Category: Crime, Courts & Cops.

Diner robber pleads guilty to all charges

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Raymond Washington

WOODSTOCK —  An Edinburg man pleaded guilty Wednesday to five charges he was facing after he attempted to rob Ben’s Diner in Woodstock in January.

Raymond Lamar Washington, 27, had not signed a plea agreement when he entered guilty pleas that eliminated the need for a jury trial that had been scheduled for Friday. The three other defendants charged in the incident — Andrea Scalf, Andrew Shoemaker and Leonard “Spoon” Garris — testified during Scalf’s trial that Washington was the one with the gun during the robbery, and the one who attempted to kick in the door to the diner’s back room.

Shoemaker and Garris also testified that Washington was the one who devised the plan to rob the diner and had motive to do so because he was trying to flee the state and avoid penalties in other criminal cases pending against him.

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Getaway driver found guilty on diner robbery charges

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Andrea Scalf

WOODSTOCK — More than week after postponing his verdict, Circuit Judge Dennis L. Hupp on Friday found a Woodstock woman guilty on three charges after determining she was the getaway driver in the attempted robbery of Ben’s Diner in January.

Hupp delivered his verdict after hearing testimony on May 25 and closing arguments Friday from Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Louis Campola and defense attorney Margarita Wood. Wood represented the defendant, Andrea Scalf.

Scalf, 43, was identified by two witnesses during the bench trial as the person who came up with the idea to rob Ben’s Diner; she had worked there in the past, and her teenage daughter was working there at the time of the attempted robbery.

Scalf’s daughter was the first witness to testify for the prosecution during the May 25 bench trial. She said that three men walked into the diner wearing dark clothing with their faces covered, and one man pointed a gun in her face and demanded money. Once she told them that the money was in the office, he held the gun to her back as she showed two of the men where it was – one man stayed by the door as lookout. Since the office door was locked, the two men tried kicking it down. When they were unsuccessful, they all fled the diner.

Scalf was crying, with her face in her hands, during her daughter’s account of what happened that night. Scalf then watched as her daughter stepped down from the witness stand and walked out of the courtroom, avoiding her mother’s gaze the entire time.

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Teen accused of stabbing Edinburg woman, 2 daughters

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Shenandoah County Sheriffs deputy Derek Smith stands outside a minivan at the Edinburg Town Park on Thursday night after a woman and her two children were attacked. Rich Cooley/Daily

EDINBURG — An 18-year-old Edinburg man has been charged with stabbing a mother and her two young children in the town park on Thursday evening.

The Shenandoah County Sheriff’s Office arrested Samual Jacob Homer, 18, at the park Thursday and he has been charged with three felony counts of aggravated malicious wounding.

The three victims — a 27-year-old Edinburg woman and her two children, a 5-year-old girl and a 1-year-old girl — are in stable condition, Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy C. Carter said at a news conference Friday.

He also elaborated on a statement he made Thursday night from the scene when he said that the victim did not know Homer. Carter said the woman who was attacked was able to identify her assailant, but could not confirm if she recognized who Homer was.

“When you hear of this incident, one would instantly think that there must be a relationship or it might be a domestic relationship or something like that,” Carter said. “That is not the case.”

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Edinburg man found guilty on one of two rape charges

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Patrick Wakeman

WOODSTOCK — After less than two hours of deliberation on Tuesday, a jury unanimously found Patrick “P.J.” Wakeman, 40, of Edinburg, guilty on one of two counts of rape he was facing.

The jury declared a not guilty verdict on the charge of rape relating to the first of two encounters and found Wakeman guilty on the charge relating to the second encounter.

The courtroom was silent as the verdict was read by the clerk, and both the victim and Wakeman’s family kept their composure at first. The victim’s family members were tearful on the stand during the penalty phase of the trial, which followed the verdict. They told the jury about how the incident has broken their family and made their lives difficult.

“I’ll never forgive you,” the victim’s mother said angrily as she looked directly at Wakeman.

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Woman claims to be target of hate crime in Front Royal

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Christel Guillen, who was staying at Tareq Salahi’s home through Airbnb, found the clothing seen here, with the shirt’s arms tied with rope and a black cloth sack (as a head), behind the house. She says it is an effigy of a simulated lynching. Courtesy photo by Christel Guillen

FRONT ROYAL — Christel Guillen and three of her colleagues, all of whom are people of color, visited Front Royal in early April for a three-night stay at Tareq Salahi’s home through Airbnb for a work retreat, but awoke after the second night to find an effigy depicting a lynching in the back yard.

The group is working on starting an alternative school in Washington, D.C., that aims to help what Guillen calls “black and brown” youth and will focus heavily on understanding institutionalized racism. The four rarely have time to work all together on this project, so she said they planned a work retreat that wouldn’t be too far from D.C., and chose Salahi’s home.

Guillen, 32, said she woke up on the morning of April 8 looking to relax on the hammock behind the house in an open picnic area, and was taking an Instagram live video on her walk down the trail. She returned to the house after forgetting something, and on her way back down the path to the hammock is when she said she saw on the ground the boots, jeans, flannel shirt and black cloth sack (as a head) tied up with rope to simulate a lynching

“Right away I started realizing how fresh it looked,” Guillen said, noting that it did not have any debris from the trail or the storm that weekend. “I started feeling like this was left for us intentionally because of how fresh it was.”

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Family of Korryn Gaines Disappointed in Lack of Charges Against Officers

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Rhanda Dormeus, mother of Korryn Gaines, stands with family attorney J. Wyndal Gordon, seen wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey under his jacket, at a press conference Sept. 21. ( Photo by Briahnna Brown)

Rhanda Dormeus, mother of Korryn Gaines, stands with family attorney J. Wyndal Gordon, seen wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey under his jacket, at a press conference Sept. 21. ( Photo by Briahnna Brown)

Lawyers for Korryn Gaines’ family confirmed that the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office will not file charges against the officers involved in the death of 23-year-old Korryn Gaines.

Wyndal Gordon, along with the Gaines family and their attorneys, met with State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger on Sept. 21 to discuss the case. He revealed that according to Shellenburger, Officer First Class Ruby shot Gaines from the hallway outside of her apartment, and did not fear for his own life, but for the life of his partner who “wasn’t even in the field of view of Korryn Gaines” when Ruby shot her.

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AFRO American

RNC Protesters met with Heavy Police Presence

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CLEVELAND – Nearly everywhere you look in downtown Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, there are cops – tall cops, short cops, fat cops, buff cops, young cops and old cops.

There are beat cops, cops on horses, cops in riot gear, cops in neon vests directing traffic and bicycle cops with body cams atop their helmets. There are cops from Illinois and Michigan and California and Austin, Texas, and Louisville, Ky.  There are cops from Georgia and Florida and Wisconsin and Delaware and even Maine.  In fact, the city asked every state to provide additional law enforcement, and it seems like nearly every state did.

There are noticeably very, very few female or black cops, and most of the black cops are from Cleveland.

Still, the massive law enforcement presence seems to have paid off.  There have been some hectic protests, including a flag-burning protest Wednesday that led to 17 arrests and resulted in charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

There have been some tense moments, like the standoff that police broke up between immigration activists and Trump supporters Tuesday on Euclid Avenue, Cleveland’s equivalent of a Main Street, right at rush hour. And the guys openly carrying assault weapons Monday had many people, especially police, anxious.

Most of the numerous protests that have taken place in downtown Cleveland have been relatively peaceful. The city has not needed the nearly 1,000 jail cells it made available, nor the 20-hour open court it set up to handle offenders.

Make no mistake, though, the protesters are here.

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Chicago Defender

Youth Baseball League Aims to Bridge Gap Between Police and Community

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baseball

It was a bright and sunny afternoon during the opening day game of the North Lawndale Police Youth Baseball League at Franklin Park. Funded by Get IN Chicago, the league aims to create trust between police and the community while helping the children build leadership, sportsmanship, teamwork and conflict resolution skills.

“We started this last year in Englewood and it was such an unexpected success,” said Toni Irving, executive director of Get IN Chicago. “Generally speaking, [with] young African American boys and girls people think basketball [and] football. It was a lot of work to really rally the people.”

Irving said that after two weeks, the community response and support for the kids playing baseball was huge and cited surveys the organization had done before and after the program that showed an improvement in feelings of self and collective efficacy in the children.

“Every week there’s some other piece that’s added to it that are giving them the building blocks to be more successful throughout their lives,” Irving said. “And so, at the core of it there’s a kind of resiliency that becomes transferred through the Little League process.”

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Chicago Defender

Finishing Fence of Slain Baltimore Father Becomes Cause

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Community members and leaders helped to build the fence that Kendall Fenwick wanted around his house to give his children a safe space to play but was gunned down before he could do so. (Photos by Brelaun Douglas, HU News Service)

BALTIMORE — Concerned residents, friends, political figures and police officers came together to finish what a slain father had started.

Kendal Fenwick, 24, was gunned down outside his home on Park Heights Avenue in west Baltimore.  He was in the process of building a fence around his backyard to keep drugs and drug dealers away from his family home.

A truck driver, Fenwick wanted to give his three children a a safe haven in the midst of a city plagued by violence. For his actions, police said, he became the 295th homicide victim in a city where murders have now climbed past 300.

On a bright, crisp Sunday morning, dozens gathered to pitch in and help complete that dream. Attorney Ivan Bates, a friend of Fenwick’s father, helped launch the event through social media and a hashtag #FinishTheFence.

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HU News Service.

The Mississippi Link.

 

Effort to Halt Prison Revolving Door Loses Funding

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Graduates of the Public Safety Compact throw up their caps in celebration of their graduation. (Photos by Briahnna Brown)

BALTIMORE – Antoin Quarles stood at the podium erect and proud.  He was dressed in his burgundy cap and gown, adorned like his 68 fellow graduates gathered in a room at the University of Baltimore for their special day.

Quarles had been asked to speak audience because of his previous life and how he had come through it was exemplary of so many of the former students.

“I grew up in a neighborhood where all I seen was hustlers, stick-up boys, shooters,” Quarles, 43, would say later.  “I didn’t have a father to guide me.  I was outside. The streets became the vision that I was into. Going inside prison was always about image, identity and having my nickname connected to my hood.”

He took deep a breath and began. He told them how he had been in and out of prison for selling drugs for 20 years, almost all of his adult life. He was homeless at times, roaming the streets armed with guns and knives and looking for a crime to commit, and then he was back behind bars.

Consequently, he struggled to maintain a relationship with his daughter and the rest of his family.

Those days are over, he said.

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HU News Service.

Black Voice News.