Georgia
Judge won't drop charges against ex-cop who shot naked man
DECATUR, Ga. (AP) - A judge has declined a request to drop the charges against a white former Atlanta-area police officer who shot an unarmed, naked, mentally ill black veteran.
Former DeKalb County police officer Robert Olsen's attorney, Don Samuel, argued at a hearing last month that the principle of grand jury secrecy was violated and that the charges should be dropped. Samuel said extra people were in the room, including extra prosecutors, and that could have kept grand jurors from feeling comfortable asking questions.
In an order signed Wednesday, DeKalb County Superior Court Judge J.P. Boulee said there aren't grounds under Georgia law to dismiss the indictment.
Olsen shot Anthony Hill on March 9, 2015, while responding to a call about a naked man behaving erratically outside a suburban Atlanta apartment complex.
Washington, D.C.
Man with gun at White House gate gets 8 months
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pennsylvania man shot by the Secret Service at a White House gate earlier this year after he refused to drop a gun he was carrying has been sentenced to eight months confinement.
Jesse Olivieri was shot on May 20. The 31-year-old from Ashland, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty in September to a charge of "resisting or impeding certain officers or employees with a dangerous weapon."
On Tuesday, Judge Royce C. Lamberth sentenced Olivieri to a total of eight months of confinement. Olivieri will get credit for the time he has been in custody and serve the rest of his sentence in home detention, in his case at a medical facility. He will serve three years of supervised release.
No one responded immediately to a telephone message left with his attorney Tuesday.
Maryland
Pepper-sprayed girl won't face court proceedings
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) - A 15-year-old Maryland girl who was handcuffed, pepper-sprayed and charged with assaulting police officers after her bicycle hit a car won't face court proceedings, community service or supervision by juvenile authorities under an agreement her lawyer announced Tuesday.
Attorney Robin Ficker said the girl has written a letter to the state Department of Juvenile Services apologizing for cursing at officers who struggled to detain her after she refused to identify herself or her parents.
The girl had been charged by police as a juvenile with two counts of second-degree assault, plus disorderly conduct, marijuana possession and a traffic violation.
The Sept. 18 incident, captured by police body cameras and cellphone video, prompted three days of demonstrations by people demanding police accountability in Hagerstown, a city of 40,000 about 70 miles west of Baltimore.
The Department of Juvenile Services could not confirm the agreement due to confidentiality laws regarding juvenile records, spokeswoman Audra Harrison said.
Police and city officials didn't immediately respond to phone calls and emails from The Associated Press. Police Chief Victor Brito has said his officers initially tried to de-escalate the situation, and then used appropriate force to get the kicking, cursing girl inside a cruiser and off to the police station so they could properly investigate the accident.
The girl refused medical care from paramedics at the accident scene. Her father later took her to an emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a possible concussion, according to a medical report.
Ficker wouldn't rule out a civil lawsuit against the city or police. He said the girl's parents have not taken any steps toward civil action, "but who knows what the future will hold."
In her letter, which Ficker provided to the AP, the girl apologized for her language and said she wasn't thinking clearly, having been briefly knocked unconscious in the collision.
"I was not brought up to speak that way. I have been taught to be respectful of everyone. I feel that if this accident had never happened I would have not spoken that way," she wrote.
A bystander's cellphone video shows officers forcefully flinging the struggling girl toward a building before handcuffing her. She and Ficker say she was slammed against the wall, but the camera angle misses the moment of impact. The video shows her a moment later, pressed face-first against the wall.
Ficker said the girl, a high-school sophomore, had no prior involvement with juvenile authorities.
"She is just to keep going to school as she's doing and not to get in any trouble," he said.
The dark-skinned girl has a white mother and black father, and all the officers involved are white, but race has not been raised as an issue in the case.
South Carolina
Survivors of fatal crash sue church that owned bus
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Twelve football players and coaches who survived a North Carolina bus crash that killed four people last month are suing the church that owned the bus.
Sandy River Baptist Church in Chester County failed to maintain the bus and its tires and didn't inspect the vehicle, a lawsuit filed Monday contends.
The bus was going 65 mph on Sept. 17 when the front tire blew on U.S. 74 near Hamlet, according to the North Carolina Highway Patrol.
The driver lost control, and the bus slammed into a guardrail and bridge support, peeling most of the metal off the bus's left front side, troopers said.
No one answered the phone at Sandy River Baptist Church on Tuesday, and no one has responded to several messages left with the church and its officials since the crash.
The lawsuit does not ask for specific damages.
Four of the people died, including bus driver Brian Kirkpatrick, and 42 people were injured.
Federal records list the bus as a private carrier, which doesn't have the same safety and inspection requirements as commercial buses.
Ramah Jucco Academy coach Bakari Rawlinson said in a voice mail last week to The Associated Press that he paid Kirkpatrick directly to use the bus after shopping around, and he didn't realize the bus wasn't legally available for hire.
Rawlinson said he paid all of the expenses for his team, which was heading to its first game when the bus crashed.
"I'm almost solely, completely paying out of my pocket to give these men a second chance. Everybody doesn't have $3,000 or $4,000 these other programs are charging," Rawlinson said. "We lost just about everything in that bus crash - everything."
In the past 10 years, Kirkpatrick had three tickets and was involved in one crash, according to state Department of Motor Vehicle records. He was cited for driving over the speed limit twice in 2011, and for driving too fast for conditions in 2012.
No criminal charges have been filed in connection to the crash near Hamlet, but troopers filed four civil penalties against the church for non-crash-related violations.
Published: Thu, Oct 06, 2016
