Lead Investigator In Derrick Rose Case Dies From Apparent Suicide

These are the crime stories making headlines today, October 13, 2016 …

• LAPD Detective Nadine Hernandez, lead detective in the criminal investigation into rape claims against New York Knicks guard Derrick Rose (above), has died in what police say is apparently a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Hernandez, 44, was found around 2:45 P.M. at a Los Angeles residence after police responded to reports of a shooting. Investigators recovered a firearm at the scene. Paramedics transported Hernandez to a hospital where she later died. Lawyers for Rose and the woman gave conflicting accounts as to what Hernandez, 44, has told them about the investigation. The civil trial continues. [New York Post]

• Golden Corral restaurant [Wikimedia Commons]

  A Golden Corral employee was doused with fluid and set on fire while working inside the Jacksonville location. Police say that an acquaintance of the woman came into the restaurant early Wednesday evening, spilled flammable liquid on her, and set her alight. The unidentified woman was airlifted to a hospital in Gainesville, and a police spokesman told reporters that the suspect, whose identity has not yet been released, was taken into custody and is being charged with attempted murder. [WPTV]
• A Colorado man has pleaded guilty to second-degree felony murder in the 1970 cold-case rape and slaying of a woman in Utah. Prosecutors say that Thomas Edward Egley, 76, was taken into custody in Colorado in August on a warrant for the slaying of Loretta Jones. Egley, who was living in Rocky Ford at the time of his arrest, faces a penalty of between 10 years and life behind bars. According to The Associated Press, Egley was an original suspect in the 23-year-old woman’s death, but a judge found there wasn’t enough evidence against him. Egley allegedly confessed details of his crime to a neighbor in June, saying he raped and stabbed Jones after she rejected his advances, prosecutors say. [Denver Post]

• Jemarr Smith [Jamestown Police and the State Division of Parole]

  A New York man was arrested and charged with possessing 95 bags of heroin — in his pants. Police officers and the New York State Division of Parole were conducting visits to the homes of parolees on Tuesday night and found Jemarr Smith, 31, at a residence on McKinley Avenue smoking marijuana. After taking the Rochester man into custody, officers say they noticed him take something out of his pants — and discovered that it was heroin. Smith was charged with false personation, unlawful marijuana possession, criminal controlled substance possession, and tampering with physical evidence. [WIBV]
• Three boys were arrested Friday for an alleged sexual assault on a 12-year-old student at a Brooklyn middle school. The alleged attackers, two of whom are 12 and another 14, pulled down the victim’s pants and forcibly touched her in a basement stairwell at Ocean Hill middle school at around 4:30 P.M. on Thursday, according to police. Officials say that the boys were charged with rape, robbery, grand larceny, and unlawful imprisonment, among other charges, according to officials. [DNAInfo]

• John Felix [Riverside County Sheriff’s Department]

  The Riverside County district attorney has announced the filing of capital murder charges against the man accused of shooting and killing two Palm Springs police officers. John Felix, 26, faces two counts of murder with the special circumstances of multiple murders, murder of a police officer in the line of duty, and lying in wait. The DA’s office alleges that Felix set a trap for the officers and was “deliberate in his actions,” and “attacked the officers for no reason other than they were officers coming to a call.” [Los Angeles Times]
• Austin Haughwout, 19, of Clinton, Connecticut, has been charged with enticing a minor, fourth-degree attempted sexual assault, and risk of injury to a minor. The teenager had been previously known for posting online videos of flying drones shooting a gun and a flamethrower in his backyard. He made headlines when he built a drone with a semi-automatic gun attached and posted a video of it on YouTube last year with the title “flying gun.” The video shows a gun affixed to a drone discharging several times while hovering several feet off the ground in a wooded area. [NBC Connecticut/YouTube]

• A man was subjected to eight hours of harassment, physical attacks, and injury by another inmate at a detention center in Richwood, Louisiana, before ultimately being stomped to death, according to a complaint filed by his family. Following his arrest for an unpaid traffic ticket, Vernon Ramone White, 28, was taken to the isolation cell of the Richwood Correctional Center in Richwood, Louisiana. On October 13, 2015, he was sharing the cell with Erie Moore, 57, who was about 75 pounds heavier than White. Over the next several hours White’s family says that video surveillance captured the men having several physical altercations and Moore threatening White — then kicking and stomping him — before his lifeless body was dragged from the cell. Paramedics were called, and White was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. [Courthouse News]

Main image: Derrick Rose [Photo: Wikimedia Commons]