OFFICER DOWN Elieser “Eli” Colonroche

 

Patrol Officer
Elieser “Eli” Colonroche

Sanford Police Department, North Carolina

End of Watch: Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Biographical Info
Age: 55

Tour of Duty: 31 years

Badge Number: Not available

Incident Details
Cause of Death: Training accident

Date of Incident: July 5, 2011

Weapon Used: Not available

Suspect Info: Not available

Patrol Officer Eli Colonroche succumbed to injuries sustained at about 9:30 am while participating in a training exercise at the Central Carolina Community College.

He and several other officers were descending a four-story rappelling tower when he collided with the tower’s third story. He continued his descent to the ground where he was evaluated by other officers. He was transported to a local hospital where it was determined he was suffering from internal bleeding. He was flown to UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill where he passed away at about 6:00 pm.

Officer had served with the Sanford Police Department for nine years and had previously served as a U.S. Army MP for 22 years. He is survived by his wife and three sons.

Agency Contact Information
Sanford Police Department
225 E Weatherspoon Street
Sanford, NC 27330

Phone: (919) 775-8268

Nigerian without passport and holding an expired boarding pass makes pass security to plane www.privateofficer.com

 

LOS ANGELES CA July 7 2011 —A Nigerian man without a passport and clutching another traveler’s expired boarding pass made it through a New York airport federal security checkpoint and boarded a Virgin America jetliner to Los Angeles International Airport, authorities said Thursday.
The incident has raised questions about the effectiveness of airport and airline screening procedures.

Days later, Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi tried to board a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta with another expired pass and was arrested and charged with being a stowaway aboard an aircraft, the FBI said.

He could face up to five years in prison if convicted, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. He’s expected to appear in a Los Angeles federal courtroom on Friday.

Investigators say Noibi, whose age hasn’t been released, boarded Virgin America Flight 415 at John F. Kennedy International Airport last Friday night. The flight crew didn’t realize an extra passenger was onboard until mid-flight.

Noibi’s name wasn’t on the flight manifest.

In an affidavit, FBI Agent Kevin Hogg said Noibi sat in a seat that was supposed to be empty. Flight attendants asked him for a boarding pass and he presented one that was a day old and had someone else’s name on it. He also showed a University of Michigan identification card with his picture on it.

University of Michigan spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham said Noibi is not a current student, but was enrolled as an engineering student at the Ann Arbor university between 2004 and 2006.
The boarding pass belonged to a man who said his pass went missing from his pocket on his way to the airport on June 23. Noibi boarded the plane with the expired pass the next day.

Identity checks at airport security checkpoints were put in place as one of many new security measures after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The federal document checkers have basic fraudulent identification training.

“Every passenger that passes through security checkpoints is subject to many layers of security including thorough physical screening at the checkpoint,” Transportation Security Administration spokesman Greg Soule said. “TSA’s review of this matter indicates that the passenger went through screening.”

TSA would not comment on what else happened, citing an ongoing FBI investigation.

Eimiller said the Virgin America flight crew asked law enforcement to meet the plane on arrival early Saturday at Los Angeles International Airport.

There was no immediate threat to the aircraft, so the flight wasn’t diverted, Eimiller said.

Hogg met the flight and detained and questioned Noibi.

“He wasn’t arrested at that time. Beyond traveling without a ticket there was no immediate threat,” Eimiller said.

Noibi spent several days in Southern California before returning to the Los Angeles airport on Wednesday, when he tried to board a Delta flight bound for Atlanta. The FBI said he again presented an expired boarding pass and had no valid identification.

A search of his bag found 10 expired boarding passes, none of them with his name.

Noibi was then arrested.

A U.S. District Court hearing Wednesday was postponed until Friday. He was still in custody pending that hearing,” Eimiller added.

Source:Mercury News/Associated Press

Murder of Virginia security officer remains unsolved after 2 years www.privateofficer.com

 

CHESTERFIELD, VA July 7 2011 – It was two years ago this week a Chesterfield security officer was found beaten to death while on the job.

Friends and family members of 28-year-old Damion West say they need answers now. No one has been arrested or charged in the murder.

Patricia Blowe is beyond heartbroken.

“That was my first born and he was my everything,” Blowe said with tears streaming down her face.

Her son, Damion West, was found beaten to death at the Ivy Walk Apartments in Chesterfield — two years ago this week.

“I want closure. I want to know why. Any mother would want to know — what was the reason for anyone to take my son’s life like that?” Blowe said.

West was working as a security guard at the apartment complex when his body was found near a retention pond.

“And then someone came up from behind and hit him in the back of his head — they cracked his skull,” Blowe said.

A makeshift memorial now marks where West died.

And for the first time family members say they believe West was targeted by someone he had dealings with at the complex while working security.

The murder victim’s 5-year-old son, Damion Jr., has plenty to say about his daddy.

“He would rub me on my back and he brush my hair before I go to school,” he said.

Loved ones say they don’t hate those responsible for West’s murder. They do want the culprits or anyone with information to step up and speak out.

“If anybody knows I’m asking them to come forward — that’s all. So we can get closure and I can have peace,” Blowe said.

If you have any information about this case you can call Crime Solvers anonymously at 748-0660.

Source:NBC12.com

A Louisville Gas & Electric employee kills supervisor- commits suicide www.privateofficer.com

 

Louisville KY July 7 2011 A Louisville Gas &Electric employee fatally shot a supervisor before shooting and killing himself Tuesday afternoon at one of the utility’s regional depots in south-central Louisville, Louisville Metro Police said.

The male employee shot his supervisor in the manager’s office, Police Chief Robert White said. Police recovered a handgun at the scene.
The employee was Jeremy W. “Billy” Davis, 52, who lived in the 7300 block of Watson Lane, said Jack Arnold, a Jefferson County deputy coroner. The supervisor was Andre Johnson, 53, of the 100 block of East Maple Court in Clarksville, Ind., Arnold said.

“We don’t believe any other employee was fired upon,” said Sgt. Robert Biven, an LMPD spokesman.
“I would never say anything is open and shut,” said Lt. Barry Wilkerson, the head of LMPD’s homicide unit, “but this appears to be an open and shut case.”

An LG&E worker alerted police at 1:35 p.m. of the shooting at LG&E’s South Service Center in the 4600 block of Jennings Lane, opposite the Louisville Produce Terminal in Watterson Park.
Police did not disclose any information about what may have led to the shooting.
“There is nothing rational about this,” Biven said from an asphalt driveway nearby, adding that “there is an alternative way to work things out without people getting hurt.” He wouldn’t elaborate.
Johnson was in charge of the center, which employs 50 people and dispatches LG&E bucket trucks and crews to the South End, including Okolona and Shively, LG&E spokesman Chip Keeling said.
Both Johnson and Davis were longtime company employees, Keeling said.
The shooting, he said, was “a terrible tragedy.”
“I am shook up,” Keeling said. “Our employees are extra close.”
He said LG&E policy forbids employees from carrying arms in the workplace.
While police combed the supervisor’s office inside a white, aluminum-clad building at the industrial complex, about 15 LG&E workers huddled in the center’s gravel parking lot.

source:louisville courier journal.com

Tennessee police capture pharmacy robbery suspect www.privateofficer.com

 

 

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn.July 7 2011 – Police have arrested a man for a pharmacy robbery in Clarksville.

Police took David Preston Saunders into custody on Wednesday morning. He was positively identified from a lineup as the man who robbed the Walgreens on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard at gunpoint on Monday.

He was booked into the Montgomery County Jail and charged with aggravated robbery. He is being held on $100,000 bond.

Police are still investigating whether he was involved in two other pharmacy robberies on Sunday.

Police said at about 1 p.m. Sunday, a man walked up to the pharmacy at K-Mart and handed a note to the clerk indicating he had a gun. He left with two bottles of Xanax.

About an hour later, investigators believe the same man walked into the Walgreens on Fort Campbell Boulevard, told two employees he had a gun, and demanded methadone.

Source:news5

NC 15 year old arrested for killing mother www.privateofficer.com

 

HENDERSON, NC July 7 2011 — Police have charged an unnamed 15-year-old with killing his Henderson mother in her home.

Investigators said last month that 33-year-old Letitia Hammond’s daughter came home and found her shot to death at their house at 710 S. Carolina Avenue on June 15.

Police said that the son is charged with first-degree murder and has a hearing in Vance County District Court Friday. The teen was in the custody of Juvenile Services.

Investigators have not said what the motive for the alleged murder was. They’ve said from the beginning that they didn’t believe the killing was a random act.

Hammond was a mother of three – two girls and the 15-year-old boy. Neighbors interviewed in June described her as a quiet woman who spent a lot of time with her kids.

Longtime friend Vergia Hayes said she was stunned when she got the news of Hammond’s death.

“I was devastated because she’s a very sweet person,” she said.

Source:WTVD

Orange County deputy strikes-kills pedestrian www.privateofficer.com

 

Orlando Fla July 7 2011 Authorities have confirmed an Orange deputy struck and killed a pedestrian who is thought to have been watching an illegal street race early this morning.

The 21-year-old man had been standing in the median about 3:08 a.m. when he walked into the left front side of the deputy’s cruiser, which had been traveling westbound in the inside lane of the 3800 block of Wetherbee Road near Sawgrass Plantation Boulevard.

The man was thrown onto the windshield of the deputy’s cruiser, said Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Kim Montes.

The deputy in the cruiser was not using lights or sirens, Montes confirmed.

The FHP identified him as Joey Busque, 30, of Orlando.

Busque, who has been employed by the Sheriff’s Office since 2008, had been part of a two-man unit tasked with monitoring and breaking up street races, said Sheriff’s spokesman Jeff Williamson.

He was “shaken up” by the incident but otherwise uninjured, Williamson said.

Well-organized racing groups and events, which move from location to location in order to avoid law enforcement, can draw hundreds of spectators from throughout the state.

The races are always dangerous — and illegal — for both participants and spectators, Montes said, in part because people watching the races are standing in areas that are very dark.

The area where the crash happened is one known to be a popular location for such races. In the past, other popular Central Florida street-racing locations have included Taft-Vineland Road, Lee Vista Boulevard near S.R. 417, Presidents Drive, State Road 408 near Alafaya Trail and Heintzelman Boulevard.

The street racing unit made no arrests this morning, Williamson said.

FHP is still investigating the incident.

Source:orlando sentinel

Mississippi copper theft ring busted in Louisiana www.privateofficer.com

 

Plaquemines Parish LA July 7 2011 Nine suspects have been arrested in connection with a copper theft ring in Plaquemines Parish that generated nearly $360,000 over 20 months, authorities announced today.

Eight of the suspects were from Mississippi, said Sheriff Jiff Hingle in a news release. The thefts occurred on the east bank of Plaquemines in areas that were only accessible by boat, Hingle said. The thefts resulted in $357,702 in cash for the sold items, the sheriff said.

Lead Detective Sidney Smith and Lt. Detective Mark Plumer, along with representatives of the Pearl River County Sheriff’s Office executed search warrants that netted five suspects. Two others surrendered to authorities at Plaquemines Parish Lock-up in Belle Chasse. The investigation is continuing, police said.

Those arrested are: Paul A. Delyea J.r, 43, 61 Howell Road, Picayune, Miss.

Anne M. Delyea, 30, 61 Howell Road, Picayune, Miss.

Timothy J. Givens, 25, 85 Curly Seal Road, Picayune, Miss.

Aaron A. Smith, 26, 3 Esther Lane, Carriere, Miss.

Harold J. Carver, 39 119 Highway 11, Apt. 4, Picayune, Miss.

Mack C. Champlin, 48, 25 Frog Pond Road, Picayune, Miss.

Dustin Beasley, 18, 61 Howell Road, Picayune, Miss.

Houston J. Delyea, 17, 702 Stonewood Drive, Covington, La.

Michael E. Beech, 22, 657 Old Highway 11, Carriere, Miss.

Source:nola.com

Armed robbery suspect wanted in Mississippi Kohl’s store theft www.privateofficer.com

 

D’Iberville MS. July 7 2011 Police need your help finding a shoplifter who drew a knife on a store clerk as he made his getaway.

Investigators say a Kohl’s employee first became suspicious of the man while he was still inside the store. When he tried to exit the store without paying for his items, the employee tried to stop him. That’s when the man pulled out a knife and threatened all the nearby employees.

Witnesses said the man got away in a gold colored Ford Contour or Mercury Mystique.

Kohl’s security video managed to catch a picture of the suspect inside the store.

If you recognize the man, or have any information that could help investigators, call the D’Iberville Police Department at (228) 396-4252 or Crime Stoppers at 1-877-787-5898. You can also leave a tip online at http://www.crimestoppers.com.

By the way, police say the armed shoplifter only got away with about $100 worth of clothing.

Mental health patients gaining their gun rights back www.privateofficer.com

 

PULASKI, Va. July 7 2011- In May 2009, Sam French hit bottom, once again. A relative found him face down in his carport “talking gibberish,’’ according to court records. He later told medical personnel that he had been conversing with a bear in his backyard and hearing voices.

His family figured French had gone off his medication for bipolar disorder, and a judge ordered him involuntarily committed – the fourth time in five years he had been hospitalized by court order.

When French’s daughter discovered that her father’s commitment meant it was illegal for him to have firearms, she and her husband removed his guns and kept them after French was released in January 2010 on a new regime of mood-stabilizing drugs.

Ten months later, he appeared in General District Court – the body that handles small claims and traffic infractions – to ask a judge to restore his gun rights. After a brief hearing, in which French’s lengthy history of relapses never came up, he walked out with an order reinstating his right to possess firearms.

Across the country, states are increasingly allowing people like French, who lost their firearm rights because of mental illness, to petition to have them restored.

A handful of states have had such restoration laws on their books for some time, but with little notice, more than 20 states have passed similar measures since 2008.

The intent of these state laws is to enable people to regain the right to buy and possess firearms if it is determined that they are not a threat to public safety.

But an examination of restoration procedures across the country, along with dozens of cases, shows that the process for making that determination is governed in many places by vague standards and few specific requirements.

States have mostly entrusted these decisions to judges, who are often ill-equipped to conduct investigations from the bench. Many seemed willing simply to give petitioners the benefit of the doubt. The results often seem haphazard.

At least a few hundred people with histories of mental health issues get their gun rights back each year. The number promises to grow, since most of the new state laws are beginning to take effect.

The issue goes to the heart of the nation’s complicated relationship with guns, testing the delicate balance between the need to safeguard the public and the dictates of what the Supreme Court has proclaimed to be a fundamental constitutional right.

In case after case examined by The New York Times, judges made decisions without important information about an applicant’s mental health.

The difficulty of assessing risk emerges in places like Los Angeles, where the Superior Court conducts a relatively thorough review of firearms rights requests.

The Times found multiple instances over the last decade in which people who won back their gun rights went on to be charged with or convicted of violent or gun-related crimes, including spousal battery, negligent discharge of a firearm, or assault with a firearm.

Then there are the nightmare cases – like that of Ryan Anthony, 35, a former Emmy Award-winning animator at Disney who was involuntarily hospitalized in mid-2001 after losing his job and separating from his wife.

Anthony filed a petition to get back his gun rights in early 2002, telling a court-appointed psychiatrist that he wanted to go skeet shooting.

A few weeks after the court granted his petition, Anthony bought a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun, holed up in a Holiday Inn in Burbank, Calif., and committed suicide.

Source:Boston.com

Teen faces 8 years in prison for blow up doll joke www.privateofficer.com

 

INDIANAPOLIS I N July 7 2011— Eighteen-year-old Tyell Morton is in a whole lot of trouble for putting a blow-up sex doll in his high school’s girl’s bathroom.

Morton’s May 31 prank, in which he left the doll in a box in a restroom stall, could land him in jail for eight years, reports WRTV. Officials have charged him with criminal mischief.

A janitor saw him run away from the campus on the last day of school, and security video showed a person wearing a hooded sweatshirt entering the school with a package and leaving five minutes later without it, according to Smoosh.com.

The high school was then locked down and police and the bomb squad were called because school officials thought the package might be a bomb.

Morton is currently out on bail.

One Las Vegas tourist is dead after beating at casino www.privateofficer.com

 

LAS VEGAS NV July 7 2011– Authorities say a Florida man is in custody on accusations that he punched a Utah man in the face killing him inside a Las Vegas Strip casino.

Police say the men were tourists and didn’t know each other before the altercation. Police say the two men argued in a restroom shortly before the slaying at about 12:45 a.m. Wednesday at O’Sheas Las Vegas Casino.

Police say the argument continued as the two men went to a lobby area, where one punched the other, killing him. Police are still investigating what sparked the altercation.

Police Lt. Jeff Whitehead says homicide detectives are questioning possible witnesses and reviewing casino surveillance videotapes.

Source:News8