National Roundup

North Carolina
Pastor charged with more than 100 sex crimes
NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. (AP) —  A  North Carolina pastor has been charged with more than 100 felony sex offenses involving three children, who were as young as four years old.

News outlets reported Tuesday that Rodney Luffman, 58, was arrested without incident at his home last week in eastern Wilkes County, according to the sheriff’s office. A church website says he’s a pastor at Open Arms Outreach Ministries in Elkin.

Luffman is accused of abusing three victims beginning about 20 years ago, when they ranged in age from 4 to 15 years old, Det. Amanda Boyd with the Wilkes County Sheriff’s Office told news outlets. She said investigators determined the crimes continued for 15 years.

Luffman remains in jail on a $1 million bond.

Oregon
Man who helped kidnap warehouse manager gets jail
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — One of two men who kidnapped a Public Storage warehouse manager at gunpoint, mistakenly thinking the manager had stolen their nearly 500 pounds of marijuana, was sentenced Wednesday to five years in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones issued the sentence for Trent Lamar Knight, 31, after he pleaded guilty in May to distributing marijuana and using a firearm in the course of drug trafficking, the Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

The judge decided to issue a shorter sentence than he gave Knight’s co-defendant, Jody Tremayne Wafer earlier this month, noting that Wafer was the ringleader. Wafer was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Knight and Wafer, both of Houston, were led to believe that their marijuana had been stolen when it actually had been seized in a secret raid by federal agents.

Both forced the warehouse manager into an empty unit, bound his wrists and held him at gunpoint on Dec. 2, 2017, demanding to know what happened to the drugs, according to court testimony and records.

Knight told the judge he thinks daily about what he did to the storage manager and apologized.

California
Judge sets preliminary hearing in ‘Golden State Killer’ case
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A California judge on Wednesday set a May hearing to decide if prosecutors have enough evidence to go to trial against a man suspected being the notorious “Golden State Killer” who eluded capture for decades.

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Steve White ordered the preliminary hearing for Joseph James DeAngelo to start May 12.

That’s more than two years after investigators said new DNA techniques linked the former police officer to at least 13 murders and more than 50 rapes across California in the 1970s and 1980s.

The rapist would break into couples’ suburban homes at night, binding the man and piling dishes on his back. He would threaten to kill both victims if he heard the plates fall while he raped the woman.

Defense attorneys had argued in court filings that they need another year to sort through the 250,000 pieces of evidence turned over by prosecutors. Prosecutors said they expect to call 150 witnesses over eight to 10 weeks, The Sacramento Bee reported.

White said he had to consider that witnesses and victims are growing older.

“I wish to make the case that there cannot be a case that’s too big to go to trial,” White said, drawing applause from victims sitting in the courtroom when he set the date.

One man in the audience earlier shouted “Amen” when a prosecutor said aging rape victims deserve to see the case advance, the Bee reported.

“Given the number of charges in this case, the amount of discovery is extraordinary,” supervising public defenders Alice Michel and Joseph Cress wrote in seeking the delay. “If forced to set a preliminary hearing date at this time, the defense will be unable to provide competent and effective representation for Mr. DeAngelo.”

Prosecutor Thien Ho countered that DeAngelo, 75, is responsible for the volume of charges.

“It was the defendant who decided to embark upon a crime spree that spanned 10 counties,” Ho said.

Some witnesses now are in their 80s and 90s, he told the judge, and a Santa Barbara investigator recently died from cancer in his 70s.

Prosecutors from Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Orange and Ventura counties in April said they would seek the death penalty if DeAngelo is convicted, making their announcement shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on executions so long as he is governor.

Iowa
Man guilty of setting fire in effort to kill wife, her uncle
INDEPENDENCE, Iowa (AP) — A man has been found guilty of setting a fire that injured two people at his eastern Iowa home.

A jury convicted Shane Heins, 45, on Wednesday of arson and two counts of attempted murder. Before the trial, he pleaded plea to misdemeanor domestic assault for shoving his stepdaughter at the home.

The online court records don’t list a sentencing date.

Investigators said Heins set the fire March 2 last year in Independence in an effort to kill his wife, Christina Heins, and her uncle, Nick Necker. Both were taken for treatment to University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in Iowa City.

A witness reported seeing Shane Heins throwing items and furniture around the home and pouring gasoline around the wooden steps between the house and garage.


Ohio
Boy, 15, charged in death of girl struck during police chase
CLEVELAND (AP) — The 15-year-old boy accused of driving a stolen car that struck and killed a 13-year-old girl during a police pursuit faces murder and other charges in juvenile court in Cleveland, records show.

He also was charged with the juvenile equivalent of aggravated robbery, failure to comply and having weapons under disability.

Authorities said a second 15-year-old boy was a passenger in the vehicle that struck and killed Tamia Chappman in East Cleveland on Dec. 20. That boy was charged days after the chase and faces murder, aggravated robbery and robbery charges, court records showed.

Both teens are being held in the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Justice Center in Cleveland.

Authorities said the teens carjacked a woman in a store parking lot in Cleveland, and an off-duty police officer witnessed the carjacking and followed the teens onto a highway before a police supervisor took up the pursuit.

Tamia was killed while walking to the library after school to meet her siblings.