◼ Witness: Sanders' alleged killers involved in meth
One of the four suspects accused of killing a 30-year-old McKinleyville man described in detail to law enforcement the events leading up to the February shooting, an investigator testified Tuesday.
Ezra Sanders was found shortly after 1 p.m. Feb. 24, lying in front of his trailer in the Widow White Creek RV Park dead of a single gunshot wound. Witnesses told investigators they heard a vehicle pull up to Sanders' trailer before hearing a gunshot, followed by the sound of a vehicle speeding away.
Investigators have said they believe the murder was the result of an attempted robbery gone bad, and that Sanders was found with a large sum of money and a small amount of illicit drugs in his possession.
In April, four suspects were arrested and charged with Sanders' murder: Jeffrey Alan Burgess, 39, of Eureka; Lukus Larry Mace, 31, of Orleans; Ruben Anthony Peredia, 32, of Eureka; and Tracey Joleen Williams, 35, of Eureka. All four have pleaded not guilty.
Tuesday, the second day of the case's preliminary hearing, Humboldt County Sheriff's Office Detective Troy Garey retook the stand, testifying about an April 9 interview with Mace. He said he'd already interviewed Mace, who was in custody for an unrelated matter, but that Mace contacted him saying he had additional information regarding Sanders' death.
Garey testified that, during the interview, Mace told him that he'd accompanied Burgess, Peredia and Williams to Sanders' trailer park in the early morning ours of Feb. 24. Garey said Mace told him that after entering the park, Peredia exited the vehicle they were riding in to dismantle a streetlight in the park, before they made their way to Sanders' trailer.
Garey said Mace told him that Burgess, who was driving, cut the lights on the truck before pulling up to Sanders' trailer, at which point he, Mace and Peredia got out of the vehicle to approach Sanders' trailer, leaving Williams in the truck as a lookout.
Prosecutor Ben McLaughlin didn't continue with this line of questioning Tuesday, but investigators have previously said they believe that when Mace, Burgess and Peredia allegedly attempted to rob Sanders, he resisted, raising his hands to fight. Burgess then allegedly shot Sanders once in the chest, according to investigators.
Garey also testified Tuesday that, during the investigation, a number of items were seized from Sanders' trailer, including $3,000 in cash, Sanders' cell phone, a spent .45-caliber shell casing, a small amount of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
Sanders' friend Ana Rooney, who also lived with Burgess and Williams, also retook the stand Tuesday, testifying about the world of methamphetamine that surrounded Sanders, and the suspects in the case.
Rooney said she moved into a house on Eureka's Lewis Avenue where she lived with Burgess and Williams from December 2008 until shortly after Sanders' death. She testified that both she and Williams sold methamphetamine at the house. Injecting, smoking and snorting methamphetamine were common occurrences there, she testified, and the house was frequently full of people coming and going, many of them looking to get high.
Rooney testified that she saw Sanders the morning before he was killed, and that he had a lot of cash on him at the time. She testified that on the morning of Feb. 23, she sold Sanders an ounce of methamphetamine for $1,400, and that he repaid her $300 she'd lent him and that he loaned her an additional $1,200 to help her pay off a drug debt.
Previously, Sanders had never bought more than $20 of methamphetamine at a time, Rooney testified, adding that Sanders told her he was buying the ounce to give to a woman who owed him money with the hope that she could sell it, repay him and also earn some extra money to provide for her children.
The morning that Sanders was shot, Rooney testified that she noticed Peredia, Mace and Williams return to the house, noticed them stripping off clothing and overheard Burgess say they had to burn what they had been wearing. Rooney said she initially thought Burgess was joking.
”I was in my room doing drugs and I wasn't too into what everyone else was doing,” Rooney said.
Rooney said she moved out of the Lewis Avenue home shortly after Sanders was killed and started to get clean.
”I left and went to (Narcotics Anonymous),” she said. “I got my head out of my a--.”
The preliminary hearing, which is being held to determine if there is enough evidence to warrant the suspects' standing trial, is scheduled to continue today with Rooney retaking the witness stand.
Thadeus Greenson can be reached at 441-0509 or tgreenson@times-standard.com
Showing posts with label Meth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meth. Show all posts
1.19.2008
Ellen Taylor, Meth Advocate
War on Drugs is war on our own people
Ellen Taylor
Article Launched: 03/11/2007 10:38:14 AM PDT
Mike Goldsby, a highly-respected local expert in drug addiction, declared in last week's My Word opinion, “I have nothing good to say about methamphetamines.”
The estimated 1.4 million users in the U.S. would disagree. Productivity-oriented professionals with demanding careers praise the increased alertness afforded by meth. Timber fallers, mill workers, truck drivers, and others in dangerous occupations extol the stamina it provides. The military has always depended upon meth as a source of courage and quick reaction time. Poor people, trapped in multiple low-paying jobs or the exhausting paperwork demands of public assistance, emphasize its empowering and antidepressant effect.
These people agree that, like other drugs, meth can be fatal. But its high morbidity and mortality, they would add, rest in the fact that its use is illegal.
Like marijuana, also a medicine, meth is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. There is naturally violence where such huge profits are to be made.
As revealed by Gary Webb in his San Jose Mercury News articles on crack cocaine, successful drug networks involve protection and exploitation by government agencies, including law enforcement. Police departments flourish on grants for drug interdiction. The domestic cost of the War on Drugs was $51 billion in 2006.
The penal system, increasingly privatized, prospers as well. The public pays an annual $27,000 for each of 2.5 million prisoners. As a society, we are invested in this industry: Some cities are almost exclusively supported by their prisons.
I recently attended a conference, “Methamphetamine, Hepatitis and HIV,” in Salt Lake City, where drug policy analysts described “set and setting” as determinants of how a drug or medicine will affect an individual.
The law enforcement vendetta against meth, and media use of such slogans as “meth kills,” linking it to deviance, disease and violence, provides a hostile setting, and amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Public opinion as reflected in Times-Standard op-eds echo the official contempt. One guest opinion praised the policies of MaoTse-tung for summarily executing drug offenders. Another called it “terrorism,” and suggested soliciting Homeland Security money.
The recent killings by the Eureka police were attributed to the victims' use of meth, which is rapidly becoming a license to kill. Even Mike Goldsby, in saluting law enforcement's “vital role in holding addicts accountable,” regretted that “there are not enough police or jails to arrest, convict and incarcerate every addict.”
A declaration of war is an open invitation to ignore the rights of individuals in the name of a more urgent destiny. The War on Drugs is no exception.
Harsher sentences than for murder, illegal searches and seizures, intrusive urine testing, property forfeitures, disenfranchisement, ineligibility for public support, housing, school loans or food stamps, loss of children: Fourth, fifth, eighth and fourteenth amendment protections are widely denied meth users.
Demonization of meth cripples democracy. A minority of our citizens even votes, let alone takes an active role in policy decisions which will affect their and their childrens' lives.
Involvement in illegal and socially-condemned activities has estranged large segments of the population from political life. Paranoia prevents users from exercising their first amendment rights to express their opinions. Thus, in a democracy already handicapped by apathy, a stigmatized class is prevented from defending their own interests.
This has powerful implications. One op-ed reported that 70 percent of children in some Humboldt County schools come from “meth homes.” Urine tests at local clinics confirm wide use.
Paul Gahlinger, M.D., commander of the Davis County Jail in Utah, observed that his inmates, 65 percent meth convicts and one-third female, attribute their incarceration not to meth but to the chaotic problems of poverty. They have no plan to stop using.
It is evident that meth is endemic, a street medicine used to treat endemic conditions of life in the American culture of speed, performance, achievement, self-absorption, alienation, waste and neglect.
The War on Drugs amounts to a war on our own people. It is contrary to the precepts of Christianity and all other religions, and destructive to the foundations of democracy.
We must treat the human conditions which cause suffering, instead of demonizing the medicine that relieves the symptoms, if we wish to restore family and human values to our communities.
Ellen Taylor lives in Petrolia.
This Op-Ed was originally posted at http://www.times-standard.com/fastsearchresults/ci_5418494
***
There was a LETTER TO THE EDITOR in response:
Meth victim's mom: Help stop this killer
Author: My Word by Suzi Fregeau
Date: March 18, 2007
Publication: Times-Standard (Eureka, CA)
I read, with amazement, the recent opinion of Ellen Taylor, “War on Drugs is a war on our own people.” I cannot for one minute understand why any sensible individual would support, in any way, the use of this drug. To imply that this drug is helpful for productivity-oriented professionals with demanding careers, that it is necessary to increase the alertness of truck drivers, timber fallers, mill workers and others in dangerous occupations is ludicrous at best.
Since... (truncated, available from Times Standard paid archives)
***
Discussion at watchpaul
Discussion on Anon.R.mous' Super Happy Fun Blog
Ellen Taylor
Article Launched: 03/11/2007 10:38:14 AM PDT
Mike Goldsby, a highly-respected local expert in drug addiction, declared in last week's My Word opinion, “I have nothing good to say about methamphetamines.”
The estimated 1.4 million users in the U.S. would disagree. Productivity-oriented professionals with demanding careers praise the increased alertness afforded by meth. Timber fallers, mill workers, truck drivers, and others in dangerous occupations extol the stamina it provides. The military has always depended upon meth as a source of courage and quick reaction time. Poor people, trapped in multiple low-paying jobs or the exhausting paperwork demands of public assistance, emphasize its empowering and antidepressant effect.
These people agree that, like other drugs, meth can be fatal. But its high morbidity and mortality, they would add, rest in the fact that its use is illegal.
Like marijuana, also a medicine, meth is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. There is naturally violence where such huge profits are to be made.
As revealed by Gary Webb in his San Jose Mercury News articles on crack cocaine, successful drug networks involve protection and exploitation by government agencies, including law enforcement. Police departments flourish on grants for drug interdiction. The domestic cost of the War on Drugs was $51 billion in 2006.
The penal system, increasingly privatized, prospers as well. The public pays an annual $27,000 for each of 2.5 million prisoners. As a society, we are invested in this industry: Some cities are almost exclusively supported by their prisons.
I recently attended a conference, “Methamphetamine, Hepatitis and HIV,” in Salt Lake City, where drug policy analysts described “set and setting” as determinants of how a drug or medicine will affect an individual.
The law enforcement vendetta against meth, and media use of such slogans as “meth kills,” linking it to deviance, disease and violence, provides a hostile setting, and amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Public opinion as reflected in Times-Standard op-eds echo the official contempt. One guest opinion praised the policies of MaoTse-tung for summarily executing drug offenders. Another called it “terrorism,” and suggested soliciting Homeland Security money.
The recent killings by the Eureka police were attributed to the victims' use of meth, which is rapidly becoming a license to kill. Even Mike Goldsby, in saluting law enforcement's “vital role in holding addicts accountable,” regretted that “there are not enough police or jails to arrest, convict and incarcerate every addict.”
A declaration of war is an open invitation to ignore the rights of individuals in the name of a more urgent destiny. The War on Drugs is no exception.
Harsher sentences than for murder, illegal searches and seizures, intrusive urine testing, property forfeitures, disenfranchisement, ineligibility for public support, housing, school loans or food stamps, loss of children: Fourth, fifth, eighth and fourteenth amendment protections are widely denied meth users.
Demonization of meth cripples democracy. A minority of our citizens even votes, let alone takes an active role in policy decisions which will affect their and their childrens' lives.
Involvement in illegal and socially-condemned activities has estranged large segments of the population from political life. Paranoia prevents users from exercising their first amendment rights to express their opinions. Thus, in a democracy already handicapped by apathy, a stigmatized class is prevented from defending their own interests.
This has powerful implications. One op-ed reported that 70 percent of children in some Humboldt County schools come from “meth homes.” Urine tests at local clinics confirm wide use.
Paul Gahlinger, M.D., commander of the Davis County Jail in Utah, observed that his inmates, 65 percent meth convicts and one-third female, attribute their incarceration not to meth but to the chaotic problems of poverty. They have no plan to stop using.
It is evident that meth is endemic, a street medicine used to treat endemic conditions of life in the American culture of speed, performance, achievement, self-absorption, alienation, waste and neglect.
The War on Drugs amounts to a war on our own people. It is contrary to the precepts of Christianity and all other religions, and destructive to the foundations of democracy.
We must treat the human conditions which cause suffering, instead of demonizing the medicine that relieves the symptoms, if we wish to restore family and human values to our communities.
Ellen Taylor lives in Petrolia.
This Op-Ed was originally posted at http://www.times-standard.com/fastsearchresults/ci_5418494
***
There was a LETTER TO THE EDITOR in response:
Meth victim's mom: Help stop this killer
Author: My Word by Suzi Fregeau
Date: March 18, 2007
Publication: Times-Standard (Eureka, CA)
I read, with amazement, the recent opinion of Ellen Taylor, “War on Drugs is a war on our own people.” I cannot for one minute understand why any sensible individual would support, in any way, the use of this drug. To imply that this drug is helpful for productivity-oriented professionals with demanding careers, that it is necessary to increase the alertness of truck drivers, timber fallers, mill workers and others in dangerous occupations is ludicrous at best.
Since... (truncated, available from Times Standard paid archives)
***
Discussion at watchpaul
Discussion on Anon.R.mous' Super Happy Fun Blog
6.21.2007
ER - Standoff subject was on meth
Emergency service personnel staged near the scene of the mobile home in Hoopa while Peter Eugene Stewart held law enforcement officers at bay. Shelly Baldy/Hoopa People Newspaper
Standoff subject was on meth
by Heather Muller , 6/21/2007
The body of the 26-year-old Hoopa man who died in a fire that broke out during a standoff with law enforcement officials tested positive for methamphetamine and marijuana, said officials from the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office.
Peter Eugene Stewart died June 4 after a daylong standoff that began with a welfare checkup and ended when a fire of as yet unknown cause swept through the Pine Creek Road mobile home he had occupied.
Humboldt County Deputy Coroner Charles Comer said Stewart’s methamphetamine level, at 0.08 milligrams per liter of blood, was above the effective range, but was not considered toxic.
An autopsy determined Stewart died of smoke inhalation.
Jeff Nicklas, Eureka Fire Department engineer and lead investigator on the case for the Humboldt County Arson Task Force, said the investigation into the fire is ongoing.
“I’ve talked to most of the people I need to talk to. My goal is to have the report submitted to the Sheriff’s Office by the end of the month.”
In other news, the body of 36-year-old Andrew Jason Stewart, found in a Hoopa creek June 9, tested positive for alcohol.
Comer said Andrew Stewart had a blood alcohol level of 0.21, not quite three times the legal limit for operating a vehicle in California.
An autopsy performed June 13 was unable to identify a cause of Andrew Stewart’s death, and Comer said the toxicology results shed little new light.
“He was intoxicated, but not enough to kill him, so we know that’s not what caused his death,” Comer said.
Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office investigators have called Andrew Stewart’s death suspicious and are treating it as a homicide.
Coroner’s officials said the two Stewarts are not related and have ruled out any connection between the two deaths.
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