UPDATE: Jury selection has been delayed until the start of the trial on May 8th at the request of Indiana County President Judge William Martin.
WHAT WE PREVIOUSLY REPORTED
Jury selection is scheduled today for an Allegheny County woman accused in a murder-for-hire plot.
55-year-old Laraine Patterson of Sewickley is charged with solicitation to criminal homicide and conspiracy to criminal homicide in the scheme with 48-year-old Gregory Rouzer, an inmate at SCI Pine Grove. Rouzer wanted to kill Randy Walters, an Allegheny County man he had shot in 2008, leading to his arrest and subsequent incarceration. He also tried to hire a hit man to kill Walters in 2009.
Laraine Patterson is accused of trying to help arrange the hit on Walters, with the help of a go-between who was actually undercover state trooper Rebecca Fabich, who used the name “Joanie Pepperoni”. Police recorded several conversations between Fabich and Patterson, and also gathered evidence from Rouzer, using a confidential informant inside the prison.
In a plea bargain in January, Rouzer pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aggravated assault. He is scheduled to be sentenced next Monday.
Also in Indiana County Court today, jury selection is scheduled for an Indiana man who allegedly fired a rifle inside the office of the Westgate Apartments in White Township last September.
67-year-old Joel Mansell is accused of firing two shots through the ceiling at the apartment complex because he was reportedly angry that his electricity had been shut off. Two workers in the office and a man who lived in the apartment above the office were unhurt. Mansell fled the scene as police were responding, but was taken into custody moment later at the Southtowne Plaza parking lot. He’s charged with two counts of aggravated assault, discharge of a firearm into an occupied structure, three counts of recklessly endangering another person, and two counts of terroristic threats.
There are four trials today involving defendants accused of trafficking in drugs. Two of the suspects, Henry Lewis King of Turtle Creek, Allegheny County and Kareem Middlebrook of Arnold, Westmoreland County, were corralled after a traffic stop last August at the Route 422/286 interchange in White Township. Two other men were in the vehicle and both remain in custody awaiting court action. Police found fourteen grams of heroin and a package of unused stamp bags in the car. King is a convicted drug dealer already, for two 2011 cases.
Both King and Middlebrook had filed motions to suppress the evidence gathered in the case plus and declare the police search of their vehicle to have been illegal, but those motions were denied by Judge Thomas Bianco. District Attorney Pat Dougherty filed a motion to consolidate the cases and Judge Bianco will hold a hearing on that motion before the start of jury selection.
Jury selection is scheduled for the second attempt at a trial for 44-year-old Carlos Harris of Pittsburgh, who is charged with possession with intent to deliver, possession of a controlled substance or contraband by an inmate, and two other possession charges. The trial was originally scheduled for last month but was postponed to today.
State police were notified anonymously last August that Harris was dealing drugs at the Indiana County Jail. In September, two Indiana County Sheriff’s deputies took him to IRMC to determine if Harris was storing drugs inside his body, but nothing was found. However, they reported finding two small plastic bags of cocaine underneath a seat of their vehicle after returning from the medical center.
A jury will be chosen starting today for the trial of 41-year-old Jason Foust of Blairsville, who is charged with felony burglary, plus misdemeanor simple assault and harassment for a case from August of last year involving a residence on Spring Street in Blairsville.
Jury selection also is scheduled for 68-year-old Joseph Serian of Boca Raton, Florida, who is charged with two counts of harassment, one a misdemeanor and one a summary offense, in a 2014 case. Serian is accused by state police of repeatedly sending text messages and calling a person at a home along Country Lane in White Township.
