Features

Bay Area Briefs

Monday October 14, 2002

Dead tree-sitter identified 

SAN JOSE – The Santa Clara County coroner’s office identified the tree sitter who died Tuesday after falling from his perch as a 25-year-old Salt Lake City man. 

Robert Bryan was an activist with Earth First! who had only been in the redwood tree in the Santa Cruz Mountains for about 12 hours when he fell. 

Since August, Earth First! has been staging tree-sit protests against logging company Redwood Empire’s operation in the Ramsey Gulch area about 20 miles south of San Jose. 

Investigators still weren’t sure how Bryan fell. 

Loggers who saw him on the ground said he was not wearing a harness. 

Officials at Earth First!, which plans an October 19th memorial for Bryan, were also puzzled. 

 

Manager killed in bank robbery 

BURLINGAME – Police released surveillance camera photos Saturday of three bank robbery suspects believed to have been responsible for Friday’s takeover hold-up in which one bank employee died. 

The three men can be seen, without masks or disguises, on the Wells Fargo bank camera footage. The general descriptions of the men were also released and they were said to have worn common street attire and casual sports caps. 

Police also identified the bank manager who died in the robbery as Alice Martel, 34, of Millbrae. 

Martel died at Stanford Medical Center after she was shot in the abdomen. Another bank employee, a male, was shot in the left shoulder and was in stable condition. His name was being withheld Saturday. 

Police said two or three men armed with handguns came in through the back door of the bank Friday. Martel was trying to close a door to protect herself when she was hit by gunfire, and the injured man was hiding behind his desk, said Police Chief Gary Missel. 

The masked men ran out the front door and fled through Burlingame’s business district on Burlingame Avenue. 

 

Arrest made in bomb scare 

SAN FRANCISCO – A San Mateo county woman has been arrested on suspicion of calling in a phony bomb threat, claiming an explosive had been planted on the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Anita Hanson, 43, of Pacifica, was arrested early Friday morning after police traced the call to her cell phone. 

“Anybody who calls in a crank call is going to be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Lt. Charles McLaughlin of the California Highway Patrol’s office in Corte Madera. 

Hanson’s cell phone was believed to have also been used an hour before the bridge threat to call in another bomb threat to the federal building in San Francisco. 

She was booked into San Mateo County Jail on suspicion of criminal threats and making a bomb threat, according to the CHP. Charges had not been filed on Friday and Hanson, also known as Anita Barbour, was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.