Good morning, Bay Area. It’s Wednesday, June 17, and federal officials say two recent Bay Area killings of law enforcement officers are connected. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
‘I was ready to die’
Surely, Rafael Arias thought, it must have been the spicy fish and rice he’d eaten the day before. The 42-year-old Oakland restaurant worker could think of no other reason for suddenly feeling ill.
It was late March, and the novel coronavirus had begun to take hold in the Bay Area. The week before, the Oakland restaurant where Arias had worked as a barback closed its doors.
As his fever, aches and confusion worsened, Arias sensed he might have the virus. He decided to begin chronicling his days in a handwritten journal, to memorialize what he believed might be a descent to death.
With no health insurance and alone in his home, Rafael Arias spent weeks fighting for his life, sometimes hallucinating and gasping for air. Through nearly all of it, he was conscious, remembering every painful detail.
This is his diary of his battle with the coronavirus.
Cases formally linked by FBI
An Air Force sergeant suspected in the fatal shooting of a Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputy on June 6 allegedly shot and killed a federal security guard in Oakland a week earlier, federal authorities said on Tuesday as they announced charges against him and an alleged accomplice.
Steven Carrillo, who has been stationed at Travis Air Force Base since 2018, allegedly took advantage of the nearby protests in Oakland, which consumed much of law enforcement’s attention that night. Robert Alvin Justus Jr. is accused of driving the van involved in the crimes.
“They came to Oakland to kill cops,” FBI Special Agent in Charge John Bennett said Tuesday.
Both men are believed to be supporters of a right-wing, anti-government movement that seeks to spark a civil war and whose members have seized on recent anti-brutality protests against the police to incite violence, authorities said.
A first in treatment studies
A steroid long used in hospitals to control inflammation significantly reduced fatalities in seriously ill COVID-19 patients during a drug trial, marking the first time any coronavirus treatment has proven to prevent deaths, said a University of Oxford study released Tuesday.
The drug dexamethasone reduced deaths among patients on ventilators by one-third and cut fatalities for people receiving oxygen by one-fifth in a drug trial involving 6,425 coronavirus patients in the United Kingdom, university scientists said.
Most medical professionals in the Bay Area said the results are encouraging, Peter Fimrite reports, but they cautioned people not to get too excited and make a run on stores looking for the drug, especially given that it appears to work only on severely ill patients.
Computer model study: Flushing a toilet can disperse the novel coronavirus 3 feet above the commode and suspend it in the air for more than a minute, according to one study.
‘Guilty, your honor’
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. formally pleaded guilty Tuesday to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter over its responsibility for California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire.
Bill Johnson, CEO of PG&E Corp., the utility’s parent company, personally entered each of the pleas at a hearing in Chico. One by one, the judge read aloud the names of the victims, mostly the elderly and infirm, who had suffered horrific, preventable deaths. The court projected their photos onto the wall.
Mask pulled down, Johnson took in each picture as he entered the guilty pleas on behalf of his company. The fire nearly leveled the town of Paradise and surrounding areas more than one and a half years ago, and investigators found that it was started by an old power line that PG&E allowed to deteriorate.
Read more from reporter J.D. Morris.
Timeline: Northern California’s most destructive wildfires.
Around the Bay
• Ballot deadline day: A proposal to tax companies with high-paid executives heads to San Francisco’s November ballot, another measure would simplify permits for small business, and Mayor Breed proposes a parcel tax to fund teacher wages.
• ‘Off-the-cuff’ remarks: Healdsburg mayor resigns after refusing to support inquiry into police policies.
• Dramatic drop-off: Bay Area home sales fall by half in May vs. last year; median price is down 2.5%.
• AB5 challenge: S.F. district attorney sues DoorDash, alleging worker misclassification.
• Salad robots, smoothie robots and vertical farms: Bay Area food automation goes from niche to necessity during pandemic.
• 5,000 backup officers: California Highway Patrol has spent $38 million responding to protests against police brutality and racism.
• Narrowly avoided: Man escapes death on BART tracks in Berkeley after woman allegedly pushes him in unprovoked attack.
• From Phil Matier: On S.F.’s Larch Street, as the tents move in, the residents move out.
In the Studio
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott says he feels conflicted as a black man and police officer watching national protests against police brutality. He supports calls for San Francisco's department to be defunded and for officers' responsibilities to be narrowed — and he explains why on the Fifth & Mission podcast. Listen here.
More:
Fifth & Mission: Police Reform — Promises Made, Often Broken — data journalist Joaquin Palomino on how police use-of-force cases have and haven’t changed.
Total SF (in Exile): Chronicle Editor in Chief Audrey Cooper’s exit interview — including Heather Knight’s lightning round of San Francisco questions.
Bay Briefing is written by Taylor Kate Brown and sent to readers’ email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact Brown at taylor.brown@sfchronicle.com.
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