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ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) — Police say a Pennsylvania woman has eaten some of the heroin she bought while working as an undercover informant for investigators. The Altoona Mirror (http://bit.ly/1iR4bf4 ) reports that 33-year-old Pamela Laich was working with Altoona police Sunday night when she bought heroin from the target of the investigation. Police say Laich was instructed to buy five bags for $80 but after a long delay came back with only three. The undercover officer supervising Laich made her go back for two more bags, but police thought what she returned with looked odd. Police say they later determined she had switched the heroin out with dry baby cereal. Police say Laich then sneaked the heroin into a holding cell, where she ate it. Court records don't list an attorney for her.
FOX LAKE, Ill. (AP) —
The Illinois police officer whose fatal shooting last month set off a massive manhunt was shot twice with his own weapon, and there were signs of a struggle at the scene, the lead investigator said Thursday in releasing what he called carefully vetted details.
Authorities, who have until now revealed little about their investigation, confirmed for the first time that Fox Lake police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz was shot with his own weapon. He was struck by two rounds, one that hit his ballistic vest with the force of a "sledgehammer" and another that pierced his upper chest, said Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Commander George Filenko.
But gunshot residue found on his hands was inconclusive as to whether Gliniewicz fired any shots himself, according to results that came back from the Illinois State Police crime lab in the last week or two.
"The weapon could have been fired by Lt. Gliniewicz or he could have been in a close proximity of the weapon being fired," Filenko said.
At a news conference Thursday, authorities revealed details they said they had concluded wouldn't harm the investigation. But Filenko refused to reveal other key information, including how many times Gliniewicz's gun was fired in total and whether any of the DNA they are examining was found on his gun. He also would not provide any details on what the signs of the struggle were.
Gliniewicz was found Sept. 1 after he radioed that he was pursuing three suspicious men in a remote area of the village south of the Wisconsin-Illinois state line. Investigators believe he was in the area because the village recently purchased the property and there had been reports of vandalism and trespassing.
Despite a wide search and a month of detective work, police haven't made any arrests, identified any suspects or come up with a possible motive. Questions have swirled around the investigation — particularly since the county coroner said he has been unable to rule the 52-year-old Gliniewicz's death a homicide, suicide or an accident.
Filenko said Thursday that the coroner and the pathologist who examined the officer's body both concluded the first shot struck his vest with such force that it likely incapacitated him. The second shot is believed to have been the fatal hit.
Filenko emphasized the investigation was "strictly" being conducted as a homicide probe, though he acknowledged detectives weren't ruling anything out, including the possibility of suicide.
The commander also said nine unidentified DNA samples were found at the scene on a variety of items that the officer had with him. Detectives working to identify the sources of that material have taken more than 100 samples from anyone who might have had contact with the officer, including from police who were close to the scene, Filenko said.
They were also running some of those samples through a national database in hopes of a match. It was impossible to tell whether the traces of DNA were from the day of the officer's death or prior to it, he said.
Asked whether any of it could have been left behind by someone walking a dog in the area, Filenko said, "Not likely."
Investigators have also returned to the scene to recreate possible escape routes, including hunting trails, Filenko said in a newspaper interview a day earlier.
It is a marshy area that Filenko described as being like quicksand in some types of weather. He became defensive when a reporter asked why police had not discovered footprints or tire marks that could point to people fleeing the scene.
"Sir, if you went out and looked at the area, you tell me where you could see footprints," Filenko said.
JARRATT, Va. (AP) —
A 49-year-old convicted of murdering three people in Virginia and California nearly three decades ago was executed on Thursday after a series of last-minute appeals failed.
Alfredo Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. Prieto was injected with a lethal three-drug combination, including the sedative pentobarbital, which Virginia received from the Texas prison system.
Prieto, wearing glasses, jeans and a light blue shirt, did not resist and showed no emotion as he was strapped to the gurney.
"I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members," he said, before mumbling, "Get this over with."
The El Salvador native was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2010 for the murder of a young couple more than two decades earlier. Rachael Raver and her boyfriend, Warren Fulton III, both 22, were found shot to death in a wooded area a few days after being seen at a Washington, D.C., nightspot.
Prieto was on death row in California at the time for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl and was linked to the Virginia slayings through DNA evidence. California officials agreed to send him to Virginia on the rationale that it was more likely to carry out the execution.
He has been connected to as many as six other killings in California and Virginia, authorities have said, but he was never prosecuted because he had already been sentenced to death.
Prieto is the first inmate to be executed in in Virginia in nearly three years.
Virginia's lethal injection protocol calls for the use of pentobarbital, a sedative, at the beginning of the execution. That's followed by rocuronium bromide, which halts an inmate's breathing, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.
Prieto looked calm as he entered the execution chamber at 8:53 p.m. The warden stepped behind the curtain at 9:09 p.m. and shortly afterward officials began administering the drugs. Prieto's chest rose and fell several times but he made no sounds. He was motionless after a few minutes.
Prieto's attorneys filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to halt the execution until Virginia officials disclose more information about the supply of pentobarbital, which Virginia received from Texas because another sedative it planned to use expired. They said they were concerned about the quality of the drugs and they fear that they will cause a cruel and painful death.
But U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson lifted a temporary order blocking Prieto's execution on Thursday, saying that Prieto's lawyers had not adequately shown that the drugs are unsafe. He said unwarranted delay of the execution would be harmful for those victimized by Prieto's crimes, a harm "magnified here by the appalling number of people that Prieto has killed, raped, or otherwise injured."
"It is time for this to end," said Margaret O'Shea, a lawyer from Attorney General Mark Herring's office, who urged the judge to dismiss Prieto's appeal on Thursday. "It is time for the carousel to end."
Prieto had also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, saying he's intellectually disabled, and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. But the high court declined to grant his requests to stay the execution on Thursday.
His attorneys argued that the state should reconsider whether Prieto is intellectually disabled because the measure used during his 2008 trial was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled last year that Florida can't use rigid cutoffs on IQ test scores to determine whether someone is intellectually disabled. Virginia had a nearly identical law.
"The Commonwealth had the opportunity to correct that error, and chose not to," Attorney Rob Lee said in a statement after the execution. "Our nation prohibits the execution of persons with intellectual disability; in this case, the state was unwilling to ensure that protection was honored before carrying out its harshest penalty."