Massachusetts
Police officer convicted of raping teenage boy
SALEM, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts police officer has been convicted of raping a 13-year-old boy he met on a dating app.
Lawrence Officer Carlos Vieira, 53, was convicted Tuesday by a Salem Super Court jury of aggravated rape of a child and indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 after about four hours of deliberations, according to the office of Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett.
Vieira, who had been free on bail, had his bail revoked and was held pending sentencing scheduled for Nov. 4.
Vieira met the teen on the app in the summer of 2018 and they arranged to meet in a Lawrence park, prosecutors said. They engaged in sex acts in the defendant’s SUV, prosecutors said.
When the victim and his family were evacuating on Sept. 13, 2018 after a series of gas explosions hit the city, the victim recognized Vieira directing traffic. The victim’s mother found out about the encounter in January 2019 and reported it to authorities, prosecutors said.
Vieira’s attorney questioned the teen’s identification of his client. He has been on unpaid leave by the department since he was charged.
Tennessee
Former officer helped drug dealer robberies, gets 12 years
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A former officer has been sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for giving police information and equipment to civilians who robbed drug dealers in Memphis, Tennessee, prosecutors said.
Former Memphis Police Officer Sam Blue, 63, pleaded guilty in January 2020 to conspiracy to violate civil rights by using force, violence and intimidation, and conspiracy to commit robbery affecting interstate commerce
Blue was sentenced to the prison sentence, plus three years of probation, on Tuesday, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
From 2014 to 2018, Blue conspired with others to rob drug dealers. Blue gave robbers home addresses for targets. He also provided robbers with an official Memphis Police Department badge and a car dashboard blue light.
In 2018, several men put on fake police uniforms and used a blue police dashboard light to stop Eric Cain near his apartment, prosecutors said. Attackers handcuffed, kidnapped and tortured Cain, demanding to know where he kept his drugs and money.
Cain escaped and spent a week in the hospital.
California
‘Scrubs’ producer Eric Weinberg pleads not guilty to assault
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Eric Weinberg, executive producer for the hit TV show “Scrubs,” was denied bail on Tuesday after pleading not guilty to sexually assaulting five women whom prosecutors said he lured to photo shoots.
Weinberg was arrested earlier this month after being charged with 18 felony counts including rape, oral copulation, forcible sexual penetration, sexual battery by restraint, false imprisonment by use of violence, assault by means of force likely to cause great bodily injury, and attempted forcible penetration with a foreign object, according to the district attorney’s office.
Weinberg entered not guilty pleas during the arraignment Tuesday and his lawyers argued for his release pending the next court appearance.
Prosecutors called Weinberg a potential danger to society. Superior Court Judge Victoria B. Wilson agreed and denied bail while ordering Weinberg held in custody until he returns to court Nov. 15.
Weinberg, 62, has been charged for alleged attacks between 2014 and 2019, but investigators said they believe there may be other victims of assaults dating back to the 1990s, District Attorney George Gascón said at an Oct. 6 news conference. He has urged those victims to come forward.
LAPD Detective Ryan Lamar said this month that investigators were looking into information received from a tip line regarding other possible assaults by Weinberg.
Weinberg was co-executive producer on nearly 100 episodes of the NBC hospital dramedy “Scrubs” between 2000 and 2006 and also wrote nearly a dozen episodes, according to the IMDB website.
He also was co-executive producer for “Californication” in 2007 and had producing and writing credits on other shows, including “Anger Management,” “Men at Work,” “Veronica’s Closet” and “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.”
In 2020, documents filed in Weinberg’s divorce and child custody proceedings included allegations by three women that he sexually assaulted them during photo shoots, the Los Angeles Times reported.
One woman alleged that she met Weinberg at a North Hollywood coffee shop in 2014 when she was 22 and he convinced her to come to a photo shoot at his home where she stripped to her underwear. The woman alleged that while taking photos, Weinberg grabbed her, forced to perform oral sex, choked her and then raped her, according to documents cited by the Times.
Ohio
Former college physician faces multiple rape charges
XENIA, Ohio (AP) — A former campus physician at Antioch College in southwest Ohio has been charged with multiple counts of rape and other sex crimes involving 15 women between 2017 and last year.
Donald Gronbeck, 42, was indicted Thursday in Greene County on 50 felony and misdemeanor charges that include nine counts of rape. He served as the campus physician at Antioch from 2015 through 2019 and maintained a medical practice in Yellow Springs where the small liberal arts school is located.
Gronbeck surrendered his medical license earlier this year after the State Medical Board of Ohio suspended him in late January based on complaints made by eight female patients.
He has been held in the Greene County Jail since his arrest Friday. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday.
“There is definitely another version of the events as told by the prosecutor’s office,” Gronbeck’s attorney, John Paul Rion, said.
A Greene County sheriff’s detective at a news briefing Monday said the investigation of Gronbeck was spurred by complaints from patients.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost at the news briefing called the allegations against Gronbeck “an incredibly graphic and brutal betrayal of trust.” He said one of the victims recorded a portion of the acts committed by Gronbeck.
Antioch College President Jane Fernandes in a statement released when Gronbeck’s medical license was suspended in January said the school would be working with local authorities to “provide information and help ensure that a full accounting is made of any harms done” from Gronbeck’s work at the school.
College spokesperson Matt Shetler did not respond to questions about when in 2019 that Gronbeck stopped working for Antioch or why he left the school’s employment.
Gronbeck received his undergraduate degree from Antioch in 2002.
Indiana
Man pleads guilty to arson in series of barn fires
GOSHEN, Ind. (AP) — A man has pleaded guilty in connection with a series of barn fires set last year in several northern Indiana counties.
An Elkhart County judge gave preliminary approval Monday to the plea agreement with Joseph Hershberger who was charged with eight counts of arson, the South Bend Tribune reported.
The fires were started in Elkhart, Kosciuosko, Marshall and St. Joseph counties between April and October in 2021. Eight of the fires were in Elkhart County, according to police.
Cellphone data placed Hershberger’s phone at the scene of several of the fires, according to court records.
He was arrested in December.
As part of the deal, prosecutors dismissed a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and placed an upper limit of 50 years on any sentenced imposed against Hershberger.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 21.
Sherry Thomas, his girlfriend, also was charged late last year with eight counts of arson.
In addition, she and Hershberger also face charges connected to a fire at an Amish school in Marshall County. Some of the barns set ablaze belonged to members of Indiana’s Amish community.
Pennsylvania
Man convicted in 2014 abduction plot that led to 2 killings
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A New York City man has been convicted in an abduction plot that led to the deaths of two brothers whose bound bodies were found in a Philadelphia river eight years ago.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that 36-year-old Jason Rivera shook his head as the foreperson of a federal court jury that deliberated for more than six hours announced the guilty verdicts Tuesday on counts including conspiracy, kidnapping and extortion.
“This is crazy,” Rivera muttered as his attorney motioned to him to stay silent while the judge dismissed court following the verdict, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison, the Inquirer reported.
The Queens resident was one of six men charged in what authorities described as a plot that led to the August 2014 deaths of Vu “Kevin” Huynh, 31, and his 28-year-old brother Viet over a $300,000 drug debt.
Authorities said the brothers were kidnapped and tortured before they were driven to the Schuylkill River, stabbed repeatedly, their faces covered with duct tape and their legs weighted down with cement before they were tossed into the water. A third man was able to escape and flag down a passing motorist.
Defense attorney Thomas Mirigliano argued that his client has been wrongfully accused and noted that no cellphone records link him to the area on the night of the crime. He objected to prosecutors pointing to a forearm tattoo of a line from the 1990 movie “Goodfellas” as evidence of his client’s role as a drug gang enforcer and debt collector.
Last year, Lam Trieu pleaded guilty to extortion, drug and conspiracy counts, acknowledging having reached out to a longtime associate to collect on a debt owed to a California marijuana supplier from drugs fronted to the brothers. He wasn’t charged with the kidnapping or murders.
Tam Minh Le, 52, a native of Vietnam, has been sentenced to death in the case. Two other men await sentencing on federal charges in the case.
Ohio
Fishermen plead not guilty to charges in tournament scandal
CLEVELAND (AP) — Two men accused of stuffing five walleye with lead weights and fish fillets during a lucrative fishing tournament on Lake Erie pleaded not guilty to cheating and other charges on Wednesday.
Jacob Runyan, 42, of Broadview Heights, Ohio, and Chase Cominsky, 35, of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, made no comments during their brief court appearances in Cleveland. Their attorneys declined to comment about the case after the hearing.
Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor James Gutierrez also declined to comment, referring questions to a spokesperson.
The cheating allegations surfaced Sept. 30 when Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournament director Jason Fischer became suspicious because Runyan and Cominsky’s fish were significantly heavier than walleye of that length typically are. An angry crowd at Gordon Park in Cleveland watched Fischer cut the walleye open and announce there were weights and fish fillets stuffed inside them.
An officer from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources confiscated the fish as evidence.
Runyan and Cominsky were indicted earlier this month on felony charges of cheating, attempted grand theft, possessing criminal tools and misdemeanor charges of unlawfully owning wild animals.
Both were released Wednesday on personal bonds of $2,500.
The first place prize in the tournament totaled around $28,000.
