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About 10 acres of vegetation burned on a steep hillside in San Martin May 11, briefly threatening nearby homes before firefighters were able to contain the fire.

Thefts of catalytic converters—part of the emissions-cleansing system found in most vehicles—are on the rise in Morgan Hill, according to police.In the last week alone, 14 such thefts have been reported locally, according to MHPD Sgt. Carson Thomas.“The neighborhoods that have been hit are in the Coyote Estates (area) and off of Fountain Oaks Drive,” Thomas said. Those neighborhoods are in eastern Morgan Hill.MHPD released a video of a May 9 incident, captured by a home surveillance camera. The 24-second video clip shows two possibly male subjects approach a white sport-utility vehicle at nighttime. One of the suspects, wearing light colored clothing and holding a flashlight, crawled under the vehicle while the other walked around the other side of the vehicle and out of the view of the camera.Catalytic converters contain precious metals, which can bring cash to thieves who find willing buyers for the stolen items at recycling centers, police explained. The devices convert exhaust fumes through a chemical process.“It only takes a minute or two for a thief to saw your catalytic converter from underneath your vehicle,” Thomas said.Almost all of the recent victim vehicles in Morgan Hill have been Toyota trucks or SUVs, police said. These vehicles sit higher off the ground and are easy for a thief to crawl under.The recent rash of thefts follows a series of similar incidents in Gilroy, where police reported 13 catalytic converter thefts in one week as of April 22. On April 13, a thief or thieves stole 11 of the devices, mostly from Toyota Sequoia SUVs parked in private driveways, according to Gilroy police.MPHD offers the following advice to deter potential catalytic converter thieves:• Park your vehicle inside the garage if possible.• Have your local mechanic install a “safety bar” across the catalytic converter. These devices can significantly slow down an attempted theft and discourage suspects.• Engrave your Vehicle Identification Number into the catalytic converter.Anyone with information about recent thefts can call Morgan Hill Police at (408) 779-2101 or the anonymous tip line at (408) 947-7867.

Police are looking for two suspected thieves whose faces were captured in video surveillance footage during unrelated incidents in Morgan Hill.In the first theft, police said a woman reported a man stole her bicycle May 7 outside the Goodwill store on the 17000 block of Monterey Road. The victim said she left the bike outside the store as she went inside, and it was gone when she exited the store.The bicycle is a green 21-speed Specialized Hard Rock mountain bike, according to Morgan Hill police. Investigators were able to retrieve a photograph of a person of interest in the case from camera footage inside Goodwill.“Morgan Hill police want to remind everyone to lock up their bikes when they are unattended,” reads a MHPD press release.In a separate incident May 9 in an east Morgan Hill neighborhood, a resident captured a photograph of a man who stole a package from the victim’s front porch, police said.That theft took place on the 300 block of East Central Avenue, according to police. The box had recently been dropped off by a package delivery service.The victim also took a photograph of a vehicle that might have been associated to the thief, police said.The vehicle appears to be an unknown make of mini-van in the grainy photograph.“The Morgan Hill Police Department wants to remind our community to make sure if you have packages delivered to your home or business to make every attempt to have someone there to receive the item,” reads a MHPD press release.Anyone with information about either theft can call Morgan Hill police at (408) 779-2101 or the anonymous tip line at (408) 947-7867.

A Christopher High School sophomore was killed in a Gilroy car wreck on Saturday when the vehicle she was in with two schoolmates veered off Miller Avenue and smashed into a tree.

GILROY—Mike Dovenberg has been named the head coach of the Gavilan College football team, the school announced Thursday.

Police are investigating a decomposed human body found in a field off Cochrane Circle in north Morgan Hill.Morgan Hill police received a call 9:50 a.m. May 7 reporting “suspicious circumstances,” MHPD Sgt. Ray Ramos said. A landscaping crew that arrived to the area in the morning to do maintenance work at the surrounding business park found what appeared to be a human body and reported it to police.Officers arrived and confirmed the remains were that of a deceased human, Ramos said. Officers do not yet know the gender or approximate age of the body.“It appears it had been there for some time,” Ramos said.As of about 10:45 a.m., detectives had not yet begun to process the scene.Officers and patrol cars surrounded the entire block bound by Cochrane Circle, Cochrane Road and Monterey Road. The body was found at an unidentified spot inside this area, which consists of an undeveloped and overgrown field with tall grass, shrubs and weeds. The block, which is located within a business park, was also cordoned off with yellow police tape.A small tractor sat in the field, but Ramos said he did not know if the machine was in any way related to the body.Ramos added that MHPD would be calling the Santa Clara County Coroner’s Office and District Attorney’s Office to assist in the ongoing investigation.Check back for updates to this developing story.

Liz Seminar was in the delivery room bringing baby Samantha into the world when something told her things were not quite as they should be. After enduring an array of pregnancy tests, Seminar and husband Dean expected all would be normal with their first-born child. But when Samantha finally arrived after an exhausting delivery, the teams of medical professionals who swiftly took over told them otherwise.

The State Water Resources Control Board approved unprecedented statewide mandatory water conservation guidelines May 5, requiring local residents, businesses and the city of Morgan Hill to cut water use by 28 percent for the rest of the year.The new rules proposed by state regulators are intended to enact Governor Jerry Brown’s April 1 executive order requiring a 25 percent statewide cut in water use in response to the ongoing historic drought.The state water board’s unanimous vote places urban water suppliers throughout the state into “tiers” of conservation standards in order to reach the statewide mandate. The tiers are based on each water supplier’s per capita daily consumption water, as measured from July to September 2014. Cities and suppliers who used the least amount of water based on this measurement are required to cut water use by as little as 8 percent this year in comparison to 2013 consumption, while those using the most water will have to cut up to 36 percent.Although a previous draft of the tiers had Morgan Hill cutting 32 percent of its water use this year, an April 28 revision reduced the local mandate to 28 percent, according to the state water board.Morgan Hill Program Administrator Anthony Eulo said the state’s initial measurement of the city’s per capita daily consumption was wrong, as city staff submitted the number based on a faulty mathematical formula which said Morgan Hill and its water customers used about 198.5 gallons of water per day.The new numbers, based on a resubmitted metric reached with the correct formula, show Morgan Hill using 161.3 gallons per person per day, Eulo said.The city is sure it can cut its water use by 28 percent under the current “level 2” restrictions, Eulo said. These restrictions, which include a ban on new swimming pools and a prohibition on refilling existing pools, were approved by the city council April 1.“We are shooting for the 30 percent (cut) that the (Santa Clara Valley) Water District has asked us to do,” Eulo said. “We’re looking forward to the community continuing to cooperate with the restrictions, and we’re confident we’ll reach the 30 percent goal.”SCVWD announced this week that it will host a May 9 “emergency water summit,” which will convene local and regional elected officials to “develop a framework to encourage collaboration and uniformity in the ways in which local cities and public agencies regulate water use in their respective jurisdictions,” reads the district’s May 5 announcement.The summit will take place 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Parkway.Morgan Hill’s restrictions also include limiting outdoor landscape irrigation to two days per week, and a prohibition on filling new swimming pools, decorative ponds and outdoor spas. Refilling of existing swimming pools is limited to one foot of water. The city’s level 2 restrictions allow penalties up to a $500 fine for customers who repeatedly flout the call for conservation.Residents and the city, which owns swimming facilities at the Centennial Recreation Center and Aquatics Center, are permitted to refill water lost through evaporation, Eulo said. The city does not drain and refill its swimming pools.Violations of the water conservation ordinance are enforced by city staff on a complaint basis.The state water board’s new regulations do not consider past conservation rates, such as Morgan Hill’s 21 percent cut in water use from June 2014 to February 2015.Some cities, such as Arcata, which cut only 1 percent of water use during the same period, will only have to cut 8 percent over the next year under the new state regulations. That’s because the city of Arcata is already conservative in its consumption, at 43.5 gallons per person per day in Summer 2014, according to the water board statistics.

A suspected drunken driver in a Volkswagen van led police on a chase, resulting in three patrol vehicles being rammed before the suspect was arrested in Morgan Hill early Tuesday morning, according to authorities.About 1 a.m. May 5, a California Highway Patrol officer saw the 1983 model van swerving “all over the roadway” on northbound U.S. 101 just south of Tennant Avenue, according to a CHP report. The officer attempted to make a traffic stop on the Volkswagen, but the driver failed to yield.The officer followed the van, which continued to swerve across the freeway and almost hit other vehicles multiple times, according to authorities. The driver turned around at Bailey Avenue and continued southbound on U.S. 101, and in the process rammed the CHP vehicle in pursuit.The Volkswagen exited in Morgan Hill, where the officer stopped him near the intersection of Butterfield Boulevard and Cochrane Road using a collision technique known as the Pursuit Intervention Technique, police said.The Volkswagen was then boxed in by Morgan Hill police officers, and the driver rammed two of those patrol vehicles in another attempt to flee, according to the CHP report.After he was surrounded, the driver was pepper sprayed by MHPD officers after reportedly resisting arrest, police said.Police said the driver was taken into custody after being pepper sprayed.The driver, Alex O. Larsen, 46 of Morgan Hill, was booked at Santa Clara County Jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, evading in a reckless manner, evading while driving the wrong way, resisting arrest, DUI and being under the influence of drugs.The three police cars rammed during the pursuit suffered moderate damages, but no officers were injured in the incident, police said. Larsen was uninjured as well.

Suspicious person