Month: August 2026

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KESQ) – A Beaumont man who severely beat his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter, as well as starved the child for weeks until she died, was sentenced today to 18 years in state prison.

Tyler Lawrence Finley, 30, pleaded guilty last week to murder and three counts of child cruelty, along with sentence-enhancing allegations of inflicting great bodily injury on a victim under 5 years old. Finley’s plea was directly to Superior Court Judge Brian Hill, without input or negotiation by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.

The plea was offered by the defense immediately after a jury had been seated for trial.

During a hearing at the Riverside Hall of Justice Friday, Hill suspended sentencing on the murder count, for reasons unclear. The judge proceeded to impose an upper term sentence for one of the child abuse counts, and then one-third terms for the remaining ones. Factoring in the enhancements, the sentence totaled 18 years.

Hill is a visiting judge, not originally from Riverside County.

According to a trial brief filed by the prosecution, 4-year-old Nicole Blackerby suffered physical trauma that lasted nearly a month before her death in mid-December 2020 in a studio apartment near the intersection of East Sixth Street and Palm Avenue.

The child resided there with her mother, 24-year-old Cheyenne Blackerby, and Finley, who had begun dating the woman after she relocated to the Inland Empire from Arizona in the summer of 2019.

Prosecutors said that not long after the relationship started, Nicole began manifesting signs of abuse and neglect, prompting calls to Child Protective Services in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

The brief said agents made multiple visits to check on Nicole’s welfare, but they did not find anything incriminating, and the girl appeared to be healthy. A visit to a pediatrician in September 2020 also revealed Nicole was at a healthy weight for her height, and there were no outward appearances of physical abuse.

Prosecutors said circumstances likely turned for the worse when Finely and Blackerby moved in together with Nicole at the Beaumont apartment a week before Thanksgiving 2020. At the time, Finley was employed at a Redlands manufacturing plant. However, on Dec. 4, 2020, he suffered an unspecified hand injury and never returned to work.

Autopsy evidence later revealed that just before or around this time, Finley and Blackerby began inflicting injuries to Nicole. Beaumont Police Department detectives and pathologists uncovered that she had been struck with fists or heavy objects to her head, face, thighs, knees and torso.

“The bruising even extended to her feet,” according to the brief.

The child’s nourishment also stopped. By the time of her death, the county’s then-chief medical examiner, Dr. Mark Fajardo, estimated she’d stopped receiving food for at least three weeks. Fluids were also withheld, with evidence that she hadn’t received water at least three days before she finally succumbed.

The only person to enter the apartment during the critical period in which the child might have been saved was a handyman, who visited on Dec. 11, 2020, to repair a broken shower head.

He later told police that he had seen the defendant and Cheyenne Blackerby sitting on their sofa foldout bed, with Finley talking on his mobile phone and Blackerby silent.

“Nicole was lying on her back in her bed, with a mask covering her entire face, other than her eyes,” the brief stated. “(The handyman) noticed that her eyes were tracking him, as he walked through the apartment, but he never saw any other part of her move.”

He completed the repair job and left.

On Dec. 16, Finley and Blackerby visited several stores, and in none of the security surveillance videos were there signs that Nicole was with them. Prosecutors said the pair purchased numerous bottles of sleep aids. That afternoon, Finley sent an obscure text message to Beaumont police, saying “I fear the suicide of someone close,” but when a police dispatcher inquired about the person and place, there was no response, according to court papers.

That night, Finley went to a neighbor’s apartment, exhibiting signs of drug-induced lethargy, including slurred speech, and asked the person to call 911 due to a medical emergency. When paramedic arrived, they found Blackerby dead from a drug overdose, at which point they also spotted the emaciated figure of Nicole, lying on her back in bed, eyes wide open but deceased, the brief said.

Finley was hospitalized for a brief period for drug toxicity before he was arrested for Nicole’s death.

“Dr. Fajardo noticed over 60 separate impacts to her body, including ones to her head,” the brief said of the autopsy. “He could see all of Nicole’s rib bones, and her hip bones were extremely pronounced. Nicole had a half dozen bruises to her face. All of the bruises were the result of blunt force impact. There were injuries to Nicole’s fingers, including a compression injury to her pinkie consistent with crushing. Dr. Fajardo also saw subdural hemorrhage, blood on her brain … the result of trauma from impact.”

Despite all of the wounds, the medical examiner ultimately determined that if she’d only been fed and given enough fluids — even several weeks after starvation — the little girl would have recovered and survived.

Her father had died several years earlier in Texas under undisclosed circumstances, according to the brief.

The defendant had no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.

DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. (KESQ) – A Desert Hot Springs family is speaking out after 36-year-old Lester Cordero was killed in a motorcycle crash last weekend in North Palm Springs.

According to the California Highway Patrol, Lester was riding a motorcycle on Indian Canyon Drive when a 61-year-old Desert Hot Springs woman driving a Kia turned left from westbound Teagarden Drive. The Kia entered the motorcycle’s path, causing Lester to collide with the left side of the vehicle. He was ejected from the motorcycle and suffered fatal injuries. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Kia driver was taken to Desert Regional Medical Center with complaints of pain. CHP says alcohol and drugs are not suspected as factors in the crash.

His brother, Johann Cordero, says Lester was on his way to meet family.

“The moment that all this happened, he was actually on his way to get to us so he could get ready to take out my mom to eat,” said Johann. “We’ve never gone out together in years.”

The family is now dealing with the sudden loss, which Johann says has been especially difficult for their mother.

“She’s trying to be strong but from time to time she has her panic attacks at night. We have to keep an eye on her,” said Johann.

The family is also raising concerns about road safety near the intersection where Lester was killed.

“I think I’ve seen more accidents here but no one ever has an eye witness because there are no cameras,” said Johann. “You could put more lights, I would recommend that because everyone here… people are speeding.”

He is also urging drivers to slow down and stay aware of others on the road.

The family has created a GoFundMe to help pay for Lester’s funeral and memorial expenses and support his loved ones.

If you would like to help, you can find the family’s fundraiser click here.

The family will also be selling tacos tomorrow, August 22, at 67921 20th Ave., Desert Hot Springs.

The crash remains under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact CHP’s Indio Area at 760-772-5300.

Stay with News Channel 3 for more.

By Laura Paddison, CNN

(CNN) — Arizona, California and Nevada will be forced to make deep cuts to the water they draw from the imperiled Colorado River under a new two-year operating plan published Friday, intended to help stave off an escalating crisis in the beleaguered waterway.

The long-awaited plan from the Department of the Interior comes after years of fraught negotiations between the seven states that rely on Colorado River water failed to produce a deal. And it arrives at a time when the river’s two key reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have both fallen to record lows — threatening water and power supplies for tens of millions of people.

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In July, the US Bureau of Reclamation published an operating framework for the waterway which set out the broad parameters of water sharing over the next 10 years, including a provision that cuts be set out every two years.

The new plan covers the first of these two-year periods, stipulating cuts for the three lower basin states through 2028. California will have the smallest at 440,000 acre-feet; Nevada will take 50,000 acre-feet less water; and Arizona will endure the steepest cuts at 760,000 acre-feet. It sets out no mandatory cuts for the upper basin states of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico.

These cuts translate into about a 27% cut to Arizona, 10% cut to California and 16% reduction in water flowing to to Nevada, according to Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

Arizona authorities have responded positively. Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, told CNN the water cuts to his state take into account previous discussions and recommendations between the three downstream states. “It could have been draconian,” he said. “I would like the reductions for Arizona to be zero but that’s not the reality we’re facing,” he said. “It’s a pretty good outcome.”

Arizona’s Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly issued a joint statement also expressing support of the new operating guidelines. But Nevada and California have expressed disappointment, and even dissent.

The plan is the latest stage in the quest to divvy up the shrinking water of the Colorado River. Some experts expressed relief that something is finally in place, even if it only covers a short period, but others say it is far from enough as water levels reach record lows with little chance of relief anytime soon. There are also fears the plan may spark a lawsuit as tensions between the states over who shoulders the cuts bubble over.

“We are at a time of tremendous change in how we are managing water in this system and what that means for both communities and the river itself,” said Celene Hawkins, director of the Colorado River Program at the Nature Conservancy.

The Colorado River is a lifeline for the Southwest, providing water to around 40 million people and irrigating more than 5 million acres of farmland. For more than two decades, it has shrunk dramatically due to a climate change-fueled megadrought, high temperatures and years of heavy demand.

Water levels in its two key reservoirs plummeted to a combined record low last month. Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, is now lower than it’s ever been since it was created nine decades ago, and Lake Powell reached a record low on August 15.

It’s “a dramatic signal that the system is at risk of crashing, meaning reservoir levels so low that water cannot be delivered from them,” Porter told CNN previously.

Colorado River water is divided between states under the 1922 Colorado River compact, which allots 7.5 million acre-feet of water yearly to the upper basin and another 7.5 million to the lower basin. The agreement was made at a time when the region had a smaller population and benefited from wetter years, with much more snow to feed the river’s headwaters in the Rocky Mountains. As water levels dwindle, it is no longer workable.

So, states have been locked in negotiations over how to share what remains. The lower basin states, which have historically used the most water to support vast farms and booming cities, have proposed cuts in their water use over the past few years but want the upper basin states to share in the pain.

California’s agriculture and urban water users will negotiate a plan to make the required cuts, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California General Manager Shivaji Deshmukh said in a statement. But, he added, “water users across the Basin must make a renewed effort to forge a longer-term agreement that produces additional reductions, including through participation of all seven Basin states.”

Nevada authorities echoed California. “… the federal government has produced a plan that provides little certainty for Nevada and other Lower Basin users,” said Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo in a statement. Over the long term, he said, this plan is “sacrificing the health and safety of Nevadans before requiring equal water responsibility for our shared water resources from the Upper Basin.”

The upper basin states — which, unlike the lower basin, cannot be compelled by federal authorities to reduce water use — have resisted cuts, arguing drought has already reduced the water available to them and that the lower basin uses far more water and should shoulder the cuts.

The new two-year guidelines provide an interim plan up to 2028 in the absence of a state-led agreement. Cuts will then be reassessed every two years.

In the meantime, the seven states can keep negotiating between themselves for a deal that would supersede the federal plan. “It’s very clear that a consensus is needed for us to manage the basin through what will likely be a permanently hotter and drier future,” TNC’s Hawkins said. But experts aren’t confident an agreement will be forged anytime soon.

A big fear is that the issue will wind up in court; states could sue each other or the federal government. “We definitely have seen some indications that some of the basin states are preparing for litigation,” TNC’s Hawkins said.

Nevada authorities have hinted as much in the wake of the announcement. “… in the absence of science-based operating regimes that demand reasonable water use reductions by all seven states, Nevada will fight to protect our community’s water supply,” said Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsminger in a statement.

Arizona, which will experience the biggest cuts, has previously made noises about opting for a legal route and authorities there have previously criticized federal plans for the river. Last month the Arizona Department of Water Resources said the cuts proposed in the 10-year framework were “unacceptable” and “would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy.”

Any lawsuit would likely rumble on for many years, during which the Colorado River looks set to continue its downward trajectory. “Renegotiating these issues every year means we could be one dry year away from crisis and one legal battle away from system failure,” California’s Deshmukh said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated statistics about who would be affected by water-use reductions in Arizona.

Additional reporting by Andrew Freedman

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