Wichita Eagle: Crime andamp; Courts

Two men arrested in stolen car linked to west-side burglary, Wichita police say

Stan Finger — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:02 CST

Two men arrested after they were spotted in a stolen car Wednesday afternoon have been linked to a burglary in west Wichita earlier in the week, police say.

An officer on patrol recognized a Hyundai Elantra in southeast Wichita at about 2 p.m. as possibly being stolen, Lt. Doug Nolte said. When he attempted to pull it over near Pawnee and Hydraulic, the Elantra sped away.

After a brief pursuit, the patrol officer backed off and a police helicopter began tracking the car from the air, Nolte said. The woman and two men in the Elantra bailed from the car in the 1900 block of South Minneapolis, but the helicopter was able to track the trio as they fled and led officers in the area to them.

Survey: Most in Barton County already believe Longoria guilty of killing 14-year-old girl

RON SYLVESTER — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:53 CST

Three out of four people surveyed in Barton County believe Adam Longoria is guilty of killing a 14-year-old girl.

Alicia DeBolt disappeared around 11 p.m. Aug. 21, after telling her mother she was going to a party. Neighbors said they saw the girl get into an SUV similar to one Longoria drove. DeBolt’s charred body was found days later at an asphalt plant south of Great Bend, where Longoria worked.

The survey, conducted through Pittsburg State University, is evidence Longoria cannot get a fair trial here, his defense argued Wednesday morning.

Federal gun sting draws 20th guilty plea

RON SYLVESTER — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:32 CST

A 22-year-old Wichita man became the 20th defendant to plead guilty in federal court from a sting operation against convicted felons who carried guns.

D’Andre Tomlin pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful possession of a firearm after a felony conviction, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said Monday. In a plea before U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren, Tomlin admitted that on Sept. 9, 2011, he possessed a Heckler and Koch 9 mm pistol. Tomlin had been convicted on three counts of aggravated robbery in Douglas County, according to the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives.

Tomlin, one of 67 people arrested during the sting last fall, is set for sentencing April 25. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000.

Bill seeks lifetime protection for abuse victims

Hurst Laviana — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:23 CST

The letter from the Kansas Department of Corrections reached Kristen Beaudette’s Goddard home in August 2010.

She thought she and her daughter were protected from the man who had broken her daughter’s arm when the girl was a month old.

Beaudette and her daughter had new identities – new names, new birth certificates and new Social Security numbers – and a protection-from-abuse order that barred the daughter’s father from having direct or indirect contact with her.

Man attempts to run over police officer while fleeing scene

Roy Wenzl — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:33 CST

A man fleeing the scene of a fuel theft crashed a gate and tried to run over a responding police officer early this morning in south Wichita. The officers fired at his truck several times, striking the windshield at least once. Law enforcement officials captured him hours later after he tried to steal more fuel, and led officers on a chase that ended with a search in muddy fields.

Two officers just after midnight were called to the 1300 block of South Bebe to check on a burglar alarm, Lt. Ken Landwehr said.

A man in a large Dodge pickup tried to run one of the officers over as he crashed a gate and tried to drive away from an industrial area, Landwehr said.. The officer fired multiple shots at the truck as it came at him, but neither the driver nor the officer was hurt. The driver of the truck had three light-weight portable fuel tanks in the back of the truck that he was using to steal fuel; two of them fell off as he escaped.

Wichita police: 2011 saw jumps in homicides, stolen vehicles

Stan Finger — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:35 CST

Last year saw dramatic spikes in homicides, auto thefts and felony larcenies over 2010, Wichita police officials said Friday. But the numbers remain level with or below the city’s five-year average.

There were 27 homicides in 2011, up 50 percent from the 18 in 2010, Police Chief Norman Williams said.

But last year’s total – which included two homicides ruled justified – is still below the five-year average of 29.

Bonner gets more than 13 years for role in killing at Wichita apartment

RON SYLVESTER — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:53 CST

Jalessa Bonner asked a judge to give her a second chance, so she could go to school and turn her life around.

Lalita Utsey, whose son, Otis Bolden Jr., died at the hands of Bonner’s boyfriend two years ago, had a different idea.

“You want to raise your son? I have to raise his kids. You have plans to go to college? I made burial plans,” Utsey said Friday, before Sedgwick County District Judge Ben Burgess sentenced Bonner to serve more than 13 years in prison.

Most Kansas sexual predators never leave treatment program

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:54 CST

LAWRENCE – Sexually violent predators who are ordered to a state hospital for treatment after serving prison sentences are almost never released, and Kansas officials say they expect the overcrowded program to continue expanding.

The Sexual Predator Treatment Program, which began in 1994, gave prosecutors a place to indefinitely hold convicted sex offenders who are considered too dangerous to release from prison. Instead, prisoners are sent to Larned State Hospital for treatment with the goal of being released back into society.

But data from the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services shows that only three have been released since 1994, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. In the same time period, 17 have died, according to the SRS.

How a fugitive’s trail of alleged crimes went through Valley Center

Tim Potter — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:46 CST

Starting around 1996, Daniel Urive Perez left a trail of trouble that began in Texas.

His trail stretched to North Dakota, South Dakota, the Kansas City area, rural Valley Center, Tennessee and, finally, Wichita, according to records and interviews. He is being held in the Sedgwick County Jail under a $2.1 million bond after being charged earlier this month with first-degree murder; multiple sex crimes, including crimes against children; multiple counts of aggravated assault involving a rifle; criminal threat; and filing false information in applications for auto credit and life insurance. The alleged crimes occurred in Sedgwick County between 2002 and 2010, the charges say.

Along the way, Perez – a fugitive from Texas who fled around 1997 before he could be sentenced for indecency with a child – collected an entourage. Some of them moved from state to state with him. They lived what seemed to be communal existences, financed in part by large life insurance payouts from associates or relatives who died in accidents, court documents say. About a dozen people associated with Perez or his group have died.

Ronald Bevan guilty in Kellogg accident that killed 5-year-old

Amy Renee Leiker — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:37 CST

Ronald Bevan was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Friday for his role in an accident that killed a 5-year-old Clearwater girl last year on Kellogg.

Bevan also was found guilty of aggravated battery and involuntary manslaughter while driving under the influence in the wreck that killed Amber Randolph and injured her mother, Michelle.

Police say Bevan was drunk and racing a friend on westbound Kellogg last February. Bevan cut off his friend’s vehicle, which caused it to slide over the Kellogg median and into the car driven by Michelle Randolph. Amber, a kindergartner at Clearwater West Elementary School, was riding in the back seat.

Jury deliberates in case of Kellogg car crash that killed 5-year-old

AMY RENEE LEIKER — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:37 CST

A Sedgwick County jury will resume deliberations this morning in the murder trial of Ronald Bevan, charged in the death of a 5-year-old girl killed last year in a car crash on Kellogg.

Bevan faces second-degree murder charges in the death of Amber Randolph, a Clearwater kindergartener killed Feb. 12, 2010, after a pickup driven by Bevan’s friend, Matthew Noel, crashed head-on into a Camry driven by the girl’s mother.

Bevan also faces one count of aggravated battery for injuries Amber’s mother, Michelle Randolph, sustained in the accident and one charge of involuntary manslaughter while driving under the influence. Bevan did not testify during the trial.

Study shows Sedgwick County District Court needs to expand by eight judges

Deb Gruver — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:10 CST

Kansas has enough judges, but they’re not in the right places, a study says, and the Kansas Supreme Court wants the right to change that.

The Blue-Ribbon Commission on the Judiciary wants the state to give the Kansas Supreme Court the power to put judges where they are needed the most — including more in Sedgwick County.

State law now requires each of Kansas’ 105 counties to have its own judge. The commission says in a report recently made public that some counties don’t generate enough cases to warrant a full-time judge “while other areas of the state have workloads that justify additional judges.” The commission hopes to get the Kansas Legislature to repeal the law and give judicial authority to the Supreme Court.

Federal judge Wesley Brown dies at age 104 in Wichita

RON SYLVESTER — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:21 CST

U.S. Senior District Judge Wesley Brown has died at age 104.

Brown died Monday evening at Larksfield Place, where he had lived for several years, Judge Monti Belot said Tuesday morning.

“There comes a time, and he was just ready,” said Belot, who served as Brown’s law clerk early in his career before joining the federal bench in Wichita in 1991.

Defendant Kiara Williams during her murder trial: ‘Why am I here?’

RON SYLVESTER — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:08 CST

Kiara Williams told a jury Monday morning that she thought she was going with a friend to smoke marijuana and then pick up her child.

Instead, Williams testified, she ended up in a car on the way to kill a man.

Williams, testifying in her own defense under a charge of murder, swore she didn’t know that the other people in the car were headed to the apartment of Otis Bolden Jr. the morning he was shot to death nearly two years ago.

Tuesday forum to focus on repeal of state’s death penalty law

RON SYLVESTER — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:20 CST

As a bill to repeal the death penalty languishes in the Statehouse, a local church-women’s group hopes to help revive legislators’ interest on the issue.

The United Methodist Women’s group at College Hill United Methodist Church in Wichita is sponsoring a forum on the death penalty Tuesday. It follows a daylong rally last November at Wichita State University by the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which said it is seeing similar programs sprouting up across the state.

“The death penalty has reached a point where it’s outdated,” said Jeff Wicks, an attorney with the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit and one of Tuesday’s speakers. “It comes from a time when we didn’t have the ability to maintain law and order, as we do now.”

Defendant’s conduct left others suspicious

Tim Potter — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:50 CST

People now know his real name is Daniel U. Perez.

His neighbors and acquaintances now know that Perez is a 52-year-old fugitive who fled after being convicted of sex crimes against a child in Texas in the 1990s.

Perez made his first appearance Thursday in Sedgwick County District Court on charges that he murdered a Valley Center woman in 2003, whose death had been classified as an accidental drowning. Prosecutors also charged him with multiple sex crimes against children from 2002 to 2009.

Woman recalls shooting of man she said raped her two years earlier

RON SYLVESTER — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:08 CST

Jalessa Bonner remembered that when she was 17, an ex-boyfriend put a gun to her head and made her have sex with seven men.

Two years later, Bonner said, she ended up at the apartment of one of those men. He ended up being shot by Bonner’s boyfriend and his cousin.

Bonner recalled the story from the witness stand Thursday while testifying against her best friend, Kiara Williams.

Fugitive charged with murder in 2003 death

Tim Potter — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:50 CST

A fugitive who lived on what has been described as a compound in rural Valley Center is now charged with murder and multiple sex crimes against children.

Thursday afternoon, Daniel U. Perez, 52, who had been known to people in the Wichita-Valley Center area as Lou Castro, made his first appearance, via video monitor, in Sedgwick County District Court. Bond has been set at $2.1 million.

Prosecutors charged Perez with first-degree murder in the death of Patricia Hughes, 26, of Valley Center, who died in 2003. She lived in one of three houses that neighbors referred to as a compound, in the 9500 block of North Oliver. For years, her death had been classified as an accidental drowning at a swimming pool on the property, but the murder charge accuses Perez of intentionally inflicting injuries that killed Hughes.

Personal information of thousands taken from Department of Aging in car break-in

Hurst Laviana The Wichita Eagle — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:31 CST

The Kansas Department on Aging is trying to contact 7,000 Wichita-area residents whose personal information was taken when a laptop computer and some paper files were stolen from an employee’s car last week while parked at a west Wichita hotel.

Secretary of Aging Shawn Sullivan said the information came from residents enrolled in the department’s home and community-based programs for seniors.

He said the files contained no bank, credit card or driver’s license information, and he said there was no indication that any of the information had been used improperly.

Officer testifies Kishen Woods admitted shooting wife

RON SYLVESTER — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:50 CST

As Wichita police officer Jeremy Miller responded to a shooting call near 13th and Grove last November, he saw a woman lying motionless in the street and children running toward him.

“Those are her kids,” Miller heard a man yell. “Put them in your car.”

It was noon on Nov. 12, and the children had just seen their mother gunned down. Miller saw another man standing in the front yard of a house, wearing a black fur-like coat and a blue cap. When he saw the officer, he started running.