Chris Amico: Journalist

HAYWARD — This is what the tactical team knows: They are protecting a speaker who is strongly against immigration. The day before she is set to deliver an address to students at Cal State East Bay, someone calls in a death threat to the university. The tactical team’s job: keep her alive.

This is only a drill, but an important one.

Across Alameda County, tactical teams from 25 law enforcement agencies are going through 48 hours of simulated disasters, terrorist attacks, riots and jail breaks, from 6 a.m. Saturday to 6 a.m. Monday. In all, 1,700 people are involved in making look real a long list of answers to the question: What’s the worst that could happen? (more…)

LITTLEROCK — Lancaster Mayor Henry Hearns apologized to the Antelope Valley and the Lancaster City Council on Wednesday for allowing a convicted child molester to help plan a youth sports camp at Jackie Robinson Park.

The camp is a church event sponsored by the Living Stone Cathedral of Worship, where Hearns serves as bishop.

Maurice Wyre will no longer work with the camp, which ends Friday, Hearns said at a press conference at the park. He was responding to an article published in Sunday’s Valley Press disclosing Wyre’s role in the camp. While Hearns spoke, about 50 children inside the park’s gym listened to a former Olympic athlete instruct them to work hard, persevere and live a balanced life. (more…)

LITTLEROCK — A convicted child molester listed on the Megan’s Law sex-offender registry is helping plan a youth sports camp at Jackie Robinson Park for the Living Stone Cathedral of Worship, with the support of the church’s leader, Bishop Henry Hearns, the mayor of Lancaster.

Maurice Wyre is listed on the registry for continuous sexual abuse of a child.

He underwent 90 days of psychiatric evaluation after pleading no contest to molestation — a lesser charge — in 1995 and served five years’ probation, which would have ended in 2000.

The 42-year-old former athlete and scion of a locally renowned sports family will not coach or be a counselor at the camp, which starts Monday and runs for a week, according to Hearns. The mayor and clergyman said he is aware of Wyre’s criminal record but that he is unwilling to cast the man out. (more…)

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LANCASTER — Spc. Eric Huff is ready to be done with the Army. Ten months after an attack by three fellow American soldiers outside his barracks in South Korea that nearly killed him, the stricken soldier has not fully recovered.

Deborah Huff, Eric’s mother, wants her son out of the military, too. “I know my son is not fit to be in the U.S. Army anymore,” she said in an interview at her Lancaster home.

Huff spent a weekend in Lancaster, where he grew up, following the last of his attackers’ courts-martial. He has been stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash., since the attack.

“He’s come a long way, but he’s not like a normal 20-year-old male,” Deborah Huff said. “He can’t do things he’s supposed to be able to do.” (more…)

LANCASTER — In a hearing to establish a restraining order, the former interim-principal of Vasquez High School and the man she accuses of shoving her against a wall in the school office met face to face Friday morning for the first time since the alleged incident occurred.

Sharon Millen, who resigned as principal days after the incident, appeared shaken for much of the hearing.

Her alleged assailant, Charlie Bang Sr., appeared without an attorney and said several times that he meant no harm to Millen or anyone else.

Bang faces a criminal charge of battery against a school official in the incident.

“I’m not a violent person,” Bang said. “There was no violence prior, the incident lasted only three or four seconds, and there was no violence after.” (more…)

PALO ALTO — Three weeks after a brutal attack by fellow U.S. soldiers, Spc. Eric Huff is learning to walk again.

Shortly after midnight on Dec. 10, three soldiers from the 305th Quartermasters Company attacked Huff outside his barracks at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, South Korea.

According to a preliminary report by the Army’s Criminal Investigations Division, the three soldiers knocked Huff to the ground, then punched, kicked and stomped on his face and head, leaving him with a fractured skull.

The next thing Huff remembers is waking up in the base hospital, his parents at his bedside. Huff had been scheduled to leave South Korea on Dec. 10 after a two-year tour of duty.

Only a week ago, Huff could only take a few steps on his own. He did not leave his mother’s Lancaster home without a wheelchair. Now, he walks independently through the halls of a Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto. (more…)

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — Army Spc. Eric Huff remembers a knock on his barracks door just after midnight on Dec. 10, the day he was scheduled to leave South Korea after a nearly two-year tour of duty.

Two other American soldiers stood outside. He walked out and shut the door behind him.

Then came a blow from behind, on the head, and Huff went down. His three assailants punched, kicked and stomped on Huff’s face and head, leaving him with a fractured skull.

The next thing Huff remembers is waking up in the base hospital two days later. His parents, who live in the Antelope Valley, were at his bedside. (more…)