ARNOLD, Mo. (KMOV.com) – Arnold police are investigating an unusual incident that occurred at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car location in the 3900 block of Jeffco Boulevard last Thursday.

According to Lt. Clinton Wooldridge, two employees became dizzy and shaky and didn’t know why. The workers were taken to an urgent care center and then transferred to Mercy Hospital South.

Wooldridge said officers questioned a 19-year old male employee and he admitted putting LSD in the water bottles of two co-workers and a third employee’s coffee cup. Police said the man told them he did it because his fellow employees had “negative energy.”

According to the task force commander of the Jefferson County Municipal Enforcement Group, which investigates drug crimes, the workers’ reaction is consistent with the use of LSD.

“You’re going to have an increased heart rate, temperature, higher blood pressure. It’s been described as causing the shakes or tremors,” said Sgt. Tony Dennis with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department.

Dennis said the popularity of LSD dropped off during the 1980’s but had a resurgence in the 1990’s and 2000’s at raves. He said LSD is still around even though there’s not much publicity about it.

“Typically it comes in a clear, odorless liquid,” said Dennis.

The Enterprise workers were okay after the effects of the drugs wore off. Wooldridge said no charges will be filed until lab tests are done on the water but the suspect could face charges of second-degree assault and possession of a controlled substance.

via: https://www.kmov.com/news/police–year-old-enterprise-employee-spiked-co-worker-s/article_89aa29c2-4c35-11e9-a592-67500d726286.html

A witness in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer said Wednesday he saw the officer standing on the sidewalk, panicking, saying, “I don’t know why I shot him. I don’t know why I fired.”

The trial of former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld ended for the day Wednesday in a Pittsburgh courtroom. It will reconvene Thursday morning.

John Leach, a neighbor who lives a few houses from the site of the June shooting, said he was on his front porch when Rosfeld fired three bullets into 17-year-old Antwon Rose II after pulling over an unlicensed taxicab suspected to have been used in a drive-by shooting minutes earlier. Rose was a front-seat passenger in the cab and was shot as he fled.

Rosfeld, 30, faces a charge of criminal homicide.

Leach, the second witness to testify Wednesday, said that after the shooting, he was watching Rosfeld on the sidewalk nearby saying repeatedly, “I don’t know why I shot him. I don’t know why I fired.”

He said that later, he saw other officers consoling Rosfeld as he was crying, bent over and hyperventilating. Rosfeld, he said, looked as if he was about to pass out.

Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey had tried to discredit Leach’s testimony, asking him if he was trying to “juice things up.” Leach said, “I don’t have any reason to.”

Patrick Shattuck said Wednesday he was standing outside a senior center when Rosfeld pulled over the unlicensed cab in front of the building. Five to seven minutes after the shooting, Shattuck said Rosfeld, with swollen, red eyes, entered the building and said, “Why did he do that? Why did he do that? Why did he take that out of his pocket?”

East Pittsburgh Mayor Louis J. Payne, who was also there, said he, too, heard Rosfeld say, “Why did he do that?” but said he didn’t hear the comment about the pocket.

Rosfeld was in the senior center only a few minutes when another officer came in and told him he couldn’t be there. Rosfeld left, taking with him a rifle he had brought inside, Shattuck said.

Thomassey said Rosfeld did not intend to shoot anyone that day and did nothing wrong in his fatal encounter with Rose.

“You think Michael Rosfeld got up on the 19th of June and thought he was going to shoot someone? Of course not,” he said.

Allegheny County Housing Authority officer Charles Rozzo, who responded to the shooting, testified that a distraught Rosfeld asked him how Rose was and if he “saw the gun.” It’s unclear what Rosfeld was referring to. Prosecutors said Rosfeld gave inconsistent statements about the shooting, including whether he thought Rose had a gun.

Authorities have said two guns were inside the vehicle and an empty magazine was in his pocket. One of the guns had Rose’s DNA on it but does not appear to have been fired officials said.

The video of the shooting, recorded by neighbor Lashaun Livingston, was posted online, triggering protests in the Pittsburgh area last year, including a late-night march that shut down a major highway.

A jury of six men and six women, including three African-Americans, was selected across the state in Harrisburg last week and will be sequestered in a Pittsburgh hotel for the duration of the trial, expected to take a week or more.

Additional video was shown in court, taken by a University of Pittsburgh student who was in his car at a stop sign nearby. Peyton Deri said he couldn’t really see whether there was anything in the hands of Rose or the vehicle’s other occupant, Zaijuan Hester.

Rose’s mother sent a letter to prosecutors Wednesday urging them to counter the defense’s portrayal of her son as “just another thug.” In the letter, she asks prosecutors to paint a picture of her son as he truly was.

“He was a rose that grew from concrete. Despite darkness all around him, he was kind, loving and funny,” she wrote in the letter dated Tuesday.

She describes how he taught other children in the neighborhood how to Rollerblade and skateboard, and even gave away his skates to kids in need.

Rose had been riding in the front seat of the unlicensed taxi when Hester, in the backseat, rolled down a window and shot at two men on the street.

Hester, 18, of Swissvale, pleaded guilty Friday to aggravated assault and firearms violations for the shooting, which wounded a man in the abdomen. Hester told a judge that he, not Rose, did the shooting.

via: https://ktla.com/2019/03/20/i-dont-know-why-i-shot-him-witness-recalls-pittsburgh-officer-charged-in-shooting-of-unarmed-black-teenager-saying/

The mother of a girl who was raped, murdered and dismembered testified Wednesday that she helped plot the attack and carry it out, telling her daughter before her death that “I can’t help you anymore.”

Appearing to smirk at times, Sara Packer calmly recounted how she watched her boyfriend sexually assault her daughter, 14-year-old Grace Packer, then strangle her in a hot attic outside Philadelphia. She said Grace looked at her as she was being choked to death, and Sara Packer took her hand and told her it was “OK to go.”

“Grace had become, for lack of a better word, a non-entity,” Sara Packer said in a monotone. “She just didn’t exist anymore. I wanted her to go away.”

Sara Packer’s testimony came at a sentencing hearing for Jacob Sullivan, who pleaded guilty to rape, first-degree murder and other offenses in Grace’s death. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Sullivan. The defense is seeking life in prison.

Sara Packer has agreed to plead guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for a life sentence.

On Wednesday, she told the jury that her daughter was a discipline problem — a “very difficult child” —and she wanted her dead. She admitted she hated Grace, shared a rape-murder fantasy with Sullivan, and helped hack up her daughter’s body and dispose of it months later.

Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub told the jury that he agreed to a life sentence for Sara Packer in exchange for her confession and guilty plea because the physical evidence against her was weak, because it was Sullivan who raped and killed Grace, and because her crimes did not qualify for the death penalty.

But Weintraub made it clear what he thought of Packer.

“Is it fair to say you are an utter and miserable failure at being a worthwhile human being?” he thundered at her.

Relatives testified about the impact of the killing early Wednesday.

“It sickens me to know that Grace was abused, tortured and literally thrown away like she was a piece of trash,” said her cousin, Karie Heisserer, with whom Grace lived for a time in 2015. “Grace is in a better place now, free from evil and pain.”

Jurors saw photos of the bubbly child in happier times: Sitting in the cab of her uncle’s big rig, frolicking in the sand at her first trip to the beach, delighting in birthday cake at a pool party. But all of that happened with relatives, not with Sara Packer, a former county adoptions supervisor who prosecutors say spent years physically and mentally abusing the little girl she fostered and then adopted.

Sara Packer testified that she and Sullivan tried to kill Grace with an overdose of over-the-counter medicine, thinking the pills and the heat of the attic would kill her. She also admitted helping bind her daughter with zip ties and stuffing a ball gag in her mouth.

The couple left her to die.

Grace eventually managed to escape some of her bindings and spit the gag out. But she was unable to make it out of the vacant house before Sullivan and Sara Packer returned overnight — some 12 hours later — and Sullivan strangled her.

Sara Packer and Sullivan stored Grace’s body in cat litter for months, then hacked it up and dumped it in a remote area where hunters found it in October 2016.

In a statement read by a detective, Grace’s younger brother, Josh Packer, now 14, said the only way he can bear his loss is if adults know her story and then act to prevent child abuse.

He said that if his big sister was told she could save other kids’ lives by giving her own, she would have asked, “What do I have to do?”

“Watch out for all the kids so that a loss like Grace’s loss never happens again,” Josh wrote. “Do your best to help kids who can’t help themselves.”

That’s not what happened in Grace’s case.

Sara Packer and her husband at the time, David Packer, adopted Grace and Josh in 2007. The couple cared for dozens of foster children before David Packer was sent to prison for sexually assaulting Grace and a 15-year-old foster daughter at their Allentown home, about an hour outside Philadelphia.

Sara Packer lost her job as a Northampton County adoptions supervisor in 2010 and was barred from taking in any more foster children. But child welfare authorities did not remove Grace from the home, despite evidence of abuse.

The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services launched an investigation after Grace’s murder but its findings have not been made public.

via: https://ktla.com/2019/03/20/philadelphia-mom-admits-plotting-girls-death-i-wanted-her-to-go-away/