Georgia
U.S. ex-missionary guilty of sexually assaulting Ugandan girl
MACON, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man on Wednesday pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a girl under the care of his church while doing missionary work in Uganda.
Court records show 44-year-old Eric Tuininga of Milledgeville pleaded guilty in federal court in Macon to illicit sexual conduct.
Prosecutors said in a news release that an American citizen had contacted the U.S. embassy in Kampala, Uganda in June 2019 to tell officials that Tuininga was having sex with Ugandan girls as young as 14 who were under the care of the U.S.-based Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Mbale, Uganda.
Tuininga was one of the church’s ministers. Authorities said they found Tuininga had already returned to the United States, but federal agents identified the minor and kept investigating. Tuininga admitted to the conduct, with prosecutors saying he told them that the victim would often visit the church property in Mbale.
Tuininga was taken to jail after his plea hearing and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 3. He could face up to 30 years in prison and could be required to be supervised by probation officials for life, although federal defendants often get substantially less than the maximum possible sentence.
Mark Bube, general secretary of the denomination’s committee of foreign missions, said Tuininga’s misconduct was reported by other Orthodox Presbyterian missionaries in Uganda and that he was removed from missionary work in 2019. Bube said Tuininga was later removed from the ministry and excommunicated from the church.
“We are all deeply grieved over this,” Bube said in a telephone interview. “He has brought shame on the name of our savior Jesus Christ.”
Bube said he has spoken with church missionaries about the importance of avoiding misconduct.
Tuininga joined the church from a separate but affiliated denomination in Oregon. A website chronicling Tuininga’s work in Uganda said he had begun working there in 2012 after previously working as a minister at Immanuel’s Reformed Church in Salem, Oregon.
Bube said the church is caring for Tuininga’s wife and children. He said he didn’t know if the church had offered aid to the victim in Uganda.
Washington
Prosecutor doesn’t agree with wife’s comments
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Haskell has issued a statement saying he does not agree with racist comments his wife has made on social media.
Lesley Haskell recently used racial slurs on the social media platform Gab in reaction to a New York Post story titled “MSNBC’s Joy Reid: Conservatives would trade tax cuts to ‘openly say the n-word.”
Lesley Haskell commented, saying Reid was “the true definition of the word” and then typed out the slur, according to an article last week in the Inlander, Spokane’s free weekly.
Larry Haskell, who is up for re-election this year, issued a statement on his official website Jan. 28 saying his wife’s views do not reflect his own, KREM-TV reported Monday night.
“I want to strongly reassure everyone that what was expressed in the Inlander, as my wife’s comments, are not my views nor the views of the prosecutor’s office – nor should they ever be. No amount of republishing of her social media posts will make that so. I have never and will never use such language. I apologize for the language and content as contained in the article,” Larry Haskell said in the statement.
In other posts, Lesley Haskell has boasted about being a proud white nationalist and says the white race is “dying” and that people “need to make more white babies.”
Florida
Man gets 16 years for spreading terrorist propaganda
MIAMI (AP) — A Florida man has been sentenced to 16 years in federal prison for distributing Islamic terrorist propaganda videos online.
Jonathan Guerra Blanco, a Cuban-born naturalized U.S. citizen, was sentenced last Friday in Miami federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in December 2020 to attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
According to court documents, federal investigators learned in 2019 that Guerra Blanco was following instructions the Islamic State terrorist group had widely distributed, directing adherents to publish propaganda, raise funds, recruit members and justify attacks on the United States. Guerra Blanco translated the group’s materials into Spanish for his target audience, prosecutors said.
Guerra Blanco also produced videos that he intended to use to recruit Spanish speakers to the Islamic State’s cause and to terrorize citizens of Spain, officials said. Many of the videos glorified the terrorist group’s violence and called for attacks on Spanish authorities, investigators said.
Washington
Deputy who mistakenly shot officer cleared in prior shooting
VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) — A Washington state sheriff’s deputy who mistakenly shot and killed an off-duty police officer over the weekend had been involved in a prior fatal shooting.
Authorities identified the Clark County deputy as Jonathan Feller, who joined the sheriff’s office in 2018.
Feller shot and killed off-duty Vancouver police officer Donald Sahota, 52, on Saturday night, as Sahota was chasing a robbery suspect who happened to show up at Sahota’s house.
In October 2020, Feller was one of three Clark County deputies who fatally shot Kevin Peterson Jr., an armed, 21-year-old Black man, as he ran from a drug deal outside a Hazel Dell motel, The Columbian newspaper reported. The Pierce County prosecutor ruled that shooting justified.
Feller served as a law enforcement officer in South Dakota for several years before being hired by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, according to the Lower Columbia Major Crimes Team, which is investigating Sahota’s death. He has been placed on critical incident leave.
Sahota was off-duty at his home on Saturday night when a man started banging on his front door, saying he’d been in a car crash and needed help. Sahota’s wife called 911 and learned that the man matched the description of a suspect in a gas station robbery.
Authorities say that Sahota’s wife informed the dispatcher that her husband was an armed, off-duty officer who was going outside to detain the suspect.
The suspect began fighting with Sahota in the driveway and stabbed him repeatedly before breaking free and running into the house. Sahota chased after the suspect and was shot and killed on his front porch by Feller, who had just arrived.
The suspect, identified as Julio Cesar Segura, 20, is being held on $5 million bail for investigation of attempted first-degree murder, robbery and other charges.
