Tag: Reckless endangerment

Wrong-way driver passes vice presidential motorcade in Wisconsin

A suspected drunken driver going the wrong way on the interstate nearly struck a vehicle containing Vice President Kamala Harris Monday night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Sister station WISN obtained video from about 8:20 p.m. Monday showing the driver getting onto Interstate 794 via an offramp. The white car heads west into the eastbound lanes just as the motorcade is approaching on what was an otherwise closed-off freeway. The vehicle is seen moving to the left lanes as the first squad at the head of the motorcade passes by. Each of the more than a dozen vehicles then drives past the car until the final ones, driven by Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Deputies, make a traffic stop. The driver has been identified as a 55-year-old Milwaukee man, whom WISN did not identify as of early Wednesday morning because he had yet to be formally charged. According to an arrest report obtained by WISN, when the man was told by a deputy he’d “almost struck a vehicle in the VPOTUS’ motorcade, he was extremely surprised and had no recollection of entering the freeway or coming close to striking another vehicle. He also stated he did not have any intention of harming Vice President Kamala Harris or anybody related to her campaign.” According to the report, the man failed several field sobriety tests and had an open beer can in his vehicle. He was arrested for drunken driving and second-degree recklessly endangering safety. He remained in jail Tuesday night without bail, awaiting a hearing. The Harris campaign referred any questions regarding the incident to the United States Secret Service. “The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the incident involving a motorist traveling in the opposite direction on the highway while the Vice President was in her motorcade. We are grateful to the Milwaukee Sheriff’s Office for their response which allowed them to stop the motorist and take the driver into custody for DUI,” Secret Service Spokesperson Joe Routh told WISN.

MILWAUKEE —

A suspected drunken driver going the wrong way on the interstate nearly struck a vehicle containing Vice President Kamala Harris Monday night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Sister station WISN obtained video from about 8:20 p.m. Monday showing the driver getting onto Interstate 794 via an offramp. The white car heads west into the eastbound lanes just as the motorcade is approaching on what was an otherwise closed-off freeway.

The vehicle is seen moving to the left lanes as the first squad at the head of the motorcade passes by. Each of the more than a dozen vehicles then drives past the car until the final ones, driven by Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Deputies, make a traffic stop.

The driver has been identified as a 55-year-old Milwaukee man, whom WISN did not identify as of early Wednesday morning because he had yet to be formally charged.

According to an arrest report obtained by WISN, when the man was told by a deputy he’d “almost struck a vehicle in the VPOTUS’ motorcade, he was extremely surprised and had no recollection of entering the freeway or coming close to striking another vehicle. He also stated he did not have any intention of harming Vice President Kamala Harris or anybody related to her campaign.”

According to the report, the man failed several field sobriety tests and had an open beer can in his vehicle.

He was arrested for drunken driving and second-degree recklessly endangering safety. He remained in jail Tuesday night without bail, awaiting a hearing.

The Harris campaign referred any questions regarding the incident to the United States Secret Service.

“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the incident involving a motorist traveling in the opposite direction on the highway while the Vice President was in her motorcade. We are grateful to the Milwaukee Sheriff’s Office for their response which allowed them to stop the motorist and take the driver into custody for DUI,” Secret Service Spokesperson Joe Routh told WISN.

Source link

October 22, 2024
3 ex-officers plead to lesser charges in girl’s shooting

PHILADELPHIA — Three former police officers who were charged with killing an 8-year-old girl after they opened fire in the direction of a crowd leaving a high school football game in suburban Philadelphia pleaded guilty Thursday to 10 counts each of reckless endangerment.

The negotiated pleas included a dismissal of manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter charges against the three former Sharon Hill Borough officers — Sean Dolan, 26, Devon Smith, 35, and Brian Devaney, 42 — in the August 2021 death of Fanta Bility. Prosecutors said the plea deal was reached in consultation with the girl’s family, who said ending the case was necessary so relatives could start healing.

“The agony we feel constantly re-living the loss of our dear Fanta, who was just 8 years old when she was killed by Sharon Hill police officers, is impossible to describe with words,” Bility’s uncle Abu Bility read from a family statement after the hearing, describing the trauma her mother and siblings went through witnessing the shooting.

“After much prayer and discussion with our family, we determined that it was in our best interest for the district attorney to ensure that the police officers take responsibility for their actions, admit to their reckless conduct endangering many, and killing our Fanta,” he said.

A phone call to the law firm representing Devaney, Dolan and Smith was not returned late Thursday. The three will remain free on bail while awaiting a sentencing hearing scheduled for January. They were fired from the Sharon Hill Borough Police Department a few days after charges were recommended.

Their attorneys had sought several times unsuccessfully to have the manslaughter charges dropped. They argued in a September hearing that the men had not intended to harm anyone in the crowd and were being unfairly targeted because they were police officers.

The shooting happened after two teenagers fired shots at each other outside the football game and fled. The officers heard the shots and told other officers they believed the gunfire had come from a car that was driving toward them. Devaney was not wearing a body camera, and the other two officers did not turn their cameras on, investigators found.

The three fired 25 shots toward the car and the crowd of people leaving the game in the small borough near Philadelphia International Airport. Four people were wounded — three by police gunfire— and Bility was killed.

Ballistics testing could not determine which officer fired the shot that killed her, but a grand jury recommended that all three face charges.

Bility had attended the game with her mother and an older sister who was also shot but survived. Her family, who belongs to a community of immigrants from Guinea, described her as a sweet child who had a smile for everyone.

“Fanta’s death was a tragedy for her family, her friends, and for the entire community — and nothing that happened in the courtroom today can lessen the grief that we have all felt since that terrible night,” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer wrote in an emailed statement.

The two teenagers who fired the initial shots were originally charged with murder in Bility’s death, but those charges were later dropped.

The Bility family has filed a federal lawsuit against Dolan, Devaney, Smith, and the Sharon Hill Borough Police Department.

Source link

November 10, 2022
Officers charged in train crash into patrol car with suspect

DENVER — Two police officers involved in the arrest of a woman who was seriously injured when the parked patrol car she was in was hit by a freight train were charged Monday.

Prosecutors also announced that the woman, Yareni Rios-Gonzalez, who was arrested after a report of an alleged road rage incident involving a gun before the crash, was also charged with felony menacing.

The Weld County District Attorney’s Office announced the charges in a statement. It provided basic court documents listing the charges but said it would not provide further details because of “pending litigation.” The documents did not include a narrative about what the officers allegedly did leading up to the Sept. 16 crash, which was captured on police body camera footage.

Rios-Gonzalez’s lawyer, Paul Wilkinson, who has said he planned to file suit over the crash, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

Of the two police officers, Fort Lupton Officer Jordan Steinke, faces the most serious charges — attempted manslaughter and second-degree assault — both felonies. No lawyers were listed as representing her in online court records yet and no contact information for her was listed on the department’s website.

Pablo Vazquez, a sergeant from the neighboring city of Platteville identified on body camera footage as the arresting officer, was charged with five counts of reckless endangerment for allegedly putting Rios-Gonzalez, Steinke and three other people at risk, as well as for traffic-related violations including parking where prohibited.

A telephone message and email sent to Vazquez at work were not immediately returned. Online court records did not list an attorney representing him yet either.

Following the crash, Vazquez told other officers on body camera footage that he thought he had cleared the tracks when he parked his patrol vehicle behind Rios-Gonzalez’s truck to arrest her. He said he was focused on her because he was concerned about weapons. He also said he did not know that the other officer he was working with from another department, who was not identified, had put Rios-Gonzalez in his patrol vehicle until after it was hit by the train. He said the “saving grace” was that the other officer put Rios-Gonzalez on the side of the vehicle not usually used for people who are arrested.

Other video from Vazquez’s body camera show him and another officer searching Rios-Gonzalez’s truck as the train approaches and its horn is blaring. Vazquez asks the other officer several times over the sound of the train’s rumbling whether Rios-Gonzalez was in the patrol vehicle and she responds, one hand to her face, “Oh my God, yes, she was!”

Other police video shows officers scrambling as the train approaches and slams into the vehicle.

Source link

November 7, 2022
Police: Driver in Nebraska crash that killed 6 was drunk

LINCOLN, Neb. — An investigation into a crash that killed six people in southeastern Nebraska last month shows the driver of the car was drunk, police said in a news release.

Lincoln police said Monday that the results from a toxicology report show 26-year-old Jonathan Kurth, of Lincoln, had at the time of the crash a blood alcohol content of .211 — more than 2½ times the legal driving limit of .08.

Police also said that electronic data collected from the car showed it was traveling 100 mph (161 kph) in the moments before it crashed into a tree along a residential street where the speed limit is 25 mph (40 kph).

Police were first alerted to the early morning Oct. 2 crash when one passenger’s cellphone automatically alerted dispatchers that the phone’s owner had been in a crash and was not responding.

Kurth and four male passengers died at the scene: Octavias Farr, 21; Jonathan Koch, 22; Nicholas Bisesi, 22; and Benjamin Lenagh, 23. A fifth passenger, Cassie Brenner, 24, died later at a hospital.

All of the dead were residents of Lincoln except Lenagh, who was from Omaha.

Source link

November 1, 2022
School bus driver charged with drunken driving on field trip

CENTREVILLE, Va. — A bus driver for an elementary school in the nation’s capital has been charged with driving while intoxicated after his bus veered into a ditch while returning from a field trip to a farm in northern Virginia.

Nine children were treated at the scene for minor injuries, Fairfax County Police said.

The bus was carrying 44 children and four adults back Thursday to Murch Elementary School in Washington, D.C., after a field trip to Cox Farms in Centreville, Virginia — a popular field trip destination in the region.

Police said the bus hit a rock and veered into a ditch off a road in the northern Virginia county.

The 48-year-old driver from Suitland, Maryland, was charged after police say he failed a field sobriety test and had a blood-alcohol content of .20, more than double the legal limit of .08.

Police say the driver’s license had already been revoked in Virginia from a prior drunken driving conviction.

Officers also said they found a combined 18 safety violations on the two buses carrying children to the field trip and that none of the operators were properly licensed to operate a school bus.

D.C. Public Schools said in a statement that it plans to undertake a review of the transportation vendors it uses for field trips and other extracurricular activities.

Source link

October 28, 2022
Guilty: Huffing driver reached 100 mph; crash killed family

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A young man who killed a family in a high-speed crash after ingesting household dust cleaner has been convicted of vehicular homicide.

Jurors found Paul Streater, now 25, guilty of four counts of vehicular homicide in the 2018 crash, which killed a family visiting Florida from Mexico and Argentina.

Prosecutors said Streater, who was in rehabilitation for drug abuse at the time, was on a “euphoric” high from huffing a can of household dust cleaner and traveling at speeds reaching 100 mph (161 kph) when he crashed into the family’s minivan in Delray Beach.

Assistant State Attorney Storm Tropea said Streater faces up to 40 years in prison in the deaths of Jorge Raschiotto, 50, his sister Veronica Raschiotto, 42, and her two children, Diego, 8, and Mia, 6. Jorge Raschiotto specialized in adult education as a professor at Argentina’s National University of Lomas de Zamora. He and Veronica, from Mexico, were visiting their sister Silvina in Florida.

The jury acquitted Streater on felony counts of DUI manslaughter and driving under the influence, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Defense attorney Samuel Halpern told jurors that the chemical found in Streater’s bloodstream was inadvertently ingested due to the car having been cleaned and detailed that day. He also argued that a “catastrophic” malfunction caused Streater’s vehicle to accelerate and left him unable to stop.

Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen revoked Streater’s bond and will sentence him on Dec. 20. His attorney said they will appeal.

Source link

October 27, 2022
Truck hits 2 Ole Miss students, killing 1; suspects arrested

OXFORD, Miss. — A pickup truck struck two University of Mississippi students in a parking lot in downtown Oxford, killing one of them and injuring the other, police said.

Two suspects, both from Collierville, Tennessee, were arrested by Monday in the crash, which occurred early Sunday, authorities said.

Tristan Holland, 18, was taken into custody Sunday in Shelby County, Tennessee, on accessory after the fact. He will face extradition to Oxford, according to the Oxford Police Department.

Seth Rokitka, 24, was taken into custody Monday after investigators found his wrecked truck in Marshall County, Mississippi, between Oxford and Collierville.

The Oxford Police Department said Rokitka was charged with one count of manslaughter and one count of aggravated DUI. He is also charged with violating the duties of a driver involved in an accident that results in death or injury. He appeared before a justice court judge who set a $1 million bond.

The Associated Press left a phone message Monday for Rokitka’s attorney.

It was not immediately clear whether Holland had an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

Oxford police said the department received an emergency call after 1 a.m. Sunday from passersby who saw two people injured in the parking lot behind City Hall. The lot is just off the town square, near several bars and restaurants.

Oxford was busy Saturday because of the home football game between Ole Miss and Auburn.

Mayor Robyn Tannehill said the student who died was 21-year-old Walker Fielder of Madison, Mississippi. Fielder was a 2020 graduate of Jackson Academy in Jackson, Mississippi.

The injured student was transferred to a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Oxford police told WRAL-TV that she is 20-year-old Blanche Williamson of Raleigh, North Carolina. Williamson graduated from Episcopal High School, a boarding school in Virginia.

“Oxford is a community that comforts those that need comforting,” Tannehill wrote Sunday on Facebook. “Perhaps that comes from practice and from times of trials that we wish we could pray away, but nevertheless, Oxford always steps up when things are hard and when people need us. These two families need us. They need our prayers.”

Oxford police said Monday that Rokitka and Holland had no interactions with either victim before striking them with the truck, and there were no fights or altercations. Police also said Rokitka and Holland did not provide aid or call 911.

University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce said in an email to faculty, staff and students that the two suspects are not affiliated with the university.

“It is a painful and distressing development for our campus community, and it is understandable that emotions are high with many unanswered questions about what happened,” Boyce wrote.

Source link

October 17, 2022