National Roundup

Illinois
Ex-Chicago sergeant faces felony counts in gay club fight
CHICAGO (AP) — A former Chicago police sergeant has been charged in an attack at gay club last year that left two men seriously injured.

Chicago police said Tuesday that 45-year-old Eric J. Elkins faces two felony aggravated battery counts in the Sept. 29 attack. Another man, 34-year-old Giovanni Rodriguez of Chicago, also faces felony counts.

Elkins resigned from the Chicago Police Department earlier this year. He previously was charged in Michigan in 2016 with criminal sexual conduct involving a teenager between the ages of 13 and 15. The sex charge was dropped and Elkins pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of disorderly conduct. Michigan records show he was sentenced to probation, community service and substance abuse treatment.

Police say Elkins and Rodriguez turned themselves in Monday.

Missouri
Drug dealer sent to prison, must pay back $1.1 ­million
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis man who was caught last year with $900,000 has been sentenced to seven years in prison for federal drug conspiracy, and he had to give up the money.

In fact, 38-year-old Quentarus Smith was ordered to surrender another $200,000 found in a bank account. Smith was sentenced Monday. He pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine.
Federal prosecutors say Smith was involved in a drug ring that brought cocaine and marijuana from Los Angeles and Florida to St. Louis. Smith was captured with the cash in September.

Texas
Police arrest bartender who served man prior to attack
PLANO, Texas (AP) — Authorities in suburban Dallas have arrested a bartender who served drinks to a man who later went to his estranged wife’s home and fatally shot her and seven others as they gathered to watch the Dallas Cowboys play.

Lindsey Glass was arrested last week and charged with a misdemeanor violation of “sale to certain persons.” The law prohibits the sale of alcohol to a “habitual drunkard or an intoxicated or insane person.”

Authorities say 32-year-old Spencer Hight in September 2017 already showed signs of intoxication at the Plano bar before leaving for the home of Meredith Hight and opening fire.

Spencer Hight was shot and killed by responding officers.

Glass had tried to persuade Hight not to drive and her attorney, Scott Palmer, said her arrest “is not in the interest of justice.”

North Carolina
Man accused of killing, ­dismembering roommates
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — A grand jury indictment has revealed more about a grisly killing in North Carolina, where a man is accused of stabbing his roommates, chopping up their bodies, wrapping them in carpet and dumping them in the woods.

The Winston-Salem Journal reports 46-year-old Tyrone Donte Gladden was indicted Mon­day on charges of first-degree murder and dismembering human remains in order to conceal an unnatural death.

He’s accused of killing 40-year-old Devetta Carnetta Campbell and 36-year-old Gary Michael Craig Jr. in June 2017. Their families asked police to check the apartment that July. It was empty, stripped of its carpeting, but investigators found blood evidence, and then spotted a human torso in the woods nearby.

Gladden was arrested that August. His girlfriend told police he’d been researching “decomposing bodies” online.

New York
Cambridge ­Analytica ­whistleblower has book deal
NEW YORK (AP) — The former Cambridge Analytica employee who spoke out on alleged ties between the data firm and the Brexit campaign for Britain to leave the European Union has a book deal.

Brittany Kaiser’s “Targeted: My Inside Story of Cambridge Analytica and how Trump and Facebook Broke Democracy” comes out Oct. 22, HarperCollins announced Tuesday. Kaiser will share “the dramatic and disturbing story” of her time at Cambridge Analytica, the British company where she was the business development director. Last year, she told Parliament that Cambridge had worked with Brexit supporters. She also cooperated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

According to HarperCollins, she will reveal “the unsettling truth” or how private information is exploited, and how Cambridge interacted with Brexit and Trump officials.

Virginia
Chelsea Manning says she’ll never testify, seeks release
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning is offering a new legal argument in her effort to be released from a Virginia jail.

Manning has been jailed in Alexandria for two months for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating the website Wikileaks. She appealed her incarceration to the federal appeals court in Richmond, but a three-judge panel unanimously rejected her appeal last month.

In a motion filed Monday in Alexandria, Manning argues she has proven she’ll stick to her principles and should therefore be released. Federal law only allows a recalcitrant witness to be jailed on civil contempt if there’s a chance that the incarceration will coerce the witness into testifying.

Manning served seven years in a military prison for leaking a trove of documents to Wikileaks.

Illinois
DuPage judge denies innocence certificate for exonerated man
WHEATON, Ill. (AP) — A DuPage County judge has ruled that a man exonerated of his mother-in-law’s death shouldn’t receive a certificate of innocence.

The (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald reports Judge Robert Miller on Monday ruled William Amor doesn’t qualify for the certificate. The judge found Amor’s confession to setting the 1995 Naperville fire that killed Marianne Miceli was voluntary. The 63-year-old Amor maintains his confession was coerced and his attorneys argued there is no evidence Amor set the fire.

Amor spent 22 years in jail before he was released in 2017 after a judge vacated his conviction. He was found not guilty at a retrial in 2018.

Amor could receive wrongfully convicted compensation of about $220,000 from the state if he has the innocence certificate. Amor’s attorneys called the judge’s ruling disappointing and say they plan to appeal.