STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
Edwin Lee Kelly, 23, of El Centro, was killed yesterday morning when he apparently fell asleep at the wheel of his car while traveling west on Interstate 8, three miles west of the Jacumba off-ramp, authorities said. His car ran off the road and crashed into a boulder.
Kelly, a salesman for the National Cash Register Co., had worked late into the night of Wednesday and had promised to join his wife and their infant child who were camped near Guatay for the Fourth of July holiday.
His wife, Phyllis, saw the ambulance carrying her husband’s body pass by her campsite, but did not know at that time of the tragedy.
40 years ago
Police today are holding a 24-year-old security guard on suspicion of murder following the fatal shooting of a Central Union High School coed Sunday inside an El Centro residence.
Investigators have indicated there may be a link between the young woman’s death and an earlier incident Sunday when a chunk of cement was hurled through the windshield of a vehicle eastbound on Interstate 8.
Charles Kimball Ryder III, of El Centro, was booked on suspicion of murder shortly after 1 p.m. Sunday after El Centro police found the 16 year old girl, fatally injured inside the suspect’s home.
Police said the girl had been shot once. Her body was lying on a living room sofa. Ryder said he called police immediately after the young woman was shot.
Officers Larry Dresher and Eugene Caldwell said the girl was still breathing upon their arrival. The girl was rushed to El Centro Community Hospital, where she died during emergency surgery at 12:07 p.m.
30 years ago
IMPERIAL — Calexico’s Rotary team will play the Holtville Reds for the championship of Little League Baseball’s District 22 at El Centro’s Frazier Field tonight.
The border city team advanced to the final round after shutting out the Brawley Cardinals in the final elimination game here Saturday, 2-0.
Calexico’s victory over the Cardinals was based on two key factors: the pitching of strikeout artist Gabriel Jiminez and the end of Brawley’s consecutive game home run streak.
Jiminez struck out 13 Cardinal batters. He struck out seven of the last 11 batters he faced, and he retired the last eight Brawley batters that came to the plate.
It was the third loss of the tournament for the Cardinals, but until Saturday Brawley had hit a home run in every game it played in the playoffs. Jiminez gave up only one extra-base hit to the Cardinals and only four hits all together. He surrendered just one walk.
20 years ago
Growing up in a migrant farm labor family, illustrator Simon Silva started working in the fields himself at age 8.
The hardships of growing up with 10 brothers and sisters in a Holtville farm labor family prepared Silva for anything that lay ahead.
Silva said in a January 1997 interview that growing up as a migrant child laborer taught him to never give up.
“We worked so hard in the fields that nothing since seems very hard,” he said in that interview.
Silva spoke to a group of migrant summer school children Wednesday at Lincoln Elementary School in El Centro.
When Silva asked the group of about 100 students gathered in the multipurpose room whether their parents were in the fields right now, more than half the hands shot up.