STATE & NATION IN BRIEF
San Jose exorcism: Coroner details how 3-year-old died
A court hearing to determine whether three people will head to trial in the 2021 exorcism death of a 3-year-old girl continued Friday with Santa Clara County’s chief medical examiner testifying about the multitude of injuries the child suffered before she died.
Dr. Michelle Jorden, the longtime head of the South
Bay coroner’s office, took the stand in Judge Hanley Chew’s courtroom to detail an array of hemorrhaging, bruising and other injuries throughout Arely Naomi Proctor’s 38-pound body, documented during her autopsy.
Arely’s official cause of death was asphyxia by way of suffocation through mechanical asphyxia and smothering. Authorities allege it occurred at the hands of three of her relatives who spent hours trying to purge the girl of a “demon” at their small Pentecostal home church in San Jose on Sept. 24, 2021.
Claudia Hernandez, Rene Trigueros Hernandez and Rene Hernandez Santos — the girl’s mother, grandfather and uncle, respectively — have all been charged with felony child abuse resulting in death. Jorden’s testimony Friday was part of a preliminary examination that began March 18. At the hearing’s end, Chew will decide whether there is enough evidence against the three to allow the charges to proceed toward trial.
Jorden recalled the autopsy she performed on Arely after police were called to the church and found the child dead. She testified to finding bruising and markings on the child’s neck, numerous burst blood vessels and brain swelling that were all indicative of asphyxiation.
Arely also had injuries in her mouth indicating that she had severely bit her tongue and had marks on her gumline from being violently shaken. Jorden recounted documenting bruising and abrasions on the child’s face, and bruises all over her torso.
Another injury that the girl suffered — one that wasn’t previously widely known — was a tear in her aorta on the right side of her heart. Jorden stated several times throughout her testimony that Arely’s injuries were consistent “with one being smothered” and “with when someone died of asphyxiation.”
In response to questioning from defense attorney Dana
Fite — who is representing the victim’s grandfather — Jorden said there was no realistic scenario in which the child could have died innocuously, and recited the technical definition of homicide in her answer: “This was a child that died at the hands of another.”
“I can’t think of a situation where smothering could be considered accidental,” she added.
NYC’S ‘worst’ landlord surrenders, taken to Rikers Island jail
NEW YORK — The city’s most infamous landlord is now at the city’s most infamous jail.
Daniel Ohebshalom, who goes by Dan Shalom, turned himself in to the New York City Sheriff’s Office Thursday afternoon after a warrant for his arrest was issued on March 8 in connection with “egregious” conditions at two of his Washington Heights buildings. He could held up to 60 days on Rikers Island.
The warrant was issued after Ohebshalom was found in contempt of court by a housing court judge for failing to correct nearly 700 outstanding violations at 705 and 709 170th Street in Upper Manhattan. He will be held on Rikers “unless and until” he makes the fixes.
It’s a rare instance of a bad city landlord facing criminal consequences for poor conditions on their properties.
Ohebshalom was listed, by proxy, as the number one worst landlord in the city by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams in December for the second year in a row, with a “staggering” record 3,293 open housing violations.
Tenants in his buildings have faced “extensive” hazardous conditions including no heat, peeling lead paint, vermin infestations, leaks and mold.
“The sheer volume of extant hazardous and immediately hazardous violations bespeaks the extent of respondents’ contempt,” Manhattan Judge Jack Stoller wrote in his decision earlier this month.
After massive sewage spill, feds order fixes at LA water plant to improve resilience
LOS ANGELES — Years after a massive spill at a Los Angeles water treatment facility dumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Pacific, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have ordered several improvements at the plant to help prevent another such disaster, even when facing more intense storms from a changing climate.
The administrative order of consent, issued this month, requires the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant in Playa del Rey to make significant fixes to its operations and infrastructure, including improving monitoring systems and overflow channels, after the federal agency’s review of the 2021 spill. The agreement, between the EPA and the
Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment division, mandates the updates be implemented by the end of 2025, though some are required to be completed as soon as within 30 days, according to the order.
The city “will conduct work to improve the Hyperion Wastewater Treatment Plant high flow capabilities and make the Plant more resilient during large, intense storms that may be the result of climate change,” according to a statement from the EPA released Thursday. As the warming atmosphere has fueled more extreme weather across the globe, including disastrous downpours across Southern California, pounding rains have overwhelmed sewer pipes across Los Angeles and pose increasing challenges for the region’s water infrastructure.
Desantis signs bill that makes demolishing historic Florida buildings easier
MIAMI — Gov. Ron Desantis signed a bill on Friday making it easier for local developers to level historic buildings near Florida’s coast, potentially threatening Miami’s iconic Art Deco architecture.
The bill, SB 1526, limits local governments and local preservation boards from protecting notable establishments from being torn down, which would affect the Miami Beach board that controls the fate of 2,600 buildings in its locally designated historic districts.
It was one of 25 bills Desantis quietly signed on Friday without a press event.
Bill proponents have said the changes are crucial to ensuring that buildings are up to code near Florida’s coast, where flooding is a problem since older buildings aren’t always the sturdiest.
And there’s language in the measure that would exempt St. Augustine, Key West, the town of Palm Beach and buildings along Ocean Drive in South Beach, House sponsor Spencer Roach, R-north Fort Myers, said just before the bill was sent to the governor.
But many buildings in the Mid-beach and North Beach neighborhoods of Miami Beach could still be affected. That includes Art Deco hotels along Collins Avenue like the Faena, Sherry Frontenac, Casablanca and Carillon.
Roach also said the bill doesn’t override local zoning requirements, and that any new structure built in place of one that is demolished would need to conform to local regulations.
2 men indicted in case of 4 Indian nationals who froze to death at Us-canadian border
MINNEAPOLIS — A federal grand jury has indicted Steve Shand and Harshkumar Patel over their alleged role in trying to illegally bring a group of Indian nationals across the Canadian border into the United States in a case that led to a family of four freezing to death.
The deaths of Jagdish Patel, 39, Vaishaliben Patel, 37, and their two children Vihangi, 11, and Dharmik, 3, in January
2022, spurred sprawling investigations into the illicit immigration pipeline to the U.S. from their home state of Gujarat in western India. Authorities discovered the four bodies frozen in Emerson, Manitoba, and found five other Indian immigrants on foot and two more in a van driven by Shand in a rural area between Lancaster, Minn., and Pembina, N.D..
Source: Tribune News Service