HEARING: Murder suspect’s defense still seeking evidence

and College streets while speeding away from police attempting a traffic stop. Eight others were injured in addition to the two who died, including Vital’s 24-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter.

Avalos said her investigators are still seeking video footage, GPS data and witness interviews from the incident, along with other documents she said will show her client to be “kind and gentle ... the sort of child that is respectful of the rules.”

“I feel like my hands are tied to show the court who this sweet boy really is,” Avalos said. “This is a minor who made a horrible decision but deserves to be home with his loving family.”

The victims' family disagreed.

“To me, that’s B.S. He needs to be held accountable for his actions,” Victor Ramirez, one of Vital’s three brothers, said after the hearing. “I’m glad he’s still being detained. What about us? Tina and Adalina are never going to get to come home.”

‘A lot of prayers’

Despite prosecutor Jennifer McHugh’s request to forge ahead with the detention hearing, Yolo Superior Court Judge Janene

Beronio ordered the parties back to court on May 2 for an update the discovery exchange. She also vacated a jurisdictional hearing — the juvenile equivalent of a court trial — set for May 3. Watching from the courtroom gallery were Kirk and Heidi Andrus, two of the six occupants of the third vehicle involved in the crash.

Kirk Andrus, whose family resides in Mount Shasta, told The Davis Enterprise his family had been in Sacramento on the day of the crash, attending an AAU basketball tournament where Andrus coached his 15-year-old son’s team.

Afterward, the Andrus family — including Heidi and the couple’s 24-year-old daughter — and the son’s two teammates decided to stop in Woodland for an early dinner before heading home. The crash occurred as they traveled westbound on Court Street in their Hyundai Santa Fe.

Asked what he recalled about the impact, Andrus said, “Absolutely nothing.”

“I remember looking at the light as we were entering the intersection and affirming it was green,” he added. “It’s almost like a massive energy wave passed through the car, and suddenly everything was broken.”

Andrus, who suffered a gash to his head, three broken ribs and a punctured lung, lost consciousness. He awoke briefly to see his son, seated next to him with his head covered in blood, then passed out again.

His next memory is of his daughter, who had been seated in the rear of the vehicle along with Andrus’ wife and sustained only minor injuries, calmly trying to mobilize him as flames engulfed the other two cars.

“Dad, there’s a fire — we need to get you out of here,” she said, removing him from the wreckage with the aid of a bystander. “She was remarkable, and we were very grateful to the bystanders” who helped Heidi tend to the injured boys in their car.

Struggling to breathe due to his punctured lung, Andrus was flown to Mercy San Juan Hospital in Sacramento, where his wife later joined him and relayed what she knew about the crash, including the 13-year-old boy’s alleged acts that led to it.

Andrus, Siskiyou County's district attorney since 2005, said he’s certain the teen will be convicted, and “I expect he will be incarcerated for the remainder of his youth.”

As a longtime prosecutor, “I’m used to people making terrible decisions, and those terrible decisions impacting human beings,” he said. “It’s striking how preventable this was. It’s hard to imagine anyone thinking any of those actions were a good idea.”

Despite the long distance from home, Kirk and Heidi Andrus returned to Yolo County primarily to meet Vital and Perez’s relatives and to receive updates about Johnny and Trinity Barrera, Vital’s two children, who remain hospitalized with broken bones and burn injuries.

“There have been a lot of prayers up here for that family,” Andrus said. “To me, that’s what this case is about — it’s about them. The tragedy to that good family is unthinkable, and we are devastated at the loss they suffered.”

— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene

CRIME: Shoplifting underreported, chief wants to hear about it

ownership,” Pytel said.

“This is currently an area that is not covered under state law. We’ve been trying to get something passed at the state level, but so far that hasn’t happened.”

Meanwhile, another form of theft many business owners deal with — shoplifting — is likely underreported, Pytel said.

“We don’t have a lot of reported shoplifters and we’ve seen decreases from the previous years,” he said.

“But when I go out and speak to the business owners, they’re frustrated with shoplifting and they just don’t call anymore even when they catch people. So I know we have a lot of unreported crime and I know that it’s really concerning to people.

“Not everybody wants to call the police,” Pytel noted.

“Sometimes people feel bad about calling the police. So sometimes we just have people tolerating the bad behavior. But as I repeatedly tell everybody, while we’re busy, we usually have time to respond to all the calls for service and try to improve the situation and

make things better.”

On the other hand, business owners and others are reporting a lot of nuisance and disorder issues. Since Jan. 1, 2022, the Davis Police Department has received more than 650 calls for service involving nuisance and disorder in the downtown area, an increase from the same time frame the year before.

“We’re just starting to see a lot more anti-social behavior and people causing nuisances and problems in the downtown,” Pytel said.

“Business owners are calling them in. We have other concerned people calling in the activity. We have quite a few people that stop and yell and scream at other people and make people uncomfortable so we’re having to respond to these complaints.”

“We’ve had a couple of arrests based on both physical fights and people threatening other people,” he added, “so this is an area that we are extremely concerned about. We’re trying to get increased patrols in the downtown area …”

But the department has had a lot of vacancies, he noted.

“We’ve been able to hire some people in the past couple of months and are definitely making strides there, and as we’re able to bring more people on and get them trained, we’ll be able to redeploy some personnel in some of the areas we haven’t been able to in the past year or so.”

The city is also seeing more trespassing complaints.

“Businesses are calling in, saying people are inside creating disturbances as well as people loitering on property or going on closed property or sleeping on private property,” said Pytel. “And it’s not just that people are there and they’re trespassing. We’re seeing pretty significant nuisance behavior — everything from a lot of trash being left behind, drugs and paraphernalia being left behind, and then, again, some cases of anti-social behavior where people are just making customers and others feel unwelcome or unsafe. So that is a problem.”

The E Street Plaza area is a particular issue, Pytel said.

“We seem to have a lot of people that are hanging out in that area and one of the things, as I’ve gone downtown in the recent months, we have kind of a core group that has set up some lawn chairs and stuff in (the adjacent parking lot).

“I am going to be going to council on May 2 and I’m proposing that we add the parking lots to the smoking ordinances,” said Pytel. “It seems a little weird that we have people in lawn chairs sitting in our parking lots and … where people are parking, and they’re out there hanging out all day and smoking and otherwise creating kind of nuisance behavior for customers. So I think that’s an area we can do a little bit better. Hopefully the council passes that.”

As for property crime citywide, vehicle burglaries were up five percent from 2021 to 2022 but vandalism is really up — 62 percent. The majority of those complaints involve vehicles, including slashed tires and broken windows.

“We have seen a lot of vandalism and that is continuing now in 2023,” Pytel said. “We’re getting several vandalism reports a day, everything from spray painting on pretty much everything that’s out there in all areas of town, to things just being broken and tires being slashed. So more and more it’s not just the graffiti. Now we’re starting to see the broken windows, the tires slashed and destruction of property. That’s pretty distressing and the numbers are going up.

“People who do that kind of stuff, they’re hard to detect,” he added. “These are areas that we really, really rely on the public to report … so we can try to curb it at least.”

Pytel noted that the city provided grants for businesses to purchase cameras for their properties “and from our perspective, we encourage that.”

“At the police department internally, we’ve had a lot of talks just in the last couple of weeks about getting a lot more of the images out to the public. We’re getting (images from cameras all over town) and our goal is to start putting them out to the public and seeing if we can identify some of the players who are creating destruction around the town because we’re dealing with a lot of it at this point.”

The bottom line, according to Pytel, is Davis doesn’t have a lot of violent crime, but some categories of crime have been increasing, particularly that property crime.

“We have a lot of burglaries and we have a lot of theft,” he said. “So when people report that or they’re feeling like everything is being stolen, there is a little bit of truth to that. And we have a lot of crime victims in town every single year. So it’s one of those mixed-bag things. The crime trends go up and down … in any given year, we see some increases, we see some decreases.

“Our job is to work especially with the business community to have safe and inviting areas and an enjoyable city. So to the extent that we can partner with all our businesses, that’s a really good thing.”

— Reach Anne TernusBellamy at aternus@ davisenterprise.net. Follow her on Twitter at @ATernusBellamy.

Obituary

Carlos Bustamante Keppers, 22, beloved son, sadly passed away and entered his eternal heavenly home on Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023. The sunset of his life was when he was hit by a drunk driver in Davis.

Carlos grew up in Anchorage, Alaska and graduated from East High School in 2019, where he enjoyed cross country running and skiing. Carlos played the violin with the Anchorage Youth Orchestra. After high school, Carlos attended UC Davis and was due to graduate in June 2023. He earned and was honored with his posthumous UCD bachelor of science degree in managerial economics. His favorite classes were political science and the source of frequent passionate discussion. Carlos was a member of the Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity. All who knew him appreciated his love for others and his beautiful smile. He was a light to all who knew him.

2004 Toyota tacoma extended cab with off-road package. 120,000 miles. Asking price $15,000. Call 530-867-7411.

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Carlos leaves behind his loving parents, Craig and Dona Keppers, and two dogs, Scout and Augustus Aurelius of Anchorage, Alaska. He is also survived by grandmother Rosa R. Bustamante; aunts Debi Bustamante, Lucinda B. Pouncey and family; uncle John Bustamante and family in Texas; and the Robert Keppers Family,

Dennis Keppers Family, and Glen Keppers of Minnesota, Ohio and North Dakota.

KEPPERS

In loving memory, his family invites all who knew and loved Carlos to his celebration of life event at 5 p.m. Friday, April 28, at the Putah Creek Lodge on the UC Davis campus. They welcome stories, pictures and memories of his life beautifully lived. His celebration of life in Anchorage, Alaska, will be held at a later date.

Please visit https://www. smith-funerals.com/ obituaries/carlos-keppers

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The Enterprise publishes brief death notices free of charge. These include name, age, city of residence, occupation, date of death and funeral/memorial information. Paid-for obituaries allow for controlled content with the option for photos. Obituaries will be edited for style and grammar.

Notice of Public Sale: Self-Storage unit contents of the following customers containing household and other goods will be sold for cash or credit card by CubeSmart Self Storage 541 Harbor Blvd. West Sacramento, Ca 95691 to satisfy a lien on May 10, 2023, approx. 12:00pm on storagetreasures.com Chelsea Collins, Sian Nadine Scarioni, William Mattos, Ronald Dosty, Corazon Fernandez, Victoria Langley, Donisha Williams Published April 23, 30, 2023 #2246

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING FOR UNITRANS PUBLIC TRANSIT PROPOSED SERVICE CHANGES FOR 2023-2024

The Unitrans Advisory Committee (UAC), a committee to the Davis City Council, will hold a public hearing on Thursday, April 27, 2023 at 4:00 PM at the Davis Senior Center at 646 A Street in Davis on proposed Unitrans service changes that, if approved, would go into effect on Monday, August 7, 2023. Meeting information will be available 72 hours in advance of the meeting at https://www.cityofdavis.org/city-hall/ commissions-and-committees/unitrans-advisory-committee. Service change proposals are available at unitrans.ucdavis.edu. Click on “2023-2024 Change Proposals” in the News section. Proposed changes focus on improving service reliability to get customers to their destinations in a timelier manner and reduce traffic in and around UC Davis during passing periods. Summary of key proposals: Reroute the A line to serve the Memorial Union Bus Terminal, reroute the Z line to serve the Silo Terminal, increase the service span of the Z line to match the A line, minor O & Z line reroute from Pena Drive to Cantrill Drive to better serve high density housing, adjust C, D, J, V-EX, V-LT, & W line schedules 5-10 minutes earlier during academic year to improve reliability, and continue restoring service frequencies to pre-pandemic levels as driver staffing improves with a focus on restoring 30minute service on all routes and reducing crowding.

To learn more or comment, you may attend the public hearing, email comments@unitrans.ucdavis.edu, call 530-7522877, or mail us at Unitrans, 1 Shields Avenue, 5 South Hall, Davis, CA 95616. Details on how to comment are also available online at unitrans.ucdavis.edu.

Publish Dates: April 21, 23, 26, 2023 #2230