November 2010 Archives

A Phoenix woman pleaded not guilty to charges of manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision involving a death yesterday. The criminal charges came after 18-year-old Joey Romero, a senior at Centennial High School, died after being struck by a vehicle on October 29 near 83rd Avenue and Thunderbird Road in Peoria.

According to ABC News, the suspect Laura Flanders was arrested a day after the incident after Peoria police received tips about the incident from community members. The 23-year-old woman now has a pretrial conference scheduled for January 13.

The rapper DMX, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was put back in the Maricopa County Jail last week for the sixth time. According to the Phoenix New Times, the rapper's most recent arrest is once again due to an alleged probation violation. He is currently being held behind bars without bail for the alleged offense and has a court date scheduled for November 24.

DMX will most likely want to have a Phoenix criminal defense attorney by his side in court tomorrow; since the rapper claims that his probation violation came about for taking just one sip of alcohol. However, court documents say that the rapper violated the terms of his probation for several different offenses; none of which are because of the man taking a sip of alcohol.

The East Valley Tribune reports that Mesa City Council agreed earlier this week to draft new regulations for hotels and motels in order to deter crime at these locations. The new measures in Mesa are also being adopted to help police officers investigate illegal activity.

The ordinance will require hotels to identify guests by asking for identification at check in. The hotels in Mesa will reportedly be required to keep guest information for a year and could face fines ranging from $250 to $2,500 for violating such a policy. The city is looking to set up a hotel review board to enforce the policy.

The mysterious murder of ASU student Zachary Marco on October 17 came as a shock to many people in the city of Tempe, mostly because of the very few details that police were able to uncover in the unsolved murder case. However, FOX News reports that Tempe police officers recently arrested 20-year-old Louis Eugene Harper and 17-year-old Marion Anthony Patterson on suspicion of first-degree murder and armed robbery in connection with Zachary Marco’s death.

Lessons in voting are learned the hard way. Some people in Arizona may have recently learned of the importance of voting, as the controversial ballot measure to legalize medical marijuana in the state was passed by just 4,341 votes out of more than 1.67 million votes counted. ABC News reported that the unofficial count for Proposition 203 resulted with 841,346 votes in favor of the measure and 837,005 opposed.

Many Arizonians are now arguing that Proposition 203 isn’t really about medicine, but about the legalization of a drug — arguing that the legalization of medical marijuana will eventually lead to the legalization of marijuana for everybody in Arizona. Yet it’s important to remember that the state currently still imposes harsh penalties for marijuana possession and the cultivation of marijuana.

An 18-year-old man was riding his Suzuki GSX-R 750 at speeds over 100 mph and said that he was comfortable going so fast because there was hardly any traffic on the road at the time of 3:00 a.m. The Arizona Republic reports that the suspect Robert Gerardi at first tried to get away from police officers, but that he eventually stopped because he wanted the chase to be over with.

FOX News reports that Steven W. Allen used to work as a Mesa attorney, but was convicted of tax fraud and will now spend almost four years in prison for the offense. Prosecutors said that Steven Allen helped his clients evade their taxes by promoting and selling a fraudulent scheme that involved setting up bogus foreign trusts to hide his clients' income.

Phoenix murder crimes can often be frightening to some residents of the area. But after a case goes to court, residents can feel more at ease.

A Phoenix man recently pleaded guilty to the murders of his 61-year-old mother Sheila Lampert and his 14-year-old nephew Logan Lampert, ending another murder mystery of the Valley. The Phoenix New Times reports that the defendant Erik Lampert was described as a "bipolar loner" that rarely left his Phoenix neighborhood. The man was living with his mother at the time of the deaths of the family members.  The suspect was actually found more than 27 miles from his home in a Tempe park at the time of his arrest.

Identity theft is perhaps one of the scariest crimes for consumers, because it can happen to anybody when they least expect it. Perhaps it's good to know that a person can face harsh penalties for an identity theft conviction in the state of Arizona, especially when there are five or more victims involved in an identity theft case.

Associated Press reported that a 56-year-old woman from Tucson was recently sentenced to 48 months in prison for stealing another person's identity. Mary Helen Romero pleaded guilty to bank fraud and aggravated identity theft last summer after she was caught in fraud schemes that lasted from March 2009 to June 2009.

A Tucson man that was convicted of raping two students at the University of Arizona was sentenced to 544 years in prison earlier this week. The Arizona Daily Star reports that 31-year-old Manuel L. Garcia was convicted of 19 felony counts last July, which included multiple counts of sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary, and aggravated assault.

While Pima County jurors were deliberating in this case, Manuel Garcia reportedly cut off his GPS ankle monitor and escaped from the surveillance of authorities. Pima County Superior Court Judge John Leonardo had to issue a warrant for his arrest, but the suspect was later found in midtown Tucson and rearrested in August.

A man in Tempe faces an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge and in this case the deadly weapon is a tequila bottle. The Arizona Republic reports that 26-year-old Jesus A. Lopez-Valle allegedly entered the home of his ex-girlfriend last Saturday and swung a tequila bottle at her current boyfriend Ray Brown, cutting his jugular vein. The suspect also allegedly hit his ex-girlfriend with the tequila bottle before going after Ray Brown.