In the news
■ Amanda McCormick, 39, and her relative Linda Johnson, 61, said they were at a Dollar General store in Maryville, Tenn., purchasing items for care packages to give to the homeless when they tried to pay for several gift cards with a counterfeit $1 million bill that McCormick told authorities she had received in the mail from a church.
■ Deonta Earl Bridgers, 31, was convicted in absentia a day after he fled from a Wilson County, N.C., courtroom during a lunch break in his trial on attempted murder charges, and police later found the electronic monitoring device he was wearing in a dilapidated house, authorities said.
■ Eric Bennett, police chief in Ste. Genevieve, Mo., said an officer was recovering from burns on his arms, legs and torso after his uniform caught fire when a man threw a Molotov cocktail at him during a disturbance call.
■ Valerie Cincinelli, 36, a former New York City police officer, pleaded guilty to an obstruction-of-justice charge after deleting phone information to obstruct a murder-for-hire investigation in which she had sought the death of her husband and her boyfriend’s teenage daughter, authorities said.
■ Richard Gilbert, 36, a rock climber from Colorado Springs, Colo., said he mistook art left by indigenous people more than 1,000 years ago at an ancient petroglyph site near Moab, Utah, as graffiti and placed his climbing bolts into the image, damaging it.
■ Kylr Yust, 32, of Kansas City, Mo., faces life in prison after a jury recommended the maximum sentence for the deaths of Jessica Runions, 21, and Kara Kopetsky, 17, who were killed nearly a decade apart.
■ Eric Nepute, a chiropractor in Missouri, is facing a Federal Trade Commission complaint over claims that the zinc and vitamin D products that he sells are more effective than vaccines in treating or preventing covid-19.
■ Keaundra Young, 24, of Houston, who was indicted on a hate crime charge accused of repeatedly punching Jung Kim, a Korean woman, while Young shopped in Kim’s beauty supply store, also faces a felony aggravated assault charge over accusations that she tried to hit one of Kim’s family members with a car.
■ Rickey Lamb, 62, of Joplin, Mo., pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the shooting of his son’s girlfriend, 32-year-old Sarah Tyminski, during a dispute over custody of his grandchildren.