-The crash of a small private jet at Santa Monica Airport took the life of Malibu resident and Morley Construction CEO Mark Benjamin, 63, and his son Lucas Benjamin, 28, also an employee of the company. The accident happened during landing at the airport when the small jet suddenly veered right and hit a hangar, immediately bursting into flames. The Benjamins and two other female occupants perished in the crash. Mark Benjamin had been active in educational and environmental causes in the Malibu community.
-Because of the ongoing questions about the safety of some Malibu High School buildings, Supt. Sandra Lyon announced at a local meeting the district would move classes out of the middle school building into trailers or the adjoining Cabrillo Elementary School. The district has brought in experts to test for contaminants, such as the carcinogen PCB, through both soil, dust and air studies. Preliminary mold tests showed “no unusual findings.”
-Pepperdine University and the California Coastal Commission butted heads over a campus soccer field that the university wants to light up for nighttime use. Coastal staff recommended against it, claiming it would cause light pollution and harm nearby animals and plants in an Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area (ESHA). One commissioner even suggested that the university might want to build a covered playing field to protect the little critters—the animals, of course, not the students. Seeing the school didn’t have the votes, Pepperdine pulled its application.
-Two severely injured sea lions washed up in Malibu and later died, with wildlife rescuers confirming the cause as bullet wounds. The shooting deaths coincided with the opening of squid season on Oct. 1. Squid boats are frequently seen offshore, with large searchlights used to attract squid.
-The end of the legislative session brought some new laws, one to make it possible for undocumented people in California to obtain provisional drivers licenses, which they can’t currently do. The law should decrease the number of cars being impounded statewide at DUI stops, similar to the types regularly set up in Malibu. In an anti-paparazzi move, Malibu residents and movie stars Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner testified in Sacramento about the harassment of their children by paparazzi. The legislature quickly obliged, passing restrictive legislation to try and protect the children of the famous.
