State Glance
Restaurant must pay at least $100,000 in back wages
PHOENIX — A U.S. Department of Labor investigation has found that a Tucson restaurant owes its workers more than $100,000 in back wages.
The federal agency said in a news release Monday that Chuy’s Mesquite Broiler violated minimum wage and overtime requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to investigators, the restaurant failed to pay the required federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. For overtime hours, employees were paid either in cash or in a separate check but at straight-time rates. The restaurant also did not maintain adequate records of hours the staff worked.
Chuy’s owners have been ordered to pay nearly $115,000 in owed wages and damages to 55 employees. They must also pay roughly $20,300 in civil penalties.
Woman indicted in deaths of her 3 kids
PHOENIX — A woman has been indicted on firstdegree murder charges in the suffocation deaths of her three young children in Phoenix.
The indictment filed Monday against Rachel Henry mirrors earlier charges lodged by prosecutors in the Jan. 21 deaths of 3-year-old Zane Henry, 23-month-old Miraya Henry and 7-monthold Catalaya Rios.
Henry is scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 4.
Prosecutors have said that Henry has acknowledged having a history of methamphetamine addiction and that her children had previously been removed from their home by child-welfare authorities in Oklahoma because of issues related to her drug problem. Henry’s family moved to Phoenix in June.
The Arizona Department of Child Safety said it didn’t have any earlier contacts or abuse reports involving the family.
No motive for the killings has emerged.
Woman gets 21 years in prison for killing twin grandsons
TUCSON — A Tucson woman has been sentenced to 21 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of her 8-year-old grandsons.
A Pima County Superior Court judge sentenced 56-year-old Dorothy Flood on Monday in the killings of Jorden and Jaden Webb last April. Flood was the guardian and sole caregiver for the boys after her daughter died in 2017.
According to court documents, the twins had severe autism and were nonverbal, and detectives said Flood told a relative that they had become too much for her as the boys had been having trouble sleeping.
With family members in the courtroom, Flood apologized before she was sentenced by Judge Howard Fell.
“I loved those boys I never intended to harm them. I am so sorry that I did,” she said.
Sheriff’s deputies who found the boys dead also found Flood unresponsive from an apparent drug overdose.
Flood later told detectives she had tried to kill herself.