On Feb. 15, 20-year-old San Jose resident Joshua Sodapop Bocanegra was arrested in San Francisco and 20-year-old Gilroy resident Michael Carabajal was arrested in Gilroy, San Jose police Officer Tanya Hernandez said in a news release.

The suspects were booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail on murder charges.

Gunshots were reported around 4:20 a.m. on Dec. 17 in the area of Snow and Giusti drives. Hernandez said officers arrived to find evidence of a shooting but no victims.

A short time later, two men arrived at an area hospital suffering from at least one gunshot wound each, Hernandez said. One died of his injuries while the other survived. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office will release the identity of the man who died once it is confirmed and his next of kin is notified.

The death marked the city’s 33rd homicide of 2023.

Hernandez said detectives went on to identify Bocanegra and Carabajal as suspects in the case and obtained warrants for their arrest. Police did not release a motive for the shooting.

Anyone with information related to the case can contact Detective Sgt. Martinez at 3934@sanjoseca.gov, Detective Jize at 4324@sanjoseca.gov or both at 408-277-5283.

Tips can also be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or www.siliconvalleycrimestoppers.org.

Check back for updates.

Instead, Castro is facing a felony child endangerment charge, which requires no malice or willful intent.

“He’s not charged with any intentional homicide, and he’s not accused of not loving his baby,” Deputy District Attorney Maria Gershenovich said in her closing argument. “What he is accused of is that after he was entrusted by CPS and others to take care of Phoenix, this 3-month-old infant … (he) kept her in a home that was so toxic and dangerous it actually killed her.”

After listening to three days of prosecution witnesses, including a toxicologist who found fentanyl and methamphetamine in the baby’s blood and police detectives who found the same drugs in Castro’s San Jose apartment, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Paul Bernal ruled there was “sufficient cause to believe he’s guilty of that crime.” He also denied a defense request to release Castro from jail while he awaits trial. An arraignment is scheduled for March 11. If convicted of child endangerment and other enhancements, he could face up to 10 years in prison.

The arrest and prosecution of Castro comes amid a surge in fentanyl deaths across the Bay Area, including five infants since 2020. Dr. Mehdi Koolaee, the Santa Clara County coroner who conducted the autopsy on the infant, testified that he had never before seen fentanyl or methamphetamine in a baby.

Unanswered is how baby Phoenix ingested the fentanyl. During the preliminary hearing, neither Koolaee nor the prosecutor explained her manner of death, only that the crime lab had found fentanyl on various discolored parts of her little pink onesie, including on the snaps.

San Jose Police Det. Mike Harrington testified Thursday that Castro tested negative for drugs on the day of baby Phoenix’s death. But in a video of police interrogating Castro, he admitted that he knew how to game the system to pass drug tests for social workers while he had custody of the baby. Sometime he would stop using days before a scheduled test or use undetectable amounts.

The baby’s May 13, 2023, death, and the coroner’s ruling that she died of a fentanyl overdose, led not only to Castro’s arrest but to intense scrutiny of the Santa Clara County’s Department of Family and Children’s Services. An investigation by the Bay Area News Group late last year found that the child welfare agency sent Phoenix home despite the parents’ history of drug addiction and warnings from a social worker that the home environment could be life threatening. Phoenix’s two older siblings, now 3 and 5, were taken away by the child welfare agency a year earlier because of severe neglect — and the parents had done little to get them back.

On Thursday, Castro’s defense lawyer, Mishya Singh, showed the judge photos Castro had taken of his infant daughter happy in her bouncy seat and videos of his tickling her tummy. Castro, 38, sat in a brown jail suit and shackles and wiped away tears as he watched.

“CPS took two of his other kids away, but CPS chose to give Mr. Castro another chance to take care of Phoenix,” Singh said. “And what Mr. Castro did is that he rose to the challenge the best way he could although he had his own addiction to deal with. He loved that baby.”

Phoenix’s mother had been sent to jail on outstanding warrants after the baby’s birth and was living in a drug and mental health rehab facility when the infant died. Emily De La Cerda was out on a day pass when she and her mother visited the apartment and found Castro panicking and the baby limp. According to a detective’s testimony, Castro told police that he had survived a drug overdose years earlier, and more recently he had revived De La Cerda from one with the use of Narcan. De La Cerda died four months after her daughter, in the same apartment, also of a fentanyl overdose.

That the father is being charged in her death, his defense lawyer said, is “unfair, not on a moral ground, look at the evidence.”

In court a day earlier, Singh had suggested that baby Phoenix didn’t die of fentanyl poisoning but that her father likely accidentally smothered her as they slept on the couch the night before — a contention refuted by the coroner, who said the baby showed no signs of suffocation.

On Thursday, however, Singh posited that if the baby did, indeed, die of a drug overdose, her mother may be to blame. Two days before Phoenix’s death, Castro took the infant to the rehab facility for a four-hour visit with her mother while he ran errands. In several text messages presented in court, De La Cerda complained to Castro that she was having troubling calming the baby that evening.

“You’re aware that fentanyl, if someone is agitated, it can calm them down?” Singh asked Harrington, who was on the witness stand.

“Yes,” testified Harrington, one of the lead detectives on the case.

“If a baby is crying, giving a baby a little fentanyl (will) calm them down?” she asked.

Gershenovich, the prosecutor, objected before the officer could answer and later told the judge there was no evidence suggesting the mother drugged the baby or had access to drugs there.

Gershenovich on Thursday also recalled to the stand the coroner who conducted the autopsy on the baby. During testimony a day earlier, he had said the baby had been dead between 24 to 36 hours, but on Thursday he said pinpointing a time of death is often “unreliable,” and it could have been closer to 10-12 hours.

Singh, the defense lawyer, also reserved blame for the county’s child welfare agency for not better informing Castro that drug residue on a tabletop, couch or his hands could harm the baby. CPS could have insisted on a deep cleaning in the house, she said.

“The person hurting the most is sitting right there,” Singh said, pointing to her client. “He would never endanger that baby willfully.”

But the prosecutor put the blame squarely on Castro.

“He was the only person caring for her,” Gershenovich told the judge. “He had a duty of care, and unfortunately he failed her.”

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — A court employee and a police officer were fatally shot Thursday after the court process server tried to serve an eviction notice at a home in Missouri, authorities said.

A second officer was critically injured, but is expected to survive, police said.

Independence Police Chief Adam Dustman said Thursday afternoon at a news conference that two of his police officers were met with gunfire while coming to the aid of Drexel Mack, the man who had been trying to serve the eviction notice.

Mack had called 911 saying he had been shot, Dustman said. The officers responded at about 1:10 p.m. and approached Mack to help him when someone shot at them, he said.

“I’m very tragically sorry to report that we lost one of our own,” Dustman said, identifying the officer as Cody Allen.

The second officer, whose name wasn’t released, underwent surgery and is expected to recover, Dustman said.

Dustman called Allen a hero and described the police department as a “broken family,” over Allen’s death.

A male suspect was in custody and sustained minor injuries, Corporal Justin Ewing with Missouri State Highway Patrol said during an earlier news conference.

Independence Police Department spokesperson Officer Jack Taylor said no details were immediately available about what led to the shooting.

Mack had worked for Jackson County for over a decade, officials said.

“We are devastated that a court employee, who is a public servant, was shot by a member of the public while performing their job,” Presiding Judge Jalilah Otto said in a statement. “Our hearts are heavy and our thoughts are with our employee, our entire Court family, and the Independence Police Department.”

Helicopter video from KMBC-TV showed emergency vehicles converged around an isolated house in the middle of a field. The media was cordoned off in an area about 1 mile (1.61 kilometers) from the crime scene. The area was a mixture of woods and farmland with a smattering of houses on large, multi-acre lots. A church was mixed in among the houses.

Independence is a suburb of Kansas City, with about 122,000 residents.

Samuel Holquin, who is also known as Samuel Holguin, was sentenced to three months in prison and three months supervised release. A court order signed by Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen says that Holquin has until April 8 to report to the Bureau of Prisons and start his sentence.

Holquin was charged in late 2022 with witness retaliation against Joseph Hardisty, a former member of the Richmond Hells Angels who testified for the government after several members allegedly assaulted him after he announced he was leaving the club.

Holquin allegedly texted menacing things to Hardisty and told another person, “I might as well drive out there and get all three of them (expletive) pieces of (expletive),” apparently referring to Hardisty and two other witnesses. Of his conversation with Hardisty, he allegedly wrote in a text message, “I had to let (Hardisty) know that I found him and know everything about him and his family,” according to a prosecution sentencing memo.

Defense attorneys representing Holquin said in court filings that he has learned his lesson. They also pushed back against prosecutors labeling Holquin a Hells Angels “associate,” writing that he was friends with a few members but not affiliated with the motorcycle club in any way.

“Mr. Holguin has learned a lesson from this conviction – the only time in his life he has been convicted of a crime. The lesson is that his focus must be on his family and on complying with the law,” his lawyers wrote. “During the pendency of this case, Mr. Holguin has demonstrated how thoroughly he has learned that lesson, performing flawlessly on supervision while serving as an in-home caretaker for his ailing father and grandmother.”

Hardisty’s testimony has resulted in four murder convictions over the death of a Hells Angels member named Joel Silva, and probably contributed to several others accepting plea deals.

Hardisty, a former friend of Silva, testified that the Hells Angels plotted to murder Silva due to his increasingly erratic behavior, culminating with him allegedly threatening a high-ranking club member during a motorcycle rally in New England. Silva was shot in the back of his head in the Hells Angels’ Fresno clubhouse and cremated illegally at a nearby funeral home, according to Hardisty’s testimony.

Chen also ordered Holquin to perform 40 hours of community service, stay away from Hardisty and not wear Hells Angels garb or associate with club members.

“There’s a high likelihood that people will be stranded if they try to drive up here from the Bay Area,” said Craig Shoemaker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento, on Thursday afternoon. “It’s too late to even try. It’s a very dangerous, life-threatening situation that will be developing.”

At local stores in Lake Tahoe, people bought tire chains, snow blowers, shovels, flashlights, candles, battery-powered lanterns and telescoping roof rakes for pulling down accumulated snow on homes.

“Today most of the locals are saying, “There is something big going on,” and yesterday they were saying, “Are we really going to get 10 feet of snow?” said Brittney McClain, manager of Ace Hardware in South Lake Tahoe.

The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for the Northern and Central Sierra continuing through 10 a.m. Saturday, the first such warning since Feb. 27 last year.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Avalanche Center in Truckee issued a backcountry avalanche watch in effect from 7 a.m. Friday to 5 p.m. Sunday for the Central Sierra, including the Lake Tahoe area, warning of “extremely dangerous” avalanche conditions.

Because of high winds and declining visibility, ski resorts were expected to close or severely limit operations this weekend.

Sierra-at-Tahoe closed Thursday and announced it also would be shuttered on Friday “to preserve the safety of our guests and employees.” Heavenly closed Thursday afternoon, and other resorts, such as Kirkwood and Palisades, had only a few chair lifts running Thursday, with most closed due to high winds.

Last winter, a series of massive atmospheric river storms dumped dozens of feet of snow on the Sierra Nevada, ending a three-year drought. The Sierra snowpack, which provides about 30% of California’s water supply, was at its deepest level in 40 years. Reservoirs around the state filled, and ski resorts stayed open well into the spring.

As a result, Tahoe locals, even newly arrived residents, have a lot of recent practice on how to prepare for blizzard conditions, McClain said. In some neighborhoods, people plan to dig out fire hydrants to stop them from being buried too deep in snow. In other areas, residents were tossing salt pellets on their roofs or plugging in electric roof cables to prevent huge amounts of snow and ice from building up.

Last March, the roof collapsed at the Raley’s supermarket in South Lake Tahoe under the weight of snow and ice.

“When you have too much snow on your roof, your doors and windows don’t open correctly. Eventually you can start having beams break down, and the roofs can collapse,” McClain said. “We had a huge mass of ice, 15 feet long and about 2 feet around, that formed on the roof of our house last winter. It was in front of our windows. If it had fallen, it could have broken through.”

On Thursday afternoon, Tricia Popky, a Carmel Valley nurse who has a cabin near Donner Lake, was in central Truckee buying winter gloves, firewood and kindling and a new firewood rack for the cabin. “I’m just going to be hunkering down,” Popky said. “I’m going to cook some soup. I’m so excited because I got my wood-burning stove working.”

The latest storm, a powerful cold front that is carrying an unusual amount of moisture, originated over the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia.

The National Weather Service said it will only bring 1 or 2 inches of rain to most Bay Area communities. But the storm is forecast to dump 5 to 10 feet of snow in the Sierra above 5,000 feet and 1 to 4 feet of snow at about 3,000 feet. In some high-elevation spots, 12 feet is possible by Sunday.

“If what we’re seeing from the models ends up happening, this is a truly remarkable storm system,” said Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab near Donner Summit. “It’s one that we very rarely have had before. It could set a highest snowfall on a single day for us.”

Since modern records began in 1970, the most snow the snow lab, which sits at about 6,900 feet, has ever received in one day was 53 inches, on Feb. 3, 1989.

An early inkling of the meteorological mayhem came Thursday morning when Interstate 80, the main highway over the Sierra, was closed eastbound for more than three hours after a big rig overturned near Donner Lake interchange, blocking both lanes of traffic, just as the snow was beginning to fall. The driver suffered minor injuries.

“It was pretty nasty for a while,” said John O’Connell, a Caltrans spokesman. “He was going too fast.”

Cars sat for miles all morning in stopped traffic or attempted to navigate backroads to get around it.

San Jose truck driver Erik Lopez, making a run from Stockton to Reno, was putting chains on his 18-wheeler near Kingvale on I-80 Thursday amid increasingly heavy snowfall after getting stuck in the lengthy jam. At the top of his mind was making sure he would return home to his family.

“There’s no fear in my heart,” said Lopez, 34. “But there’s safety in my heart.”

Farther east, Truckee resident Brent Martin was pulling into his garage after a sketchy trip from Sacramento in his pickup truck, traveling via backroads because of the I-80 crash. He planned to keep off highways until the storm has passed but was not expecting snow-related problems at home.

The blizzard would be “nothing compared to last year,” he predicted. “I’d shovel four feet off my deck twice a day last year.”

Martin urged non-residents to stay away this weekend.

“Tell everyone not to come up — all the Teslas and the Priuses, stay down in the Bay Area,” said Martin, 32. “That’s what causes a lot of the problems. Teslas are the new minivans — we hate ’em up here.”

The disruption Thursday wasn’t just limited to Tahoe and Donner Summit. Yosemite National Park officials said the park would be closed Friday and will not open until at least Sunday afternoon.

While a headache for motorists and first responders, the storm was a godsend to water managers. On Thursday, the statewide Sierra snowpack was 80% of its historical average, up from 28% on Jan. 1 after a wet February.

“When all is said and done, it is likely the Sierra snowpack will be significantly above average just about everywhere in as little as a week,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.

“This storm will certainly bolster the Sierra snow pack, but it is going to cause a lot of disruption.”

Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of posting a trove of classified documents online, is expected to plead guilty to federal charges on Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter.

In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors in Boston asked for a so-called Rule 11 hearing – proceedings to discuss a change of plea. He previously pleaded not guilty.

Teixeira, a Massachusetts native who was 21 when he was arrested, is charged with six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information related to national defense. It is not yet clear what charge he plans to plead guilty to, nor what any potential deal he struck with prosecutors looks like.

Teixeira has been held in federal custody since his arrest in April.

CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

Teixeira faces spending decades in prison if convicted. Typically, any deal struck between criminal defense attorneys and prosecutors would include a lower range of potential prison time, though any eventual sentence is up to a judge.

According to prosecutors, Teixeira, a junior enlisted airman who worked within the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, was repeatedly warned by his superiors over inappropriately accessing classified intelligence.

The documents, some of which have been reviewed by CNN, included a wide range of highly classified information, including eavesdropping on key allies and adversaries and blunt assessments on the state of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Once the document leak was discovered, law enforcement embarked on a sprawling and fast-moving search for the leaker’s identity.

Prosecutors allege that after the leak was publicized, Teixeira destroyed his electronics and obtained a new phone number and email address. He was taken into custody at his home in Massachusetts about a week later, CNN reported.

MIAMI — A former career U.S. diplomat said in court Thursday that he will plead guilty to charges of serving as a secret agent for communist Cuba going back decades, bringing a lightning fast resolution to a case prosecutors described as one of the most brazen betrayals in the history of the U.S. foreign service.

Manuel Rocha, 73, told a federal judge he would admit to two federal counts of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government, charges that carry a maximum penalty of between 5 and 10 years in prison each. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop 13 additional counts for crimes including wire fraud and making false statements.

Prosecutors and Rocha’s attorney indicated they have agreed upon a sentence but details were not disclosed in court Thursday. He is due back in court on April 12, when he’s likely to be sentenced.

“I am in agreement,” said Rocha, shackled at the hands and ankles, when asked by U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom if he wished to change his plea to guilty.

Rocha was arrested by the FBI at his Miami home in December on allegations that he engaged in “clandestine activity” on Cuba’s behalf since at least 1981 — the year he joined the U.S. foreign service — including by meeting with Cuban intelligence operatives and providing false information to U.S. government officials about his contacts.

Federal authorities have said little about exactly what Rocha did to assist Cuba while working at the State Department for two decades at posts in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. He followed that with a lucrative post-government career that included a stint as a special adviser to the commander of the U.S. Southern Command.

Instead, the case relies largely on what prosecutors say were Rocha’s own admissions, made over the past year to an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence operative named “Miguel.”

In those recordings, Rocha praised the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro as “Comandante,” branded the U.S. the “enemy” and bragged about his service for more than 40 years as a Cuban mole in the heart of U.S. foreign policy circles, the complaint says.

“What we have done … it’s enormous … more than a Grand Slam,” he was quoted as saying in one of several secretly recorded conversations.

Rocha’s decision to plead guilty Thursday came just hours after the widow of a prominent Cuban dissident killed in a mysterious car crash filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the former diplomat. The lawsuit accuses Rocha of sharing intelligence that emboldened Cuba’s communist leaders to assassinate a chief opponent.

Officers were called at 1:18 a.m. to a shopping plaza in the 5100 block of Moorpark Avenue, near Lawrence Expressway, for a “weapons disturbance” at the location, according to a social-media post by the San Jose Police Department.

They found an injured man, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators remained at the site for all of Thursday morning. Police said there is no ongoing danger or threat to the public.

Additional details were not immediately released. The death marks the ninth homicide of the year investigated by San Jose police.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Police said they arrested the man on suspicion of robbery, grand theft from a person and arson. He remained in custody in the county jail in Martinez early Thursday in lieu of $115,000 bail.

The gathering of protesters and counter-protesters happened Jan. 6; protestors opposed to the Israel attack on Gaza took over the intersection of San Pablo Avenue and Carlson Boulevard, while pro-Israeli protestors gathered on a nearby sidewalk. Police released photos of the suspect with his face covered and said they received help from the public in identifying him.

Chunli Zhao, 67, spoke little during the brief hearing, which came a month after a San Mateo County grand jury indicted him in the January 2023 workplace massacre. Along with seven murder charges, Zhao faces a charge of attempted murder, to which he also pleaded not guilty.

The indictment — which superseded charges filed just days after the shooting spree — was sought as a way to “move the case along” after delays affected the timing of a key evidentiary hearing, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. As a result of the indictment, no such preliminary hearing is needed and the case is now bound for trial.

Zhao was ordered to appear again in court for a hearing April 19.

“The victims’ families deserve to have this move along,” said Wagstaffe, shortly after the indictment last month.

Wearing a red jail outfit with an orange long-sleeved undershirt, Zhao stood quietly during the hearing with his head bowed and his arms folded in front of him. He wore a blue face mask and black headphones, into which a Mandarin interpreter translated the court’s proceedings.

He only said the word “yes” in Mandarin, when asked whether he understood and agreed with his attorney’s decision to waive his right to a speedy trial.

Zhao had pleaded not guilty last year to the original charges and has been in custody since surrendering to authorities hours after the mass shooting. He remains held in the San Mateo County jail without bail.

Prosecutors say Zhao killed four workers and severely wounded a fifth at California Terra Garden, a mushroom farm in Half Moon Bay where he lived and worked for seven years, most recently as a forklift driver. The violence appeared to stem from a workplace grudge, according to authorities — one triggered by a $100 equipment bill from his boss for damage to heavy construction equipment.

Moments before opening fire, Zhao vented his frustrations at the supervisor and a co-worker whom Zhao blamed for a collision between his forklift and a bulldozer, prosecutors allege. After the confrontation, he allegedly shot the supervisor and the coworker, along with the co-worker’s wife and two others at the farm.

The shooting illuminated deep concerns about living conditions among migrant workers living on farms across San Mateo County. County and state officials have described the workers’ dwellings at California Terra Garden as “deplorable,” with families living in shacks with leaky roofs and no running water or kitchens.

A subsequent Bay Area News Group investigation found that laws meant to ensure livable farmworker housing often went unenforced in San Mateo County, allowing farm owners to neglect their struggling workforce, including the shooter and his victims.

The hearing was presided over by Judge Elizabeth Lee, after a previous judge, Sean Dabel, recused himself. Dabel was a former prosecutor at the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office and maintains close ties with the prosecutor overseeing Zhao’s case, Joshua Stauffer, according to Wagstaffe.