National Roundup

Colorado
Man ­acknowledges role in killing 2 high school ­students
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado Springs man has pleaded guilty to his role in the gang-related killings of two high school students.

The Gazette reports 20-year-old Diego Chacon pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of second-degree murder in the March 2017 shooting deaths of 16-year-old Natalie Cano-Partida and 15-year-old Derek Greer.

Chacon’s plea deal calls for a 65-year prison sentence and doesn’t require him to testify against 22-year-old Marco Garcia-Bravo, the other alleged shooter.

Chacon said that after shooting Partida, he “passed off the gun to another individual,” who then shot Greer. He didn’t identify the second shooter.

The teens were abducted at gunpoint and driven to a road outside Fountain, where they were shot at point-blank range. Investigators said they were targeted over suspicions that Cano-Partida had been helping a rival street gang.

Greer was killed to eliminate a witness.

Hawaii
State high court lets ruling stand on giant ­telescope
HILO, Hawaii (AP) — The Hawaii Supreme Court is letting its decision stand in upholding the construction permit for a giant telescope planned for the state’s tallest mountain.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports the state’s highest court filed an order last week denying opponents’ motion for it to reconsider the ruling on the Big Island project.

The court ruled 4-1 on Oct. 30 that the state land board was correct in approving a permit to build Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea, a mountain some Native Hawaiians consider sacred.

Kealoha Pisciotta, one of the people who challenged the project in court, says they will “use all the avenues we can, including legal avenues,” in continuing to try to stop the $1.4 billion observatory from being built.

New York
Developer gets prison in ‘Buffalo Billion’ bid rigging case
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge Monday sentenced a Buffalo developer to 28 months behind bars and ordered him to pay a $500,000 fine in a bid-rigging scheme connected to Gov.
Andrew Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion” economic redevelopment program.

U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni suspended the prison term while Louis Ciminelli appeals his conviction.

Ciminelli, 63, was found guilty with three others over the summer in a pay-to-play conspiracy in which his firm won a development job worth a half billion dollars. Prosecutors called the scheme an “enormous fraud” and said it involved state-funded contracts worth more than $850 million.

Ciminelli and others in his company contributed nearly $100,000 to Cuomo’s campaign, prosecutors said. The Democratic governor was not accused of wrongdoing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky asked Caproni not to allow Ciminelli the chance to “buy his way out of prison” by pointing to his years of philanthropy in Buffalo. Rather, he asked the judge to send the message that “everyone has to play by the same rules” when bidding on state contracts, irrespective of which lobbyists they know and which connections they have.
Caproni credited Ciminelli for his generous giving and said she had taken into account the developer’s recent diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. But she also scolded Ciminelli for obstructing the federal investigation by deleting a critical email after he heard the footsteps of the FBI.

“I hope this sentence will be heard around the state,” the judge said.

While Caproni warned of the far-reaching — and nonmonetary— consequences of corruption, she also seemed skeptical of some portions of the government’s case, which Ciminelli’s defense attorney had assailed as weak. She noted the developer would have faced a significantly harsher sentence had federal prosecutors managed to put a more precise price tag on the loss to taxpayers.

Caproni said the case left her and others to wonder what other economic development projects Ciminelli’s construction firm might have won by “cheating.”

Ciminelli, who has maintained his innocence, told the judge he intends to keep fighting to clear his name.

His defense attorney, Paul Shechtman, argued Ciminelli already has suffered the loss of his company and his previously “unblemished reputation.” Outside the Manhattan courthouse, Shechtman told reporters he was pleased his client had been released while a federal appeals court decides “what (Caproni) acknowledged are substantial legal issues.”

“Particularly in political corruption cases, she’s a strong minded judge,” he said of Caproni, “so I take great solace in that on what is otherwise a very difficult day.”

The jury that found Ciminelli guilty also convicted two other developers and one of Cuomo’s top economic development advisers, former State University of New York Polytechnic Institute President Alain Kaloyeros.

Kaloyeros is scheduled for sentencing next week.

Maryland
EMS worker accused of ­inappropriately touching patient
GAITHERSBURG, Md. (AP) — A Maryland emergency services worker is accused of inappropriately touching a woman while treating her in an ambulance.

Citing a Montgomery County police release, news outlets report 33-year-old Mario Arturo Obando-Rodriguez was arrested Friday on several counts in connection with the July 3 incident.

Police say Obando-Rodriguez was working in his capacity as a Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Services employee and was en route to a local hospital with the woman. Detectives determined he inappropriately touched her under the guise of medical treatment and then gave her his phone number.

He’s been with the department since 2013.

It’s unclear whether he has a lawyer. He’s posted $5,000 bail.

Florida
Court files: Dad tells doctors ­voices urged him to kill girl
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A man accused of dropping his 5-year-old daughter off a Tampa Bay bridge told doctors that voices urged him to kill the child.

Twenty-nine-year-old John Jonchuck is being treated at a state mental hospital as he awaits a March trial on first-degree murder charges in the death of Phoebe Jonchuck. Prosecutors say Jonchuck dropped the little girl into the water in January 2015.

The Tampa Bay Times reports new court files reveal Jonchuck told doctors the voices told him “everybody was going to go to hell” if he and Phoebe didn’t die.

Jonchuck told psychiatrist Emily Lazarou these details during evaluations to determine his mental state. Another doctor, hired to assess Lazarou’s methods, quoted them in a deposition that became public when it was filed in court.