digest
PONTIAC, Mich. — A man accused of abducting his 2-year-old daughter three decades ago and leading her to believe that her mother was killed in a traffic crash pleaded no contest yesterday to a parental kidnapping charge.
Eric Douglas Nielsen, 54, faces a maximum of a year in jail when he is sentenced July 26 in Oakland County Circuit Court. A no contest plea in Michigan is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing purposes.
Sheriff’s deputies say Nielsen picked up Genevieve — who is now 32 — at his estranged wife’s home May 8, 1976, for what was supposed to have been only an overnight visit. Two months earlier, a judge had granted temporary custody to the girl’s maternal grandmother.
Genevieve’s mother, Laura Gooder, learned only recently that her daughter was living in the Phoenix area.
Gooder said yesterday that she and Genevieve have met and are staying in contact with each other.
“Just build my relationship with my daughter, that’s my goal,” she said.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A former university class president accused of robbing a bank to pay his online poker debts pleaded guilty yesterday to felony robbery.
Greg Hogan, 20, the son of a preacher and former president of Lehigh University’s class of 2008, was accused of holding up a Wachovia bank Dec. 9 by handing a teller a note demanding money and saying he had a gun.
He got away with $2,871, then drove off with two of his fraternity brothers, according to police. Both said they knew nothing of Hogan’s plans, and neither was charged.
Hogan was arrested during orchestra practice the night of the robbery, after the cellist had gone to the movies and eaten pizza with his unsuspecting friends.
He owed $5,000 in debts from playing online poker and later entered a treatment program for gambling addiction, according to his lawyer, John Waldron.
“I think this incident was a cry for help from Greg Hogan,” Waldron said.
JACKSON, N.C. — An inmate grabbed a correction officer’s gun inside a courthouse yesterdayand shot him, then was killed as he struggled with other law enforcement officers.
Willie Forrest, in court to face charges including murder, had become enraged by a judge’s decision and was being removed from the courtroom yesterday morning by several deputies, said Sheriff Wardie Vincent. He wrestled a gun from an officer and began firing.
The officers pinned Forrest against a wall, but he managed to fire a shot that stuck a correction officer in the arm, Vincent said. A deputy then fatally shot Forrest.
“He was almost like a wild animal,” Forrest’s lawyer, Sam Dixon, told WRAL-TV in Raleigh. “I really have never seen anything like it in my life.”
MILWAUKEE — Two car crashes occurred and four people were arrested in excitement over a gasoline giveaway yesterday to reward the city for its safe-driving record.
For the most part, hundreds of drivers waited patiently for hours for about $30 worth of free gasoline each that Allstate Insurance provided at one station.
However, some motorists started lining up before midnight and the queue stretched far from the station into a residential area, trapping some residents in their driveways, said police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz.
That led to fights and arrests for disorderly conduct. In one case, three officers were sent to a hospital as a precaution because they were spattered with blood from someone’s bloodied nose, Schwartz said.
The two crashes apparently occurred when queued-up motorists tried to let friends into line, Schwartz said.
Allstate gave away a tanker truckload of gasoline as a reward to Milwaukee for ranking No. 1 among mid-sized cities on its safe drivers list.
FRESNO, Calif. — Two junior college football players pleaded not guilty yesterday to sexually assaulting an 11-year-old runaway in an attack that may have involved eight other men.
Mackey Davis, 20, and Eddie Scott, 19, did not speak during the short arraignment in Fresno County Superior Court as lawyers entered pleas on their behalf to single counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child. Bail was set at $55,000 each.
Police have identified eight other men as “persons of interest” in the attack Saturday night at an apartment complex where the girl was allegedly sexually assaulted multiple times by several men.
Most of the men played football at Fresno City College or Reedley College.
Davis, from Port St. Lucie, Fla., transferred from Reedley to Fresno City College.
Scott, who is from West Palm Beach, Fla., had signed to play for Division II Ferris State University in Michigan.
From Associated Press reports