Defendant pleads guilty in carjacking at KUMC

Kansas City, Kan. — A Kansas City, Kan., man pled guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court to a count of carjacking.

Paul H. Robinson, 52, admitted that on Aug. 5, 2003, he approached a graduate student at Kansas University Medical School in Kansas City, Kan., and forced her into the car while wielding a knife.

Robinson said he took the student’s car keys and drove, with the student in the car, from Kansas to Missouri. That’s where the student escaped by unlocking the passenger door and stepping out of the moving vehicle. The student received minor injuries during the escape.

Robinson faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison without parole. Sentencing is set for April 5.

State representative sets office hours

State Rep. Paul Davis, a Democrat who represents Lawrence’s 46th District in the Kansas House of Representatives, plans legislative hours from 10:30 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Lawrence Public Library auditorium, 707 Vt.

Davis will discuss issues relating to the upcoming legislative session, which opens Monday. For more information, call 843-7674.

Leavenworth principal resigns after arrest

An elementary school principal charged with drug possession has resigned.

Clay Guthmiller, superintendent of the Leavenworth school district, said Thursday the school board unanimously accepted Karen Boldridge’s letter of resignation Wednesday after meeting behind closed doors.

Boldridge, 34, former principal of Earl M. Lawson Elementary School, was placed on leave by the school district after police last month searched the home she shared with Arvey Torez, 40, and arrested the two.

Both were charged with possession of cocaine, a felony, and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, both misdemeanors.

Boldridge pleaded innocent to the charges during a Dec. 22 court appearance.

Overcrowded prisons force transfers to Texas

Kansas, out of space for medium- and maximum-security male prison inmates, has transferred some of them to a private prison in Texas.

Forty-eight medium-custody inmates from the state prisons at Hutchinson and El Dorado were transferred to Texas because of crowding created by a continuing increase of inmates, said Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz.

Space for medium- and maximum-security male inmates has already run out, despite projections that the state wouldn’t reach its 9,244-bed capacity until 2007.

The inmates sent to Texas tend to have less violent histories, Miskell said. Officials also tried to send inmates who have not been receiving regular visitors.