Oakland, Calif. police chief stepping down

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The chief of Oakland's embattled police department said Wednesday that he is stepping down due to medical reasons.

Chief Howard Jordan abruptly told City Administrator Deanna Santana and the rank-and-file that effective immediately he is on medical leave and taking steps toward medical retirement.

"Through my 24 years of wearing an OPD badge and uniform, I have emulated the department's core values: Honesty, respect and integrity — values I observed in the men and women who worked with me and for me," Jordan said.

Jordan's resignation came at a crucial time for the city, which continues to deal with one of the nation's most violent crime and robbery rates. He also faced mounting challenges in leading the force after city officials relinquished broad powers late last year over the department to a court-appointed director to avert an unprecedented federal takeover over reforms involving a brutality scandal.

After serving as chief for less than two years and doing two stints as interim chief, Jordan did not specify his medical condition. He said his decision was difficult but necessary.

Jordan's stunning announcement came moments before a scheduled news conference where consultant and former New York and Los Angeles police chief William Bratton was to present a plan on how Oakland could reduce crime. City officials quickly cancelled the event.

Santana and Mayor Jean Quan were scheduled to talk about Jordan's departure later in the day.

The departure of Jordan, who also served as an assistant chief and head of internal affairs in Oakland, came as a surprise, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank for police chiefs.

But, Wexler said, "being the police chief in Oakland may be one of the toughest jobs in the country."

Oakland has "high crime, a police department with a shrinking force in a poor economy, trying to complete a consent decree and working with a compliance director," he added. "To make the changes necessary with such limited resources is a daunting task."

Jordan previously served as interim chief after Wayne Tucker resigned in 2009. Jordan was at the helm during the deadliest day in Oakland police history when four officers were shot and killed by a parolee after a traffic stop.

During that time, he publicly lobbied for the permanent job, but then-Mayor Ron Dellums lured Long Beach Police Chief Anthony Batts to Oakland.

Batts resigned as the Occupy Oakland movement began its encampment outside City Hall. He cited frustration about having limited control over decision-making in the department. Jordan was named interim chief again in October 2011 and sworn in as chief four months later.

He led the department during numerous Occupy protests in Oakland that attracted international attention and drew criticism of police tactics. Jordan and city leaders would later acknowledge the actions of some officers were inappropriate.

Jordan and city leaders faced criticism by U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson for failing to fully implement court-mandated reforms stemming from a decade-old police scandal.

The judge warned that the department could be placed in federal receivership if it did not achieve reforms to settle litigation over claims that several rogue officers beat or framed drug suspects in 2000.

Henderson recently named police consultant Thomas Frazier as the department's compliance director to ensure that reforms are finally completed. The judge gave Frazier the authority to fire Jordan and his command staff.

In a 59-page report last week, Frazier was highly critical, saying punishment of officers for misconduct was rare. He also criticized the department's top brass.

That report may have been a sign for Jordan, said attorney John Burris, who has been overseeing the brutality lawsuit settlement.

"I think the compliance director's view was you need to have a fresh start and (Jordan) resigned voluntarily because he could see the handwriting on the wall," Burris said.

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Bride, 4 others die in limo fire on Calif. bridge

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A newlywed bride was celebrating a night out with friends when the limousine they were in erupted in flames on a San Francisco Bay bridge, killing the bride and four other women who were trapped inside and injuring four who escaped, authorities and her family said Sunday.

The driver, who was not hurt, told investigators he was driving the women on the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge Saturday night when one of them complained of smoke inside the passenger compartment, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said.

He said he pulled over, got out, and saw the back of the 1999 Lincoln Town Car fully engulfed in flames, Foucrault said.

By the time firefighters rushed to the scene and put out the fire, authorities found five badly burned bodies huddled near the partition that separates the driver from the passengers.

"My guess would be they were trying to get away from the fire and use that window opening as an escape route," Foucrault said.

He said other motorists helped three women get out of the rear right door, and a fourth woman managed to squeeze through the partition.

Investigators didn't release details about the accident Sunday, but scheduled a news conference Monday.

The San Mateo Fire Department was looking into the cause of the fire, while the coroner's office was working with the California Highway Patrol to determine whether a crime occurred.

"We don't believe there is," Foucrault said.

Relatives told the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News that one of the dead was Neriza Fojas, 31, a registered nurse from Fresno who recently wed and was planning to travel to her native Philippines next month to hold another ceremony before family. Her friends in the limousine were fellow nurses.

The driver said he picked the women up in Oakland and was taking them across the bridge to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Foster City. Fojas' sister, Rosalyn Bersamin, told the Chronicle that after a night out on the town, Fojas and her friends were heading to the hotel to party with her husband.

"She was a hard worker, a loving sister," a sobbing Bersamin said.

Aerial video shot after the incident showed about one-third of the back half of the limousine had been scorched by the fire. Its taillights and bumper were gone and it appeared to be resting on its rims, but the remainder of the vehicle didn't appear to be damaged.

A photo taken by a witness and broadcast on KTVU-TV showed flames shooting from the back of the limo.

The driver — 46-year-old Orville Brown of San Jose — was the only person to escape unhurt.

Brown's brother told the Chronicle the flames spread before he could help the women escape.

"He told me, 'Man, it was so fast.' He said, 'I've never seen anything like it in my life.'"

"He kept saying, 'I should have done more, I should have done more," he added.

The brother said that Brown is an experienced commercial driver who has operated big rigs and moving trucks and has a clean record.

The bodies were so badly burned that medical examiners will have to identify the victims by using dental records. Foucrault said the autopsies will include toxicology tests, as well as examinations into whether any accelerant such as alcohol or gasoline was found on the bodies.

The four other women who escaped the fire, Mary G. Guardiano, 42, of Alameda; Jasmine Desguia, 34, of San Jose; Nelia Arrellano, 36, of Oakland; and Amalia Loyola, 48, of San Leandro, were being treated at nearby hospitals, the CHP said.

Desguia and Loyola were listed in critical condition, said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for Valley Medical Center. The condition of Arrellano, who was taken to another hospital, was not known.

A spokeswoman for Community Medical Center in Fresno said one or more of its employees were in the limo.

The company that operated the limo was identified as Limo Stop, which offers service through limousines, vans and SUVS.

The company issued a statement saying it "will do everything possible to investigate and assist authorities in determining the cause of this fire in order to bring forth answers and provide closure to (the) victims and their families."

According to records from the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates limousine companies, Limo Stop is licensed and insured.

____

AP reporter Daisy Nguyen contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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Calif. educators sued over English instruction

LOS ANGELES (AP) — About 20,000 students in California who need to learn English aren't getting adequate language instruction, according to a lawsuit against the state and education workers filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Under state and federal law, schools are required to teach non-English speakers the language, but by its own records, the state isn't offering English instruction to nearly 20,000 students. The suit alleges that lack of instruction has meant some children had to be held back a grade or live with low proficiency scores because of a language barrier.

The ACLU brought the issue to the attention of the state with a letter in January, and officials say they're working to ensure compliance at the local level.

Attorney Mark Rosenbaum said in Wednesday's filing that English learners fall behind without proper language lessons, even as school districts collect federal funds for providing such education.

"These kids are not getting the differentiated learning they're supposed to be getting," Rosenbaum said.

Chief Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Richard Zeiger said in a statement that the state is determined to provide English learners appropriate instruction and encouraged parents to bring problems to the state's attention.

"The Department will continue to work with local agencies to ensure compliance with districts' obligations to provide services to English learners," Zeiger said.

Zeiger also noted that a recent appellate court decision found that the department was meeting its legal obligations related to on-site monitoring of English learners.

The ACLU's lawsuit describes the educational struggles of three families with Spanish-speaking children attending Compton Unified School District and a San Diego 18-year-old in the Grossmont Union High School District.

In each case, schools identified the students as English learners but were later taken out of English language classes and saw their grades drop dramatically in courses where they struggled to understand instruction, the suit alleged.

One mother had both of her children, an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old, held back a year immediately after they stopped being provided language instruction, the suit alleged.

Rosenbaum said parents often didn't know their children had been taken out of language classes, and in one case, a mother was told to bring her own translator to school meetings to get an explanation.

In response to the January letter, school officials acknowledged the problem while adding more than 98 percent of the state's 1.4 million English learners are receiving services.

The suit seeks a court order for schools to provide courses to English learners who need them, attorney's fees for filing the suit and unspecified further equitable relief the court finds appropriate.

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20,000 students sue Calif. educators over English

LOS ANGELES (AP) — About 20,000 students in California who need to learn English aren't getting adequate language instruction, according to a lawsuit against the state and education workers filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Attorney Mark Rosenbaum said in Wednesday's filing that English learners are falling behind without proper language lessons, even as school districts collect federal funds specifically for that purpose.

Chief Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Richard Zeiger says the state is determined to provide English learners appropriate instruction.

The suit seeks a court order for schools to provide courses to English learners who need them, attorney's fees for filing the suit and unspecified further equitable relief the court finds appropriate.

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Calif. ruling throws hope to fracking foes

By Rory Carroll and Braden Reddall

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A court ruling that the U.S. government must consider the environmental impact of "fracking" on federal lands leased to oil companies offers opponents of the technique a useful weapon in the fierce public debate in California and other parts of the country.

In a regulatory setback for hydraulic fracturing on public lands, a federal magistrate judge in San Jose, California, on Monday ruled that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to analyze its impact on 2,500 acres in Monterey County.

While energy lawyers were skeptical about the ruling's long-term impact, it was hailed as a victory for environmentalists trying to stop fracking in the state due to concerns about its groundwater impact and the potential for increased fossil fuels output contributing to climate change.

The ruling could even inspire environmental groups to sue the BLM in other states as oil companies accelerate their leasing of federal lands for fracking, said Brendan Cummings, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity.

"While the ruling has most direct impact on public lands in California, it also sets an important legal and policy precedent that federal and state agencies around the country would be wise to heed," said Cummings, whose group brought the suit with the Sierra Club.

Celia Boddington, a spokeswoman for the BLM, said: "We are evaluating the ruling."

Monterey county captures just part of the vast Monterey shale formation, estimated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration to hold 15 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, or four times that of the Bakken formation centered on North Dakota.

Most of that oil is not economically retrievable except by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a production-boosting technique in which large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are injected into shale formations to force hydrocarbon fuels to the surface.

Cummings believed the San Jose ruling would likely have implications for a more recent and much larger lease sale of 18,000 acres for oil and gas development in the same general region.

Judge Paul Grewal did not hand down a remedy, instead asking the BLM and the environmental groups to confer and submit an agreed upon path forward by next week.

Jack Luellen, a Denver-based managing partner at energy law firm Burleson LLP, said the potential for a time-consuming BLM environmental impact statement would put the burden on the BLM to "prove a negative," or that fracking would not cause damage.

"If you're anti-fracking, delaying is almost as good as barring it," Luellen said.

But James Pardo, a partner at the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, believed a full separate study of the Monterey shale was unlikely to be necessary even though the geology is different from other U.S. shale plays. But a "harder look" at the issue would be necessary.

"The court's telling them to square those corners," he said. "Note this judge did not void the leases ... This judge is looking at a reasonable solution."

Bill Allayaud, California director of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, said the court decision could cause the BLM to rethink how it leases land.

Oil and gas drilling on BLM lands has shot up in recent years as advances in horizontal drilling and fracking have made hard-to-reach deposits recoverable.

As a share of overall U.S. production, oil from federal onshore land accounted for about 5 percent of the total last year, and 12 percent for natural gas, according to federal data.

About 98 percent of the land under BLM control is in the western United States, including Alaska. California accounts for 6 percent of the 247 million acres under BLM control, according to the most recent statistics available on the agency's website.

California regulators are in the process of devising rules for fracking.

It is already the subject of a state-level court battle. That lawsuit, brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, Environmental Working Group and Sierra Club, accuses the state regulator with failing to evaluate the risks.

The state case is Center for Biological Diversity et al v California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, Case no. RG12652054, in Alameda County Superior Court, Oakland, CA.

The federal case is Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club v Bureau of Land Management, Case no. 11-06174 PSG in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, CA.

(Additional reporting by Tim Gardner in Washington; Editing by Grant McCool)

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Court rules Calif. driver can't use hand-held map

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Steven Spriggs was stopped in a traffic jam near downtown Fresno and thought nothing of whipping out his iPhone 4 and clicking on the map feature to see if there was an alternate route around the construction mess.

He was startled when he looked up and saw a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer ordering him to pull over. He showed the officer that he was looking at a map and not texting or talking.

"'Pull over,'" Spriggs recalled the officer as saying. "'It's in your hand.'"

A little more than a year later, Spriggs is at the heart of a novel court case that has technology blogs and social media sites buzzing about the $160 ticket plus court costs he was ordered to pay for "distracted driving."

A court commissioner and then a three-judge appellate panel of the Superior Court found Spriggs guilty of violating a California law that bans motorists from texting or conducting phone conversations with hand-held devices.

The judges rejected Spriggs' argument that they were expanding the law by refusing to toss out the ticket he got in January 2012.

Spriggs, who graduated from law school but is not a practicing attorney, represented himself before the commissioner and then the appeals panel. He initially brought a paper map to court to argue that it was legal to hold it while driving. Not persuaded, the traffic court commissioner found him guilty.

Next, he appealed to the three-judge panel of Fresno Superior Court, arguing in a legal brief that the iPhone has a flashlight feature and other functions that can be useful to a driver and aren't as dangerous as texting or talking. That hearing last all of 30 seconds because no one from the CHP or district attorney's office appeared to oppose the appeal by Spriggs.

He still lost.

Fresno County Judge Kent Hamlin, writing on March 21 for the three-judge panel upholding the commissioner's ruling, said "the primary evil sought to be avoided is the distraction the driver faces when using his or her hands to operate the phone. That distraction would be present whether the wireless telephone was being used as a telephone, a GPS navigator, a clock or a device for sending and receiving text messages and emails."

The ruling doesn't apply outside of Fresno County.

Nevertheless, Spriggs said he is troubled that police can now pull over motorists they suspect of simply holding their mobile phones.

Spriggs, a fundraiser for Fresno State University, said he's unsure if he has the time or money to pursue further appeals to the California Court of Appeal and the state Supreme Court.

"I'm just a little guy who is frustrated," Spriggs said. "I don't see how they can extend this law."

He actually supports the prohibition on texting and conversing on hand-held devices while driving, saying his adult son's leg was badly broken in 2010 when he was struck by a motorist who was chatting on a mobile phone.

Judge Hamlin acknowledged in his ruling that changes in the law may be needed.

"It may be argued that the Legislature acted arbitrarily when it outlawed all 'hands-on' use of a wireless telephone while driving, even though the legal use of one's hands to operate myriad other devices poses just as great a risk to the safety of other motorists," the judge wrote in the March 21 ruling. "It may also be argued that prohibiting driving while using 'electronic wireless communications devices' for texting and emailing, while acknowledging and failing to prohibit perhaps even more distracting uses of the same devices, is equally illogical and arbitrary."

But the judge said it's up to the Legislature to amend the law. Until then, Hamlin wrote, courts are compelled to deem illegal nearly all uses of hand-held phone by motorists.

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Hope not lost for missing for Calif. hikers

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, Calif. (AP) — Rescuers combing Southern California's Cleveland National Forest for two lost hikers said late Wednesday they weren't giving up hope the pair would be found alive despite a fruitless third day of searching.

There is no evidence of foul play and authorities believe the teens are in the area, in part because a 911 call made before their cell phone died was traced to a cell tower near the location, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. John Muir.

"Their probability for survival is good," he said, adding that the nights have been mild and the days not too hot.

"We're not stopping until we find them."

So far, nothing has been found in the area where mountain bikers glimpsed what they believed to be a light in heavy brush Tuesday night off of a trail, he said.

The aerial search was to end at nightfall Wednesday but would resume Thursday at first light, Muir said.

Nicholas Cendoya, 19, and Kyndall Jack, 18, were last heard from Sunday night when they called for help on a cellphone. The phone's battery later died.

The two are believed to have gone off trail near Holy Jim Trail, a tree-lined dirt path along a creek that leads to a waterfall and is popular with day hikers.

In the call, they said they were about a mile from their car, which was parked at a trailhead, but rescuers have expanded the search.

"When you're disoriented because you're out of breath and tired and you think you're 1 mile away, you could be potentially 3 or 4 miles away," Muir said. "There's a lot of ground to cover."

It was unclear whether the lost hikers carried water and Kyndall's father, Russ Jack, said he worried that after three days the pair might be dehydrated. But he still has hope.

"So at this point everybody's still upbeat, optimistic about finding the kids in good shape and alive," he told TV reporters.

About 50 searchers, some on horseback and aided by dogs, moved back and forth through chest-high brush across mountain ridges.

The U.S. Forest Service gave permission to cut brush on a mountain peak to land a helicopter, which allowed LA County sheriff's personnel and two dogs to be taken to a canyon northwest of the pair's car, Orange County Sheriff's Department Lt. Erin Guidice told the Los Angeles Times.

That area was chosen because of the nearby cell phone tower that picked up the 911 call, she said.

Four helicopters also dropped search and rescue teams in the forest all day Wednesday, Muir said.

Jack's car was left in a parking area. Her mother drew a message on the dusty windshield that read: "Kyndall - we r looking wont stop love you mom" and signed it with a heart. Jack's family towed away the car Tuesday night, KABC-TV reported.

The area is in a section of the national forest in the Santa Ana Mountains, which lie along the border of Orange and Riverside counties southeast of Los Angeles. The trail ranges in elevation from about 2,000 feet to about 4,000 feet.

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Mistrial in Bell, Calif. corruption case

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge declared a mistrial Thursday on dozens of remaining counts against five former elected officials accused of misappropriating public funds in a working-class California city.

The move came after jurors who had convicted the Bell officials of 21 criminal counts the day before said they could not reach a verdict on the other allegations.

Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy declared the mistrial after a day of fruitless deliberations by the panel.

Jurors reached mixed verdicts on Wednesday, convicting the former mayor and four former Bell City Council members of 21 counts of misappropriating public funds and acquitting them of 21 other counts.

The case involving the modest 2½-square-mile Los Angeles suburb has become a national symbol of political greed. Authorities allege a salary-inflating scheme that drove the city to the brink of bankruptcy was masterminded by former City Manager Robert Rizzo, who is expected to go on trial with his former assistant on similar charges later this year.

The city of Bell has about 36,000 residents, with one in four people living below the poverty line.

Before declaring the mistrial, Kennedy had ruled the 21 previous verdicts would stand, even though she received a note from a juror who was having second thoughts.

"The chips are going to fall where they fall," she said.

Kennedy asked the jury earlier in the day to keep trying to reach verdicts on 42 other counts in deliberations that have now lasted longer than the trial.

The note from the juror, who asked to remain anonymous, referred to a verdict related to one of the municipal boards that prosecutors said was created by the officials to help boost their salaries.

"I have been debating in my own mind that due to the pressure and stress of the deliberation process the jury may have given an improper verdict on the Solid Waste Authority," the note said.

In a separate note sent Wednesday, a different juror, identified as No. 10, said she thought the panel was straying from the judge's instructions.

Defense attorneys argued that the notes might indicate there was misconduct in deliberations.

"There may be horse-trading to give up one verdict to get another," said attorney Alex Kessel, who represents former Councilman George Mirabal.

Kennedy said pressure is placed on juries in all cases.

"That is not tantamount to misconduct," she said.

Defense attorneys also questioned whether Kennedy's jury instructions were prejudicial to their clients.

At one point, attorney Ron Kaye, who represents ex-Councilman George Cole, suggested jurors hear more evidence about the case, drawing an angry rebuke from the judge.

"You are not going to reopen evidence," she said. "That is not provided. No!"

Former Mayor Oscar Hernandez and former City Council members Teresa Jacobo and Mirabal were each convicted of five counts of misappropriating public funds. Former Councilman Victor Bello was convicted of four counts and former Councilman Cole of two.

Prosecutors declined to say what sentences they could face until the other charges are resolved.

Former Councilman Luis Artiga was acquitted of all 12 counts filed against him.

The convictions were the first to come after revelations more than a year ago that Bell's leadership had illegally raised taxes, business license fees and other sources of income to pay huge salaries to the city manager, police chief, City Council members and others.

The six former City Council members were each paid about $100,000 a year.

Following the three-week trial, deliberations began on Feb. 21 and had gone on for only four days when one juror was replaced for misconduct and the panel was ordered to start over. The new group has been in its 20th day of deliberations on Thursday.

The convictions all related to the defendants being paid for sitting on Bell's Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, an entity they could not prove had been legally established or did any work.

Records show the authority met only one time between 2006 and 2010 and there was no evidence any waste was ever collected or recycled.

Many of the still unresolved charges relate to the council members' work on other agencies that prosecutors also say were created only to help boost their salaries.

The defendants, many of whom took the witness stand during the trial, insisted they earned those salaries by working around the clock to help residents. They and their lawyers blamed Rizzo for creating the fiscal mess in Bell.

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Calif. couple feared missing in Peru found safe on river boat

LIMA (Reuters) - A young California couple feared by family to have been abducted while on a cycling trip through Peru have safely surfaced on a river boat headed for Ecuador, surprised to learn they were subjects of an international search, the Peruvian government said on Tuesday.

"The American tourists are continuing to enjoy their trip in the Peruvian Amazon," the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism said in a statement, adding that a national police official had spoken with the couple and found them to be "in good health."

Garrett Hand and his girlfriend, Jamie Neal, both 25, had last been heard from by friends and relatives about a month ago, according to co-workers and a statement issued on Monday by the U.S. Embassy in Lima, the Peruvian capital.

The embassy said then that Peruvian authorities had mounted a search for the pair, who are residents of Oakland, California.

The couple were said to have vanished while en route to Lima from Cusco, in the mountainous southeastern Peruvian interior near the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu, an area where U.S. citizens have been warned by the embassy of kidnapping risks.

That advisory last month was widely interpreted as linked to efforts by a remnant band of Maoist Shining Path rebels to repel a government push to regain control of jungle valleys that are rife with coca cultivation and cocaine trafficking.

Friends and family of Hand and Neal said they worried the pair had been abducted and that their bank accounts had remained idle since they disappeared.

But a day after relatives and co-workers went public with efforts to organize a search for the couple, the Peruvian government said national police had caught up with the duo in the northern village of Angoteros along the Napo River.

SURPRISED BY CONCERN

The tourism ministry said the couple were passengers on a boat headed up the river, a tributary of the Amazon, to a town on the border with Ecuador.

The couple "were surprised by the concern generated by family, friends and the international community after the cessation of their communications in late January," a ministry statement said.

It added that the pair had been traveling overland by bicycle, bus and river boat through remote areas where access to telephones and the Internet was limited.

Meanwhile, Hand's mother, Francine Fitzgerald, posted a message on Facebook saying she had been informed by U.S. Embassy and Peruvian authorities that the couple were spotted in a remote village and were now on a river boat.

She gave few other details but said she would not be satisfied until receiving "proof of life" from her son.

"Proof of life is my son's voice on the phone and a picture of him holding the missing poster," she wrote.

ABC News reported on Tuesday that the tourism ministry was sending a crew with video cameras to the location where the couple's boat is scheduled to dock on Wednesday to show they are alive and well.

The U.S. Embassy issued a separate statement saying it was aware of "reports that the missing U.S. citizens have been located," adding, "we are working with local authorities to confirm those reports."

The location of the couple in northern Peru was reinforced by previous accounts from police and officials of an ecological community in the Amazonian region of Iquitos. They had told Reuters earlier this week that Hand and Neal were seen embarking on an upriver boat trip toward Ecuador on February 16, three weeks after their families had last heard from them.

(Additional reporting by Laila Kearney in San Francisco; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Bernard Orr and Eric Walsh)

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2 Santa Cruz, Calif., police officers shot dead

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) — Two Santa Cruz police officers were shot and killed Tuesday while investigating a sexual assault, and a suspect was also fatally shot, authorities said.

The officers were shot around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, and Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak confirmed Tuesday evening that they died.

The shooting in the community about 60 miles south of San Francisco took place as police were investigating a report of a sexual assault, Wowak said. A suspect fired, hitting the two officers.

A suspect was shot while police were in pursuit of the shooter, the sheriff said. Authorities said that person also died.

The names and ages of the officers and the suspect have not been released.

Residents on the streets adjoining where the two shootings occurred received an automatic police call at about 3:30 p.m. warning them to stay locked inside.

About half an hour later, more than a dozen semi-automatic shots echoed down the streets in a brief shootout that killed the suspect.

Three hours later, police were going door to door in the neighborhood searching homes, garages, even closets, although the sheriff said authorities didn't know if another suspect remained at large.

Police, sheriff's deputies and FBI agents filled intersections, some with guns drawn, in what is ordinarily a quiet, residential neighborhood.

A store clerk a few buildings away from the shooting said the barrage of gunfire was "terrifying."

"We ducked. We have big desks so under the desks we went," said the clerk, who spoke on condition of anonymity and asked that her store not be identified because a suspect might still be at large and she feared for her safety.

She said she was still locked in her store a few hours after the shooting and was still scared.

Two schools were locked down during the shooting. About two hours later, the students were evacuated by bus to the County Government Center about half a mile away.

As darkness fell, helicopters and light aircraft patrolled above the neighborhood, which is about one mile from downtown Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

The university of California, Santa Cruz campus is in hills about five miles away from the shooting scenes.

Santa Cruz has faced a recent spate of violence, and a rally had been scheduled for Tuesday for community leaders to speak out against shootings. But after Tuesday's gunfire, both a regularly scheduled City Council meeting and the downtown rally were canceled after teary-eyed city leaders learned of the deaths.

The surprising attacks include the killing of Pauly Silva, a 32-year-old martial arts instructor who was shot outside a popular bar and restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz on Feb. 9.

Two days later, a UC Santa Cruz student waiting at a bus stop was shot in the head during a robbery. She is recovering from her injuries.

Then on Feb. 17, a 21-year-old woman was raped and beaten on the UC Santa Cruz campus. Four days later, a Santa Cruz couple fought off two men who came in their home before dawn and threatened them with a sword.

___

Associated Press writer John S. Marshall in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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