Texas

Cuban musician granted asylum

After a concert in Mexico, a popular Cuban musician defected by grabbing a cab to the border and walking onto American soil.

Carlos Manuel Pruneda, of the band “Carlos Manuel and his Clan,” was granted asylum Tuesday after crossing the border late Sunday or early Monday, said Art Moreno, a spokesman for the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration.

Pruneda said he left Cuba to find personal and artistic freedom.

“I felt very uncomfortable with the situation,” Pruneda told The Associated Press. “I was fed up with the government in Cuba. … There was no more room to grow, there was no time to waste.”

After a weekend concert in Mexico City, Pruneda flew to Monterrey, then took a cab to Matamoros and walked across the border into Brownsville.

Los Angeles

Vendor raids yield bogus Versace items

More than 100,000 allegedly counterfeit Gianni Versace products were seized during simultaneous raids across Southern California and Arizona, officials said Wednesday.

Approximately 130 federal marshals, accompanied by state and local authorities and Versace employees, greeted merchants Tuesday with federal search and seizure orders as they arrived at more than 75 locations.

The Gianni Versace Corp. received the court orders Monday allowing searches of the businesses and street vendors and the seizure of counterfeit goods bearing the pricey designer’s name.

There were no arrests, U.S. Marshals Service spokesman William Woolsey said Wednesday.

The items seized were mainly clothing and belts, but there also were a few sunglasses and bottles of perfume, Woolsey said.

Atlanta

Student convicted in hate-crimes trial

In the first trial under Georgia’s new hate-crimes law, a former college student was convicted Wednesday in the baseball-bat beating of a dorm mate he thought was giving him the eye in the shower.

Aaron Price, 19, was found guilty of assault and battery charges that carry up to 40 years in prison. The jury continued to weigh a hate-crimes charge that could bring an additional five years.

Gregory Love suffered a fractured skull in the attack in a Morehouse College dormitory bathroom in November.

Price said he interpreted Love’s stares in the shower as a sexual advance, and claimed he was acting in self-defense.

Love said he did not have his glasses on and mistook Price for his roommate.

SALT LAKE CITY

Polygamist freed without parole

A polygamist was freed from prison after serving four years of a possible 10-year sentence for incest with his underage niece, who testified she was forced to become his 15th wife.

The state parole board’s decision to release David Ortell Kingston on Tuesday rather than parole him means the prison has no responsibility to follow up on him.

Todd Utzinger, one of Kingston’s former attorneys, said the parole board’s decision recognizes “he has taken full responsibility and is prepared to go on and live a crime-free life.”

Kingston, 36, was an accountant for The Latter Day Church of Christ, a secretive polygamous sect believed to have about 1,000 members and a $150 million business network in six Western states. Religious beliefs include marriages of men to close female relatives.

Kingston’s 16-year-old wife was the daughter of his brother John Daniel Kingston, who was sentenced to seven months in jail for beating the girl after she attempted to flee the marriage.