New York
Disorder in the court: Cockroaches released during hearing
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A courthouse in upstate New York was closed for fumigation Tuesday after hundreds of cockroaches were released during an altercation that broke out at an arraignment, according to court officials.
The clash broke out during proceedings in Albany City Court for four people for an arrest at the state Capitol. A defendant who started to film the courtroom proceedings was told to stop. In the altercation that followed, hundreds of cockroaches brought into the courthouse in plastic containers were released, according to the state court system.
The bug release was being investigated while the courthouse was closed for the rest of the day for fumigation.
Court officers arrested a 34-year-old woman in the audience for charges related to the altercation, including disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration and tampering with physical evidence.
She was released, and it was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney to speak on her behalf.
“What transpired is not advocacy or activism, it is criminal behavior with the intent to disrupt a proceeding and cause damage,” read a statement from the Office of Court Administration.
London
Harvey Weinstein to be charged in UK over assault claims
LONDON (AP) — British prosecutors said Wednesday they have authorized police to charge ex-film producer Harvey Weinstein with two counts of indecent assault against a woman in London in 1996.
The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement that “charges have been authorized” against Weinstein, 70, following a review of evidence gathered by London’s Metropolitan Police.
Police said the alleged offenses against the woman, now in her 50s, took place during July and August 1996.
After revelations about Weinstein emerged in 2017, British police said they were investigating multiple allegations of sexual assault against Weinstein that reportedly took place between the 1980s and 2015.
Unlike many other countries, Britain does not have a statute of limitations for rape or sexual assault.
Weinstein is serving a 23-year sentence for rape after his 2020 conviction in New York for offenses against two women.
He is jailed in California, where he was extradited last year, and is awaiting trial on charges he assaulted five women in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2013.
Weinstein, the co-founder of the Miramax entertainment company and The Weinstein Company film studio, was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, having produced films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The Crying Game.”
The announcement in England on Wednesday came two weeks after U.K. prosecutors authorized police to charge actor Kevin Spacey with four counts of sexual assault against three men. The alleged incidents took place in London between March 2005 and August 2008, and one in western England in April 2013.
Washington
Police arrest man after wife found dead
SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle police have arrested an 89-year-old Capitol Hill man in the fatal shooting of his wife at their home Tuesday afternoon.
The man contacted police shortly before 2 p.m. to report he had shot his wife, Detective Patrick Michaud said in a police blotter post, the Seattle Times reported.
Responding officers found the 83-year-old woman dead inside the home in the 200 block of 15th Avenue and arrested the man, police said. Homicide detectives are investigating.
Police did not immediately release details about the moments before the woman’s death. Neither she nor her husband has been publicly identified.
The fatal shooting marked the city’s 19th homicide of 2022. Thirteen of those killings came in the first quarter of the year, and the pace of deadly violence has since slowed.
Still, the city could in 2022 easily meet or surpass the 41 homicides investigated last year, especially because violence tends to spike during summer months.
There were 53 homicides committed in Seattle in 2020, 20 more than in 2019, according to a Seattle Times database compiled with information from police, prosecutors and the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Indiana
Man gets 10 years for mall shooting
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — A man was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday for a deadly shooting that sent shoppers fleeing for safety inside a northern Indiana shopping mall.
Dazhon Howard, 23, ‘also was given a suspended 7.5-year sentence after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter plea for killing Delaney Crosby, 23, inside University Park Mall in Mishawaka in September 2020.
Howard reached a plea agreement with prosecutors after his March trial ended with a judge declaring a mistrial when jurors said they were deadlocked. Howard had argued that he shot Crosby in self-defense after the two got into an altercation
St. Joseph County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Sanford also assigned Howard to probation after he leaves prison.
No witnesses or family members spoke at the sentencing, but Howard apologized to Crosby’s family and his attorney, Mark Lenyo, said his client was “regretful for his conduct in this case.”
Howard accepted the plea agreement last month. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss a murder charge.
Iowa
Man sentenced for detonating homemade explosives
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa man has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for making explosive devices and then detonating them on an Ankeny street in 2021.
Chad Allen Williams, age 47, of Johnston, was sentenced Friday for making a destructive device and being a drug user in possession of a firearm, according to federal prosecutors.
Williams, who pleaded guilty Jan. 20, will be on three years of supervised release after his prison term.
Court documents said Williams admitted detonating homemade devices on an Ankeny street on May 12 and June 7 of 2021. A third device was found on the same street on June 9, 2021, but it did not detonate. That device contained a “significant amount” of metallic shrapnel, prosecutors said.
Officers who searched Williams’ home found drugs, weapons and items needed to make the explosive devices, prosecutors said.
Florida
Man who damaged LGBTQ streetscape sentenced to probation
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A man convicted of burning tire marks across a gay pride streetscape in South Florida while participating in a rally for former President Donald Trump last summer has been sentenced to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service.
Alexander Jerich, 20, of Lake Worth, had previously pleaded guilty to felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor reckless driving, but a Palm Beach County circuit judge withheld adjudication during a Tuesday hearing, meaning Jerich will not have a felony on his record if he successfully completes his probation. Prosecutors had been seeking 30 days in jail, community service and five years of probation.
The judge had also previously ordered Jerich to write a 25-page essay on the deadly 2016 shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Jerich turned in the essay about the 49 people killed during the Pulse nightclub shooting before Tuesday’s hearing.
Jerich joined a convoy of about 30 vehicles last June on Delray Beach to celebrate Trump’s birthday, officials said. A video that quickly went viral showed a white pickup truck adorned with a Trump flag and registered to Jerich’s father burning tire marks into a rainbow design painted on the road at an intersection.
Officials said the design had been unveiled just a day earlier to celebrate Pride Month, which is meant to promote LGBTQ rights.
Nevada
Mom to plead guilty in crash involving 2 schoolgirls
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A woman who had been accused of trying to kill two schoolgirls she blamed for fighting with her daughter at a Las Vegas-area high school plans to plead guilty to a reduced reckless driving charge, her attorney said Tuesday.
Fatima Maria Mitchell, 36, remained jailed on $250,000 bail ahead of her scheduled Wednesday plea in Clark County District Court to a single felony charge stemming from a March 28 crash near Basic High School in Henderson.
Mitchell’s attorney, Roger Bailey, said his client faces a possible sentence of one to six years in prison, but will seek a mental health evaluation and probation under a Clark County court diversion program.
Prosecutors in the case did not immediately respond Tuesday to messages.
Battery and attempted murder with use of a weapon charges were dropped Monday, when Mitchell agreed in Henderson Justice Court to bypass a preliminary hearing and take the case to state court.
Police alleged that Mitchell used her vehicle as a deadly weapon. It struck a tree, a concrete sign and the two girls, who were treated at a hospital for broken bones but were expected to recover. Their ages were not made public.
Henderson police alleged that Mitchell deliberately drove toward the girls because they had been fighting with her daughter at school.
School police said fights earlier in the day at the 2,400-student campus resulted in citations for four students and a separate arrest of a parent.
The incidents were among several that raised concerns about campus safety during a school year that ended last month at the nation’s fifth-largest school district.
The Clark County school police tallied more than 40 students struck by vehicles on the way to and from school, the confiscation on campus of 31 guns and reports of some 3,000 assaults and fights, Lt. Bryan Zink said.
In April, a high school teacher was attacked and left unconscious in her classroom and a teenage junior was arrested on attempted murder, sexual assault and other charges. The teen’s criminal case is pending.
Charges also are pending against another 36-year-old mother who was arrested in December and accused of using her vehicle to strike at least four juveniles in a group gathered off-campus near a Las Vegas junior high school.
Police said three other children received minor injuries in the incident that escalated after the woman, Jaquitta Madison, confronted a student and his mother, alleging that Madison’s son was bullied at school.
Madison pleaded not guilty and is free on bail ahead of an Aug. 31 preliminary hearing on felony charges of battery with a deadly weapon, the minivan.
Madison’s attorney, Philip Singer, was in court Tuesday and did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages.
