There are several re-scheduled sentencing proceedings today at the Indiana County courthouse.
Included among them is the case of 26-year-old Torrence Deonta Lyde, a Cleveland, Ohio man convicted in a drug case. He was one of five people arrested in an August 2013 raid at a home on Poplar Avenue in Indiana, where he blocked a bathroom door and attempted to flush drugs down the toilet. Last May, Judge William Martin ordered Lyde to serve three to twelve years in prison for possession with intent to deliver, a concurrent term of three to twelve years for reckless endangerment, and consecutive terms of one to two years for conspiracy to deliver 1.8 grams of heroin, and six months to one year resisting arrest.
After a series of appeals, it was determined that the state’s mandatory minimum sentence was illegal, sending the case back to Indiana County for re-sentencing. Lyde has now filed an appeal of his case before State Superior Court.
An SCI Pine Grove inmate from Fulton County is scheduled to be sentenced for a guilty plea to conspiracy to aggravated assault, with agreement for non-prosecution on additional charges of criminal solicitation for homicide and conspiracy to commit criminal homicide.
49-year-old Gregory Rouzer was already in prison for his second attempt to kill Randy Walters, a Franklin County man Rouzer shot in 2008. In 2009, while awaiting trial, he tried to hire a hit man to kill Walters, and he tried again to hire a man late in 2015 and early in 2016. Police say Rouzer’s girlfriend, Laraine Patterson of Aliquippa, was used as a go-between in the latest scheme. Rouzer could be sentenced today to an additional 20 years in prison, plus $25,000 in fines. Patterson is scheduled to go on trial next Monday.
A woman who pleaded guilty to possession with intent to deliver for a January 2016 drug bust is scheduled for sentencing this morning. 30-year-old Sara Painter was a passenger in a car that was stopped for a traffic violation in Indiana Borough. Police found approximately forty stamp bags of heroin in the vehicle.
41-year-old Thomas Edward Henson III of Homer City will be sentenced for attempted indecent assault of a person less than 16 years of age, with agreement for non-prosecution on charges of corruption of minors, stalking, and retail theft. In October 2016, police said Henson approached a 13-year-old girl at the White Township Walmart and said he’d been following her and wanted to touch her. He then tried to reach up under her dress, but she fended off his advance. The girl did not know Henson, who fled the store with merchandise he had not paid for.
38-year-old Glenn Otis Watkins Jr. of Indiana will be sentenced for recklessly endangering another person for making threats against Indiana Borough police officers last September in the 500 block of School Street. Police were there to investigate an unrelated matter when Watkins became agitated and threatened them.
