MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A former Milwaukee hotel bellhop accused of taking part in a dogpile that killed a man pleaded guilty Thursday to a reduced charge of misdemeanor battery, his attorney said.
Prosecutors initially charged Herbert Williamson with being a party to felony murder in connection with the June 2024 death of D’Vontaye Mitchell outside the Milwaukee Hyatt.
Williamson’s attorney, Theodore O’Reilly, told The Associated Press that prosecutors reduced the charge to battery in exchange for his guilty plea and a promise to serve as a witness. O’Reilly said he wasn’t
sure whether Williamson would be asked to testify against others implicated in Mitchell’s death.
Williamson faces up to nine months behind bars when he’s sentenced Sept. 3 on the battery count. He could have been sentenced to up to 15 years if convicted on the murder count.
“It’s a good outcome for Mr. Williamson,” O’Reilly said.
No one immediately returned an email the AP sent to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office seeking comment.
Three other former Hyatt employees — security guards Brandon Turner and Todd Erickson and front desk worker Devin Johnson-Carson — also were charged with being a party to felony murder in Mitchell’s death. Turner pleaded guilty to that count last week in a deal with prosecutors. He could receive probation in exchange for testifying against the other men. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Sept. 3 as well.
Erickson is set to stand trial in August. Johnson-Carson has a plea hearing set for March 20.
According to court documents, surveillance and bystander video shows Mitchell running into the Hyatt’s lobby and entering the women’s bathroom. Two women later told investigators that Mitchell tried to lock them in the bathroom.
Turner and a hotel guest scuffled with Mitchell and eventually dragged him out of the lobby onto a hotel driveway. Erickson, Williamson and Johnson-Carson joined Turner in pinning Mitchell down for eight to nine minutes, according to court documents. By the time emergency responders arrived Mitchell had stopped moving.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Mitchell was morbidly obese and suffered from heart disease. He also had cocaine and methamphetamine in his system. The office determined he suffocated and ruled the manner of death as homicide.
Attorneys for Mitchell’s family have likened his death to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died in 2020 after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for about 9 minutes.
Mitchell was Black. Court records identify Erickson as white and Turner, Williamson and Johnson-Carson as Black.
The four workers told investigators Mitchell was strong and tried to bite Erickson but they didn’t mean to intentionally harm him.
Aimbridge Hospitality, the company that manages the hotel, fired the four workers in July.
BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP) — A bestselling mystery writer has been sentenced to 3 1/2 to seven years in prison after he pleaded guilty to charges of possessing child sexual abuse material.
Brendan DuBois, 65, was indicted by a county grand jury last year. He appeared in a New Hampshire court on Thursday after prosecutors agreed to drop two of six possession counts against him as part of a plea agreement.
DuBois was arrested in Exeter last July. He has been in jail since then, so more than eight months can be credited to his term.
DuBois must register as a sex offender, according to court records. The judge recommended that he receive an assessment for sexual offender treatment at the state prison. Part of his minimum sentence could be suspended if he completes the assessment, or if it concludes that no treatment is needed.
An email seeking comment was sent on Friday to his attorney, Harry Starbranch.
DuBois’ website, which no longer appears to be working, had said he is a New York Times bestselling author who has written 29 novels. He co-wrote several of those with James Patterson, including “Cross Down,” “Count Down,” “The Summer House” and “Blowback.”
Severn River Publishing previously announced that it was removing his books from its website.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A father in Missouri was sentenced to 13 years in prison on Thursday for shooting and wounding a St. Louis youth football coach over his son’s playing time while 9- and 10-year-olds practiced nearby.
A jury found Daryl Clemmons, 45, guilty last month of assault and armed criminal action in the October 2023 shooting of Shaquille Latimore, a volunteer coach for the City Rec Legends Football League. He was hospitalized in critical condition but survived.
Both men were armed. According to prosecutors, the coach handed his gun to a friend and told Clemmons they should fight with fists. Clemmons rejected that idea and shot Latimore five times. The father fled but turned himself in to police later that evening.
The team was then suspended over what St. Louis officials described as “a series of incidents perpetuated by adults” that culminated in the shooting near a practice field in Sherman Park. Latimore said at the time that he was upset about the decision, calling it “not fair” that the team should suffer.
The defense argued that the shooting was in self defense and filed a motion for a new trial.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office said the two men were at odds over the amount of playing time Clemmons’s son had been getting.
“Violence, especially in youth sports, is completely unacceptable and undermines the purpose of these programs — teaching teamwork, discipline, and respect,” said Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore in a news release after the jury returned the guilty verdict.
After the shooting, the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis partnered with the city to offer counseling to the players and others who witnessed the shooting.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government’s steward of funding for public broadcasting stations sued the Trump administration on Thursday over its pause in grant payments for upgrading the nation’s emergency alert system.
The nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s federal lawsuit says a recent hold on grant funds for modernizing the alert system hampers the ability of federal, state and local authorities to issue real-time emergency alerts.
The CPB sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington, D.C., to challenge its Feb. 18 hold on the $40 million grant program for the Next Generation Warning System.
FEMA didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit’s allegations. The suit says FEMA hasn’t attempted to explain a basis for suspending the grant payments.
The national Emergency Alert System helps government officials issue alerts about disasters, including flash floods, blizzards, tornados and hurricanes.
The CPB, which Congress created in 1967, is the largest source of funding for public radio and television. The private corporation says it distributes over 70% of its funding to more than 1,500 public radio and television stations.
The CPB administers the Next Generation Warning System grant program for FEMA. The grants help pay for public media stations to upgrade their emergency alerting equipment. The program has over 40 grant recipients.
Kathy Merritt, a CPB official, said FEMA hasn’t informed the corporation when or even if the program’s funds will be restored.
“To protect public media stations from financial harm, CPB has no recourse other than to bring legal action against FEMA under the Administrative Procedure Act,” Merritt said in a statement.
The CPB is seeking a court order for FEMA to immediately lift the hold so that the corporation and the grant recipients can be reimbursed for expenses.
The lawsuit says FEMA’s “hold” status in the grant system leaves public media stations across the country on the hook for a total of nearly $1.9 million in unreimbursed expenses.
“At no point has FEMA indicated that CPB has done anything that would call this grant into question,” the lawsuit says. “At no point has FEMA indicated that it is cancelling the grant or taking any other adverse action with respect to the grant.”
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A representative for the estate of actor Gene Hackman is seeking to block the public release of autopsy and investigative reports, especially photographs and police body-camera video, related to the recent deaths of Hackman and wife Betsy Arakawa after their partially mummified bodies were discovered at their New Mexico home in February.
Authorities last week announced Hackman died at age 95 of heart disease with complications from Alzheimer’s disease as much as a week after a rare, rodent-borne disease — hantavirus pulmonary syndrome — took the life of his 65-year-old wife.
Hackman’s pacemaker last showed signs of activity on Feb. 18, indicating an abnormal heart rhythm on the day he likely died. The couple’s bodies weren’t discovered until Feb. 26 when maintenance and security workers showed up at the Santa Fe home and alerted police, leaving a mystery for law enforcement and medical investigators to unravel.
Julia Peters, a representative for the estate of Hackman and Arakawa, urged a state district court in Santa Fe to seal records in the cases to protect the family’s right to privacy in grief under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, emphasizing the possibly shocking nature of photographs and video in the investigation and potential for their dissemination by media.
The request, filed Tuesday, also described the couple’s discrete lifestyle in Santa Fe since Hackman’s retirement. The state capital city is known as a refuge for celebrities, artists and authors.
The couple “lived an exemplary private life for over thirty years in Santa Fe, New Mexico and did not showcase their lifestyle,” the petition said.
New Mexico’s open records law blocks public access to sensitive images, including depictions of people who are deceased, said Amanda Lavin, legal director at the nonprofit New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. Some medical information also is not considered public record under the state Inspection of Public Records Act.
At the same time, the bulk of death investigations by law enforcement and autopsy reports by medical investigators are typically considered public records under state law in the spirit of ensuring government transparency and accountability, she said.
“I do think it does infringe on transparency if the court were to prohibit release of all the investigation records, including the autopsies,” Lavin said Thursday. “The whole idea of those records being available is to ensure accountability in the way those investigations are done.”
“There is also a public health concern given that hantavirus was involved,” Lavin said.
She said the preemptive request to prevent the release of government records on constitutional grounds is unusual.
