Police serve search warrant on house raided in first UCSC animal rights attack

By Jennifer Squires - Sentinel Staff Writer
Article Launched: 08/07/2008 07:09:35 PM PDT

SANTA CRUZ - Law enforcement officers are serving a search warrant at 724 Riverside Ave., the same house searched after a UC Santa Cruz researcher's house was targeted by animal rights activists in February.

Police are tight-lipped about what's happening referring all questions to the FBI. Spokesman Joseph Schadler, who was apparently at the scene this afternoon, could not be reached to comment. At least four agencies were at the scene, including Santa Cruz and UCSC police and the Department of Justice.

Police earlier this week said the students who lived at that house were not a focus of this investigation.

Santa Cruz and UCSC police have Riverside blocked off from Broadway to Barson. Residents with photo ID are allowed in but cars are not.

As about a dozen students gathered, some wearing masks, police took boxes and bags of evidence out of the house and put them into two suburbans.

One resident said she asked is there were safety concerns and was told no. Police said they did not know how long they would be on scene.

The Riverside Avenue house was tied to a Feb. 24 attack on a Westside researcher's house when six animal rights activists - five wearing masks and one man with a bullhorn - protested in front of the home. The demonstration turned violent when the masked protesters banged on the front door and were confronted by the researcher's husband.

He was struck on the hand by an unknown object, then chased the activists off his property while his wife hid their two children and two of their friends in the kitchen. The family had been hosting a birthday party.

The group ran to a waiting car and drove away. Later that day, police traced the car back to the house on the 700 block of Riverside Drive and raided the home.

Several people connected to the house, including at least three UCSC students, were considered "persons of interest" by police but no arrests were ever arrested. The mother of one of those students told the Sentinel earlier this year that none of the items seized, including computers, cameras, cell phones, have been returned to her son who was living at the time. Police said last month that the hard drive on one of the computers had been erased several times.

In Saturday's firebombing case, the FBI this week increased to $50,000 the reward leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone targeting UCSC biomedical researchers, marking the largest bounty for a crime in city history.

The FBI's top San Francisco bureau agent, Charlene B. Thornton, said she hoped the $20,000 donation to add to the $30,000 fund already collected by UCSC and others would entice those with information about the suspects to come forward.

Schadler said earlier this week there were no new details to disclose about the case they classify as "domestic terrorism" and declined to answer questions about leads. But he did say the investigation is one of the bureau's highest priorities.

Police were reviewing surveillance video from houses near the Village Court home where scientist David Feldheim, his wife and two children, 2 and 4, were sent fleeing from a second-floor fire escape after a firebomb erupted on their front porch. Detectives also poured through surveillance video from Caffe Pergolesi, where a flier listing the names, home addresses, phone numbers and photos of 13 UCSC researchers was left last week, as well as retail stores where suspects may have purchased items to build the incendiary devices, which he declined to describe in detail to preserve evidence.

Friend said the devices deployed in Saturday's attacks, which also scorched the vehicle of a researcher who lives on campus, closely resemble one used in the attempted firebombing of a police cruiser on the Westside in March 2007. Santa Cruz police spokesman Zach Friend said earlier this week that investigators have not been able to link that case specifically to animal rights activists, but said the similarity of the bombs lead police to a suspect a connection.

Earlier this week the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office confirmed that a third scientist was targeted in Saturday's string of incidents. A research associate who lives on McGivern Way, eight miles north of campus received a threatening phone message at home around the same time as the firebombing incidents were taking place.

University records indicate the researcher is an aide to the UCSC faculty member whose home was the site of an attempted home invasion by masked animal rights activists in February, an incident that touched off the FBI's involvement.

The Sentinel is not identifying either woman out of ongoing security concerns. Both were mentioned - along with Feldheim, the target of the Village Court firebombing - in the pamphlet found at Caffe Pergolesi. The fliers said "we know where you work, we know where you live."

Feldheim bruised his feet during the 5:45 a.m. escape from his home. But no other injuries have been reported in a string of Santa Cruz animal-right attacks focused on UCSC scientists dating back to February's home invasion. Chalk scrawlings found outside the homes of other UCSC researchers followed a firebombing of a UCLA scientist's home and a spate of trespassing and vandalism incidents targeting UC Berkeley biomedical faculty.

The FBI assumed jurisdiction of all the various animal rights cases after investigators classified the incidents as domestic terrorism. Authorities are treating the firebombing at Feldheim's home as an attempted murder because he and his family were home at the time.

Police said the $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of suspects in the firebombings tops the $40,000 offered by the city in the unsolved 2003 homicide of Derek Snell in the Beach Flats district. A $20,000 reward for a rape at the Santa Cruz Harbor this March also has gone unclaimed.

Contact Jennifer Squires at 429-2499 or jsquires [at] santacruzsentinel.com