A City of Lawrence bus driver on Monday testified that a woman pried the bus doors open, physically intimidated her, called her foul names, then stole her bus and drove it across town last September. "Bitch, we're going to the TRC," the woman told her, she testified. TRC is a reference to the Treatment and Recovery Center at 1000 W. Second St. The driver said that at the time she was seated in her bus, ...
A speech pathologist accused of molesting multiple children at a Lawrence elementary school pleaded not guilty Monday afternoon at his formal arraignment in Douglas County District Court. Mark Gridley on Monday waived a formal reading of his charges and pleaded not guilty to all of the felony counts against him. As the Journal-World reported, Judge Amy Hanley, following a two-day preliminary hearing last ...
Updated at 11:15 a.m. Monday, April 13 The families of two men who were shot in January at The Hawk, one fatally, expressed disbelief Monday when they got word, last minute, that another continuance was granted for the defense. "Are you (expletive) kidding me?" one relative said as prosecutor Eve Kemple returned from the judge's chambers with the news. "This is ridiculous," another said through tears as ...
Judge Sally Pokorny warned the crowd at her retirement ceremony Friday that she was a "crier," and sure enough she shed a few tears almost immediately as she declared "I'm the luckiest woman in the world." That was the "bottom line of my entire life," she said: luck. Luck in having the parents, neighbors, teachers and lifelong friends she made growing up in Independence, Kansas. Luck in her education, ...
Two Hispanic construction workers on Thursday told a Douglas County judge that they still have nightmares about an armed and angry man assaulting them one summer morning two years ago as they worked. They thought the man, Craig Endecott, of Baldwin City, was going to kill them with his rifle, they said in written statements read aloud in court by a Spanish-language interpreter. A third statement, written in ...
When Kris Wilcoxson heard recently that Judge Sally Pokorny would be retiring on April 10, he made a beeline over to the courthouse to thank her. Pokorny had just wrapped up one of her final sessions of Behavioral Health Court, which she presided over in a multi-zippered black leather jacket — prompting some to ask where her Harley was. As people milled about, Wilcoxson charged up the aisle and ...