Wednesday Morning News Roundup

As San Francisco leaders make plans to revive the Union Square shopping district, hotels in the city want to fill 1,200 jobs.

During a joint press conference Tuesday at a downtown hotel, national, state and local hospitality leaders said they have high hopes for a bustling summer tourism season as the industry makes a slow recovery from COVID-19 lockdowns.

The city’s hotel occupancy rate remains down by 24 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels, but the tourism sector is optimistic that as international travel restrictions ease up, group tourism reawakens and conferences come back to the city, downtown will be vibrant once again.

To accommodate the projected uptick in visitors and conference attendees, the industry wants to recruit and retain hotel workers by providing above-average-wage jobs with benefits and career pathways.

The announcement comes on the heels of Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Aaron Peskin introducing legislation Monday that aims to turn Union Square’s vacant retail storefronts into dynamic spaces.

Police in San Jose released the name Tuesday of a suspect in a fatal hit-and-run crash over the weekend.

Silvia Solorio, 27, from Santa Clara, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run, police said.

On Monday evening, police said they believed they had located the vehicle suspected in the crime.

Police had previously released a description of a car that fled after hitting a mother and her daughter while they were walking their dog Sunday evening.

The mother and the dog died at the scene, and the daughter was hospitalized after being hit about 6:50 p.m. while walking in a marked crosswalk across Blossom Hill Road in the area of Leigh Avenue.

San Jose Police said an automated license plate reader identified the car after a concerned citizen reported seeing a suspicious vehicle.

An eviction moratorium was unanimously passed Tuesday by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors for unincorporated county residents impacted by flooding from atmospheric rainstorms in March.

The moratorium includes residential and commercial properties as well as mobile homes. It is effective immediately and runs through August, but it does not prevent rent from accruing. Tenants should still respond to any eviction papers they receive from a landlord who is unaware of, or ignoring, the county-wide moratorium.

The moratorium, passed by the board as an urgency ordinance, does not stop the eviction process as outlined in state law, but it will stop an eviction from actually being carried out if all of the requirements are met.

If a tenant does receive eviction papers, the eviction moratorium can and should be used as a defense, but needs to be submitted to the landlord properly, said Phyllis Katz, a legal advocate with California Rural Legal Assistance who spoke during the public comment period.

Power outage problems amid wet and windy weather Tuesday in the Bay Area were far less than from recent storms, according to numbers released by PG&E.

As of 4:30 p.m., only about 1,700 PG&E customers around the Bay Area remained without power.

Over 6,000 PG&E customers were without power around the Bay Area at noon, the utility said.

At 4 p.m., the majority of the outages were in the East Bay, where 783 customers were without power. There were also 343 customers affected along the Peninsula, 70 in San Francisco, 226 in the South Bay and 355 in the North Bay, PG&E officials said.

The storm that arrived in the Bay Area on March 21 initially left more than 100,000 PG&E customers without power as winds exceeding 50 mph blew through the region.

Tuesday’s storm had less of an impact on power, despite downed trees, traffic accidents and landslides being reported due to the weather.

The Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office has announced murder charges against a man suspected in a vehicle collision that killed a mother and her six-year-old child last Thursday.

Ralph Ellsworth White III, 20, of Vallejo, is being charged with two counts of murder with two enhancements for allegedly committing the offenses while on bail.

White also faces felony charges for fleeing a pursuing peace officer’s vehicle and causing serious bodily injury, a hit-and-run resulting in the death or injury to another person, carrying a loaded unregistered firearm and receiving stolen property.

The mother was pronounced dead at the scene and one of her two twin sons died of his injuries days later.

A federal jury convicted a 36-year-old Oakland man of producing child pornography and sex trafficking a minor, according to an announcement from U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey and FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp.

The jury found that Kenneth Orlando Sparks produced child pornography by recording multiple videos of himself having sex with the female victim in July 2019, that he engaged in sex trafficking of her and that he took her to Oakland and San Francisco to engage in commercial sex work.

The investigation began after Sparks and the minor victim were stopped by San Francisco Police officers in July 2019. During the traffic stop, officers learned the passenger in the car was a minor and observed evidence of her involvement in commercial sex work.

Police in San Francisco are offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect or suspects responsible for gunning down two young men in a park last spring, the department said on Tuesday.

The reward has doubled since last August, when it stood at $50,000.

In the afternoon of Sunday, April 3, 2022, a shooting occurred near the Alice Chalmers Playground which wounded two and killed Kieran Carlson, 20, and Brandon Alexander Cheese, 22.

Police said the suspect fled the scene in a vehicle.

A man suspected of burglarizing schools in the San Jose area has been arrested, police said Tuesday.

Juan Rodriguez, 44, of San Jose, was arrested March 21 on suspicion of carrying out a series of commercial burglaries at several schools in the East Side Union, Mount Pleasant and Alum Rock school districts between August 2022 and February 2023.

Rodriguez allegedly targeted portable classrooms without alarm systems during late night and early morning hours, prying open locked doors and stealing electronic items, including audio and visual equipment for hearing and vision-impaired students.

San Jose police arrested Rodriguez in a stolen vehicle with numerous pieces of stolen property belonging to the schools, police said.

The National Weather Service forecast for the greater San Francisco Bay Area calls for the next round of showers to start early Wednesday with a possibility of thunderstorms after sunrise. Daytime highs are expected in the 50s with overnight lows in the 40s in most areas, while dipping into the upper 30s in the North Bay’s interior. Mostly dry weather is forecast for Thursday through Saturday.

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