ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) - An 18-year-old has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for throwing a punch in a St. Cloud alley that killed a college student.
Jesse Smithers of Sauk Rapids earlier pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 20-year-old Colton Gleason.
A plea agreement mandated the sentence. The St. Cloud Times (https://on.sctimes.com/1evSwOHhttps://on.sctimes.com/1evSwOH ) reports if Smithers doesn’t commit any disciplinary offenses in prison, he could be released in just over five years.
Gleason’s father, John, says no punishment is great enough to bring his son back.
Smithers apologized for what he called a “complete accident.”
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Joe Biden will be among those paying respects to Joan Mondale at a memorial service in Minneapolis.
Mondale was the wife of Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale. She died Monday at age 83.
Carter will speak during the Saturday service at Westminster Presbyterian Church. The former president will attend with his wife, Rosalynn. Biden’s office confirmed that he and his wife, Jill, also will travel to Minnesota for the service.
Joan Mondale cultivated a reputation as a strong and vocal advocate for the arts, helping transform the role of second lady. She continued her advocacy after her husband was appointed U.S. ambassador to Japan under President Bill Clinton.
The service will be streamed live on the church’s website.
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NEW YORK (AP) - The so-called “johns” who fuel the sex-for-pay trade were not left out of a slew of crackdowns on the industry scheduled to coincide with the Super Bowl as hundreds were rounded up in a multistate sting operation, authorities said Thursday.
In all, 359 men soliciting sex were rounded up, along with 14 others who were arrested on sex trafficking charges, according to Cook County, Ill., Sheriff Thomas J. Dart. The sting lasted from Jan. 23 through Sunday, when the Super Bowl played in East Rutherford, N.J.
The arrests included what the Los Angeles Police Department reported was a pimp who drove from Arizona to collect what he thought was a new recruit. Authorities said Los Angeles undercover officers discovered that he brought along an 18-year-old woman he had forced into prostitution, along with her 5-year-old son, both of whom were rescued.
Other busts included a pimp in St. Paul, Minn., who had been holding two 18-year-old women against their will and a Harris County, Texas, Constable Precinct 4 deputy who was wearing his uniform trousers when he was arrested as he tried to solicit sex, said Benjamin Breit, a spokesman for Dart. He said Harris County law enforcement arrested 48 johns.
Dayton, Ohio, police arrested five sex traffickers, the most of any agency.
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SPRINGFIELD, Minn. (AP) - A suspected carbon monoxide leak has forced an evacuation at a southern Minnesota school and sent 30 children to the hospital.
Police were called to Springfield Public School just after 9:30 a.m. Thursday after a couple of students reportedly fell ill in the school auditorium.
The entire school was evacuated. Hospital spokesman Kevin Burns says 30 elementary school students were taken to Mayo Clinic Health Center in Springfield with symptoms of possible carbon monoxide exposure such as nausea.
Burns says by late afternoon, 27 students were treated and released and three were still being evaluated.
Students and staff were taken to the Springfield Community Center, where students were to be picked up by parents.
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