Transcripts For KPIX The 20240703

Now at 11 00 the sheer anger and evil that i felt as i became more and more aware of what occurred was very disturbing to me. An east bay man convicted of murdering and dismembers his fiance. Plus, its day one for oaklands new police chief and some say there wont be much of a honeymoon. The issues oaklanders want him to tackle right away. And theres a new sheriff in town in the south bay, kind of. Finishing my business career, i felt a different calling. What took one man from a tech job to working behind a badge. From kpix this is the late news with sara donchey on cbs news bay area. Hello, im sara donchey. Tonight we begin with a murder case so disturbing it even shook up a local police chief. A womans body found dismembered and dumped on the alameda shoreline set off a very complex investigation that uncovered a tragic case of Domestic Violence. Police say 27yearold pleasanton resident Rachel Buckner was murdered then dismembered, and today her fiance, 42yearold joseph roberts, was convicted of her murder in an Alameda County courtroom. Our lauren toms spoke to Law Enforcement about why the case was so difficult to solve. Reporter a dismembered body found off the shores of alameda last july haunted investigators, but a conviction has finally brought some closure to the family of young Law School Graduate Rachel Buckner. The manner which miss Rachel Buckner lost her life was horrific. She was dismembered and, you know, the sheer anger and evil that i felt as i became more and more aware of what occurred was very disturbing to me. Reporter the afternoon of july 20, 2023, officers found a womans remains inside a black trash bag sealed with duct tape with her hands and feet removed. It was one of those cases where we had to figure out from scratch exactly what occurred, down to even who this person was. Reporter the body was determined to be 27yearold Rachel Buckner. Prosecutors say dna evidence on the tape linked her fiance, joseph roberts, to the case. Roberts and buckner first met at Golden Gate University law school in 2019 and lived together in an apartment in pleasanton. The Alameda County district torns office says police were called to their apartment multiple times for welfare checks and Domestic Violence calls. And when buckner vanished, the d. A. Says roberts never reported her as missing. Roberts actually gained National Media attention in this abc news nightline interview in 2018. He claimed he was falsely accused of sexual harassment, denied due process, and kicked off the campus of Savannah State university in georgia in 2013. Youre hereby summarily suspended. There was a campuswide email alert with my picture, almost like a mug shot. Reporter roberts lobbied for rollbacks to title nine reforms and in 2020 he was elected to the San Francisco republican central committee. Title nine is supposed to protect students and if you are accused youre supposed to be given certain rights that i just wasnt given. Reporter tonight he sits behind bars awaiting his sentencing. In addition to miss buckner herself, the people who i feel really sad for are her family, her mother, to look into her eyes and to see the pain and the no parent should have to go through Something Like this. Reporter roberts is facing 15 years to life in prison. He will be sentenced in june. All right, it is safe to say that the search for oaklands new police chief was something of an ordeal that led to lots of infighting at city hall, but tonight the city does have a new personal nnt chief for the first time in more than a year. Chief Floyd Mitchell started the job today. He comes from lubbock, texas, where he last served as top cop. Our Wilson Walker spoke with ok land residents about what theyre hoping for in the new chief as he gets to work. O my goodness gracious, you know, besides the litter and the robbery, you know, ive had a lot of employees quit. Reporter Eduardo Rodriguez has been frustrated for a while. When we first spoke he was lamenting the state of his neighborhood and the crime that has surrounded his business. His thoughts on the new police chief. I think, you know, weve been needing one. You know, somebody permanent. That we needed one a long time ago, and maybe we shouldnt have had the other one removed, you know . But it is what it is now. So normally, you know, there would be socalled honeymoon period, but unfortunately, it is so our situation is so needed of him, especially our business community. So he has to hit the ground running, flying right away. Reporter carl chan is head of the Chinatown Chamber of commerce, he too has been sounding alarm bells on crime in recent years. And so but in order for him to be successful, i think he needs to build a Good Relationship within his department but also within the entire community from east to west oakland, the hills to the flat land. Reporter chans top concerns for the Incoming Police chief, political mine fields and oaklands looming budget deficit. We are realizing that the resources may not be there for him. Reporter no one would describe the role of Oakland Police chief as an easy job, but many agree that the budget challenges and the recent surge in robberies could make it as difficult as ever. But rodriguez is still hopeful. I say one guy with the proper attitude will always make a difference. It always takes that one guy, okay, changes people s attitudes. Thats what needs to change here. Overall crime is actually down in oakland in 2024 after a huge spike last year, but robberies are still up 6 this your. We are about to see the next chapter of driverless car testing in the bay area. Googles Autonomous Car company waymo is about to Start Testing rides on the peninsula. For the past few month, people have been hailing driverless waymo cars across San Francisco with the waymo one app, but now the company has the green light to expand all the way down to the south bay. At first, though, itll just be waymo employees that can ride as far south as san mateo with plans to eventually expand down to sunnyvale. But the company is running into some resistance. As our kenny choi report, some critics say that expansion is still happening too fast. Reporter when a driverless car struts by and catches eyes, people stop and stare. Rick has noticed too. Hes always looking for the next best mode of transportation. Whatever makes it easier is critical when that commute is every day. I work two jobs. Im able to rest in between riding the bus. Reporter he rides the bus, uses an escooter, and a Ride Hailing Service if the weather gets nasty. Lately the San Francisco native has been using waymo occasionally for more reasons than just one. I dont have to deal with drivers that have bad attitude. Because its drivers will, you know . Reporter with waymo expanding to the peninsula for the first time, rick believes it could become part of his regular commute to san bruno if the ride fare makes economic sense. I jumped into one to take it for a ride. Hello from waymo. Reporter by chance we approached a construction zone. It slowed down, navigated the cone, and came out the other end without a hitch. Ahmed is a professor of engineering at san jose state. The future is driverless, all of us knows that. Its a matter of when. Reporter and also a matter of who. Who will gain dominance in a driverless world. Its a very tight rope that they are walking. Gain the trust, gain the market share before tesla comes into play. Reporter but its not full throttle for waymo just yet as lawmakers, union, and First Responders have been critical, questioning its safety among other concerns. Supervisor david opposes the expansion. He wants more data and transparency related to safety issues near crashes and more. We need to put guardrails. And that means waymo has to communicate with police chiefs, fire chiefs. They have to communicate with department of public works. Once you gain this trust and people are used to it and not afraid of seeing it on their, you know, on their roads, on their street, then its going to the human driver will disappear in that case. Its going to be rally an autonomous, driverless cars. Reporter thats part of the conundrum for rick. What could make his commute easier and cheaper one day could come at a cost. I could see like uber drivers and lyft drivers losing their jobs because you have automated cars that are moving out there. Reporter and just like that, the driver is out of sight. When we asked the company for a specific timeline, waymo wouldnt give us one but simply said that the expansion will take time. The company did tell us they will work closely with cities and First Responders to ensure they are offering rides that are safe and accessible. It was an f word from the vp. Where she let an f bomb slip during an inspirational speech. And a delta plane goes up in flames. The newly released video of the moments after it touched down. And after a long career in business, then a leap boo into what should have been a peaceful retirement, a north bay man started a new career in Law Enforcement in his 60s. Fog, low cloud cover rolling in across the bay area. We did have blue skies for a little while this afternoon. But our time lapse from the Mark Hopkins Hotel shows that fog just sweeping over San Francisco and spreading farther across the bay throughout this evening. Well track how long its going to last tomorrow and if there are any changes in store through the rest of this week coming up in the first alert forecast. Later in sport, history made at the as game in houston tonight. And the giants balled out, laid out against his rivals from l. A. And nine innings was not enough. Cole bishop. If you thought that pronunciation sounded a little off, wait until you hear how they read some of the other names at a College Commencement gone incredibly wrong. Tonight is my ofth birthday. Colberts new with steve sometimes when people get really excited about something, they can let some swear words slip. And that is exactly what happened to the Vice President , kamala harris. She so fired up during a speech encouraging Asian Americans to break down barriers that she said this. We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open, sometimes they wont. And then you need to kick that [ bleep ] door down. Excuse my language. Oh, that happened while she was at a speech in d. C. The audience seemed to be very forgiving. They were applauding with one person saying, we got to make tshirts on social media. Another scary situation involving a delta plane that caught fire after it landed last week. A fireball and some black smoke rose up from the nose of the plane. Passengers were evacuated on to the tarmac after that. The plane had just landed at the airport in washington from cancun. The airport says a shorted electrical plug sparked that fire. Not what i want to see when im getting on a flight in ten days. Or getting off, oh, youre getting on a flight, yeah. Im so scared of a regular, boring, one and a half hour flight that, yeah, i dont i close my eyes. Too much of that. Maybe were getting it out of the way. Like the rain that we kind of sort of pushed out of the way. Weve pretty much gotten past the last significant chance of rain. I dont think theres anymore of that in store for us. Drizzle every once in a while. We have plenty of fog, that can add up to trace amounts of moisture, especially along the coast. That remains the case as we head through the rest of this week. A cooler start to the workweek, especially compared to the way above average temperatures we had at the end of last week. This pattern isnt going to shift around a whole lot. The upper levels of the atmosphere, the wind streamlines moving around here. The winds are offshore. At ground level were seeing the onshore influence, that onshore breeze is with us at sea complefl that has a lot to do with the temperatures that we are going to specious over the next several days, and the presence of that fog. The fog is going to spread well inland through the rest of tonight. Temperatures down to 51 in San Francisco and santa rosa. Everybody else a little farther into the 50s but not by much. Temperatures later tonight will dip to the upper 40s and low 50s as that fog will continue to spread out. Well into the inland valleys form morning. The fog backs up out of those inland valleys pretty quickly. The exception to that is going to be in the valleys of the north bay. Santa rosa some reduced visibilities by 10 00 a. M. Fog backs up to the coast but lunchtime. It does not back up away from the coast. May gray in full effect for coastal parts of the bay area as we head through the rest of this week. You might see an hour, maybe an hour and a half of sunshine during the mid day and early afternoon hours. High temperature temperatures tomorrow also close to normal with one exception, and that is the santa clara valley. The winds out of the southwest and the Santa Cruz Mountains block that marine air from making its way in. So you make it the low 80s. Of course, along the coast, temperatures are going to be cooler. Upper 50s for half moon bay. 59 a couple degrees cooler than where you made it to today. San francisco hit 59 today, so closer to average, in the low 60s tomorrow. And low to mid70s in the north bay. Not as warm as other inland parts of the bay area. Thats the influence of that fog hanging on a little bit longer and slowing down the warmup. Still looks like a nice afternoon. Plenty of sunshine out there. The winds are going to be pretty calm to start the day. And they arent going to pick up until we get past about noon or so. So light winds for most of the bay area through lunchtime and then you see pockets of orange on futurecast indicating more gusts in the 20 to 25mileanhour range. Not what youd call a blustery day, but its a noticeable breeze each afternoon helping to keep things cool. The cool weather might stick around the for a while. Memorial day weekend, a continuation of the below average temperatures that will settle in a week from today. Until then, mid to upper 70s for inland parts of the bay area. Some of the warmest around 80 degrees. A dip by monday of next week with temperatures running slightly below normal. Its not a fullfledged cold snap or anything like that. Temperatures around the bay also very close to average. Upper 60s to around 70 degrees. A little more cloud cover in the mornings compared to farther inland. We should see sunshine during the afternoons around the bay. Along the coast that sun is, as i mentioned, in very short supply. The may gray keeps temperatures in the upper 50s to around 60 degrees and a little bit of that coastal drizzle could add up during the late night and Early Morning hours as well. All right, paul, thank you. Most 66yearolds are planning for the end of their careers, not starting a brand new one. Upon which im about to enter. Upon which im about to enter. Congratulations. But today the Santa Clara County Sheriffs Department swore in 66yearold bob yi in its latest class of recruitings. Yi was a retired tech Marketing Executive, now he is a reserve sheriffs deputy. He wanted to take a more active role in public safety. Our da lin asked bob more about his journey from retirement and then to Law Enforcement. Reporter on most days, youll find this man on the move, working on something. Even though he retired four years ago. I was a Marketing Executive for over 35 years in high tech. Reporter but bob yi is about to come out of retirement and do something quite different from his previous career. Reserve deputy sheriff, Santa Clara County. Reporter he will join the reserve unit on monday, serving as a parttime deputy for Santa Clara County. Finishing my business career, i felt a different calling. Reporter bob said it wasnt an overnight decision. He first volunteered as a safety ambassador in oakland chinatown after hearing of attacks on asian seniors during the pandemic. He then organized a workshop to train people on how to use pepper spray to edefend themselves. He also attended events to support crime victims. And this journey with helping the community out, advocating for victims of Violent Crimes has been much more fulfilling for me, and u want to continue this journey in Law Enforcement. Reporter at 66 years old, bob was the oldest in his police academy. His youngest colleague was 23 years old. He says his good shape and physical health helped him get through the academy. Risk control techniques. We learned about vehicle operations. We learned about shooting. Reporter after monday, hell begin months of field training. And chances are he will not do felony warrants or sprinting full speed. He will do more Community Policing where he can use his life experience. It involves taking a lot of business skills that ive had in my prior career and applying them towards Law Enforcement. Reporter his wife says shes seen bobs transformation and that hes much happier in this new career. I actually thought he would have a retirement career or hobby that was building things. I didnt think he would be like building community. So i was very pleased to hear that. I think its a noble thing to be doing. Bob turns 67 next month, but get this, he has some very good company. There was a 70yearold man from a different academy than the one bob was in who received his badge this morning. Two skydivers looked at this historic bridge and thought, i want to fly right through that. The defying leap that took hundreds of practice jumps using cranes. Vern . Straight ahead in sports, giants and dodger, extra inning baseball. And show me a fur baby that had it better than this retriever . Nope, not giving it these two skydivers did something that had never been done before, they flew through londons famous tower bridge. They trained for a year, which included flying behind two cranes set up to match the dimensions of the bridge. Finally. Oh. Took about 45 seconds. Im sure they were scary ones. They practiced the jump 200 times to figure out the best height to leap from. You dont have a big margin of error there. No, you dont want to miss. Oh man, look at that. Yeah. Have you ever jumped out of a plane . Vern, please. What kind of question is that . All right, lets talk about something a little less risky, al that he thoe that didnt exactly go our way. The giants struck out 13 times tonight and still had a shot to pull this one out. If youre scoring at home, thats four game this is season and four straight wins for the dodgers over the giants. Giants had its shot to pull this one off. Look at the pelican fly. Scarface reference. The lucky pelican landed on this second inning swing. Luis matta, swung on, gone. The oracle joint was jumping. 31, San Francisco. Giants looking to hang on, but a pinchhit blast from Enrique Hernandez stays, look at, just fair enough. It tied the game. The game went to extras. And then Taylor Rogers in the tenth and will smith was swinging. The smash went over mattas head, enough to drive in two, and it was the dodgers night, 64, the final. The giants 1924, had them on the ropes. Same two tuesday. Tough one, but they cant dwell on it. Defensive play of the game, mike yastrzemski, full extension in the fifth to take it away from mookie betts. Thats worth another look, huh . I mean, come on. Yes, just parallel to the ground. Pitcher jordan hicks all fired up for this one. As in houston, julian morales, length of time, and cavnar and daughter. First mlb all female playbyplay for both teams. As for the game, j. J. Bleday in the fifth, barrelled one into left. Careened off the wall. And that was enough to drive in abraham toro to make it a onerun game. But the astros responded with two in the seventh then four more in the eighth, including this tworun double from alex bregman. Lawrence butler couldnt play it cleanly. The astros, they won it 92. The as record of 1924 now have lost seven of their last nine. Nfl, a marin county nay tuf got paid today. The Detroit Lions skeined quarterback jared goff to a fouryear extension reportedly worth 212 million with 170 million guaranteed. The Marin Catholic and cal alum became the highest paid player in lions franchise history. Pivot to the nba playoffs. Look out wedgie alert. Briefly halted game four dallas at Oklahoma City in white. What a comeback. A steal in the inbounds. Led to an easy bucket for jalen williams. Thunder came back from 14 and won it 10096. The celtics beat the cavaliers and lead in the east. Saint marys softball, the gaels won over the weekend to clinch a spot in the ncaa tournament for the First Time Since 2010. Saint marys will open up against eighthranked stanford in palo alto friday. Cal is also going to the tournament. They face Southern Illinois in their opener. College baseball. This one from the arizona utah game. Watch where mason whites blast ended. Okay, its a tworun homer for arizona but a dog eat chew toy for this pup. Look at. All these kids with baseball mitt, but its the dog, sara, that came up with it. After all, sara, it was a retriever. Eyes, paul loved that one too. Im sure he did. To that i say dog gone it. Dont go anywhere, vern, we need you for later. A public art installation turned experiment is drawing crowds. A screen in new york, another in dublin allowing people who walk in front of the cameras to see those in the other city. According to the bbc, the Dublin City Council said it would be making changes after reports of a man mooning and other inappropriate behavior. What did they think was going to happen . College is hard enough, but having your school absolutely botch your Graduation Ceremony as bad as one did on the east coast imagine you spend four years in college or, like, eight, nine. Six, seven. Waiting for the day to hear your name called on the graduation stage only to hear it totally botched, first, middle, and last. Thats what happened to students at Thomas Jefferson university in philadelphia last week. Listen. Alisuna cole beeshop. Sighyear brienone. Maybe lee zoo beth. Marlena subeth comp. To tamood may. Oh my gosh. The peanut gallery going, thomas. The groan after she read thomas name. So the issue was the speaker was reading the phonetic spellings off after flash cards, which even that is, you know, kind of a stretch. She eventually stopped and reset after someone pointed out the error. The school issued a heartfelt apology on social media. At first i thought, was she medicated . Is she having an episode . Its a nursing school. They could check quick. As someone who reads names ive never seen before, i feel for her, i do, but sometimes the lift the clouds off of. Virtual weather, only on kpix and pix . Liz neeley you know, youve probably heard it said that some people have to hit rock bottom before they really come to the lord and give him their life. Lift the clouds off of. And thats what happened. I probably had a lot of anxiety at that point about my future, but as i began to study the word and a lot of dr. Stanleys teachings and sermons, i began to realize that, through the love of jesus, god saved me for a purpose