Year in Review: Top ten breaking news stories that captivated North Coast readers in 2016

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Press Democrat is taking the last 10 days of the year to review the news stories that marked our lives and shaped our region in 2016. For a complete list of the stories, click here.

The news can be shocking, heartbreaking and achingly painful, the grief over young lives lost or senseless violence connecting people from different backgrounds in communal mourning.

And yet people are fascinated by the details, hungry to learn what happened and wonder why.

These contrasts were reflected in the following 10 stories that were among those that most captivated Press Democrat readers in 2016.

2 CRASHES, 4 SISTERS

Two crashes eight days apart in August involving vehicles plunging into Sonoma County rivers took the lives of two sets of young sisters.

Two sisters from Jenner died Aug. 23 when their mother lost control of the family truck and ran off Highway 1, plunging into the Russian River. On Aug. 31, two Rohnert Park sisters died when their mother lost control of her car and drove into the Petaluma River.

Both happened as the mothers drove their girls to school. Both women escaped the sinking vehicles, but the girls were trapped.

First responders rushed into the murky waters at both sites and tried unsuccessfully to free the girls.

Kaityln, 6, and Hailey Markus, 4, died in the crash just outside of Jenner. The highway was wet from a drizzle and the truck swerved and dropped about 40 feet over the side of the hill before sinking in 20 feet of water.

Sayra, 7, and Delilah Gonzalez, 9, died in the Aug. 31 crash off Petaluma Boulevard North in Petaluma near Gossage Avenue. Their mother's car veered off the road and dropped 20 feet through thick brush and flipped onto its roof as it hit the shallow river. The car sank in about 6 feet of water.

ARMORED TRUCK HEIST

Not long after noon on a summer day, two armed men raced into a Windsor shopping center, shot an armored truck guard, stole bags of money and then led police on a chase to Calistoga where after gunfire the two were arrested.

The 55-year-old Loomis armored car guard was struck three times by bullets from a high-powered assault rifle. A fourth bullet blasted his handgun from its holster. A handful of good Samaritans and Windsor deputies are credited with saving him from bleeding to death.

Numerous witnesses saw the brazen July 12 heist outside the Chase Bank branch in the busy Safeway Lakewood center. From Windsor, the suspects drove east toward Calistoga where one fired at a Calistoga officer. Ivan Morales, 24, of Lakeport, and Sergey Gutsu, 24, of Antelope, remain in custody without bail, charged with three counts of attempted murder and four counts of robbery.

They also are suspects in other California crimes including another armored truck heist, a carjacking and the murder of a Southern California sandwich shop owner during a robbery.

UNSOLVED DEATH

He pedaled away from his Rohnert Park house on an October morning, but 18-year-old Kirk Kimberly did not return home.

Two weeks later, Kimberly's family's worst fears were realized when his body was found partly buried near the Green Music Center on the Sonoma State University campus. He had been stabbed to death.

Detectives are still seeking Kimberly's killer. Sonoma County sheriff's officials have asked the public's help finding his white Cannondale mountain bike and a portable speaker he often carried with him. A $2,500 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

A 2016 Rancho Cotate High School graduate, Kimberly practiced jiu jitsu and was supposed to start a new job.

Detectives suspect Kimberly was targeted and that his slaying was not random.

“It's a big empty hole in my heart,” his mother Jennifer Kimberly said. “He was an only child.”

DOWNTOWN STABBINGS

Cirak Tesfazgi's broad smile and the bounce in his step were well known in downtown Santa Rosa where he spent hours at local cafes writing poetry.

The 32-year-old graduate of Santa Rosa High School and Sonoma State University often slept on the street, even though his mother lived less than a mile away. On June 27, he had settled down for the night in a Riley Street doorway alcove when he was brutally stabbed to death.

Police said a transient from Baltimore, Delonte Hart, committed the unprovoked attack.

Two days later, Adam Lucero, 21, a recent Cal Poly graduate visiting friends in Sonoma County before starting a new job, was attacked from behind while watching a movie in the Roxy Theater.

Lucero fought off the assault, and Hart, now 24, fled. He was arrested shortly afterward.

Criminal proceedings against Hart are suspended while he is undergoing psychological evaluations.

HOMELESS SLAYINGS

Two other homeless men also were slain this year in separate attacks in downtown Santa Rosa.

Ben Guleng, 43, was about two weeks from moving into an apartment when he was found bleeding from a gunshot wound on his makeshift bed under a highway overpass along Santa Rosa's Prince Memorial Greenway. The case remains unsolved.

Josh Clark, 37, died May 26, five days after he was attacked by an acquaintance at a park across the street from Santa Rosa City Hall. Clark had been homeless for about one year. A 20-year-old man accused in the beating, Thomas “TJ” Borbeck is awaiting trial.

BAPTISMAL DROWNING

Sonoma County's youngest homicide victim this year was 4-year-old Maria Jose Ordaz Chavarria, who drowned in a downtown Healdsburg church baptismal pool, allegedly held underwater by her father.

Gerardo Mendoza Ordaz, 42, is charged in the Nov. 20 slaying of his daughter at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.

Police suspect the Healdsburg man walked the girl and her 9-year-old brother from their home north of town into downtown to the open church. About 8:30 p.m., the naked man, accompanied by his son, carried the limp body of his daughter from the church across the street to the rear of the police station and called for help. He was arrested several hours later.

A Sonoma County court judge has suspended criminal proceedings for Ordaz, following evaluations regarding the man's mental competency.

PETALUMA FIRE

A cigarette flicked out a car window most likely sparked Petaluma's worst residential fire in 14 years, destroying four homes and damaging nine other properties in an eastside neighborhood along Highway 101.

The Sept. 27 fire started about 3:15 p.m. and grew to a five-alarm blaze, forcing dozens of people from their Stuart Drive homes and requiring more than a dozen fire agencies. Property losses, still being assessed, are expected to exceed $1.5 million.

The cigarette landed in dried leaves, fueling flames that spread to eucalyptus trees near the East Washington Street highway exit. Hot embers floated into nearby backyards, creating an inferno of trees and multiple homes, just yards from passing northbound commuters. Traffic backed up into Marin County.

A fundraising effort for victims so far has raised about $18,000.

DEADLY DEAL

The black market value of California marijuana continued to fuel violence.

Two East Coast visitors suspected of coming to Sonoma County for a lucrative pot deal, then leaving after killing two people and wounding a third, remain at large.

Suspects Robert Lee Randolph, 30, and his girlfriend Maria Teresa Lebron, 28, evaded authorities when they fled the Highway 116 South property after the Oct. 15 shooting. They vanished again when authorities came knocking at their Philadelphia homes.

Investigators said Randolph and Lebron were supposed to buy about 100 pounds of marijuana - estimated to be worth between $100,000 and $200,000 - from former teacher Nathan Proto, 36, of Sebastopol, in a deal arranged by John Jesse Mariana, 28, of Guerneville, who is originally from the Philadelphia area.

But the Sonoma County men were killed - and a 23-year-old woman seriously wounded - during the deal. The woman, the sole survivor of the attack, hasn't been identified while the suspected killers remain free.

POT VIOLENCE

Marijuana trimmers turned on their boss in a robbery that turned deadly, said detectives investigating the killing of longtime Laytonville pot farmer Jeffrey Settler.

Three people have been arrested in connection with Settler's death. Mendocino County sheriff's detectives are still looking for at least four others suspected of involvement in the Nov. 11 attack against Settler, who was sleeping in a barn at his northern Mendocino County property.

Authorities said the suspects left with 100 pounds of Settler's marijuana and also kidnapped a 4-year-old boy and his mother, a Virginia woman who worked at the farm and was eventually set free.

The suspects being sought are Frederick “Freddy” Gaestel, 27, of Clifton, New Jersey; Gary “Cricket” Blank III, 34, of Elgin, Illinois; Jesse Wells, 32, of Binghamton, New York; and Michael Kane, 25, of Pleasantville, New York.

DEPUTY'S DEATH

A family lost its pillar and the Lake County Sheriff's Office lost an exceptional deputy in April when an ocean wave knocked Jake Steely off a rocky outcropping on the Mendocino Coast and into the frigid water.

Both Steely, 39, and his 11-year-old son, were knocked into the water near the town of Mendocino. Rescuers saved his son, but they could not revive Steely, who died at a hospital several days later. His organs were donated. He is survived by a wife and five children.

Steely graduated from Clear Lake High School in 1995 and started his law enforcement career in 2007 with the Lakeport Police Department. In 2010, he was hired as a deputy with the Sheriff's Office where he worked on patrol and several other assignments including SWAT, marijuana eradication and the canine team. Before his death he had planned on joining the Redwood City Police Department where he had been offered a job.