http://www.nvdaily.com/news/2015/06/jury-fines-man-2500-for-driving-107-mph-on-i-81/
WOODSTOCK – A Shenandoah County Circuit Court jury fined a Tennessee man $2,500 Wednesday after convicting him on a reckless driving charge of 107 mph in a 70 mph zone on Interstate 81.
Joel Brice Tawembe, 23, testified that he was northbound looking for a gas station or similar facility where he could he use a restroom before he was pulled over at 2:50 a.m. on June 22 just south of Woodstock. He said a cousin riding in the vehicle was helping him navigate with a GPS device.
“I was paying attention to road signs, but I didn’t locate a gas station or anything like that,” Tawembe said.
Virginia State Police Trooper Michael Painter testified that his radar showed Tawembe traveling at 107 mph. Tawembe, a college student, said he was on his way to Maryland to visit a friend at the time he was stopped.
Tawembe’s attorney, Blake Woloson of Woodbridge, said in an interview afterward that he sought the jury trial in an effort to head off a jail sentence for his client. A reckless driving charge is a misdemeanor carrying a sentence of up to one year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,500.
The jury took about 15 minutes before returning a guilty verdict. Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Kristen Zalenski asked the jury to impose an unspecified jail sentence on Tawembe.
“One hundred and seven miles per hour is a deadly speed,” Zalenski told the jury.
“That’s a speed at which you can change your life or someone else’s like that,” she added, snapping her fingers.
Woloson argued that his client wasn’t racing, weaving in and out of traffic, drunk “or any of the other things we normally associate with reckless driving” at the time he was pulled over. Woloson added that Tawembe had no previous driving offenses during the three years he has held a license.
“He’s led a good, honest life,” Woloson said of Tawembe. “He does not need to go to jail for this.”
Court costs and other fees raised the total amount Tawembe must pay to $3,259.
Contact staff writer Joe Beck at 540-465-5137 ext. 142, or jbeck@nvdaily.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011102173.html
Hispanic Gang Member Who Drove Gunman Is Convicted of MurderNetwork News X Profile
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TOOLBOX ResizePrintE-mailReprintsBy Jamie StockwellWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 12, 2007
An Arlington County jury convicted a 21-year-old gang member yesterday in the slaying last spring of a member of a rival gang.
The Circuit Court jury deliberated about five hours before it found Ismael Paiz guilty of second-degree murder, malicious wounding by a mob, lynching, participation in a gang and firearms charges. Paiz, an associate of the Latino street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, faces up to 40 years in prison for the convictions. The jury recommended that he serve 18 1/2 years.
By returning the guilty verdict, the jury agreed that Paiz, of Falls Church, was responsible for the April 27 shooting death of Julio Bonilla, even though Paiz didn’t fire the shots that killed Bonilla. According to testimony, Bonilla, 18, was a member of Southside Locos, also known as SSL.
A second SSL member was shot and critically wounded but did not die, prosecutors said.
The prosecution’s case during the four-day trial was built on the contention that Paiz, as the driver of a carload of MS-13 members, knew that one of the men had a gun and that the intention that night was to continue a fight with several SSL members. The alleged shooter, Juan Pablo Salamanca Rodriguez, 22, fled to El Salvador immediately after the slaying, prosecutors said. He has been charged in a warrant in connection with the homicide.
Because the shooter escaped arrest, someone had to be the “fall guy,” said Blake Woloson, Paiz’s attorney.
Paiz “feels morally responsible because he was driving,” Woloson said in his closing arguments to the jury yesterday morning. “But that’s not the same thing as legally responsible.”
The jury disagreed, siding with Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Frank Frio, who painted Paiz as a liar, one who tells “half-truths and who went out [the night of the killing] for the purpose of fighting SSL.”
“He was their driver, and he was their backup,” Frio told the jury in his closing arguments.
According to testimony, Paiz parked his white Honda near Arlington Mill Community Center and Senior Center the night of April 27. Inside his car were Rodriguez, two of Rodriguez’s brothers and Rodriguez’s girlfriend. An ongoing dispute with SSL had led earlier in the evening to a “stare-down,” in which members of the opposing gangs traded glares, witnesses at a Wakefield High School soccer game testified.
Cars carrying members of both gangs eventually parked near the center in the 900 block of South Dinwiddie Street shortly before 8:30 p.m. Moments later, Rodriguez allegedly fired five or six shots at SSL members as they walked toward him.
“MS-13 was planning this fight,” Frio told the jury yesterday. “They had discussed what they were going to do.”
Paiz is scheduled to be sentenced in April.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061501284.html
Two-Year Term in Toddler’s DeathNetwork News X Profile
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TOOLBOX ResizePrintE-mailReprintsBy Jamie StockwellWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 16, 2006
Nearly nine months have passed since a little boy named Henry Hall stopped breathing at the home of his caregiver. Yesterday, inside an Alexandria courtroom, it was as if the 10-month-old child died again.
As his day-care provider apologized to the judge for the mistakes that led to Henry’s death, the boy’s mother rushed from the courtroom clutching her chest, her heavy sobs piercing the quiet hallway. Vanessa Hall’s ear-splitting cries were unbroken and could be heard inside the courtroom as Laytarishia D. Robinson told the judge that her life is also forever changed by the boy’s death.
An ambulance was summoned to the courthouse, and medics tended to Henry’s mother as Robinson, 32, asked Circuit Court Judge John E. Kloch to “lean on the side of compassion” and grant her probation. Instead, he sentenced her to two years in prison. With a grim face, Kloch conceded that “justice in this case is elusive.”
“I agree that no amount of punishment will bring Henry back and no amount of punishment will make you a better person,” Kloch said. “But nonetheless, this case calls for punishment. And I realize that by punishing you, I am also punishing the people who love you.”
On Sept. 28, Robinson fell asleep after taking a sleeping aid while Henry and several other children were in her care. Henry suffocated in a pile of bedding on the floor where she had left him. Robinson pleaded guilty in April to involuntary manslaughter.
Outside the courtroom, while relatives tried to console his wife, John Hall said no amount of jail time could begin to make up for the loss of their only child.
“He would lean forward in his stroller as if to take the world in that much faster,” said Hall, 38, his eyes moist. “He was a loving and happy little boy, and we believe in our hearts that he would have grown up to be a very good person.”
A licensed day-care provider who had been trained in safety procedures, Robinson ignored many of them on that fall afternoon, prosecutors said yesterday.
To combat a headache, Robinson took three or four Tylenol PM tablets, an over-the-counter pain reliever and sleeping aid. She then put the children down for naps, placing Henry, who remained alert and playful, on the floor of her bedroom, despite having been taught the dangers of soft bedding, which can suffocate babies, prosecutors said.
When she awoke about 2:30 p.m., Robinson was unable to find Henry. She searched her bedroom and adjoining rooms, assuming he had crawled away. Moments later, digging into the bedding on the floor, she found Henry in the fetal position, unresponsive and not breathing.
Instead of calling 911, Robinson called the parents of the other children, asking them to hurry to her apartment because she had a sick child, Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Krista Boucher said.
Robinson “did not intentionally and deliberately kill Henry, but she intentionally and deliberately . . . delayed for more than 40 minutes before summoning any medical help,” Boucher said, adding that Robinson then lied to medics about why Henry wasn’t breathing. “Her actions and inactions led to his death.”
At first, Robinson told authorities that Henry was playing when he stopped breathing. She later admitted to having put Henry, who was just beginning to walk, on the comforter in a bedroom with exposed wires, uncovered outlets and fish food within reach, Boucher said.
Her attorney, Blake K. Woloson, said it came down to “one bad decision. By all accounts, she was good at what she did.”
Standing next to Woloson, Robinson delivered a 35-minute unscripted apology and said she had a lapse in judgment. “I’d give anything to take that day back,” she said.
It is a day that Henry’s parents regularly relive, John Hall told the judge. He was in California on a business trip and was eating lunch with colleagues when his wife called from the hospital, in tears because their child had stopped breathing.
Fifteen minutes later, packing in his hotel room, his cellphone rang again. This time, his wife told him Henry was dead. Now, they still avoid the restaurants and stores where they took Henry, and it hurts to see other young children.
“We can’t think of our past with him and we can’t look at our pictures of him,” he said, “without being constantly reminded of what we will miss.”
WOODSTOCK – A Shenandoah County Circuit Court jury fined a Tennessee man $2,500 Wednesday after convicting him on a reckless driving charge of 107 mph in a 70 mph zone on Interstate 81.
Joel Brice Tawembe, 23, testified that he was northbound looking for a gas station or similar facility where he could he use a restroom before he was pulled over at 2:50 a.m. on June 22 just south of Woodstock. He said a cousin riding in the vehicle was helping him navigate with a GPS device.
“I was paying attention to road signs, but I didn’t locate a gas station or anything like that,” Tawembe said.
Virginia State Police Trooper Michael Painter testified that his radar showed Tawembe traveling at 107 mph. Tawembe, a college student, said he was on his way to Maryland to visit a friend at the time he was stopped.
Tawembe’s attorney, Blake Woloson of Woodbridge, said in an interview afterward that he sought the jury trial in an effort to head off a jail sentence for his client. A reckless driving charge is a misdemeanor carrying a sentence of up to one year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,500.
The jury took about 15 minutes before returning a guilty verdict. Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Kristen Zalenski asked the jury to impose an unspecified jail sentence on Tawembe.
“One hundred and seven miles per hour is a deadly speed,” Zalenski told the jury.
“That’s a speed at which you can change your life or someone else’s like that,” she added, snapping her fingers.
Woloson argued that his client wasn’t racing, weaving in and out of traffic, drunk “or any of the other things we normally associate with reckless driving” at the time he was pulled over. Woloson added that Tawembe had no previous driving offenses during the three years he has held a license.
“He’s led a good, honest life,” Woloson said of Tawembe. “He does not need to go to jail for this.”
Court costs and other fees raised the total amount Tawembe must pay to $3,259.
Contact staff writer Joe Beck at 540-465-5137 ext. 142, or jbeck@nvdaily.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011102173.html
Hispanic Gang Member Who Drove Gunman Is Convicted of MurderNetwork News X Profile
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TOOLBOX ResizePrintE-mailReprintsBy Jamie StockwellWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 12, 2007
An Arlington County jury convicted a 21-year-old gang member yesterday in the slaying last spring of a member of a rival gang.
The Circuit Court jury deliberated about five hours before it found Ismael Paiz guilty of second-degree murder, malicious wounding by a mob, lynching, participation in a gang and firearms charges. Paiz, an associate of the Latino street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, faces up to 40 years in prison for the convictions. The jury recommended that he serve 18 1/2 years.
By returning the guilty verdict, the jury agreed that Paiz, of Falls Church, was responsible for the April 27 shooting death of Julio Bonilla, even though Paiz didn’t fire the shots that killed Bonilla. According to testimony, Bonilla, 18, was a member of Southside Locos, also known as SSL.
A second SSL member was shot and critically wounded but did not die, prosecutors said.
The prosecution’s case during the four-day trial was built on the contention that Paiz, as the driver of a carload of MS-13 members, knew that one of the men had a gun and that the intention that night was to continue a fight with several SSL members. The alleged shooter, Juan Pablo Salamanca Rodriguez, 22, fled to El Salvador immediately after the slaying, prosecutors said. He has been charged in a warrant in connection with the homicide.
Because the shooter escaped arrest, someone had to be the “fall guy,” said Blake Woloson, Paiz’s attorney.
Paiz “feels morally responsible because he was driving,” Woloson said in his closing arguments to the jury yesterday morning. “But that’s not the same thing as legally responsible.”
The jury disagreed, siding with Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Frank Frio, who painted Paiz as a liar, one who tells “half-truths and who went out [the night of the killing] for the purpose of fighting SSL.”
“He was their driver, and he was their backup,” Frio told the jury in his closing arguments.
According to testimony, Paiz parked his white Honda near Arlington Mill Community Center and Senior Center the night of April 27. Inside his car were Rodriguez, two of Rodriguez’s brothers and Rodriguez’s girlfriend. An ongoing dispute with SSL had led earlier in the evening to a “stare-down,” in which members of the opposing gangs traded glares, witnesses at a Wakefield High School soccer game testified.
Cars carrying members of both gangs eventually parked near the center in the 900 block of South Dinwiddie Street shortly before 8:30 p.m. Moments later, Rodriguez allegedly fired five or six shots at SSL members as they walked toward him.
“MS-13 was planning this fight,” Frio told the jury yesterday. “They had discussed what they were going to do.”
Paiz is scheduled to be sentenced in April.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061501284.html
Two-Year Term in Toddler’s DeathNetwork News X Profile
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TOOLBOX ResizePrintE-mailReprintsBy Jamie StockwellWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 16, 2006
Nearly nine months have passed since a little boy named Henry Hall stopped breathing at the home of his caregiver. Yesterday, inside an Alexandria courtroom, it was as if the 10-month-old child died again.
As his day-care provider apologized to the judge for the mistakes that led to Henry’s death, the boy’s mother rushed from the courtroom clutching her chest, her heavy sobs piercing the quiet hallway. Vanessa Hall’s ear-splitting cries were unbroken and could be heard inside the courtroom as Laytarishia D. Robinson told the judge that her life is also forever changed by the boy’s death.
An ambulance was summoned to the courthouse, and medics tended to Henry’s mother as Robinson, 32, asked Circuit Court Judge John E. Kloch to “lean on the side of compassion” and grant her probation. Instead, he sentenced her to two years in prison. With a grim face, Kloch conceded that “justice in this case is elusive.”
“I agree that no amount of punishment will bring Henry back and no amount of punishment will make you a better person,” Kloch said. “But nonetheless, this case calls for punishment. And I realize that by punishing you, I am also punishing the people who love you.”
On Sept. 28, Robinson fell asleep after taking a sleeping aid while Henry and several other children were in her care. Henry suffocated in a pile of bedding on the floor where she had left him. Robinson pleaded guilty in April to involuntary manslaughter.
Outside the courtroom, while relatives tried to console his wife, John Hall said no amount of jail time could begin to make up for the loss of their only child.
“He would lean forward in his stroller as if to take the world in that much faster,” said Hall, 38, his eyes moist. “He was a loving and happy little boy, and we believe in our hearts that he would have grown up to be a very good person.”
A licensed day-care provider who had been trained in safety procedures, Robinson ignored many of them on that fall afternoon, prosecutors said yesterday.
To combat a headache, Robinson took three or four Tylenol PM tablets, an over-the-counter pain reliever and sleeping aid. She then put the children down for naps, placing Henry, who remained alert and playful, on the floor of her bedroom, despite having been taught the dangers of soft bedding, which can suffocate babies, prosecutors said.
When she awoke about 2:30 p.m., Robinson was unable to find Henry. She searched her bedroom and adjoining rooms, assuming he had crawled away. Moments later, digging into the bedding on the floor, she found Henry in the fetal position, unresponsive and not breathing.
Instead of calling 911, Robinson called the parents of the other children, asking them to hurry to her apartment because she had a sick child, Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Krista Boucher said.
Robinson “did not intentionally and deliberately kill Henry, but she intentionally and deliberately . . . delayed for more than 40 minutes before summoning any medical help,” Boucher said, adding that Robinson then lied to medics about why Henry wasn’t breathing. “Her actions and inactions led to his death.”
At first, Robinson told authorities that Henry was playing when he stopped breathing. She later admitted to having put Henry, who was just beginning to walk, on the comforter in a bedroom with exposed wires, uncovered outlets and fish food within reach, Boucher said.
Her attorney, Blake K. Woloson, said it came down to “one bad decision. By all accounts, she was good at what she did.”
Standing next to Woloson, Robinson delivered a 35-minute unscripted apology and said she had a lapse in judgment. “I’d give anything to take that day back,” she said.
It is a day that Henry’s parents regularly relive, John Hall told the judge. He was in California on a business trip and was eating lunch with colleagues when his wife called from the hospital, in tears because their child had stopped breathing.
Fifteen minutes later, packing in his hotel room, his cellphone rang again. This time, his wife told him Henry was dead. Now, they still avoid the restaurants and stores where they took Henry, and it hurts to see other young children.
“We can’t think of our past with him and we can’t look at our pictures of him,” he said, “without being constantly reminded of what we will miss.”