Palm Desert crime victim candlelight vigil tonight
The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office will hold a candlelight vigil tonight in Palm Desert as part of Victims’ Rights Week.
The 7 p.m. vigil will be held at the Palm Desert Civic Center Park amphitheater, 43-900 San Pablo St. There are two more vigils in Riverside County this week — tomorrow at the Harveston Village Welcome Center, 40135 Village Road, Temecula; and Thursday at the Riverside County Historic Courthouse, 4050 Main St., Riverside. Both are at 7 p.m.
District Attorney Paul Zellerbach and people who have lost a loved one will speak at each event. The names of recent victims will be read at each vigil, D.A.’s spokesman John Hall said.
The Riverside vigil will be followed by dedication of the Victims Memorial Courtyard at the district attorney’s office, 3960 Orange St.
The speaker at the Palm Desert event will be Jami Davis, daughter of Sandra Smith, who was killed in Indio in 2010. Smith’s husband, Garey Smith, is awaiting trial in Indio on a murder charge.
The Temecula vigil will feature the mother of Robert Golden, who was stabbed to death in 2005 by his girlfriend in their Lake Elsinore home, not long after the two spent Thanksgiving with her family.
At the Riverside vigil, the parents of 18-year-old Rachel Elliott, who was killed by a drunken driver in the Corona area in 2008, will address attendees. Less than a year before she was killed, Elliott was a lead participant in her high school’s Every 15 Minutes program, which is held to create awareness of the dangers of driving while intoxicated.
