Man guilty on gun charge; led school ambush in 1998

Man guilty on gun charge;
led school ambush in 1998

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A federal jury convicted a 23-year-old man on an obscure weapons charge Tuesday, apparently unaware that 10 years ago he and another boy killed four classmates and a teacher in a schoolyard ambush. Mitchell Johnson faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in the next 45 days on a count of possessing a firearm while being a drug user. Johnson was arrested New Year’s Day 2007 after police stopped his van and said they found a bag of marijuana in his pocket and a 9 mm pistol and a 20-gauge shotgun in two bags. Police said they stopped the van after getting an anonymous tip about drugs in the vehicle. In 1998, Johnson, then 13, and 11-year-old schoolmate Andrew Golden opened fire as students and teachers left Jonesboro Westside Middle School after Golden pulled the fire alarm. The boys killed English teacher Shannon Wright and four pupils ages 11 and 12. They wounded 10 other people.

Ex-prosecutor removed
from Duke lacrosse suit

DURHAM, N.C. — A federal judge has removed the disgraced Durham County prosecutor from a lawsuit filed by three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape. Former District Attorney Mike Nifong filed for bankruptcy two weeks ago, citing more than $180 million in liabilities. Almost all of that amount is the estimated damages from pending litigation. U.S. District Judge James Beaty left open the possibility that Nifong could again become a defendant in the suit. Nifong won indictments against the three players after a stripper hired to perform at a March 2006 team party reported being raped, but the case unraveled in the face of the accuser’s changing story and a lack of evidence. The state prosecutors who eventually took over the case dropped all charges and declared the players innocent victims of Nifong’s “tragic rush to accuse.” He was later disbarred for his handling of the case and spent a night in jail for lying to a judge.

Candidate accused
of falsifying evidence

DOVER, N.H. — Gary Dodds soaked his feet in cold water and faked a story about getting lost after a car crash as part of a ploy to drum up attention for his congressional campaign, a prosecutor charged Tuesday. Dodds claimed he waded across an icy river and spent a night in the woods in April 2006 after crashing his car in a snowstorm, but physical and medical evidence show otherwise, acting County Attorney Thomas Velardi said in his opening statement at Dodds’ trial. Prosecutors say Dodds’ daylong disappearance was faked. He is charged with falsifying evidence, a felony, and misdemeanor charges of leaving the scene of an accident and causing false public alarm. He could be sentenced to seven years in prison if convicted of the most serious charge. Prosecutors say Dodds had worrisome campaign debts and was facing a possible investigation by the Federal Election Commission at the time of the crash.

Sound-alike drugs double
prescription mix-ups

MELVILLE, N.Y. — Medication mix-ups have more than doubled since 2004 driven largely by a troubling proliferation of prescription drugs with confusingly similar names, according to a new report. Examining records submitted by 870 hospitals to MEDMARX, a database run by the United States Pharmacopeia — USP — researchers discovered glaring, and sometimes deadly medication errors linked to sound-alike, look-alike medication names. In the new report, its eighth assessment of medication errors, USP researchers found that 1.4 percent of the mistakes resulted in harm, including seven errors that may have caused or contributed to the deaths of patients. The research implicated 1,470 different drugs in errors associated with brand or generic names that looked or sounded similar. From this data, USP compiled an even longer list of 3,170 pairs of names that look or sound alike. This total is nearly double the 1,750 pairs that USP identified in its 2004 analysis.

Change in mayor’s office

DETROIT — Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick named a new chief of staff Tuesday, a day after the woman who previously held the post resigned amid allegations that she and the mayor lied under oath about an affair. Kandia Milton, who has served as deputy chief of staff and liaison to Detroit’s City Council, was appointed to Christine Beatty’s job, Kilpatrick announced in a written statement released Tuesday. The mayor’s office also said he planned to address the city for the first time since the scandal broke, with an address tonight from his church.

Combined dispatches