Mid-Valley Briefs

Mid-Valley Briefs from Wednesday's paper.

Yuba City

Single gunshot wound killed man

An autopsy Tuesday showed a Yuba City man died of a single gunshot to the upper chest, according to the Sutter County Coroner's Office.

Lorenzo Christopher Aguilar, 25, was pronounced dead at 1:10 a.m. Monday at Rideout Memorial Hospital after being shot while riding in a car near Queens and Clark avenues.

A Yuba City man, Jose Alexander Hidalgo, 25, a passenger in the same car, was arrested soon after on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter and booked into Sutter County Jail, where bail was set at $50,000.

Hidalgo had been released Tuesday after posting bail. He is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 9 in Sutter County Superior Court.

Yuba City police did not comment Tuesday on the circumstances of the shooting, which apparently was not gang-related.

Biggs

Sunday shooting victim identified

The woman shot late Sunday night in Biggs has been identified as 46-year-old Emily Esquivel.

The Biggs resident is in fair condition at Enloe Medical Center in Chico, said Community Outreach Coordinator Trudy Duisenberg. She was shot once in the upper torso in a gang-related drive-by that hit the wrong target, said Assistant Chief Brian Cook.

Investigators are still working on the case, Cook said, but two men were arrested were arrested on suspicion of being connected to the attack. Yuba City resident Jose Melchor, 27, and Alejandro Magana, 21, of Biggs were booked into the Butte County Jail, and bail was set at $1.3 million for Magana and denied for Melchor, a parolee.

Yuba-Sutter

Gas prices spike by 37 cents

In the Yuba-Sutter area and statewide, gasoline costs have rebounded upward after a price collapse that more than halved fuel costs.

The average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded fuel in the Marysville area has jumped 37 cents since Dec. 9, to $2.07, according to the AAA of Northern California. That hike represented the first price increase for gas since July, after which crude oil prices slid to less than a third of their $143-a-barrel peak and sent fuel costs tumbling from more than $4 a gallon.

Local prices moved slightly above the California average of $2.01, which increased 21 cents in December. Concord in the Bay Area recorded the lowest average per-gallon charge at $1.97, and Tahoe City's $2.40 was the state's highest, AAA said.

Crude oil closed at $38.89 a barrel Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange — about a $10 drop from last week and what AAA called a possible prelude to continued low gas prices.