San Diego, CA
City to clear San Diego Riverbed homeless encampments
The city of San Diego is set to clear homeless encampments at the San Diego Riverbed, posting notices early Monday to tell people who live there that they have to collect their belongings and leave by 7:30 a.m. Tuesday.
It’s a coordinated effort with multiple agencies — the first of its kind at the riverbed, the culmination of months of outreach efforts paid for by millions of dollars in state funding.
The bright green notices posted early Monday indicate the city plans to perform the abatement within 24 hours.
Outreach workers from People Assisting the Homeless have been in the riverbed for months, working to find housing and offer supportive services to those living there.
“The abatement is going to happen no matter what, like it was going to happen. So it was: Do they abate and keep doing the same thing that they’ve been doing, abating ticketing, arresting and throwing people’s stuff away so we have to start over?” said Autumn McCann, of PATH. “Or do we partner together and provide the case management services first and try to get people everything that they need?”
San Diego Riverpark Foundation’s latest census numbers, released last month, show an estimated 423 people were believed to be living along the riverbed.
San Diego’s homeless crisis only continues to grow. Now, we have new numbers highlighting one local hotspot — the San Diego Riverbed. NBC 7’s Shelby Bremer explains.
McCann spent all Monday in the riverbed near where Interstate 5 and Interstate 8 intersect to try and get those remaining there into some form of shelter, like to the city’s safe sleeping sites or into temporary housing.
She said MTS, lifeguards, Caltrans and the city will all be involved in the abatement Tuesday morning, with a lifeguard boat brought in as well as a crane that will lift loads of debris from the riverbed.
“I really don’t want to see any of my clients being ticketed or arrested,” McCann said. “I don’t want that to happen, so I’m a little stressed and pressed, but I am feeling confident that we can help the majority of the people that are still left out there.”
“It gets depressing, and I’m already depressed, so it just makes it more worse,” said Joseph Miller. He’s been living on the streets for six years and came to the San Diego Riverbed about a month before the notices went up.
“I didn’t think this was going to happen, you know?” he said. “They’re washing us out.”
“This is about providing assistance, providing resources and then going in and doing the abatement, doing the cleanup, restoring this area back to what it was,” said city spokesman Matt Hoffman.
The effort is paid for with $3.6 million in state grants awarded the city of San Diego from California’s Encampment Resolution Funds. That’s part of a total of $17 million in grants awarded the city, San Diego County and the city of Santee under those funds last June.
The funding used to clear the riverbed can be spent on rental subsidies, outreach work, supportive services and more.
“This is about building and providing resources that people need to get out of homelessness and not return to homelessness,” Hoffman said. “That’s part of the benefit of this grant. These funds are flexible so that somebody something doesn’t work for someone, we can try something else.”
The city said, after months of outreach, individuals still in the riverbed Tuesday morning will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Officials said the timing of the abatement process – beginning on Election Day – was a coincidence, put into motion when the city applied for the Encampment Resolution Fund grants in 2023. The abatement process will continue all week as the city looks to get ahead of the king time and the upcoming rainy season.
Miller said he planned to take the offer to go to O Lot, one of the city’s safe sleeping sites. He said he plans to take care of some medical issues then look for work — still hopeful he can get back on his feet.
“I couldn’t pass up this, you know? Land of opportunities out here,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of things to do out here in San Diego.”
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A local mother is raising awareness about holiday theft after her children’s Christmas presents were stolen from their family home.
Meanwhile, San Diego police are warning people to be wary of scammers and thieves this time of year when the department sees a rise in these types of crimes.
“All the gifts that were hidden from my children were all gone,” said Kristin Lyons.
Plans for a Christmas surprise are now a loss for her two boys. Just before 3 a.m. Friday, a holiday grinch was caught on camera walking up the family’s University Heights driveway.
“It was a male. Jeans, gray sweatshirt, black backpack, a brown Padres hat and he came in on a bike,” said Lyons.
The alleged thief used a flashlight to search their carport before leaving with arms full.
“It was a big bin full of like 30 or 40 gifts wrapped,” according to Lyons. She explained the gifts included a scooter, shoes, clothes, and toys for her 3 and 4-year-old sons.
“They may not be very expensive items, they were very sentimental and personalized for the kids,” said Lyons.
Her neighborhood is located off Park Blvd. and Adams Ave. “We’ve had a lot of foot traffic, which has increased a lot of the crime as well.”
She said she and her neighbors rely on security cameras for safety, but hope police increase patrols after filing a report.
“There’s crimes of opportunity,” said SDPS Lt. Cesar Jimenez. He added that typically thieves look for easy targets.
“They’re looking for homes that are empty. They’re also looking into windows, and if people have all their presents, they have their Christmas tree by a window with all the presents underneath, then that’s a big temptation,” said Lt. Jimenez.
He advised residents to avoid placing their Christmas tree right by a window and to make sure packages are secured and out of sight.
Meanwhile, Lyons said she wants others to learn from her experience and isn’t letting this bring her and her family down.
She added that a neighbor found a partially wrapped gift dumped in the area and returned it to her after they saw her Nextdoor post. She’d like others who may stumble upon more gifts to also post about it on the Nextdoor app in the University Heights area, and she will keep an eye out.
The Husker football program announced its second hire to the coaching staff on the morning of Dec. 19.
Though it was first reported on Dec. 11, the university took to social media Friday morning to make it official that former San Diego State edges coach Roy Manning would be following defensive coordinator Rob Aurich to Lincoln. Per his coaching bio on the Huskers.com website, Manning will be in the same assistant role at Nebraska for the 2026 season.
The news marks the first defensive assistant hire for Aurich as a Husker and comes roughly a week and a half after the dismissal of Terry Bradden as defensive line coach. While Manning is not a 1:1 replacement for Bradden, he is expected to oversee a smaller position group as the Huskers look to overhaul their defensive scheme under its new leader.
With that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about Nebraska football’s newest defensive hire.
Manning arrives in Lincoln with a dozen years of defensive coaching experience at the Division I level, spanning multiple power conferences included the Big Ten and Big 12. He has coached at three of the 10 winningest programs in college football history, including Michigan, USC, and now, Nebraska. Most recently, Manning worked under Aurich at San Diego State, where the two were instrumental in engineering one of the nation’s most dramatic defensive turnarounds in 2025.
At San Diego State, Manning coached the Aztecs’ defensive edge players as SDSU produced one of the best defensive seasons in program history. The Aztecs led the nation with three shutouts and ranked fifth nationally in scoring defense, allowing just 12.6 points per game. San Diego State also finished seventh nationally in total defense and first in the country in red zone defense, something the Huskers finished 2025 second-to-last in. He helped oversee a unit that made a 17-point improvement in scoring defense from the previous season.
Prior to his time at San Diego State, Manning spent two seasons at USC as the Trojans’ assistant head coach for defense and outside linebackers coach. Before USC, Manning coached cornerbacks at Oklahoma from 2019 to 2021, helping the Sooners win two Big 12 titles and reach the College Football Playoff. His defensive backs were a major factor in Oklahoma’s ability to generate turnovers and limit explosive passing plays, with multiple All-Big 12 selections and an NFL Draft pick emerging from his position group.
Manning’s coaching career also includes stops at UCLA, Washington State, Michigan, and Cincinnati, giving him experience coaching nearly every defensive position group, along with special teams and even offensive roles early in his career. A former Michigan linebacker and NFL veteran, Manning has been part of championship programs as both a player and a coach, contributing to conference titles in the Big Ten and Big 12 and appearances in multiple conference championship games. His winning pedigree now carries over to Nebraska as he joins Rhule’s staff, tasked with returning the Huskers to a top defensive unit in the country.
Rhule emphasized that Manning’s addition to the staff is about adding a coach who understands defense holistically. “Roy has experience coaching defense from front to back,” Rhule said. The versatility was a key factor in the hire, allowing Nebraska to add a coach who can connect the front seven with the back end of the defense with more seamlessness as Aurich invokes his new scheme.
Continuity was another major theme in Rhule’s comments, as Manning joins Aurich after the two brough whole sale improvements to the Aztecs this fall. “Along with Coach Aurich, he was a key part of the defensive transformation at San Diego State this past season,” Rhule said. Nebraska’s head coach highlighted the trust built between the two coaches and the value of bringing in staff members who have already proven they can work together at a high level, particularly when installing a new system and expectations from day one.
For Manning, the move to Nebraska represents both an opportunity and a responsibility tied to the program’s history. “Nebraska Football is one of the most storied and respected programs in the entire country,” Manning said, expressing gratitude to Rhule and excitement about joining the Huskers staff. Manning added that he’s eager to begin building relationships within the program and help spark the same improvements the Aztecs did in 2025 in his new defensive room.
With Manning’s hire now official, Nebraska appears to be adding a coach with a proven track record of defensive success. In 2025 alone, the duo of Manning and Aurich helped San Diego State record 32 sacks in 12 regular-season games. For context, Nebraska finished the 2025 season with just 19 of its own.
No matter how it’s framed, Manning arrives in Lincoln with the pedigree and experience to match. With 15 of Nebraska’s 18 listed defensive linemen currently underclassmen, Manning will have the opportunity to develop a young corps with the same traits that defined his most recent defensive stops.
While Nebraska is still expected to continue its search for a true defensive line coach, Manning’s addition gives the Huskers another proven developer with lengthy Power Four experience. The reunion of former San Diego State coaches Aurich and Manning brings immediate credibility to Nebraska’s defensive rebuild. For Manning, it represents a return to Power Four football. For Nebraska, it’s a hire that appears positioned to accelerate the program’s defensive progress up front.
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A member of the San Diego Unified School Board says someone poisoned her dog in her Sorrento Valley backyard last week.
Sabrina Bazzo says she found her golden retriever Bruno chewing on meat laced with poison and metal hooks on Dec. 12. Two handfuls of it were thrown into her backyard.
There are plenty of playthings in Bruno’s backyard, but nothing as dangerous as what the 2-and-a-half-year-old dog found that afternoon.
“When I first saw it, I was just so shocked, I couldn’t believe it,” Bazzo said.
She keeps what is left of two fistfuls of shredded meat tied up with string in her refrigerator.
“It had these blue-like crystals in there and these metal pieces, like metal hooks. That’s when I like freaked out,” Bazzo said.
Within 20 minutes of swallowing that poisonous bait, she brought Bruno to the animal hospital, where they induced vomiting. No further medical treatment was necessary, but timing was everything. Bazzo says had it taken longer, the outcome could have been much worse.
“The vet said if animals take in enough, a decent amount, there is nothing they can do,” Bazzo said.
Like all pets, Bruno is special, but for more reasons than the obvious. Bruno was just a puppy when he became part of the Bazzo family. It happened when her husband David was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer. Her husband died last June.
“Now that he’s actually gone, I have Bruno here with me. He has been very comforting for the family,” Bazzo said.
Three months after her husband’s death, Bazzo received a letter in the mail. It was typed in bold red letters. It read, “Please shut your (expletive) dog up with all the barking day and night.”
“It was during a difficult time for us that makes this that much more sad. We never leave him unsupervised, just being outside on his own,“ Bazzo said.
She suspects the author of the letter is also behind the poison food thrown in her backyard.
In part of an email, San Diego Humane Society spokesperson Nina Thompson wrote: “San Diego Humane Society’s Humane Law Enforcement is currently investigating a recent incident of suspected animal cruelty. We are working diligently to investigate all leads.”
What was once a safe retreat designed and maintained by her late husband while still alive, now, seems more like a trap.
“To now feel like someone is watching me or knows my dog is in the backyard and wants to do him harm, it’s scary,” Bazzo said.
Bazzo says until she finds out who did this, she can’t be sure whether this has anything to do with her position on the school board or her dog.
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