■MEXICO
Bishop held in traffic fatality
One person is dead and five injured after a Roman Catholic bishop apparently lost control of his vehicle and ran them over. Police in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz say Bishop Eduardo Patino Leal has been detained in the town of Huatusco. They say he was driving a sport utility vehicle at a high rate of speed on Thursday when he lost control. The vehicle hit a parked car and a light pole before going up on a sidewalk. The victims were all Indian street vendors who were on the sidewalk.
■UNITED STATES
Man convicted over ‘fight club’
A jury in Corpus Christi, Texas, has found a former employee of a state-run living center for the developmentally disabled guilty of causing injury to a disabled person in a high-profile “fight club” case. Jesse Salazar, 26, was charged with involvement with the orchestration of late-night fights among residents of the state facility for the developmentally disabled. Salazar was the first of six former employees charged in the case to stand trial. He could face two to 10 years in prison.
■UNITED STATES
Prison denies relationship
Arkansas prison spokeswoman Dina Tyler says allegations that a death-row guard had a romantic relationship with an inmate were determined to be “unfounded.” The guard, Danita Williams, on Thursday denied claims that the inmate committed a sexual act in her presence and passed her love letters. Tyler said investigators found no love letters or any evidence proving a romantic relationship between the two. Prison officials fired Williams on July 7 for passing goods between the death-row inmate and another inmate. An internal report also raised anonymous allegations of a sexual relationship between Williams and the inmate.
■MEXICO
Convictions overturned
Twenty men were released from prison on Thursday after their sentences in the 1997 massacre of 45 Indian villagers in southern Chiapas state were overturned by the Supreme Court. The men proclaimed their innocence, after the court ruled that prosecutors used illegally obtained evidence in their convictions. New trials were ordered for six other prisoners. “We were in prison for almost 12 years, for a crime that we didn’t commit,” said Antonio Ruiz Perez, one of the 20 Tzotzil Indians. “That is almost 12 years they robbed from our lives, and separated us from our families.” Chiapas Interior Secretary Noe Castanon said the men would be relocated away from their home village near the massacre site to avoid tensions with survivors and their families. The Acteal victims were supporters of the Zapatista rebels, and the men convicted in the slayings were from a neighboring pro-government hamlet that had political and territorial disputes with the victims.
■UNITED STATES
Drugs found in toothbrush
Authorities say actor Michael Douglas’ son has been jailed after his girlfriend allegedly tried to smuggle drugs to him inside an electric toothbrush while he was under house arrest in New York City. Cameron Douglas, 30, was arrested last month at a Manhattan hotel on charges he trafficked large quantities of methamphetamine. He was put under house arrest at his mother’s apartment. Federal investigators claim that on Monday, girlfriend Kelly Sott delivered an electric toothbrush to the apartment. They later discovered 19 containers of heroin inside of it. Sott has been arrested and it being held in a federal jail.
RSS