It was a perfect storm: A drug-abusing dad with more than 30 prior convictions, an inexperienced social worker and an 11-year-old girl, buffeted in the middle.
While Sacramento citizens committees examine child abuse and neglect deaths, focusing on the most extreme cases, a number of children who don’t die have their own hazardous brushes with the system. This is the story of one such child.
The girl’s case comes to light only because she sued Sacramento Child Protective Services and two social workers for what happened to her in August 2001 — five years after the death of 3-year-old Adrian Conway, and the county’s promise to place child safety over “family preservation.”
A 22-year-old North Highlands man was sentenced Friday to 15 years to life in prison for the hit- and-run collision that killed a nurse who weeks earlier had lost his daughter in another car crash.
A 61-year-old man was sentenced Thursday to two life terms in prison with a possibility of parole for arson and the attempted murder of five Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies.
No one saw who started the 50-acre wildfire that burned dangerously close to homes near El Dorado Hills in September 1999.
But authorities say they quickly turned their attention to an ex-state firefighter and Placer County fire district candidate who had a knack for showing up around fires and firefighters.
El Dorado County Deputy District Attorney Paul Sutherland said Robert Lizarraga appeared shortly after the blaze broke out near Salmon Falls Road and chatted eagerly with firefighters. In Lizarraga’s car, he said, investigators found a uniform shirt, badge and flashlight stolen from a firetruck in Sacramento County.
A former Sacramento property manager was sentenced Friday to 100 days of community service for her conviction on misdemeanor hate crime charges against a black family.
