National Roundup

Utah
Sheriff to hold active-shooter training for teachers

PROVO, Utah (AP) — The Utah County sheriff is offering an active-shooter training for teachers and it has filled up long before its start date.

Trainers at the Teachers Academy include police, self-defense trainers and medical professionals for the 20-hour course informed by lessons learned in other active shooter incidents, the Daily Herald reported.

Topics covered during the Teacher Academy training will include tactical emergency medical techniques, weapons familiarization, Utah concealed carry certification, tactical de-escalation, self-defense and live range-shooting.

“Many times people fail to act in critical incidents because they have never been taught how to act,” Utah County Sheriff Sheriff Mike Smith said in a statement. “The skills taught in this class are designed to teach you how to act and how to save lives.”

This is the third Teachers Academy class held since 2019. It’s designed for teachers, administrators, and school support staff.

Participants for the session beginning Aug. 3 are limited to 30 people, and spots have already filled up and a wait list has started.

Massachussetts
Couple in eBay harassment case sues company, ex-officials

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts couple subjected to threats and other bizarre harassment from former eBay Inc. employees filed a civil lawsuit against the Silicon Valley giant on Wednesday.

David and Ina Steiner say in their lawsuit filed in Boston federal court that the company engaged in a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them” in order to “stifle their reporting on eBay.”

The Natick residents, who run EcommerceBytes, an online newsletter focused on the e-commerce industry, say they were subjected to cyberstalking, death threats, bizarre deliveries, and in-person surveillance from company workers. They’re seeking damages to be awarded by a jury.

“This has been an unbelievably difficult ordeal for my wife and I,” David Steiner said in a statement Wednesday. “Never did we imagine doing our jobs as journalists would lead to this. We want to protect the rights of reporters and their freedom of the press. We have endured enormous cruelty and abuse and feared for our lives. If this behavior can happen to us, it can happen to anyone.”

Spokespersons for eBay didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Several former eBay employees were charged last June for their roles in the harassment campaign. At least five have already pleaded guilty.

Federal prosecutors have said the harassment included anonymous deliveries of items like live insects, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig face Halloween mask to the couple’s home. The employees also sent pornographic magazines with the husband’s name on it to their neighbor’s house and planned to break into the couple’s garage to install a GPS device on their car.

“This was a determined, systematic effort by senior employees of a major company to destroy the lives of a couple in Natick all because they published content that company executives didn’t like,” then-U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Andrew Lelling said at the time.

Illinois
Ex-superintendent gets 33 months for embezzlement

URBANA, Ill. (AP) — A former superintendent for two central Illinois school districts has been sentenced to 33 months in federal prison and ordered to repay $343,000 he admitted embezzling over several years from the districts.

Daniel Brue, 48, was sentenced Tuesday in Urbana by U.S. District Court Judge Colin Bruce, who also ordered Brue to three years of supervised release following his release from prison.

Brue had pleaded guilty to four counts of wire fraud in March, The (Champaign) News-Gazette reported.

Federal investigators said the thefts from the districts occurred between 2011 and 2019. Brue served as superintendent for the Bement school district between 2009 and 2013, and the Meridian school district between 2013 and his resignation in the summer of 2019.

According to federal court documents, a tip from a Meridian school employee in 2019 prompted auditors to alert the FBI, which began an investigation.

Authorities found that Brue created a shell company and fraudulently sent invoices to the districts for work that was never performed. After the schools paid those bills, he deposited the checks into a personal account.

The judge noted during Tuesday’s sentencing that Brue’s scheme was not “simple” and involved efforts to conceal the thefts, which could have long-term impacts on the districts.

Brue was ordered to make restitution of $76,576.08 to the Bement school district and $266,433.44 to Meridian. That will come in the form of 50 percent of his disposable income after his release from prison.

Florida
Dad, son get life sentence for killing son’s wife

KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) — A judge in Florida sentenced a man and his father to life in prison Wednesday for killing the younger man’s estranged wife in 2019.

Jurors in April found Christopher Otero-Rivera and his father, Angel Luis Rivera, guilty of second-degree murder, abuse of a body and evidence tampering in the killing of Nicole Montalvo.

Montalvo disappeared on Oct. 21, 2019, after dropping the couple’s 8-year-old son off at the Rivera home, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Investigators later found some of Montalvo’s remains at the home.

During the trial, prosecutors said both men wanted Montalvo to “disappear” so they could get custody of the young boy, the newspaper reported.

In 2018, Otero-Rivera was accused of abducting and brutally beating his wife, according to court records. She filed for divorce while he was in jail, claiming years of abuse.

Prosecutors said the father and son hatched a plan to plant drugs on Montalvo to make her lose custody of the boy. And two people testified during the trial that Angel Rivera offered them money to kill his daughter-in-law.

When she disappeared, her father-in-law told investigators Montalvo sent a text asking him and his wife to take care of their grandson for a few days.

Detectives suspected someone else sent the text because Montalvo had not told anyone she planned to go somewhere, according to court records.

Her body was later found burned, cut into pieces and buried on two of the Rivera’s properties, prosecutors said.

The defense attorneys had claimed the evidence was “circumstantial.”

The father and son each blamed the other for killing Montalvo, court records show.