California
Man gets 13 years in teenager’s fentanyl death
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A man who sold fentanyl-laced pills that killed a 15-year-old San Diego County boy was sentenced Tuesday to 13 years in federal prison.
Kaylar Junior Tawan Beltranlap, 21, of San Diego was sentenced for distributing fentanyl in the form of counterfeit oxycodone pills.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin and even a tiny amount can be deadly. It is sold in various forms, including blue pills designed to look like oxycodone, a powerful painkiller.
Beltranlap pleaded guilty in July, acknowledging that he used his Instagram account to work out a drug transaction with Clark Jackson Salveron, a sophomore at Coronado High School in Coronado, the San Diego County district attorney’s office said.
In his plea agreement, Beltranlap warned Salveron to take just half of a pill because it was “strong as hell,” the DA’s office said in a statement.
The deal was made on May 12, 2021. The next morning, the teenager was found dead in his bedroom in his Coronado home, prosecutors said.
The county medical examiner’s office determined that the teen died from acute fentanyl intoxication.
In the government’s sentencing memo, the boy’s mother was quoted as saying: “I will never recover from my oldest son being poisoned and taken from me.”
At his sentencing hearing Tuesday, a judge said Beltranlap went for “easy money” with “callous disregard for the poison he was putting into the community and into a very young victim,” the DA’s office said.
“Drug dealers are using social media to target kids,” said Shelly Howe, a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego. “Parents, be vigilant about checking your children’s social media, it may save their life.”
Fentanyl-laced pills are suspected in a number of overdoses of several teenagers in California, including the death last September of a 15-year-old girl in a high school bathroom in Hollywood.
Police said Melanie Ramos and a classmate bought what they thought was a painkiller off campus. Two teenaged boys were arrested in connection with her death.
New Hampshire
Surgeon accused of sexually assaulting patient
CLAREMONT, N.H. (AP) — An orthopedic surgeon has been accused of sexually assaulting a patient during an office visit, police in Claremont said.
The doctor, 70, was scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday on charges of aggravated felonious sexual assault and attempt to commit aggravated felonious sexual assault. It wasn’t immediately known if he had a lawyer. He was taken into custody Tuesday.
Claremont Police Chief Brent Wilmot said an investigation began in December when a patient alleged she was sexually assaulted by the doctor during an office visit.
Texas
GOP states sue administration over Biden’s new border policy
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Twenty states with GOP attorneys general on Tuesday sued the Biden administration over a major change in immigration policy that would turn away more migrants but still allow 360,000 people to legally enter each year from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The lawsuit, which was filed in a federal court in Texas, accuses the Biden administration of “arbitrarily” creating recent changes and overstepping its authority. Among those leading the challenge is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has succeeded before in temporarily stopping new immigration rules under President Joe Biden.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment on the lawsuit late Tuesday.
The changes that Biden announced this month amounted to his boldest move yet to confront the arrival of migrants that have spiraled since he took office two years ago. The four nationalities that Biden addressed now make up the majority of those crossing the border illegally.
There were more than 2.38 million stops during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, which is the first time the count topped 2 million. The administration has struggled to clamp down on crossings, reluctant to take hardline measures that would resemble those of the Trump administration.
Arkansas
Officers charged in violent arrest caught on video
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Two former Arkansas law enforcement officers are charged with civil rights violations in the violent arrest of a man outside a convenience store that was caught on video and widely shared on social media, the U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Former Crawford County sheriff’s deputies Zack King and Levi White are charged with using excessive force by hitting Randal Worcester multiple times while he was on the ground during an Aug. 21 arrest. A bystander used a cellphone to record the arrest in the small town of Mulberry, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, near the border with Oklahoma.
The two former deputies pleaded not guilty during an initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon, after the indictment against them was unsealed. An attorney for the former deputies, Russell Woods, said his clients deny the allegations.
If convicted, each deputy faces up to 10 years in prison.
Charges were not announced against Mulberry police officer Thell Riddle, who was also on the video. Former Crawford County Sheriff Jimmy Damante fired King and White in October.
The current sheriff, Daniel Perry, declined to comment on the charges.
Damante has said Worcester, 27, of Goose Creek, South Carolina, was being questioned for threatening a clerk at a nearby convenience store and that he attacked one of deputies. The deputy suffered a concussion, Damante has said.
The three officers were suspended after the video came to light, and state and federal authorities launched investigations. The state’s criminal investigation remains open and active, said Emily White, the state special prosecutor assigned to the case.
Worcester filed a federal lawsuit against the officers and local officials, saying they violated his constitutional rights during the arrest. Rachel Bussett, an attorney for Worcester, said she was pleased the two had been arrested.
“Now they’re just going to have to go through the court process,” Bussett said.
White and King, who had been taken into custody by U.S. Marshals and the FBI, were released on bond Tuesday. A judge set an April 3 trial date for the men.
Policing experts have said the video raises red flags about the officers’ actions, saying that blows to the head amount to a potentially deadly use of force that’s justified only when someone poses a current and serious threat.
Worcester was treated at a hospital then jailed on charges including second-degree battery and resisting arrest. He was released the following day on a $15,000 bond. Worcester’s lawsuit said he has permanent injuries and will need continued medical treatment.
Wisconsin
Ex-college football player convicted in 2 killings
JANESVILLE, Wis. (AP) — A former University of Wisconsin football wide receiver was convicted of two counts of first degree homicide and other charges Tuesday in the February 2020 shooting deaths of two women.
Jurors deliberated about two hours before finding Marcus Randle El guilty in the slayings of 27-year-old Brittany McAdory and 30-year-old Seairaha Winchester.
Randle El, who was a wide receiver for the Wisconsin Badgers from 2004 to 2007, also was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and one count of operating a vehicle without consent while possessing a weapon.
Prosecutors argued Randle El suspected Winchester was informing police of his drug dealing and that he killed McAdory to eliminate her as a witness.
Investigators said that while they did not have a murder weapon directly linking Randle El to the slayings, surveillance footage and text messages tied him to the crimes.
The defense argued the state did not meet its burden of proof and called just two witnesses. Randle El declined to testify in his own defense.
The defendant’s brother, former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver Antwaan Randle El, wore a pained look on his face as the Rock County jury returned the verdict.
Sentencing has been scheduled for May 3.
New York
Woman files suit accusing Tyson of rape in early ’90s
NEW YORK (AP) — A woman has filed a lawsuit accusing former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson of raping her sometime in the early 1990s after she met him at a nightclub in Albany, New York.
The woman, who is suing for $5 million, said Tyson raped her in a limousine and that she has suffered from “physical, psychological and emotional injury” in the years since then.
The woman’s affidavit does not provide a date for the attack but says only that it happened in the early 1990s — around the same time that beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington said Tyson raped her in Indianapolis. Tyson was convicted of raping Washington on Feb. 10, 1992, and served three years in prison.
The legal action in New York was filed under the state’s Adult Survivors Act, which gives sexual assault victims a one-year window to file lawsuits over assaults that happened years or even decades ago.
The woman said in her affidavit that she got in Tyson’s limousine and the boxer immediately started touching her and trying to kiss her.
“I told him no several times and asked him to stop, but he continued to attack me,” the woman said. “He then pulled my pants off and violently raped me.”
The lawsuit was first reported by the Times Union of Albany.
The woman is seeking to maintain her anonymity because, she said, publication of her name “would certainly pose a risk to me of further mental harm, harassment, ridicule or personal embarrassment.”
The woman’s attorney, Darren Seilback, said in a separate filing that his office did not simply take the woman at her word but investigated her allegations and determined that they are “highly credible.”
Seilback said Tuesday he could not comment further on the case.
A message seeking comment from Tyson was sent to an agency that has represented him.
Brooklyn-born Tyson, 56, won adulation as the undisputed world heavyweight champion from 1987 to 1990, but his life outside the ring has been turbulent.
Tyson’s former wife, actor Robin Givens, said in divorce papers that their late-1980s marriage was characterized by “unprovoked rages of violence and destruction.”
