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Opening statements were delivered Tuesday in the trial of a Richmond man accused of commiting a 2009 crime spree that left four people wounded and a 21-year-old rap artist dead in incidents six months apart. Jose Blacknell III, age 21, whom prosecutors say is a member of the Easter Hill Boys gang and goes by the nickname “Fatter,” is charged with 22 felony counts in Contra Costa County Superior Court in Martinez, including first-degree murder for the March, 2009 killing…
Joe Blacknell III, age 20, is accused of a slew of crimes committed in the spring and summer of 2009, including the murder of Marcus Russell, a 21-year-old rap artist who was shot and killed as he drove west on I-580 on a weekday afternoon.
The City Council approved $900,000 Tuesday to continue to defend the city in two civil rights lawsuits filed by a group of high-ranking Richmond police officers, adding to a legal battle that has already gone on for five years and cost $3.4 million.
North Richmond knows the blues of economic and social decay, but a brighter day will come – the real question may be when.
The kids walked east on Silver Avenue, tossing back and forth a frayed, half-deflated football. It was the afternoon of March 30, 2011.
Civic leaders who seriously grapple with the question of how North Richmond can break its ruinous cycle of crime, poverty and decline often come to the conclusion that its current political arrangement is untenable – and that the city would fare better if it was annexed to Richmond.
From the corner of Filbert Street and Chesley Avenue, the unofficial center of North Richmond, a person gets the full sensory onslaught that the community has endured for decades.
From 2005 to 2010, at least 28 homicides occurred in the county area of North Richmond alone, an area with a population that has averaged about 2,300 people.
For more than a decade, one man has been the de facto elected representative of the nearly 3,000 residents of unincorporated North Richmond.