Road rage killers sentenced. Top Sacramento stories this week you may have missed

From a Rocklin road rage sentencing to new University of California admissions data, Sacramento-area readers had a lot to digest this week.

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Here are some of the stories to catch up on:

• A father and son were sentenced Tuesday in a Rocklin road rage killing that took the life of 55-year-old Jeremy Styles in March 2025. Blake Rakela, 21, received four years in prison for voluntary manslaughter after striking Styles with a metal wrench, while his father, Anthony Rakela, 61, was sentenced to 90 days in jail on a misdemeanor assault charge.

• UC Davis Medical Center ranked as the No. 1 hospital in the Sacramento area and No. 8 in California in the U.S. News & World Report 2026-2027 rankings. Six Sacramento-area hospitals made the Best Regional Hospitals list, and California led the nation with 70 hospitals recognized.

• A former Idaho police officer with Sacramento ties faces a long recovery after confronting a mass shooter at an Idaho In-N-Out on Aug. 1. A rifle round shattered his arm and severed an artery, but his actions drew the gunman’s attention away from others in the area.

• An Elk Grove mother is fighting to change how California treats fatal car crashes after her son Connor Lopez, 23, was killed when a driver turned left in front of his motorcycle in April 2025. The driver was charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, carrying a maximum one-year sentence, prompting Allison Lyman to launch a political campaign at the Capitol.

• UC Berkeley was the hardest UC campus to get into in 2026, with just a 10% acceptance rate for first-year applicants, dethroning UCLA as the most selective UC. The UC system overall received more than 205,000 first-year applications and admitted 153,272 students, with acceptance rates ranging up to nearly 95% at UC Merced.