Wisconsin
Ex-Milwaukee teacher wants body camera video after arrest
MILWAUKEE (AP) — A former Milwaukee Public Schools teacher is urging police to release body camera footage of an altercation that left her injured after school district staff accused her of trespassing when she went to the district’s office to collect pay stubs.
DeShawnda Bailey, who taught special education, spent three days in custody and faces misdemeanor charges of trespassing and resisting arrest.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Milwaukee Public Schools administrators declined to answer questions about the June 1 encounter. Police have launched an internal investigation. Bailey provided police reports to the newspaper.
The district had already cut contracts with the Milwaukee Police Department in an effort to avoid such escalations, and about six months before the encounter the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission adopted a use-of-force policy that emphasizes de-escalation.
Bailey said she went to district offices to talk to someone after there was an issue with her employment. The school district claims she resigned May 28, but she says she didn’t. After Bailey was escorted out of the building, she sat outside in a lawn chair and went live on Facebook. That’s when security called police.
In Bailey’s video, Officer Shawn Humitz shows her a no trespassing order and says she has to leave or will be arrested. Bailey says she wants to contact her attorney, and she asks people on Facebook to share her video. Humitz then tells Bailey it’s her last chance to leave and reaches to grab her hand. She says she will go to her car.
“We’re past that,” Humitz said before the video cuts out.
Bailey said police threw and broke her phone. Police reports state Bailey continued saying she was going to leave and refused to put her hands behind her back. The reports state Bailey went down to her knees, and was pushed to the ground and told to put her hands behind her back. She said no and that she couldn’t breathe, according to reports. Bailey said her head bounced off the ground.
The reports say Humitz struck her once in her back, then hit her twice more and cuffed one of her wrists. Bailey was transported to a hospital, where she was cuffed to a bed before being taken to jail. She was held for two nights on a tentative charges of felony battery or threat to police, along with misdemeanor counts of trespassing and resisting arrest.
Bailey has not been charged with a felony.
“I want MPS to explain to me, why were the police called?” Bailey said. “Why couldn’t we have a mediation conference?”
The other arresting officer was Hector Claudio. Humitz declined to comment to the Journal Sentinel and the police department denied a request to interview Claudio. The department said neither has been taken off active duty.
Humitz was also accused of excessive force in a 2006 lawsuit that ended with a $98,000 settlement from the city, according to court documents. In that case, Humitz was accused of punching two men, including a church elder, inside a church.
Minnesota
Man accused of killing mother with drug injection
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Authorities were searching Monday for a 62-year-old suburban Minneapolis man accused of injecting his ailing mother with a lethal dose of the powerful painkiller fentanyl.
Scott Henkel is charged with third-degree murder, four felony drug counts and a weapons possession violation in connection with the death of 82-year-old Carol L. Henkel in November 2020. Authorities say the two shared an apartment where police seized a large quantity of marijuana, other illicit drugs and a handgun.
A nationwide warrant has been issued for Henkel’s arrest, the Star Tribune reported.
The state Medical Examiner’s Office turned over the body to a funeral home after determining that “the death appeared to be natural,” a search warrant affidavit stated. After one of her daughters told the examiner’s office that Scott Henkel was a street drug user and “possibly ‘injected’ his mother with heroin, a subsequent autopsy found “unexplained fentanyl” in her system and ruled that to be the cause of death.
Henkel, described in court filings as a “roadie” who sets up musical equipment for bands, said he gave his mother an over-the-counter pain reliever on the night she died and he didn’t know how she could have ingested fentanyl.
A search of the apartment and a locker at a storage facility found more than 100 pounds of marijuana, methamphetamine, psychedelic mushrooms, cocaine, a .357-magnum handgun, ammunition, and a ledger that outlined numerous alleged drug transactions.
Florida
Man gets life sentence for molesting girl, 10
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A judge ordered a life sentence for a 43-year-old Florida man who molested a 10-year-old girl and then doused her in bleach to destroy evidence.
Jurors in Tampa found Lewis Matthews guilty of four felonies following a three-day trial earlier in June, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
No one spoke on behalf of Matthews, who was the boyfriend of the girl’s mother, during Monday’s sentencing hearing, the newspaper said.
“It’s heartbreaking to sit in court and watch a victim, who has been sexually abused by someone who is supposed to be caring for her, testify on the stand,” Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren said in a statement. “That’s why I’m so proud of the work that our prosecutors do to hold these offenders accountable, stand up for the victims, and send these predators away for life.”
Prosecutors said the girl told investigators — and later the court — about falling asleep on the living room floor on April 13, 2019. She said about 3:30 a.m., Matthews woke her up and molested her.
He was interrupted when her mother, heard a noise and came downstairs. She was “stunned by what she discovered,” prosecutors said, and quickly dialed 911, the newspaper reported.
As she was on the phone, Matthews grabbed the girl and two other children in the home and put them in a car. He drove to a gas station, took the child inside and grabbed a bottle of bleach off the shelf, prosecutors said. He took the child into the store’s bathroom, ordered the girl to remove her clothing and doused her in bleach.
Even so, investigators were able to recover traces of Matthews’ DNA on the girl’s body, clothing, and on the bleach-stained underwear.
“Parents who are sexually abusing kids in their custody — it makes your blood boil,” Warren said. “That’s why we’re aggressively prosecuting cases like these. And that’s why these people deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison.”
California
Man faces 20 years in prison after jumping from plane in LA
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A passenger who tried to break into an airplane cockpit last week had recently been under the influence of methamphetamine before he jumped from the moving plane in Los Angeles, authorities said Monday.
Luis Antonio Victoria Dominguez of La Paz, Mexico, broke his leg Friday when he opened the plane’s emergency exit and jumped to the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
He underwent surgery and is expected to appear in federal court this week on a charge of interference with a flight crew, which could bring 20 years in prison if he is convicted.
It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
A criminal complaint released Monday gave new details about the incident and Victoria Dominguez’s life in the days prior.
The 33-year-old arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, the complaint says. His plan was to get to Salt Lake City, but he did not have a connecting flight.
He spent the night at a hotel in downtown Los Angeles after drinking several beers and buying “a lot” of crystal meth for $20, he told the FBI.
The next day, he continued to smoke the crystal meth and decided to fly to Utah instead of taking a bus, the complaint says. He smoked more of the drug before heading to the airport Thursday but ultimately missed his flight and wandered the streets through the night.
On Friday, he missed a second flight but was rescheduled to board United Airlines Flight 5365, operated by SkyWest Airlines, to Salt Lake City. Victoria Dominguez took his seat and began to doze as he “was coming down from all the drugs he had used the last couple of days,” the complaint says.
The passenger sitting next to Victoria Dominguez told authorities that he kept looking around and fidgeting. He asked her where she was going, and she said it was not his business. She said he then whispered to her that he needed to get off the plane and was going to jump out. “I’m serious,” he said.
Victoria Dominguez, however, told the FBI that he had he heard other passengers laugh and say they were going to a different destination, the complaint says. He panicked. He “sprinted” toward a flight attendant at the front of the plane around 7 p.m. and said he wasn’t feeling well and needed to get off the flight.
The flight attendant said the plane was about to take off and they began to struggle, the complaint says. He pounded on the locked cockpit door and tried to open it as the flight attendant prayed the pilots — who were confused by the banging — would not open the door, according to the document.
Victoria Dominguez wrenched open the emergency exit door and the emergency slide deployed, according to the complaint, as the flight attendant called the pilots to stop the plane.
He told the FBI that his panic attack potentially “gave him the strength to open the door.” The aircraft, which had not been moving before, began to roll as Victoria Dominguez struggled with a passenger who was trying to restrain him.
Victoria Dominguez got away and jumped from the aircraft, missing the emergency slide and landing on the tarmac, breaking his right leg. He was trying to crawl away from the plane when he was apprehended.
West Virginia
Needle exchange law halted amid federal lawsuit
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A judge in West Virginia has granted a group’s request to stop a law tightening requirements on needle exchange programs from being implemented next month.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s West Virginia chapter filed a federal lawsuit last week. A judge issued a temporary restraining order Monday and scheduled a July 8 hearing on the issue. The law was set to take effect July 9.
“We’re encouraged by this decision from the court,” chapter legal director Loree Stark said. “This harmful, constitutionally flawed bill should never be allowed to take effect. Harm reduction saves lives.”
Republican Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill in April over the objections of critics who said it will restrict access to clean needles amid a spike in HIV cases.
The governor’s office did not return an email seeking comment Monday.
The bill would requires licenses for syringe collection and distribution programs. Operators would have to offer an array of health outreach services, including overdose prevention education and substance abuse treatment program referrals. Participants also must show an identification card to obtain a syringe. Advocates view the regulations as onerous.
Supporters said the legislation would help those addicted to opioids get connected to health care services fighting substance abuse. Some Republicans lawmakers had said the changes were necessary because some needle exchange programs were “operating so irresponsibly” that they were causing syringe litter.
The ACLU chapter called it “one of the most restrictive state laws governing syringe exchange services in the nation.” The group said it would likely lead to more HIV cases and the spread of other bloodborne illnesses.
The law, if implemented, would take effect amid one of the nation’s highest spikes in HIV cases related to intravenous drug use. The surge, clustered mainly around the capital of Charleston and the city of Huntington, was attributed at least in part to the cancellation in 2018 of Charleston’s needle exchange program.
It has led to an investigation by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that last week found emergency departments and inpatient medical personnel rarely conducted HIV testing on intravenous drug users in Kanawha County.
Previously, city leaders and first responders complained that the program in Kanawha County led to an increase in needles being left in public places and abandoned buildings, and it was shut down.
The CDC describes syringe programs as “safe, effective, and cost-saving.”
On Saturday, dozens of volunteers formed the letters “HIV SOS” at a health event as activists seek a public health emergency declaration in Charleston for the HIV crisis as well as overdoses from prescription pain pills.
