson) is a really complete player and this guy is a first-round-level guard.”
It was a stretch to assume Johnson would become a reliable offensive lineman after what he displayed in his first spring workouts at Riverdale Baptist. Johnson spent most of his first year in football in the weight room and standing on the sideline before seeing game action as a senior, including a tussle against Chase Young, the star edge rusher for the Washington Commanders.
“Undersized is an understatement,” Johnson said. “I was 225 pounds and I played right tackle and our team played Chase Young, so it wasn’t like we were playing scrubs or anything.”
NO REGRETS
Initially, Johnson wasn’t interested in football, but Lloyd kept asking and mentioned the idea to his mother, Tammie Edwards, and recommended him to the high school’s football head coach, Caesar Nettles.
“He would come home and say, ‘Mommy, the bus driver keeps saying why do I keep getting on the bus with these golf clubs,’” Edwards recalled. “He had to haul those to school every day.”
Johnson eventually agreed to try football and Edwards gave Nettles permission to meet Johnson at his bus stop.
“I was talking to his bus driver and said, ‘Well, can you point out Zion for me”’” Nettles said. “He came on out (with the football team) and he was really, really raw.”
Lloyd pushed football and Nettles showed interest because of Johnson’s long arms and large hands and feet. He was a few inches shorter than most offensive linemen, but once he filled out his arms, he made up for it with strength.
At the NFL Scouting Combine in March, Johnson had 32 reps on the bench press, the most among offensive linemen who participated. He was measured with 34-inch arms, an 82-inch wingspan and 10 ⅝-inch hands.
“With that size he had, he needs to be playing football,” Lloyd said. “When you get blessed with a body like that and you’re smart … I thought he would have no problems picking up the offense.”
But there were problems early on, and Johnson’s size wasn’t enough for Keith McIver, Riverdale Baptist’s then-offensive line coach. After what would become the first of many rides home, Johnson explained to McIver in detail why the garage was structured near the front of the house.
“He was saying this and that,” McIver recalled. “I was like, ‘Son, just get out my car.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘This kid ain’t going to make it.’”
McIver didn’t realize it then, but Johnson’s technical side and affinity for learning the ins and outs were reasons why he quickly developed into a polished offensive guard.
Staley called Johnson pro-ready and Chargers general manager Tom Telesco raved about Johnson’s strength and determination. Johnson continued football at Davidson, where he struggled financially for two years due to the private college’s non-scholarship program. He then went on to earn a scholarship at Boston College and left with a master’s degree in cybersecurity policy and governance.
Johnson had the right coaches and mentors during his meteoric rise in football, but it was Edwards, who raised Johnson as a single mother, who made this improbable football story possible. James Stacy Edwards, Johnson’s uncle, also played a role in why Johnson went from no-star recruit to the Chargers’ prize first-round selection.
“It was really my mom who pushed me to play,” Johnson said. “She always taught me that you should try things so that you don’t have regrets later on in life. I’m glad that I tried football because that would’ve definitely been a regret that I would have had.”
DRAFT EXPERIENCE
McIver has been one of Johnson’s strongest supporters since he started football, but he was still surprised about being in the draft green room with Johnson in Las Vegas.
“If we look back and look at when you first started and look at where we are at now, we would never have believed it,” McIver told Johnson before the draft began.
Johnson said he was glued to the prospect’s chair, a location for TV cameras to easily spot the draftees, for the first hour until he learned he was allowed to walk around. The draft experience moved rapidly after Johnson left his seat.
Johnson was expecting to get drafted after the 19th pick, with the Dallas Cowboys at No. 24 being the most likely destination. Johnson grew up in Bowie, Maryland, an area outside of Washington D.C. Most of his friends and relatives are fans of the Commanders and dislike the Cowboys.
“Then the Cowboys were calling, that would have been very difficult,” McIver recalled. “I had mentioned to (Johnson), it might be nice to go to the Chargers. He was just chilling and then the phone rang. I knew something was up because the cameras came over.”
Nettles wasn’t surprised about Johnson being the 17th pick and thought he would go sooner after speaking with about 20 teams who showed interest in Johnson, including the Chargers.
“Zion was one of those prospects that teams didn’t really try to find dirt on because they know they couldn’t,” Nettles said. “He’s that good of a kid. He’s his authentic self. They were just trying to see what made him tick and all of that, because the film doesn’t lie. And once you meet him, he’s infectious.”
Johnson had a whirlwind first 24 hours with the Chargers and briefly met some of his new teammates. Johnson will have plenty of time to get to know them, especially on the Chargers’ starting offensive line with left tackle Rashawn Slater, left guard Matt Feiler and center Corey Linsley.
“From everybody that I’ve talked to, people that know him, they have all raved about him,” Linsley said. “The kind of person that he is and, obviously, the kind of football player.”
NEW KID ON THE O-LINE
Johnson played golf and basketball before the bus driver suggested football.
Tammie Edwards was a basketball standout at Virginia Tech, where she set rebounding records, but she knew basketball wasn’t for her son.
“He didn’t have the passion for basketball like I did,” Edwards said. “But football, I saw it differently in his eyes. He has the passion, he loves the game. I think he loves the mechanics of it. He loves figuring things out. He likes breaking it down.”
But before Johnson gave up basketball, he won back-to-back championships with his mom as the head coach of his youth team. Edwards was the only female coach in the U13 basketball league.
“Some of the fathers who would come with their kids and they would say, ‘Dad, here’s my coach,’ and they would walk past me and look for somebody else,” Edwards recalled. “No, it’s me.”
Johnson credited his mom for his athletic gifts and some of his coaches credited her for Johnson’s competitive side.
“He is the most articulate, genuine, young man I’ve probably come in contact with,” Nettles said. “But on the field, he’s going through the whistle on every play, and he’s gonna give you 110 percent on every play. And it doesn’t matter if somebody gets him on one play. … He’s coming right back and he’s going 1,000 percent at his throat. I think (the Chargers) have a silent assassin.”
For a period, Johnson’s passion was golf. He was the only middle-school student on the high school’s golf team. Johnson learned to golf during summers spent with his grandmother, Rosa Edwards, who was a principal at a school in Norfolk, Virginia.
Johnson participated in the school’s golf camps and received coaching from a golf instructor. But Johnson stopped carrying his golf clubs after Lloyd physically nudged him to play football.
“I gave him a little elbow to the chest,” Lloyd said. “I asked him, ‘Did you feel it?’ He said, ‘I didn’t even feel it.’ I was just telling him you ain’t going to get hurt because you’ll be doing the hitting.”
Johnson gained the respect of McIver and Nettles with his work ethic and how quickly he learned the playbook, but the coaches didn’t rush his development. Johnson weighed only 225 pounds when he joined the football team.
“This is a very bright kid,” McIver said. “I’m thinking, like, ‘OK, this is a little nerdy kid. Not sure how much he’s gonna play or anything like that.’ But his work ethic changed everything.”
Johnson bench-pressed 135 pounds the spring before his junior season and increased that to 225 by the fall.
Johnson didn’t see the field until the final game of his junior season when he filled in at left tackle for Christian Darrisaw, who later starred at Virginia Tech and was a first-round pick of the Minnesota Vikings last season.
“You need to give (Johnson) a test,” McIver remembered telling the coaches. “He did a heck of a job (at left tackle) and he proved that he belonged on the team.”
Johnson had a productive senior year at right tackle with Darrisaw patrolling the left side, but Johnson joined the recruiting process too late and went unnoticed until Davidson called.
“Me and Christian were pretty close in high school because our O-line coach (McIver) would have us over to the house,” Johnson said. “With him going to Virginia Tech, we weren’t able to stay as close because it’s like, ‘I want to beat you.’ He’s definitely someone who has pushed me, especially in high school and throughout my career, because with his level of play, I’ve always wanted to outdo him as a rival sort of thing.”
Johnson improved at Davidson under the guidance of Matt Applebaum and Phil Trautwein and later reunited with the offensive line coaches at Boston College. With Johnson in the ACC, he got to measure his skills against Darrisaw and Virginia Tech.
McIver wore a Boston College shirt with a Virginia Tech hat when the game was at Boston College and vice versa for the game at Virginia Tech.
“I would sit on the Virginia Tech side for one half and the Boston College side for the other half,” McIver said.
CREDIT TO THE BUS DRIVER
On Sunday, Johnson called Lloyd to reconnect and told his former bus driver that his advice got him drafted to the NFL.
“I told him, ‘That’s gonna be my second team now (the Chargers) that I’m gonna be rooting for,’” said Lloyd, a fan of the Commanders.
Lloyd, 68, coached high school basketball, volleyball and softball for 40 years before being a school bus driver. He coached former NBA players Michael Beasley, Nolan Smith and Thomas Robinson, and WNBA players Shakira Austin and Tianna Hawkins.
Lloyd’s only request for Johnson was to get one of his Chargers jerseys to hang next to his Wanisha Smith jersey – another former basketball standout he coached.
“He’s a great kid,” Lloyd said. “He’s going to be a great asset to the Chargers.”
A woman died Sunday in a crash involving a sedan and a big rig on the Pomona (60) Freeway in Diamond Bar.
Ana Cruz-Sanchez was a 29-year-old resident of Rialto, according to the coroner’s office.
The crash occurred a little after 6 a.m. on the eastbound freeway, at the Grand Avenue off-ramp, the California Highway Patrol reported.
Cruz-Sanchez was pronounced dead at the scene, the coroner’s office said.
A Sigalert, issued at 6:27 a.m. shutting down all eastbound lanes except the carpool lane, as well as the connector road from the eastbound 60 Freeway to the southbound Orange (57) Freeway, was canceled at 12:24 p.m.
A suspected drunk driver was arrested after he drove on the wrong side of the road in Winchester and crashed head-on with another car Thursday night, killing a woman and injuring himself and another driver, authorities said.
The suspect, Willie Salazar, 23, of Wildomar, and the other driver remained in a hospital Friday, said Officer Jason Montez, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.
The crash on Domenigoni Parkway, east of Patterson Avenue, was reported to the CHP around 10:55 p.m. Thursday.
The suspect was driving a Honda Civic west on the eastbound lanes and collided head-on with a Chevrolet Malibu, Montez said.
The suspect, a 31-year-old Hemet man driving the Malibu and a 32-year-old Menifee woman sitting in the front passenger seat of the Malibu had major injuries and were hospitalized, he said.
Sahtarria Anderson, 32, of Menifee, died early Friday morning at Inland Valley Regional Medical Center, according to the coroner’s office.
Salazar was found to be under the influence of alcohol and arrested on suspicion of felony DUI causing injury, Montez said. He faces additional charges since the passenger of the Malibu later died at the hospital, he added.
