Former Colorado officer gets probation for putting woman in police vehicle that was hit by a train
DENVER — A former Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train, causing the woman serious injuries, has avoided a jail sentence and must serve 30 months on supervised probation.Jordan Steinke, 29, was sentenced Friday by Weld County District Court Judge Timothy Kerns, who found her guilty of reckless endangerment and assault for the Sept. 16, 2022, crash near Platteville. Kerns acquitted the former Fort Lupton police officer of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter after her bench trial in July.Kerns said he had planned to sentence Steinke to jail, but he changed his mind after both prosecutors and defense attorneys sought a probationary sentence, The Denver Post reported.“Someone is going to hear this and say: ‘Another officer gets off,’ ” Kerns said. “That’s not the facts of this case.”He ordered Steinke to perform 100 hours of community service. And if she violates the terms of her probation, “I will harken back to my original gut response as to how to address sentencing,” Kerns warned. Steinke, who wept during the sentencing hearing, apologized to Yareni Rios-Gonzalez, who attended the hearing virtually. “What happened that night has haunted me for 364 days,” Steinke said. “I remember your cries and your screams.”Steinke said she hoped to fulfill some of her community service by giving educational talks to new police officers about the dangers of railroad tracks and the importance of officers being aware of their surroundings.Then-Plateville Police Sgt. Pablo Vazquez had stopped Rios-Gonzalez after a reported road-rage incident involving a gun. Steinke took her into custody and locked her in Vazquez’s police vehicle, which was parked on the railroad tracks. A train crashed into the SUV.Rios-Gonzalez, who suffered a lasting brain injury and is in pain, was conflicted about how she wanted Steinke to be punished, attorney Chris Ponce said. “The conflict that she feels is one where every day she has to feel this pain,” Ponce said. “And she’s had to deal with (doctor) appointments and having her life so radically changed. And feeling upset, very upset about that — angry about that — but on the other hand, feeling for Ms. Steinke, and, I think, truly empathetically feeling sorry for how she lost her career.”Steinke was fired from the Fort Lupton police department after her conviction. She is expected to lose her Peace Officer Standards and Training certification, her attorney Mallory Revel said, meaning she can never be a police officer again.During Steinke’s trial, her defense attorneys said she did not know that Vazquez had parked his police vehicle on the tracks.Vazquez still faces trial for his role in the crash. He has been charged with five counts of reckless endangerment for allegedly putting Rios-Gonzalez, Steinke and three other people at risk, as well as for traffic-related violations, including parking where prohibited.Rios-Gonzalez has also filed a lawsuit against the police agencies involved.
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy dies after being shot in his patrol car by an unknown assailant
PALMDALE, Calif. — A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy died after he was shot in his patrol car Saturday evening by an unknown assailant and an investigation is underway that the sheriff said will press all of the department’s resources into action.Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer, 30, died after being transported to a hospital, Sheriff Robert Luna said during a press conference late Saturday night.The preliminary investigation showed Clinkunbroomer was driving while on duty and fired upon around 6 p.m., Luna said.Clinkunbroomer was unconscious in the vehicle when he was found near the intersection of Sierra Highway and Avenue Q in Palmdale by a person Luna identified as a “good Samaritan” who alerted personnel at the Palmdale station of the sheriff’s department.The deputy was transported to Antelope Valley Medical Center in Lancaster, where he was treated for a gunshot wound. “Despite the medical staff’s best efforts to save our deputy’s life, regrettably he succumbed to his injuries,” Luna said.Homicide investigators are aware of video from a surveillance camera that may have captured the shooting, Luna said. Luna said he believed the shooting was a “targeted attack” but the motive, and whether the deputy or the department in general was the target, was not yet known.“We’re going to catch the person who did this,” Luna said. “Because every resource that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has to bear is going after you.”Clinkunbroomer, who transferred to the Palmdale station in July 2018, was a third-generation officer who followed his grandfather and father into the sheriff’s department, Luna said.The sheriff added that his department was working closely with representatives from the city of Palmdale, about 61 miles (98.1 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles.“Palmdale loves the sheriff’s deputies and the deputies take very good care of Palmdale and love our community back,” Mayor Laura Bettencourt said at the press conference. “The person that did this is a coward and they will be caught.”“It is sickening, heartbreaking news,” Republican state Sen. Scott Wilk, who represents Palmdale, posted earlier in the evening on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Marine Capitol rioter gets 1 hour of community service for each of 279 Marine Civil War casualties
WASHINGTON — One of three active-duty Marines who stormed the U.S. Capitol together was sentenced on Monday to probation and 279 hours of community service — one hour for every Marine who was killed or wounded fighting in the Civil War.U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said she can’t fathom why Dodge Hellonen violated his oath to protect the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” — and risked his career — by joining the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that disrupted Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.“I really urge you to think about why it happened so you can address it and ensure it never happens again,” Reyes said. Dodge Hellonen, now 24, was the first of the three Marines to be punished for participating in the Capitol siege. Reyes also is scheduled to sentence co-defendants Micah Coomer on Tuesday and Joshua Abate on Wednesday.The three Marines — friends from the same unit — drove together from a military post in Virginia to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, when then-President Donald Trump spoke at his “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House. They joined the crowd that stormed the Capitol after Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell.”Before imposing Hellonen’s sentence, Reyes described how Marines fought and died in some of the fiercest battles in American history. She recited the number of casualties from some of the bloodiest wars.Prosecutors recommended short terms of incarceration — 30 days for Coomer and 21 days for Hellonen and Abate — along with 60 hours of community service.A prosecutor wrote in a court filing that their military service, while laudable, makes their conduct “all the more troubling.”Reyes said she agreed with prosecutors that Hellonen’s status as an active-duty Marine does not weigh in favor of a more lenient sentence. But she ultimately decided to spare him from a prison term, sentencing him to four years of probation.Reyes said it “carried a great deal of weight” to learn that Hellonen maintained a positive attitude and stellar work ethic when he was effectively demoted after the Jan. 6 attack. He went from working as a signals analyst to a job that few Marines want, inventorying military gear.“The only person who can give you a second chance is yourself,” she told him.“I take full responsibility for my actions and I’ll carry this with me for the rest of my life,” Hellonen told the judge.Hellonen, Coomer and Abate pleaded guilty earlier this year to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six months behind bars. Hundreds of Capitol rioters have pleaded guilty to the same charge, which is akin to trespassing.Hellonen was carrying a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag when they entered the Capitol through a door that other rioters had breached about seven minutes earlier. After walking to the Rotunda, they placed a red “Make America Great Again” hat on a statute and took photos of it. They remained inside the Capitol for nearly an hour, joining other rioters in chanting “Stop the Steal!” and “Four More Years!”None of them is accused of engaging in any violence or destruction on Jan. 6. But prosecutors said none of them has expressed sincere remorse for their crimes.Coomer bragged on social media about taking part in “history,” called for a “fresh start” and said he was “waiting for the boogaloo,” a slang term for a second civil war in the U.S.Coomer’s statement that he was “hoping for a second civil war to topple what he viewed as a ‘corrupt’ government was deeply ominous, given that his military training and access to military weapons would make him a particularly effective participant in such a war against the government,” the prosecutor wrote.More than 600 people have been sentenced for Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 100 of them have served in the U.S. military. according to an Associated Press review of court records. Only a few were active-duty military or law enforcement personnel on Jan. 6.On Jan. 18, 2023, law enforcement officers arrested Coomer at a military office in Oceanside, California; Abate at his home in Fort Meade, Maryland; and Hellonen at his residence in Jacksonville, North Carolina.As of Friday, all three Marines were still on active-duty status, according to the Marine Corps. But all three could be separated from the Marine Corps “on less than honorable conditions,” prosecutors said.Hellonen received separation paperwork in July, while Coomer awaited a decision last Friday on his possible separation, according to prosecutors. They said Abate was still enlisted in the Marine Corps as of Sept. 1.“Under other circumstances, that service would be incredibly laudable,” a prosecutor, Madison Mumma, told the judge. “At best, it shouldn’t be credited at all.”Hellonen, a Michigan native, was stationed at the military base in Quantico, Virginia, on Jan. 6. He worked at the Marine Corps Information Operations Center as a signals intelligence analyst and was promoted to the rank of sergeant in August 2021, said his attorney, Halerie Costello.Hellonen moved to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in February 2022 and was waiting to be deployed when he was arrested, according to Costello. Hellonen knows he shouldn’t have entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, Costello wrote in a sentencing memo._____Associated Press reporter Lolita Baldor contributed from Washington.
Stock market today: World shares mostly higher as investors await US inflation, China economic data
World stock prices were mostly higher Monday as investors awaited an update on U.S. inflation and China’s latest economic data. Benchmarks fell in Hong Kong and Tokyo but rose in Shanghai, Paris, Frankfurt and London. Oil prices were mixed.A recent surge in oil prices has added to worries that inflation may not be waning as much as hoped for in the U.S and other major economies. That could lead the Federal Reserve and other central banks to keep interest rates higher for longer, which would hurt prices for shares and other investments. Germany’s DAX gained 0.7% to 15,846.97 and the CAC 40 in Paris was up 0.9% at 7,308.46. In London, the FTSE 100 added 0.8% to 7,539.30. The future for the S
Lahaina's fire-stricken Filipino residents are key to tourism and local culture. Will they stay?
LAHAINA, Hawaii — Ambulance and fire truck sirens wailed outside as Elsie Rosales stripped linens from king-sized mattresses at a beachfront resort in Lahaina.She tried to focus on the work, but was beset by dread: Had a wildfire taken the home she scrimped to buy on a housekeeper’s wages?It had. And now Rosales, like many other Filipino housekeepers used to cleaning hotels, is living in one with her family, a poignant example of how the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century has afflicted Maui’s heavily Filipino population.“All our hard work burned,” Rosales told The Associated Press in an interview conducted in Ilocano, her native language. “There is nothing left.”The disaster has prompted fears about what will become of Lahaina’s community and character as it rebuilds. Many are concerned residents like Rosales won’t be able to afford to live in Lahaina after the community is rebuilt, and that affluent outsiders seeking a home in the oceanfront town will price them out.Will Filipinos, Native Hawaiians and others who have been the backbone of the tourism industry for so long be able to remain here? Will they want to?Filipinos began arriving in Hawaii more than a century ago to labor on sugarcane and pineapple plantations. As their descendants and successive generations of immigrants have settled, they have become deeply ingrained in the community’s culture.Today, they account for the second-largest ethnic group on Maui, with nearly 48,000 island residents tracing their roots to the Philippines, 5,000 of them in Lahaina, which was about 40% of the town’s population before the fire. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates about one-fourth of Hawaii’s 1.4 million people are of Filipino descent.Many of them work in hotels, health care and food service. Filipinos account for about 70% of the members of UNITE HERE Local 5, the union representing workers in those industries, union President Gemma Weinstein said. She is Filipino and a former Honolulu hotel housekeeper.“If it wasn’t for the Filipinos having two or three jobs, a lot of the businesses here, including the hotels, would have a hard time operating,” said Rick Nava, a community advocate and Filipino immigrant who lost his own home in the fire.A month after the Aug. 8 disaster killed at least 115 people, nearly 6,000 people were staying at two dozen hotels serving as temporary shelters around Maui.A number are hotel housekeepers like Rosales, 61, who is staying in a two-bedroom suite with her two sisters, her son, his wife and three grandchildren at the Sands of Kahana resort. Rosales’ 72-year-old sister, Evangeline Balintona, works there as a housekeeper.In the sisters’ suite, there is an artificial plant in the corner of the living room, between a window overlooking the ocean and the flat-screen TV, that Balintona has dusted countless times. When she makes the bed, she does it the way she always has done for work, with layers of sheets and a comforter tucked neat and tight under a heavy mattress.”I know every corner of this room,” Balintona said.She is thinking about returning to Ilocos Norte, the family’s hometown in the Philippines. She hopes her son there has saved enough from the monthly remittances she sent over the years to support her if she returns with nothing. Tourists have been told to avoid Lahaina for now, and many hotels are housing federal aid workers. Balintona and others worry about the futures of their jobs.Rosales, who said she did not know anyone who died in the fire, immigrated to Hawaii in 1999. After years of renting and saving for a down payment, she bought a five-bedroom home on Lahaina’s Aulike Street in 2014 for $490,000. Her mother and siblings owned homes nearby. Those also are gone now.She continues to work at another resort a few miles from where the sisters are staying. On her days off, she sorts out insurance paperwork, including trying to itemize belongings lost in the fire.Rosales recalled the night of the fire when she and her co-workers — almost all from the Philippines — were forced to remain in the hotel because roads were blocked. She didn’t learn the fate of her home until the next morning, when her youngest son called.“Mom, no more house,” he told her.“No, anak ko!” she shrieked, using an Ilocano term meaning “my child.”Around her, other housekeepers sobbed as they received similar calls.The Rev. Efren Tomas, pastor of Christ the King Church in Kahului, worries about the mental health of survivors. He has been counseling groups of Filipinos staying in hotels, even celebrating Mass in a hotel reception room.“For Filipinos, it’s very hard for them to go into one-on-one counseling,” he said. “They want to gather in a group. I think they get strength from each other.”Many longtime Lahaina residents, including Native Hawaiians, told the AP they worry that whatever is built from the ashes of Lahaina won’t include Filipinos and other ethnic groups who made it the working class community it was.“The new Lahaina should be the old Lahaina,” said Alicia Kalepa, who lives in a Hawaiian homestead where most of the houses survived the fire. “Mixed culture.”Gilbert Keith-Agaran, a state senator from Maui who is stepping down to focus on litigation work involving the fires, said he won’t be surprised if many Filipinos leave for places such as Las Vegas, an affordable destination for Hawaii residents who no longer can afford to live here.“I think it’s hard to take the Filipinos out of the fabric of our community,” said Keith-Agaran, whose father came from Ilocos Norte in 1946 for plantation work. “We intermarried a lot with others who are here.”Melen Magbual Agcolicol was 13 when she arrived on Maui from the Philippines more than four decades ago with her family. Since then, she has become a community advocate and is president of Binhi at Ani, “Seed and Harvest,” which operates Maui’s only Filipino community center.Her group unveiled a fund called Tulong for Lahaina, or Help for Lahaina. The idea is to provide grants to Filipinos who lost homes, shops or loved ones.“The starting over is so difficult. How are you going to start over? Number one, you don’t have a job,” she said. “Number two, your sanity. Your sanity is not normal until you think that you can accept what happened to you.”Rosales’ three sons don’t want her to sell her property, but she is finding it difficult to think about the future. She can’t sleep or eat, can’t stop crying.Residents have not been allowed to return to the burned areas. Rosales wants to go back. She wants to comb through the rubble of her American dream, hoping to find a piece of her jewelry collection, a gold bracelet or a watch, luxuries she would never have been able to afford in the Philippines. “Even if it’s black,” she said, “I want to take it as a remembrance.”She touched the delicate gold hoops dangling from her ears. She put them on the morning she left her house to go to work.___Associated Press writer Bobby Caina Calvan contributed.
Hawaii volcano Kilauea erupts after nearly two months of quiet
Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, began erupting Sunday after a two-month pause, displaying glowing lava that is a safe distance from people and structures in a national park on the Big IslandByThe Associated PressSeptember 10, 2023, 10:20 PMIn this screen grab from webcam video provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, erupts in Hawaii, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. (U.S. Geological Survey via AP)The Associated PressHONOLULU — Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, began erupting Sunday after a two-month pause, displaying glowing lava that is a safe distance from people and structures in a national park on the Big Island. The Hawaii Volcano Observatory said the eruption was observed in the afternoon at the summit of Kilauea.The observatory said gases released by the eruption will cause volcanic smog downwind of Kilauea. People living near the park should try to avoid volcanic particles spewed into the air by the eruption, the observatory said. The volcano’s alert level was raised to warning status and the aviation color code went to red as scientists evaluate the eruption and associated hazards.In June, Kilauea erupted for several weeks, displaying fountains of red lava without threatening any communities or structures. Crowds of people flocked to the Big Island’s Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which offered safe views of the lava.Kilauea, Hawaii’s second-largest volcano, erupted from September 2021 until last December. A 2018 Kilauea eruption destroyed more than 700 homes.Related Topics
McCarthy juggles government shutdown and Biden impeachment inquiry as House returns to messy fall
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a man who stays in motion — enthusiastically greeting tourists at the Capitol, dashing overseas last week to the G7 summit of industrial world leaders, raising funds back home to elect fellow Republicans to the House majority.But beneath the whirlwind of activity is a stubborn standstill, an imbalance of power between the far-right Republicans who hoisted McCarthy to the speaker’s role yet threaten his own ability to lead the House.It’s a political standoff that will be tested anew as the House returns this week from a long summer recess and McCarthy faces a collision course of difficult challenges — seeking to avoid a government shutdown, support Ukraine in the war and launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.“They’ve got some really heavy lifting ahead,” said the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Thune of South Dakota.McCarthy is going to “have his hands full trying to figure out how to navigate and execute,” he said.Congress has been here before, as has McCarthy in his nearly two decades in office, but the stakes are ever higher, with Republicans powered by an increasingly hard-right faction that is refusing to allow business as usual in Washington.With former President Donald Trump’s backing, McCarthy’s right-flank pushed him into the speaker’s office at the start of the year only after he agreed to a long list of conservative demands — including the ability to call a quick vote to “vacate the chair” and remove him from office. That threat of an abrupt ouster hovers over McCarthy’s every move, especially now.To start, Congress faces a deadline to fund the government by the end of the month, or risk a potentially devastating federal shutdown. There’s just 11 working days for Congress to act once the House resumes Tuesday.Facing a backlash from conservatives who want to slash government funding, McCarthy may be able to ease the way by turning to another hard-right priority, launching a Biden impeachment inquiry over the business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden. For McCarthy, running the two tracks — a government funding process alongside an impeachment drive — is an unusual and politically fraught undertaking. But starting a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden could help to appease Republican allies of Trump, who has emerged as the GOP frontrunner to confront Biden in the 2024 election for the White House.“He’s being squeezed,” Brad Woodhouse, a veteran Democratic operative, said of McCarthy. Woodhouse is now a senior adviser to the Congressional Integrity Project, which is preparing to criticize Republicans over the Biden impeachment. The White House has said Biden is not involved in his son’s business dealings.But Trump’s allies among House Republicans are working furiously to unearth any links between Biden and his son’s business as they portray Hunter Biden as trading on the family name for financial enrichment and work to erode public support for the president ahead of the presidential election.Republicans have not yet been able to produce evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. White House spokesman Ian Sams said, “Speaker McCarthy shouldn’t cave to the extreme, far-right members who are threatening to shut down the government unless they get a baseless, evidence-free impeachment of President Biden. The consequences for the American people are too serious.” Meanwhile, what should have been a fairly prescribed process to fund the government after McCarthy and Biden negotiated a more than $1 trillion deal earlier this summer over the debt limit appears to be falling apart. Even a stopgap measure to simply keep government funding at existing levels for a few months while Congress tries to finish the spending bills is a nonstarter for McCarthy’s right flank.Conservatives powered by the House Freedom Caucus are insisting federal spending is rolled back to 2022 levels and they want to add other priorities to the legislation. If not, they say they will oppose a temporary measure, called a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep government running.“We must rein in the reckless inflationary spending, and the out-of-control federal bureaucracy it funds,” the Freedom Caucus wrote in a statement at the end of August.With command of dozens of votes, the hard right can deny McCarthy the support he needs to pass a Republican bill on its own. But relying on Democrats for votes would bring other problems for McCarthy if he is seen as disloyal to his ranks.The conservatives want to beef up border security and address what Republicans deride as the “weaponization” of the Justice Department’s prosecutions, including of those charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. They also want to end what they call the Pentagon’s “woke” policies as the Defense Department tries to provide diversity, equity and inclusion to service personnel.Signaling the hard road ahead, Trump-ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., mockingly reposted one of McCarthy’s recent videos welcoming tourists at the Capitol.“Kevin thinking this was the video we needed at this moment is depressingly revealing,” Gaetz said on social media.”We need a SPEAKER not a GREETER.”Congress also has a pending request from the White House to provide an additional $40 billion on three fronts — some $21 billion in military and humanitarian relief for Ukraine as it battles the Russian invasion; $12 billion to replenish federal disaster aids after floods, fires and other problems, including to curb the flow of deadly fentanyl at the southern U.S. border with Mexico.McCarthy has vowed there won’t be any “blank check” for Ukraine as he works to appease skeptical Republicans who want to end U.S. involvement in overseas affairs, particularly involving Russia.While the shutdown is the more pressing problem for McCarthy, the Biden impeachment inquiry is his bigger political gamble.McCarthy has signaled an impeachment inquiry is coming. But there is “no date circled on the calendar,” said a person familiar with his thinking and granted anonymity to discuss it.Not all House Republicans are eager for impeachment proceedings. “We can waste our time on issues that are not important, or we can focus on issues that are,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.”Trump faces his own more serious charges of wrongdoing, including the federal indictments over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Biden and his refusal to return classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He has been indicted four times this year.Watching from the Senate, which has been working to pass all 12 of the regular bills needed to fund government operations through committees ahead of floor votes starting next week, Republicans hope cooler heads in the House will prevail on all fronts.Several Republicans have made no secret of their disinterest in impeachment proceedings against Biden. And GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski said those who don’t think a federal shutdown of government operations is a big deal ought to visit her state of Alaska and see “real life.”During a previous government shutdown, Murkowski said crab fisherman couldn’t get out in the water because federal permits could not be issued.“You know, we’ve got a lot of things going on here in the Congress right now,” she said. “So the House is going to have to sort through their priorities and hopefully, they’re going to be priorities that are in the best interests of the operations of good governance.”