South Dakota
Two men convicted of kidnapping an FBI employee
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — A federal jury in South Dakota has convicted two men on charges related to the 2022 kidnapping of an FBI employee.
The jury in Rapid City on Tuesday found 29-year-old Deyvin Morales and 25-year-old Juan Alvarez-Soto guilty of kidnapping, carjacking and other counts, the Rapid City Journal reported. Alvarez-Soto, who is from El Salvador, also was found guilty of unlawfully entering the U.S. after being deported.
Sentencing dates have not been set. Both men could face up to life in prison.
The men and a third suspect, 29-year-old Karla Lopez-Gutierrez, left Greeley, Colorado, on May 5, 2022, and were on a “drug trafficking trip” to South Dakota in a Ford Expedition, prosecutors said.
The Expedition was chased by a South Dakota trooper at one point before getting away. Nearly out of gas at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Morales told the others they needed to “take over” a new vehicle, Lopez-Gutierrez testified.
A short time later, the FBI employee was speeding in his Dodge Durango when he saw the Expedition and pulled over, believing it was a tribal officer. Prosecutors said the suspects took the Durango at gunpoint and forced the victim to go along.
When the group stopped to buy gas and zip ties at the town of Hermosa, South Dakota, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) from Red Shirt, the victim was able to escape.
Morales and Alvarez-Soto were arrested in Greeley, a week later. Lopez-Gutierrez was arrested in August 2022 in Loveland, Colorado. She pleaded guilty in August.
Alvarez-Soto’s defense attorney, Alecia Fuller, cited “a lot of doubt” in the government’s case. Fuller said there was no intent to harm the victim.
Jonathan McCoy, the attorney for Morales, said there was no proof that Morales was even present for the crime.
Washington
Transgender veterans sue to have gender-affirming surgery covered by VA
A group of transgender veterans filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to force the Department of Veteran Affairs to begin providing and paying for gender-affirming surgeries.
The lawsuit from the Transgender American Veterans Association seeks to compel the VA to codify in its regulations verbal assurances the department has made that it would begin providing those services, said Rebekka Eshler, the president of the association.
She said the surgeries are needed to reduce the risk of suicides, depression, and psychological distress for transgender people who live with gender dysphoria.
“It would also mean that those veterans do not have to seek this care through private doctors, which is often prohibitively expensive,” the transgender veterans association said in its lawsuit, which it said was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington.
A spokesperson for the Department of Veterans Affairs said it does not comment on ongoing litigation. But he pointed to 2021 statements from Veteran Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, who said the VA was beginning a years long rulemaking process that would result in providing gender-affirming surgeries. McDonough said the VA would use the time to “develop capacity to meet the surgical needs” of transgender veterans.
The decision, he said, will allow “transgender vets to go through the full gender confirmation process with VA by their side.”
The veterans first petitioned for the rule change in May of 2016. Since then, has VA has held hearings and prepared multiple proposed rules for cost-benefit analysis, the association said. But while the VA currently provides hormone therapy and other services to transgender veterans at some locations, it has failed to change its rules in a timely manner and provide any coverage for the surgeries, the group said.
“I get phone calls from veterans that are so in crisis that they are calling us because they can’t handle it anymore and they are wanting to go kill themselves,” Eshler said.
Natalie Kastner, a 39-year-old disabled veteran from Texas, said she went to the VA in 2022 seeking surgery. When doctors there denied her request, she said she took a knife and attempted self castration. She hit an artery and almost died, but doctors were able to save her life.
“I did not go into that bathroom looking to kill myself,” she said. “I went into that bathroom looking to fix myself. I can only imagine how many others have done the same and have not been so lucky and have simply been listed as a suicide.”
Eshler said she hopes the lawsuit also will standardize the care transgender veterans receive, which said can vary from state to state and even clinic to clinic.
The lawsuit asks the court to compel the VA to respond to the 2016 petition within 30 days.
Missouri
Bounty hunter sentenced to 10 years in prison for abducting St. Louis woman
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A bounty hunter from Louisiana was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for kidnapping a suburban St. Louis woman, an abduction he claimed was part of his job.
A federal jury in St. Louis in September convicted 45-year-old Wayne Lozier of the New Orleans area on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
“This sentence should reinforce that those who work in the fugitive recovery industry must comply with state and local laws and regulations and treat those they take into custody with decency,” U.S. Attorney Sayler A. Fleming said in a statement. “They work in a dangerous industry, but that is not a license to go rogue.”
The victim was a woman who was staying at a home in St. Peters, Missouri, in 2019. Lozier and his partner, Jody L. Sullivan, had been hired by a Louisiana bail bond company to find and apprehend the woman, who had an arrest warrant on two misdemeanor crimes.
The bounty hunters were not licensed in Missouri and did not notify St. Peters police before entering the home on May 9, 2019, prosecutors said. According to testimony, the men handcuffed the woman, who was wearing only pajamas, and took her away in an SUV.
The homeowner contacted police. A St. Peters officer reached Lozier by phone and told him to return the woman, but he refused, prosecutors said. When the woman sought help from clerks at a gas station in rural Missouri, Lozier used a stun gun and pulled her hair before dragging her from the store, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Lozier eventually dropped the woman off at a detention facility in Mississippi, where she remained for about a week until she was released.
Sullivan, 56, pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and kidnapping charges. She was sentenced in December to five years of probation.
Two men convicted of kidnapping an FBI employee
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — A federal jury in South Dakota has convicted two men on charges related to the 2022 kidnapping of an FBI employee.
The jury in Rapid City on Tuesday found 29-year-old Deyvin Morales and 25-year-old Juan Alvarez-Soto guilty of kidnapping, carjacking and other counts, the Rapid City Journal reported. Alvarez-Soto, who is from El Salvador, also was found guilty of unlawfully entering the U.S. after being deported.
Sentencing dates have not been set. Both men could face up to life in prison.
The men and a third suspect, 29-year-old Karla Lopez-Gutierrez, left Greeley, Colorado, on May 5, 2022, and were on a “drug trafficking trip” to South Dakota in a Ford Expedition, prosecutors said.
The Expedition was chased by a South Dakota trooper at one point before getting away. Nearly out of gas at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Morales told the others they needed to “take over” a new vehicle, Lopez-Gutierrez testified.
A short time later, the FBI employee was speeding in his Dodge Durango when he saw the Expedition and pulled over, believing it was a tribal officer. Prosecutors said the suspects took the Durango at gunpoint and forced the victim to go along.
When the group stopped to buy gas and zip ties at the town of Hermosa, South Dakota, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) from Red Shirt, the victim was able to escape.
Morales and Alvarez-Soto were arrested in Greeley, a week later. Lopez-Gutierrez was arrested in August 2022 in Loveland, Colorado. She pleaded guilty in August.
Alvarez-Soto’s defense attorney, Alecia Fuller, cited “a lot of doubt” in the government’s case. Fuller said there was no intent to harm the victim.
Jonathan McCoy, the attorney for Morales, said there was no proof that Morales was even present for the crime.
Washington
Transgender veterans sue to have gender-affirming surgery covered by VA
A group of transgender veterans filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to force the Department of Veteran Affairs to begin providing and paying for gender-affirming surgeries.
The lawsuit from the Transgender American Veterans Association seeks to compel the VA to codify in its regulations verbal assurances the department has made that it would begin providing those services, said Rebekka Eshler, the president of the association.
She said the surgeries are needed to reduce the risk of suicides, depression, and psychological distress for transgender people who live with gender dysphoria.
“It would also mean that those veterans do not have to seek this care through private doctors, which is often prohibitively expensive,” the transgender veterans association said in its lawsuit, which it said was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington.
A spokesperson for the Department of Veterans Affairs said it does not comment on ongoing litigation. But he pointed to 2021 statements from Veteran Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, who said the VA was beginning a years long rulemaking process that would result in providing gender-affirming surgeries. McDonough said the VA would use the time to “develop capacity to meet the surgical needs” of transgender veterans.
The decision, he said, will allow “transgender vets to go through the full gender confirmation process with VA by their side.”
The veterans first petitioned for the rule change in May of 2016. Since then, has VA has held hearings and prepared multiple proposed rules for cost-benefit analysis, the association said. But while the VA currently provides hormone therapy and other services to transgender veterans at some locations, it has failed to change its rules in a timely manner and provide any coverage for the surgeries, the group said.
“I get phone calls from veterans that are so in crisis that they are calling us because they can’t handle it anymore and they are wanting to go kill themselves,” Eshler said.
Natalie Kastner, a 39-year-old disabled veteran from Texas, said she went to the VA in 2022 seeking surgery. When doctors there denied her request, she said she took a knife and attempted self castration. She hit an artery and almost died, but doctors were able to save her life.
“I did not go into that bathroom looking to kill myself,” she said. “I went into that bathroom looking to fix myself. I can only imagine how many others have done the same and have not been so lucky and have simply been listed as a suicide.”
Eshler said she hopes the lawsuit also will standardize the care transgender veterans receive, which said can vary from state to state and even clinic to clinic.
The lawsuit asks the court to compel the VA to respond to the 2016 petition within 30 days.
Missouri
Bounty hunter sentenced to 10 years in prison for abducting St. Louis woman
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A bounty hunter from Louisiana was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for kidnapping a suburban St. Louis woman, an abduction he claimed was part of his job.
A federal jury in St. Louis in September convicted 45-year-old Wayne Lozier of the New Orleans area on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
“This sentence should reinforce that those who work in the fugitive recovery industry must comply with state and local laws and regulations and treat those they take into custody with decency,” U.S. Attorney Sayler A. Fleming said in a statement. “They work in a dangerous industry, but that is not a license to go rogue.”
The victim was a woman who was staying at a home in St. Peters, Missouri, in 2019. Lozier and his partner, Jody L. Sullivan, had been hired by a Louisiana bail bond company to find and apprehend the woman, who had an arrest warrant on two misdemeanor crimes.
The bounty hunters were not licensed in Missouri and did not notify St. Peters police before entering the home on May 9, 2019, prosecutors said. According to testimony, the men handcuffed the woman, who was wearing only pajamas, and took her away in an SUV.
The homeowner contacted police. A St. Peters officer reached Lozier by phone and told him to return the woman, but he refused, prosecutors said. When the woman sought help from clerks at a gas station in rural Missouri, Lozier used a stun gun and pulled her hair before dragging her from the store, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Lozier eventually dropped the woman off at a detention facility in Mississippi, where she remained for about a week until she was released.
Sullivan, 56, pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and kidnapping charges. She was sentenced in December to five years of probation.
