In the news
Felipe Talamante, 48, faces charges, accused of trafficking dozens of pounds of cocaine out of a house being used as an unlicensed child day care center and just a few blocks from an elementary school in a neighborhood north of downtown Los Angeles, City Attorney Mike Feuer said.
Mark Dunston, police chief in Ocean Springs, Miss., wants Axel, the department’s drug-sniffing dog, declared “surplus” so it can be sold to offset some of its training costs because the officer who works with the canine is being called for military duty.
Dan Leckrone and his wife, Lynette, of Lewisville, Ohio, got back the $97,000 they had saved to buy a house after two Goodwill employees called police when they discovered wads of $100 bills, along with a will and legal documents, stashed in a duffel bag in a box of donated clothes.
Amy Sims, a freelance musician who lives in Watertown, Mass., got her $40,000 violin and $6,000 bow back after Boston police located the instrument, which had been picked up by a woman after Sims left the items on a platform as she rushed to board a train.
Lance Africk, a federal judge in New Orleans, ruled that panhandling is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech, writing that an ordinance passed by Slidell requiring a panhandling license “offends” the U.S. Constitution.
Ronald Strickland, 70, a retired Tennessee Highway Patrol sergeant, pleaded guilty to transporting a 22-year-old Honduran woman into the country illegally after prosecutors said he paid a smuggler $8,000 to bring her across the U.S.-Mexican border.
Porsha Session, 31, a teacher in Boynton Beach, Fla., who as revenge for her police detective husband’s infidelity tipped off drug dealers that he was investigating them, faces up to eight years in federal prison after pleading guilty to an obstruction charge.
Richard Conway, police chief of Port Chester, N.Y., said a 14-year-old boy died when he fell several stories down an elevator shaft at an abandoned hospital as officers tried to talk some teenagers off the building’s roof.
Ed Lamarre, 22, was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder after he met with a college-bound 19-year-old who was selling his video games and console on Craigslist and fatally shot the teen during an argument over the deal, police in North Miami-Dade, Fla., said.