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LEX 18 is on the scene of an accident at the corner of Broadway and Short Street in downtown Lexington.
http://liarcatchers.com/accident_reconstruction.html
A car crash sent one vehicle into the patio area of the Shakespeare & Co restaurant.
Officials say at least three people have been taken to the hospital.
It’s not clear yet what lead to the accident or how serious the injuries are.
Authorities in Powell County have made an arrest hours after a deadly stabbing.
Kelly McCoy, 50, was found stabbed to death Saturday around 5:30 p.m. inside his home on First Avenue in Clay City. Terrance Wagner, 67, is charged with McCoy’s murder
“This is a bad neighborhood right here, but I never expected nothing like this,” said Linda Townsend, McCoy’s sister. “Kelly didn’t deserve anything like this… his 15 year old son saw his daddy laying there like that.”
http://liarcatchers.com/wrongful_death.html
The disabled 50-year-old was a father of two. His family describes him as a man who gave without ever asking for anything in return.
“Even when he was a child, he would do anything for anyone. He’d give the shoes off his feet. The shirt off his back. He’d come home from school with no jacket on,” Townsend said.
“He was a really good, kind-hearted person. Do anything for anybody and I don’t see how somebody could do this,” said Tiffany Sullivan, McCoy’s grandniece.
Investigators said McCoy was fatally stabbed in the stomach, following what police simply call an argument. The details of that argument have not been released.
“This is what he gets? Death? It’s not right. It’s not right,” said Townsend.
McCoy’s body has been taken to Frankfort for autopsy. Funeral arrangements are pending.
A person is rushed to the hospital after a shooting in Shelby County Saturday.
It happened around 3:00 in the afternoon on Berea Street.
Authorities haven’t released much information in the case but they do say they responded to a call of a man shot in the chest.
http://liarcatchers.com/index.php
The victim was rushed to University of Louisville Hospital with a gunshot wound, but the extent of his injuries are not known.
Police have not released the identity of the victim and they have not said if the shooter is in custody.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Her mother is in prison for welfare fraud. Her stepfather is lying low. Her six siblings, some just infants, are in the custody of child welfare authorities. And Aliayah Lunsford, the brown-eyed 3-year-old who vanished from her West Virginia home a year ago Monday, is still missing.
“It just seems like everybody’s forgotten her,” said Aliayah’s great-aunt Vickie Bowen, “but we’re never going to forget.”
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
In the year since Aliayah disappeared from her family’s rented house in the Bendale section of Lewis County, Bowen has concluded the girl is probably dead, though she avoids using the word.
“But we still need to know. We need that closure,” Bowen said. “We need to take care of her.”
Aliayah’s mother, Lena Lunsford, told police her daughter was in bed, wearing purple pajama pants and a pink sweat shirt, at 6:30 a.m. Sept. 24, 2011. But she said the child was missing when she checked on her a few hours later.
Six months later, an FBI official said investigators had a working theory about what happened – and it didn’t involve a break-in. The agency has since refused to say what agents believe happened to Aliayah or whether they think she’s still alive, though it is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to her recovery or an arrest.
Authorities have made no arrests and named no suspects, only describing the people of interest as “a small universe.”
Lewis County Sheriff’s Deputy Lt. David Parks declined to discuss details of the investigation this week and referred questions to the FBI, which didn’t return several messages. However, local authorities have put information about Aliayah in a brochure for people attending a hunting and fishing expo this weekend.
“It’s something that stays in our minds all the time here,” Parks said. “It’s not something you can forget: There’s a little girl missing.”
Parks said the case is still active and tips are still coming in, though relatives complain they’ve had no updates in months.
“If there were more to do, we’d be doing it,” he said. “Unfortunately, right now we’re doing what we can with what we have.”
Aliayah Lunsford’s case has gotten little attention beyond the boundaries of her small home state, failing to resonate with the public in the way that Caylee Anthony’s story did even though both girls were toddlers with chubby cheeks and brown hair.
The body of the 2-year-old Florida girl was found a month after she was reported missing in 2008. Anthony’s mother, Casey, was charged with murder after telling a string of lies to police but was later acquitted.
However, Aliayah’s case is different in several ways: Neither the immediate family nor the police sought national media attention. Investigators have been tight-lipped about the case, the family and their working theories from the start.
Aliayah’s parents were also poor, and their family relationships were splintered before the girl vanished, so there has been no prominent spokesman.
And Aliayah has never been found, dead or alive.
The girl’s mother was indicted weeks after Aliayah’s disappearance on charges she illegally swapped welfare benefits for cash five times in two months. She was sentenced in May to eight months in prison after pleading guilty to selling $114 worth of credit on her food-stamp card for $50 cash and reported to prison in late June.
Attorney Mike Woelfel, who has represented Lena Lunsford in unrelated civil matters, has said Lena doesn’t believe her daughter wandered off and has cooperated with investigators. She’s also certain “no blood relative of Aliayah knows what has happened to her,” though Woelfel has never elaborated.
Woelfel said he spoke to Lena Lunsford on Friday, and she told him she still believes “Aliayah is out there, alive.”
“She’s told the FBI everything she knows,” he said, “so she’s basically powerless to do anything other than sit and wait.”
Lena Lunsford filed for divorce from her husband, Ralph Keith Lunsford, after her daughter’s disappearance, and is still waiting for it to be finalized. She’d been ordered by a judge to live apart from Ralph after he acknowledged buying and using synthetic drugs called bath salts.
Both parents have repeatedly refused to comment on Aliayah’s disappearance, but in a court proceeding, Ralph Lunsford acknowledged police had considered him a person of interest and repeatedly questioned him in the case.
Lena Lunsford gave birth to twins after Aliayah disappeared and before she went to prison. Bowen, their great-aunt, has never met them. Nor does she know where the other children are.
“Until we find answers for Aliayah,” she said, “there’s no chance of seeing them.”
After a year with no solid leads, Bowen is frustrated – but she and a group of about 10 people still search regularly for Aliayah.
“If we hear anything, anything at all, we’re there. No matter how unbelievable it seems to us, we go check it out,” she said.
On Monday, Bowen and others will plant flowers near the welcome sign in Weston to honor Aliayah. They’ll distribute flyers with her picture and post them at area businesses. They’re even planning a small afternoon demonstration at the Lewis County Courthouse.
“We’re not giving up,” Bowen said. “There’s no way we’re going to give up. A child does not simply disappear.”
Flippin police arrested 34-year-old Lakeview resident John Ferguson on Thursday for felony possession of drug paraphernalia, according to a press release from Flippin police chief Dusty Smith.
Police conducted surveillance on a business after receiving a tip Ferguson was there and behaving suspiciously, according to the press release.
Officers learned Ferguson had an outstanding warrant, and conducted a traffic stop on Ferguson after he left the business, according to the press release.
http://liarcatchers.com/drugdogsweeps.html
A police dog was called to the scene and the dog indicated there might be drug-related items in the vehicle, according to the press release which said officers found methamphetamine related drug paraphernalia and a small amount of marijuana.
Ferguson was taken to the Marion County jail where he is awaiting extradition on an outstanding warrant from California.
The Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office says Parish Sheriff Randy Seal was recently the victim of a “sophisticated identify theft ring operating from Texas to Florida.
Washington Parish is a common target for the ring.
Officials say Sheriff Seal and his wife were notified that they had written checks for more than $2,500 to Baton Rouge and Denham Springs businesses they had visited.
http://liarcatchers.com/identity_theft_investigation.html
The method used by the thieves is to obtain the routing number, checking account number and driver’s license number from the victim’s personal checking account.
That information is then used to produce counterfeit checks, along with a counterfeit driver’s license, and the thieves shop at local stores and shopping malls where electronics and other high end merchandise can easily be purchased.
The thieves then return the merchandise for cash at another location of the same store.
Two woman and one male have been arrested, but are not believed to be the masterminds of the operation.
Sheriff’s Office Captain Tommie Sorrell says weekly thefts continue to be reported and the criminals have been traced to five states.
These same criminals have recently struck in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Louisiana purchases were made in Baton Rouge, Denham Springs, Slidell, Covington, Amite, Hammond and Lake Charles. In each case, the criminals were operating in the name of a Washington Parish resident.
There are 20 cases currently being worked on by the sheriff’s office, Bogalusa Police Department and Franklinton Police Department, and authorities suspect that there are at least 20 more unreported cases.
Residents are advised to carefully guard their personal banking and driver’s license information and not to leave mail in mailboxes for an extended period of time. Officials suggest buying a shredder in order to destroy any documents containing personal information. Personal checking accounts should be monitored for unusual activity.
A stunned jury in the Los Angeles County murder trial of a local chef heard him say in a taped interview with detectives that he had slow-cooked his wife’s body for four days to get rid of the corpse after accidentally killing her, The Daily Breeze reports..
David Viens, 49, has pleaded not guilty to killing 39-year-old Dawn Viens in 2009.
http://liarcatchers.com/wrongful_death.html
The taped interviews were conducted in March, 2011, in his hospital room after he tried to commit suicide by jumping off an 80-foot cliff on the same day that The Daily Breeze reported that police suspected him in his wife’s death.
Viens, chef-owner of the Thyme Contemporary Cafe in Lomita, in South Bay, tells detectives that he and Dawn had been arguing and that he duct-taped her mouth and put her in a closet.
“For some reason I just got violent,” he said.
When he woke up four hours later, Viens tells detectives, he found her dead.
“I just freaked. I go, ‘Oh my God. And I go rushing out there and she’s gone,” he says on the tape.
He says he panicked and decided to get rid of her corpse.
Here, according to the The Daily Breeze, is an excerpt from the confession:
“I manipulated her so the face was — the face is down, and I took some — some things — like weights that we use, and I put them on the top of her body, and I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days,” Viens said.
“You cooked Dawn’s body for four days?” sheriff’s homicide Sgt. Richard Garcia asked.
“I cooked her four days,” he said. “I let her cool. I strained it out as I — I was in there, OK.”
Viens says he mixed what remained of the body with other waste and poured it into the restaurant’s grease pit, the Los Angeles Timesreports.
The remainder was packed into garbage bags and thrown into a trash bin. Viens says he hid her skull and jawbone in his mother’s attic, although police did not find any evidence during a search of the home.
Update 12:15 p.m.: Arlington police are now saying that, based on evidence collected at the scene, they believe that a Volkswagen Jetta was involved. The car is likely a 2011-2013 model and probably has extensive damage to its front, including the grill and emblem, police said.
Investigators are asking that body shop workers, insurance agents or drivers notify police if they encounter a late-model Jetta with similar damage. Reports can be filed to Arlington police at 817-459-5600 or to Crime Stoppers at 817-469-TIPS, where they may be eligible for a reward.
http://liarcatchers.com/wrongful_death.html
Original story: Arlington police believe a man whose body was found by firefighters early Saturday morning in the westbound lanes of Interstate 30 was the victim of a hit-and-run accident.
The firefighters were traveling the freeway about 4:10 a.m. when they saw another car swerve to avoid something on the road. The firefighters stopped to see what the car had swerved around and found the body.
It was unclear how long the body had been in the road when it was discovered, police said. The body was taken to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office, where the cause of death will be determined. The man’s identity was not immediately released pending notification of next of kin, police said.
Westbound I-30 was closed for several hours while police investigated the scene. Police are treating the death as a hit-and-run. No other cars were in the vicinity when the body was found, and investigators have no description of a suspect car. Anyone with any information about the wreck is asked to call Arlington police at 817-459-5600.
FORT EDWARD – A Cambridge couple torched their trailer home for insurance money while their 3-year-old child slept on the couch, a prosecutor said.
Frank F. Ruggles, 43, and his live-in girlfriend, Leann M. Coon, 33, were indicted Thursday on charges of second-degree arson, insurance fraud, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child for the Sept. 1 blaze that destroyed their Duell Hollow Road mobile home in Buskirk, the indictment said.
http://liarcatchers.com/arson_investigation.html
The child, who escaped injuries, was awakened and led out of the home by the couple as the fire started, authorities said.
Ruggles and Coon were sent to the Washington County Jail without bail after pleading not guilty at their arraignments Thursday in Washington County Court, according to the Office of District Attorney Kevin Kortright.
Authorities said the couple sprayed lighter fluid into an electrical outlet to make the fire appear electrical in origin. Investigators initially believed it was an accident until Coon admitted to State Police on Sept. 5 that the fire was deliberately set to collect $60,000 from their homeowners insurance policy, authorities said.
Coon told investigators they wanted a larger home.
Coon was sent to jail on $30,000 cash, $75,000 bond and Ruggles on $75,000 cash, $150,000 bond. The cases were adjourned until Nov. 30.
A gunman caught on surveillance video shooting his victim at point-blank range in March pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree manslaughter.
Taire M. Chaney, 21, admitted shooting Anthony L. Pitts, 20, in the head early March 2 outside Pandora’s Sports Bar at Fillmore and Victoria avenues. The shooting followed a minor altercation inside the tavern about an hour earlier.
http://liarcatchers.com/wrongful_death.html
“I was at a bar, and things got out of hand,” Chaney told State Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Burns. “It was the worst decision of my life.”
After Chaney’s arrest, Mayor Byron W. Brown and Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda met with reporters outside the bar to reveal how a city surveillance camera, on a utility pole more than two blocks away, helped lead homicide detectives to Chaney. Security cameras also captured what police called graphic footage of the shooting.
The two officials hailed the use of the surveillance camera as a crime-fighting tool. Since 2006, the Brown administration has added 125 such cameras, with 25 more on the way, the mayor said at the time of Chaney’s arrest.
Brown also praised residents who provided tips to detectives, leading to Chaney’s arrest on a charge of second-degree murder.
Prosecutor Mary Beth DePasquale said Pitts’ family consented to the plea.
“They are in agreement with this disposition,” she told the judge.
Chaney faces five to 25 years in prison when sentenced Oct. 23. The District Attorney’s Office will seek the maximum sentence, DePasquale said.
Burns did not say how long a prison term he is inclined to impose.
“I will listen to recommendations each side wants to provide,” he said.