ALEDO, Ill. - The estranged husband of a Viola homicide victim has been sentenced to four years in prison on various charges.
William White, 43, of Andover, will also serve four years probation. He was sentenced in Mercer County Circuit Court to the prison term for a felony driving while revoked charge and received the probation term for violating an order of protection and resisting a peace officer for incidents that occurred last year.
The charges are unrelated to the homicide investigation in Mercer County.
He is the estranged husband of Melissa White, 39, who died from skull fractures in October. No charges have been filed in the death, but investigators have described William White as a "person of interest" as the investigation continues.
Mercer County State's Attorney Greg McHugh has said very little publicly about the White homicide investigation.
For nearly six years, they were locked up facing a possible death sentence for a grisly 2001 triple homicide in Ypsilanti Township. On Friday, a federal judge dismissed the charges against Deondre Byrd and three other men after a federal prosecutor said new evidence came to light last Friday that prevented the government from taking the case to trial. It was the second time in three years that Byrd escaped murder charges. He has been imprisoned in recent years for both the triple homicide and the slaying of a 16-year-old girl in Ann Arbor, but he has been convicted on only a federal gun charge. "Obviously, I'm pretty upset that almost 11 years later, we still don't have any answers," said Christy Brown, 30, a close family friend of the victims of the triple homicide. She said she got a call from federal prosecutors Thursday saying the case was being dropped, but they wouldn't elaborate. "I was very surprised. I honestly thought they were making some...
FLINT, MI -- There have been 189 murders in the city since 2010. Below is a map of the locations of each murder in the last three years, as well as the names of the slain on Flint's battlefield. The spike in murders occurred almost immediately after large-scale layoffs in March of 2010. By year's end the city had set a record with 66 murders, breaking the previous mark of 61 set in 1986. Killing continued in 2011 with 57 murders. A look at the map shows the majority of the murders took place on the north and east sides, historically the most economically depressed areas of the city. Just 25 murders in the last three years occurred south of Court Street. The map is color-coded by year. Green markers denote 2012 murders while red markers are from 2011 and blue from 2010. 2012 No. 1: Jan. 11: Kevin Berger, 55, died Jan. 11 after a Jan. 10 double shooting at his home on Keller Avenue near Welch Boulevard around 10:15 pm. Darius McGee, 25, was also critically shot. He survi...
A manslaughter charge against a Marathon man accused of helping cause the death of a teenager by letting her drive drunk has been dropped due to what prosecutors say is lack of evidence. Michael Mearns, 26, the son of former Marathon Mayor Randy Mearns and grandson of former Marathon Councilwoman Margie Mearns, had been charged with manslaughter by culpable negligence following a Feb. 25, 2011, crash in which 17-year-old Amber Kogelis of Lower Matecumbe Key died. "You have to prove he knew she was drinking," State Attorney Catherine Vogel said Wednesday. "It's clear we do not have evidence of the impairment." That's even though an autopsy revealed Kogelis had a blood alcohol content of .125. In Florida, .08 is considered legally drunk. "It didn't rise to the level beyond a reasonable doubt," said Assistant State Attorney Paunece Ramage. "She wasn't stumbling, she wasn't holding herself up" in a video prosecutors re...
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