Maine
10-year-old student arrested for having gun at school
MONROE, Maine (AP) — Police arrested a 10-year-old student in Maine after the student arrived on school grounds with a firearm on Friday.
No one was injured, the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office said.
The office said it arrived at Monroe Elementary School in Monroe on Friday just before 9 a.m. after fielding a report that the student had a firearm.
The sheriff’s office said police worked with school staff to detain the student and seize the firearm. The student was then arrested and taken to the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office.
The office said there was no ongoing threat to the school or the community.
Officials with the school district did not respond to numerous requests for comment.
Monroe is a rural community of about 900 about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Portland. The small school has about 70 students and is set on a two-lane road amid rolling hills and forest.
The news of a student bringing a firearm to school was alarming, said Ted Pellerin, 64, who lives near the school and sent his own children there years ago. He said it seemed the community avoided a tragedy.
Pellerin said the incident should prompt “a discussion with students about how dangerous something like that could be, how seriously something like that could be.”
The town is home to craftspeople and professionals who commute to Bangor and Belfast, Pellerin said. It once had a larger agricultural sector, but that has diminished.
“It’s a quiet, rural community with nice people who support each other,” he said.
The sheriff’s office and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were investigating the incident, police said.
No further information on the incident was immediately released.
Other communities have seen their share of guns showing up at elementary schools. Most recently, in Newport News, Virginia, a teacher was shot and injured in January by a 6-year-old boy who brought a gun. A prosecutor said he would not seek charges against the child, but he has yet to decide whether any adults associated with the case could be held criminally liable.
In Naples, Florida, an 11-year-old elementary school student was arrested in 2021 after bringing an unloaded gun to school and threatening two classmates, authorities said. In 2017, authorities said a first-grade student in Newton, Mississippi, was shot and wounded when another child was playing with a gun at school.
And back in 2000, a 6-year-old boy was accused of killing a classmate in Mount Morris Township, Michigan. He was deemed too young to be charged.
Arizona
Woman accused in death of son pleads not guilty
BUCKEYE, Ariz. (AP) — A woman accused in the disappearance and death of her 10-year-old adopted son in a Phoenix suburb has pleaded not guilty in the case and is facing a July 6 trial, according to authorities.
Buckeye police said 54-year-old Crystal Wilson appeared in court briefly Friday with her lawyer. She entered a plea and a judge scheduled a pre-trial conference for April 25.
Wilson is facing one count of abandoning or concealing a body. She was arrested in December in Gainesville, Georgia, and recently extradited to Maricopa County.
Jesse Wilson’s body was found in 2018 a few miles from his home. Police said Crystal Wilson had moved a few weeks before her son’s remains were discovered and had been living the past few years in Georgia.
She told police in July 2016 that her son had run away from their home after she put him to bed for the night. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies unsuccessfully searched for months for the boy.
His skeletal remains were found in March 2018 on the side of a road about six miles (9.6 kilometers) from his home. The county medical examiner’s office declared the cause of death as undetermined.
In November 2020, Buckeye police reassigned the case to a new investigator who gathered more evidence and reexamined old leads that led to an indictment last December.
Police said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Crystal Wilson with a homicide, but she was the main person of interest in the case all along.
Ohio
Judge to decide on insanity defense in child slayings
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio judge is scheduled to decide this week on the validity of the insanity defense submitted by a man charged with fatally shooting two of his girlfriend’s three young sons and wounding the third.
Judge Eric Allen Marks last week heard assessments from two psychologists of the state of mind of 29-year-old Kevin Moore at the time of the February 2021 shootings in Toledo, The (Toledo) Blade reported.
Marks then recessed the nonjury trial until Thursday afternoon and must now decide whether Moore knew the wrongfulness of his actions when he shot the victims, killing 14-month-old Gabriel Phillips and 5-year-old Ahmir Phillips and wounding a 4-year-old boy.
Moore is charged with two counts of aggravated murder and single counts of attempted aggravated murder and felonious assault. A second felonious assault count was dismissed at the end of testimony last week.
One psychologist testified Thursday that decades ago he would have supported an insanity defense because Ohio law at the time required only proof of mental illness. Since then, he said, the standard has “become very, very strict” in requiring substantial evidence of inability to tell right from wrong.
He and another psychologist concluded that despite the defendant’s severe schizophrenic mental illness and gross overreaction to events in the home, he later demonstrated an understanding of having been in the wrong.
Defense attorney John Thebes, however, cited a third psychiatrist’s conclusion that Moore did qualify for an insanity defense under current law. He said the defendant’s rambling remarks and many of his actions were consistent with a schizophrenia patient not taking appropriate medication.
Prosecution witnesses, however, cited testimony from the children’s mother that Moore’s behavior appeared normal both before and after the crimes, and they said mental illness should have been evident beforehand if he was profoundly disturbed at the time.
North Carolina
Judge lets state lawmakers defend abortion pill laws
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Republican legislative leaders can defend in federal court the state restrictions on dispensing abortion pills that are being challenged by a physician, a judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge William Osteen granted the request by House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger to formally intervene in the lawsuit filed in January.
Berger and Moore specifically sought involvement after the office of Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein told the legislators that it believed the arguments by the lawsuit plaintiff about the drug mifepristone were “legally correct.” State attorneys representing Stein, a case defendant but an abortion rights supporter, said the same in a written response to the lawsuit.
Osteen’s ruling on Friday wasn’t surprising. State law already gives the House speaker and Senate leader the ability to intervene in litigation to defend North Carolina’s statutes. A U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer involving North Carolina’s voter ID law also affirmed their ability to enter cases.
Dr. Amy Bryant — the physician who sued — as well as Stein and other defendants didn’t oppose the legislators’ intervention request.
Bryant’s lawsuit alleges state laws and rules conflict with her ability to provide mifepristone to patients. She said those restrictions should be preempted by powers the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hold to regulate the drug.
Osteen told Berger and Moore to file a written response to the lawsuit by March 24. In a previous document, the legislative leaders wrote that North Carolina abortion regulations apply “with equal force to both surgical and chemical abortion procedures” and that Bryant’s arguments would mean the state couldn’t regulate the safety of chemical abortions.
Pennsylvania
2 plead in 2021 fight, slaying outside cheesesteak shop
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A man and a woman have pleaded guilty in a fight and shooting death outside a well-known Philadelphia cheesesteak shop almost two years ago.
Paul Burkert, 37, of Reading pleaded guilty last week to voluntary manslaughter and a firearms charge in the July 2021 shooting death of 22-year-old David Padro Jr. outside Pat’s King of Steaks.
Jamie Frick, 38, of Newmanstown pleaded guilty to simple assault and reckless endangerment in connection with the fight moments before the shooting.
Both will be sentenced in June. Other charges, including murder counts, were withdrawn by prosecutors.
Authorities said the early morning dispute, which was captured on video, began when the victim pulled into a parking spot outside the restaurant and bumped Burkert’s van with his car door. Early reports had incorrectly suggested that the fight began over a football rivalry.
During the fight that followed, Frick hit Padro in the head and Burkert broke free, pulled a gun and shot Padro, authorities said. The suspects fled in the van, and Burkert surrendered to police near Independence Mall while Frick was arrested several days later, authorities said.
Burkert’s attorney, A. Charles Peruto Jr., told The Philadelphia Inquirer that he’d been prepared to take the case to trial and argue that his client was acting in self-defense, but a plea to a lesser charge was more prudent since Burkert was barred from legally possessing a firearm due to a previous drug conviction.
Frick’s attorney, Brian McMonagle, told the newspaper that she was expected to receive a sentence of probation.
The victim’s father, David Padro Sr., said that the killing “took something from me that I can never get back.” “It’s just been devastating,” he said. “My whole life changed. My family’s life changed.”
Louisiana
Teen convicted in death of basketball player
SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — A northwest Louisiana teen has been found guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of a star high school basketball player.
Local news outlets report that Shamichael Antonio Pearson, 19, was convicted by Caddo Parish jurors on Thursday in fatal shooting of Devin Dewayne Myers. Jurors deliberated less than an hour.
Myers was a basketball player at Shreveport’s Huntington High School. The 17-year-old had gone to a friend’s house to get a phone charger when he ran into Pearson in March 2022.
“Didn’t I tell you that I was going to get you?” is what officials said Pearson said before he shot Myers in the back as many as 13 times. Court testimony showed Pearson shot at least twice while standing over Myers’ body. He and Myers had previously argued.
Police later found a handgun in a freezer at Pearson’s house, with testing showing it was the murder weapon and was connected to Pearson by DNA.
Pearson will be sentenced on March 27. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
