The Best and Brightest

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (Star News) – A New Hanover County man is charged with attempted murder in a shooting Sunday that left one man seriously injured.

New Hanover County Sheriff’s Lt. Jerry Brewer said Juan Sanchez Rebodello, 37, was arrested in Pender County on Monday in the shooting of Manuel DeJesus Silva-Bonilla, 39.

Silva was hit in the arm and mouth in the 3 p.m. shooting at Rebodello’s home at 222 Flemington Road, Brewer said. He was taken to New Hanover Regional Medical Center where he underwent emergency surgery.

The two men each have a child with the same woman, Brewer said. Rebodello was arrested Monday by Pender County Sheriff’s Office deputies after they stopped his vehicle on Union Chapel Road. He has since been taken to the New Hanover County jail. Rebodello’s bail amount was not immediately released.

RALEIGH, NC (The News & Observer) – Police on Wednesday night arrested a 20-year-old man on a statutory-rape charge involving a 15-year-old girl.

Gelguin Nery Ramirez-Moralez was arrested at his home on St. James Church Road, Wake County records show.

In an arrest warrant, police accused Ramirez-Moralez of statutory rape of a child and taking indecent liberties with a child.

The warrant said it happened between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31.

Ramirez-Moralez was held in lieu of $75,000 pending a first court appearance.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT (The Daily Mail) – A Somali refugee who raped two Utah women when he was 14, has been spared adult prison – despite pleas from one of his victims.

Mohammed Ali Mohammed, 20, has spent almost six years at a Salt Lake Valley juvenile detention center after pleading guilty rape, sexual assault and kidnapping charges in 2012, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

He was due to age out of the juvenile system when he turns 21 next month, leaving Judge Vernice Trease with a choice; sentence him to serve time in an adult prison for his crimes, or release him on five year’s probation. She chose the latter.

The sentence comes as a bitter blow to his victims and prosecutors who sought to keep him behind bars.

One woman, who was attacked and raped in her own Salt Lake City home by Mohammed, who then forced her at knife point to take money out at the ATM, said she is ‘terrified’ at the thought her rapist will be free to walk the streets where she lives.

Breaking down in tears in court, she told the judge: ‘He did adult crimes and should have an adult sentence to match what he did.’

She says she still lives with the flashbacks and fear from that day and had asked for the strictest sentence for Mohammed.

His other victim, who he grabbed outside her home and raped her with a four-inch switchblade to her throat, was not in court but prosecutors said her life had fallen apart shortly after the assault.

Then a promising college student in 2011, prosecutor Coral Sanchez-Rose said she fell into drug use and got in trouble with the law after the assault.

‘We just lost track of her,’ Sanchez-Rose said. ‘I don’t know if she’s homeless, I don’t know where she’s staying at; we’re unable to contact her. Clearly, this has had a great impact in her life.’

But in 2012, when he was sentenced to juvenile detention, she told the court he was ‘getting away with less than he deserves.’

‘I want him in prison. … I want to have him feel what I felt.’

Mohammed moved to the US in 2010 with his family. Less than 12 months later he committed the first heinous rape.

On August 14, 2011, the then-14-year-old came up behind a woman, who was outside her home with her dog and put a knife to her throat, threatening it to cut it if she screamed. He then raped her behind her own house.

The next night, he broke into a second woman’s home, and went through her belongings before raping her, court documents show. He then forced her to go to an ATM and withdraw $400 which he later told prosecutors was for him to buy new clothes for the first day of ninth grade school.

It was the ATM camera that allowed police to track down and arrest the teen.

But on Monday, the Salt Lake City court heard how Mohammed had turned his life around during the past six years and was now repentant for his crimes.

‘I was a monster,’ he told Judge Trease, adding he did ‘very, very horrible things’ six years ago.

‘There is nothing that I could say or do that could restore what I did to them,’ he said. ‘The only way I can show them I’ve changed is how I live my life.’

Volunteers at Wasatch Youth Center also claimed he’d changed, and was a kind person and a leader to his unit.

The court also heard about Mohammed’s troubled childhood.

Born in a ‘lawless’ Somali refugee camp in Yemen, his brother was murdered before his eyes, his defense attorney Andrea Martinez-Griffin said.

He also witnessed his mother’s friend get raped and was himself, sexually abused, he added.

His mother, Zahra Mohammed, told the Salt Lake Tribune in 2012 she refused to believe the crimes he’d pleaded guilty to and even blamed his victims, saying her son was set up or taken advantage of by older women.

She claimed he’d pleaded guilty because he believed it would be easier for him in the long run.

On Monday, he was sentenced to five years of strict probation which includes wearing an ankle monitor bracelet, weekly check-ins with the court and his probation office, and more.

And he puts a toe out of line, he’ll be back in court and off to jail to serve a lengthy sentence.

‘I won’t let you down,’ Mohammed replied.

COLUMBUS, OH (10 TV) – Police are investigating a fatal crash that happened in northeast Columbus Thursday evening.

The crash happened just after 6:30 p.m. in the area of Cleveland Avenue and Minerva Avenue.

Officials said two vehicles were involved crashed.

Authorities say a Jeep Liberty operated by Jose Veliz was traveling southbound on Cleveland Avenue when he drove left of center and crashed into a Ford Fusion driving northbound.

According to police, a passenger in the Fusion 31-year-old, Amber Moses was pronounced dead at Mount Carmel St. Ann’s and a second person was taken to Grant Medical Center in stable condition.

Police say Veliz has been charged with aggravated vehicular homicide and vehicular assault.

The crash remains under investigation, according to investigators.

ABC News 6 also reported:

A man accused of killing a person in fatal northeast Columbus accident will have to pay a large price for his freedom after a judge set bond for him at $10 million.

…

Prosecutors asked for a high bond because they say he’s wanted for a high-level felony in Peru and is a flight risk.

LILLINGTON, NC (The Fayetteville Observer) – A Moore County man is accused of repeatedly molesting a girl under the age of 15, the Harnett County Sheriff’s Office said.

Jose Manuel Santiago-Cintron, 30, of the 600 block of Hazel Lane in Cameron, was arrested in Moore County, where he now lives, on Nov. 13, said Maj. Jeff Huber, a Harnett Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

Santiago-Cintron is now in the Harnett County Detention Center.

He is charged with four counts of statutory rape, eight counts of statutory offense with a child and 12 counts of taking indecent liberties with a child.

The incidents happened in 2016 and 2017, Huber said, and were reported by a member of the girl’s family.

Bail was set at $250,000.