‘Affluenza’ Teen Ethan Couch Tentatively Sentenced to 2 Years in Fatal Drunken Driving Crash
A Texas judge ordered Wednesday that “affluenza” teen Ethan Couch spend 720 days in jail — nearly two years — as a condition for his continued probation for a 2013 fatal drunken-driving crash.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office released a booking photo of Ethan Couch after his transfer from a juvenile facility to the Lon Evans Corrections Center, an adult facility in Fort Worth, in February 2016.
However, the judge said he’d give the defense two weeks to make an argument against the order.
“Nothing is set in stone, so I might reconsider,” the judge said in a court hearing in the case in Tarrant County, Texas.
[Original story, published at 9:02 a.m. PT]
Ethan Couch, a Texas teenager accused of fleeing to Mexico after using an “affluenza” defense to avoid prison in a fatal drunken-driving crash, will remain in jail for an undetermined number of days while a judge awaits recommendations from prosecutors and defense attorneys, the judge said during a court hearing Wednesday.
The judge eventually will determine how many further days Couch will have to serve in jail as a long-anticipated condition of his probation upon turning 19.
Mom stabs crying infant daughter with kitchen knife
Police say a Virginia woman stabbed her 3-month-old baby with a kitchen knife when the girl wouldn’t stop crying, sending the baby to the hospital.
A Prince William County Police incident report issued Monday says 35-year-old Leah Arrington of Woodbridge is being held without bond on a charge of aggravated malicious wounding.
Another family member called police.
The baby was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, and Arrington was arrested. It was not known whether she has a lawyer.
N.W.A. Inducted Into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; ‘We Belong Here,’ Ice Cube Says
Five decades of pop music history — along with a bit of hip-hop controversy — passed through the stage of the Barclays Center on Friday night for the 31st annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.
The night celebrated hard rockers (Deep Purple), horn rockers (Chicago), and rap (N.W.A). Cheap Trick represented the garage rock era while inductee Steve Miller’s passage through Chicago blues clubs and San Francisco psychedelia before he became a multiplatinum selling stadium filler in the mid-1970s makes him a one-man rock encyclopedia. Among the people Miller thanked was his godfather, guitar legend Les Paul. Miller said he was a 5-year-old when he learned his first chords from Paul.
Throughout the night, the inductees’ introductions recounted the hard work, persistence and durability of each act despite deaths, disputes and personnel changes. The groups all performed with a studio like slickness undoubtedly honed by years of constant touring that continues today. N.W.A — which broke up in 1991 — only reunited to accept its award.
But N.W.A co-founder Ice Cube delivered the most stirring statement of the night in response to the suggestion from rock traditionalists that the groundbreaking group from Compton was too far outside the genre to deserve its honor.
via: http://ktla.com/2016/04/08/n-w-a-to-be-inducted-into-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-friday-night/
4 Men Arrested After 9-Year-Old Is Raped, while mother smoking meth in the next room
Four men have been arrested on suspicion of raping and sodomizing a 9-year-old girl on Easter Sunday in Utah while her mother was allegedly smoking methamphetamine in another room, police and KTLA sister station KSTU reported a week after the incident.
The young girl was with her mother, who was visiting a friend, when the pair left the child alone and sleeping on a couch to go into a Utah home’s garage and smoke methamphetamine on March 27, the Uintah County Sheriff’s Office stated in a news release on Sunday.
When the mother returned, she noticed her daughter’s clothing was in disarray, the girl seemed upset and wanted to go home, KSTU reported.
The following day the child told her mother four men had taken her into a bedroom and took turns raping and sodomizing her, and one threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the heinous acts, the TV station reported.
Police were notified and Larson RonDeau, 36, was detained on March 29 after the victim identified him from a picture.
Josiah RonDeau, 20; Jerry Flatlip, 29; and Randall Flatlip, 26 were later arrested on March 31 and April 1, according to police, who did not say if any of the men were related.
All four were booked on suspicion of first-degree felony counts of rape and sodomy.
Evidence; including bloodstained bedding, marijuana and drug paraphernalia; were also obtained when officers executed a search warrant, KSTU reported.
The 9-year-old girl was in state custody following the incident, which was still under investigation, according to police.
Father Leaves 9-Month-Old Girl in Car While Getting Lap Dance at North Hills Strip Club
A father accused of leaving his baby girl in a parked car outside a North Hills strip club so he could buy lap dances has been charged with child abuse.
Auwin Dargin, 24, of Van Nuys pleaded not guilty Monday to one count of child abuse and now faces up to six years in state prison if convicted, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Dargin allegedly locked his 9-month-old girl in the car and left her in the parking lot of the Synn Gentlemen’s Club on Sepulveda Boulevard for roughly an hour in the middle of the afternoon on March 9.
Matthew Nadeau, the assistant manager at the club, told the Los Angeles Times he became suspicious after seeing one of his patrons leave and re-enter the club every 15 minutes.
He went to investigate and says he heard the child’s cries coming from inside the vehicle about 2 p.m.
Nadeau and employees from a neighboring business worked to free the infant by unlocking the door through a small gap in the window. A waitress got water for the little girl, who felt warm and appeared upset, Nadeau said.
Nadeau then alerted his manager, who he said went inside to locate the child’s father and found Dargin in the middle of a lap dance.
“Just give me my baby and I know I am messing up,” Dargin said, according to Nadeau.
When Nadeau refused to hand over the infant, however, Dargin allegedly ran out of the club, abandoning his daughter.
Los Angeles police arrested him as he was leaving.
The DA’s office announced the charges against Dargin in a news release issued Tuesday.
Man Faces Life In Prison For Stealing $31 Worth Of Candy
A New Orleans man could spend the rest of his life in jail after allegedly shoving “$31 worth of candy bars into his pockets at a Dollar General store.”
The man, 34-year-old Jacobia Grimes, is being charged by prosecutors under the state’s “habitual-offender law.”
Grimes has five prior convictions for theft. All of Grimes convictions “involved thefts of less than $500.” His last conviction was for stealing “some socks and trousers.”
Grimes appeared in court last week and pled not guilty. He faces a potential sentence of 20 years to life. He has already spent 9 years in jail for his previous convictions.
The decision to come down hard on Grimes met a skeptical audience from Judge Franz Zibilich, who is overseeing the case.
“It’s not even funny, 20 years to life for a Snickers bar, or two or three or four,” Zibilich said. If Grimes is found guilty, Louisiana law could leave Zibilich little discretion over the sentence.
Louisiana’s habitual offender law has been in place for 30 years. The result has been that “[s]entences of several decades, or even life, for nonviolent crimes are not unusual in Louisiana.” In other states, individuals convicted of similar crimes “would have received a much shorter sentence or no jail time at all.”
Grimes’ case is an example of how Louisiana became the “world’s prison capital.” A 2012 expose by The Times-Picayune found that the state imprisons more of its citizens than any other states and its incarceration rate is “nearly five times Iran’s, 13 times China’s and 20 times Germany’s.”
A major factor driving Louisiana’s massive inmate population is money. Each prisoner costs Lousiana an average of $18,800 per year. Sending Grimes to prison for 20 years would cost the state around $376,000.
“A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt,” The Times-Picayune reported.
New York Woman Pleads Not Guilty in Death of Newborn Found in Garbage
A New York City woman accused of leaving her newborn to die in the trash pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse.
Nausheen Rahman, 28, allegedly cut the umbilical cord of her baby daughter, who was still breathing, placed her in a plastic bag, and threw her in a garbage can outside her Staten Island residence on March 11, according to the Staten Island District Attorney’s Office and a criminal complaint.
Rahman entered her not-guilty plea on a three-count grand jury indictment before State Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Rooney in Staten Island. Rooney ordered Rahman held without bail.
A message left Friday with Rahman’s attorney, Michael Robert Rosas, was not returned. After Rahman’s arraignment in March on the criminal complaint, at which she did not enter a plea, Rosas told NBC News they would conduct their own investigation and see where it leads.
Nausheen Rahman, 28, allegedly cut the umbilical cord of her baby daughter, who was still breathing, placed her in a plastic bag, and threw her in a garbage can outside her Staten Island residence March 11, according to the Staten Island District Attorney’s Office and a criminal complaint.
Rahman entered her not-guilty plea on a three-count grand jury indictment before State Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Rooney in Staten Island. Rooney ordered Rahman held without bail.
A message left Friday with Rahman’s attorney, Michael Robert Rosas, was not returned. After Rahman’s arraignment in March on the criminal complaint, at which she did not enter a plea, Rosas told NBC News they would conduct their own investigation and see where it leads.
According to prosecutors, Rahman allegedly gave birth to her daughter inside her Staten Island home. Later, her parents took her to Staten Island University Hospital – North for vaginal bleeding, prosecutors said. At first, Rahman allegedly denied having a baby, but later admitted to giving birth and disposing of her daughter who was alive, prosecutors said.
“I want to remind the public that under the state’s Safe Haven law, a baby up to 30 days old can be left with any responsible person at a hospital, police precinct or firehouse,” Staten Island District Attorney Michael E. McMahon said in a statement.
If convicted, Rahman faces 25 years to life in prison.
Mother of Brain-Dead Teen Refuses to Give up Hope: She Is ‘as Healthy and Beautiful as Ever’
More than two years after 15-year-old Jahi McMath of Oakland, California, was declared brain-dead, her mother has posted a new photo of her on Facebook and declared that her daughter is as “healthy and beautiful as ever.”
She is “a fighter, a warrior, a blessed child,” Nailah Winkfield wrote in her post about the teen, who went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced legally dead by doctors after surgery to remove her tonsils and treat her sleep apnea in December 2013.
Winkfield, who won a court injunction to keep Jahi on life-support, moved her daughter last year to an undisclosed New Jersey facility willing to care for her. In New Jersey, the law allows the rejection of a “brain-dead” declaration on religious grounds.
“God’s got your back little girl – keep fighting,” Winkfield wrote on March 15. “Your testimony will be a great one. All the prayers and good wishes combined with your mother’s love for you, which is pure and soothing, will definitely keep you going.”
Jahi’s family fought to keep her on a ventilator and have breathing and feeding tubes surgically inserted, because they believe that as long as her heart is beating, there is hope for a recovery.
“They said she was ‘dead, dead, dead,’ and they said she won’t last long and that she would start deteriorating,” Winkfield said in a post on Oct. 23, 2015, after braiding her daughter’s hair in preparation for her 15th birthday the next day. “They claimed she was just going to last a few weeks, or a maximum of a few months before her organs stopped working. Who are ‘they?’ Just mere human beings who will keep learning each new day that there is a ‘He’ who is greater than ‘they.'”
Winkfield is now fighting to have Jahi’s death certificate invalidated and have her declared legally alive. If her lawsuit is successful in federal court, the family’s insurance company will be required to pay for her medical treatment.
“I want her to have the same rights as any other disabled kid,” Winkfield told the New York Daily News in December. She said then that her daughter was showing some signs of life, including the twitching of her fingers and toes – something that doctors say could be spasms or reflexes commonly seen in clinically-dead people.
“Our prayers are being heard,” Winkfield wrote in a December Facebook post, accompanied by a video of her daughter. “We know ‘dead’ people don’t move their fingers and reflexes don’t happen on command. We will keep praying, as this beautiful child of God keeps fighting to get better.”
Pennsylvania Parents Allegedly Starved 23-Month-Old Toddler to Death
A Pennsylvania couple who brought their unconscious 23-month-old daughter to the hospital in February claiming she was sick were charged with murder on Thursday after an autopsy revealed the toddler allegedly starved to death, PEOPLE confirms.
According to the criminal complaint obtained by PEOPLE, when parents Andrea Dusha and Michael Wright brought their daughter, Lydia Wright, to the hospital, they allegedly told doctors Lydia had been drinking “a mixture of water, Gatorade and pedialyte from a sippie cup” when her eyes “rolled into the back of her head, foam began to emit from [her] nose and mouth, and [she] quit breathing.”
Doctors attempted to revive Lydia but were unsuccessful.
An autopsy conducted the following day determined the cause of death was homicide as a result of malnutrition and dehydration, the complaint states. The medical examiner reported that Wright weighed 10 pounds; the average toddler weighs between 20 and 25 pounds, according to authorities.
During their investigation, police searched the home of Dusha and Wright and allegedly discovered “deplorable conditions.” Rooms were allegedly cluttered with objects, making it hard to walk through, and there was allegedly no running water or sewage system.
According to the complaint, the family allegedly urinated in empty soda and juice bottles and disposed garbage in plastic bags kept on the floor. Police allegedly discovered a high chair covered in excrement and a grocery bag filled with used tampons, the complaint states.
The condition of the home was allegedly “unsuitable for children to be living in,” the complaint states.
The couple’s two other young children are currently with child protective services, Fayette County District Attorney Richard Bower tells PEOPLE.
Dusha and Wright have not yet entered a plea.
via: https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/pennsylvania-parents-allegedly-starved-23-172906807.html
Black co-owner of New Jersey sneakers shop is killed in front of his shop.
RAHWAY, N.J. — The co-owner of a New Jersey sneaker boutique was shot to death outside his own store Friday night, authorities said.
Friends and family of 21-year-old Jamaal Gaines gathered outside the East Coast Sneaker Boutique Saturday, a consignment store that sold high-end sneakers.
Union County prosecutors said the shooting at the Irving Street business was reported around 9:15 p.m., according to the Associated Press. When police arrived at the seen, they found Gaines suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead a short time later.
Gaines went by the nick name “Mally” and was described by loved ones as highly passionate and driven.
On his Facebook page, he talked about opening his first sneaker store at 18. When that shut down, he tried again and opened the boutique just a few months ago.
Friends said Gaines also had an interest in music. Ruff Ryders rapper “Verbz” had just shot a music video in the store a few weeks ago.
” Mally was one of the best people. He wasn’t a street guy or a gang- banger,” Verbz said.
“He was like my little brother. This goes way beyond sneakers. And all I hope is that whoever did this is brought to justice.”
via: http://pix11.com/2016/02/27/21-year-old-man-killed-in-shooting-outside-boutique-sneaker-store/#