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A man shot and killed last week at the Richmond BART station was identified Monday by the Contra Costa County Coroner as San Pablo resident Raymond Harris. The 34-year-old Harris, Richmond’s third homicide victim this year, was killed after 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Richmond BART station. A second man was also shot. A 26-year-old was treated at a local hospital, and then released after sustaining non life-threatening injuries. BART’s Deputy Chief of Police, Benson Fairow, said detectives are…
Dozens of palm-sized faces hang from the ceiling in Steve Mainini’s art classroom at Kennedy High School. The ceramic reflections of former students dangle in wire cages and defy gravity as if trapped in some sort of bad dream. But for the hundreds of students that have enrolled in Mainini’s art classes the past eight years, the art teacher with a crew cut is no Freddy Krueger—instead his students and peers regard him as an inspiration. “Soul Cages,” Mainini called…
A yellow cat runs up the steps of the house on 127 Chanslor Avenue, hopping over the weeds sprouting from the charred wood. It stops in the entryway and turns, shutting its eyes against the sun streaming down through the hole where the roof used to be. The house, on the corner of 2nd Street and Chanslor, in Richmond’s Iron Triangle neighborhood, is abandoned. It’s caught fire—twice. The entire roof is gone. The siding above the windows and doors is…
The SS Red Oak Victory has a long history of carrying cargo. After being commissioned in 1944, it transported ammunition during three wars. The Richmond Museum Association took ownership of the vessel in 1998, and now the ship is being restored in the same port where she was built: the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards. A group of faithful volunteers is getting the ship prepped to take passengers on cruises across the San Francisco Bay four to six times a year. Click on…
Richmond Oilers head softball coach Rosalind “Roz” Randle wore a long white blouse, blue stretch pants, baby blue ankle socks and shower slippers as she stood in the dusty third base dugout Wednesday evening at Salesian High School. More team uniforms were on order, she said, as the second-year coach shouted instructions through the chained linked fence. “Mo stop biting your nails,” she said to her third baseman, Moesha Samuel, as a Salesian runner danced off the bag ready to…
A man was shot dead at the Richmond BART station just after 6 pm on Thursday evening. The shooting marks Richmond’s third homicide this year. It follows the shooting deaths of Lincoln Plair, 20, on March 4, and William Wheeler, 26, on February 4, both within half a mile of Thursday night’s shooting. Police described the victim as an African American man. He was pronounced dead at the scene. On Friday, BART’s Deputy Chief of Police, Benson Fairow, said that…
The results of an investigation into allegations against Richmond’s Assistant City Manager Leslie Knight showed that she had violated several city staff policies, according to a statement released on Friday by the office of the city manager. The summarized findings from the investigation conducted by the Van Dermyden Allison Law Corporation concluded that Knight had used a city vehicle while taking in a monthly car allowance that was supposed to pay for her to use her own car while…
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…
Kennedy High freshman English teacher Aaron Colacion does it his way. And because of that the school and the district may reap a financial reward. The third-year teacher is one of five finalists competing for the Bay Area’s 2013 Comcast SportsNet All-Star Teacher Award. Grand prize: $20,000. Colacion said if he won the twenty-grand he’d like to buy Kennedy High School small Acer computers called Nettops. He said because students are so strapped for computer lab time, that would help…