The shooting was reported around 8:35 p.m. in the area of 1340 S. Beach Boulevard, near Imperial Highway, where a boy was found with gunshot wounds and died despite lifesaving efforts, according to a news release from the La Habra Police Department. A man was also shot and transported to UCI medical center, but the release did not state his condition.

Their exact ages were not immediately released.

Police did not identify a suspect in the release, but said there was no ongoing threat to the community. It wasn’t immediately clear whether a weapon was recovered at the scene, which is in the Westridge Plaza shopping center.

Authorities urged anyone with information to contact the La Habra Police Department at 562-383-4300.

The woman,  who has since been released from jail on $20,000 bail, is accused of abusing dogs at the facility on the 4500 block of East Eisenhower Circle, according to Sgt. Jonathan McClintock. He said it wasn’t immediately clear how many dogs were affected or what was done to them.

The facility, Dogtopia, has been in business for about seven years, one of its owners, Larry Hartjoy, said in a videotaped interview with a photojournalist Friday.

“After learning about animal abuse by an employee at our Anaheim Hills location, the owners of this center, including myself and my wife, contacted Orange County Animal Care,” Hartjoy told Brentt Sporn, the videographer. “We are devastated by these events … the employee was terminated.” The tape did not detail the alleged abuse.

Dogtopia is conducting an internal investigation, Hartjoy said, adding that “the dogs involved are doing well.”

“We thank and support the staff member at this location that reported this behavior to help ensure justice is served,” Hartjoy said. “Our thoughts are with the (dogs’) families at this time.”

Investigators were still working to put together a timeline of the alleged abuse as of Friday, McClintock said.

There may be additional dogs affected, McClintock said, urging pet owners with any relevant information to contact the Anaheim Police Department at 714-328-8153.

Anaheim residents Adrian Castaneda, 19, and Damian Ivan Mayorga, 18, as well as  Garden Grove resident Henry Diep Le, 19, are accused of fatally shooting Juan Cristalinas last June at the 7000 block of Lessue Avenue, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.

Cristalinas, who was 49 and lived in Santa Ana, had been trying to help a 76-year-old man who was apparently being beaten by a group of men demanding money, the release said. The 76-year-old man was also shot but survived.

It was not immediately clear whether the suspects knew any of the victims.

“Juan leaves behind three sons, a loving wife, and three beautiful grandchildren. He was a hardworking, loving man. He had two jobs and spent his weekends working on cars as a mechanic. He was the kind of person who always stood up for others and wasn’t scared of doing the right thing,” a GoFundMe set up for Cristalinas said.

Castaneda, Mayorga, and Le were all being held at Orange County Jail as of Thursday evening, according to jail records.

Bail was set at $1 million each. Le was due in court Thursday, while Castaneda and Mayorga were expected to appear Friday.

Pizza delivery driver killed, elderly man wounded in Stanton neighborhood

Annastasia Rose Beal’s voice rang out cheerfully as she stepped off of an electric skateboard one gloomy Wednesday afternoon and approached three men seated on a Santa Ana sidewalk at First and Lyon streets, with a blend of motels, other low-slung businesses and palm trees about.

Beal was doing what she often does: handing out for free the drug that can cancel out, in miraculous fashion, opioid overdoses.

In a crop top, sneakers and jean shorts, the 28-year-old Beal didn’t ask the men what drugs they may have been on. She didn’t ask if they were homeless. She did make light conversation and asked how she could help.

The three men turned into five. A woman across the street gazed at Beal’s wagon she had been towing — yes, behind her electric skateboard. It was stacked high with boxes of Narcan, water bottles, condoms, hygiene wipes, and electrolyte-drink mix packs. The woman crossed First and Beal waved her over and asked:

“What can I get you, my dear?”

The woman, about Beal’s age, took the proffered box that was the size of a palm. It held Narcan.

Beal had struggled with opiate addiction as a teenager in Irvine. “These are my people,” she said. Many of her friends from that time are dead.

Now is different. The drug is commonly called “Narcan,” which is actually the brand name of a device that dispenses naloxone like a nasal spray. The drug can also be injected into the muscle. Finally, it has become widely available and is considered a major weapon — but not the cure-all — in the fight against the opioid-overdose epidemic sweeping the country in part because of fentanyl, which can be lethal at just two milligrams.

The San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange and Los Angeles County sheriff’s departments now all carry naloxone. In 2021, for example, Orange County sheriff’s personnel gave 219 doses of naloxone to 117 people, said Carrie Braun, a spokesperson for the agency. Forty-six of them were in the jails, with the rest on the streets.

Last October, the Los Angeles Unified School District approved naloxone for every K-12 school. That month, the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved six $20,000 grants for the drug’s purchase by school districts. In January, a new law began requiring community colleges and Cal State campuses to keep the drug on hand, too. And in 2022, some state lawmakers started pushing for another law that would make libraries, bars, and gas stations stock up on naloxone.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved making naloxone nasal spray available over the counter. Soon, anyone at least age 18 will be allowed to buy it off of the shelf. For now, pharmacists can provide the drug without a furnished prescription, albeit once they’ve finished opioid-education requirements.

How much opioid settlement money is your county getting and will it help?

Beal distributes Narcan through her organization, the Irvine-based Harm Reduction Circle she started in 2021 with co-founders Emma Webb, Dylan Waller, and Hannah Halbers. Their group had to get state approval to hand out the drug.

Beal says she maintains meticulous records of her group’s distribution, keeping the nonprofit in the California Department of Health Care Services’ Naloxone Distribution Project, which delivers the drug by the pallet. Beal also trains people how to use the nasal spray, which is so easy to use, she said, that her 8-year-old daughter, Samantha, learned to do it.

In 2023 so far, Harm Reduction Circle has distributed more than 11,000 doses. In 2022, the group said Narcan it supplied reversed 170 overdoses. In the vast sea of approaches to the opioid epidemic, saving lives — not evangelizing on the dangers of drug use — is Beal’s focus.

“Everyone should be carrying Narcan,” she said.

♦ ♦ ♦

Naloxone’s cost can be a barrier to its success.

It’s about $140, on average, for a standard, two-dose pack of Narcan spray. The injection is $40 to $60. California is looking to partner with a manufacturer to produce affordable naloxone.

“Today’s market lacks access to a low-cost naloxone nasal spray and relying on the market to self-correct is uncertain, underscoring the need to support development, manufacturing, or procurement of a low-cost option,” Andrew DiLuccia, a spokesman for the state Department of Health Care Access and Information, said in an email.

Major national retailers, such as CVS and Walgreens, carry the drug as do many other pharmacies. But months after the FDA’s announcement, it’s unclear when consumers will actually be able to get the drug off of shelves as easily as grabbing Pepto Bismol or Advil.

Since the FDA’s March announcement, Andre Hanna, a pharmacist who owns Yee’s Pharmacy in Long Beach, said he has regularly checked with manufacturers and looked for FDA updates about when over-the-counter naloxone will be available.

“Once (FDA) approved it, I checked this right away to see if the wholesaler has it so I can get some,” Hanna said. “(But) no one knows anything, it’s not available anywhere.”

The FDA, in an email, casts the spotlight elsewhere when saying when naloxone will hit shelves: “The timeline for availability and price of this OTC (over-the-counter) product is determined by the manufacturer.”

Emergent BioSolutions, which makes Narcan, is “working toward a late summer launch this year,” spokesperson Assal Hellmer said in an email, without elaborating on what needs to first be done.

And without elaborating on what, if anything, is different about the naloxone that is available now and the product meant for shelves.

For now, Hanna has naloxone behind the counter, which he can furnish to those who don’t have a prescription if they are 18 or older. Also, doctors prescribe naloxone along with opioids for their patients as a safeguard, he said.

But Hanna wants to make it even easier for the public to get — from shelves out in the open. Last month, he went to a funeral for someone who suffered an opioid overdose.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ryan Marble, a 38-year-old security guard who lives in Santa Ana and works for a motel on First Street, regularly sees people using drugs. While at work, he said, he has administered naloxone at least three times. When Beal arrived that Wednesday, Marble happily accepted the Narcan.

“This isn’t going to fix it,” Marble said. “It’s putting a Band-Aid over it. Our government needs to do better.”

Matt Capelouto lost his 20-year-old daughter, Alexandra, to fentanyl.

An Arizona State student who aspired to become a social worker, she died in 2019 at their Temecula family home from an accidental opiate overdose. In Capelouto’s words, it was a poisoning — what Alexandra believed was an oxycodone pill, he said, turned out to be laced with fentanyl. In February, the 23-year-old Riverside man who sold her the pill was sentenced to federal prison.

“I will never say my daughter died of a drug overdose, my daughter was poisoned,” the father said. “She did not make a wise choice (but the) fact of the matter is this person sold her a counterfeit pill.”

Capelouto emphasized that he “110%” supports making naloxone accessible. But more needs to be done.

“For (myself and the) majority of parents that I speak with, all of our kids died by themselves,” he said. “There was nobody around to administer Narcan. So how do we address those deaths? People like to say we’re not going to arrest our way out of this, we’re not going to Narcan our way out of it, either.

“I do support it, but it’s not an end-all. And we need to have a wide variety of tools to help save the lives that are lost.”

Capelouto supports drug dealers getting charged with murder if someone dies from fentanyl poisoning their product caused. The stance has gained traction with some district attorneys.

Naloxone is not new. It was developed in the 1960s and gained FDA approval in 1971; in subsequent decades, it was primarily used by first responders and hospitals. No longer.

Dr. Sid Puri, a substance-abuse expert with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said he disagreed with any notion that making naloxone widely accessible is somehow enabling drug use.

“If someone was coming into my office, and they have really, really high sugars, my first instinct isn’t, ‘Go out and eat better and exercise before I give you medication or any treatment to reduce your diabetes,’ it’s, ‘I’m giving you medication, I’m giving you something to reduce the risk and to help you in your current situation,’ ” Puri said.

“And that same way, someone struggling with substance-use disorder needs naloxone (or) they need sterile supplies because that reduces overdoses and deaths and disease transmission.”

Puri said the over-the-counter approval is “huge” — it normalizes naloxone in everyday places.

“When we think of the way that people have to get naloxone now, they have to get prescribed or they have to go into a pharmacy, they (may) have to give their ID and insurance card,” the medical doctor said. “All those are barriers, especially for people who are experiencing homelessness, or who are using drugs and feel completely stigmatized by the medical and pharmaceutical industry anyway.”

Naloxone, Puri added, has no known harmful side effects and isn’t addictive; the only downside is the user could go through withdrawals. If someone is given naloxone and they aren’t on opioids, it has no effect.

For those on an opioid, naloxone reverses the effect. It can restore normal breathing in two or three minutes. Multiple doses may be needed if a more potent opioid such as fentanyl has been ingested, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Naloxone lasts 30 to 90 minutes in the body. Opioids can stay in the system longer — another reason additional doses may be required.

Administering naloxone is covered under California’s Good Samaritan Law, which protects those who act in good faith to assist someone during a medical emergency.

“If people are alive, we can at least link them to treatment services, we can understand their goals and help them, reach them in a safe and effective way,” Puri said. “The dam is broken, and we are watching this wave wash over us. But naloxone is a lifejacket for a lot of people that would otherwise just completely die and drown. So I think this is a step in something.”

♦ ♦ ♦

After an hour on the streets, Beal meandered along First on her way to Grand Avenue, her first turn on her way home to Irvine on her electric skateboard.

She has bigger plans for Harm Reduction Circle. The group has started providing free meals on certain days, distributing naloxone then and at events such as concerts and festivals and on college campuses.

A few more people popped up as she walked. One man she gave a pack of M&M’s. Another woman chatted with Beal for 10 minutes and took a box of Narcan before heading off to a bus stop.

Beal hopped off of her electric skateboard intermittently, leaving boxes of Narcan on a bench, on the top of a trash can, on a curb, and near some bushes.

She hopes whoever needs it, finds it.

Jayson Otto was driving a vehicle carrying three passengers when it crashed into concrete barricades at Westminster Boulevard and Rancho Road on Dec. 6, according to a Saturday news release from the Westminster Police Department. Jayda Jean Feeney, an 18-year-old from Huntington Beach, died at the scene; two other passengers, aged 16 and 17, received medical treatment, police said.

Drugs or alcohol are thought to have caused the crash, the release said, adding that Otto was taken into custody and booked into Orange County Jail.

As of Saturday, Otto had posted in bond and been released from jail. It was not immediately clear when he was next due in court.

A GoFundMe page set up for Feeney said she was a senior in high school and had celebrated her 18th birthday less than a month before the crash.

“Jayda was wickedly smart, energetic and had a laugh that would cause you to burst into laughter yourself,” the page said.

Hikers discovered the remains around 10 a.m., the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. Positive identification of the remains is set for next week, the alert added.

It was not immediately known whether the remains belong to actor Julian Sands, 65, who went missing in January in the Mt. Baldy area.

Another search for the actor occurred June 17, but did not yield any findings.

“We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer,” Sands’ family said in a statement following the latest search.

Sands, of North Hollywood, was reported missing in the Baldy Bowl area on Jan. 13, officials have said. He had been hiking alone at the time of his disappearance.

Brandy Escamilla, 29, hailed from Norwalk; Josilyn Ruiz, 26, was from Walnut, according to the Los Angeles-based firm, Panish Shea Boyle Ravipudi LLP. They got engaged last January and had relocated to Seattle over a year ago, the firm said, adding that both women were nurses.

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Escamilla and Ruiz were shot by a 26-year-old man who opened fire Saturday night near the Gorge Amphitheatre, a venue about 150 miles east of Seattle, during the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival, authorities said.

Three other people were injured in the shooting. The shooter is an active member of the U.S. Army and has been taken into custody.

Kevin Boyle, an attorney for the families, is in the early stages of investigating the shooting but no lawsuit has been filed as of Wednesday, June 21, the firm said. The firm is also working to uncover how a gun made its way into the venue.

“The families of the victims are suffering intensely. They are not litigious people, and they are not after money, but they do want to know why this happened and how it can be prevented in the future,” Boyle said in a statement.

In a GoFundMe page, Escamilla was remembered as “the kind of person that would light up a room with her energy and her beautiful smile.” Ruiz was memorialized in a separate GoFundMe as “bubbly and full of joy” with a “brave heart.”

The blaze broke out at the 5300 block of Walnut Avenue shortly after 6 p.m., according to Orange County Fire Authority spokesperson Capt. Thanh Nguyen. No injuries were reported, Nguyen said.

The cause of the fire remains unknown, and a crew of 43 was required to knock it down, the OCFA said.

Westbound Walnut Avenue was closed at Jeffrey Road while firefighters worked on the blaze, Irvine Police said in a Tweet around 7 p.m., adding that part of the shopping center was shut down.

Phoenix resident Aristeo Martinez was arrested on suspicion of killing Deonte Lenin, 32, who was found dead from a gunshot wound in the Gardenwalk parking structure in the early hours of May 21, according to a news release from the Anaheim Police Department.

It was not immediately clear if Martinez and Lenin knew each other.

Another victim, a 21-year-old from Arizona named Elian Arvayo, was found dead from a gunshot wound nearby, but the news release did not say if Martinez has been arrested in connection with Arvayo’s death, as well.

As of Friday, Martinez was being held at Maricopa County jail in lieu of $1 million bail, pending extradition proceedings, the release said.

Waves were expected to be 4-7 feet and reach up to 8 feet at Orange County beaches, according to the NWS, which warned of dangerous swimming and surfing conditions.

Minor flooding was expected due to the high tide; by Wednesday evening, some flooding had popped up near the Seal Beach Pier.

On social media, the Seal Beach Police Department on Wednesday night said there was a high tide advisory in Old Town between 10th Street and 12th Street.

Public Works and lifeguard crews were aware of the situation, police said.

The surf is expected to be highest Thursday evening, with high tide around 6 feet at 9 p.m. in Orange County, the NWS added.

The NWS first issued a warning around 2 p.m. Wednesday for high tides hitting large swathes of Southern California, including the Catalina and Santa Barbara islands and Ventura and Los Angeles county beaches.

For LA County beaches, the warning concerned the risk of rip currents, ocean drowning and enhanced beach erosion. High tides were expected between 8 and 10 p.m. Thursday at 6.4 to 6.8 feet.