Massachusetts
Driver charged with injuring motorcyclists held without bail
GREENFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A driver who authorities say was under the influence of prescription medications when he veered into oncoming traffic on a Massachusetts roadway and crashed into a group of motorcycles, injuring nine people, is being held without bail.
Ryan O’Farrell, 32, of Westerly, Rhode Island, pleaded not guilty in Greenfield District Court on Tuesday to multiple charges, including nine counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and operating under the influence of drugs in connection with Sunday’s crash on Route 10 in Northfield.
O’Farrell was driving a trailer-towing SUV south when he crossed a double yellow line and struck five motorcycles heading north, prosecutors said.
The motorcycles were among a group of nine from a Connecticut motorcycle club.
Nine people who were either operating or passengers on the motorcycles were hurt, and eight required hospitalization, prosecutors said. Three medical helicopters responded to the scene to take the most seriously injured to trauma hospitals.
One suffered a broken pelvis, one is facing amputation, and one was in and out of consciousness as of Tuesday, prosecutor Jeremy Bucci said in court.
Two children, ages 11 and 12, in O’Farrell’s vehicle were also taken to the hospital as a precaution.
O’Farrell had taken three prescription medications, all of which warn that drowsiness is a side effect, and his Connecticut driver’s license had been suspended, Bucci said.
“He should not have been driving,” Bucci said. “It is the Commonwealth’s position that nothing short of incarcerating him would stop him from driving.”
One of the children in O’Farrell’s vehicle warned him he was driving erratically, Bucci said.
O’Farrell’s lawyer, Alan Rubin, argued for low bail, citing his client’s ability to pay.
“He is incredibly remorseful for the injuries he caused,” Rubin said.
New York
Jury deliberates verdict in ‘We Build The Wall’ fraud trial
NEW YORK (AP) — A prosecutor told jurors in closing arguments at a criminal trial Tuesday that there is overwhelming evidence that organizers of a “We Build The Wall” campaign to raise millions of dollars for a wall along the U.S. southern border defrauded investors by lying to them.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman urged Manhattan federal court jurors to deliver guilty verdicts on fraud and conspiracy charges against the lone defendant: Timothy Shea.
“You will quickly see that the evidence is overwhelming,” the prosecutor said as he delivered a rebuttal after defense attorney John Meringolo told the jury that an acquittal was the only fair verdict.
Jurors deliberated for a short time late Tuesday without reaching a verdict. Their work resumed Wednesday morning.
Former presidential adviser Steve Bannon was once a defendant in the case, but ex-President Donald Trump pardoned him as he left office last year. Two other defendants had pleaded guilty to charges and await sentencing.
Meringolo insisted in his closing that there were multiple ways that jurors could conclude there was reasonable doubt and that an acquittal was fair.
“There are two sides to every story,” he said. “Their story has doubt and their story has reasonable doubt.”
As he had in his opening statement a week earlier, Meringolo insisted that a company prosecutors say was created to carry out a fraud — Ranch Property Management — was not the shell company the government claimed it was. And he said prosecutors were wrong to say his client didn’t work.
“It wasn’t a shell company. Tim worked,” he said.
Sobelman and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos in an earlier closing argument attacked the motives of Shea, who owns an energy drink company, Winning Energy, whose cans have featured a cartoon superhero image of Trump and claim to contain “12 oz. of liberal tears.”
They maintained that Shea, of Castle Rock, Colorado, and his former codefendants siphoned money from the fund, which raised over $25 million from thousands of donors after it was created in late 2018.
“No one donates to a nonprofit thinking that the nonprofit is going to loan money to an energy drink company,” Sobelman said.
“They stole and looted from the organization,” Roos said, citing hundreds of thousands of dollars that did not go to a stretch of several miles of wall that resulted from the fundraising effort.
California
Former executive gets prison for $1 billion solar fraud
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A former executive of a California solar power company was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $620 million in restitution for his role in a $1 billion fraud scheme, federal prosecutors said.
Alan Hansen, of Vacaville, pleaded guilty in 2020 to conspiracy and money laundering charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Hansen, 51, worked for DC Solar, a company based in Benicia in the San Francisco Bay Area that marketed mobile solar generator units. The firm touted the units mounted on trailers as being able to provide emergency power for cellphone companies or to provide lighting at sporting and other events.
But the company executives started telling investors they could benefit from federal tax credits by buying the generators and leasing them back to DC Solar, which would then provide them to other companies for their use, prosecutors said.
The generators never provided much income, and prosecutors say the company ran a Ponzi scheme, in which early investors were paid with funds from later investors.
The company eventually stopped building the mobile generators altogether, and prosecutors say a least half the company’s claimed 17,000 generators didn’t exist.
Hansen had previously worked for a telecom company that did business with DC Solar. In that role, he accepted $1 million from co-conspirators at DC solar to fraudulently sign a false leasing contract for the generators, prosecutors said.
Then Hansen joined DC Solar, where he signed false agreements relating to the earlier contract, according to court documents.
DC Solar founder Jeff Carpoff was sentenced last November to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay $790.6 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
The company’s chief financial officer, Robert Karmann, was sentenced in April to six years in federal prison and ordered to pay $624 million in restitution.
Other defendants have pleaded guilty to criminal offenses related to the fraud scheme and are scheduled for sentencing, prosecutors said.
Minnesota
Man accused in clinic shooting declines to look at four survivors
BUFFALO, Minn. (AP) — A man accused in a shooting attack on a Minnesota medical clinic that killed one staff member and wounded four others last year refused to look at the survivors Tuesday as they described their pain and terror.
Gregory Ulrich is being tried on charges of murder, attempted murder and other counts in the Feb. 9, 2021, shooting at the Allina Health Clinic in Buffalo, a small city about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of Minneapolis.
Ulrich sat attentively at the table with his lawyers through the first two weeks of trial. This time he laid his head on a courtroom table and wrapped his arms around it as victims took the stand. He didn’t look up through two hours of testimony, the Star Tribune reported.
Before the jury was brought in, Ulrich told Wright County District Judge Catherine McPherson that he was in great pain and would prefer to lie down outside the courtroom.
“Pain is the most powerful drug. I might as well be on heroin. I’m all mixed up and I need some pain medication so I can talk and think about it,” Ulrich said.
McPherson ordered Ulrich to remain in the courtroom, where the first to testify was Jennifer Gibson, a medical assistant at the clinic. She shared an office space with Lindsay Overbay, a medical assistant who died in the attack.
Gibson said she heard “a loud metallic bang” around 10:55 that morning and looked down the hallway to see a man with a gun. She heard more bangs and ran outside, where she lay on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound in her thigh, and played dead in temperatures around 5 below zero.
Antonya Fransen-Pruden, a registered nurse, walked to the witness stand with a slight limp, a lingering effect of being shot in the back during the attack. She was in the lobby when she and a coworker were shot.
As she dragged herself under a desk, she heard the gunman call 911 and tell the dispatcher to “send a lot of ambulances. There are a lot of spinal injuries and I have bombs that are about to go off.”
Fransen-Pruden spent 10 days in the hospital being treated for injuries to her spine, colon, ovaries and Fallopian tubes. She still has a bullet in her pelvis.
Prosecutors say Ulrich was angry about his medical treatment at the clinic. Court records allege Ulrich has mental health and substance abuse problems.
After the two victims testified, prosecutors played two short videos made by Ulrich in December 2020, about six weeks before the attack.
“They’re gonna find out what happens” when they mess with “a good Christian man,” Ulrich said in one of the videos. “You picked on the wrong person.”
Tennessee
3 teens, 2 adults charged in funeral shooting
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Three teenagers and two adults have been charged in the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy during a funeral procession for a teen homicide victim in Memphis, Tennessee.
A grand jury handed down five indictments on charges including first-degree murder and attempted murder in the shooting death of Emmit Beasley, the Shelby County district attorney’s office said in a statement Monday.
Beasley took part in a crowded funeral procession on a north Memphis street on Oct. 23, authorities said. The funeral was for Je’Marco Smith, 16, who was fatally shot weeks earlier, authorities said.
Five people attacked Beasley and another 16-year-old boy from behind during the procession, knocking them down and shooting them each at least eight times, police said. The other boy who was shot ran away and collapsed in a nearby vacant lot. He was critically wounded but survived, authorities said.
The ages of those indicted are 15, 16, 17, 18 and 23, authorities said. Prosecutors say the five are gang members.
South Dakota
State won’t seek death penalty in triple homicide
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — Prosecutors won’t seek the death penalty for a New York man charged with killing three people in Rapid City.
Pennington County State’s Attorney Mark Vargo told a judge Tuesday that he wasn’t aware the 45-day deadline for making a decision had passed four days earlier, the Rapid City Journal reported.
Thirty-seven-year-old Arnson Absolu faces three counts of premeditated first-degree murder in connection with the August 2020 deaths of Charles Red Willow and Dakota Zaiser, both of Rapid City, and Ashley Nagy of Greeley, Colorado.
Red Willow and Nagy were found shot to death in a vehicle at a park on Aug. 24, 2020. Zasier’s body was discovered Sept. 24 near Sheridan Lake. According to court documents, he had been killed sometime between Aug. 24 and Aug. 25, 2020. He was initially identified as possible witness in Red Willow and Nagy’s deaths.
