The Chino Hills City Council voted unanimously on February 10 to elevate Rod Hill, the city’s assistant city manager since August 2019 and the director of administrative services and controller with the City of Whittier for 16 years previous to that, to the position of city manager.
Hill is to move into the top administrative post of San Bernardino County’s southwesternmost city on April 1, the day after Benjamin Montgomery, who has been city manager since April 2019, officially retires on March 31.
According to the announcement by the city issued after the city council’s action, “As assistant city manager, Mr. Hill has been instrumental in managing some of the city’s most complex contracts, divisions, and initiatives. He has overseen the code enforcement, community relations, emergency management, human resources, information technology, and solid waste divisions, as well as risk management.”
The announcement further stated, “A major area of his responsibilities included oversight of the city’s largest and most critical service contracts, including law enforcement services provided by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. He led negotiations on the new solid waste services contract and implementation of the city’s transition to a new waste hauler, ensuring continuity of service, regulatory compliance, and a smooth experience for residents and businesses. In addition, Mr. Hill managed contracts for animal care and control services and played a key leadership role in developing and implementing the city’s first homeless services contract.”
City officials touted what they said was Hill’s “strong background in municipal finance and emergency management. He began his career in the finance department with the cities of Brea and Anaheim. He was then selected as assistant finance director for the City of Redlands, where he oversaw information technology, risk management, accounting, and budget.”
With his 2003 hiring by Whittier in the role of administrative services director, he also headed and served as director of the finance and human services department and filled the post of city treasurer. The administrative services director in Whittier also oversaw emergency management and animal control.
Hill has a bachelor of science degree in business administration from the University of La Verne and a master of public administration degree. He holds government accounting and emergency management certificates.
A volunteer with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department West Valley Search and Rescue Team, Hill previously served as a reserve park ranger in Orange County. He was formerly an adjunct instructor at the California Specialized Training Institute.
Hill and his wife, Laurie, have lived in neighboring Chino for 35 years, and have three adult children and six grandchildren.
“I am very happy to be working for the City of Chino Hills and am excited to put my 31 years of training and experience to use by working along side some very dynamic, skilled, and professional colleagues and city council members,” Hill said. “It’s an honor to serve the residents of Chino Hills.”

Two of San Bernardino County’s leading politicians recently suffered the loss of family members.
Bob Ulloa, the husband of Chino Mayor Eunice Ulloa has died at the age of 87.
Stacey Schooler, the daughter of Yucca Valley Councilman Jim Schooler last month stepped into eternity at the age of 46.
Elements of Bob Ulloa’s life, which was intertwined with politics on many levels, shadowed or paralleled that of his wife, who is currently San Bernardino County’s longest serving elected municipal official.
In 1984, the year Eunice Ulloa first ran fro city council, she was encouraged in her electoral effort by then-Chino Mayor Larry Walker, who was seeking reelection that year. Signing Walker’s nomination papers were both Eunice Ulloa and Bob Ulloa. Both Bob Ulloa and Larry Walker signed Eunice Ulloa’s nomination papers.
Larry Walker, Bob Ulloa and Eunice Ulloa were involved in the campaigns of former Chino Mayor and later State Senator Ruben Ayala.
Both Eunice Ulloa and Bob Ulloa endorsed Walker in his successful 1986 challenge of Gus Skropos for Fourth District San Bernardino County Supervisor. Bob Ulloa went on to become one of Walker’s field representatives.
In 1992, Eunice Ulloa was elected Chino Mayor when Fred Aguiar, another Walker ally, left the post. She served as mayor until 2004, , . Left the a
The Ulloas’ alignment with Walker extended to their association with efforts to control development in Chino. Walker, who was Chino Mayor from 1980 to 1986, was a “slow-growth” and “controlled-growth” advocate, calling for requirements that the entities to profit by development – developers and landowners upon whose property the growt was to take place – defray the cost of infrastructure needed to offset the impact of that development. In the 2017-18 timefram, when the “Protect Chino” group opposed Measure H, an aggressive development initiative, Walker, who had just retired from county politics upon departing as the county treasurer/tax collector/auditor/controller, served as the president of the group, assisted in its effort by Eunice Ulloa, who had recently returned to the post of mayor following a several-years long run as councilwoman while Dennis Yates was mayor. Eunice Ulloa had been a slow-growth advocates in her time on the city council, a position that put her in the minority on the panel. She had voted against placing Measure H on the ballot.
Walker expressed optimism about the City of Chino’s direction in 2018, almost two years after Eunice Ulloa’s return as mayor.
Over the years, both Walker and Ayala were prominent Democrats. It was largely assumed that Bob Ulloa and Eunice Ulloa, too, were Democrats. While there are indications that in the 1970s and 1980s the Ulloas were Democrats and that Bob Ulloa remained a lifelong Democrat, in 1998, when Eunice Ulloa ran unsuccessfully for a position in the California State Senate representing what was then the 32nd District, she did so as a Republican. She is still registered with the GOP.
Ulloa left office in 2004 as the result of a failed campaign for county supervisor, but returned to elective office as a councilwoman two years later. She then served 12 years as a council member before running for and returning to the mayor’s post in 2016. In the 1970s, when she was then going by her maiden name, Eunice Shaffer, she and Bob Ulloa, a Navy veteran seven years her senior, Ulloa were working for what was then one of the region’s largest employers, General Dynamics, in Pomona. They worked in different roles and in different divisions, but met at an employee potluck. They married in June 1975 and moved to Chino, on a 1.1 acre-farm in the north part of the city, five years later. Beside a grand home, the farm featured a barn, a corral and a riding arena, as well as four horses, different types of birds including chickens, tortoises, dogs and cats.
As a Chino resident, Bob Ulloa was a board member and eventually the chairman of the Citizens Advisory Committee for the California Institution for Men.
After retiring from General Dynamics, he served as a field representative for Ayala when the older man was in the California State Senate. He recreated by restoring vintage cars and flying hot air balloons. He was a member of the Chino Hills Lions Club and the Chino Mounted Posse, as was Eunice.
Bob is survived by Eunice and their children Nicole Abarca, Erika Jackson, Robert Ulloa Jr. and Troy Ulloa.
Stacey Schooler was the daughter of Jim Schooler and his first wife, Marlene Price.
She was born on September 19, 1979, in Palm Springs, three years after her parents moved to Yucca Valley. She lived in Yucca Valley most of her life, with the exception of the time she was attending college in Northern California.
She was a graduate of Yucca Valley High School and Copper Mountain College and then obtained a bachelor’s degree in communications at California State University, Chico.
She was employed by the Town of Yucca Valley, State Farm Insurance, Inspire Real Estate and her own Scans by Stacey digital conversion business. Her dream job, which she never quite achieved, was to work for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Stacey volunteered extensively in community activism with the Joshua Springs Calvary Chapel in Yucca Valley, most notably the Calvary Bible Institute and Joshua Springs worship team. She actively participated in other efforts in support of Miracle League Baseball, Dreams for Kids, JS Thrift Store, Partners Against Violence and the High Desert Pregnancy Clinic.
A passionate Dodgers fan, Stacey overcame significant physical challenges and possessed an engaging personality, social talents few others could match and the ability to enrich the lives of others.
She valued immensely, and was valued by, her family and friends.
Stacey is survived by her mother, Marlene Price, her father, Jim, and stepmom Dawn Schooler; brothers Michael, Jay, Andrew and John; as well as nephews Lucas, Zakk, Evan, Wesley, Joshua and Grant, and niece Zoe; and several aunts, uncles, in-laws and cousins.
A celebration of Stacey’s life, which ended peacefully on January 29, 2026, will be held Saturday, February 21, at 11 a.m. at Joshua Springs Calvary Chapel in Yucca Valley.

The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office is pursuing a first degree murder case against a former Ontario-based businessman, more than 29 years after his alleged killing of one of his employees when that employee sought to blackmail him over labor law violations that were taking place at the noodle plant where the alleged murderer was the operations manager.
Woravit Mektrakarn, who has been charged with murder in what is believed to have been the November 23, 1996 death of Luis Osvaldo Diego Garcia, has been the primary suspect in Garcia’s disappearance from the outset. He was arrested two days after Garcia was last seen, but released shortly thereafter when prosecutors felt there was insufficient evidence available at that time to bring him to trial. In short order, Mektrakarn left the United States, fleeing it was believed to either Thailand, the land of his birth, or Cambodia or Burma. It was believed and later established that he was living under a falsified identity between Burma and Cambodia and had been able to transit between those two countries and Thailand largely on the strength of his personal wealth and the social standing of his family. The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs, the U.S. State Department, the International Liaison Office of the FBI and Interpol for a quarter of a century conducted a manhunt for Mektrakarn unsuccessfully.
For years, the case lay dormant until in April 2024, an individual believed to be Mektrakarn was observed to be residing in Bangkok under an alias and in disguise. After authorities were alerted, at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, the Royal Thai Police in Bangkok moved in upon Mektrakarn, who initially claimed a different identity. Thai law enforcement, however, confirmed who he was and held him in custody. Over a period of more than 20 months, an extradition process wound its way through Thai courts. On January 16, 2026, Mektrakarn was extradited to the United States and transported to San Bernardino by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Luis Osvaldo Diego Garcia, born on August 27, 1972 in Veracruz, Mexico, illegally entered the United States through the border at San Ysidro it is believed in April 1993 at the age of 20. He did not register his presence as an alien as required by U.S. Law. He took up residence in home in Ontario among a household of other undocumented immigrants, including two of his cousins. In Ontario, he found employment at noodle factory in that city, Rama Foods, was owned by Wichart Mektrakarn, a wealthy Thai businessman. The Rama Foods operation in Ontario was overseen by Woravit Mektrakarn, who also went by the informal first name Kim. Woravit Mektrakarn was a 1985 graduate of El Camino Real High School in Placentia. Mektrakarn’s wife, Aree, also worked for the the company in a management or administrative capacity.
By 1996, Garcia had been working at Rama Foods for two years, having obtained the job through his cousin, Rene Delgado, who had been working at the plant at least since 1987.   Rene Delgado worked for Rama Foods in the capacity of chauffeur, mechanic, translator, and liaison between the Mektrakarns and the plant workers, the vast majority of whom could not speak English.
The factory’s production workers consisted almost exclusively of undocumented immigrants, working in substandard conditions and provided with low wages at or marginally above minimum wage. Many of the company’s employees worked six days a week and 11-hour to 12-hour days, without being compensated for overtime.
At some point in the late summer or fall of 1996, Garcia became aware that the company was in violation of California’s labor laws, according to court documents, and threatened to report Mektrakarn to the state labor commission. Mektrakarn, in a bargaining session which was translated and in part brokered by Rene Delgado, agreed to pay Garcia $5,000 in exchange for dropping the issue. Mektrakarn paid him $1,000 up front with a promise of further like installments, with the proviso that Garcia keep silent about the deal and not inform any of the other employees at Rama about the arrangement.
Garcia had not returned to Mexico since coming to the United States and had arranged to make a return trip home, having purchased an airline ticket to fly to Veracruz, Mexico on December 8, 1996, so that he could visit his family.
Despite Garcia’s assurance to Mektrakarn that he would remain silent about the $5,000 hush money deal, at least two others who worked at Rama Foods beside Garcia and Rene Delgado – Garcia’s other cousin Francisco Delgado and an individual named Epifanio Flores – learned that Mektrakarn was providing Garcia with money in addition to his wages at the noodle plant, as did another of Garcia’s cousins, Guillermo Ramirez, who was residing in Fontana. Mektrakarn learned that Garcia was not holding up his end of the bargain when Flores began pressing to be paid $5,000.
Guillermo Ramirez, who lived in Fontana and has variously been described as Garcia’s “friend” and “cousin,” was with Garcia earlier in the day on November 23, 1996 at Ramirez’s apartment in Fontana. He testified that Garcia said that he was going to get money from Woravit Mektrakarn that day and Garcia had plans to return to Fontana, where they intended to go out to dinner later that evening. Ramirez testified that Garcia left Ramirez’s apartment in Fontana for Rama Foods between 3 and 4 p.m. on November 23, 1996.
That day, a Saturday, Garcia came to the plant, located at 1486 East Cedar Street in Ontario, to pick up what was supposed to be a $3,000 installment toward the agreed-upon $5,000.
Francisco Delgado later testified that on November 23, 1996, he arrived at the Rama Foods plant at 7:00 a.m. and later that morning drove Mektrakarn to Ontario International Airport to rent a Plymouth Voyager minivan.   According to Francisco, Mektrakarn returned to the plant in the rented minivan at “around 5:00 in the afternoon.”   Rene Delgado testified that he arrived at the plant at 8 a.m., and saw Mektrakarn there at 3 p.m. At that time, Mektrakarn’s usual car, a Honda Passport, was in the parking lot, according to Rene Delgado. At 4 p.m., Mektrakarn told Rene Delgado he was expecting Garcia to arrive.
Francisco Delgado recalled seeing Chansak “Buck” Plengsangtip, the factory manager and close friend and associate of of Woravit Mektrakarn, arrived at Rama Foods at around 4 p.m. Francisco Delgado testified he saw Plengsangtip park his car, a brown or tan Mercedes Benz, in the parking lot and walk toward the offices. According to Ramirez, Garcia left Ramirez’s apartment in Fontana for Rama Foods between 3 and 4 p.m. Rene Delgado saw Garcia at the plant at 5 p.m. Francisco and another employee, Julio Zamudio, saw Garcia arrive at 5 p.m. According to Francisco Delgado, Garcia arrived in his own car and walked toward the office area. Testimony placed Garcia’s car in the plant parking lot until about 5:30 p.m. Zamudio saw Garcia enter the plant area through one of the roll-up doors, and walk toward the office area.
At 5 p.m., Aree Mektrakarn called Rene Delgado into the plant’s north office to translate for Garcia. According to Rene Delgado’s testimony, there were five people in the office other than  himself:  Plengsangtip, Garcia, Woravit Mektrakarn, Aree Mektrakarn and Woravit Mektrakarn’s sister Vicky Mektrakarn. Woravit Mektrakarn and Aree Mektrakarn told Rene Delgado they were going to pay Garcia the rest of the money. Rene Delgado did not witness the payment.   Aree Mektrakarn told Rene Delgado to clean the area in the back of the plant, and Rene Delgado left the office with Aree Mektrakarn. Rene Delgado thought Aree Mektrakarn’s request strange, he later testified, because cleaning was not a part of his normal duties. He also testified that when he was in the office that afternoon, he saw two large, clean metal pots, handcuffs, and a handheld radio, and that when he wanted to return to the office later, Aree Mektrakarn would not allow him back in the office, Rene Delgado did not complete the cleaning assignment. Instead, he left for home at 5:30 p.m. As he did so, he drove by the outside door to the north office and looked through the window. Inside the office, he saw three men, at least two of whom appeared to be hiding or crouching. At that time, Garcia’s, Woravit Mektrakarn’s, and Plengsangtip’s cars were still in the parking lot, according to Rene Delgado, but Woravit Mektrakarn’s rented minivan was no longer there.
Francisco Delgado testified his usual duties included moving everyone’s cars inside the plant premises near the end of the day. Between 6 p.m and 6:30 p.m. on November 23, 1996, he said, he tried to enter the office area to retrieve car keys to move the cars and park them inside the plant’s fenced-in grounds, but Aree Mektrakarn did not allow him in the office area. This was the first time he had not been allowed to move the cars inside the factory yard, Francisco Delgado testified, and he said he left the plant at 7 p.m. At that time, he noticed that Plengsantip’s car was still in the parking lot.
During the afternoon, Woravit Mektrakarn ordered another employee, Julio Zamudio, to stack pallets in front of the south office door. This prevented access to the offices from the plant area. Zamudio used a forklift to begin stacking the pallets, and Woravit Mektrakarn completed the task. The stack was heavy and as high as the top of the office door, according to Zamudio’s later testimony, in which he said the stack was in place before he saw Garcia arrive at 5 p.m. During the 14 years Zamudio worked at the plant, he had never seen a stack of pallets blocking the office door, he testified. Zamudio also testified that another worker at the plant with the first name Adolfo was not allowed to count his sales route money inside the office that afternoon, as Adolfo usually did.
Garcia was not seen by either of his cousins, friends or acquaintances after that. The evening of November 23, 1996, Garcia did not return to Ramirez’s Fontana apartment with the money he said he was going to obtain from Woravit Mektrakarn to go out for the dinner as had been Garcia’s stated intention earlier that day. Both Rene Delgado and Francisco Delgado, who knew Garcia was expecting to receive money from Woravit Mektrakarn on November 23, did not see or hear from him after approximately 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on November 23, 1996 Garcia had a plane ticket for a scheduled flight to Veracruz, Mexico on December 8, 1996, and was intending to visit relatives over the course of several days thereafter, but did not show up at the airport.
At some point on or between late Saturday November 23, Sunday November 24 and the morning of Monday November 25, 1996, the Ontario Police Department was contacted by Francisco Delgado, and by mid-morning November 25, 1996, a homicide investigation was underway.
When Francisco arrived at work on the morning of November 25, he later testified, he entered the plant through the office area and noticed that the carpet was “cut up and dirty.”   It looked as though some liquid had been spilled on it, he told the court, and he said it did not appear that way when he last saw it on Saturday morning, November 23, 1996.
Homicide investigators with the Ontario Police Department were present on the grounds of the Rama Noodle Plant by 9 a.m.  Forensic supervisor Steve Hall arrived at Rama Foods crime at 10:15 p.m., and joined the investigation. When Hall arrived, Woravit Mektrakarn was present and had injuries on both his hands.
Hall testified about several items the police found in a dumpster 50 feet from the office area. Among those were a large metal pot wrapped in two plastic bags. There was ash inside the pot, and it looked as though someone tried to burn evidence in it, according to Hall. The investigators found in the dumpster a plastic bucket with burned carpet inside, and another three pieces of carpet that had been fused together by burning. Hall also found a small, triangular piece of carpet matching a triangular hole found in the south office carpeting, together with a can of lighter fluid with about one inch of liquid inside it, a pair of blue jeans stained white by bleach and with cleaning fluid on them, a yellow glove and pink velvet soap material, the same sort of fluid found on the rug in the north office, and an original fax cover sheet with Plengsantip’s company’s “Lanna Trading” letterhead at the top of it.
According to Hall, a piece of rug from the north office, carpet in the office hallway along the west wall, carpet next to the triangular-shaped hole in the south office and the area inside the office bathroom sink trap all tested positive for the presence of blood or blood stains. Hall also testified that two handguns were found at the scene.
Investigators interpreted the blood evidence to indicate Garcia was standing against the office wall when he was violently attacked, after which he was forcibly moved toward or perhaps dragged down the hallway and assaulted a second time in the bathroom.
The Plymouth Voyager minivan Woravit Mektrakarn had rented was nowhere to be found, and was reported as stolen. Garcia’s vehicle, a gray Tercel, was gone.
Woravit Mektrakarn was arrested for Garcia’s murder. Investigators knew, or had access to information to indicate, that Plengsangtip, Aree Mektrakarn and Vicky Mektrakarn were present in the Rama plant’s office on November 23. They were not taken into custody, however, and it is not clear from the available record as to whether Plengsangtip or Vicky Mektrakarn were interrogated at that time.
When no direct evidence turned up to establish that Garcia was actually dead and no further evidence beyond that in the dumpster or the office was found, prosecutors informed the Ontario Police Department that they had insufficient evidence upon which to convict, and Woravit Mektrakarn was released. In relatively short order, he, Aree Mektrakarn and Vicky Mektrakarn left the United States for Thailand.
On December 4, 1996, Garcia’s grey Tercel car was found in Los Angeles with its key in the ignition and the tank full of gasoline.
The Plymouth Voyager minivan Kim had rented and which National Rent-A-Car had reported stolen, was found in the parking garage of the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas on December 15, 1996, missing its license plates. It was locked, its ignition had not been punched out, and it did not appear to have been broken into. Internally, it smelled of bleach, and there was indication that a substantial amount of bleach had been poured onto the vehicle’s floor and rear compartment.
With Woravit Mektrakarn gone, the Ontario Police Department had no logical progression forward on the case.
One of the Ontario Police Department’s homicide investigators, Byron Lee, maintained an intense interest in the matter. Lee was convinced that Mektrakarn’s virtual immediate departure for Thailand after his release from custody in 1996 could not be interpreted any other way than that he was responsible for Garcia’s disappearance. As a consequence of his dedication, Lee was made the lead investigator. Still, the matter languished for weeks, then months and years.
In 2003, Lee and his team developed a DNA profile for Garcia and thereby, through comparisons with the evidence gathered on November 25, 1996, established the blood on the carpet was Garcia’s. A search of the factory more than six years after the fact was made, with forensic technicians spraying the office with fluorescein. That examination found spatters on the walls, floor and ceiling of the office and in the hallway and bathroom that were not visible previously.
The detectives next aggressively interrogated Plengsangtip, who unlike Woravit Mektrakarn, Mektrakarn’s wife and Mektrakarn’s sister, had not fled the country but was living in Granada Hills. The detectives concluded Plengsangtip was lying about what had occurred on November 23, 1996 and built a case against him, which then-District Attorney Mike Ramos, Assistant District Attorney Mike Fermin and deputy district attorneys Mark Vos and Debbie Ploghaus bought, which held that Plengsangtip was an accessory to Garcia’s murder in that he was present when it occurred even if he did not take part in it and that he had actively assisted Woravit Mektrakern in covering it up.
Plengsangtip’s acknowledgement that he was at the noodle factory on the night of the disappearance was enough, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Barry Plotkin in October 2005 ruled, for prosecutors to proceed to trial against Plengsangtip on the accessory charge, despite the defendant’s insistence he knew nothing whatsoever about what befallen Garcia.
In 2006, however, Judge Ingrid Uhler overruled Plotkin, reasoning that Plengsangtip had made no admission of any knowledge of the disappearance or murder and that the district attorney’s office’s presumption that he was lying was just that – a presumption – and insufficient, without any further evidence of Plengsangtip’s involvement or knowledge of a crime, insufficient as the basis for prosecuting him as being an accessory to a murder, which had yet to be established as having occurred.
Rather than taking Judge Uhler’s ruling as an indication that there were gaps in their case, the district attorney’s office thereafter appealed her ruling to the Fourth Appellate District, arguing that there were grounds to indicate that something violent had occurred on the grounds of the noodle factory on November 23, 1996 and that Plengsangtip, as the manager of operations there and who acknowledged he was present, lacked credibility when he told investigators that he knew nothing about what had occurred that day. While someone cannot be prosecuted for having knowledge about a crime and not reporting it to authorities, Plengsangtip crossed the line when he actively lied about what went on at the noodle plant, prosecutors said.
At Plengsangtip’s May trial, which began on May 5,2008, Ploghaus alleged, and Plengsangtip acknowledged, he was present on the Noodle factory grounds on November 23, 1996 and in the plant’s office. The accessory to murder charges were supported by the testimony of more than eight witnesses, at least two of whom testified they saw Plengsangtip or his car at the factory when Garcia arrived to pick up his money and two of whom placed him in or around the office where the murder was alleged by the prosecution to have taken place at the approximate time Garcia was last seen. Two witnesses explicitly said Plengsangtip was in the office with Garcia and Woravit Mektrakarn.
According to Ploghaus, when Plengsangtip was confronted by homicide investigators, more than six years after Garcia’s disappearance, there were inconsistencies in his statements that strongly indicated he was lying about his knowledge of the crime to protect his friend, Woravit Mektrakarn. The evidence that a murder had taken place in the office was overwhelming when investigators and forensic technicians examined it on November 25, 1996, at which point an extensive effort to clean the crime scene had taken place. Plengsangtip’s statements that he was not aware of what had happened while witnesses placed him in the area where it occurred, which had blood scattered all about it, at around the same time that Garcia disappeared was not credible, she argued.
Plengsangtip, while not disputing he was there, insisted he had seen nothing out of the ordinary at the noodle plant on November 23, 1996 and that he was at the office only for a very brief time on that Saturday, since he had come there to meet up with Woravit Mektrakarn so they could take a recreational trip to Las Vegas. As it turned out, Woravit Mektrakarn was otherwise engaged, Plengsangtip said, so he left the noodle plant grounds.
Ploghaus was unable to provide an exact time of death or produce a body. She did not make anything of the fact that the Plymouth Voyager minivan leased by Woravit Mektrakarn ended up in Las Vegas on December 15, 1996, having been abandoned there for several days, and that Plengsangtip said he was in the gambling Mecca less than three weeks previously.
About a day after concluding arguments in the case were delivered, the eight-man, four-woman jury on May 14, 2008 acquitted Plengsangtip.
The entire case thereafter remained pretty much dormant for more than a decade-and-a-half.
American and Thai authorities, however, were on the lookout for Woravit Mektrakarn, who eluded capture in large measure based upon his family’s wealth and social standing and his use of different identities under which he was able to frequently transit between Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar.
In April 2024, the Royal Thai Police in Bangkok, who were acting on a tip and special request from the United States Embassy and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs, apprehended Woravit Mektrakarn, who was living under an alias and in disguise. He remained in custody thereafter but after all of the efforts by his legal team had been exhausted, on January 16, 2026, he was extradited to the United States.
On January 22, 2026, Woravit Mektrakarn was arraigned in Rancho Cucamonga Superior Court on the charge of murder and pleaded not guilty. The motion for bail was denied, with the court finding clear and convincing evidence that no conditions could reasonably protect the public or ensure the defendant’s appearance.
“This case demonstrates our unwavering commitment to pursuing justice, no matter how much time has passed,” said District Attorney Jason Anderson. “It also stands as a testament to the extraordinary efforts and partnerships of law enforcement agencies across the globe, whose dedication made this outcome possible.”
Anderson made his confident statement, more than 17 years after the district attorney’s office took its best shot at Plengsangtip and missed, partially because of what was then the passage of more than 11 years since the crime. Anderson appears to believe, or says he believes, that 29 years after the events in question, his office can establish to all 12 members of a jury beyond reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Woravit Mektrakarn killed Luis Osvaldo Diego Garcia, despite Garcia’s body having never been found.
A pre-preliminary hearing for Mektrakarn is scheduled for February 17, 2026, at 8:30 AM in Department R15 at the Rancho Cucamonga Superior Courthouse.

In the days just ahead of a jury in a federal civil case originating out of San Bernardino County awarding a man crippled by the aggressive response of a sheriff’s deputy $27 million, the sheriff’s department elected to roll the dice by escalating the intensity of its operations in clearing the homeless out of the county.
While a fair number of county employees have expressed concerns that the heavy-handed, indeed ruthless and sometimes oppressively violent methods applied by the sheriff’s department are increasingly likely to result in dire or fatal consequences, those at the middle and command levels of the department are intent on resolving the homeless issue to the satisfaction of an increasingly callous public frustrated with the growing presence of the homeless population and the county’s political leadership, who measure progress on the issue in the reduction of its visibility.
Most of those involved are confident the indigent being encouraged to leave do not have the wherewithal to bring federal suits that might possibly cost the county any money.
The three highest ranking members of the county who are detailed to managing the county’s homeless crisis, Department of Behavioral Health Director Georgina Yoshioka and her assistants Jennifer Alsina and Marina Espinosa are said to be personally disturbed, in one case acutely emotionally to the point of tears, by the way in which the sheriff’s department employs brutality and violence against the county’s homeless population, most notably males between the approximate ages of 17 to 55, but are unwilling to offer resistance to what is occurring out of the belief that in doing so they would incur the wrath of the board of supervisors, Assistant Executive Officer Diane Rundles, Deputy Executive officer Victor Tordesillas, risking their employment status with the county.
Official homeless figures in San Bernardino County have varied over the last decade and a half. At the behest of the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, local governments carry out what is referred to as a point in time count of the homeless living within their jurisdictions, traditionally, with some fluctuation, on a single day during the final two weeks of January. Continue reading →