The 13-year-old stepdaughter of Robert Trussell found him beaten to death in a pool of blood in his bed in one of the most brutal killings ever in Placer County.

She went screaming from her rural Roseville home to a neighbor who called authorities.

Trussell’s assailant was believed to have used a claw hammer to strike him in the head, neck and shoulder more than 25 times as he slept naked in his bed in a single family house on Billy Mitchell Drive north of Roseville.  Detectives said the majority of he wounds were on the left side of the victim and were focused on the head, cheek, throat and upper left shoulder.

Directors of the Placer County Water Agency have set November 15 at 2 p.m. for a public hearing on proposed water rate and charge increases in PCWA Zone 1, which includes the Auburn area and other communities.

Mailed notification of the hearing was sent this week to all Zone 1 customers and/or property owners.

Auburn police are beginning to sound like a broken record when they talk about the case involving Francisco Evangelista, 19, the suspect in the August 27 gun scare at Placer High School.

“There’s nothing we can report at this time, the investigation is continuing,” declared APD Lt. Scott Burns again this week.

Evangelista is due in court late this week for arraignment on a felony charge of possessing a firearm on school grounds. His lawyer, Tim Woodall, is expected to request that Evangelista’s $500,000 bail be lowered.

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More than 100 employers will be in Auburn October 11 to particpate in a job fair at the Gold Country Fairgrounds from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The job fair is hosted by the County of Placer and the Business Advantage Network. Co-sponsors include Placer County Office of Economic Development, Auburn Chamber of Commerce, Gold Country Media and the Workforce Investment Board. For more information, contact Cindy Burris at 530-889-4090.

Despite dire predictions, the city and business community in Colfax have begun to turn around the economic outlook of an area that just in March was the subject of a meeting titled “Colfax: Ghost Town or Not?” With a chamber of commerce on the verge of bankruptcy, businesses reporting lackluster sales and a town looking at possible deficits, the community has rallied and things are beginning to look up. The town finally has a working budget, the chamber of commerce is in the black, and new projects, such as the wastewater treatment plant, mean more dollars for the cash-strapped hamlet. With this edition, the Sentinel takes an in-depth look at a community that is proving it’s anything but a ghost town. Stories and photos by Don Chaddock.

Downtown Colfax, the town’s historic business district, has been hard hit, but appears to be on the upswing with two new restaurants and a museum opening on Main Street. Sentinel file photo.

The Placer County Water Agency has given itself a well-earned, 50th birthday pat on the back while saluting Auburn’s Bruce McCreary, the civil engineer credited with selling county officials on the idea of building what has become the PCWA’s crown jewel: the Middle Fork American River hydroelectric project. 

PCWA Honors Bruce McCreary — Lowell Jarvis, right, board chairman of the Placer County Water Agency, is shown with Bruce McCreary, the civil engineer whose vision more than a half-century ago resulted in the PCWA’s Middle Fork American River hydroelectric project, which was built at no cost to county taxpayers. McCreary, who turned 90 last month, was a special guest at the PCWA’s golden anniversary party.

Faced with declining enrollment and resultant budget woes, the board of trustees of the Auburn Union Elementary School District is looking at the possibility of closing one of the district’s five schools, either Rock Creek or Alta Vista.

The board has scheduled public input hearings on the situation for next Wednesday, September 26, at Rock Creek School and Wednesday, October 10 at Alta Vista School. Both meetings will start at 7 p.m.

The trustees anticipate making a decision at their October 24 meeting at E.V. Cain Middle School.

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It costs oodles of money to operate the County of Placer’s government, and the budget adopted by the board of supervisors this week is testament to this fact.

The board approved an overall 2007-08 spending program of $792.2 million, an increase of about $103 million over last fiscal year’s budget. Much of the increase is due to ongoing building projects and obligatory road work.