Kendall Jamison Clark, 26, of Murrieta admitted the felony charges under a plea agreement with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. In exchange for his admissions, prosecutors agreed to drop 25 related counts against Clark.

The plea deal was reached Thursday during a status hearing before Superior Court Judge Judith Clark — no relation to the defendant — who scheduled a sentencing hearing for Oct. 21 at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta. She permitted Clark to remain free on the $250,000 bond that he posted soon after his arrest in October 2023.

His co-defendant, 48-year-old Gabriel Dean Watters of San Diego, is also free on bail and is slated to appear at the Murrieta courthouse for a felony settlement conference on April 4. Watters is charged with nearly a dozen felony offenses, including embezzlement, auto theft and possession of stolen property, as well as a sentence-enhancing white collar crime allegation.

Prosecutors allege Clark engaged multiple owners of luxury vehicles countywide, who rented the pricey rides to him and never saw them again.

“When the owners tried to report the vehicles as stolen, they learned their names had been taken off the titles,” according to a District Attorney’s Office statement.

“Investigators discovered Watters was buying the stolen cars from Clark at prices substantially lower than their real value,” the agency stated. “Watters would meet … Clark at locations throughout Riverside County, pay him for a group of cars and then take the cars to other locations, including Mexico, where he would attempt to sell them again.”

Among the stolen autos: a 2021 Lamborghini Aventador and 2022 Urus, along with a 2021 Porsche Boxter and a 2022 Tesla Model Y.

Personnel from the county’s Auto-Theft Interdiction Detail, a multi- agency task force that focuses on deterring and apprehending car thieves, caught onto the scheme in September 2023, culminating in Clark’s arrest weeks later.

Court records show he had prior convictions for statutory rape and lewd acts.

Watters was taken into custody on Nov. 27, 2023, at San Diego International Airport. He has no documented prior felony or misdemeanor convictions in Riverside County.

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Adam Slater, 53, is charged with felony counts of murder, attempted murder, assault on a child under 8 years old resulting in death, assault with a deadly weapon and child concealing, and one misdemeanor count of resisting arrest.

He also faces a special circumstance allegation of committing a murder during the commission of a kidnapping, which makes him eligible for the death penalty if the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office decides to pursue it, and a sentence-enhancing allegation of using a knife in the commission of a murder.

The defendant’s trial is scheduled to begin on Jan. 24, according to case records.

Slater was arrested May 7, 2020 in connection with a spate of alleged crimes the previous day that culminated in a rollover crash on Highway 74 near Pinyon Crest, where he allegedly threw his daughter over “a steep cliff into a ravine,” according to sheriff’s Sgt. Ben Ramirez.

Slater remains jailed without bail at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facilty in Banning.

According to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, the series of events on May 6, 2020, began about 14 miles from the crash site in the 41000 block of Washington Street, outside the Southwest Community Church in Indian Wells, where deputies responded to a stabbing call at about 8:30 a.m. that was described as a “domestic violence incident.”

Deputies located an injured woman who was taken to a hospital with multiple stab wounds.
Slater and the woman — who was six months pregnant at the time of the attack — were married, and the year-old daughter was theirs together, officials said.

Following the attack, Slater allegedly sped away in a vehicle with the child. Deputies learned soon afterward that a rollover crash reported on Highway 74 around six miles south of Palm Desert could be connected to the original call.

According to sheriff’s officials, passing motorists attempted to help Slater and his daughter escape the wreckage, but he allegedly stabbed one man attempting to help rescue his daughter.

“The suspect then took the girl from the arms of the male he stabbed. Multiple witnesses saw the suspect take the child and throw her over a steep cliff into a ravine,” according to a sheriff’s department statement.

California Highway Patrol Officer Graham Aanestad testified during a preliminary hearing that he searched the area at the bottom of the cliff and saw hair peaking out from a pile of rocks. The child was found there, and pronounced dead at the scene.

It was unclear if she was already dead prior to being thrown off the cliff. But Investigator Dario Hernandez with the sheriff’s Central Homicide Unit testified that an autopsy determined her cause of death was multiple stab wounds to the chest.

“The injuries to the chest were consistent with an injury possibly from a knife or some sort of object,” Hernandez said.

After allegedly throwing the girl, Slater ran down into a canyon, where deputies detained him after a short foot chase, and he was taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries connected to the crash, authorities said. Slater was discharged from the hospital the next day and arrested shortly afterward.

It was unclear if the man he allegedly stabbed required medical treatment.

Slater was in violation of the terms of his parole, according to California’s Megan’s Law website.

He was convicted in 1995 of sexually penetrating a victim with a foreign object by force and served about two years in state prison before being released in 1997.

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Proponents, including law enforcement organizations and major retailers, say the law would help reduce rampant retail theft and tackle homelessness. But opponents point out that not only does the measure lack funding for drug treatment and shelter efforts, it actually could end up taking money away from those services in order to fund increased prison and judicial costs.

The measure, dubbed the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, on Tuesday was cleared by state officials to appear on the Nov. 5 ballot after organizers gathered the required number of signatures.

If approved by voters, the measure would roll back some of the changes made by Proposition 47, which reclassified certain felonies as misdemeanors. Most notably, the 2014 law made theft and other property crimes under $950, as well as the personal use of most illegal drugs misdemeanors.

While violent and property crimes have increased statewide since 2020, they remain relatively low compared other the 1980s and 1990s, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Critics of Prop. 47 blame the measure for increasing crime and a host of other issues, despite a lack of conclusive data proving that correlation.

“Our homelessness problem is directly connected to these unintended consequences of Proposition 47, which the voters now desire to correct,” reads the new measure.

The measure would allow for felony charges to be filed against those who commit thefts under $950 as well as for possessing certain drugs, including fentanyl, in cases where the suspect has two prior drug or two prior theft convictions.

Currently, such cases can only be prosecuted as misdemeanors.

Defendants who plead guilty to felony drug possession and complete treatment could have their charges dismissed under the measure.

The measure has earned strong support from the state’s top retailers, including Walmart, Target, Home Depot and 7-Eleven, who are among the campaign’s major funders, Bloomberg reported.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and the state associations of police chiefs and prosecutors are also among the effort’s backers.

“The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act will make targeted but impactful changes to our laws around fentanyl and help us tackle the chronic retail theft that hurts our retailers, our workers, and our cities. I fully support this measure and know it will make a meaningful difference for cities across California,” reads a quote from Breed on the campaign’s website.

But critics say the bill’s targeting of Prop. 47 is overly simplistic at best.

“We have to dispense with this simplistic narrative that reforms are what caused the crime and the crime is what causes all of the retail problems that the retail establishments are reporting,” said Charis Kubrin, a professor of Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine told the Sacramento Bee.

Additionally, an analysis of the measure by state officials found that increased sentences and incarceration may cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars. And to pay for it, the state might have to reduce spending on mental health and substance abuse services, truancy and dropout prevention and victim services, based on requirements in current law.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and other lawmakers oppose the measure in favor of their own competing bill package, arguing that concerns about retail theft can be addressed without altering Prop. 47,the Bee reported.

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PERRIS, CA — A Menifee teen was facing felony charges after leading a weekend police chase through the Perris area in an off-road vehicle.

Shortly after 2 p.m. Saturday, the 16-year-old boy, whose name was not released due to his age, was spotted driving a Polaris RZR on a public street with an underage passenger.

Deputies from the Perris Sheriff’s Station tried to pull him over, but instead of stopping the teen “sped away and drove recklessly … endangering other drivers,” the sheriff’s department reported.

Deputies chased the off-road vehicle through Romoland, Nuevo and Lakeview, and finally corraled the teen and his passenger in the hills near Foothill and Orange avenues, just south of Lake Perris, the agency said.

The passenger was taken into custody but later released to his parents. The driver, however, was booked into juvenile hall on suspicion of two counts of felony evading and one count of reckless driving, according to the sheriff’s department.

“The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Perris are dedicated to the safety of everyone, including community members driving on/off the streets. Additionally, we would like to remind our community members that operating an OHV on [a] public street is not only illegal but it can also be dangerous,” the law enforcement agency said.

Visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/ivm/ or http://ohv.parks.ca.gov/ for legal off-road locations across the region. For additional information regarding OHV access spots, contact the Perris Sheriff’s Station at 951-210-1000.

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A staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force Reserve from Texas was arrested Wednesday on felony charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, where authorities say he pushed and grabbed police officers and called one officer a “traitor.”

Kyle Douglas McMahan, 41, of Watauga, was taken into custody in Dallas nearly three years after authorities say he joined the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat with “God” written on it in black marker.

After the riot, his Google search history included: “Can I resign from the military if I do not want to serve an illegitimate president?” and “capitol terrorists identified,” according to court papers.

He faces felony charges of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and obstruction of law enforcement, as well as additional misdemeanor offenses.

There was no lawyer immediately named in the court docket. The voice mailbox was full for a number listed for McMahan and a person who answered the phone at a number listed for a relative declined to comment.

The Air Force Reserve Command said in an emailed statement that McMahan is reservist at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas. McMahan is a staff sergeant in the 301st Fighter Wing medical squadron and a traditional reservist who is not actively participating in the unit, the command said.

Authorities say McMahan was seen on camera pushing back and forth against an officer outside a Capitol door before going into the building. During another encounter with law enforcement inside, prosecutors say he attempted to swat at an officer and grabbed an officer’s fingers, appearing to crush them in his hand.

Before he left the Capitol, he was captured on video telling one officer: “You’re a traitor,” according to court papers. Later that day, he was seen outside the Capitol wearing a green ballistics helmet and carrying an American flag.

Authorities say McMahan boasted on social media about being at the riot, writing: “For those that think we went in because of Trump is uninformed. We the people are the ones that need to rid our government of corruption, abuse and tyranny!”

He is among roughly 1,200 people who have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot that left dozens of police officers injured and halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. Those charged include dozens of former and active duty military or members of the reserve.

Nearly 900 defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted by a judge or jury after trials. Over 700 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving prison sentences ranging from three days to 22 years.

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