Indiana
Man gets 5 years for stealing truck with child, 1, inside
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indianapolis man who pleaded guilty to stealing a truck and driving off with a one-year-old child inside was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.
Gonzalo Mondragon Jr., 35, had pleaded guilty in December to one count each of criminal confinement where the victim is under 14 years old, auto theft and resisting law enforcement.
A Marion County judge sentenced Mondragon Friday to five years of confinement on the charges stemming from the September 2022 incident on Indianapolis’ east side, WRTV-TV reported.
According to court records, Mondragon was seen on surveillance video exiting an SUV and then getting into a pickup truck the child’s mother had left running while she was inside a gas station. Mondragon then drove off with the toddler inside.
After an Amber Alert and police search was launched, the child was found eventually unharmed by a construction worker in the town of Speedway on Indianapolis’ far west side.
Officers later located the stolen pickup truck, and Mondragon was taken into custody less than one mile away, records state.
Wisconsin
Man convicted in 1986 killing of 22-year-old woman
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A Racine man has been convicted in the 1986 killing of a young woman whose body was found in a swamp at a Green Bay nature area.
Lou A. Griffin, 67, pleaded no contest Friday in Brown County Circuit Court to a charge of homicide by reckless conduct, and a judge found him guilty. His sentencing is set for March 27.
Griffin entered his plea as potential jurors were reporting to court Friday ahead of Monday’s expected start of his trial in the death of Lisa Holstead, 22.
Griffin was originally charged in October 2020 with first-degree intentional homicide in Holstead’s killing. Her body was found in a swamp in a Green Bay nature area in August 1986.
Holstead’s slaying had been Brown County’s oldest unsolved murder case.
Investigators said that at the time of her killing Griffin lived within a few miles of where her body was found.
Griffin was identified as a suspect in Holstead’s slaying after Green Bay police sent DNA evidence found on her body to a company that performs forensic genetic genealogy testing. That testing provided information on the suspect’s heritage and possible relatives.
Griffin was eventually placed under police surveillance and DNA that was collected from cigarettes and beer cans he had discarded matched the DNA collected in the murder case, police said.
Griffin told investigators he might have had sex with Holstead but denied killing her, police said.
Missouri
Mom convicted of killing her infant twins
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri mother who reported that her infant twins were stillborn has been convicted of manslaughter.
Maya Caston, 28, was convicted Friday of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and two counts of child endangerment. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that jury found her guilty of lesser charges instead of convicting her of second-degree murder.
Prosecutors argued that Caston’s lack of action to get care for the babies showed that she caused the deaths. And her extensive internet searches for miscarriages and abortion methods before she gave birth demonstrated that she didn’t want the babies.
The evidence showed that Caston searched Google for “cheap abortion pills,” “free abortion clinic” and “can you cause a miscarriage if you hit yourself in the stomach hard enough?” After she gave birth, Cason researched if you can bury a baby in a back garden.
Caston told the jury that she had planned to give the babies up for adoption at a doctor’s appointment three days after they were born, but by that time, the babies had died after not eating.
“We have two dead babies. She didn’t want them. She didn’t care for them,” Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Thomas Dittmeier said in closing arguments. “She didn’t even give them a name.”
Caston’s public defenders argued that she has an intellectual disability and didn’t understand the risk to the infants.
“I was in shock. I didn’t know what to do,” she told the jury.
New Jersey
Man gets 55 years in slaying of co-worker on lunch break
PLAINSBORO, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey man has been sentenced to 55 years in prison in the stabbing death of a co-worker authorities say was slain on her lunch break 3 1/2 years ago.
Kenneth Saal, 33, of Lindenwold pleaded guilty last fall in Middlesex County to first-degree murder and other charges in the June 2019 death of 26-year-old Carolyn Byington in her Plainsboro apartment.
Superior Court Judge Pedro Jimenez Jr. sentenced him last week to 45 years on murder and burglary charges and a consecutive 10-year sentence on conspiracy to commit murder and witness-tampering charges for a crime the judge called senseless, cruel and depraved.
The defendant and the victim had worked since 2016 at a business in Princeton, where he was an accountant and she was a market research project manager. In his plea, Saal said he copied the key to Byington’s apartment, planted hidden surveillance cameras there and later killed her in a struggle to silence her.
Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone said he later conspired with another inmate to commit a copycat murder to make it appear the culprit was still free and also conspired to have a witness killed and the slaying staged as a suicide with a note claiming responsibility for Byington’s murder.
Saal read a statement in court saying there were “no words to describe the atrociousness of what I’ve done.” He also apologized to his family, saying he had put up a facade for his whole life that “kept you from seeing any warning signs.”
Ohio
Man sentenced to 56 years in 2020 shootout with police
LEBANON, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio man convicted in a shootout that wounded a police officer and also wounded him 2 1/2 years ago has been sentenced to 56 years in prison.
A Warren County judge told Christopher Hubbard, 38, of Somerville last week that he hasn’t taken any responsibility for shooting at officers in August 2020, The Journal-News reported.
“I believe you are dangerous. I believe you are manipulative,” Judge Tim Tepe told Hubbard, who could serve an additional 5.5 years if he misbehaves in prison. Hubbard declined to speak on the advice of his attorney, who has vowed an appeal.
Authorities said a 28-mile pursuit from Middletown ended in the Turtlecreek Township, where the driver wounded a Middletown officer and law enforcement officers then opened fire. State investigators said the officer was shot in the arm, finger and right leg and Hubbard was hit 10 to 13 times after eight officers returned his fire.
A county jury earlier this month acquitted him of attempted murder but convicted him after two hours of deliberation on charges of felonious assault, weapons crimes and other counts including a second-degree misdemeanor charge of assaulting a police dog.
Defense attorneys had argued he acted in self-defense when the pursuit triggered post-traumatic stress disorder. Hubbard testified that he fled because he was afraid and was trying to find a safe place to stop, and he fired only after he was cut by broken window glass — and then only at the police dog.
South Carolina
Man convicted in fatal home attack
MONCKS CORNER, S.C. (AP) — A jury in South Carolina has convicted a man for riddling a home with bullets in 2017, killing one person inside.
The Post & Courier reports that Maurice Durell Wigfall of Hanahan was sentenced Friday to 45 years for the death of Steven Hutchins, and another five years on a weapons offense.
Circuit Judge Jennifer McCoy sentenced Wigfall after a four-day trial.
Wigfall, 37, was charged with another man whose case is still pending, according to online court records.
Jurors at the Berkely County trial were told that the two shot up the home in an act of retaliation on the morning of Oct. 31, 2017. One of the men had been at the home earlier when he was robbed of a gun, state Ninth Circuit Solicitor 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said in a release announcing the conviction.
Both men were armed with rifles when they returned to Hutchins’ home. Investigators noted over two dozen bullet holes.
Montana
Man gets 10 years for faking COVID, missing court
BUTTE, Mont. (AP) — A Montana man who is serving a 23-year prison sentence for defrauding two elderly Butte residents had another 10 years added to his term this week for lying when he said he missed a court hearing because he had COVID-19.
The Butte man was sentenced in March 2022 for violating his probation for his 2015 and 2017 convictions for stealing from two people. He had been given suspended sentences for both crimes, but he never paid restitution.
The man missed a December 2021 court hearing over those criminal cases and told the judge he had COVID-19. The next week he supplied a document from a Missoula clinic saying he had been diagnosed with the respiratory virus — a medical record prosecutors later learned had been forged, The Montana Standard reported.
The 10-year sentence he received Wednesday was for fabricating physical evidence.
District Court Judge Kurt Krueger denied a defense request that the new sentence run at the same time as the 23-year sentence, citing the 50-year-old man’s extensive criminal record.
Massachusetts
Prosecutor: 2-year-old who died allegedly exposed to drugs
PEABODY, Mass. (AP) — A mother has been charged with reckless endangerment of a child in connection with the death of her 2-year-old daughter, who allegedly was exposed to illegal drugs while the two were living in a car, a Massachusetts prosecutor said.
The woman, 28, was ordered held without bail following her arraignment Friday in Peabody District Court. She pleaded not guilty to the charge, as well as to a charge of permitting substantial injuries to a child.
Essex County Assistant District Attorney Kate MacDougall told a judge that the woman allegedly contacted a friend after her daughter appeared unresponsive in their car in Peabody on Jan. 18. The friend encouraged her to take the child to a hospital, and then called police to alert them. Police escorted the woman and her daughter into the emergency room. Efforts to revive the child were unsuccessful.
MacDougall said police found evidence of illegal drugs in the car.
The woman is scheduled for a hearing on Feb. 3. A message seeking comment was left for her lawyer Saturday.
