The Daily Blog

Karen Elaine Cordova Arrested For Allegedly Stabbing A Burglar To Death, Critically Wounding Another (UPDATE).

Karen Elaine Cordova, 48, was arrested Monday for allegedly stabbing two men who broke into her Erie, Colorado home where she grows medical marijuana — killing one and and critically injuring the other — is being formally charged with what will likely be second-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder Thursday.

According to the Longmont Times-Call, Cordova claims that Stephen Erikson, 34, and Kyle Dust, 31, broke into her house Saturday while she was home. Cordova confronted the two men and allegedly stabbed both of them, Erikson in the belly, leaving a 5-inch wound above his belly button cutting his stomach and liver, leaving Erikson alive but critically injured.

SECOND UPDATE:

Karen Elaine Cordova was released from Weld County Jail late Thursday and the district attorney’s office announced that no charges will be filed against Cordova at this time, however the investigation remains open, according to The Denver Post.

More details have emerged from the alleged robbery and act of self defense from Cordova. Sheriff’s spokesperson Margie Martinez spoke to the Daily Camera saying that Cordova never reported the burglary attempt or the fact that she had stabbed or shot anyone before the investigators arrived at her door on Monday.

Martinez went on to state to the Daily Camera that it was her understanding that investigators did not recover any weapons when searching Cordova’s property, but did find some of the marijuana plants had been pulled from their pots. Martinez also states to the Daily Camera that the Colorado’s “Make My Day” law will be taken into consideration, especially due to the nature of Dust’s fatal gunshot wounds, before making any further arrests.

However, it hasn’t been revealed where Dust was shot, but if he was shot in the back it could reveal he was fleeing the crime scene at the time which could further complicate this already complex story.

UPDATE:

As more details emerge, this case of apparent self-defense gets more complex. The Denver Post reports that Weld County Coroner’s autopsy report on Kyle Dust revealed that he died of a gunshot wound, not a stab wound, as the suspect, Karen Cordova originally told the police investigating the case.

Stephen Erikson, who was stabbed, remains in the hospital in critical condition.

EARLIER:

7News reports, that Erikson, still alive, staggerd into his Erie home when one of his roommates called 911. Erikson was taken to Lafayette Samaritan Hospital where he remains in critical condition.

In the police report Cordova is reported by the Longmont Times-Call as saying:

I am not going to lie, what would you do if someone broke into your house at 2:30 in the morning? I’m a single woman.

The Denver Post reports that although the attempted robbery and stabbings happened Saturday morning, Dust, the accomplice, was not found until Monday. Detectives returned to Cordova’s home where they found Dust’s body at the edge of her property, the Longmont Times-Call reports, when according to the police report Cordova said:

Oh my God, I didn’t know that I killed him. They were coming for me. They were coming for me.

The investigation got more complex when it was discovered that Erikson met Cordova two weeks prior, learned that Cordova ran a medical marijiuana business out of her home and then scouted her home for a later burglary by posing as a home repair consultant to Cordova. Erikson had even robbed Cordova’s house once before, either Friday or earlier Saturday, and then later returned on Saturday with Dust to rob her again, the Longmont Times-Call reports.

Cordova is being held in Weld County Jail on $400,000 bail.

Calvin Pitts, Amanda Deleon Arrested For Felony Child Abuse After Their 3-Month-Old Baby Is Found Dead.

Denver parents Calvin Pitts, 28, and Amanda Deleon, 21, have been arrested and charged with child abuse after their 3-month-old boy, Sanai Pitts, was found dead in their apartment Saturday morning.

The Denver Post reports that authorities responded to a call to the apartment where Pitts and Deleon were living and found the child was not breathing. the infant was rushed to Swedish Medical Center and pronounced dead at 8:40 a.m. on Saturday morning.

The infant’s cause of death is still to be determined, but authorities have announced that the child was abused regularly during its short life. Matt Murray with the Denver Police states to CBS Denver :

The parents were arrested for felony child abuse because we were able to determine through several means that there were numerous injuries to the child and in different stages over a period of time.

Both of the parents have criminal records. According to The Denver Post, Pitts, the boy’s father, has been arrested six times in the past year alone, most of which were for misdemeanor drug possession charges. Deleon, the deceased child’s mother, was arrested three times in 2009 for misdemeanor drug possession and once years prior for a felony drug possession charge.

The Office of the Medical Examiner will determine the baby’s cause of death.

Teen Charged with Murder of Newark Police Officer.

A 19-year-old Newark man was charged with murder Saturday of an off-duty city police officer who was killed in a drive-by shooting while attempting to purchase a slice of pizza, according to officials with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.

Rasul McNeil-Thomas, of Newark, also was charged with two counts of aggravated assault and additional weapons offenses for the shooting of two other victims during the incident, authorities said. Officials said a second suspect is still at-large.

William C. Johnson, 45, a 16-year veteran of the Newark Police Department, who was assigned to the communications division, was unarmed and not working when he was shot shortly before 10 p.m. Thursday night at Texas Fried Chicken and Pizza on Lyons Avenue in the city’s South Ward, according to officials. He was pronounced dead at 3:10 a.m. Friday at University Hospital.

Johnson was a father of two daughters, a 22-year-old and an 11-year-old, according to Newark Police Department Det. Levi Holmes, who referred to Johnson as “the sweetest kind of guy who would never hurt anyone.”

The two other victims, a 19-year-old female and a 21-year-old male, were injured during the incident. The man, who was shot in the stomach, was listed in stable condition at University Hospital, while the woman, who was shot in the shoulder, was treated and released. City officials said the woman was carrying a toddler during the incident. The toddler was unharmed. The identities of the man and woman were not immediately released.

McNeil-Thomas was arrested without incident Friday at his home on Leslie Street, about half-a-mile from the location of the shooting. He already had been charged Friday with conspiracy to commit carjacking, unlawful possession of a handgun and possession of a handgun for an unlawful purpose.

Officials from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office said Friday that early evidence suggests McNeil-Thomas stole a vehicle at gunpoint and that “evidence related to the shooting” was found in the vehicle, which has been recovered by police. The car, only described as a “late-model” vehicle, allegedly was carjacked shortly before the shooting and was found abandoned shortly after the incident, according to Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray.

Acting Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio said no more than 10 shots were fired from a car that pulled up to the restaurant at the corner of Clinton Place and Lyons Avenue. He also said authorities do not believe the officer was the intended target.

McNeil-Thomas currently is in Essex County Correctional Facility now in lieu of $1.5 million bail. Bail originally was set at $300,000.

The scene Friday was quiet with residents milling around the neighborhood, which is a strip of homes and shops that’s roughly two blocks west of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. The Texas Fried Chicken and Pizza restaurant, a family-owned eatery, according to an employee, was back open with a shattered window waiting to be replaced.

A vigil is planned for Johnson Tuesday night, 6 p.m., at the restaurant’s intersection, according to a spokesman with the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition.

Christian Choate, Boy Found Buried In Concrete Died While Locked In A Cage, Sister Says.

Christian Choate’s father Riley and his stepmother Kimberly Kubina were charged Tuesday with murder, battery, criminal confinement, and neglect of a dependent in the young boy’s death. Kubina allegedly helped Riley Choate bury his son’s body, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

***

On May 4, authorities investigating a mobile home park in Gary, Indiana made a harrowing discovery. Buried under a thin layer of concrete was the body of a 13-year-old boy, believed to be Christian Choate.

Choate apparently died in April of 2009, but according to his sister, threats from his abusive father Riley kept the boy’s death a secret for more than two years.

Only when Riley left their home three weeks ago did Christian’s sister feel safe enough to approach authorities about her brother’s death. And the account she gives is nothing short of chilling.

According to Christina Choate, young Christian was kept locked in a dog cage for the last year of his life, CBS-2 reports. He was let out of the cage only to eat and use the bathroom, and to endure brutal beatings from his father, who apparently used the cage to keep him from running away.

The Northwest Indiana Times, which has been covering the story since it broke, writes that one day Christina found her brother unresponsive in his cage. She placed a finger under his nose and found he wasn’t breathing.

More from the Times:

After she made the harrowing discovery, she scrambled to find the key to the Master Lock that kept her brother trapped. She pulled him out of the cage and put her ear to his chest desperately trying to find a heartbeat.

“I couldn’t hear anything,” she said.

Then, she asked for help from her stepsister, who in turn called adults for help.

As they waited for adults to come home, Christina Choate frantically tried to revive her brother. She pumped his chest and used an electric air pump to try to get him air.

“I kept thinking, ‘Oh my God, my brother is dead,’” she said.

When Riley came home — as he would later tell police — he dug a two-foot grave for his son, and buried him in lime, dirt and concrete, placing a Bible on his chest.

After Christian’s death, Christina says Riley moved her to Kentucky, where she wasn’t allowed to go to school or talk on the phone, until three weeks ago when he moved back to Indiana without her.

According to a Chicago Tribune story on the investigation, it was the boy’s biological mother who called police ten days ago inquiring about Christian. She had long been separated from Riley, but presumably after hearing from Christina, she began to worry about his fate.

Investigators were led quickly to Riley, who admitted to burying the boy and willingly led them to his makeshift grave. “If I had to do it over, I’d have just called (police),” Choate told authorities, according to the Tribune. “But I was freaking out.”

He did not, however, admit to having anything to do with causing the boy’s death.

An autopsy showed that Christian suffered blunt force trauma to his body, internal bleeding and a skull fracture, according to a separate Times story.

Riley Choate is currently being held on charges of removing a body from a death scene, a felony, and misdemeanor failure to notify authorities of a dead body, CBS writes.

More charges, however, are expected later Tuesday.

Watson Admits Marijuana Found In His Car.

The East Greenwich Republican, minority leader for the state House of Representatives, was charged in Connecticut with DUI, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Republican state Rep. Bob Watson acknowledged in a statement that marijuana was found in his car. Watson was arrested for possession of marijuana and driving under the influence Friday in East Haven, Conn.
According to the East Haven police, Watson was pulled over as part of a sobriety check point.
Watson told police he had had “one or two drinks,” according to the police report. Watson represents East Greenwich and is the house minority leader.
According to the police report, police said they smelled “the distinct odor of marijuana” on Watson’s person. They found a small plastic sandwich bag containing a substance later identified as marijuana, according to the report.
Watson, in his statement, said he denied driving under the influence.
“While confident I was a safe and sober operator, trace evidence of marijuana was discovered and I was charged with operating under the influence, a charge I vehemently deny.”
Watson was also charged with possessing drug paraphernalia. Watson registered .05 on a breathalyzer test. The legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit in Connecticut is .08.

In his statement, Watson said, “These events will be addressed fully in the proper legal forum.”
Watson was in the news earlier this year when he spoke out about bills the General Assembly was focusing on.
“I suppose if you’re a gay man from Guatemala who gambles and smokes pot, you probably think that we’re onto some good ideas here,” he said at the time.

Wisconsin Church Members Charged With Abusing Infants.

The pastor and seven members of a small church in central Wisconsin have been charged with using wooden rods to spank infants as young as 2 months old for “being emotional, grumpy or crying,” the Dane County Sheriff’s office said.

The Aleitheia Bible Church, in the town of Black Earth, was started in 2006 with a donation in the range of $500,000-$600,000 from Bob and Lori Wick of nearby Mazomanie, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.

Lori Wick is the author of almost three dozen historical Christian novels with more than five million books in print, according to her Amazon profile. Reached by AOL News today by telephone at their home, Bob Wick said they “have no comment” on the case.

Publicists at Lori Wick’s publisher, Harvest House Publishers, did not immediately respond to emails from AOL News today for comment.The investigation into the Aleitheia Bible Church began last November, when former members contacted authorities with concerns about how children were being treated, according to the sheriff’s office.

Six church members pleaded innocent to charges of child abuse during an appearance Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court. They were booked and released.Pastor Philip Caminiti, 53, and his brother, John Caminiti, 45, were charged with a dozen counts of child abuse last week and also pleaded innocent.

The victims included 12 children ranging in age from infancy to 6 years old, according to the sheriff’s office.

“During interviews with detectives, Phil expressed his belief that the Bible dictates the use of a rod over a hand to punish children. He stated that children only a few months old are ‘worthy’ of the rod and that by ‘one and a half months,’ a child is old enough to be spanked,” according to the sheriff’s office release.

“Throughout the investigation, the church members were open with detectives about their ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’ philosophy. They described using wooden dowels and wooden spoons on the bare skin of children, starting as young as 2 months old,” the sheriff’s office said.

“If you spank early and it is done right, then kids will be happy and obedient,” Philip Caminiti said, according to the criminal complaint.

According to the sheriff’s office, the dowels were described as being 12-18 inches long with a diameter about the size of a quarter. The parents told detectives that “redness and bruising” were the “common effects of the spankings.”

“One person described the children being emotional, grumpy or crying as behaviors that would constitute a spanking with a dowel,” according to the sheriff’s office.

Three sets of parents are among the six others charged, including two of Philip Caminiti’s children and their spouses: Matthew Caminiti, 27, and his wife, Alina, 24; and Maria J. Stephenson, 29, and her husband, Timothy, 28. Also charged are Andrea L. Wick, 26, and Timothy J. Wick, 27.

The children often were punished when they cried or failed to sit still during church services, a former church member told authorities. “Phil was very strict about children being quiet during church,” the complaint states.John Caminiti told investigators in November that he does not allow his family to communicate with people outside his religious beliefs and has punished his wife and son by confining them to their rooms until they corrected their disobedience, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

Attorney Jeffrey W. Nichols, who represents Alina Caminiti, described his client as a “caring mother who loves her children,” according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

“I believe it is important to note that the children have never been removed from her or her husband’s care despite these allegations and despite some unfair characterizations of her,” he said.

All the children of the parents charged are remaining in their homes and the fami
lies are working with social workers from Dane County Human Services, the sheriff’s office said.

14-year-old to be tried as adult in killing of Cheltenham teacher.

The young teen accused of killing a teacher at the troubled Cheltenham juvenile detention facility has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree rape. He was ordered jailed without bond Wednesday. The charges come after Prince George’s County Judge C. Philip Nichols Jr. ruled that Brian Lee Wonsom, now 14, could be tried as an adult. He was 13 at the time of the attack. Wonsom is charged in the killing of Hannah Wheeling, 65, a teacher from Bel Air whose bludgeoned and partially clothed body was found Feb. 18, 2010, at the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George’s County. The Laurel youth was being held there on burglary charges. If convicted, Wonsom could be sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors have not decided whether to seek life without parole. If the case were tried in juvenile court and Wonsom found responsible for the crime, the sentence would be served in a juvenile facility, and he would be released when he reached the age of 21. In Nichols’ ruling, which was not made public but was obtained by The Baltimore Sun, the judge expressed concerns over dangers that Wonsom might face in an adult prison. But, he wrote: “The court is simply not prepared to accept the risk of his premature release at age 21 on the chance that he would be willing to end his destructive behavior to those around him.” The judge noted that none of the juvenile facilities approached was willing to accept Wonsom. Nichols’ ruling cannot be appealed before trial. A public defender had argued during hearings that the teen should be tried as a juvenile. “[Wonsom] is emotionally, chronologically, biologically and neurologically a 14-year-old. He is probably even younger than that when you take into consideration the problems he has,” his attorney, Allen E. Wolf, said Friday. “Putting this child in an adult prison is not suddenly going to make him an adult,” Wolf said. “This is a critical time for him if he were in a juvenile facility to be rehabilitated and treated, and now that time is going to be wasted.” Prosecutors had argued that Wonsom’s problems began years ago and that he had grown increasingly violent. “This has been a tough and arduous process,” said Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for State’s Attorney Angela D. Alsobrooks. “We strive very strongly to hold defendants accountable. This is a necessary step to gain full justice for Hannah Wheeling.” Security lapses uncovered at the Cheltenham facility after Wheeling’s death led to a staff shake-up, including the demotion of the superintendent, the firing of two staff members and the suspension of two others. The incident led to the closing of the Re-Direct program Wonsom was in, which, though considered secure, was outside Cheltenham’s barbed wire. In his ruling, Nichols wrote that he “sadly” concluded that Wonsom should be tried as an adult mostly because of the nature of the crime and public safety concerns.

Mother of Twins Found in Toxic Fla. Truck Charged.

MIAMI — Police say the mother of a 10-year-old girl who was found dead in a toxic truck in Florida three weeks ago has been charged with murder.

The Miami-Dade Police Department said Saturday that Carmen Barahona has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Nubia Barahona. The girl was found in the back of the truck Feb. 14 along Interstate 95 in West Palm Beach. Her brother was found in the front seat of the truck, critically burned by a chemical. Their father was lying on the ground nearby.

Barahona also faces seven counts of aggravated child abuse and seven counts of child neglect.

The children’s’ father, Jorge Barahona, has pleaded not guilty to attempted first-degree murder of Nubia’s twin brother, Victor.