Final defendant sentenced in slaying of Washington homeless man
EVERETT, Wash. — A man convicted of participating in the killing of a Washington homeless man who was tied to a tree and left to die in the cold was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
Darron Weidman was sentenced for setting in motion a robbery that resulted in the December 2018 death of 46-year-old Michael Boone in Everett, the (Everett) Daily Herald reported.
Weidman, 42, pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery in April 2019.
Earlier this month, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Bruce Weiss also sentenced Weidman’s co-defendant, 35-year-old Donita Burkley, to more than three years.
Matthew McGowan, 28, was sentenced in February to more than 45 years in prison for first-degree murder.
Boone spoke with Weidman in the hours before New Year’s Day 2019 and offered to pay cash for sex with Burkley, court records said.
The group planned to rob Boone before McGowan struck Boone with a stick, choked him and tied him to a tree with his own belt. Temperatures dropped overnight and a passerby found Boone’s mostly unclothed body days later, authorities said.
Weidman left the group before the attack, but Burkley acknowledged in a police interview that she looked through Boone’s jacket pockets.
Customs officials in Seattle seize unapproved COVID-19 medicine
SEATTLE — Customs officials say they seized a shipment of unauthorized COVID-19 medication at the Port of Seattle.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Thursday the seizure involved 360 pills of Lianhua Qingwen. The medicine has been used in China and some other countries to treat the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but it remains unapproved in the U.S.
CBP spokesman Jason Givens said the package was arriving from Canada when it was seized Wednesday. Agents in Baltimore seized a shipment of 1,200 capsules from Hong Kong earlier this month, and on Tuesday agents in Chicago confiscated three shipments from China totaling 28,800 capsules.
Former Montana deputy gets 21 years for sex abuse
HELENA, Mont. — A former Lewis and Clark County sheriff’s deputy was sentenced Thursday to nearly 22 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child for molesting a girl over a period of a dozen years.
Virgil Allen Wolfe was arrested in February 2019 on 80 state charges after a 17-year-old girl reported Wolfe had been molesting her since she was 6 years old, including taking photographs of her. Investigators said the abuse happened in both Cascade and Lewis and Clark counties.
Federal prosecutors later took over the case. Wolfe pleaded guilty in May 2019.
U.S. District Judge Charles C. Lovell sentenced Wolfe, 53, to 21 years and eight months in federal prison. After his release, he must stay away from places where children congregate and cannot drink alcohol or use cellphone cameras.
His family had sought the minimum sentence of 15 years, admitting that what he did was horrible, but said a shorter sentence would give him time to seek help and make amends, the Great Falls Tribune reported.
Wolfe was a sheriff’s deputy in Lewis and Clark County from 1999 to 2008 until the sheriff fired him for unrelated reasons.
Authorities charge Oregon woman after her son dies in car crash
GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A 21-year-old Grants Pass woman has been charged with manslaughter after her 2-year-old son died in a car crash Tuesday.
The Josephine County Sheriff’s Office said investigating officers determined Amanda McFarland was under the influence of alcohol when the incident happened, local news media reported.
The sheriff’s office said the car McFarland was driving left the paved roadway and spun into the opposite lane, where it collided with another car. McFarland’s son was in the rear passenger seat.
The sheriff’s office said he died at a hospital. It wasn’t known if McFarland has a lawyer.
Fourth child in Washington has coronavirus-related illness
PASCO — A child in the Pasco area has been diagnosed with a multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children, an illness associated with COVID-19, the Benton Franklin Health District. said
The Tri-City Herald reported it’s one of four cases of the syndrome identified in Washington and the first in the Tri-Cities area.
The child is younger than 10 and is hospitalized.
No additional information has been released to protect the family’s privacy.
Children diagnosed with the illness are healthy before developing symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease.
Parents are advised to watch for symptoms such as fever or headache, abdominal pain with or without diarrhea, fatigue and respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath, said Dr. John McGuire, chief of the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
