Jennifer Baires

Labor Day homicide victim identified

Faheim Smith, a 30-year-old man from Richmond, was shot and killed Monday night near the Richmond BART station.  An assailant shot Smith just after 10 p.m. near the corner of Nevin Avenue and 19th Street, Richmond Police Sergeant Nicole Abetkov said.  A BART police officer was the first to find the victim, after hearing a gun shot from the area, said BART’s Deputy Chief of Field Operations Benson Fairow.  Smith was bleeding from a single gun shot wound, when the…

Infighting a challenge for City Council

Councilmember Tom Butt left the April 24 city council meeting around 9 pm, too frustrated to continue, followed a while later by Councilmember Jovanka Beckles, who had to work early the next morning. Down to five remaining members, the council debated and argued into the night, past 11 pm, midnight, 1 am. By the time Mayor Gayle McLaughlin declared the end of the meeting, around 1:30 am, it had gone on for more than seven hours. The long meeting wasn’t…

Richmond man killed in Sunday shooting

Roy Hill III, a 22-year-old Richmond resident, was shot dead while sitting in his car on the 2700 block of Ohio Avenue in Richmond Sunday afternoon. Richmond Police spokeswoman Detective Nicole Abetkov said RPD was alerted to the shooting at 2:20 pm on Sunday by its ShotSpotter system and several calls to 911. “He had several gunshot wounds,” Abetkov said, adding that it looked like Hill was shot multiple times from around the car with different caliber guns. Hill was…

At heated meeting, council discusses gun control, mural approval

In a contentious meeting Tuesday night, the city council took on gun control and support for a program that works to curtail violence in Richmond after a deadly week that ended with three dead in the city. Councilmember Corky Booze set the tone for the meeting early on, when he took issue with Mayor Gayle McLaughlin’s re-ordering of agenda items. “This is just to show how we let our personalities get ahead of what’s supposed to happen in our city,”…

Movie theater opens in Point Richmond

Ross Woodbury looks around the lobby of his newly opened movie theater before hitting the lights and walking out. It’s just after 4 p.m., a little less than an hour until the next show starts.

Whole Foods Market warehouse opening and hiring

Whole Foods Market said it expects to complete a 117,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse in Richmond and to begin hiring up to 40 workers for the new distribution center within the month. The new Richmond distribution center will serve over forty Whole Foods Market in Northern California by the end of the year. In a city with unemployment at just over 13 percent, the new jobs will be highly coveted.  Most of the employees at the center are expected to transfer to…

Homicides are down, but closing cold cases remains a struggle in Richmond

While waiting to leave for church on Monday night, January 30, 2006, Karen Jones worried about her unanswered phone calls to her son. It had been six hours since he’d left school. He should have been home by now. He usually called her back. Finally, her phone rang. But it wasn’t her son—it was one of his friends. “Did you hear…” the friend started to ask, but seven years later Jones can’t remember exactly what they said—or even who the…

Contra Costa board votes to refuse state call center, citing disagreement with local union

After weeks of intense back and forth between political players in Richmond and Concord the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors announced Tuesday that neither city would play host to a state call center—and its 200 plus jobs—because the county could not settle a contract with a local union. The call center would have been one of three statewide centers set up by the California Health Benefits Exchange to help Californians with health insurance questions under the new federal Affordable…

Richmond and Concord vie for state-run call center

As part of an ongoing tussle over the fate of a state-run call center expected to create some 200 jobs, city council members in Concord and Richmond will discuss the same item at their respective meetings on Tuesday night: How to guarantee the center is placed in their town. The call center is part of California’s move to comply with Affordable Care Act regulations and provide information for Californians on health insurance changes and plans. The goal is to have…

Man shot dead on 6th Street

Lincoln Plair, 20, of Richmond was shot dead this afternoon on the 100 block of 6th Street, said Detective Nicole Abetkov of the Richmond Police Department. Police had blocked off most of 6th Street between Pennsylvania and Ripley Avenues on Monday night, but friends and family of Plair gathered near the corner of 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Yesena Alvarez, who was among those gathered, said Plair had been washing her uncle’s car in front of her 6th Street home when he…

Spawning a swimming culture in Richmond

Ducking under the water, seven-year-old Colin twists his body around in a tight corkscrew, shoots his hands in front of his head and pushes off hard against the pool wall. His slight frame cuts through the water like an arrow in flight—graceful, precise, direct. And then the arrow goes awry: a few yards down his head pops up, his right arm readies for the first stroke and his right leg suddenly juts out of the water too. Like a periscope,…