1 million sign petitions to boot Stanford sex-assault judge

Woman killed when car hits pickup near Levi’s Stadium

A woman was killed Sunday afternoon when her sedan collided with a pickup truck near Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara police said. The two male occupants of the pickup truck were transported to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to Santa Clara police Lt. Dan Moreno. The battered truck wound up on stretch of light-rail tracks, leading the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to halt service on Line 902, which runs from Mountain View to Winchester.

SF’s Carnaval inspires preservation of environment, community
Pumping rhythms of samba, salsa and cumbia filled the air as the 38th annual San Francisco Carnaval Parade kicked off Sunday morning with a procession of feathered and sometimes scantily clad dancers celebrating multiculturalism, great food, music — and a love for Mother Earth. While the annual two-day festival in the heart of the Mission District is ultimately about bringing community together through music and dance, this year it built on 2015’s theme of water conservation and urged greater awareness of the fragility of the environment all around us. Serving as the parade’s grand marshal was labor organizer, farmworker rights advocate and 2012 National Medal of Freedom recipient Dolores Huerta. In addition to her labor efforts, Huerta was also an early critic of the use of toxic pesticides and their effects on field workers and the food chain. Carnaval king and queen Carlos Venturo and Kianna Rachal led the parade this year, and among the 70 participating groups marching down the street was San Francisco’s recycling and waste disposal company, Recology — whose members danced along in a lighthearted routine featuring recycling bins. […] festival organizers handed out free water bottles to encourage people to reduce waste, and clothespins to promote energy conservation by taking advantage of the Mission’s sunny climate for line-drying clothes. The usual sprinkling of freebies handed out to the crowds also included one truly sensible type this year: 2,000 reusable Carnaval-themed shopping bags, to encourage people to break the old habit of just using bags from stores. Another undercurrent in the festivities was gentrification’s effect on the Mission, and the efforts by community groups including Our Mission No Eviction to preserve the district’s heritage as new residents pour in. With that in mind, festival organizers said they brought in thousands of dancers and drummers, many of whom have been displaced from their homes because of the neighborhood’s gentrification woes.

Memorial Day transit schedule, office closures

Memorial Day closures and transit schedule Government offices Closed Banks and other financial institutions Closed Post offices Closed, no mail delivery BART Sunday schedule Muni Sunday schedule Golden Gate Transit Sunday schedule for buses, weekend schedule for ferries SamTrans Sunday schedule Caltrain Sunday schedule AC Transit Sunday schedule San Francisco parking Meters enforced. Commuter tow-away zones, residential parking and Monday-Friday street sweeping not enforced.

BART resuming service in time for Warriors fans Monday
Warriors fans heading to Oracle Arena on Monday have one less thing to worry about: BART will resume service between San Leandro and Bay Fair stations that afternoon. The transit agency announced Sunday that it would end track repairs early, easing congestion along the Fremont and Dublin/Pleasanton lines. Normal service will begin at 3 p.m. Monday to accommodate the huge crowds expected for Game 7 of the Western Conference basketball playoffs.

Teens rescued after hurtling off Oakland cliff in car
Rescue teams from multiple agencies scrambled down steep terrain Sunday and saved two teens who drove off a cliff in the Oakland hills and plunged 500 feet before their car landed, top down, in a ravine. The accident happened at 11:36 a.m. when a boy and girl veered off the road while speeding south on Grizzly Peak Boulevard at Fish Ranch Road in a Ford Escape. The careening vehicle left no skid marks, according to East Bay Regional Park District spokeswoman Carolyn Jones, because the driver didn’t hit the brakes. The effort also drew crews from the Oakland police and fire departments, the California Highway Patrol, and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.

New species of coral discovered off Farallones

Unlike the corals that form spectacular reefs in the shallow waters of tropical oceans, the bone-white animal that biologist Gary Williams discovered is a solitary creature barely 15 inches tall, with a thousand mouths that feed on microscopic plankton borne by the current flowing past its whip-like stalk. Williams, of the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, found the new species in a rocky area of the sea floor about 30 miles west of Jenner in what is now the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. The new coral is flourishing amid an abundance of other animals that include starfish, sea worms, snails, sponges, sea cucumbers, crabs, nurseries of catsharks and skates, and at least 34 varieties of other fish. Among its relatives there and in the nearby Cochrane Bank are more than 1,000 other coral species with names well known to hobbyists with home aquariums: pink lace, cluster cup, Christmas tree, cockscomb, bubblegum, sea pens, sea fans and red whips. “The hard corals that build reefs near the surface are in increasing danger now from the warming oceans and their increasing acidity,” Williams said, but up to now we haven’t found evidence that these soft corals … in deeper water have been affected. “We were cruising along above the bottom,” Williams recalled recently, and the ROV was down there sending up video and images from about 600 feet deep, and I spotted this thing and said, ‘What’s that? I’ve never seen anything like that before! The brittle stars were competing for food with the coral’s hungry polyps, whose tentacles were gathering detritus carried in by the ocean current flowing down the coast from Point Arena in Mendocino County, about 60 miles north. The Fulmar’s crew used the ROV to snag the unknown coral and bring it to the surface, where Williams preserved his discovery in alcohol before carrying it back to his laboratory at the academy.

Fire at Potrero Hill homeless camp scorches nearby warehouse
A fire with flames up to 40-feet high raced through a homeless encampment Saturday in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill district, fire officials said. The blaze engulfed the entire encampment at 15th and Carolina streets at 10:56 a.m., but firefighters were able to put the fire out within 15 minutes of arriving on the scene, said Bryan Rubenstein, a battalion chief at the San Francisco Fire Department. The encampment was located alongside a warehouse that suffered considerable damage to an exterior wall, Rubenstein said. Flames spread about 30 feet along the wall of the building and ignited fuel and other flammable materials that were stored just inside the building, Rubenstein said. The industrial building was storing AT&T vehicles at the time of the fire, Rubenstein said. Smoking materials, including a crack pipe and cigarettes, were found at the scene and determined to be the preliminary cause of the fire, Rubenstein said. Ben Calalo, 27, lives in the area and said he was on his way back to work when he saw the flames and smoke from the other side of the building.

Dogs euthanized, woman injured in Saratoga hit-and-run
Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies are searching for a driver who ran over two dogs, injured their owner, then fled the area Wednesday in Saratoga. Anne Palmer, of Saratoga, was walking her two Labradors, Sadie and Chudley, when a Ford truck came around a corner and hit the pups, pulling them under the vehicle and causing Palmer, who was holding onto their leashes, to fall to the ground. Though Palmer sustained moderate injuries, Sadie and Chudley were severely wounded and had to be euthanized at a veterinary hospital, officials said.

Final resting place found for 3-year-old who died in 19th century SF
The body of a young girl found nestled in a coffin beneath the concrete garage floor of an unsuspecting San Francisco family’s home in the Richmond District will soon get a new, more peaceful resting place. The story started in early May, when workers doing remodeling at Karner’s Lone Mountain neighborhood home, struck a lead-and-bronze coffin with their shovels. Karner originally found herself in a bind after the medical examiner’s office told her the body was her responsibility and local undertakers and archaeology companies gave her quotes for taking care of the remains that ranged from $7,000 to $22,000. Elissa Davey, the founder of the Garden of Innocence charity, who for two decades has buried the bodies of unidentified children in California, originally offered to help Karner find the girl a new place of burial. The Odd Fellows, along with Greenlawn Memorial Park, took care of securing the burial plot. Davey is also asking for the San Francisco community’s support through attendance of the girl’s service, where she said each person will be asked to show their respect through sprinkling rose petals onto the girl’s new casket and, hopefully, final resting place. The girl is believed to be one of about 30,000 people who were buried at the old Odd Fellows Cemetery in San Francisco, which was active from 1860 to 1890. The bodies were moved to a common burial plot in Colma around 1920, after all the city’s graveyards were ordered to make way for the living.

BART to close 2 East Bay stations for weekend track work
Folks planning to take a holiday from their cars and rely on BART over the Memorial Day weekend will need to plan ahead, though Golden State Warriors fans can rest easy. BART’s series of intermittent weekend shutdowns for track repairs between San Leandro and Bay Fair stations will continue through the weekend — but will end early if the Warriors force a Monday playoff game. The shutdown is scheduled for all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday but will end at 3 p.m. Monday if the Warriors play a deciding Game 7 at Oracle Arena in the NBA Western Conference Finals. While the tracks are closed, beginning at the end of service early Saturday morning, scores of workers will replace worn rail and decaying wooden railroad ties.

Angela Paton, Bay Area legend of stage and screen, dies at 86
Angela Paton, an performer, director, producer and founder of Berkeley Stage Company, died in an Oakland hospice from stroke complications on Wednesday, her nephew George Wolfe confirmed. Paton is best known for the 1993 romantic comedy “Groundhog Day,” about a tedious day in Punxsutawney, Pa., that weatherman Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, is forever doomed to relive. Though Paton’s film and television credits span 40 years, including parts in “The Wedding Singer,” “American Wedding” and the 1997 version of “Lolita,” she also worked on Broadway and had a formidable career in Bay Area theater. Paton was one of the principal actors in American Conservatory Theater’s early seasons in the 1960s, helping to catapult that company to prominence with lauded performances in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Three Sisters” and many others. In a 2006 podcast interview with then Chronicle theater critic Robert Hurwitt, Paton remembered those early years at ACT as “exhilarating.”

Search for kidnapped Vallejo girl shifts to Sonoma County coast
The search for a kidnapped Vallejo girl shifted to the Sonoma County coastal town of Jenner on Friday, a day after the suspect in her abduction was killed in a police shootout nearly 400 miles to the south in Santa Barbara County. Solano County Sheriff’s Department officials worked with the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office to conduct a search for 15-year-old Pearl Pinson in an area near Willow Creek Road in Jenner, said sheriff’s Deputy Christine Castillo, a spokeswoman for the agency. Earlier Friday, investigators were combing an area under the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, where a security camera caught Pearl’s alleged abductor, Fernando Castro, 19, driving around Thursday — hours before he was killed in a Santa Barbara County gunbattle with police. Solano County Sheriff’s Department officials said Castro was spotted about 9:30 a.m. Thursday driving a 1997 Saturn in the area of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard near the Marin County side of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. An automatic license plate reader triggered a traffic camera to pick up the car in the area after an Amber Alert was issued for Pearl and authorities sent out an all-points-bulletin with a photo of the Saturn and its license plate number, said Solano County Sheriff Tom Ferrara. The security footage showed Castro apparently alone in the car, but officials said the missing girl could have been lying down in the back seat and not visible to the camera. Later Wednesday morning, several witnesses called police and reported seeing a girl bleeding, screaming and being dragged into a car on the Interstate 780 overpass near Home Acres and Taylor avenues.

SFPD sergeant in fatal shooting of woman is identified
Sgt. Justin Erb, 45, was identified as the officer who fired a single shot May 19 that killed 29-year-old Jessica Williams. Police officials said Erb and another officer, who has not been identified, suspected Williams of driving a stolen car. The incident on Elmira Street near the Bayview was the third controversial fatal shooting by San Francisco police in less than six months, and it led to the resignation later that day of Chief Greg Suhr. Before his resignation, Suhr said Williams had driven off as Erb and the officer tried to question her, but that she crashed into a utility truck a short distance away. The Police Department limits the circumstances under which officers may shoot at moving vehicles because of the danger to bystanders if the driver is hit. The city public defender’s office said she had a criminal record that consisted of misdemeanors.

Cops investigating if sex assault linked to Novato trail killing
Detectives are investigating the possibility that a sexual assault involving two Novato High School students that occurred last week near campus is related to the late afternoon attack Wednesday that left one teenager dead and another in the hospital with gunshot and stab wounds. Officials revealed Friday that the three suspects in Wednesday’s attack on a hiking trail near a country club and the two victims were all students at Novato High School. The possibly connected sexual assault occurred exactly one week before the shooting and stabbing in an outdoor area known as “The Hill” — near a cul-de-sac at the end of Tyler street, just west of the high school campus, said Capt. Jamie Knox, of the Novato Police Department. “It seems like it was just a situation of a male and a female student who had just met and were going off campus to hang out and one of the juveniles reported that the other one sexually assaulted her,” Knox said. Novato High School Principal Matt Baldwin sent out an email to the school community on May 19 referring to an off-campus incident that occurred between a male and female student. The district is doing everything necessary to ensure that Novato High School is a safe educational environment for all students. The deadly encounter occurred Wednesday afternoon at a waterfall site in an isolated canyon about three-quarters of a mile down a hiking trail that leads from a country club community along Fairway Drive in Novato. The surviving victim, who was shot in the left side of his chest and stabbed, first reported the incident to police at 4:50 p.m. after walking about a third of a mile from the waterfall to gain cell phone reception near the end of Fairway Drive, Pittman said. The upscale neighborhood where the attack occurred — near the Marin Country Club — is typically a quiet area, residents said, with the hiking trail to the waterfall frequented by dog walkers and friendly hikers. Novato High School was closed Thursday, which officials from the school announced in a Wednesday letter to parents and relatives of students informing them of the attack. Officials said the closure of the school on Thursday was to ensure the safety of students and staff because at the time all the attackers were still at large.

State backs away from drought crackdown on two water agencies
Two Central Valley irrigation agencies slapped with unprecedented penalties last year during the state’s drought-related crackdown on illegal water users are likely to see their cases dropped. In a dispute that has been closely watched by California’s farmers and water managers, the State Water Resources Control Board moved to dismiss its complaints that the Tracy-area irrigation districts were taking river water illegally. Last year, California’s historic drought prompted state regulators to enact sweeping restrictions on pumping river water. The restrictions limited access even for those with water rights dating to 1914 and earlier — known as senior water rights and long considered ironclad. In proposing Thursday to drop the cases, water board regulators acknowledged that they had used flawed methods to measure water draws and had failed to prove the districts did anything wrong. “We conclude that the board has the authority to take enforcement action … against the unauthorized diversion of water under claim of a pre-1914 water right,” state regulators wrote in a proposed decision to drop the case, which will be taken up by the five-member governing board June 7.

17 fun facts about the Golden Gate Bridge on its 79th birthday

We should all look this good at we approach our 80th birthday. 79 years ago Friday, a party kicked off to mark the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Temps to range from 60s to 90s in Bay Area through Memorial Day

An estimated 38 million Americans are set to travel over the holiday weekend, about 700,000 more than last year and the most since 2005, according to the AAA travel club. Marshall Doney, president and CEO of the AAA travel club, said low fuel prices are encouraging drivers.The national average for gas prices is $2.26 a gallon, about 45 cents cheaper than last year, Doney said. Tickets prices for domestic airline flights are also running about 26 percent cheaper than last year.

Kathryrn Steinle’s parents sue over daughter’s SF slaying
The federal court suit by Kathryn Steinle’s parents said Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican immigrant who has admitted firing the fatal shot, was freed from jail only because of blunders by both Mirkarimi and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lopez-Sanchez, deported five times in the past, had just spent 46 months in federal prison for illegal re-entry when federal officials turned him over to San Francisco in March 2015 to face an old marijuana charge. The sheriff, relying on his interpretation of San Francisco’s sanctuary-city law, had prohibited his deputies from cooperating with immigration officials’ orders to hold immigrants for possible deportation. The lawsuit by James Steinle and his wife, Elizabeth Sullivan, of Livermore, said Mirkarimi’s policy violated both city and state law, citing Mayor Ed Lee’s statement after the shooting that the sanctuary ordinance did not prohibit the sheriff’s office from contacting federal agents. […] the suit said, federal law prohibited local governments from restricting communications with immigration officials about detainees’ immigration status. “The Steinle Family hopes that their actions today will serve to highlight the lax enforcement of gun safety regulations among the law enforcement agencies involved and bureaucratic confusion so that this will not happen to others,” said Frank Pitre, the family’s lawyer.

Lee sees ‘consequences’ for SFPD officer in fatal shooting
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said Thursday that “there has to be consequences” for the city police sergeant who fired into a moving car last week near the Bayview neighborhood, killing an apparently unarmed woman and prompting the resignation of Chief Greg Suhr. In recent years, the Police Department has strongly discouraged shooting at moving cars because of the danger to both police and the public if the driver is hit. Before he resigned, Suhr said the sergeant and another officer had tried to question Williams because she was in a stolen car, but that Williams drove off, crashing into a utility truck a short distance away. What went wrong? Because I think it was, in my view, generally, this was not supposed to happen. Department policy allows officers to fire at vehicles under the narrowest of circumstances: if the driver is threatening to use another deadly weapon, such as a gun, or is about to run down an officer who has no way to retreat. Officers also can shoot at drivers who have already committed a violent crime and are an immediate threat to do so again. The Police Commission has been working to pass a draft policy crafted by Suhr that would allow an officer to shoot into a moving vehicle only if someone inside is threatening to use a deadly weapon other than a car. Lee did not specify what “consequences” the sergeant should face for last week’s shooting, but said that before the Police Department’s culture can be changed, there needs to be “accountability, discipline from the highest levels.”

$26 million plan to slow speeding traffic on SF’s Masonic Avenue
Masonic Avenue was built for speed, which is exactly what many cars and trucks do as they drive the half-mile or so between Geary Boulevard and the Panhandle, ignoring the 25 mph limit posted on signs and painted on the pavement. A new plan for Masonic aims to slow traffic and make the street safer by installing a median strip, widening sidewalks, adding protected lanes for bikes and creating boarding areas for Muni. […] it makes room for all those changes by eliminating — or, in the words of transportation planners, “repurposing” — 167 parking spaces and squeezing three lanes of rush-hour traffic into two. Neighbors either love or hate the changes, which have been in discussion or design since 2008 after more than 500 neighborhood residents signed a petition demanding the Municipal Transportation Agency do something about the street. At a community open house Wednesday night, many neighbors said the plan would bring some peace and order to Masonic, which is mainly lined with homes. The community outcry for a safer Masonic preceded the city’s Vision Zero commitment, which aims to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2024, but still the street is a poster child for the program. […] the emphasis, transportation agency officials say, is on safety — for drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians. The stretch of Masonic due for the overhaul carries two lanes of traffic in each direction for most of the day with cars parked along the curbs. Under the new plan, parking will be eliminated on both sides and green-painted bike lanes, raised 2 inches above the traffic lanes, will be installed. Michael Helquist, 67, a writer who lives on Masonic near Golden Gate Avenue, has been an active participant in the planning process for about 10 years. Some drivers and residents accustomed to parking on Masonic wondered where delivery trucks, garbage trucks and construction workers would park and predicted they would double park, which would create chaos when combined with just two lanes of traffic.