Washington
Cops: Teen killed man, posed with gun on Facebook
SEATTLE (AP) - Prosecutors have accused a Seattle teen of fatally shooting a man, stealing his money and then posing with the victim's gun in a picture she posted on Facebook after the killing.
Seattlepi.com reports that the 16-year-old was arrested last week in the death of Emmanuel Gondo, who was found shot to death in his car in February.
Charging documents say the teen, who investigators described as a runaway, had planned to rob Gondo. A Seattle police detective says Gondo's cellphone, gun and wallet were missing when they found his body.
The teen has also been accused of referring to the shooting in Facebook postings.
The girl is scheduled to appear in court on May 2.
Florida
Man pleads guilty in $4.8 million gold truck heist
MIAMI (AP) - One of three South Florida-based men accused of stealing $4.8 million in gold from a truck along a North Carolina interstate has pleaded guilty.
Court records show Roberto Cabrera faces a maximum of 50 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to robbery, firearms and other charges. Sentencing is set for June 23 in Miami.
The FBI says Cabrera, co-defendant Adalberto Perez and an unidentified third man used a GPS device in March 2015 to track the gold-laden tractor-trailer heading from Miami to Massachusetts. Investigators say pepper spray was released by remote control to sicken the driver and a passenger before the robbery along Interstate 95 in Wilson County, North Carolina.
The crooks made off with 275 pounds of gold bars and some silver.
Perez has pleaded not guilty.
Virginia
Court overturns transgender bathroom rule
RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) - A U.S. appeals court has overturned a policy barring a transgender student from using the boys' restrooms at his Virginia high school.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the Gloucester County School Board policy is discriminatory. A federal judge had earlier rejected the student Gavin Grimm's sex discrimination claim.
The appeals court's ruling establishes legal precedent in the five states in the 4th Circuit, including North Carolina, which faces a lawsuit challenging a new state law requiring transgender public school students to use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificate.
Grimm was born female but identifies as male. After complaints, the school board adopted a policy requiring students to use public restrooms corresponding with their biological gender.
Pennsylvania
Hearing delayed in police ambush case after judge bars media
MILFORD, Pa. (AP) - A judge postponed a hearing Tuesday for a man charged with ambushing two troopers outside a Pennsylvania State Police barracks after reporters objected to being excluded from part of it.
Eric Frein, 32, is charged with opening fire outside the Blooming Grove barracks in 2014, killing Cpl. Bryon Dickson and seriously wounding Trooper Alex Douglass. The anti-government survivalist led police on a 48-day manhunt before U.S. marshals captured him in an abandoned airplane hanger.
Tuesday's hearing centered on the admissibility of Frein's videotaped statement to police after his arrest. Frein told police that Dickson's slaying was an "assassination" and that he ambushed the troopers to "wake people up," according to court documents filed earlier in the case.
His attorneys argue his statement should be suppressed because police did not inform Frein his parents had hired a lawyer to represent him.
Citing heavy pretrial publicity, a Pike County judge tried closing that part of the hearing to the public, then postponed it until Friday after a TV station formally objected. Judge Gregory Chelak said he will hear arguments Thursday on whether the suppression hearing should be held in open court instead.
Earlier Tuesday, Frein's attorneys argued that Chelak should rule Pennsylvania's death penalty unconstitutional. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Frein.
New Jersey
Email goes to wrong Verona but helps save woman
VERONA, N.J. (AP) - An email from a concerned friend of a suicidal student in Verona, Italy, mistakenly went to a police department of the same name in New Jersey, but authorities said it helped save a life.
Mitchell Stern, police chief in Verona, New Jersey, said the department received an email April 14 from a Chinese student in the United Kingdom concerned about another Chinese student at the Verona Academy of Fine Arts in Italy.
After trying to find contact information for the Italian police department of the same name and the Italian embassy, he eventually got in touch with Interpol, a network of police forces around the world. Interpol forwarded it to the state police in Italy.
The student was found with her wrists partially slit and with a half-empty bottle of antidepressants when local police arrived at her apartment, the Italian Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The student had told her friend in an online chat that she was going to harm herself, Stern said.
Stern said the 30-member Verona, New Jersey, police department occasionally gets emails looking for lost luggage or reporting thefts in Verona, Italy, but nothing at the same magnitude as last Thursday's.
Stern said he wouldn't have shared the story, but Italian authorities saw it as an opportunity to show how police work together.
Mississippi
Gang members convicted of racketeering
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Federal prosecutors say two members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Mississippi have been convicted on charges including racketeering and murder.
A news release from the U.S. Justice Department says 44-year-old Frank George Owens of D'Iberville and 35-year-old Eric Glenn Parker of Richton were convicted last week.
The guilty verdict from a federal jury followed guilty pleas by 40 others involved in the case.
The indictment in the case said Owens, Parker and others murdered a subordinate Aryan Brotherhood gang member, Michael Hudson, in 2010 because they believed he owed a drug debt to the gang.
Each could be sentenced to life in prison. No sentencing date has been set.
The Justice Department describes the Aryan Brotherhood as a violent "whites only" group that operates inside and outside of state prisons.
Published: Wed, Apr 20, 2016
