Indianapolis
Indianapolis police arrested a 17-year-old boy Monday in the killings of five people, including a pregnant woman, who were shot to death inside a home in what the city’s mayor called a “devastating act of violence,” the Associated Press reported.
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement the name of the suspected in Sunday’s killing was “not being released at this time since the suspect is a juvenile.” No one else was believed to be involved, according to AP.
The fatal shooting victims were discovered by police who had been called about 4 a.m. Sunday to investigate reports of a person shot on the city’s near northeast side and first found a juvenile male with gunshot wounds. As officer’s were investigating, police received information which led to a nearby home, where they found multiple adults dead inside from apparent gunshot wounds, AP reported.
IMPD spokesperson Aliya Wishner said the suspect in custody is a 17-year-old boy who is not the same juvenile male who was found wounded Sunday. However, IMPD does believe the injured juvenile was wounded in the same shooting which left the other five dead, according to AP.
Fayetteville, Arkansas
A former pathologist at an Arkansas veteran hospital has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty last year to involuntary manslaughter in the death of a patient he misdiagnosed, the Associated Press reported.
Robert Morris Levy, 54, was sentenced Friday in federal court. Prosecutors said Levy diagnosed a patient with lymphoma when the patient actually has a smallcell carcinoma. Levy falsified the patient’s medical record to the state which a second pathologist agreed with his diagnosis. The patient later died, according to AP.
Levy also pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud for receiving 2-methyl-2-butanol, a chemical he used to intoxicate himself but standard drug and alcohol screenings don’t test for. Levy was fired from the Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks in Fayetteville in April 2018. VA officials said outside officials reviewed nearly 34,000 cases handled by Levy and found more than 3,000 errors or missed diagnoses dating back to 2005, AP reported.
Levy has acknowledged he once showed up to work drunk in 2016, but he denied he had worked while impaired. He entered an in-patient treatment program following incident and returned to work in October 2016 after agreeing to remain sober and submitting to random drug testing, according to AP.
Sacramento
California lifted regional stay-at-home orders across the state Monday in response to improving COVID-19 conditions, returning the state to a system of county-bycounty restrictions, the Associated Press reported.
The order has been in place in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, covering the majority of the state’s counties. The change allowed restaurants and churches to resume outdoor operations and hair and nail salons to reopen in many areas, though local officials could choose to impose stricter rules. The state also is lifting a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, according to AP.
Orange County planned to lift some restriction as well. In Los Angeles County, home to 10 million people, Republic Supervisor Kathryn Barger expressed support for opening outdoor dining, personal care services and other industries and said the state must balance public health with “devastating social, emotional and economic impacts of the virus,” AP reported.
The state’s decision came amid improving trends in California’s rate of infections, hospitalizations and intensive care unit capacity as well as vaccinations. Republicans said Gov. Gavin Newsom was relaxing the rules in response to political pressure and the threat of a recall. Democratic Assemblywoman Laura Friedman said state lawmakers have been out of the loop on changing rules, according to AP.
Seattle
Genetic genealogy helped identify the youngest known victim of Green River Killer Gary Ridgway — the Pacific Northwest serial killer who admitted to killing dozens of women and girls — after her remains were found almost 37 years ago near a baseball field south of Seattle, the Associated Press reported.
Wendy Stephens was 14 and had run away from her home in Denver in 1983. Ridgway pleaded guilty in 2003 to murdering 48 women and girls. Four of the victims, including Stephens, had not been identified at the time. Researchers at the DNA Doe Project, a volunteer organization which uses publically available DNA databases to find relatives of unidentified victims, helped make the identification, according to AP.
Stephens’ remains were found in a wooded area next to a baseball field in what is now the suburb of SeaTac March 21, 1984. She had been strangled a year or more earlier and is believed to be Ridgway’s youngest victim. The remains of another Ridgway victim, Cheryl Wims, were discovered at the same time, AP reported.
Ridgeway claimed to have killed dozens more women than he was charged with, so many he said he lost count. He pleaded guilty in a deal to avoid the death penalty after agreeing to help investigators find additional remains. He now is 71 and spending the rest of his life at Washington State Penitentiary.
Florida
A naked Florida man stole what news footage showed to be a marked police vehicle and crashed it in a wooded area, the Associated Press reported.
Joshua Shenker, 22, was arrested after Thursday’s crash on charges including theft of a motor vehicle, aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, depriving an officer of a means of communication or protection and resisting an officer without violence, according to AP.
Officers responded to reports of a naked man running along Interstate 10 in Western Jacksonville shortly before noon Thursday. Shenker was lying in the roadway when an officer stopped on the opposite side of the route. Shenker then ran across the highway lanes toward the officers, AP reported.
The redacted report didn’t state how Shenker stole the vehicle, however, footage of the scene showed the crashed vehicle to be a marked patrol car. According to the police report, about $10,000 worth of damage was done to the vehicle. Officers noticed Shenker has road rash after the crash, and he was taken to the hospital to be checked out, according to AP.