STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
YUCAIPA (UPI) — Authorities today hoped to remove the bodies of four men killed in the crash of their small plane on 10,454-foot Dobbs Peak near here.
The wreckage believed to be that of a plane missing since last June 7 on a flight from Calexico to Taft was spotted late Saturday by a Forest Service plane.
Sunday, a sheriff’s helicopter landed Deputy Coroner William Hill and FAA representatives at the site. Fog and rain made it impossible to evacuate the bodies immediately.
The plane was believed to be a Cessna 172 in which four Taft men were returning from Calexico.
The four were pilot Paul Johnson, a Taft policeman, and Howard Lair, Clifford Calbert and Gene Little.
40 years ago
MEXICALI — A Los Angeles area couple has been arrested by Mexican immigration authorities in connection with the alleged illegal adoption of a 10-dayold baby boy.
Taken into custody Tuesday were Gerald Junior Prince, 46, and his wife, Delia, 41, of Mission Hills. They were reportedly arrested after immigration officials at the border found irregularities in the child’s birth certificate. Prince is an employee of the California Transportation Department.
According to the Public Ministry office, the couple last month contacted a friend of Mrs. Prince in Morelia, Michoacan, inquiring about adopting a Mexican child. The Prince couple then flew to Morelia on June 23 to pick up the child.
The child has been placed in an orphanage near the highway to Tijuana. Authorities apparently do not know who the child’s parents are.
30 years ago
A 38-year-old man who began firing a shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle from his South Western Avenue apartment early today after he reported seeing someone with a gun on a nearby rooftop is being held for mental observation.
A total of eight shots were fired, Brawley police said, causing damage to the apartment door and to a kitchen window. No one was injured.
The man is being kept under observation for 72 hours at the county Mental Health Department in El Centro, police said.
Police receive a call at 3:45 a.m. from the man’s wife who said her husband sad he saw someone watching their apartment.
The kitchen window of the couple’s upstairs apartment looks out over the Waves Restaurant on South Brawley Avenue. She said her husband thought he saw someone with a gun on the roof of the restaurant.
20 years ago
Like bedrock upon which society builds, water is the bedrock upon which the Imperial Valley’s history is built. Without water and the rights that come with it, the Valley would still be a valley, but it would be a dry and desolate valley. And probably deserted.
The core of the Valley’s bedrock is “present perfected rights,” sometimes referred to as the “mother lode” of water rights. This core is held in trust by the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors. The district holds present perfected rights to 2.6 million acre-feet per year of water from the Colorado River.
IID also holds a third priority to additional waters, when available, based on the 1931 Seven Party Priority Agreement. These “surplus” waters are allocated by the federal secretary of the interior. The first three priorities under the agreement include the Palo Verde Irrigation District, the Yuma Project, IID, the Coachella Valley Water District and PVID again, for a total entitlement, including present perfected rights, of 3.85 million acre-feet per year.