No truth to the rumor that it's harder to get information out of UCSB than from the CIA.
Word on the street, however, says it's easier to obtain old text messages from the Secret Service than straight answers from Cheadle Hall.
That's the takeaway from our reporters' round-the-horn on this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, as Nick Welsh, Jade Martinez-Pogue and Josh Molina join the genial host to break down the strange story of Chancellor Henry Yang and the Gaucho Skateboarder Hit and Run.
For weeks, reporters from several local news organizations, not least the Daily Nexus, have tried doggedly to get to the bottom of allegations, made by a UCSB student, that the 81-year old Chancellor was behind the wheel, his wife in the passenger seat, when the undergrad was struck by a car while riding his skateboard last May - and left sprawled on the ground as the pair motored off without stopping.
For their trouble, the journos were met with a combination of stonewalling and non-denial denials from the university and UC HQ ((Yang "wants to respect the skateboarder’s report of what the skateboarder believed occurred," UCSB said at one point - huh?). The cloud of mystery and speculation surrounding the case was finally pierced this week, when two reporters working the story for the LA Times confirmed in a twisting tale that the CHP had investigated the Chancellor in the case but found no physical evidence of an accident on either of his cars.
Yang, on the advice of his lawyer, refused to speak with investigators, which came as a shock to the unfortunate skateboarder, who had picked him out of a photo lineup. Curiouser and curiouser.
In other news, controversial developer Ed St. George is back in the headlines, with a proposed annex to a hotel project that drew major brickbats from the Architecture Review Board while Funk Zone business owners look agog at a proposed new blockbuster project in "SoMo" (that's South of Montecito Street for those of us not au courant with real estate marketing tosh) and Gov. Gavin Newsom offers enviros a choice between perishing from climate change or a nuclear meltdown with his bid to recommission the decommissioned Diablo Canyon nuke plant.
Plus: The lib majority on the Board of Supervisors is all tingly over a new consultant's study offering a possible pathway to reducing the county jail population - and its budget line item - permanently. To the surprise of no one, Sheriff Bill Brown begs to differ.
It's all right here, right now on Newsmakers TV.
JR
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