National Roundup

Illinois
Police: Chicago teen apparently gang-raped on Facebook Live

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago Police are searching for five or six men or boys suspected of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl on Facebook Live.

Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Tuesday that detectives found the girl and reunited her with her family. She went missing on Sunday.

Guglielmi says about 40 people viewed the attack on Facebook while it was happening, and none of them reported it to police.

He says police Superintendent Eddie Johnson was leaving a station in the Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side late Monday afternoon when a woman approached him with photographs of her daughter being sexually assaulted on Facebook. He says Johnson immediately ordered an investigation and the department contacted Facebook to take down the video, which it did.

Texas
‘Affluenza’ teen’s lawyers seek his release from jail

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Lawyers for a Texas teenager who used an “affluenza” defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck have turned to the Texas Supreme Court in an effort to secure his release from jail.

The motion filed Friday on behalf of 19-year-old Ethan Couch argues that a judge had no authority to sentence Couch to nearly two years in jail after his case was moved from juvenile to adult court.

Couch’s attorneys argue that the judge only had jurisdiction over criminal cases and that juvenile matters are civil.

Couch was given 10 years’ probation after killing four people in a 2013 wreck. He later violated his probation.

A defense expert invoked the term “affluenza” in arguing during the sentencing phase of the teenager’s trial that he was coddled into a sense of irresponsibility.

Tennessee
Teacher had ­earlier been reported kissing missing student

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A teacher accused of kidnapping a 15-year-old female student in Tennessee had been investigated by the school system after another student reported seeing him kiss the girl, a lawyer for the missing girl’s family said.

Yet according to attorney Jason Whatley and school records, teacher Tad Cummins was allowed to continue working at Tennessee’s Culleoka Unit School for two weeks. Culleoka is about 60 miles south of Nashville near the Alabama state line.

Student Elizabeth Thomas was last seen March 13 and is believed to be with the 50-year-old teacher, authorities said.

In late January, another student saw the teacher kissing the girl on the lips, school records Whatley provided to The Associated Press show.

Despite the report from the other student, Cummins was allowed to continue teaching and nobody in the school system bothered notifying the girl’s family about the kiss allegations, Whatley added. He said the school system must have not believed the student’s report of seeing Cummins kiss the girl.

“This is my client’s daughter, and she’s been taken. She’s been abducted, and I can’t figure out for the life of me why no one believed this middle school student,” Whatley said.

The father, Whatley said, only learned of the kissing allegation a week later after a detective with the Maury County Sheriff’s Department went to the home to investigate.

The school system didn’t suspend Cummins until Feb. 6, the day that a letter from the father’s attorney was hand-delivered to Maury County school officials. The letter to Maury County School Superintendent Christopher Marczak demanded that the father be updated on what school officials had learned and that his daughter not have contact with the teacher.

The girl’s father, Anthony Thomas, is outraged that officials delayed telling him about the report and let the teacher continue working in the school, according to the lawyer.

“My client’s position, respectfully, is that Mr. Cummins should have been out the door until the police investigation was completed,” Whatley said.

Marczak did not return a call seeking comment.

School officials did send files to the father after the lawyer sent the letter.

The school’s investigative files provided to the father show that both Cummins and the girl denied kissing. The teacher, however, acknowledged that the girl was “a really good friend and she does leave her other classes to come see him when she needs someone to calm her down,” according to a school report dated Jan. 30.

The report said the allegation could not be confirmed but recommended that the girl be taken out of Cummins’ forensics class and that he be reprimanded to uphold his professional responsibility as a teacher. The report also recommended that the administration monitor Cummins’ classroom to make sure students weren’t there when they weren’t supposed to be.

The teacher would later be reprimanded on Feb. 3 by school principal Penny Love after the girl was seen in Cummins classroom for a little more than half an hour that day. In her letter, Love said the girl being in his classroom was a violation of the principal’s order to him.

The teacher was fired a day after the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued an Amber Alert about the teen.

TBI officials said they remain concerned about the girl’s safety because there have been so few sightings reported. The agency has issued two nationwide alerts to law enforcement, TBI spokesman Josh DeVine said.

Massachusetts
74-year-old man faces charges of drug trafficking 

TAUNTON, Mass. (AP) — A 74-year-old Massachusetts man living in public housing for the elderly faces drug trafficking charges after police say they found cocaine valued at about $150,000 in his unit.

Police say they found nearly 3 pounds of cocaine at Pedro Rodriguez's Taunton apartment on Friday.

The Taunton Daily Gazette reports the unit is in a complex owned by the Taunton Housing Authority.

Police say they also found more than a pound of marijuana and an extensive coin collection. They say the coins were probably used to launder drug sales proceeds.

Rodriguez was also charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana.

Rodriguez said he did not know what the cocaine was and was holding it for a friend.

Bail was set at $50,000.