Gary Barlow has declared this year's X Factor finalists the “best ever” as 16-year-old Ella Henderson and chimney sweep Kye Sones easily progressed to the live shows.

Barlow was pleased with the selection of all the judges, saying: “This year we really got the crème de la crème with our finalists and it was difficult for all of us to choose our three acts.”

He continued: “The level of talent has increased this year and I think it is the best finalist line-up ever.”

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“The level of talent has increased this year”: Gary Barlow and his X-Factor colleagues have selected their candidates for this year’s live shows

THE BOYS – Mentor: Nicole Scherzinger

WHO: James Arthur, 24, from Middlesbrough.

Did you know? After running away from home, he often slept outdoors and says music was his coping mechanism.

Why he thinks he should win: “I will bring versatility, passion and pure emotion to the competition and when given the chance to showcase my songwriting skills, I will hopefully show exactly why I should win the competition.”

What Nicole says: “He is so brilliant, he is a modern poet. He is really something special. He is a real artist and I am very happy to work with him.”

James Arthur: “I will bring versatility, passion and pure emotion to the competition”

WHO: Rylan Clark, 23, from Essex.

Did you know? When he reached boot camp, he was stripped naked and dragged through a bar before passing out in a hotel elevator.

Why he thinks he should win: “I'm going to perform on The X Factor that no contestant has ever done before. I want to be the first dance artist to come out of the show. I just hope people pick up the phone.”

What Nicole says: “He's full of spikes and glitter, we need diva music and powerful diva anthems for him. He would definitely have his own audience.”

Rylan Clark: “I want to be the first dance artist to come out of this show. I hope people pick up the phone.”

WHO: Jahmene Douglas, 22, from Swindon.

Did you know? Before wowing the judges at his audition in London with his rendition of Etta James’ “At Last,” he worked at Asda.

Why he thinks he should win: “I am not confident in any way, but I express myself through singing because speaking is not my strong point at all.”

What Nicole says: “He has an incredible voice – he needs a lot of support and love and I'm definitely ready to give it to him.”

Jahmene Douglas: “Singing is my way of expressing myself because speaking is not my strong point at all.”

THE GIRLS – Mentor: Tulisa Contostavlos

WHO: Jade Ellis, 25, from London.

Did you know? She worked as a bicycle mechanic and has a six-year-old daughter named Cayden.

Why she thinks she should win: “There is a gap in the market for young British female urban singers. From the beginning I have taken every opportunity to learn more about myself as an artist and I will continue to take steps to improve and grow.”

What Tulisa says: “She's amazing – when you hear a voice like that, you just can't let go.”

Jade Ellis: “From the beginning, I have taken every opportunity to learn more about myself as an artist and I will continue to take steps to improve and develop myself.”

WHO: Ella Henderson, 16, from Grimsby.

Did you know? Grammy-winning singer Cher recently expressed her joy over Ella's cover of her song “Believe” on Twitter.

Why she thinks she should win: “I believe I have a lot to give and I am fully dedicated to my music. I know that through this show I will grow as an artist and my confidence will grow every week.”

What Tulisa says: “She's so incredible. She just radiates this innocence when she sings and loses herself in the moment. It's beautiful, really.”

Ella Henderson: “I will grow as an artist and my confidence will grow every week.”

WHO: Lucy Spraggan, 20, from Sheffield.

Did you know? When she's not performing in shows, she sells baby portraits to earn some extra money. She used to work as a demolition expert.

Why she thinks she should win: “I want the public to see how hard I have worked, to share my experiences with them, to entertain them and to succeed in the music industry. If I could do that by winning this year's show, I would be over the moon.”

What Tulisa says: “I love her more than anything. As a mentor, you like the music your artists play and what they sing, but it's rare that you can be a fan of the contestants, and I'm a fan of Lucy.”

Lucy Spraggan: “I want the public to see how hard I have worked. I want to share my experiences with the public, entertain them and be successful in the music industry.”

OVER 28 YEARS – Mentor: Gary Barlow

WHO: Melanie Masson, 44, from North London.

Did you know? She has collaborated with the likes of Kasabian, Stereophonics, Fatboy Slim and Happy Mondays, released a single in 2007 and signed a deal with industry heavyweight EMI.

Why she thinks she should win: “It would be so positive to show that no matter where you are in your life, what you've done before or how old you are, you can still achieve your goals, achieve your dreams, be taken seriously and continue to be relevant.”

What Gary says: “She is an incredible talent. She is a true soul singer.”

Melanie Masson: “It would be so positive to show that you can still achieve your goals, realize your dreams, be taken seriously and still be relevant, no matter where you are in life.”

WHO: Carolynne Poole, 32, from Huddersfield.

Did you know? Her dreams of fame were shattered when Louis Walsh sent her home after the Judge's House stage of The X Factor in 2011.

Why she thinks she should win: “I think The X Factor needs to realise that country is more than just line dancing and cowboy boots!! It would be so great to show the world that the great country voices don't just come from America!”

What Gary says: “She has an incredible voice, she knows who she is and where she is going, and to top it all off, she is beautiful.”

Carolynne Poole: “I think The X Factor needs to realise that country isn’t just line dancing and cowboy boots!!”

WHO: Kye Sones, 30, from London.

Did you know? He makes his living sweeping chimneys for other people.

Why he thinks he should win: “If I won The X Factor, it would be a victory for anyone who has never given up on anything. It would show people that you should never give up on your dreams, no matter how many setbacks you experience.”

What Gary says: “I'm looking forward to learning from him because I think he's someone who knows a lot about music and I think he'll be a great candidate.”

He's through: Kye Sones has made it to the live performances

THE GROUPS – Mentor: Louis Walsh

WHO: GMD3 – Greg, 18, Dan, 19, Mickey, 18 – from Windsor.

Did you know? They met at school and enjoy watching the Inbetweeners, going to the gym and playing football.

Why they believe they should win: “We hope to show people something new and exciting that they haven’t seen before in this great show.”

What Louis says: “I love them. These guys can sing, they have a great harmony sound, they are nice guys, they work hard and they tick all the boxes.”

Cheeky guys: GMD3 will undoubtedly have many female fans on the show

WHO: MK1 – Charlotte Rundle, 19, and Simeon Dixon, 24 – from London.

Did you know? Before their trip to Las Vegas to see Judges Houses, Simeon broke his ankle and Charlie had to push him around in a wheelchair the whole trip. Now his cast has been removed and Simeon is getting physical therapy to make sure he is in top shape for the first live show.

Why they believe they should win: “The thought of being the first duo to win is really exciting. We're also a niche band that hopefully works in our current market.”

What Louis says: “They are so current and relevant to today's charts and Charlie has an amazing, original and brilliant voice.”

Double trouble: Duo MK1 also takes part in the next stage of the competition

WHO: Union J – Jamie Hamblett (JJ), 24, George Shelley, 19, Josh Cuthbert, 20, and Jaymi Hensley, 22 – from Ascot, Bristol, Luton and Newmarket.

Did you know? Jaymi is a part-time singing and dance teacher, Josh works in IT sales, JJ works with horses and George works part-time in a café.

Why they believe they should win: “We are new and fresh. We haven't been together long, but I hope the public sees the potential in us. We are four normal, down-to-earth guys who love to sing.”

What Louis says: “The guys have a great young image, the girls will love them, they have everything – great energy, looks and the singing to match.”

They are overjoyed: The boy band Union J jumped for joy when they found out that they had made it through

And of course they are all on Twitter…

The young

James Arthur @jamesarthur23

Rylan Clark @RylanClark

Jahmene Douglas @JahmeneDouglas

The girls

Jade Ellis @jadaface101

Ella Henderson @ella_henderson

Lucy Spraggan @lspraggan

Those over 28 years old

Melanie Masson @MelanieMasson1

Carolynne Poole @CarolynnePoole

Kye Sones @Kyesones1

The groups

GMD3 @GMD3music

MK1 @mk1official

Union J @UnionJworld

Bookmakers’ odds

Ella Henderson 5/4

James Arthur 6/1

Carolynne Poole 12/1

GMD3 14/1

Melanie Masson20/1

Christopher Maloney 28/1

Amy Mottram 40/1

Adam Burridge 50/1

Jahmene Douglas 6/1

Kynes Sones 8/1

Lucy Spraggan12/1

Jade Ellis 20/1

Union J 20/1

MK1 33/1

Ryan Clark 40/1

Times Red 50/1 (William Hill)

VIDEO: Tears at X Factor. The selection of the final 12 was more than just emotional…

The post Ella Henderson, chimney sweep Kye Sones and single mom Jade Ellis make it appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A Queens handyman has pleaded guilty to the killing of a 51-year-old mother who was found dismembered in a duffel bag earlier this year. On Wednesday, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced that 44-year-old David Bonola pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the slaying of Orsolya Gaal.

According to a statement from Katz, shortly after midnight on April 16, Bonola, a handyman who had previously worked at Gaal’s residence, went to her home, where she had just returned from a night out. The two got into an argument and he slashed her throat and proceeded to stab her more than 50 times, the statement said.

Katz did not elaborate on why Bonola had gone to the residence. At the time of Bonola’s arrest, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said that he and Gaal had been in an “off-and-on” relationship for at least two years. The two allegedly reunited early in the month of April, but their relationship was considered at an end at the time of Gaal’s death, the police said.

At approximately 4:15 am, Bonola was captured on a neighbor’s surveillance camera wheeling a duffel bag. The bag was found in a nearby park about four hours later with Gaal’s dismembered body inside, prosecutors said. Police followed the trail of blood to Gaal’s home where they discovered the murder weapon, prosecutors said. Police also discovered Bonola’s jacket at the park where the duffel bag was found, according to prosecutors.

When Bonola spoke to police days later he made “incriminating statements” and revealed that he had gone to a local hospital to treat a cut on his hand, prosecutors said. Bonola also stated that he and Gaal had argued and confessed to stabbing and moving her body, prosecutors said.

“This heinous killing devastated an entire family, left two boys without a mother, and horrified the surrounding community,” Katz said in a statement. “I want to thank my prosecutors for their exhaustive efforts in securing this plea.”

“In pleading guilty, the defendant has accepted responsibility and is being held fully accountable for his criminal actions,” Katz added. “We express our sincerest condolences to the victim’s family and hope that today’s plea will allow them to begin to heal.”

Bonola is set to be sentenced to 25 years in prison followed by five years post-release supervision on November 16, prosecutors said.

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A Queens handyman has pleaded guilty to the killing of a 51-year-old mother who was found dismembered in a duffel bag earlier this year. On Wednesday, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced that 44-year-old David Bonola pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the slaying of Orsolya Gaal.

According to a statement from Katz, shortly after midnight on April 16, Bonola, a handyman who had previously worked at Gaal’s residence, went to her home, where she had just returned from a night out. The two got into an argument and he slashed her throat and proceeded to stab her more than 50 times, the statement said.

Katz did not elaborate on why Bonola had gone to the residence. At the time of Bonola’s arrest, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said that he and Gaal had been in an “off-and-on” relationship for at least two years. The two allegedly reunited early in the month of April, but their relationship was considered at an end at the time of Gaal’s death, the police said.

At approximately 4:15 am, Bonola was captured on a neighbor’s surveillance camera wheeling a duffel bag. The bag was found in a nearby park about four hours later with Gaal’s dismembered body inside, prosecutors said. Police followed the trail of blood to Gaal’s home where they discovered the murder weapon, prosecutors said. Police also discovered Bonola’s jacket at the park where the duffel bag was found, according to prosecutors.

When Bonola spoke to police days later he made “incriminating statements” and revealed that he had gone to a local hospital to treat a cut on his hand, prosecutors said. Bonola also stated that he and Gaal had argued and confessed to stabbing and moving her body, prosecutors said.

“This heinous killing devastated an entire family, left two boys without a mother, and horrified the surrounding community,” Katz said in a statement. “I want to thank my prosecutors for their exhaustive efforts in securing this plea.”

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“In pleading guilty, the defendant has accepted responsibility and is being held fully accountable for his criminal actions,” Katz added. “We express our sincerest condolences to the victim’s family and hope that today’s plea will allow them to begin to heal.”

Bonola is set to be sentenced to 25 years in prison followed by five years post-release supervision on November 16, prosecutors said.

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The post Handyman pleads responsible to killing of mom discovered dismembered in duffel bag appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

After police were notified, they began looking for answers about Cole’s whereabouts. This included searching her home. When they arrived at the property, they didn’t see any signs of a struggle, but they did notice a shotgun in a bedroom. Eventually, they learned that it had been given to her by Jason Garland, a handyman that Cole had employed. When asked about the gun, Garland said that he had given it to her because she had been “afraid” but didn’t elaborate.

During the search, officials also found her cell phone. Later, they retrieved text messages between Cole and Demich, another handyman who had completed work for her. One message, in particular, that was sent after the concert stated that she would call him on Saturday. It also revealed that she had sent him some money through Cash App. However, when they looked through Demich’s phone, they could not locate the text, leading them to believe that it had been deleted.

Demich denied being at Cole’s home, despite Lyft account data showing that he had taken a ride from his home to hers on February 24 at 7:06 PM.

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NORMAN, Okla. (KFOR) – Deciding to move is one of the more costly, stressful decisions a family can make. But a Norman mother says she’s between a rock and a hard place, being told to leave her home less than four months after moving in.

To donate to Chelsye’s GoFundMe, click here.

Chelsye Bacon has a lot on her plate. For starters, she’s a college student, a single mother of four and was nine-months pregnant when meeting with KFOR.

“This is a boy,” she said, describing her growing family. “He’ll be here any time now.”

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Chelsye’s family moved into a Norman townhome in late January.

Now, just months later, she says she’s being forced to move again.

Her story starts just a week after moving in, when her washer flooded.

“So it was backed up, and my dining room and kitchen flooded, so I wasn’t allowed to use my washer,” Chelsye explained. “Then the following day, took a bath and my kitchen started leaking.”

From a drip in the kitchen, to flooding toilets and washers, Chelsye complained a handful of times to management.

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According to her online portal, it appears maintenance was responsive in hiring plumbers to try and find a fix. But problems persisted.

The company, Red Door Management, noted in a March phone call that Chelsye complained her ceiling was still leaking and that plumbing hadn’t worked properly since she moved in.

While visiting the home, News 4 found a hole in the kitchen ceiling from prior maintenance work, and a can to catch dripping water ready on Chelsye’s stove.

Photo from KFOR.

Some packaged food items had also been moved to the living room to keep dry.

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In the midst of these issues, Chelsye was served with a lease violation from management for “failure to maintain her dwelling in a healthy manner” in late March.

With four kids at home, nine months into a high-risk pregnancy, Chelsye claims most cleanliness or clutter issues were partially a result of the plumbing.

“Like helped my snacks and just everything that is in the way of the leak is in my living room,” she said.

The situation came to a head in mid-April. Chelsye reported her downstairs toilet had flooded again.

She received a letter in the mail three days later.

“I got a vacate notice that I had to move out,” she said.

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Red Door Management claimed in the letter the “current plumbing issues require the property to be vacant.”

They also said they didn’t know the extent of the issues prior to Chelsye’s move in, and wrote that the family must be out of the home by May 31 or risk losing their deposit.

“I was devastated,” said Chelsye. “Because I physically cannot move.”

In Your Corner stopped by Red Door Management and spoke with the person in charge on the phone.

“[Chelsye] failed to clean up her home, and has been there in a very short period of time,” they said. “That is the reason we gave her the notice to vacate.”

News 4 pointed out the notice sent to Chelsye cited plumbing issues, and had no mention of a messy home. The person on the phone said they would need to “talk to the manager.”

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Chelsye pays for the home with the help of Section 8. In a follow-up email after the phone call, Red Door claimed the vacate order cited plumbing as opposed to home maintenance to better protect Chelsye’s federal subsidy moving forward.

The true cause of the order, they said, resulted from the March lease violation. They say the issue wasn’t fixed by a follow-up inspection days later.

“She failed to clean up her home and has been there in a very short period of time,” said the Red Door representative on the phone. “That is the reason we gave her the notice to vacate.”

But clean is in the eye of the beholder. Chelsye provided KFOR with a number of photos she says were taken shortly after the follow-up inspection.

These line up with what News 4 found. While cluttered, we wouldn’t describe it as dirty.

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We shared as much on the phone.

“For somebody who’s lived there less than eight weeks, and has had to deal with water leaking from the kitchen to the point where they have to keep some of their food in their living room,” In Your Corner reporter Adam Snider said to Red Door . “With four children at home and a fifth on the way, it would look to me that she’s doing the best she can.”

In the post phone call email, Red Door claimed our story would force them to inform the Norman Housing Authority of Chelsye’s violations, which they said would “undoubtedly create an even greater hardship.”

News 4 left the decision up to Chelsye, who opted to share her story. She’s hoping for help and hopes to warn others of what happened.

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She also doesn’t know what happens next.

“I don’t know because I don’t physically have the money to move,” Chelsye said.

Chelsye’s family has now grown, as she has given birth to a baby boy days after our interview!

News 4 spoke with the Norman Housing Authority briefly at the start of our investigation. We had hoped to discuss the condition of Chelsye’s property, but multiple follow-up requests were not returned.

Chelsye says she has been in contact with her case worker and is looking to figure out what happens next.

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The 14-year-old girl was facedown on the top bunk bed, arms splayed out. It was just after 5 pm Maybe my daughter is just really tired, Hazel Mayorga thought. Paris is not usually a late napper. I’ll just give her a shake.

Climbing up the bed frame to get a better look, Mayorga saw that the teenage girl who’d visited Paris the night before was also on the top bunk bed, asleep. She jostled them both. The other girl woke up.

Paris did not. Her lips were purple.

After the screaming and the 911 call and the frenetic paramedics’ best efforts were over, there was nothing more to be done. On March 9, 2021, Paris Serrano became the youngest person in San Francisco to the last year of a fentanyl overdose.

While more than 1,300 people died from drug overdoses in San Francisco over the last two years, many from the powerful opioid fentanyl, few of them were teenagers. In 2021, 645 people died of fatal overdoses, and at least 3, including Paris, were under the age of 21, according to the most recent data, which provides demographic details for only 469 of those overdoses. In 2020, at least four of the 711 fatalities were teens.

The rate of teenagers overdosing nationally is also very small — but it’s growing. The nonprofit Families Against Fentanyl estimates that fentanyl overdose deaths among American teenagers tripled in the past two years.

Paris Serrano, who died of a drug overdose last year, is seen in photos on her mom’s kitchen wall at home in San Francisco.

Provided by Hazel Mayorga

Paris is a vivid face of that trend. Her death highlights how the devastation of drug overdoses is spreading along with the prevalence of hyper-deadly fentanyl. And how families sometimes never find out how their child got ahold of the drug — or unknowingly took it.

In the year since that awful day, Mayorga, 39, has wrestled with feelings of helplessness and guilt. She said her daughter would not have knowingly taken fentanyl, and that the drug was not present in her home.

However, because of the circumstances around the overdose, her other child, a 12-year-old girl, was placed in a temporary foster home, and Mayorga has been undergoing counseling.

The mere mention of Paris, a bubbly kid who liked to sing, whose favorite song was “Invéntame” (Imagine Me) by Marco Antonio Solis, and who liked to cook potato pancakes for her mother, chokes up Mayorga. Last month, on the first anniversary of Paris’ death, she spent the morning sitting in the living room of her tenderloin flat with friends, staring at pictures of her daughter. And crying.

“Today is the worst day, just the worst day,” she said.

Hazel Mayorga gets emotional as she talks on the first anniversary of the day her daughter Paris Serrano died of a drug overdose.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Graciela Cortez, a close friend for many years, put an arm around Mayorga.

“Oh my God, that girl was special,” Cortez, 54, told her. “She was a good, clean-hearted girl, and so much magnetism. She was one of those girls who wanted to eat the world in one day. Remember her like that.”

At the time of her death, Paris was a freshman at June Jordan School for Equity, a small public high school named after the renowned American poet and activist. Though just a teenager, Paris dreamed of becoming a police officer or a lawyer, her mother said.

Mayorga came to San Francisco after fleeing violence in Nicaragua 16 years ago to find a better life in America. She had her two daughters with a man she met on the journey, she said, and started to build a solid life, taking house-cleaning jobs while she lived in subsidized housing on Treasure Island.

But the children’s father was violent and abusive, she and her friends said, and he did short stints in jail for it but always came back home. An eviction followed because of the disruptions, punctuated by periods of homelessness and, for Mayorga, stints in a domestic violence shelter.

The girls, she said, were sent to temporary foster homes before. But she said she found some stability about four years ago as a single mom in the supportive housing apartment where she now lives. Then came Paris’ death.

During one of the worst times for Mayorga and the girls, she pitched a tent in the Mission. Former city Supervisor David Campos found the family living there years ago while making rounds with street outreach counselors, and helped route them toward the housing she eventually landed in.

“I remember this mother being very protective of her kids and doing her best to take care of them,” Campos said recently after hearing from Cortez of Paris’ death. “She was in a tough spot and really trying to get back on her feet — she was even working. It’s very tragic.

“To me, it seems like there was a system failure here,” he said.

For Mayorga, that years-old dream of a good life in America feels in tatters.

“God is with us, but why such sadness?” she said. “Nothing in life is more important than your daughter. Why would he take her?”

Paris Serrano, who died of a drug overdose last year, is seen in photos on her mother’s kitchen wall in San Francisco. Her mother suspects Paris may have smoked a fentanyl-laced joint.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Luis Tolbar, Mayorga’s 42-year-old boyfriend, was with her when she found Paris. They wonder if the 17-year-old girl Paris was hanging out with had something to do with how fentanyl wound up in the apartment, and then in her system.

The two were smoking marijuana, Mayorga said, “but my daughter never did hard drugs, never, and I don’t do them either.”

Mayorga believes her daughter smoked a joint that she didn’t know was laced with fentanyl, which is about 50 times more potent than heroin.

Lawyers, police and child welfare officials contacted by The Chronicle said they could not comment on the circumstances of the case because it involved a juvenile. The Chronicle could not locate Paris’ friend.

Mayorga said she called a child welfare social worker from the city Human Services Agency to remove the second girl when she showed up the night before, because Mayorga wasn’t able to make her leave and thought she would be a bad influence.

She said the worker, who like others at the agency told The Chronicle he could not comment because it was a juvenile matter, told her he had no authority to remove the girl.

Sources familiar with the situation — who also declined to be identified because they were not authorized to comment, and were granted anonymity by The Chronicle — said the social worker acted correctly.

A police report showed that heroin and fentanyl were found in a jacket in the room where the girls were, but with inconclusive evidence about its origins, officers did not file charges against anyone.

Paris’ death is a reminder that the fentanyl epidemic ravaging the city is not merely a street-life problem.

“Most of the coverage around fentanyl overdoses in San Francisco has been focused on homeless single adults in the Tenderloin,” said Trent Rhorer, director of the Human Services Agency, which overees child protective services but could not comment on Paris’ death. “But the reality is fentanyl is touching more than that — it touches families, too.”

dr Allanceson Smith, an adolescent addiction specialist with the city Department of Public Health, said it was “pretty rare for a minor to be using opioids,” but added that such use is growing.

The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports that drug overdose death rates among children 15 or younger are about 0.3 per 100,000, compared with about 22 per 100,000 overall.

“When you look at the US as a whole, the vast majority of kids tend to see opioids as dangerous,” Smith said. “Over 60% of high school students disapprove of opioid use. And it’s not uncommon for kids to be unintentionally exposed — taking it without knowing they’re taking it.”

Paris’s writing at home on Wednesday, March 9, 2022 in San Francisco, California.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Hazel Mayorga’s guinea pig named Paris is seen on the one-year anniversary of the day her daughter Paris Serrano died of a drug overdose on Wednesday, March 9, 2022 in San Francisco, California. The pet was named after her daughter.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

A sample of Paris’ writing and drawing and the guinea pig that Hazel Mayorga named after her deceased daughter. Photo by Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
A sample of Paris’ writing and drawing and the guinea pig that Hazel Mayorga named after her deceased daughter. Photo by Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Slumped in a chair on the anniversary of Paris’ death, Mayorga said she had no idea how common it was for children to overdose. There was only one loss she was focused on — her daughter.

She hummed a little from Paris’ favorite song, remembering how the two of them used to sing it together in her tiny kitchen. “Imagine me, Imagine what one day we could have been,” the lyric goes. Mayorga hung her head and burst into sobs.

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron

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San Francisco will pay $ 2.5 million to the mother of a man who was shot dead by a San Francisco police officer in 2017.

The payment, pending board approval, would settle a federal civil lawsuit that Judy O’Neil filed in December 2017, about two weeks after the death of her son, Keita O’Neil.

Police officer Christopher Samayoa had just graduated from police academy and started field training when he shot and killed O’Neil on December 1, 2017. O’Neil allegedly pushed a state lottery worker and stole the keys to her white minivan. Police accused him of stealing the van and leading her on a chase on Highway 101 that ended at a public housing complex on Bayview.

O’Neil opened the door to his van and jumped out of the moving vehicle as the police followed him. Samayoa, in the passenger seat of a patrol car driven by Edric Talusan, a training supervisor, pulled out his service pistol and fired through the window as O’Neil sped by. Footage of samayoa’s body-worn camera and surveillance video nearby revealed that O’Neil was unarmed and only yards away at the time of the shooting. He died of a gunshot wound to the head.

Three years later, in November 2020, Samayoa was charged with manslaughter, along with three other criminal charges: assault with a gun, reckless firing of a gun, and unlawful attack by a police officer. It was the first time in recent history that the city’s chief prosecutor has charged a police officer with murder in a case of use of force, and the third time in the region.

Since then, Boudin has charged five other officers who he believed used excessive force, including another for murder, which the prosecutor announced earlier this week. He has five criminal cases pending against police officers, including the one against Samayoa.

“This is one of the more ruthless shootings I’ve ever seen, mainly because the person was unarmed, the officer was in a safe position, and O’Neil ran past,” said John Burris, the O’Civic attorney. Neil’s family. “According to the principles of ‘reasonable’ and ‘necessary’ he was wrong in both cases.”

Julia Fox, an attorney who represents Samayoa in criminal proceedings, said her client “has full confidence in the legal process and he trusts a jury of his colleagues should this become relevant”.

“We are confident that Officer Samayoa’s actions at the end of his case, after a thorough review of all the circumstances presented, were reasonable,” said Fox.

Burris added that O’Neil’s mother, Judy, was traumatized and that the court had hired her younger sister to look after her. He called the case heartbreaking.

Rachel Swan is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

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SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – On Wednesday, the mother of a man struggling with addiction protested at an infamous corner in San Francisco’s tenderloin.

She said she was ready to stand alone on the corner. As it turned out, that wouldn’t be necessary.

CONTINUE READING: UPDATE: 9th victim dies in mass shooting at VTA Light Rail Yard in San Jose; Family and friends pay tribute

“I used to be ashamed,” Jackquie Berlinn told the crowd. “I’m just hiding my story out of shame. I realized a few years ago that it wasn’t helping me. It didn’t help my son. And it didn’t help anyone on the street. “

Berlinn’s son is addicted to fentanyl. He’s on the street in San Francisco somewhere. Desperate, she came to Turk and Hyde to ask for help.

“I’ve spoken to parents who are in other states,” she says. “Your kids come to San Francisco because they know how easy it is to use and get drugs.”

CONTINUE READING: Mass shooting in San Jose: 10 dead, including shooter at VTA Rail Yard; Victim identities released

It is a crisis that a coalition of the Disgruntled is building, and many of them have surfaced today. It was a gathering of residents and politicians who often disagreed on many things. On this issue, they share the frustration.

“Every single officer-elected, supervisor, there are two here, should be here,” Supervisor Matt Haney shouted. “The mayor should be here. The prosecutor should be here. “

“We need bipartisan participation,” said Adam Mesnick. “We need the leaders who admit that addiction is a problem.”

It was vented and argued, but everyone here agreed that the status quo has failed and that there is an impetus for a change towards compassion and accountability.

MORE NEWS: UPDATE: The investigation into the bomb squadron at the home of the San Jose VTA mass rifleman extends into the night

“We can offer them services and do everything we can to keep them from drug trafficking in the future,” said Thomas Wolf, an attorney for recovery. “But we need to impose meaningful sanctions, which means we need our district attorney’s cooperation.”

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The Guardian

How did a wildlife lover become one of the bloodiest poachers in California history?

Richard Parker was a self-described naturalist. Then an anonymous tip led investigators to a scene of ‘carnage’This article contains animal images some viewers may find distressing Wildlife officials were told someone in the area was shooting raptors, including red-tailed hawks. Photograph: Alamy The California department of fish and wildlife relies on an intricate network of citizen-informants to help do its job. The agency’s secret tip line is a critical tool in the fight against wildlife crimes because, in more rural areas of the state, a single wildlife officer can be responsible for thousands of miles of territory. Todd Kinnard is one such officer – tasked with overseeing agency operations across the expansive Lassen county, five hours north-east of San Francisco by car. He was on duty when an anonymous tip came in that someone in the county was shooting raptors, birds of prey such as red-tailed and ferruginous hawks. Raptors are not typically the subject of poaching tips. They are agile, apex predators that – due to a diet consisting largely of pests such as rats, snakes, and mice – tend to coexist with humans rather than compete with them. map showing standish Kinnard took the tip with a grain of salt. In Lassen county, it is not unheard of for neighbors to weaponize the department’s anonymous tip line against one another out of spite. Because something as seemingly innocuous as taking one too many fish from a local pond can result in substantial government fines, grazing-rights or property-line disputes can quickly mushroom-cloud into frenzies of sometimes bogus, sometimes legitimate, tit-for-tat poaching complaints. Kinnard drove out to the site of the alleged raptor killings to carry out a preliminary, informal knock-and-talk inquiry. It was a large-tract property, roughly 80 acres, in the unincorporated town of Standish. The property sat perched on the banks of the Susan River, a few miles east of the county seat, Susanville. The owners, Richard Parker and his wife, Tonya, were not at home at the time. But what Kinnard saw upon entering the property was stomach-churning. A cottonwood tree near the Parkers’ home was strung up with grisly ornamentation – several dead raptors, all at varying stages of decomposition. Other bodies were scattered around the tree’s base, approximately a dozen in all. Kinnard was not prepared to bag and tag the gruesome cache of evidence dangling from the cottonwood tree. He seized what evidence he could and took the bodies to the fish and wildlife department’s forensic laboratory in Sacramento. Wildlife officers conduct their investigation. Photograph: Courtesy California department of fish and wildlife The agency’s raptor specialist examined the carcasses and was able to determine species, with corresponding protected statuses. Causes of death proved more elusive, however. The bodies had been left to field for quite some time. Still, the probability of a dozen birds of prey dying of natural causes at the same location is spectacularly low. As the Sacramento laboratory got to work on identifying causes of death, Kinnard proceeded with his own investigation. The dead raptors recovered on that day in 2018 were only the tip of a blood-red iceberg. Richard Parker, a seemingly ordinary country gentleman, appeared to have a secret, sadistic hobby and the anonymous tipster had led Kinnard to uncover one of the bloodiest poaching cases in California history. An anti-government streak Lassen county is tucked away in the sparsely populated north-east of California. It sits north of Lake Tahoe along the Nevada border, and east of Redding, the last major population center before the vast wilderness stretching between northern California and southern Oregon. Lt Kyle Kroll, who oversees game wardens in the area, describes the region around Susanville as the Honey Lake Valley, a unique ecosystem straddling a transition zone between the desert and the mountains. “But with a lot of water,” he says, “because the aquifers flow eastward into the desert. It’s a perfect habitat for raptors, because it’s a rich area that attracts a lot of their prey.” Topography aside, Lassen is an entirely different world, culturally speaking, from the metropolitan sprawl of the Bay Area to its south-west, or even the exurbs and rich farmland of the nearby Sacramento Valley. The population in 2019 was just over 30,500 residents, less than half that of the San Francisco suburb of Palo Alto, spread out over more than 180 times the square mileage. It is the kind of place people go to get away from the congestion of coastal California’s urban-suburban sprawl, and the many customs and regulations woven into life there. There is a palpable anti-government streak embedded in the culture of Lassen county – a “don’t tread on me” mentality that often pits the priorities of local residents against those of state conservation officers such as Kroll and Kinnard. California’s sole pack of wild wolves inhabits a territory encompassing parts of Lassen county. There is no love lost between the endangered canines and area ranchers, who view the pack as a direct threat to their livelihoods. (Wolves occasionally feed on cattle and sheep.) In December of 2020, a state investigation into the shooting of a protected wolf in Lassen county laid bare these tensions by implicating a 23-year-old, sixth-generation rancher, Brett Gagnon. An adult wolf and three pups in Lassen county. Photograph: AP “I can’t believe you guys would waste your time to investigate somebody for shooting a miserable wolf,” Gagnon’s grandfather told state agents as they executed a search warrant on the family ranch. Gagnon was not ultimately charged with the killing. Analysis of the bullet recovered from the wolf’s body did not match any of the guns seized from the Gagnon home. The case remains open. The ordeal did little to warm relations between the fish and wildlife department and county residents. And perhaps a flavor of that tension informed the politics of one Richard Parker. The stakeout As the fish and wildlife department’s forensic examiners poked and prodded the bodies recovered from the Parker property, Todd Kinnard remained disturbed and restless over what he could only imagine had occurred there. He knew the physical evidence against the Parkers was damning, but not conclusive, and the agency would need solid proof that one or more members of the family were behind the brutal raptor killings in order to bring about any kind of justice. Kinnard enacted what state agents call a Code Five surveillance plan. In March 2018, for several mornings in a row, he took up a vantage point on a neighboring property and, using a high-powered scope, staked out the Parker home. On one of these mornings, he witnessed an individual emerging from the house, rifle in hand, later determined to be Parker, according to department officials. Kinnard says Parker took up position in the yard, raised his rifle, and shot off several rounds in different directions. Kinnard recalls watching nearby foliage explode to life as birds fled the vicinity. He now had sufficient probable cause to corroborate the initial tip and secure a search warrant. The warrant was served on the Parkers by a team of wildlife officers in the early hours of 11 March 2018. “I’ll be honest, we thought we were only going to find what was already around that tree,” Kroll recalls. “But that was just one of the specks of evidence that we found.” The true extent of the horror would stretch from fence to fence. Recollecting the broader examination of the property, Kroll describes a scene of complete carnage within a 300-yard radius of the Parker home. “Every bird within reach of his house, anything he could hit, was lying there on the ground. Dozens and dozens of carcasses.” A river flows toward Lake Tahoe from the smaller mountain Eagle Lake, near Standish. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPA “It was just an unbelievable amount of evidence,” Kroll says. The team needed to restrategize. Time was of the essence – many of the bodies had clearly been decomposing for some time. Some were little more than skulls and delicate wing bones. State wildlife officers assembled in a kind of phalanx formation and began meticulously surveying the property in four waves. The first wave made initial identifications of body locations, marking points on a GPS app. The second took photographs; the third recorded copious notes on the state and positioning of the carcasses. The fourth collected and bagged them. The process created a map of the butchery, which investigators later transposed on to satellite imagery of the Parker property. It provided unsettling insight into Parker’s bloody method. “As he entered his property by vehicle, any raptors he’d see perched along the access road he’d shoot,” Kroll says. “It was a row of dots along the road and around his home.” Parker, for his part, was surprised by the raid, yet calm, Kroll recalls. Kinnard obtained an admission on the scene from Parker that he had shot a red-tailed hawk just the day before. The justification offered was that he believed the raptors were killing off local game birds. “He was an upland game hunter,” Kroll says, conceding that raptors are known to predate on certain species of quail, dove and pheasant, favored by sportsmen. “He said he thought he was doing the game bird population a favor by eradicating the predators.” Kroll believes this may have been Parker’s original intent, “but it eventually became a sick sport”, he speculates. “There might have been an adrenaline rush; people get addicted to that. We see that from time to time with the larger-scale poaching cases.” Likewise, the map of Parker’s killings seemingly refutes the notion that his motives lay chiefly with preserving the area game bird population. All of the bodies recovered from Parker’s property were killed along the access road and in the immediate vicinity of his home. There is no evidence to suggest he made treks further afield to enact this purported, self-directed population-control program. That same day, Parker was arrested and booked into Lassen county jail on charges including unlawful killing of birds of prey, killing of migratory non-game birds in violation of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and possession of wildlife unlawfully taken. The man who relished the hunt The man wildlife agents took into custody that day had not necessarily lived a life indicative of a future sport killer. Richard Earl Parker was born and raised in Lassen county. He graduated from Susanville high school, and after receiving his bachelor’s degree from Sacramento State University in 1973, he returned to the area to settle down. He became a significant figure in the Honey Lake Valley, according to local people who spoke with the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. Parker still has friends in the area. Susanville is small. And even two years after his conviction, anxiety about retaliation persists. “They [don’t] want to stir up anything,” one local resident explains. Parker’s charges included the killing of migratory non-game birds, in violation of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Photograph: Courtesy California department of fish and wildlife For 20 years, Parker was the area milkman. When the home milk-delivery business died out, he pivoted to insurance sales. He served in the Lassen County Chamber of Commerce for 15 years and participated in local theater productions. Members of the community in Susanville say Parker’s local status was polarizing. He was intensely liked by his circle of friends and confidants and intensely disliked by others. “A lot of people from his community called us after the arrest came out,” Capt Patrick Foy of the department of fish and wildlife says. “They acknowledged that he was a powerful, well-connected guy in the community, and there was concern he was not going to be prosecuted fairly.” Indeed, local residents tell the Guardian that Parker viewed the Honey Lake Valley as a manor and himself as its lord. And like all standard-issue country gentlemen, Parker relished a stalk and a hunt. Sport hunting in many parts of rural America sits at an awkward philosophical crossroads between conservationism and libertarianism. On the one hand, there is a rationale for the preservation of wild lands, which arises from a mixture of legitimate appreciation for nature and simple supply-and-demand economics: better habitats attract more creatures to hunt. On the other hand, there is a natural tension between the autonomy of the hunter and the conservationist machinations of the state. Parker seemingly resided, for a time, at this crossroads. But the tension perhaps proved untenable for him. In the late 1990s, shortly after purchasing the property in Standish, Parker asked state forestry authorities to set a controlled fire on his land. Parker thought the riverside property was a perfect nesting ground for waterfowl. But at the time, it was infested with whitetop, an invasive weed that chokes out competing grasses. The controlled blaze, administered in November 1999, wiped out a mat of whitetop and made way for the area’s natural weeds and grasses to take root. “What I was going to grow was wildlife, little critters, waterfowl,” Parker told the Lassen County News just after the fire. “My interest is to have birds and wildlife around me.” But something in Parker’s philosophy would change in the ensuing years. The self-described hunter and naturalist began advocating seemingly contrary positions to the conservationist movement. In 2013, he told the Lassen County Times, another local newspaper, that he hoped a commission tasked with making countywide economic projections would prioritize logging, largely viewed as one of the most ecologically devastating industries in the world. “This committee should recommend to the people that our biggest opportunity for economic growth is timber,” he said. ‘We uncovered a hundredfold more than we thought we’d find,’ says Lt Kyle Kroll. Photograph: Courtesy California department of fish and wildlife The inciting incident for this change of heart may have been a small-town political scandal, at the heart of which was Parker himself. Despite the shades of anti-government spirit that pervade Lassen county, Parker seemed to crave public office. He has made several runs at various positions – most recently, it appears, in 2008, for the Lassen Community College board. In 2000, he was elected director of the Lassen municipal utility district, the public utility provider for the county. Less than a year into his tenure, citizens launched a vigorous recall effort against Parker and his fellow board members. Organizers accused Parker of “abdication of authority”, “violation of public trust”, “abuse of power”, and “intentional misuse of public funds” arising from a proposed 162% rate hike in electrical costs for the county that year. Public meetings in response to the proposed rate hike were “vile” and “disorderly”, according newspaper reports from the time, with community members lodging concerns that such a move would destroy the county’s fragile economy. Richard Parker was effectively villainized by the whole ordeal. The place to which he devoted years of time and effort cultivating a reputation seemed to be rejecting him. And he scrambled to shift blame – first, to unnamed local environmentalists, allegedly to blame for preventing the construction of more power plants. “Bunny huggers”, he called them in one public meeting, with palpable, newfound derision. The crimes come full circle Nearly two decades after the recall effort, Parker found himself on trial for conduct that was arguably the polar opposite of bunny hugging. In April of 2019, Parker, then 68, pleaded guilty to crimes associated with poaching in excess of 150 birds of prey and other wildlife. He was sentenced to three months in jail, a $75,000 fine, and five years’ probation. Terms of his probation forbid him from possessing firearms or engaging in hunting or fishing of any kind. Wildlife officers are reluctant to label crimes like Parker’s “serial killings”, as it conflates terminology associated with homicide and animal poaching. Still, they acknowledge a distinction between the crimes of Richard Parker and your average poacher. “Poaching can be taking one too many trout from a pond, or redirecting a creek on your own property,” says Foy. “But there are individuals who seem to enjoy killing for the sake of killing,” he says, noting that in cases where the body count is as high as Parker’s, it is difficult to identify a motive other than rank cruelty or sadism. “Who knows what the true extent was,” Kroll says of Parker’s crimes. “We uncovered a hundredfold more than we assumed we’d find. But things don’t last long in the wild. The true extent of the carnage was probably much greater. We truly think that his kill number was so much higher than what we were able to collect.” Kroll speculates Parker’s conviction was largely attributable to the strength of the government’s case against him, primarily due to forensic assistance from the federal Fish and Wildlife Service. Federal wildlife officials ‘were an immense help’ in the investigation, Kroll says. Photograph: Courtesy California department of fish and wildlife “Because these birds are federally protected, we were in constant contact with them,” Kroll says. “They were an immense help because we were able to ship the [dead] birds up to their lab in Ashland, Oregon, which is really world-renowned in wildlife forensics. They spent an immense amount of time going through every piece of evidence submitted and writing a comprehensive report for each – way beyond anything we could have compiled locally.” Ultimately, despite committing several federal crimes, Parker was tried in state court by the office of the former California attorney general Xavier Becerra. This, Kroll says, allowed for the story of Richard Parker – bloody as it may be – to inspire a happy ending. “Because of the case disposition, a huge sum of money went back into community conservation and education programs,” he explains. Per the California fish code, 10% of fish and wildlife-related fines go to individual county fish and game commissions, which can reinvest those funds to the benefit of local ecology. Seventy-five hundred dollars goes a long way in Lassen county. “They might donate the money to a fishing program for inner-city youth,” Kroll says, “Or wildlife projects like installing [water] guzzlers for antelope in the high desert. “It’s a nice way of bringing wildlife crimes full circle,” he says. Despite himself, Richard Parker, one of the most extensively prosecuted poachers in California history, became an indirect bunny hugger after all.

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Thousands of SEIU supervisors on strike in Philadelphia in 2019. Cory Clark / AP

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More than 700 San Francisco janitors represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) quit their jobs yesterday morning and launched a three-day strike for improved COVID protection and working conditions after months of contract negotiations collapsed.

Hundreds of workers waved protest signs and sang in front of the Salesforce Tower – Salesforce chairman, CEO and billionaire Marc Benioff’s passion for skyline capping – in San Francisco’s high-dollar SoMA district, home to the offices of Silicon Valley giants Amazon, Airbnb and Facebook are located, Google and Twitter. The companies enter into contracts with custodians through facility management companies such as ABM and Able Services.

“These buildings won’t be safe until the janitors have a fair contract,” Olga Miranda, a striking janitor, told local CBS subsidiary KPIX – and if the janitors aren’t sure, Miranda said, “others will definitely not be safe be.”

“Strike”
Hundreds of SF caretakers are on STRIKE today.
The caretakers – mainly women, colored people and migrant workers – fight for a fair trade union contract with protection from sexual harassment and security measures!
Boost @Ableserve & @ABM_Industries #JusticeForJanitors pic.twitter.com/KR8bGd0P4A

– Justice for Janitor (@JusticeforJans) March 24, 2021

Since the pandemic began, over 3,000 caretakers, mostly black migrants, have been laid off and at least 26 workers have died of COVID-19, according to SEIU Local 87 members. With their eight-month struggle for a new contract at a dead end, the union janitors are demanding not only better ventilation and protective equipment, but also a raise in salaries, health insurance coverage, improved sick pay and protection from sexual harassment in the workplace.

When the pandemic hit in March last year, the precarious conditions for low-wage workers were exposed – and a series of strikes sparked, which led the calls related to COVID to a wider struggle for improved working conditions. All over the west coast similarly endangered farm workers Strikes – with and without the support of the trade unions – not only because of insufficient cover-ups of PPE and COVID, but also because of wage cuts and insufficient sick pay during the pandemic. As my colleague Julia Lurie reported in December:

When some pickers and packers hit this breaking point, there were COVID-related slips on the west coast … Hundreds of fruit packers in the Yakima Valley in Washington left production lines to protest a lack of safety and hazard payments. In Santa Maria, California, strawberry pickers left work to protest falling wages, just as many families were particularly financially stricken. Blueberry pickers near Fresno also encountered a wage cut and stood beside the red and black waving fields [United Farm Workers] Flags.

As in San Francisco, these strikes were not limited to masks and hand sanitizer. Workers who have mobilized over imminent threats to their health and safety have expanded their demands to include working conditions exacerbated by the pandemic – particularly in Bessemer, Alabama, where Amazon warehouse workers are casting their final votes in the most serious attempt to date, the company to merge into trade union organizations. (Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, saw his net worth grow by $ 58 billion during the pandemic.)

These efforts were supported by, among others, President Joe Biden and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. And, according to Gallup, two-thirds of Americans are in favor of unions – their best poll in more than a decade.

STRIKE ALERT

26 caretakers have died of # COVID19 in San Francisco. We’re in the pandemic for a year – but janitors still don’t have the PPE and ventilation they need.

As SF moves to the orange plane today, @ SEIU87’s janitors have started a ULP strike to demand safety at work. # 1u pic.twitter.com/3IqeDKgaXO

– UNITE HERE Local 2 #PROAct (@ UniteHereLocal2) March 24, 2021

Caretaker strikes across town are not new. In 2018, SEIU 87 caretakers struck outside the offices of troubled cooperating startup WeWork with a mariachi band playing in support. In 2019, the union fought for a fairer contract on the steps of the fitness company Equinox, both times drawing attention to the divide between the treatment of higher-level employees by startups and their essential employees. Elsewhere, the union is fighting for more than 10,000 airport workers pushing for health care in New York and New Jersey, as well as immigrant domestic workers struggling for permanent residence.

“I deserve to feel safe at work,” said Ramiro, another caretaker for the SEIU, during the strike. “But almost a year after the pandemic, and we’re still collecting trash without masks or hand sanitizer.”

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