National Roundup

Minnesota
Lawsuit: 3M contamination led to more cancer, infertility

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota’s attorney general alleges that chemicals dumped by 3M Co. in the Twin Cities metro led to an increase in cancer, infertility and babies with low birth weights.

Attorney General Lori Swanson says in a court filing that the contamination caused $5 billion in health and environmental damage for which 3M should be liable.

3M says the lawsuit is a “misguided attempt” to force the company to pay for a problem that does not exist.

The filing Friday alleges that 3M knew the groundwater was contaminated years before it stopped making perflourinated chemicals, known as PFCs, and that it withheld critical information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The lawsuit was first filed in 2010. After a series of procedural delays, the case is scheduled for trial early next year.

Arizona
Clergy sex abuse case ends in monetary settlement

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A clergy sex abuse lawsuit against the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and an Arizona school has been settled.

The Gallup Independent reports Phoenix attorney Robert E. Pastor, who represents the woman who filed the suit, says “the agreement has been finalized.”

The lawsuit, which was filed in Coconino County Superior Court in 2015, centered on the childhood sexual molestation of the plaintiff, who filed the lawsuit as Jane L.S. Doe.

The plaintiff, a member of the Navajo Nation, says she was abused by Brother Mark Schornack, OFM, when she was a student at St. Michael Indian School and Schornack, a Franciscan friar, was her bus driver.

Colorado
Prosecutor: Teen arrested in woman’s murder had ‘death list’

LONGMONT, Colo. (AP) — A prosecutor in northern Colorado says a 15-year-old arrested in the stabbing death of a 19-year-old woman had a “death list” that included the victim’s younger sister.

Boulder Country Deputy District Attorney Michael Foote told a judge that the teen stabbed Makayla Grote at an apartment complex Saturday night and then pursued the younger sister, who locked herself in a room.

The boy declined to appear at his first court hearing Monday after being arrested Sunday on suspicion of first-degree murder.

The Longmont Times-Call reports that prosecutors said police found the teen about a mile from the home of another person on the list.

Prosecutors also said the boy assaulted his grandfather and threatened his mother with a knife the day before Grote’s killing.

New Hampshire
Competency hearing for woman accused in plot to kill

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A competency hearing has been scheduled for an 83-year-old New Hampshire woman accused in a failed murder-for-hire plot involving her son’s ex-wife.

Pauline Chase and her 63-year-old son, Maurice Temple, both of Plainfield, have pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal solicitation of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and attempt to commit murder. They’ve been jailed on $1 million bail each.

A competency hearing was scheduled Tuesday in Merrimack Superior Court for Chase. Her lawyer has said Chase is growing more forgetful and confused.

Prosecutors said Chase and Temple arranged to have a man kill Jean Temple over money Maurice Temple owed her after their 2009 divorce. The man went to police, and the killing didn’t happen.

Jean Temple sued Chase and Temple last month, seeking $2 million, saying she suffered emotional distress.

New York
Family of jogger  hears confession in court in tears

NEW YORK (AP) — The family of a woman found dead after she vanished while jogging watched in tears as lawyers played a taped confession of the man accused of killing her.

Chanel Lewis has been charged with murder in the 2016 death of Karina Vetrano. He has pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys say his confession was wrongly obtained and should not be admissible in his upcoming trial. The video was played in court Monday. Lewis says he grabbed the 30-year-old who ran past him in on a secluded section of a marshland park in Queens. He says he beat and strangled her, but he did not molest her. The body had been found with her clothing in disarray leading investigators to suspect she’d also been sexually assaulted.

A judge will decide whether the footage can be used.

Ohio
Review clears police who shot ‘Buckeye Bandit’ bank robber

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Police say officers acted within department policy when they shot and wounded the suspected serial bank robber whom law enforcement called the “Buckeye Bandit” because he often wore Ohio State University clothing.

Columbus police cornered him after a teller slipped a tracking device into a bundle of cash during a robbery last year. Police say two officers fired when the man pointed what appeared to be a handgun.

The department says an internal review found the officers acted according to police policy.

The man, Ikechi Emeaghara (ee-KEE’-chee ee-MEHG-’rah), was suspected in a string of robberies. He pleaded guilty to armed bank robbery in federal court and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

New Jersey
Parents lose suit over making kids walk to bus stop

FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — An administrative law judge has ruled against a New Jersey couple who said it was unsafe to make their children walk less than a mile to a bus stop.

The parents, identified only by initials in court papers, claimed the bus should pick up their 9- and 12-year-old at the end of their driveway in Franklin Township like it had.

The Courier News of Bridgewater reports a new driver assigned to the route refused to drive down the road because the bus exceeded a bridge’s weight limit and the school district prohibited drivers from using a private driveway to make a K-turn.

The parents said the road the children would have to walk on was narrow.

The judge ruled requiring the bus to go to the house was risky.