Texas
Woman gets death for killing woman to take unborn baby
NEW BOSTON, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury sentenced a woman to death Wednesday for killing a pregnant woman she knew to take her unborn daughter.
Jurors returned with the sentence for Taylor Parker, 29, after deliberating for just over an hour, the Texarkana Gazette reported. The same Bowie County jury convicted Parker on Oct. 3 of capital murder in the 2020 slaying of 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock, whose baby was cut from her womb and did not survive.
In a statement to the court, Simmons-Hancock’s mother addressed Parker as an “evil piece of flesh demon.”
“My baby was alive still fighting for her babies when you tore her open and ripped her baby from her stomach,” Jessica Brooks said.
Simmons-Hancock’s body was found Oct. 9, 2020, at her home in New Boston, a city of about 4,600 people that’s 160 miles (258 kilometers) northeast of Dallas. Her 3-year-old daughter was at home when her mother was killed.
Later that morning, Parker claimed she’d just given birth after being pulled over by a state trooper for speeding and driving erratically. The baby, Braxlynn Sage Hancock, was taken to a hospital in Oklahoma, where she was pronounced dead.
Prosecutors have said that in an attempt to keep her boyfriend, Parker made herself look pregnant, faked ultrasounds and even had a gender-reveal party.
Homer Hancock, Simmons-Hancock’s husband, testified that Parker and his wife were “somewhat friends,” and that Parker had taken their engagement and wedding photos.
In closing statements, prosecutor Kelley Crisp showed jurors a crime scene photo of Simmons-Hancock soaked in blood on the floor. She told jurors that Parker needed to be sentenced to death because she’s a danger. She said that in addition to having her baby ripped from her womb, Simmons-Hancock was “slashed” hundreds of times and beaten.
Parker’s attorney, Jeff Harrelson, told jurors in closing statements that “words can be used to dehumanize,” and said that there are “layers” and “shades of gray” to people’s lives.
“She is a human,” he said.
Harrelson also said Parker was let down by her friends and family, who didn’t confront her about the fake pregnancy.
“There was no safety net when everyone saw the wheels were off,” he said.
Pennsylvania
Syrian refugee gets 17 years in church bomb plot case
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A Syrian refugee has been sentenced to more than 17 years in what authorities said was a plot to plot to bomb a Christian church in Pittsburgh.
Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, 24, was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years and four months on a guilty plea last year to a federal charge of attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic Stage group, a militant extremist organization.
Authorities said Alowemer, who was born in Syria and came to the United States in 2016, had detailed plans in 2019 to bomb the Legacy International Worship Center, a small Christian church on the city’s North Side. Prosecutors said he wanted to inspire other U.S. supporters of the Islamic State group to conduct similar actions.
Alowemer gave someone he thought was a fellow IS supporter instructions about how to build and use explosives in May 2019, but that person was in fact with the FBI, prosecutors said. A month later, they said, he purchased nails and nail polish remover to build an explosive device, they said.
In a June 2019 meeting with an FBI agent and an FBI confidential source, Alowemer gave them maps with arrival and escape routes, and a handwritten, 10-point plan about how he would deliver the explosives in a backpack. He was arrested about a week later.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that U.S. District Judge Marilyn Horan told Alowemer on Tuesday that the case had brought “nothing but tragic impact” on him and his family, as well as the community.
“You knew full well what you were doing,” she sad. “All of your actions were knowing, intentional and deliberate.”
Prosecutors sought the maximum term of 20 years. The defense argued for an eight-year term, arguing that years of trauma had left Alowemer with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder as well as survivor’s guilt that made him obsessed about what was happening in his homeland.
“At the time of his offense, he was sick, and that sickness contributed to his offense,” assistant public defender Andrew Lipson said. “That sickness distorted the world around him.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Soo Song acknowledged that he had endured trauma but said what he planned was not only “an act of terrorism” but had the hallmarks of a hate crime in targeting a Christian church to try to retaliate for actions against ISIS in Nigeria. Other potential targets he identified included classmates and U.S. soldiers, she said.
In court, Alowemer apologized to the church’s pastor and congregation as well as the community and the government.
“I understand the severity of my crime,” he said. “I no longer think or act the way I used to. I no longer support ISIS.”
Montana
Judge orders arrest of neo-Nazi website founder
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the arrest of a neo-Nazi website publisher accused of ignoring a $14 million judgment against him for orchestrating an anti-Semitic harassment campaign against a Montana woman’s family.
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen issued a bench warrant for the arrest of Andrew Anglin, founder and operator of The Daily Stormer website.
Attorneys for Montana real estate agent Tanya Gersh have said Anglin did not pay any portion of the August 2019 judgment and has ignored their requests for information about his whereabouts, his operation of the website and other assets.
Gersh says anonymous internet trolls bombarded her family with hateful and threatening messages after Anglin published their personal information, including a photo of her young son. In a string of posts, Anglin accused Gersh and other Jewish residents of Whitefish, Montana, of engaging in an “extortion racket” against the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer.
Gersh’s April 2017 lawsuit accused Anglin of invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violation of the Montana Anti-Intimidation Act. An attorney for Gersh did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment Wednesday.
Judge Christensen ordered Anglin to pay over $4 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages to Gersh, who is represented by lawyers from the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. The court entered the default judgment against Anglin after he failed to appear for a scheduled deposition by Gersh’s attorneys.
Anglin, a native of Ohio, has claimed to be living outside the U.S. His current whereabouts are unknown and he did not immediately respond to an email sent to an address posted on his website.
Other targets of Anglin’s online harassment campaigns also secured default judgments against him after he failed to respond to their respective lawsuits.
In June 2019, a federal judge in Ohio awarded $4.1 million in damages to Muslim American radio host Dean Obeidallah, who sued Anglin for falsely accusing him of terrorism. Obeidallah said he received death threats after Anglin published an article that tricked readers into believing he took responsibility for the May 2017 terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert.
In August 2019, a federal judge in Washington entered another default judgment against Anglin and awarded just over $600,000 in compensatory and punitive damages to the first Black woman to serve as American University’s student government president. Taylor Dumpson’s lawsuit said Anglin directed his readers to “troll storm” her after someone hung bananas with hateful messages from nooses on the university’s campus a day after her inauguration as student government president.
Arkansas
45 arrested in drug, weapons investigation
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Nearly four dozen people were arrested Wednesday in what federal authorities say was the culmination of three investigations into a drug and firearms operation that stretched from central Arkansas to California and Texas.
A total of 80 people have been indicted and 45 were arrested on weapons and drug trafficking charges, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Little Rock.
The statement said two FBI investigations into gang violence and drug trafficking and a separate Drug Enforcement Administration investigation uncovered methamphetamine and fentanyl being mailed from California into Arkansas and distributed in Little Rock, Pine Bluff and Houston.
The statement said weapons, including machine guns, cash and drugs, have been seized as part of the investigation.
Pennsylvania
Woman convicted in 911 hoax pleads guilty in new fraud case
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former Pennsylvania woman who made national headlines more than a decade ago by falsely claiming she had been kidnapped when she had actually gone to Walt Disney World has pleaded guilty to having stolen nearly $150,000 from an employer.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports Bonnie Sweeten, 51, of Delanco, New Jersey clutched a tissue and spoke softly Tuesday in federal court as she pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud. She was allowed to remain free pending her Feb. 21 sentencing.
Prosecutors said the former Feasterville resident was hired in 2017 as a bookkeeper for an unnamed Doylestown excavation firm headed by someone who had known her for many years. They allege that she used her position and access to issue dozens of company checks to herself, steal checks mailed to the firm and fraudulently endorse them over to herself and make tens of thousands of dollars of personal purchases on the company credit card.
Authorities said in 2009 that Sweeten, who is white, called 911 claiming she and her 9-year-old daughter had been carjacked by two Black men and stuffed into the trunk of another vehicle. Authorities said she was actually on her way to the airport to fly to Florida using a co-worker’s identification card and feared arrest in a fraud case. She and the child were found unharmed the next day at Disney World. She served nearly a year in state prison for the hoax.
“I wanted something so bad that I would do whatever I had to do to get it,” Sweeten told a judge in 2012 before she was sentenced in another case to more than eight years for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from an employer and others. Her voice cracked during an apology for a $280,000 theft from an elderly relative she called “cruel and sick.”
Sweeten told the judge Tuesday that she had received treatment for oxycontin addiction in 2018 and had been “clean ever since.” Defense attorney James McHugh Jr. of the federal defenders’ office said his client’s latest crime took place five years ago and since that time she “has been a productive and law-abiding citizen.”
