Florida
Man wanted in NC shooting waives extradition from Florida
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A North Carolina man accused of shooting and wounding a 6-year-old girl and her parents after children went to retrieve a basketball that had rolled into his yard waived extradition during a brief court appearance Friday morning in Florida.
Robert Louis Singletary, 24, was arrested Thursday in the Tampa area by Hillsborough County deputies, according to online jail records. He wore a dark colored protective vest during the hearing.
Singletary replied, “indeed,” when Hillsborough Circuit Judge Catherine Catlin asked if he would sign the waiver to allow officials to take him back to North Carolina to face charges in Tuesday’s shooting of the girl and her parents. He will be held without bond on a fugitive warrant.
The judge said she would hold another detention hearing if North Carolina officials haven’t picked Singletary up by April 24.
Singletary is facing four counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Gaston County Police Chief Stephen Zill said at a news conference Wednesday that his department and the U.S. Marshals Service’s Regional Fugitive Task Force had been conducting a broad search for Singletary, who fled after the Tuesday night shootings near Gastonia, a city of roughly 80,000 people west of Charlotte. Singletary had been out on bond in a December attack in which authorities say he assaulted a woman with a hammer.
Zill declined to say what sparked Tuesday’s attack, explaining that the investigation was ongoing.
A neighbor, Jonathan Robertson, said the attack happened after some children went to retrieve a basketball that had rolled into Singletary’s yard. He said Singletary, who had yelled at the children on several occasions since moving to the neighborhood, went inside his home, came back out with a gun and began shooting as parents frantically tried to get their kids to safety.
A 6-year-old girl, Kinsley White, was grazed by a bullet in the left cheek and was treated at a hospital and released, she and her family said. Her father, Jamie White, who had run to her aid, was shot in the back and remained hospitalized Thursday, according to Kinsley’s grandfather and neighbor, Carl Hilderbrand. The girl’s mother, Ashley Hilderbrand, was grazed in the elbow. Authorities say Singletary also shot at another man but missed.
It is the latest in a string of recent U.S. shootings that occurred for apparently trivial reasons, including the wounding of a Black teenage honors student in Missouri who went to the wrong address to pick up his younger brothers, the killing of a woman who was in a car that pulled into the wrong upstate New York driveway, and the wounding of two Texas cheerleaders after one apparently mistakenly got into a car that she thought was her own.
California
U.S. Marine gets 12 years for cross-border drug smuggling
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A former Marine who for years helped smuggle drugs from Mexico into the United States and even tried to get a song written to glorify his exploits was sentenced Friday to 12 years in federal prison.
Roberto Salazar II, 26, of San Diego was sentenced for importing fentanyl and for conspiracy to distribute heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.
Salazar, who pleaded guilty last October, could have faced up to life in prison.
He was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego. Prosecutors said that before joining the corps and while on active duty, he and couriers he recruited made dozens of smuggling trips across the border.
Salazar would obtain cars that were driven to Mexico, where drugs were loaded into the engine compartments. Couriers would then drive them back across the border into the U.S., prosecutors said.
The scheme began around 2015, authorities said.
By the time of his arrest last year, “Salazar had become so involved in drug trafficking that he was commissioning a Mexican songwriter to write a drug ballad known as a ‘narcocorrido about him,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.
“In one line that Salazar suggested to the songwriter, he boasted: ‘I wanted to study and became a soldier, but I liked the fast life better,’” the office said.
Some of the couriers recruited by Salazar were former Marines or classmates at Southwestern College in Chula Vista.
“This case involved a Marine who was supposed to protect and defend our country, but instead brought great harm to Americans by trafficking fentanyl and other dangerous drugs,” U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman said. “He also betrayed his solemn oath by recruiting other Marines to do the same.”
Texas
Man indicted for alleged threat to kill U.S. Rep. Waters
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal grand jury indicted a Houston man Friday for allegedly calling the office of California Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters several times last year and leaving threatening voice mails, including saying he intended to “cut your throat.”
Brian Michael Gaherty, 60, was charged in the indictment with four counts of making threats in interstate communications and four counts of threatening a U.S. official, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said in a statement.
Gaherty was arrested April 13 after prosecutors filed a criminal complaint alleging that he had threatened Waters, other elected officials and a news reporter in Houston.
The indictment says Gaherty called the congresswoman’s office four times — twice in August and twice in November — and each time left a threatening message.
Prosecutors said that in one, he told the congresswoman he intended to “cut your throat.”
The indictment alleged Gaherty “knowingly threatened to assault and kill” Waters while she was engaged in the performance of her official duties.
There was no immediate response to messages requesting comment from an attorney who was believed to be representing Gaherty.
After Gaherty was arrested at his residence in Houston, he made a court appearance Monday and was ordered released on $100,000 bond.
He is expected to appear for an arraignment in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in the coming weeks.
Each count of making a threat to a federal official carries a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. The charge of making threats in interstate communications carries a maximum penalty of five years.
Wisconsin
Milwaukee prosecutors charge jailor in fugitive’s death
MIlWAUKEE (AP) — A Milwaukee County Jail guard was charged with misconduct Friday in connection with the in-custody death earlier this year of an accused killer who was once on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list.
Laquisha Cowser, 32, told investigators that she had completed her safety checks when she had not, according to the criminal complaint. Jail surveillance video shows that she skipped Octaviano Juarez-Corro’s cell on two separate checks in the two hours preceding his death.
Cowser has been a jailor for about four years, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office said. She was relieved of duty with pay pending the outcome of the criminal case and a subsequent internal review. Online court records did not list an attorney for Cowser.
Juarez-Corro, 49, was found unresponsive in his single-occupant cell in January, authorities have said.
An investigator with the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office discovered a ligature around Juarez-Corro’s neck, the complaint said. Investigators who wrote the complaint did not elaborate on where the ligature may have come from or whether Juarez-Corro possibly killed himself.
Juarez-Corro had confronted his estranged wife at a 2006 Memorial Day picnic in a Milwaukee park and demanded to see his daughter, authorities say. When his wife refused and told him to leave, Juarez-Corro allegedly pulled out a handgun and shot five people. Two of them died. Hundreds of people were in the park at the time.
Juarez-Corro disappeared after the shooting, landing on the FBI’s most wanted list in 2021. He was finally captured in Zapopan, Guadalajara, Mexico, in February 2022 thanks to a tip. He was extradited to Milwaukee in September.
He faced two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of attempted first-degree homicide. He had been held on $1.5 million bail since October.
Virginia
Family, feds reach $5M settlement of Park Police shooting
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — The family of a northern Virginia man fatally shot by U.S. Park Police officers has reached a $5 million settlement in its civil lawsuit against the government.
Two officers shot 25-year-old Bijan Ghaisar of McLean in November 2017 after a stop-and-go chase on the George Washington Memorial Parkway outside the nation’s capital.
Ghaisar was unarmed, but the officers said they feared for their lives when Ghaisar’s car lurched forward after it had stopped and the officers stood outside the vehicle with weapons drawn.
The civil settlement comes after more than five years of legal wrangling and criticism of Park Police alleging excessive force and a lack of transparency.
Federal prosecutors declined to prosecute the officers, Lucas Vinyard and Alejandro Amaya, after a two-year FBI investigation. At that point, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano filed manslaughter charges against the officers in state court. That set off a tug-of-war between state and federal officials over who had jurisdiction to prosecute the case.
In October 2021, a federal judge tossed out the manslaughter charges brought by Descano’s office. The judge ruled that the officers were entitled to immunity and that their actions were proper under the circumstances.
Even though the criminal charges were tossed out, Ghaisar’s family continued to pursue a civil lawsuit alleging wrongful death.
The Ghaisar family said the officers violated their own policies by chasing Ghaisar, who was unarmed when officers opened fire.
The settlement, detailed Friday in a court filing in federal court in Alexandria, describes the agreement as a compromise. It says that Ghaisar’s parents, James and Kelly Ghaisar, will receive $3.75 million, and their lawyers will get $1.25 million.
The settlement still must be approved by a judge.
Dashcam video of the shooting shows the pursuit starting on the parkway, then continuing into a residential neighborhood. It shows the car driven by Ghaisar stopping twice during the chase, and officers approaching the car with guns drawn. In both cases, Ghaisar drives off.
At the third and final stop, the officers again approach with guns drawn, and Amaya stands in front of the driver’s door. When the car starts to move, Amaya opens fire. Seconds later, when the car begins moving again, both Amaya and Vinyard fire multiple shots.
