Pleasanton police announced last Friday that three teenagers have been arrested in connection with the high-profile crime from September in which masked burglars kicked in the front door of a Vintage Hills house while the homeowner and her young son were inside — with it all caught on camera.
The teen boys, already lead suspects in a similar crime in Fremont, were booked into a juvenile detention facility on suspicion of residential burglary for the Pleasanton incident. The case was forwarded to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office for review for formal charges within the past week, according to Pleasanton police Sgt. Steve Ayers.
The arrestees’ names were not released because they are underage, but Ayers said there were two 17-year-olds and one 15-year-old.
The case was put in the national spotlight back in September after Ring doorbell-security video of the burglars kicking in the front door with the family inside was shown across news media and went viral.
The original break-in occurred around 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 at a house on Burgundy Drive while one of the homeowners was upstairs taking a shower and her 9-year-old son was playing downstairs.
She told news outlets at the time she’d heard her dogs growling and a loud commotion before the masked burglars broke in. They were scared away after she started yelling at them, likely because they were not expecting anyone to be home. Although the door was damaged, nothing was taken from the home.
The homeowners shared the video footage with police, and it was also posted on social media. Detectives working to identify and apprehend the culprits also alerted neighboring law enforcement agencies about the case, Ayers said.
Then, on Halloween day, Fremont police detectives contacted Pleasanton PD to say they had arrested three juveniles in connection with a similar residential burglary in their city. Pleasanton detectives worked for weeks to collect evidence that eventually linked the trio to the Burgundy Drive break-in, according to Ayers.
The updated final police report was completed for DA’s office review on Dec. 13, Ayers said.
In other news
* A man was sentenced to two days in jail and three years of probation after pleading no contest in the fall to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter for causing the all-terrain vehicle crash that killed a Tri-Valley native at a state-operated park near Pismo Beach in June, prosecutors confirmed last week.
Oscar Renteria Corchado, now 35, also was ordered to complete 300 hours of community work service and pay a $500 fine for his misdemeanor conviction in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court on Oct. 28, according to assistant district attorney Eric Dobroth.
Corchado was identified early on as the at-fault driver in the ATV collision at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area that killed 37-year-old Shawn Joseph Imlig, a Brentwood man who was born in Livermore and spent parts of his life living in Pleasanton as well as Livermore.
An avid outdoorsman, Imlig died from injuries he sustained when, while riding an ATV on a dune on the evening of June 22, he was struck in the helmet by a recreational off-highway vehicle (ROV) that went airborne after reaching the top of the dune, California State Parks officials reported at the time.
State Parks rangers initially arrested Corchado on suspicion of fatal DUI, alleging he was drunk and speeding at the time of the crash, but further investigation led the San Luis Obispo County DA’s Office to not file DUI-related charges — though Dobroth did not elaborate on the evidentiary reasons for that decision.
Prosecutors instead charged Corchado with one misdemeanor count of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence on Aug. 8.
After his no contest plea on Oct. 28, Corchado was also ordered to pay restitution to Imlig’s family. A restitution status determination hearing is scheduled for Jan. 29, Dobroth said.
* A state judicial commission last week publicly admonished Alameda County Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson for misconduct that included hitting a defense attorney on the hand in 2011.
The public admonition by the San Francisco-based Commission on Judicial Performance was also for a second count of using crude and inappropriate language when telling a female court administrator in 2016 about sexual misconduct by a Texas judge two decades earlier.
Jacobson agreed to the commission’s decision on both counts and agreed not to seek review of his case by the California Supreme Court.
According to facts agreed to by Jacobson, he hit the hand of a deputy public defender on June 29, 2011, after he called her up to the bench to apologize for having spoken sharply to her during an arraignment.
Jacobson’s lawyer, Edith Matthai, said the judge agreed to and stands by the stipulated language that he “hit her hand, and inadvertently used enough force to leave a visible impression.”
But the attorney said, “As his counsel I can say that the stipulated language was not intended to convey that there was an assault … Neither Judge Jacobson nor I believe it is appropriate to assault anyone.”
The admonition is the third time the commission has rebuked Jacobson.
— Jeremy Walsh and Bay City News Service
