An Alabama high school band director said Wednesday that he was just “doing my job” when police officers arrested him and shocked him with a stun gun after he refused to immediately stop the band as it played in the bleachers following a football game.
Johnny Mims, the band director at Minor High School, told The Associated Press he was confused when officers pulled him from the director’s podium to arrest him following last Thursday’s game between Minor and Jackson-Olin high schools.
“I was in shock. Just totally confused because I was pretty much doing my job, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. I definitely did not deserve to be Tased,” said Mims, who noted that he was shocked with the stun gun three times.
Police body camera footage released Monday shows Mims being arrested and repeatedly shocked in a chaotic scene that included students screaming. Police charged him with disorderly conduct, harassment and resisting arrest.
In the body camera footage, officers are seen approaching Mims as the band plays in the stands. They ask him several times to stop the performance, saying it is time for everyone to leave the stadium since the game was over, and appear incredulous that Mims continues directing the band for another two minutes or so.
As the music continues, an officer tells Mims he will go to jail and another says she will contact the school. Mims flashes two thumbs up and says, “That’s cool.”
“Put him in handcuffs,” an officer is later heard saying. The stadium lights are cut off shortly before the band finishes. Mims said after the song ended that he was pulled from the conductor’s stand. Officers are seen in the video apparently trying to arrest him, in a scrum of bodies. Students in the 145-member band can be heard screaming as the arrest plays out.
A University of North Carolina graduate student walked into a classroom building, shot his faculty adviser and quickly left, authorities said a day after the attack paralyzed campus as police searched for the gunman.
Tailei Qi, 34, was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder and having a gun on educational property in Monday’s killing of Zijie Yan inside a science building at the state’s flagship public university.
Chapel Hill police arrested Qi without force in a residential neighborhood near campus within two hours of the attack, UNC Police Chief Brian James said at a news conference.
Investigators were trying to determine a motive and searching for the gun, James said. He declined to specify where in Caudill Labs Yan was killed, saying officers are still looking at evidence. Qi was already gone when a team of officers reached the building, James said.
On Wednesday afternoon, the school’s iconic Bell Tower will ring in honor of Yan’s memory and students are encouraged to take a moment of silence, he said. The school also canceled classes until Thursday.
The former IT director of a Rhode Island metals fabrication company convicted of stealing more than $1 million from his employer and using the money for personal expenses was sentenced Monday to nearly three years in prison.
Juan Hicks, 47, of New Bedford, Massachusetts used his purchasing authority to bilk the company out of the money over a period of about 10 years, the U.S. attorney’s office in Rhode Island said in a statement.
While working at A.T. Wall Co. in Warwick, Hicks carried out his scheme in a variety of ways, prosecutors said.
He created false invoices and expense reports for purchases that were never made, and altered legitimate credit card statements to make purchases appear to be business expenses when they were really for personal expenses, authorities said.
He also issued company phones with wireless service to himself and six family members, and used company credit cards to buy airline and entertainment tickets for himself, as well as for retail purchases and auto repairs, prosecutors said.
His conduct came to light in March 2022 when his employer hired forensic analysts to determine the source of a cyberattack.
In addition to prison time he was also ordered to pay restitution. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud in March.
A judge overseeing the case against Bryan Kohberger, charged with killing four University of Idaho students last fall, heard arguments Friday over a gag order that largely bars attorneys and other parties in the case from speaking with news reporters.
A coalition of more than 30 media organizations has challenged the order, saying it violates the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech and a free press, as has a lawyer for one of the victim’s families. But prosecutors and the defendant’s lawyers insist it’s needed to prevent prejudicial news coverage that could damage Kohberger’s right to a fair trial.
“It remains appropriate to have an Order reminding lawyers and their agents of the rules of engagement in this country and that we try cases in court, not in the press,” one of Kohberger’s attorneys, Jay Weston Logsdon, wrote in a memo to the court this week.
Second District Judge John C. Judge indicated he would rule later on the gag order and on a separate issue of whether to allow cameras in the courtroom during further proceedings.
Kohberger, 28, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary in connection with the stabbing deaths in Moscow, Idaho, on Nov. 13, 2022. Judge entered not guilty pleas on his behalf last month. Prosecutors have not said if they will seek the death penalty.
The bodies of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were found at a rental home across the street from the University of Idaho campus. The slayings shocked the rural Idaho community and neighboring Pullman, Washington, where Kohberger was a graduate student studying criminology at Washington State University.
The case has garnered widespread publicity, and in January Latah County Magistrate Judge Megan Marshall issued a “nondissemination” order barring attorneys, law enforcement agencies and others associated with the case from talking with the press or issuing statements unless they are quoting directly from a court document.
Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually abusing Olympic and college female gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times by another inmate at a federal prison in Florida that is experiencing staffing shortages.
The attack happened Sunday at United States Penitentiary Coleman, and Nassar was in stable condition on Monday, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
One of the people said Nassar had been stabbed in the back and in the chest. The two officers guarding the unit where Nassar was held were working mandated overtime shifts because of staffing shortages, one of the people said.
The people were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack or the ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.
Nassar is serving decades in prison for convictions in state and federal courts. He admitted sexually assaulting athletes when he worked at Michigan State University and at Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians. Nassar also pleaded guilty in a separate case to possessing images of child sexual abuse.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has experienced significant staffing shortages in the last few years, an issue thrust into the spotlight in 2019 when the convicted financier Jeffrey Epstein took his own life at a federal jail in New York.
An Associated Press investigation in 2021 revealed nearly one third of federal correctional officer positions were vacant nationwide, forcing prisons to use cooks, teachers, nurses and other workers to guard inmates. The staffing shortages have hampered the response to emergencies at other prisons, including suicides.
A Brooklyn man accused of killing an 86-year-old and injuring three other men in a series of shootings while riding a scooter in New York City is charged with murder and attempted murder, police said Sunday.
In all, six apparently random shootings occurred in Brooklyn and Queens on Saturday, according to police.
The motive of the alleged gunman, identified Sunday as 25-year-old Thomas Abreu, was unknown, police said. Police arrested Abreu without incident Saturday. The New York Police Department pulled an image of the gunman from video and sent it to officers, who spotted him a couple hours after the first shooting, police said.
Police confiscated a scooter and a 9 mm handgun with an extended magazine. Abreu was charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder and six counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
The shootings began around 11:10 a.m., when the gunman shot a 21-year-old man in the shoulder in Brooklyn. The man was brought to a hospital and was expected to survive, police said.
A man who confessed to raping and impregnating a 9-year-old Ohio girl has been sentenced to life in prison in a case that became a national flashpoint on abortion rights because the girl had to travel out of state to end the pregnancy.
Gerson Fuentes, 28, was sentenced to life in prison, but his plea deal stipulates that he can seek parole after serving 25 to 30 years. He would then have to register as a sex offender.
Common Pleas Court Judge Julie Lynch, who was not required to approve the plea agreement, said the girl’s family “begged” the judge to back it. Lynch called the deal a “very hard pill for this court to swallow.”
“Anyone who’s ever been in this courtroom for the last 20 years knows how this court feels about these babies, young people, being violated,” Lynch said. “However, today, by the request of the family, this court will be sentencing without comment.”
The maximum sentence would have been life without parole. Settling the case before trial will spare the survivor from having to testify in court.
Zachary Olah, an attorney who represented Fuentes, told The Columbus Dispatch after the hearing that his client has been cooperative since the beginning.
“He was anxious to get this resolved,” Olah said.
The girl, who turned 10 before having the abortion, confirmed that Fuentes attacked her, Franklin County prosecutors have said, and Fuentes confessed to Columbus police detectives. DNA testing of the aborted fetus confirmed Fuentes was the father, prosecutors said.
Fuentes, who is from Guatemala and was living in Columbus, had been held without bond since his arrest. If he eventually wins parole, he would likely be deported given that authorities have said they have not found any evidence he is authorized to live in the U.S. legally.