Parents face hearings on waterboardng charges

A Beaver County couple accused of waterboarding their 12-year-old daughter as punishment — a technique they said they picked up from television — face preliminary hearings on a series of charges.

Dion Stevens, 33, and Malisa Stevens, 41, appeared before court officials Oct. 6 in Aliquippa and had bail set at $25,000 each, according to Aliquippa police.

Charges filed against the couple Sept. 27 include strangulation, aggravated assault, unlawful restraint, endangering the welfare of children and recklessly endangering another person. The child is in foster care, according to court documents.

Aliquippa police were alerted in April after a referral was made to ChildLine, the state’s child abuse hotline.

On May 11, a caseworker from the Beaver County Children Youth and Families agency told police that the couple “openly admitted” to her that they had “water-board[ed]” their daughter because they were punishing her.

Their preliminary hearings are set for 9 a.m. Nov. 1.

McKees Rocks man sentenced in slaying

A McKees Rocks man will serve 17½ to 35 years in prison for a killing last summer.

Charles Anthony Dixson, 28, was found guilty by a jury on June 12 of killing Robert Lee Ray, 22, on July 28, 2016. He was sentenced Thursday.

Investigators said Mr. Ray was found outside of his home on Russellwood Avenue. He had been shot in the head.

Earlier in the evening, Stowe police officers saw the two men arguing, and Mr. Ray told them Dixson had been harassing him for months.

An officer said he heard Dixson call Mr. Ray a “rat,” he testified at a court hearing.

Investigators obtained surveillance video from the community showing Dixson later that night walking on to the front porch of Mr. Ray’s home, where there was a scuffle before Dixson fled.

Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Alexander Bicket presided over the case in which Dixson was found guilty of third-degree murder and carrying a firearm without a license. are nearly identical to rabies.

“Canine distemper is an often fatal disease caused by canine distemper virus. It is a common cause of mortality in several species of wildlife, such as gray foxes, raccoons, skunks and coyotes,” Justin Brown, wildlife veterinarian with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, said in a statement.

Humans can acquire the virus, but there are no symptoms. It is highly contagious among domestic dogs, however, and is often fatal, although a distemper vaccine usually prevents the pet from acquiring the disease.

Symptoms in pets include coughing, sneezing, fever, lethargy, sudden loss of appetite, vomiting, diarrhea and thick mucus running from the eyes and nose.

Twelve of the raccoons collected in Ross were tested at the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study center in Georgia. Canine distemper was confirmed in five of them. All 12 tested negative for rabies.