North Carolina
Brothers plead guilty in deputy’s shooting death
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Two brothers pleaded guilty on Tuesday to murder-related counts for the shooting death of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy three years ago when authorities said the officer approached a pickup truck late at night in a rural area.
Alder Marin-Sotelo, 28, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Wake County court in the killing of 48-year-old Deputy Ned Byrd, a K-9 officer. The man’s brother, Arturo Marin-Sotelo, 32, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.
Superior Court Judge Graham Shirley sentenced Alder Marin-Sotelo to life in prison without the chance for parole and Arturo Marin-Sotelo to a prison sentence of roughly eight to 10 years.
Both of them had previously been charged with murder and had otherwise been scheduled to go to trial in September 2026. Byrd’s co-workers, family and friends filled the courtroom to see the plea agreements carried out.
“We know that you can tell from the outpouring of love and support from the sheriff’s office — all of them who were present here today — that this has been a great loss for our community and for that agency,” Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told the judge.
Freeman said evidence would have been presented at trial that showed Byrd was traveling the night of Aug, 11, 2022, in his patrol vehicle en route to a law enforcement training center for his dog when he noticed a pickup truck beside a fence on the side of a dark road. Byrd pulled over and moved his vehicle up to the truck.
A recording from his in-car camera showed that Byrd got out of the vehicle, and mere seconds later six gunshots could be heard, followed later by the pickup leaving the scene, Freeman said. An autopsy determined that the officer was shot four times, three in the back of the head, the prosecutor said in court. The brothers, who were from Mexico, ultimately were located in separate vehicles in western North Carolina days after the shootings.
Legal proceedings had been delayed largely because in April 2023, Alder Marin-Sotelo escaped from a Virginia jail where he was being held after pleading guilty months earlier to a federal charge of firearm possession by someone in the country unlawfully.
The FBI said Alder Marin-Sotelo was taken into custody a few days later in Mexico. He was held there until February 2025, when Mexico agreed to send to the U.S. nearly 30 prisoners requested by the federal government.
First-degree murder can be punished by the death penalty in North Carolina. Freeman said Tuesday that getting Alder Marin-Sotelo back to North Carolina required prosecutors to take capital punishment off the table. Otherwise, she said, “if there was ever a capital case, this is the type of case that certainly would have been.”
Byrd’s sister, identified by Freeman as Mignon Perkins, told the court before sentencing that her brother “was one of the most amazing people you have ever known.” Byrd joined the sheriff’s office in 2009.
“You have stolen my happiness. You have stolen my joy,” Perkins told the defendants. “I’m a godly woman, but I will never forgive you for taking my brother from me.”
Through an interpreter, Arturo Marin-Sotelo apologized in court for what had happened and still asked for the sister’s forgiveness because, he said, he could do nothing else. Alder Marin-Sotelo did not speak at the hearing.
Freeman said Alder Marin-Sotelo’s cellphone placed him at the crime scene during the shooting. She said evidence backed up Arturo Marin-Sotelo’s statement to police that the brothers had driven to a Wake County field to hunt for deer.
After Tuesday’s hearing, Freeman confirmed Arturo Marin-Sotelo told investigators that he walked through the woods with a rifle while his brother parked the truck. Arturo Marin-Sotelo then said that on the phone his brother “made statements that an officer had been killed” and that the brother traveled to the other side of the field to pick him up, Freeman said.
Freeman said cartridge casings at the crime scene and in the pickup truck were fired from the same unknown gun, and that a DNA sample from the younger brother matched a DNA profile collected from Byrd’s police-issued gun. The weapon was in Byrd’s holster when he was found, with the belt twisted around his body. It appeared that Alder Marin-Sotelo had tried to remove Byrd’s gun before giving up, according to Freeman.
California
Well-known chef faces charges after 3 bank robberies
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A well-known chef who robbed a northern California bank in 2018 is facing charges again after three bank robberies in central San Francisco last week, according to police.
Officers responding to a bank alarm around noon on Sept. 10 learned that a man passed a note demanding money to an employee, who complied in fear for their life, according to a San Francisco Police Department news release. The man then fled with a bag of money, police said. With help from the community, investigators identified the suspect as Valentino Luchin, 62, of San Francisco and arrested him, police said.
There were two other bank robberies in the central district that day involving a suspect with a similar description and methods and police also charged Luchin with those robberies, police said.
Luchin was charged with robbery and attempted robbery, police said. He’s being held on $200,000 bail, according to the San Francisco Sheriff’s website. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Sept. 24.
Luchin is a talented chef and kind person who found himself in a “desperate” financial situation recently, Deputy Public Defender Kwixuan H. Maloof said in a statement.
The restaurant industry has been difficult in recent years and Luchin was offered a position that was later withdrawn, putting him into a “state of depression,” he said.
“The charges against him are totally overblown, and the government is trying to stretch the law to fit facts that simply are not there,” Maloof said, adding that he intends to challenge the charges and “expose prosecutorial overreach.”
Local news outlets report that Luchin was known for his work at Italian restaurants such as Rose Pistola and Ottavio. He was charged in a 2018 bank robbery in Contra Costa County and told KGO-TV during an interview at a detention facility at the time, “I went inside and said ‘Good morning. Nobody move. This is a robbery.’”
Luchin said he was desperate after his restaurant Ottavio in Walnut closed in 2016.
“We’ve been struggling a lot financially and I have a family,” Luchin said. “I feel bad. It wasn’t something I was planning or doing for a living.”
Luchin pleaded no contest to one count of second-degree robbery in 2018 and was sentenced to one year in county jail and three years probation, according to Contra Costa County District Attorney’s spokesperson Ted Asregadoo.
Florida
Convenience store employee charged with fatally shooting off-duty police officer
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A Florida convenience store employee has been arrested and charged with fatally shooting an off-duty police officer, authorities said.
Eduardo Labrada Machado, 24, shot David Jewell, 45, shortly after arriving for work at the Daytona Beach-area Circle K gas station Monday afternoon, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.
Labrada Machado has been charged with first-degree murder. Court and jail records didn’t list an attorney for him.
Labrada Machado told investigators that he was having a bad day on his drive to work and thought about shooting Jewell. When Labrada Machado arrived at work and saw
Jewell, Labrada Machado used a handgun he had recently purchased to shoot Jewell multiple times at close range, officials said.
Jewell had been a police officer with the city of Edgewater, but it wasn’t clear if Labrada Machado knew that or had ever seen Jewell in his uniform.
Labrada Machado had apparently seen Jewell in the store previously, and the two had argued, officials said. Labrada Machado told deputies that he had seen Jewell with a firearm in the past and was afraid of him.
The gun used in the shooting was recovered from a jacket in the back of Labrada Machado’s vehicle, officials said.
Interviews with the Labrada Machado’s family revealed a history of mental illness and hearing voices. They were not aware of any homicidal threats or anti-law enforcement sentiment. Labrada Machado is a legal U.S. resident with a green card.
Labrada Machado’s only previous encounter with law enforcement was for shooting guns at Tomoka State Park in 2023, officials said. According to court records, he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge, and adjudication was withheld.
California
Judge denies Menendez brothers’ petition for new trial
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California judge has rejected a request for a new trial for Erik and Lyle Menendez, shutting down another possible path to freedom for the brothers who have served decades in prison for killing their parents in 1989 at their Beverly Hills mansion.
The ruling Monday by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan comes just weeks after the brothers were denied parole. Ryan denied a May 2023 petition seeking a review of their convictions based on new evidence supporting their claims of sexual abuse by their father.
The judge wrote that the new evidence that “slightly corroborates” the allegations that the brothers were sexually abused does not negate the fact that the pair acted with “premeditation and deliberation” when they carried out the killings.
“The evidence alleged here is not so compelling that it would have produced a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror or supportive of an imperfect self-defense instruction,” the judge wrote.
An email was sent to Mark Geragos, a lawyer for the brothers, seeking comment on the judge’s ruling.
A panel of two commissioners on Aug. 22 denied Lyle Menendez parole for three years after a daylong hearing. Commissioners noted the older brother still displayed “anti-social personality traits like deception, minimization and rule-breaking that lie beneath that positive surface.”
Erik Menendez, who is being held at the same prison in San Diego, was similarly denied parole a day earlier after commissioners determined that his misbehavior in prison made him still a risk to public safety.
The brothers were sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for fatally shooting their father, Jose Menendez, and mother, Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills mansion almost exactly 36 years ago on Aug. 20, 1989. While defense attorneys argued that the brothers acted out of self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father, prosecutors said the brothers sought a multimillion-dollar inheritance.
A judge reduced their sentences in May, and they became immediately eligible for parole. The parole hearings marked the closest they have come to winning freedom since their convictions almost 30 years ago.
Brothers plead guilty in deputy’s shooting death
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Two brothers pleaded guilty on Tuesday to murder-related counts for the shooting death of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy three years ago when authorities said the officer approached a pickup truck late at night in a rural area.
Alder Marin-Sotelo, 28, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Wake County court in the killing of 48-year-old Deputy Ned Byrd, a K-9 officer. The man’s brother, Arturo Marin-Sotelo, 32, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.
Superior Court Judge Graham Shirley sentenced Alder Marin-Sotelo to life in prison without the chance for parole and Arturo Marin-Sotelo to a prison sentence of roughly eight to 10 years.
Both of them had previously been charged with murder and had otherwise been scheduled to go to trial in September 2026. Byrd’s co-workers, family and friends filled the courtroom to see the plea agreements carried out.
“We know that you can tell from the outpouring of love and support from the sheriff’s office — all of them who were present here today — that this has been a great loss for our community and for that agency,” Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told the judge.
Freeman said evidence would have been presented at trial that showed Byrd was traveling the night of Aug, 11, 2022, in his patrol vehicle en route to a law enforcement training center for his dog when he noticed a pickup truck beside a fence on the side of a dark road. Byrd pulled over and moved his vehicle up to the truck.
A recording from his in-car camera showed that Byrd got out of the vehicle, and mere seconds later six gunshots could be heard, followed later by the pickup leaving the scene, Freeman said. An autopsy determined that the officer was shot four times, three in the back of the head, the prosecutor said in court. The brothers, who were from Mexico, ultimately were located in separate vehicles in western North Carolina days after the shootings.
Legal proceedings had been delayed largely because in April 2023, Alder Marin-Sotelo escaped from a Virginia jail where he was being held after pleading guilty months earlier to a federal charge of firearm possession by someone in the country unlawfully.
The FBI said Alder Marin-Sotelo was taken into custody a few days later in Mexico. He was held there until February 2025, when Mexico agreed to send to the U.S. nearly 30 prisoners requested by the federal government.
First-degree murder can be punished by the death penalty in North Carolina. Freeman said Tuesday that getting Alder Marin-Sotelo back to North Carolina required prosecutors to take capital punishment off the table. Otherwise, she said, “if there was ever a capital case, this is the type of case that certainly would have been.”
Byrd’s sister, identified by Freeman as Mignon Perkins, told the court before sentencing that her brother “was one of the most amazing people you have ever known.” Byrd joined the sheriff’s office in 2009.
“You have stolen my happiness. You have stolen my joy,” Perkins told the defendants. “I’m a godly woman, but I will never forgive you for taking my brother from me.”
Through an interpreter, Arturo Marin-Sotelo apologized in court for what had happened and still asked for the sister’s forgiveness because, he said, he could do nothing else. Alder Marin-Sotelo did not speak at the hearing.
Freeman said Alder Marin-Sotelo’s cellphone placed him at the crime scene during the shooting. She said evidence backed up Arturo Marin-Sotelo’s statement to police that the brothers had driven to a Wake County field to hunt for deer.
After Tuesday’s hearing, Freeman confirmed Arturo Marin-Sotelo told investigators that he walked through the woods with a rifle while his brother parked the truck. Arturo Marin-Sotelo then said that on the phone his brother “made statements that an officer had been killed” and that the brother traveled to the other side of the field to pick him up, Freeman said.
Freeman said cartridge casings at the crime scene and in the pickup truck were fired from the same unknown gun, and that a DNA sample from the younger brother matched a DNA profile collected from Byrd’s police-issued gun. The weapon was in Byrd’s holster when he was found, with the belt twisted around his body. It appeared that Alder Marin-Sotelo had tried to remove Byrd’s gun before giving up, according to Freeman.
California
Well-known chef faces charges after 3 bank robberies
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A well-known chef who robbed a northern California bank in 2018 is facing charges again after three bank robberies in central San Francisco last week, according to police.
Officers responding to a bank alarm around noon on Sept. 10 learned that a man passed a note demanding money to an employee, who complied in fear for their life, according to a San Francisco Police Department news release. The man then fled with a bag of money, police said. With help from the community, investigators identified the suspect as Valentino Luchin, 62, of San Francisco and arrested him, police said.
There were two other bank robberies in the central district that day involving a suspect with a similar description and methods and police also charged Luchin with those robberies, police said.
Luchin was charged with robbery and attempted robbery, police said. He’s being held on $200,000 bail, according to the San Francisco Sheriff’s website. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Sept. 24.
Luchin is a talented chef and kind person who found himself in a “desperate” financial situation recently, Deputy Public Defender Kwixuan H. Maloof said in a statement.
The restaurant industry has been difficult in recent years and Luchin was offered a position that was later withdrawn, putting him into a “state of depression,” he said.
“The charges against him are totally overblown, and the government is trying to stretch the law to fit facts that simply are not there,” Maloof said, adding that he intends to challenge the charges and “expose prosecutorial overreach.”
Local news outlets report that Luchin was known for his work at Italian restaurants such as Rose Pistola and Ottavio. He was charged in a 2018 bank robbery in Contra Costa County and told KGO-TV during an interview at a detention facility at the time, “I went inside and said ‘Good morning. Nobody move. This is a robbery.’”
Luchin said he was desperate after his restaurant Ottavio in Walnut closed in 2016.
“We’ve been struggling a lot financially and I have a family,” Luchin said. “I feel bad. It wasn’t something I was planning or doing for a living.”
Luchin pleaded no contest to one count of second-degree robbery in 2018 and was sentenced to one year in county jail and three years probation, according to Contra Costa County District Attorney’s spokesperson Ted Asregadoo.
Florida
Convenience store employee charged with fatally shooting off-duty police officer
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A Florida convenience store employee has been arrested and charged with fatally shooting an off-duty police officer, authorities said.
Eduardo Labrada Machado, 24, shot David Jewell, 45, shortly after arriving for work at the Daytona Beach-area Circle K gas station Monday afternoon, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.
Labrada Machado has been charged with first-degree murder. Court and jail records didn’t list an attorney for him.
Labrada Machado told investigators that he was having a bad day on his drive to work and thought about shooting Jewell. When Labrada Machado arrived at work and saw
Jewell, Labrada Machado used a handgun he had recently purchased to shoot Jewell multiple times at close range, officials said.
Jewell had been a police officer with the city of Edgewater, but it wasn’t clear if Labrada Machado knew that or had ever seen Jewell in his uniform.
Labrada Machado had apparently seen Jewell in the store previously, and the two had argued, officials said. Labrada Machado told deputies that he had seen Jewell with a firearm in the past and was afraid of him.
The gun used in the shooting was recovered from a jacket in the back of Labrada Machado’s vehicle, officials said.
Interviews with the Labrada Machado’s family revealed a history of mental illness and hearing voices. They were not aware of any homicidal threats or anti-law enforcement sentiment. Labrada Machado is a legal U.S. resident with a green card.
Labrada Machado’s only previous encounter with law enforcement was for shooting guns at Tomoka State Park in 2023, officials said. According to court records, he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge, and adjudication was withheld.
California
Judge denies Menendez brothers’ petition for new trial
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California judge has rejected a request for a new trial for Erik and Lyle Menendez, shutting down another possible path to freedom for the brothers who have served decades in prison for killing their parents in 1989 at their Beverly Hills mansion.
The ruling Monday by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan comes just weeks after the brothers were denied parole. Ryan denied a May 2023 petition seeking a review of their convictions based on new evidence supporting their claims of sexual abuse by their father.
The judge wrote that the new evidence that “slightly corroborates” the allegations that the brothers were sexually abused does not negate the fact that the pair acted with “premeditation and deliberation” when they carried out the killings.
“The evidence alleged here is not so compelling that it would have produced a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror or supportive of an imperfect self-defense instruction,” the judge wrote.
An email was sent to Mark Geragos, a lawyer for the brothers, seeking comment on the judge’s ruling.
A panel of two commissioners on Aug. 22 denied Lyle Menendez parole for three years after a daylong hearing. Commissioners noted the older brother still displayed “anti-social personality traits like deception, minimization and rule-breaking that lie beneath that positive surface.”
Erik Menendez, who is being held at the same prison in San Diego, was similarly denied parole a day earlier after commissioners determined that his misbehavior in prison made him still a risk to public safety.
The brothers were sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for fatally shooting their father, Jose Menendez, and mother, Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills mansion almost exactly 36 years ago on Aug. 20, 1989. While defense attorneys argued that the brothers acted out of self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father, prosecutors said the brothers sought a multimillion-dollar inheritance.
A judge reduced their sentences in May, and they became immediately eligible for parole. The parole hearings marked the closest they have come to winning freedom since their convictions almost 30 years ago.
