Minnesota
Prosecutors to dismiss charges against trooper who shot motorist
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Prosecutors plan to dismiss murder and manslaughter charges against a white Minnesota state trooper who fatally shot Ricky Cobb II, a Black motorist, as Cobb tried to pull away from a traffic stop, saying the decision comes in response to recent statements from the trooper’s attorney and new analysis of video from the scene.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty filed a notice to dismiss the charges after Trooper Ryan Londregan’s defense team revealed prospective testimony during an April court hearing that the trooper believed Cobb was reaching for a firearm — and that a Minnesota State Patrol trainer said he never instructed officers to refrain from shooting into a moving vehicle.
The evidence would have made it impossible for prosecutors to prove that Londregan’s actions were not an authorized use of force by a peace officer, the county attorney’s office said in a statement released Sunday.
Referring to the decision to drop the charges, Londregan’s attorney, Chris Madel, told the Star Tribune, “It’s about goddamn time. That’s going to be about my only on the record comment.”
Bakari Sellers, an attorney representing Cobb’s family, told the Star Tribune the family was disappointed with prosecutors.
“They got bullied. There’s no other way around it,” Sellers said.
Londregan, 27, pleaded not guilty May 15 in the death of Cobb, and his trial was set to begin Sept. 9.
Troopers pulled the 33-year-old Cobb over on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis last July 31 because the lights were out on his car. They then found that the Spring Lake Park man was wanted for violating a protection order in neighboring Ramsey County. Londregan shot Cobb twice as Cobb tried to drive away after troopers ordered him to get out of his car.
Prosecutors and a law enforcement expert reviewed footage from the scene and found that, as Londregan’s partner clung to the passenger’s door, Cobb moved his hand upward. Cobb did have a gun in the vehicle. Moriarty told the Star Tribune there is still no evidence he intended to grab it but that the defense team’s statements caused prosecutors to reconsider the evidence through a new lens.
“They could have told us that before we charged it, they could have told us that at any time,” she said. “And that is information that we would have considered — and obviously have considered.”
Law enforcement and Republican leaders had been calling on Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to take the case away from Moriarty, a former public defender who was elected on a platform of police accountability following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer in 2020, and turn it over to Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison. Walz had expressed concern about the direction of the case but had not acted.
Cobb’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in April, alleging that the stop and the shooting were unjustified.
California
Daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt files petition to remove father’s last name
A daughter of actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt filed paperwork to legally remove “Pitt” from her name on the day she turned 18.
Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt submitted a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court on May 27 to change her name to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The third-eldest of the former couple’s six children was born in Swakopmund, Namibia, on May 27, 2006. The siblings also include Maddox, Pax, Zahara and twins Knox and Vivienne.
Shiloh, who performs as a voice actor in the film “Kung Fu Panda 3,” is the first of the siblings to file a petition for a legal name change, but some of the other children have dropped public use of their father’s last name in recent years, the Times reported.
Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016 but the details of the divorce have not yet been finalized.
The actors, who were married in August 2014, have filed lawsuits against each other in recent years stemming from disagreements over their shared business ventures and property including a winery in France, the Times reported.
Virginia
UVA to pay $9M in settlement over shooting that killed 3 football players, wounded 2 students
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The University of Virginia will pay $9 million in a settlement related to a 2022 campus shooting that killed three football players and wounded two students, a lawyer representing some of the victims and their families said Friday.
But some of the families are calling for more: The immediate release of an independent probe into the shooting that was completed last year. Its focus included efforts by the university to assess the potential threat of the student who was eventually charged with murder as well as recommendations from what was learned.
Kimberly Wald, an attorney who represents some of the families, said the university should have removed the alleged shooter from campus before the attack because he displayed multiple red flags through erratic and unstable behavior.
“This settlement today is only one small step for these families — there is much to be done,” said Wald, an attorney with the Miami-based Haggard Law Firm. “If there is one lesson, even one lesson that we can learn from that report, we need to know it now ... We need to protect lives now.”
University officials postponed the report’s release last year over concerns that it could affect the alleged shooter’s upcoming trial.
“We are committed to providing it as soon as we can be sure that doing so will not interfere in any way with the criminal proceeding,” UVA President Jim Ryan said last fall.
The school in Charlottesville will pay $2 million each to the families of the three students who died, the maximum allowable under Virginia law, said Wald, who represents the estate of D’Sean Perry. The other two students who died were Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis Jr.
The university will pay $3 million total to the two students who were wounded Mike Hollins, a fourth member of the football team, and Marlee Morgan, who Wald also represents.
The settlement was negotiated outside of court and did not follow the filing of a lawsuit, Wald said. However, every settlement in Virginia must be approved by a judge. The settlement with UVA was accepted by a judge in Albemarle County Circuit Court on Friday afternoon.
The agreements also were approved by Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin and state Attorney General Jason Miyares, the university said in a statement.
UVA Rector Robert Hardie and President Ryan said in the statement Friday that the three students’ lives “were tragically cut short” and the young men “have been ever present in our minds.”
“We will forever remember the impact that Devin, Lavel, and D’Sean had on our community, and we are grateful for the moments they spent in our presence uplifting UVA through their time in the classroom and on the football field,” the statement said.
Police said Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a UVA student and former member of the school’s football team, carried out the shooting. It occurred when he and others had returned by charter bus to campus from a field trip to see a play in Washington, authorities said.
The violence that erupted near a parking garage set off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured. His trial on murder charges and other counts is scheduled for January.
Within days of the shooting, university leaders asked for an outside review to investigate UVA’s safety policies and procedures, its response to the violence and its prior efforts to assess the potential threat of the student who was eventually charged. School officials acknowledged he previously had been on the radar of the university’s threat-assessment team.
The report was completed in October, and UVA said it would release it in November. But UVA’s stance changed over concerns about affecting Jones’ trial.
Happy Perry, who lost her son D’Sean Perry, said Friday that the report should be released now if it can help prevent similar shootings.
“As a mom, I want to know what happened. It is my right to know what happened,” she said during a Zoom call with reporters. “At this point, it is an issue of public safety and national security that we get that report.”
Brenda Hollins, whose son Mike Hollins was shot and wounded, said she felt mixed emotions Friday in the wake of the settlement. And she talked about how devastated and changed all of the families are.
“You put on your smile, and throughout the day you may be able to move forward,” Hollins said during the Zoom call. “But then it just creeps up on you. And if you do not address it at that moment, then it consumes you.”
North Carolina
Lawsuit ends over Confederate monument outside county courthouse
GRAHAM, N.C. (AP) — A lawsuit challenging a central North Carolina county’s decision to keep in place its government-owned Confederate monument is over after civil rights groups and individuals who sued decided against asking the state Supreme Court to review lower court rulings.
The state Court of Appeals upheld in March a trial court’s decision to side with Alamance County and its commissioners over the 30-foot (9.1-meter) tall monument outside the historic Alamance County Courthouse. The state NAACP, the Alamance NAACP chapter, and other groups and individuals had sued in 2021 after the commissioners rejected calls to take it down.
The deadline to request a review by the state Supreme Court has passed, according to appellate rules. Following the March decision, the plaintiffs “recognized the low probability of this case proceeding to a full trial,” Marissa Wenzel, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Thursday while confirming no appeal would occur.
The monument, dedicated in 1914 and featuring a statue of a Confederate infantryman at the top, had been a focal point of local racial inequality protests during 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals panel agreed unanimously that the county had kept the statue at its longtime location in accordance with a 2015 state law that limits when an “object of remembrance” can be relocated.
Ernest Lewis Jr., an Alamance County NAACP leader, told WGHP-TV that his group is now encouraging people to vote to push for change.
“We have elected to focus our efforts instead on empowering our clients to advocate for change through grassroots political processes,” Wenzel said in a written statement Thursday.
Other lawsuits involving the fate of Confederate monuments in public spaces in the state, including in Tyrrell County and the city of Asheville, are pending.
Prosecutors to dismiss charges against trooper who shot motorist
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Prosecutors plan to dismiss murder and manslaughter charges against a white Minnesota state trooper who fatally shot Ricky Cobb II, a Black motorist, as Cobb tried to pull away from a traffic stop, saying the decision comes in response to recent statements from the trooper’s attorney and new analysis of video from the scene.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty filed a notice to dismiss the charges after Trooper Ryan Londregan’s defense team revealed prospective testimony during an April court hearing that the trooper believed Cobb was reaching for a firearm — and that a Minnesota State Patrol trainer said he never instructed officers to refrain from shooting into a moving vehicle.
The evidence would have made it impossible for prosecutors to prove that Londregan’s actions were not an authorized use of force by a peace officer, the county attorney’s office said in a statement released Sunday.
Referring to the decision to drop the charges, Londregan’s attorney, Chris Madel, told the Star Tribune, “It’s about goddamn time. That’s going to be about my only on the record comment.”
Bakari Sellers, an attorney representing Cobb’s family, told the Star Tribune the family was disappointed with prosecutors.
“They got bullied. There’s no other way around it,” Sellers said.
Londregan, 27, pleaded not guilty May 15 in the death of Cobb, and his trial was set to begin Sept. 9.
Troopers pulled the 33-year-old Cobb over on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis last July 31 because the lights were out on his car. They then found that the Spring Lake Park man was wanted for violating a protection order in neighboring Ramsey County. Londregan shot Cobb twice as Cobb tried to drive away after troopers ordered him to get out of his car.
Prosecutors and a law enforcement expert reviewed footage from the scene and found that, as Londregan’s partner clung to the passenger’s door, Cobb moved his hand upward. Cobb did have a gun in the vehicle. Moriarty told the Star Tribune there is still no evidence he intended to grab it but that the defense team’s statements caused prosecutors to reconsider the evidence through a new lens.
“They could have told us that before we charged it, they could have told us that at any time,” she said. “And that is information that we would have considered — and obviously have considered.”
Law enforcement and Republican leaders had been calling on Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to take the case away from Moriarty, a former public defender who was elected on a platform of police accountability following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer in 2020, and turn it over to Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison. Walz had expressed concern about the direction of the case but had not acted.
Cobb’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in April, alleging that the stop and the shooting were unjustified.
California
Daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt files petition to remove father’s last name
A daughter of actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt filed paperwork to legally remove “Pitt” from her name on the day she turned 18.
Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt submitted a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court on May 27 to change her name to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The third-eldest of the former couple’s six children was born in Swakopmund, Namibia, on May 27, 2006. The siblings also include Maddox, Pax, Zahara and twins Knox and Vivienne.
Shiloh, who performs as a voice actor in the film “Kung Fu Panda 3,” is the first of the siblings to file a petition for a legal name change, but some of the other children have dropped public use of their father’s last name in recent years, the Times reported.
Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016 but the details of the divorce have not yet been finalized.
The actors, who were married in August 2014, have filed lawsuits against each other in recent years stemming from disagreements over their shared business ventures and property including a winery in France, the Times reported.
Virginia
UVA to pay $9M in settlement over shooting that killed 3 football players, wounded 2 students
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The University of Virginia will pay $9 million in a settlement related to a 2022 campus shooting that killed three football players and wounded two students, a lawyer representing some of the victims and their families said Friday.
But some of the families are calling for more: The immediate release of an independent probe into the shooting that was completed last year. Its focus included efforts by the university to assess the potential threat of the student who was eventually charged with murder as well as recommendations from what was learned.
Kimberly Wald, an attorney who represents some of the families, said the university should have removed the alleged shooter from campus before the attack because he displayed multiple red flags through erratic and unstable behavior.
“This settlement today is only one small step for these families — there is much to be done,” said Wald, an attorney with the Miami-based Haggard Law Firm. “If there is one lesson, even one lesson that we can learn from that report, we need to know it now ... We need to protect lives now.”
University officials postponed the report’s release last year over concerns that it could affect the alleged shooter’s upcoming trial.
“We are committed to providing it as soon as we can be sure that doing so will not interfere in any way with the criminal proceeding,” UVA President Jim Ryan said last fall.
The school in Charlottesville will pay $2 million each to the families of the three students who died, the maximum allowable under Virginia law, said Wald, who represents the estate of D’Sean Perry. The other two students who died were Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis Jr.
The university will pay $3 million total to the two students who were wounded Mike Hollins, a fourth member of the football team, and Marlee Morgan, who Wald also represents.
The settlement was negotiated outside of court and did not follow the filing of a lawsuit, Wald said. However, every settlement in Virginia must be approved by a judge. The settlement with UVA was accepted by a judge in Albemarle County Circuit Court on Friday afternoon.
The agreements also were approved by Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin and state Attorney General Jason Miyares, the university said in a statement.
UVA Rector Robert Hardie and President Ryan said in the statement Friday that the three students’ lives “were tragically cut short” and the young men “have been ever present in our minds.”
“We will forever remember the impact that Devin, Lavel, and D’Sean had on our community, and we are grateful for the moments they spent in our presence uplifting UVA through their time in the classroom and on the football field,” the statement said.
Police said Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a UVA student and former member of the school’s football team, carried out the shooting. It occurred when he and others had returned by charter bus to campus from a field trip to see a play in Washington, authorities said.
The violence that erupted near a parking garage set off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured. His trial on murder charges and other counts is scheduled for January.
Within days of the shooting, university leaders asked for an outside review to investigate UVA’s safety policies and procedures, its response to the violence and its prior efforts to assess the potential threat of the student who was eventually charged. School officials acknowledged he previously had been on the radar of the university’s threat-assessment team.
The report was completed in October, and UVA said it would release it in November. But UVA’s stance changed over concerns about affecting Jones’ trial.
Happy Perry, who lost her son D’Sean Perry, said Friday that the report should be released now if it can help prevent similar shootings.
“As a mom, I want to know what happened. It is my right to know what happened,” she said during a Zoom call with reporters. “At this point, it is an issue of public safety and national security that we get that report.”
Brenda Hollins, whose son Mike Hollins was shot and wounded, said she felt mixed emotions Friday in the wake of the settlement. And she talked about how devastated and changed all of the families are.
“You put on your smile, and throughout the day you may be able to move forward,” Hollins said during the Zoom call. “But then it just creeps up on you. And if you do not address it at that moment, then it consumes you.”
North Carolina
Lawsuit ends over Confederate monument outside county courthouse
GRAHAM, N.C. (AP) — A lawsuit challenging a central North Carolina county’s decision to keep in place its government-owned Confederate monument is over after civil rights groups and individuals who sued decided against asking the state Supreme Court to review lower court rulings.
The state Court of Appeals upheld in March a trial court’s decision to side with Alamance County and its commissioners over the 30-foot (9.1-meter) tall monument outside the historic Alamance County Courthouse. The state NAACP, the Alamance NAACP chapter, and other groups and individuals had sued in 2021 after the commissioners rejected calls to take it down.
The deadline to request a review by the state Supreme Court has passed, according to appellate rules. Following the March decision, the plaintiffs “recognized the low probability of this case proceeding to a full trial,” Marissa Wenzel, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Thursday while confirming no appeal would occur.
The monument, dedicated in 1914 and featuring a statue of a Confederate infantryman at the top, had been a focal point of local racial inequality protests during 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals panel agreed unanimously that the county had kept the statue at its longtime location in accordance with a 2015 state law that limits when an “object of remembrance” can be relocated.
Ernest Lewis Jr., an Alamance County NAACP leader, told WGHP-TV that his group is now encouraging people to vote to push for change.
“We have elected to focus our efforts instead on empowering our clients to advocate for change through grassroots political processes,” Wenzel said in a written statement Thursday.
Other lawsuits involving the fate of Confederate monuments in public spaces in the state, including in Tyrrell County and the city of Asheville, are pending.
