SAN DIEGO — A small Cessna plane crashed in La Jolla Wednesday night, killing the pilot, officials said.

The wreckage of the plane, a single-engine Cessna P210, was found shortly after 2 a.m. in a brushy area off Caminito Claro near Gilman Drive, said San Diego police Officer David O’Brien.

Residents called 911 around 9:35 p.m. reporting that they heard or saw a distressed plane and that it had crashed.

“We got reports that the plane was low, circling the area” and reports that “the plane had gone down,” O’Brien said.

Officers searched the area, but it took hours to locate the wreckage in the dark. O’Brien said the aircraft missed a condo complex and hit a hillside.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration registry, the plane’s registered owner lives in Carlsbad.

The pilot was the only person on board the six-seater and died before he could be taken to a hospital. His name was not released, pending notification of family.

According to FlightAware, the plane departed from French Valley Airport, just north of Temecula, on Monday and flew to Buchanan Field Airport in Concord. The plane was headed back from the Bay Area Wednesday night but diverted from French Valley. The Cessna appeared to attempt to land at Montgomery Field in Kearny Mesa before continuing west toward La Jolla, according to FlightAware tracking. It crashed about 3 miles west of the airport, according to a spokesperson from the National Transportation Safety Board.

“An NTSB investigator will arrive on site later today to begin the on-scene portion of the investigation,” according to the spokesperson. “Once on site, the investigator will begin the process of documenting the scene and examining the aircraft. The aircraft will then be recovered to a secure facility for further evaluation.”

No other information was immediately available.

Jose Antonio Alvarez, 25, and Omar Rojo, 25, both entered no contest pleas to voluntary manslaughter and were formally sentenced in late October. They were originally charged with murder and robbery in the death of 25-year-old Jaime Valdovinos.

Police said at the time that Rojo and Alvarez arranged to rob Valdovinos and another man of “a large amount of marijuana” after setting up a cannabis deal. The four men met on the 3000 block of East Ninth Street in Oakland on Sept. 26, 2019.

Investigators said in a court statement that Alvarez was identified as a suspect through “surveillance video and witnesses.”

The plea deal includes a court order for both defendants to stay away from the surviving victim and to not possess guns after their release from prison. Both men were originally charged with crimes that made them eligible for life without the possibility of parole.

Neither man has yet been transferred to state prison, according to public records.

Three weeks ago, the sheriff’s office in Mariposa County had asked the public’s help in finding the 42-year-old man, whom it called armed and dangerous.

The announcement did not specify his connection to Pullins, a 57-year-old Ahwahnee woman who was reported missing on June 18, 2022.

She had last been seen three days earlier, before heading off toward Mariposa, 25 miles away, to register her vehicle.

She reportedly planned to stay the night at a friend’s home on Stumpfield Mountain Road, off Highway 49 between Ahwahnee and Mariposa. Her cellphone location indicated she left the friend’s house, but she never made it to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Mariposa County sheriff’s office said.

About two months later, her Jeep Cherokee was found down a steep embankment in a remote area of Mariposa County, the sheriff’s office said. Pullins’ body was not found, but blood found in the SUV was determined to be hers.

No developments were reported in the case for more than a year, then the sheriff’s office issued a flurry of announcements:

• Sept. 26, 2023: It was announced that investigators believed Pullins to have been killed.

• Oct. 4: The sheriff’s office asked for the public’s help in finding a Subaru Outback believed to be connected to the case.

• Oct. 10: It was announced that the Subaru had been found.

On Monday, Nov. 13, law enforcement officers saw the suspect getting into the passenger seat of a car in Willits. The vehicle was followed about half a mile, and then officers from Mendocino, Lake and Mariposa counties closed in on it and  “performed a high-risk enforcement stop,” said a statement from the Mendocino County sheriff’s office.

The driver, said to be a relative of the suspect’s, obeyed commands to get out of the car, but the suspect did not. A dog was “deployed into the vehicle,” and the man was removed.

He was taken to Mendocino County Jail on a felony murder arrest warrant pending extradition to Mariposa County, the sheriff said.

Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji was expected to be booked into jail and held in lieu of $1 million bail, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said.

Paul Kessler, 69, was found suffering on the afternoon of Nov. 5, a Sunday, bleeding from his head and mouth at Westlake and Thousand Oaks boulevards, according to authorities and witness accounts.

The Sheriff’s Department continues to investigate the case.

On Thursday, it asked that anyone driving in the area of the confrontation in a car with video-recording equipment between 3 and 4 p.m. to contact the agency. If a witness wants to remain anonymous, he or she can contact Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

The shift, made this week, is accompanied by a new court calendar reserved for people who discover they are the subject of bench or arrest warrants, and until now had to submit to jail booking — and possible detention — just for the chance to argue to a judge why they shouldn’t be in custody.

According to the court and attorneys involved in shaping the new policy, the change had been in the works for several months. The issue gained added public pressure in July when the ACLU and the Stanford Law School Criminal Defense Clinic sued the court over the previous practice.

The plaintiffs — led by a man who discovered he had a warrant for a minor offense, then spent three days in jail only to be released at arraignment — called the system a “bail or jail” test that unfairly burdened poor people.

“Our hope is that this allows people to avoid truly unnecessary incarceration,” said Emi Young, a staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. “That’s something that never should have happened. It was extremely harmful to individuals and was bad public policy.”

The Superior Court declined to offer any comment other than to assert that the lawsuit was not the catalyst for the policy change.

Under the new protocol, people who learn they are wanted for a warrant now have the option, through an attorney, to request an arraignment date on the court calendar. They would still have to submit to an “informal booking” requiring a photograph and fingerprint recording, but they would head to court from there instead of being faced with posting bail or going into jail custody. In its initial stages, the reserved calendar for these cases will be on the second and fourth Mondays of the month.

A judge still has the final say on whether someone will be released, based on a person’s individual case and history. The kinds of cases on this calendar will typically involve minor and nonviolent offenses for which there is a good chance that someone will be ordered released while their case is adjudicated.

Meghan Piano, a county deputy public defender who was involved in drafting the new protocol — joined by representatives for the court, pretrial services, the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office — said the change is an important step toward leveling court access.

“Prior to this calendar, if you were poor and could not post bail, you sat in jail, whereas your wealthy neighbor would never step foot into a cell,” Piano said. “What matters is that we are here addressing this gaping hole of inequity.”

In several ways, this new calendar is a return to form. A similar practice was instituted as an emergency measure near the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. But in July 2022, Criminal Division Supervising Judge Daniel Nishigaya sent an email directive to judges stating that continuing to calendar unserved arrest warrants created an “administrative difficulty” that muddied recording, tracking, and reporting of cases.

Brandon Cabrera, supervising deputy district attorney for his office’s court diversion and mental-health unit, said a series of meetings followed in which there was a consensus to move away from forcing jail stays for people whose situations meant they would likely be released by a judge anyway.

“We got all the right people finally together to have a conversation about this,” Cabrera said.

Cabrera said that led to discussions about how to tackle those “administrative difficulties,” which ultimately led to the court agreeing to reserve a court session on two Mondays a month, when the arraignment calendar is the least busy, and the sheriff’s office agreeing to staff those Mondays at the county jail specifically to handle the warrant bookings.

What resulted, partly at Piano’s urging, was a “one-stop shop” system in which someone could get booked at the jail and go to court on the same day to see a judge and argue for release.

The new system is currently in a pilot phase, starting with one case this past Monday, and continuing with a full 10-case calendar Nov. 27.

Piano, who supervises the Pre-Arraignment Representation and Review program at her office, said she is already getting a flood of inquiries from people about the new court calendar.

“Just in the past week I have received numerous phone calls from people who really want to take care of their case but are petrified, and rightfully so, of having to sit in custody while they do so,” she said.

“It’s this unexpected complete interruption in life. All the main staples of what people have to hold on, their housing or their job or their family situation, they get ripped away from all that,” De-Bug cofounder Raj Jayadev said. “Even if the jail stay is only a couple of days, some of those things might never come back.”

Cabrera added that the new policy helps streamline the court system by incentivizing people to resolve their warrants, and allow cases to move along rather than wait for an unserved warrant to get activated by a happenstance encounter with law enforcement.

“If we can avoid someone waiting two to three days in jail and we know they don’t need to be there, this is a perfect solution,” he said.

Kenneth David McIsaac, 32, was arrested Tuesday in Oakland and booked into the Martinez Detention Facility, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office said.

At a hearing Wednesday, Judge Julia Campins terminated McIsaac’s mental health diversion status at the district attorney’s request. Prosecutors said McIsaac is being held without bail.

On Sept. 24, 2022, McIsaac allegedly broke into a Lafayette apartment, forced a family to be tied up at gunpoint and held them hostage for five hours until they were able to break free.

McIsaac was charged with a dozen felony counts that included kidnapping, false imprisonment by violence, robbery, burglary and child abuse. He spent a year in jail while the case was pending, until roughly two months ago, when Judge Campins ruled that he qualified for a mental health diversion program that allowed him to stay at a hotel but required him to submit to drug testing and other supervision.

Prosecutors, along with one of the alleged victims, objected to placing McIsaac in the diversion program.

At a hearing in September, Campins said she believed the diversion program would do a better job of addressing McIsaac’s underlying mental illness than the prison system.

“If properly done and properly managed, it is actually safer to have someone receive treatment and guidance through this process than place them in prison for a period of time with no such treatment and then released,” Campins said during the hearing.

McIsaac left the diversion program on Oct. 24. A warrant was then issued for his arrest.

Criminal proceedings against McIsaac will resume on Nov. 29, according to prosecutors.

Police don’t know the motive for the shooting, said Officer Ryan Railsback, a Riverside Police Department spokesman.

On Nov. 7, Gabriel Molina, a 29-year-old from Riverside, was arrested on suspicion of shooting and killing Michael Rangel, a Riverside resident. Molina was found with a firearm at the time of his arrest, the Police Department said in a statement.

Additionally, RPD announced the arrest of Mark Anthony Valdez, a 28-year-old man from Riverside, on suspicion of accessory to murder and possession of a controlled substance with a firearm.

Valdez was released after posting $10,000 bail on Monday, Nov. 13.

Molina had previously been arrested on suspicion of committing a series of robberies in Riverside and Moreno Valley from June 2022 to December 2022, Wednesday’s statement said.

“Gabriel Molina is a convicted felon who was out on $250,000 bail for a series of fast-food restaurant armed robberies that occurred between June and December of 2022 in Riverside and Moreno Valley,” Wednesday’s statement said.

In these robberies, the suspect used a handgun and demanded money from the cash registers and safes of Del Taco restaurants and Baker’s fast food restaurants. Authorities do not suspect Valdez was involved in the robberies, Railsback said.

On Jan. 27, authorities arrested Molina at the 24000 block of Myers Avenue in Moreno Valley on suspicion of the robberies. Molina later posted bail of $250,000 on Feb. 7 despite authorities’ attempt to raise the bail, court records show.

“Charges were filed out of custody due to injuries he sustained that required he be admitted into the hospital,” Railsback said.

On Saturday, Oct. 28, at around 3:26 p.m., Michael Rangel, a retired electronics technician and Army veteran, was watering the lawn at his home on the 8500 block of Harmony Lane when Molina allegedly fired gunshots in a passing vehicle and struck Rangel, Wednesday’s statement said.

Rangel was transported to a local hospital, but he succumbed to his injury a short time later. Molina is now being held on $1 million bail in the case of Rangel’s death.

Anyone with additional information regarding the shooting and arrests is urged to contact Detective Stanley Hua at (951) 353-7135 or SHua@RiversideCA.gov or Detective William McGuigan at (951) 353-7103 or WMcGuigan@RiversideCA.gov

Tyler Burrow, 24, and Bailey Blunt, 28, were each reported missing by their families in late September. According to an October news release from the Humboldt County sheriff’s office, Blunt was last seen on Sept. 22 when she went to retrieve her belongings from a property associated with Burrow near the community of Willow Creek.

Two days later, her pickup truck was detected by license plate readers in Redding and in Central Point, Ore., the sheriff’s office said.

The arrest on the afternoon of Tuesday, Nov. 14, near Trail, Ore., came after a hunter who had been in the area contacted Blunt’s sister Steffany Baroni, who had been coordinating a public search, and told her of finding an encampment in the woods.

She passed that information on to sheriff’s investigators in Oregon’s Jackson County, she told the North Coast news site Redheaded Blackbelt, and they found Burrow near the site, about 30 miles north of Central Point.

They also found Blunt’s dog, Hank, and her pickup truck, which had been spray-painted black, Baroni said.

A search party that Blunt’s family had organized for Saturday, Nov. 18, has been called off, Baroni’s Facebook page says.

Anyone with information regarding Blunt’s whereabouts is asked to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at 707-445-7251.

Sage Alexander can be reached at 707-441-0504.

As officers raced to the medical center at 222 West 39th Ave, employees activated their lockdown protocol.

Police said an investigation revealed that the suspect – later identified as Miguel Boch-Chamale – had tried to get into the hospital and was asked to leave. While in the parking lot, the suspect reportedly brandished a knife, threatened to kill a security guard and ran toward him. Fearing for his life, the guard fired his weapon once into the air.

The suspect threw a firework at the guard before running away from the hospital, police said.

After obtaining a description of the suspect, officers found and arrested him near the intersection of 36th Avenue and Colegrove Street. He was booked into San Mateo County jail on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, making criminal threats, brandishing a deadly weapon and discharging dangerous fireworks, police said.

Anyone with information related to the case can contact the police department at 650-522-7700.

Nov. 9

Petty theft, theft by credit card: At 2:35 p.m., two suspects worked together to distract the victim, who was shopping at Safeway in the Argonaut Shopping Center on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, and then stole the victim’s wallet from a shopping cart for a loss valued at $195. The suspects then used credit cards from the wallet to make fraudulent purchases totaling approximately $1,412.

Nov. 10

Check fraud: A Saratoga resident reported that someone obtained a check put into outgoing mail at a US post office, then altered and cashed the check for a loss of about $4,000.