and there's an emergency on a public bus. we investigate why the call for help about a machete wielding passenger didn't go straight to police officers. also, new york billionaire michael bloomberg helped finance a high stakes recount in the bay area the

connection he has to one of the candidates, plus who's going to be the next mayor of san francisco? we're continuing our series with the major candidates. mark farrell is here to discuss his bold plan for crime and homelessness and a 1950s era cruise ship is now sinking into the delta. we're there and dig into its unusual history. good evening. this is nbc bay area news tonight. i'm raj mathai. could mark farrell unseat san francisco mayor london breed? farrell joins us in just a few moments. we start tonight, though, with that developing situation that we've been following on the peninsula. you can see all this smoke here, a fire at a metal recycling center in redwood city. our sky ranger was overhead at this hour. the bulk of all those flames there are gone. but there are still concerns about the lingering smoke, which is now drifting down the peninsula and

into the south bay. this fire broke out around 3 p.m. at the sims metal. that's a 12 acre recycling center on seaport boulevard. you could see the smoke for miles. this is right off 101. that thick smoke accompanied by the smell of burning plastic. that's not good air quality. officials are now analyzing what might be in that smoke. they're urging people with existing respiratory issues to stay indoors with the windows closed to avoid any exposure to another headline that we're watching, the bitter divorce between the a's and the city of oakland. what happens with the coliseum once the a's leave town ? today? oakland leaders reached a landmark deal to sell the city's share of the coliseum for 105 million bucks. that money could help offset a major budget shortfall. but here's the issue the a's own the other half of the coliseum. mayor shengtao today held a news conference. you see it here, she says the city will sell its half of the

112 acre site to the african american sports and entertainment group. that group is made up mainly of oakland based black developers and investors. they plan to revitalize the area by redeveloping it, including building affordable housing. well, i'm appalled by how long it has taken for us to build you know, the infrastructure that is so needed. the very basic necessities here in the community. well, it's far from a done deal because we don't know what the a's are going to do. will they also sell their half of the coliseum to that group, the team who's leaving for sacramento next season has not commented yet on this deal. well, a violent day on campus. one student sent to the hospital, another one arrested after a stabbing at christopher high school in gilroy. it happened inside the school's locker room. police say a male student was fighting with another boy, then stabbed him. other students saw it happen.

and so you just hear a, like, commotion like, oh, he's got a knife, he's got a knife, and everybody's just freaking out. everyone's like, just freaked out. the coaches, they're there like. like they just saw a ghost. like the student who was stabbed is expected to survive. christopher high was placed on lockdown for about 30 minutes. officers arrested that teenage stabbing suspect at the school and took him to juvenile hall. well, also tonight, in an emergency, every second counts. when a machete wielding hijacker boarded a bus, the driver pressed the panic button. but the call for help did not go straight to law enforcement. this incident happened in 2022, in san jose, but only now is that bus driver carlos zarate, speaking publicly, and he's speaking to us. zarate tells us he was alone when the passenger with a 17 inch blade, that machete came on board. you see the video here? that passenger ordered him to hit other cars on the road. zarate pressed the bus's silent panic button. but

our investigative unit learned that alarm did not initially go to law enforcement. instead, it went to the vta dispatch. zarate says every second he waited for help was excruciating. the new father had a six month old at the time at home. that was my biggest thing. either getting hit with the machete and not my baby, being embarrassed with me later on, or or just not being here for her anymore. joining us now is our investigative reporter, candace nguyen. okay. so you see some distress on your bus. how does this work here? there's a silent panic button and you push it and it then what? it goes to dispatch. yeah. so this it's it worked the way it was supposed to. that call first goes to transit dispatchers. that's how it's supposed to work. they assess what's going on. and then they refer that call to appropriate departments. they get all kinds of calls, mechanical route changes, emergencies. but it's in these emergencies that bus

drivers like zarate say they really need a direct line of communication to emergency responders. okay, so it worked as it's designed, what did they get a hold of? police officers immediately? and what's vta's response to all this right now? yeah, they did it eventually went to the sheriff's office at vta contracts with the total time took 11 minutes. and they said that's a good time. but really, what zarate is saying is that he needed that direct line of communication. so not 11 minutes. hopefully sooner is what he says even sooner when really in that moment, minutes, seconds count. so vta's, chief of safety and security, told me that there's always room for improvement, but that he doesn't see anything wrong with how the system responded to zarate's call. there we did press this director, though, this chief of safety, about vta tracking its own response time. the sheriff's office tracking its own separate response time, and no one really combining those times and getting a full picture of how long these drivers are actually waiting for help when they press

that panic alarm. don't you think that's much more of an accurate reflection of how long that bus driver is actually waiting? no, i mean, our principle is for first responders to get there as soon as possible. our responsibility is to report on the contract scope of work with law enforcement, particularly their crime stats. okay, so is there a point in the future perhaps they changed their policy or are they pretty dead set? they like it this way. well, he said the system was worked the way it's supposed to, but he did tell me that he's working on a bunch of initiatives and there is room for improvement. improvement okay. elsewhere around the bay area, we have a lot of transit agencies. is this similar to what they're doing, sfmta perhaps, ac transit samtrans yeah, we found out this issue is not specific to vta. we reported on this same problem with ac transit back in 2018. we reached out to ac transit again to say, hey, what's going on? and they said their system, the way it's set up, they do not feel bus operators need that direct line of communication to deputies drivers. we spoke to disagree. yeah. bus drivers want it asap.

if their life is in danger or passengers lives are in danger. exactly. okay, candace, thank you. let's move on. now, who's going to be the next mayor of san francisco this week? some fireworks, actually, in the hotly contested mayoral race, every one wants to unseat mayor breed. here are the latest poll results released just last week. mayor breed, slightly ahead of former mayor mark farrell. you see, he is the leading candidate right now in terms of opponents and also slightly ahead of philanthropist daniel lurie. now, the first debate between the five candidates was scheduled to go two nights ago on monday, but the debate was canceled after three of those candidates dropped out. among the big concerns of why they dropped out, the close ties between mark farrell and the group organizing the debate together. sf well, as we march toward election day, we are inviting every major mayoral candidate onto this program. with us tonight is mark farrell. mark, nice to see you. thanks for being here. okay. what happened monday, this canceled

debate a lot of finger pointing already. do you get it, though, that your opponents, some of your opponents, the concern they had going into this debate about your connection with together sf and the and the organizations? look, the bottom line is, you know, there are connections everywhere and every mayoral forum, every mayoral debate to me. i'm happy to show up anywhere, any time to debate my fellow candidates. okay. and as we sit here tonight, do we have a firm date on the next debate or the first debate, or is that still being worked out? i think last night we had our first mayoral forum where it was one on one, so we didn't get to debate each other on stage, but there is going to be at least one next month, maybe two, and there'll be more coming down the road. i'm just looking forward to getting that going. okay, coming down the road november 5th is election day. that's that's not far away. who are you chasing? who's the favorite here in this race? look, we feel super confident. all the polling that we've seen has us in first place right now and winning through our ranked choice voting system. but i'm one never to take anything for granted to me. keep your head down, work incredibly hard and poker. head up at 8:00 on election day.

okay, so in terms of ranked choice voting, i'm glad you brought that up. this is tricky. it's confusing to some people. do you think? and i've talked to all the candidates so far. what face to face. you and danny lurie have a lot of similarities in what you want done with the city and how you want to do it. do you think you guys will split the vote, hurt each other, and both of you don't win? or either of you don't win? i don't think that's going to happen. what we see in all of the polling and the data analysis after that polling is that my candidacy picks up a lot of those votes through ranked choice voting. so we feel incredibly positive about where we sit today. but again, take nothing for granted and really work hard through election day. how do you tell people tonight in these next several months, what sets you apart? i've asked you this before, but what really now? because this is a fluid situation. what sets you apart? if i'm at home saying, you know what, i like mayor breed. she's fine, i believe her. why am i going to change my vote? from my point of view, it's the combination of seven and a half years of effective leadership inside of city hall, because i do believe experience matters. you know, san francisco government and certainly being

the mayor of san francisco, is not something you just walk into. experience really will matter. i was the longest serving budget chair in our city's history, and we're facing a billion and a half dollar budget deficit in five years. that background is going to matter. and also served as mayor of san francisco. so i have experience in that role. and when i was in office before i fought for the issues around public safety, cleaning up our streets and investing in our local economy, all the issues that i simply cared about when i was in office now happen to be the major issues facing the city of san francisco today. but what i also bring is 20 plus years in the private sector in terms of experience. you know, my career has encompassed being an attorney, being an investment banker and being an investor. the combination of that background with my public sector experience will allow me to hit the ground running on day one and bring back the city of san francisco. okay, you want public safety, which is very similar to a lot of the other candidates. you want to increase the amount of cops on the streets that's going to cost money. we're in a budget deficit. where are you cutting this? you got to get creative here. where is it

coming from that money? absolutely. so when i was mayor, our budget was $11 billion a year. right now it's about $14.6 billion. so over the past three and a half excuse me. over the past six years our budget has increased over three and a half dollars billion over $2 billion of that is going to community health and welfare writ large to me. ask any san francisco resident where they've seen over the last 12 months an additional $2 billion on the streets around community health and welfare. the answer guaranteed is going to be no. so to me there's plenty to cut from a lot of inefficient spending coming out of city hall right now. to me, public safety is job one. i believe it's a number one job of government to protect our residents. we have failed at that over the last six years. mayor breed has failed at that. she's led our police department decline to the point where our staffing compared to when i was mayor, we were down over 25. to me, that's just dereliction of duty. i want to protect the residents of san francisco, protect our visitors and bring our city back. you still want to replace the police chief? day one on the job. i believe we need to. yeah. look, chief,

scott is a good man, but the reality is the average tenure of a police chief in the us is three years. he's been here for close to eight. we need someone that's going to come in with me when i'm mayor to fight for increased budget, fight for increased staffing, fight against the police commission, and make sure we support our officers every single day. homelessness is another huge issue in the city. in the city, i know public safety as well. daniel lurie, one of your opponents there just a couple of days ago, i believe, said he's got a new plan to solve the crisis. according to him, in six months, 1500 shelter beds and tiny homes expanding homewhere brown, he says he's going to solve that crisis. what's your plan? look, from my point of view, what i've been very clear about is when i was mayor in 2018, we cleared out all of the large tent encampments in san francisco. i will do it again as mayor next year. legally, there are obstacles. as you know, to do that obstacles, but also have legal opinions that say we can do exactly what i did today, piercing the veil of that ninth circuit injunction right now, despite the fact that the us supreme court is about to rule on that case, i believe we need

to be aggressive out of city hall to do the right thing, because nobody's getting better by sleeping in tents at night. the health issues, the crime issues that exist between rape and arson. it's off the charts and doesn't get talked about enough. we need to get these people on to better lives. we need to offer them shelter and housing, treat them with compassion and the respect that they deserve. but if they say no, we will take their tents away because i believe the sidewalks of our city belong to everybody. they belong to young families. they belong to the elderly, not just people who are choosing to sleep in tents on the streets of san francisco. that will be the mayor. i will be next year as we wrap it up, one thing that we don't know about you in your personal life tell us. our daughters graduating from high school on saturday. i'm so incredibly proud of our daughter madison, a graduate of saint ignatius high school up in san francisco. she's going off to boston college next year, to me to know me as i'm a dad first, and we're just so incredibly proud of her and look forward to seeing her soar in college next year. all right. congratulations to madison. thanks for coming to

the studio. good luck in this race. thank you. roger. we mentioned we are chatting with all the major candidates in this race. you can see our interviews with all of them. we post them at nbc bay area on our app and on our website, nbc bay area .com/ decision 2020 for up next. we have new information about another high profile race in the bay area. we're learning that new york billionaire michael bloomberg helped finance the recounts. also, a disaster unfolding in the delta. you see that old ship right there undergoing a restoration. it's now sinking. you're watching nbc bay eaar

norman, bad news... i never graduated from med school. what? -but the good news is... xfinity mobile just got even better! now, you can automatically connect to wifi speeds up to a gig on the go. plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. i gotta get this deal... i know... faster wifi and savings? ...i don't want to miss that. that's amazing doc. mobile savings are calling. visit xfinitymobile.com to learn more. doc?

congressional race in san mateo and santa clara county. former san jose mayor sam liccardo has been hit with a new federal elections complaint. liccardo is facing off against evan low in that race for congress to replace ana eshoo. that lawsuit accuses liccardo of hiding his affiliation with the super pac that paid for the recent recounts, the complaint says. the super pac, called count the vote, claimed no connection to the liccardo campaign in its recount filings. however, recent financial disclosures show the pac had been receiving payments from another pro, liccardo pac known as neighbors, for results. as it turns out, liccardo got help from billionaire michael bloomberg, the former new york city mayor paid about $500,000

to neighbors for results, which in turn paid 100,000 bucks to count the vote. in april, our partners at the san jose spotlight dug into those financial filings. how exactly did you uncover the michael bloomberg connection with all of this? what has remained a mystery are the funders behind count the vote, which is the super pac that was paying for the congressional district 16 recount, and because their quarterly filer, they weren't required to disclose file a disclosure of all their donors until the summer. but another pac that had been giving money to them, known as neighbors for results, was a monthly filer, which meant that we got to get a little window, an early window into who was giving money to this pac that was paying for this controversial recount. liccardo served as a key adviser to bloomberg's failed 2020 presidential campaign, known as brandon. just mentioned their count. the vote won't have to

release its campaign finance disclosures until july. okay, here's an odd story we're following in the delta, a ship right here with a famed history, a famed television history is sinking. sinking in the san joaquin river delta. our sky ranger was overhead earlier today. the ship is called aurora. it's a 293 foot ocean liner made back in 1955. now, the sheriff's department says the ship has a hole that's caused it to take on water right now, it's not clear what caused that hole state environmental agencies are on scene because the ship is also leaking diesel and oil into our delta. you're doing our best to mitigate any pollution impacts because there is some petroleum on board the vessel. so far, we haven't found any wildlife that has been affected by this leak. but then also the delta waterway is it's recreational. we have boaters out here. we have swimmers out here, and we want to make sure

that they're not affected by this. yeah this is a big deal here. this is all happening up a remote river channel named the little potato slough. this is about 15 miles northwest of stockton. the delta, as you probably know, is a major source of our water. and the point where the state's two largest rivers, the sacramento and the san joaquin rivers, meet. now, the aurora back to the ship has been here for more than a decade. the 68 year old luxury liner was once the inspiration for the hit tv show love boat. originally, the german built ship was intended for cruise voyages. after several different owners, though, the ship was bought by kris wilson, who found it on a craigslist ad, his goal to restore it took a hit during the pandemic. in a facebook post today, wilson said he spent 15 years of his life working to keep the aurora afloat, but he has since removed himself from the project. all right, let's take you outside now. live. look at the bay bridge, looking into san francisco. changes are afoot

in our forecast. jeff is going to join hi, i'm todd. i'm a veteran of 23 years. i served three overseas tours. i love to give back to the community. i offer what i can when i can. i started noticing my memory was slipping. i saw a prevagen commercial and i did some research on it. i started taking prevagen about three years ago. i feel clearer in my thoughts, my memory has improved and generally just more on point. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription.

you're already thinking. friday. giants. giants. friday always in that giant spirit. all right. as we get you into that forecast tonight, we have mostly sunny skies out there. that is going to start a change for us though. let me get you more details and

that microclimate forecast. and for tomorrow morning we will begin with 50s. now it will be mostly clear for the morning, and even through the afternoon, we're going to keep that sunshine in the forecast for us. temperatures go a couple of degrees cooler. but look, we're still in this really nice range. it will leave us a 76 in san jose, 79, concord 78, santa rosa, 50s and 60s for the coastline. the larger changes moving in a little bit quicker now looks like friday into saturday. this cold front sweeps down not only bringing us some colder weather, but the chance of some drizzle early on saturday morning. now, beyond that, it's going to be the temperatures i think everybody is going to be impacted by start of your weekend. 68 in concord. a lot of our inland valleys down in the 60s, but here we go. we warm it up on sunday to 7679 on monday. beautiful weather into next week. so a little bump in the road there as we head into saturday with those chillier temperatures. if you're doing any traveling, severe weather, high likelihood of tornadoes in nebraska, especially around lincoln, strong storms through the central plains, maybe even

back towards washington dc right here in the bay area. we will keep it dry next seven days. i think the chance of drizzle early saturday morning really isn't going to get in your way. once we really hit the nine, ten and 11:00 in the morning on saturday, we're going to be on a path to sunshine and that would continue into memorial day. seeing what we're seeing in the other parts of the country. we're fine here. yeah, certainly we're totally fine. thank you jeff, as we wrap up, mario lopez just getting started with access hollywood, a big show tonight kicking off with the new documentary on the 1980s, brat pack. and it's fascinating to watch andrew mccarthy reunite with the gang, including demi moore, rob lowe, molly ringwald and emilio estevez. because you can really feel their unbreakable bond. despite their ups and downs, nearly 40 years later, and we'll remind you which two brats were once engaged. then we're going to break down kelly rowland's red carpet incident at the cannes film festival. and we also have breaking news on the arrests made after this terrifying attack on 90210i and ziering on

hollywood boulevard. and remember when the infamous cheating website ashley madison was hacked, exposing all its subscribers nearly ripped apart this seemingly perfect couple. theirust moments away on access hollywood. back to you okay. thank you. here's what's coming up in prime time tonight here on nbc bay area. it's chicago night. chicago med at eight, chicago fire at nine, and chicago pd at 10:00. and then it's our 11:00 news live and local from our nbc studios. that's going to do it for us here at seven, for everyone here at nbc bay area, including our associate director, eddie duran. thanks for joining us. we hope you enjoy your evening. we hope to see you back at

we're up to 12 times faster than verizon, at&t, and t-mobile. and existing customers could even get up to triple the speeds... at no additional cost. it's ultimate speed for ultimate business.

don't miss out on our fastest speed plans yet! switch to comcast business and get started for $49.99 a month. plus, ask how to get up to an $800 prepaid card. call today!

hollywood." ♪ ♪ >> it's time that we clear the air on a couple of things. >> don't you forget about them. the new brat pack documentary