Defendant in 3 murders in 2012 to get competency evaluation

Michael Crane has pleaded not guilty to three murders he is charged with committing in late January 2012, but during one of his many outbursts in court on Friday, he declared the opposite.

“I take the blame for all these crimes and would like to go home,” Crane said, pointing his finger skyward.

Crane, 36, is charged with first-degree murder in the January 2012 deaths of Glenna and Lawrence Shapiro of Paradise Valley and Bruce Gaudet of Phoenix. The deaths were part of two separate home invasions that Crane is accused of being involved in. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

His admission in Maricopa County Superior Court during a routine hearing gave Judge Warren Granville pause. The judge told Crane that his sudden change of heart was alarming and, combined with his unpredictable behavior in court, again brought into question Crane’s mental competency.

Granville explained to Crane that he wanted to approve the Rule 11 motion filed by his defense attorney and the state to determine if his “intent to change his plea was voluntarily or if his mental stability was playing a part.” A Rule 11 in Arizona is defined such that a person who may have a mental illness, defect or disability cannot stand trial, be convicted, sentenced or punished for any public offense.

“Fine, fine,” Crane said, “get ‘er done.” Before the judge could finish, Crane hollered out “We done?” becoming visibly more agitated.

“Irregardless to whenever the change of plea is submitted in this case, it is the state’s intention to take this case before a jury,” Deputy County Attorney Patricia Stevens said, adding that because this is a capital-murder case, they would not be offering a plea deal to Crane.

As Crane was being escorted out of court by sheriff’s deputies, he turned to his family members in the gallery and said he loved them. He then swung all the way around to look at Stevens and, after calling her names, said, “Rule 11 is ridiculous and unnecessary.”

Crane spat expletives at Granville, as well, as he exited the courtroom.

Disruptions and profanity-laced tirades are par for the course when Crane appears in court. Such behavior prompted officials to look into his mental stability in early April 2015. He is expected to be back in court May 19 after his defense team and the state have had time to review the court-ordered mental-health assessment.

Crane pleaded guilty last month to two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of armed robbery and burglary in a separate case. His sentencing is set for April.

April Morganroth , The Republic | azcentral.com

 

Funnel cloud forms in Scottsdale

SCOTTSDALE, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) – Arizona is not used to this weather.

People in Scottsdale were surprised when they saw a cold air funnel cloud near Talking Stick Resort on Sunday afternoon.

A cold air funnel is a high based, weak circulation that occurs in a cool air mass. It develops well above the earth’s surface. Since it is high based and weak, they rarely impact the earth’s surface, although they can look threatening.

Unlike typical tornadoes, cold air funnels develop in a shallow cool air mass and often behind a cold frontal passage.

The cloud is part of a storm system that brought rain to the Valley and snow to the high country.

[READ MORE: Storm fills up Valley rain gauges; snow blankets Flagstaff]

Posted: Feb 20, 2017 8:32 AM TST Updated: Feb 20, 2017 9:51 PM TST

By David Baker

Endangered Species Act under fire from lawmakers

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) – Recently, a Senate hearing was held to discuss the possibility to change or modernize the Endangered Species Act.

Republican lawmakers including Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming said that the act wasn’t working and went on to say that it was hindering job growth and keeping protected lands from mining and development.

There are other Republican lawmakers who want to see the act changed to only allow one species on the list at a time. Currently, there are over 1,600 species on the list.

Here in Arizona, the state is home to more than 70 species that are endangered or threatened. Conservation efforts have been able to help some populations including the Black Footed Ferret. The small, cute creature is the most endangered species in North America. In the early 1980s, it was believed the species had gone extinct, but 24 were found and saved.

Today, 1,000 live in facilities, and another 1,000 are in the wild. The population is slowly recovering, and it’s all thanks to the Endangered Species Act.  It helped to fund research, staff and studies to find the best ways to save the Black Footed Ferret.

There are several facilities across the country that help to build the population, and one of them is at the Phoenix Zoo. The Black Footed Ferret’s population declined dramatically when its primary food source, the prairie dog, was being killed off by land development and farmers.  It also experienced a terrible plague that nearly wiped them out.

Conservationists say that with their help, the population of the Black Footed Ferret could reach stable levels in a decade and it could be taken off the endangered species list.

Copyright 2017 KPHO/KTVK (KPHO Broadcasting Corporation). All rights reserved.

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Posted: Feb 17, 2017 11:09 AM TST

Updated: Feb 17, 2017 2:20 PM TST

By Jeff Van Sant

Arizona hitchhiker steals vehicle of helpful motorist

SEDONA, AZ (AP) – A hitchhiker is accused of stealing the vehicle of an Arizona man who stopped to help him and buy him breakfast.

The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office says the 69-year-old motorist was driving south of Sedona on Friday when he spotted the hitchhiker, who looked like he spent the night outside.

After stopping at a cafe, the motorist offered to get $20 from his bank to help the hitchhiker – identified as 31-year-old Ricardo Munoz Ayala. Because it was cold, he left the car running with Ayala inside.

When the motorist came out, Ayala and the car were gone.

Authorities say Ayala failed to stop when he was spotted south of Phoenix. Spike strips were used but he continued driving for another 20 miles on flat tires.

Ayala was booked into the Pima County jail on numerous charges.

© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Posted: Jan 31, 2017 11:09 AM TST

Updated: Jan 31, 2017 11:09 AM TST

By The Associated Press

 

 

Man dies after falling from South Sixth Garage

 

A man has died after falling from the Sixth St. Garage on the north side of Sixth Street early Thursday afternoon. The University of Arizona Police Department shut down the south entrances and shuttle-bus pickup lane on the south side of the Sixth Street Garage for several hours to investigate.

The 21-year-old man was not a UA student, according to UAPD Sgt. Cindy Spasoff, the information officer on the scene. The man was spotted on top of the garage shortly before noon, and was later found on the ground near the center stairwell, where medical personal treated him.

UAPD is “currently unsure” on the details of what happened, but the man was transported to Banner University Medical Center-Tucson for treatment, where he was later pronounced dead.

Police are investigating the death as a suicide.

Police know the identity of the man, but are not releasing his name at this time. His family has been notified, police said.

Published Jan 26, 2017 2:43pm

Updated Jan 26, 2017 5:33pm

By Daily Wildcat Staff

Suspect in Mesa teacher’s death arrested in California

Susanville California Highway Patrol have arrested the man suspected of shooting and killing a Mesa High School teacher, according to a Tempe police spokesman.

Caleb Bartels, 27, has been the subject of a nationwide manhunt for nearly a week.

At 9:08 a.m. Saturday, an off-duty officer in Doyle, Calif. spotted the vehicle belonging to Bartels parked alongside a highway, said Sgt. Josie Montenegro, Tempe police spokeswoman.

Tempe police late Monday had identified Bartels as a suspect in the Jan. 15 death of Mesa High School math teacher Ryne Zahner, 26. According to court records and Tempe police, Bartles was pulled over three times in the hours following the shooting – once southwest of Page, once in Utah and once in Nevada. He was released all three times, as Tempe police had not yet named him as a suspect.

Hundreds turn out to remember slain Mesa High School teacher

Montenegro said the California officer recalled the description Tempe police had released and notified dispatch. An on-duty officer located the vehicle and confirmed the Arizona license plate belonged to Bartels. Additional backup was requested prior to stopping Bartels, Montenegro wrote in a statement. A high-risk stop was conducted and Bartels was arrested without incident.

California Highway Patrol then notified Tempe police of the arrest. Tempe investigators are preparing to go to California to continue the investigation. Bartels was booked into the Lassen County Jail in Susanville.

The shooting occurred at about 4 a.m. Jan. 15 in Zahner’s Tempe backyard near Mill Avenue and Baseline Road.

It was Bartels’ brother, Tyler, who initially steered police toward the suspect, according to court records.

Tempe police ID suspect in shooting of Mesa High School math teacher

Police identified Tyler Bartels as a key witness in the murder of Zahner, a friend whom Tyler had met through Caleb.

Tyler said he initially thought it was a prank when the man ordered the two to put their hands up. But Tyler then recalled hearing several loud booms, and spotted the rifle pointed slightly downward, as if it had moved closer to him.

Tyler said he grabbed the end of the hot barrel, pulling both he and the shooter to the ground. The two wrestled for a bit, and Tyler said he must have blacked out shortly thereafter. The next thing he could remember was running down the street and noticing that his shoe was falling off.

At the time, Tyler said he couldn’t provide any description of the shooter other than to say he was a white man. But the following day, Tyler returned to the police station with what would become a vital lead: He recalled the shooter saying “Tyler, get the f–k off me,” court records show. The voice had sounded like his brother, Caleb.

Tyler said his memory was sparked when he learned from his mother that Caleb had been missing since the night before the shooting.

Police would learn that Caleb and Zahner had been roommates in the past, but Caleb moved back in with his father after suffering brain and mental-health issues. Tyler soon moved in with Zahner, taking over Caleb’s old room, and the two became good friends.

Those close to Caleb said he began feeling an irrational animosity toward Zahner and blamed him for his mental-health issues, according to court records. Caleb felt Zahner had “brushed him aside” after he became ill, records show.

Police executed a search warrant Tuesday on Caleb’s home in Tucson and discovered an “incoherent” handwritten note and a box for a Bushmaster AR-15 under his bed.

Soaked Saguaro Crushes Glendale Family Truck

GLENDALE, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) –

A Glendale family believes last weekend’s storm is to blame for a 30-foot saguaro falling and crushing one of their trucks.

The 10,000 lb cactus stood in Jordan Duncan’s front yard near 43rd Avenue and Bell Road until early Saturday morning when it fell across the driveway and crushed his Nissan truck.

“It crushed the truck almost like a tin can,” said Duncan.

The homeowner, who estimates the saguaro is about 25 years old, noticed the cactus starting to lean about two years ago.

“If they’re learning towards your house, I would get them removed because it could do some serious damage,” he said.

Since there are strict rules on touching cacti in Arizona, Duncan called a professional.

“If there’s a saguaro on your property and you want to remove it, you need to get permission from the Arizona Department of Agriculture. But once it’s fallen, you can cut it up and remove it,” said Duncan.

After getting a $2,000 quote, Duncan decided to hold off on moving the cactus from his yard.

“It’s pretty expensive to get it removed so I just played the odds and I did lose,” said Duncan.

With more rain coming to the valley, Duncan warns others with cacti to take precautions.

“As the ground gets soaked and the cacti fill up with water, it makes them a lot heavier so if you have a saguaro in your yard that you see leaning, I would look at it getting anchored down,” said Duncan

Arizona lawmaker targets lawbreaking universities, colleges

PHOENIX (AP) –A Republican state lawmaker said Thursday he will target Arizona colleges and universities that violate state law with a new proposal that would penalize them with the loss of 10 percent of their state funding.

Rep. Bob Thorpe of Flagstaff said his legislation, House Bill 2119, was prompted by decisions by community colleges and the state university system to offer lower in-state tuition to immigrants granted deferred deportation under an Obama Administration policy.

[RELATED: Judge: Dreamers can get in-state tuition in Arizona]

Although Thorpe said he’s targeting colleges, the proposed legislation makes no distinction between K-12 schools and higher learning institutions, leaving them at risk too.

A judge has held that deferred deportation recipients qualify for lower tuition, although the state is appealing.

Thorpe is also proposing legislation, H.B. 2120, to expand a state ban on ethnic studies programs in K-12 schools to colleges and universities. Violations also come with a 10 percent funding penalty.

Democratic Sen. Martin Quezada calls both proposals “scary stuff.”

The proposal comes as a new state law to withhold all state funding from cities that violate state laws is being challenged in the Arizona Supreme Court.

[RELATED: AZ state attorneys take DACA in-state tuition battle to court]

Thorpe said targeting colleges and universities that offer in-state tuition is a pushback against President Barack Obama’s 2012 program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

That program has given work permits and relief from deportation to more than 700,000 young immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally, about 27,000 of them in Arizona. Last month, 240 state university students got lower tuition because they were DACA students.

“We’re not talking about a law that was enacted by Congress and signed by the president. They’re executive orders,” Thorpe said. “My concern is that we have a voter-protected law on the books that says you have (to be authorized to be in the U.S.) to get in-state tuition.”

Former Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne contended that a 2006 law known as Proposition 300 barred lower in-state tuition for those students after a Phoenix-area community college adopted the practice. A state judge ruled in 2015 that DACA recipients do qualify.

The state Board of Regents quickly approved lower tuition for DACA recipients attending the three state universities. Current Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is appealing that ruling.

The proposed expansion of the ethnic studies ban comes seven years after lawmakers barred such studies in K-12 schools. Thorpe said he is concerned that some university classes are being designed that promote racial divisiveness.

“The intention of the bill is Martin Luther King,” Thorpe said. “The strides that we made in the 1960s I think are being diluted.”

Quezada said the ethnic studies proposal also includes student activities.

“So if you’ve got a student activity celebrating the 16th of September, the traditional Mexican Independence Day, and just having a prideful celebration, that would be impacted by this,” Quezada said. “It would really put in danger teaching about the causes of the Civil War, those types of things.”

“It’s beyond just bad policy, this is a scary type of very Eurocentric type of thinking that we should have moved beyond as a nation a long time ago,” he added.

Thorpe said the financial penalties are needed to force compliance.

“The message that needs to be sent to our state funded institutions is, ‘Please be in compliance with state law,'” he said. “I hope that these are never used.”

By Bob Christie

Disturbing new trend ‘Pink’ kills 3 in Arizona

TEMPE, Ariz. (KSAZ) – The synthetic drug “Pink” is a disturbing new trend that has killed dozens across the country and now we’re learning it’s responsible for at least three overdose deaths in Arizona.

The DEA announced the three deaths in Maricopa county; all involving “Pink,” the synthetic opioid formally known as U-47700. They only learned about these overdoses in the past few months.

They’re trying to find the traffickers responsible, as recovery clinics treat a growing number of opioid addicts.

Disturbing new trend ‘Pink’ kills 3 in Arizona

“U4 is seven times more powerful than morphine, so just the smallest amount of it can end in an overdose episode and death,” Doug Coleman said.

Coleman is a special agent in charge of the DEA in Arizona and says this is the first time “Pink” has shown up in local overdose cases. Two of the three men who overdosed were only in their 20s.

“Your kid can be sitting next to you on a couch working his iPhone and ordering “Pink” from a website in China for $35,” Coleman said.

Lee Pioske gets calls from concerned parents every day. He’s the executive director of Crossroads, one of the country’s largest residential treatment centers for substance abuse.

“There’s probably 60 to 70 percent of the people that are addicted to opioids that aren’t even seeking help, so we want them to know that its a good idea to do something about it, to call somebody, to start tonight by getting involved in your own recovery,” he said.

The Cronkite School had 100 professionals on hand tonight taking calls from those struggling with addiction.

By: Kristy Siefkin

Trial begins for Arizona man accused of recruiting for ISIS

NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors are counting on the social media postings of an Arizona man to help persuade a jury that he was a recruiter for Islamic State militants.

Ahmed Mohammed el-Gammal, who lived in Avondale, a Phoenix suburb, faces trial today, Jan. 9, at a federal court in New York on charges that he helped a 24-year-old New Yorker link up with Islamic State fighters in 2015 after traveling to Syria via Turkey.

“I am willing to live in a tent under an Islamic state instead of all luxuries under an infidel state,” Ahmed Mohammed el-Gammal, 44, wrote in one Facebook chat in July, 2014.

The New York man he allegedly helped become a fighter, Samy el-Goarany, was killed in Syria in November 2015, according to prosecutors.

El-Gammal has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers say the vast majority of his online communications were innocent. Investigators, they said, failed to find evidence in el-Gammal’s home that he was involved in any terrorist plotting in the United States.

At trial, jurors are also set to view a video that el-Goarany made before his death. In it, el-Goarany, clad in military fatigues, insists he got himself to Syria without any help.

El-Gammal’s attorney, Sabrina Shroff, said in a court filing that the slain New Yorker, “was a sophisticated, strong-willed young man who formed his own beliefs and arranged and financed his own travel.”

When el-Gammal’s arrest was announced in August 2015, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said el-Gammal attracted the attention of el-Goarany by touting his support online for the Islamic State group. The government said the two men communicated online for about six months before el-Goarany went to the Middle East.

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos, who will preside over a trial expected to last about three weeks, is permitting the government to show jurors numerous online communications between the two.

“The government anticipates its proof at trial will consist, in significant measure, of the defendant’s own statements via social media and other electronic communications,” prosecutors said in court papers.

Other trial exhibits include a handwritten “martyr” letter el-Goarany wrote that was sent to his brother after he died. In one portion, he wrote: “If you are reading this, then know that I’ve been killed in battle and am now with our Lord Allah.”

El-Gammal was arrested in Arizona in August of 2015, after el-Goarany went to Syria but before he was killed. He is charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

The Arizona Republic reported at the time of his arrest that el-Gammal was a naturalized U.S. citizen who had lived in the country since 2000. He was married the same year, but his wife filed for divorce in 2014. His lawyers said at his bail hearing that he owned his own business importing machinery to fix vehicles.

By The Associated Press