North County Times from Oceanside, California • 4

North County Timfs A-4 WEDNESDAY, Aruii 2, 1W (O) SHOOTOUT Continued from A 1 GUNS Continued from A1 Cult inspires first copycat suicide S.D. county suicides Total 333 344 370 33S 339 with them, Lipscomb said. The suspect was white, appeared to be middle-aged, more than 6 feet tall and more than 200 pounds. He wore a flannel shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots. He lay on his left side mortally wounded as police canvassed the area.

More than 20 CHP and sheriffs personnel were involved in the investigation that lasted hours into the night. It went on during a torrential downpour and hailstorm, forcing investigators to put a canopy over the body. Lipscomb said the suspects identity would be released after his family is notified. Breans bullet wound marked the first time a CHP officer has been shot in San Diego County since 1995, when Officer Steven Ussher was wounded in a shootout with a bank robber on a rural stretch of Interstate 15 near Champagne Boulevard. before me," said Yuba County Undersheriff Gary Finch.

The purple cloth and plastic bag are trademarks of the Rancho Santa Fe deaths. Victims of the largest mass suicide in U.S. history were covered with purple shrouds and in addition to ingesting a mixture of drugs and vodka, asphyxiated themselves with plastic bags. But unlike the cultists who all wore black and had short-cropped hair, Nichols was found clad in a blue and white T-shirt and blue briefs, had a beard and shoulder-length hair. Nichols was not believed to be a member of Heavens Gate.

San Diego sheriffs investigators have said all 39 members, whose bodies were discovered March 26, were all of the cults current members. Betty Reinhardt, program manager for the Crisis Team of San Diego County, said a weekly meeting of representatives from the countys governmental and nonprofit mental health agencies Tuesday included a discussion of the Marysville suicide. The Crisis Team is a private, nonprofit agency that operates the countys suicide hot line, whose number is (800) 479-3339. We want to really put the word out that there are ways to deal with it, Reinhardt said. Call the crisis team, and if you think there is imminent danger, call 911.

Those law enforcement people are more responsive and compassionate than people think. Sheriffs Department spokesman Ron Reina said his department had not responded to any suicide calls in the departments jurisdiction copying Heavens Gate. miles east of Ramona, Lipscomb said. After brief words with the officer, the man jumped into his pickup and led two CUP cars on a winding pursuit west on Highway 78, Lipscomb said. The sheriffs deputy joined the chase before the suspect made a U-turn near Rancho Santa Teresa Road and headed east on Highway 78 for about one mile.

He turned into Embly Egg Ranch, drove a half-mile to a point next to the west side of the Embly warehouse and stopped at a fork in the gravel roadway, Lipscomb said. He got out and started running, Lipscomb said. Officers tackled the man after a short chase, and he began scuffling HUBBELL Continued from At in the effort to help Hubbell. Investigators for the Whitewater counsel as well as congressional committees are now trying to determine whether any of the income Hubbell received in 1994 after resigning was part of an effort to discourage him from cooperating with investigators. After his resignation as associate attorney general, Hubbell faced mounting debts and legal ONOFRE Continued from At out of service more than 120 days to repair leaks and plug cracked tubes in its two steam generators.

The first leak occurred in a plug that had been installed in a steam-generator tube during a previous outage. The second was in a device that maintains pressure on the reactors primary water loop, and the third came from the seal around a passageway into a steam generator. Each leak was found during preparations to return to power, and required notification to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and state and local agencies. Our perspective on it has to be that these were events isolated from each other, said NRC spokesman Mark Hammond. We feel their staff responded promptly and appropriately to each of these events.

The most significant discovery was the more than 250 cracked tubes in the reactors steam generators. Steam generators are vessels where heat is transferred from the pressurized loop that goes through the reactor to a secondary loop of water that turns to steam and spins the turbines that create electricity. Degradation of steam generators, caused by the intense heat and pressure of the operating system, has been common to pres-surized-water reactors throughout the United States. It continues to be a very significant concern in the industry, More than at any time in the last four years, City Council members see Oceansides future tied directly to whether it can develop its economy, particularly downtown. Without specific goals and a time line for their progress, the council cannot expect to hold city officials accountable, Johnson, McCauley and Harding agree.

I think we have to set goals for our top management, Harding said. We have a window now, and people are saying if we dont do it now, well never do it. Wilson, who has been city manager since mid-1993, said the council should shoot high and hold city management accountable. The council already has set general goals for economic prosperity in its new strategic plan for economic development. Its recent decision to preserve land in east Oceanside for industrial development made a dramatic statement about how it wants the city to grow economically, Wilson said.

The city is growing economically, the city manager added. A Wal-Mart-anchored shopping center at the east end of town and a new one under construction at Jefferson Street and Highway 78 are enormous accomplishments, Wilson said. A remodeled Ralphs supermarket, a new Boneys Market, a new blockbuster Video store and requests. Suicide-prevention experts, fearing more copycat deaths, reacted to news of a Northern California man who killed himself wearing a purple scarf and using a plastic bag. He left a note saying he hoped to join members of the Heavens Gate cult on a spaceship they believed was tailing the Hale-Bopp comet and would take them to a higher evolutionary level.

The owner of the Rancho Santa Fe mansion where the cult members had lived since October, Sam Koutchesfahani, gave his first interview since the bodies were discovered March 26. He said he felt partially responsible. Twenty-three families have contacted local mortuaries to make funeral arrangements for shipping home the bodies of cult members. The victims of the largest mass suicide in U.S. history came from eight states and Washington, D.C.

The New York Times reported a possible Biblical significance to the number 39: three plus nine equals 12, the number of Christs disciples. And while the Sheriffs Department continues to say there are no other surviving current members of the cult, the newspaper quoted former cultists refuting that, adding that those others may kill themselves to join their brethren. The bodies were discovered in Rancho Santa Fe on March 26, a day after former cult member Richard Ford received word of the long-planned suicide in two videotapes and a note sent by the group. The cult members died in three waves aided by two of their own, who were nurses after ingesting a mixture of pheno-barbital and vodka and asphyxiating themselves with plastic bags. The two nurses, Susan Strom, 44, and Julie LaMontagne, 45, also had Vicodin in their systems.

They were the last to die, authorities said. With the discovery of the guns Tuesday, yet another question was added to the bizarre case: Why would an apparently peaceful, UFO-tracking, comet-chasing group stash guns in storage lockers? Authorities last week disclosed they found a 9mm handgun inside a duffel bag found near one of the victims. Maybe they thought someone was going to be bad to them, a ranking sheriffs official said. Maybe (the guns) were for the bad aliens. In its Internet ramblings, the cult of World Wide Web page designers wrote about Luciferians, a group of fallen angels that control humans.

It also took out a $1 million insurance policy in Octo- HEPATITIS Continued from At Angeles. The U.S. Public Health Sendee notified the district that frozen fruit cups made with strawberries and blueberries distributed by the federal Department of Agri- PADRES Continued from At Opening Day, baseball is a business. Continuing construction on the trolley stop and the stadium expansion robbed the parking lot of some 2,000 spaces, causing the entrances of the lot to be shut down about half an hour before game time. Latecomers among the 43,005 who attended the 14th Opening Day sellout in Padre history were directed to overflow lots.

Inside the lot, a steady stream of cars wove between Penas grill and the guests. But Penas irrepressible good humor kept the food line moving, a cold drink in every other hand and the peaceful coexistence of barbecue smoke and tailpipe exhaust. Pena greeted friends old and new. Are you with us? he asked some Pena Padre Party first-timers, looking for their name tags. Mostly, though, he caught up with friends from work or the service clubs to which he belongs.

We like to get together because we dont get to see a lot of each other all year, he said. Its not often that 180 friends all get sick or take vacation time the same day. Anne Marie Urru-tia orDel Cerro said she 1 tA not seen some of the other guests DON STANZIANO North County Tiwts The idea of copycat suicides in the wake of Heavens Gate scares county mental health officials so much that they dont even want to talk about it. After a Northern California mans body was discovered Monday with a note indicating he had killed himself to join the 39 members of the Heavens Gate cult who committed suicide last week in Rancho Santa Fe, local mental health professionals said Tuesday theres a real threat of others doing the same thing. A spokeswoman with the countys Department of Mental Health Services declined comment Tuesday saying she feared more publicity of the copycat incident in Marysville could lead to similar acts.

Robert Leon Nichols, 58, was found dead Monday morning by a friend in his trailer home in a canyon near Marysville. He was lying on his back with a plastic bag over his head, the hose to a propane tank under the bag, and a 3-by-3-foot multihued purple scarf covering his upper body. A suicide note dated March 27 said: Im going on the spaceship with Hale-Bopp to be with those who have gone ber for each member insuring them against alien abduction, impregnation or being killed by aliens. The cult urged others to rise to a Level Above Human, but the guns seemed out of character. Other items removed from the 10-by-10-foot storage units included bunk-bed hardware, mattresses, a washer and dryer, sleeping bags, exercise equipment, computer disks, empty computer boxes and boxes of videotapes, said Kent Schirmer, chief of the property division of the Public Administrators Office.

It seems as if there was a library of their organization, he said. The tapes seem to contain the same information as a book posted on the Internet written by the cult. The manager of the storage facility declined comment, and culture might be contaminated, said Los Angeles school district spokesman Patrick Spencer. This is surplus food coming from USDA. Apparently it went to a number of states, Spencer said.

Tom Amontree, communications director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, said that as a precaution the since Penas last barbecue in 1994. She wouldnt have made it away from her job as a prosecutor for the District Attorneys Office if her opposing defense attorney hadnt called in sick. Urrutia guessed that the attorney was elsewhere in the parking lot. Del Mar attorney Jim Spievak gave clients with whom he was doing legal work on a merger an early Tuesday morning deadline before putting everything on hold for April 1.

Opening Day comes first. Inside, there were superficial changes: gray slabs of concrete on the unfinished loge level, new outfield sections wrapping around the east end of the stadium almost to the scoreboard, the pitchers board that reported Joey Hamiltons first pitch as a 94-mph fastball, and the Western Division Champions flag that flew on the centerfield flagpole. On the heels of the Padres playoff appearance, a feel-good optimism took hold of Opening Day 1997. The stadium might have a new name, it might take longer to park, but it was still baseball in April. Some made light of the construction with plastic hard hats with Padres logos.

But at game time, everything was business, and Assistant StadiiKn Manager Bill Wi'nn was surprisingly calm. Females hi 93 91 73 S3 Year '91 '92 '93 '94 '95 California suicides Total 3.763 3,700 3.H1H 3.690 3.823 Females 84 6 900 sis sis 1 S24 Year '91 '92 '93 '94 '95 Total 31,142 30,892 U.S. suicides Year 94 '95 Sources National Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services MARK THORNHILL NORTH COUN I 1 IMks Homicide Lt. Jerry Lipscomb said the department received a tip about a cult in the South contemplating another mass suicide and passed that information on to the FBL Reinhardt said the countys suicide experts have no plan to prevent copycats, but said county residents are no more likely to mimic Heavens Gate cultists than anyone else in the world. Staff writers Randy Dotlnga and Tim O'Hara and The Associated Press contnbuted to this report.

The final relative to be contacted was Peases aunt. Ruby Pease, 89, of New York called the Medical Examiners Office about 8 p.m. Monday. Hours earlier at a news conference, the office issued a worldwide plea asking for any relatives step forward. Authorities did not confirm the notification until the following morning.

Also as a result of the news conference, the family of Alphon-zo Ricardo Foster, 44, contacted the office to confirm Fosters identification. Despite almost nonstop media coverage of the suicides, Fosters sisters, Juanita and Felicia, and brothers, Jose and Ramon, were all living right here in San Diego and had no idea he belonged to the cult, authorities said. They hadnt heard from him in two decades. We are in the process of conducting an investigation and a recall, said Randy Wykoff, associate commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. At this point we are also looking into where else these lots might have gone.

Clearly some of the product went to school lunch programs and some went into commercial distribution. COUNCIL Continued from A 1 complex downtown to open next spring, a major five star hotel above the Oceanside Municipal Pier open for business in two years and a revitalized downtown just like downtown San Diego in three years. The councilman also expects the citys harbor to be commercially successful, and some type of car mall akin to Car Country Carlsbad to be built, preferably in the San Luis Rey River Valley. We talk in generalities, Johnson said of the councils commitment so far to boosting Oceansides economy. We have not given (City Manager Tom Wilson) a list of goals and objectives with a time line to achieve them.

Harding and McCauley agree that Wilson and his staffers be given specific objectives, but they both doubted that a major downtown hotel could open in two years. Johnson, on the other hand, appears willing to stake his political future on it. If we cannot get a major hotel built along our waterfront in the next two to three years, I think the whole council, the city manager and the redevelopment director should be firedfjind replaced, he said. problems growing out of his disputes with his former law firm, and he was emerging as an important witness in the Whitewater investigation. By the end of 1994, he had pleaded guilty to two felony fraud and tax charges arising out of his bilking his former law firm and clients of almost $400,000.

Hubbell was hired by three businesses as a result, at least in part, of McLartys intervention, though some of the other efforts did not result in any employment, White House aides and associates of Hubbell said. Hammond said. Only time will tell how the tubes wifi bear continued pressure. Both the utilities and the NRC look at that issue very closely. The danger comes if one of the tubes ruptures, he said.

A single rupture could release large amounts of radioactive water within the reactors containment dome. Inspections of Unit 3s two steam generators will take a top priority when it is taken out of service April 12 for a refueling and maintenance outage scheduled to last 75 days, said plant spokesman Golden. We will be looking closely, as we always do in every outage, he said. Though San Onofres Units 2 and 3 are virtually identical, theres no way to know how many tubes may have to be plugged in Unit 3 until the reactor is shut down and the steam generators can be inspected. Refueling outages can be much shorter when all goes well.

The Palo Verde plant in Arizona recently completed a 37-day refueling outage, setting a national record for pressurized-water reactors built by the same contractor as those at San Onofre. Southern California Edison Co. owns 75 percent of San Onofres Units 2 and 3 and is the sole operator of the power plant. San Diego Gas Electric Co. owns 20 percent of the plant, and the cities of Riverside and Anaheim own small percentages.

The reactors first went on line in the early 1980s. The Unit 1 reactor at San Onofre, built in the 1960s, was taken out of service permanently in November 1992. other new retailers along Ocean-side Boulevard at Interstate 5 reflect more progress. A new Saturn car dealership opening in May at the citys former Surfside Nissan dealership also shows promise, he said. And, Wilson said, the city has cleaned up downtown, cleared a contaminated site for an affordable-housing project and opened a successful restaurant at the end of the pier.

When you put it all together, wreve hit the ball a lot more times than weve missed it, Wilson said. Downtowns image is still tarnished by large, vacant lots that lie dormant. A San Diego-based developer has proposed building a theater complex at Coast Highway and Mission Avenue, but a failed deal in late 1995 to bring Marriott time-share units has left other lots along Pacific Street empty. I think the redevelopment area has been a total and complete mess, Harding said. The council is scheduled to meet in a special session sometime this month to set its own goals for the future.

That meeting should include the councils specific objectives for city management, Johnson said. I want the council to come together as a working council to show some leadership, some and some vision, he said. would not say which member of the group rented the facility or how long items have been stored there. Sheriffs officials also would not say. Homicide Lt.

Jerry Lipscomb said detectives received word about the facility manager Monday evening and obtained a search warrant before arriving there Tuesday. Except the guns, the items were taken to the county Public Administrators warehouse at 5201 Ruffin Road in Kearny Mesa. Cult members belongings, including videotapes, from the 18241 Colina Norte mansion also are being held there until claimed by relatives or sold at public auction. The guns will be tested to see if they had recently been fired. As authorities dealt with the guns Tuesday, relatives continued to make funeral arrangements.

department instructed 17 states to put a hold on frozen strawberries. They got strawberries from the same company. He did not have the complete list of those states. However, other federal agencies indicated the fruit may also have been delivered to schools in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois; Iowa and Tennessee. S' TT 5 I i VA fV 11' DAVID CARLSON North County Times Shaun Benoit of Rancho Penasqui-tos, left, and Tony Huntley of Pacific Beach wear their Wally World outfits Tuesday In honor of Padres first baseman Wally Joyner.

The biggest concern I had was when 500 toilets flush at the same time, does (the system) have the capacity? Wilson said. Is it going to clear? After a few snaked sewer lines and the throwing of a few forgotten power switches, te stadium functioned after all..