Court briefs: Christmas motel shooting and Lake Station rape
A Merrillville man was charged Friday with criminal recklessness after he accidentally discharged a gun in a motel lobby on Christmas Day. No one was hurt.
Kenneth Coleman, 20, has not been apprehended. When arrested, he is ordered held on a $2,000 cash surety bond.
Merrillville Police responded Dec. 25 to Motel 6, 8300 Louisiana St. Coleman's siblings told cops someone broke her car window with a landscaping brick out back. As the hotel clerk went back inside, video showed Coleman walking into the lobby.
The gun went off; a bullet hit the floor, then struck a coffee table.
Lake Station rape
A Lake Station man is charged with sexually assaulting a woman on Feb. 15 while she slept.
Jesse Silverthorn, 36, is charged with rape.
He posted a $3,000 bond Monday.
The victim told Lake Station Police she went out with Silverthorn and her relative the night before on Valentine's Day. She woke up hours later, realizing he was raping her.
Before the assault, Silverthorn took the victim's gun from her purse, because he 'knew she would have shot him,' the affidavit states.
He called the relative at least 10 times the next day, denying he raped the woman. She put him on speakerphone during one call for the cops.
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Chicago Tribune
9 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
A father's attempt to stand up for his daughter ends in his death and charges against a longtime family friend
Latisha McMillen stood in the doorway of the crowded closet she shared with her husband and put her face into a folded white t-shirt. She took a deep breath into the fabric, then sighed and put it back on a stack of shoeboxes. She kicked another, empty box. 'These had the shoes he died in,' she said that day. 'I'm waiting for (the morgue) to give them back.' Eric McMillen's black and grey sneakers with orange accents and leopard print laces never did get returned. Latisha McMillen couldn't stand to look at her own matching pair, which sat untouched in their closet. But getting dressed Monday morning, Latisha felt the need to wear them to court, where her husband's alleged killer — a longtime friend of the family who had been dating their youngest daughter — was set to come before a judge for the first time. Eric McMillen's phone had rung a little before 7 a.m. April 30 — his daughter was in a fight with that man and needed McMillen to pick her up. Latisha, 50, said he'd listened and done what any father might do. He got up, changed out of the white t-shirt and got in the car. Prosecutors said Flomont Johnson and McMillen's children had all known each other for most of their lives. Johnson shared high school classes with them, the family said. He and the family's youngest daughter had started dating about a year earlier, and he had been part of their Christmas celebration last year, they said. They had pictures of everyone in matching pajamas. McMillen and his son had driven to Johnson's house in Roseland after the dispute, where prosecutors said he spoke briefly to Johnson outside. McMillen's daughter and son were already in the car when he asked to speak to Johnson's mother. At that point, prosecutors alleged that Johnson went back inside and returned with the gun Latisha McMillen said her husband had purchased for their daughter and made sure she was licensed to carry, as well as a second, larger weapon. Johnson allegedly shot McMillen three times as his mother ran down the steps to stop him, prosecutors said. The 52-year-old was pronounced dead shortly afterward at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. Marquitta Willis, McMillen's oldest daughter, was getting her kids ready for school when she got a brief phone call from her mother. ''They said he's gone,'' said Willis, 34, of that short call. 'Then she hung up.' Now, McMillen's family is staring down life without his romantic advice, terrible dancing and cooking skills. They don't know who will look after the massive fishtank in their South Chicago kitchen. And they were stunned that someone who had such a long history with their family could be the suspect in his death. Prosecutors said Johnson, 28, fled after the shooting to south suburban Markham and then to Gary, Ind. before turning off his phone. Authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in June, records show, and prosecutors said he was ultimately apprehended in Mississippi. Latisha McMillen put her face in her hands as an assistant state's attorney began to talk through the case Monday afternoon. She leaned on a cousin sitting beside her in the courtroom all through the recitation of the allegations and Johnson's past weapons convictions, public defenders' argument that he had feared for his own safety during the confrontation and Judge John Hock's declaration that Johnson was 'clearly a danger to anybody you might have contact with.' Hock ordered Johnson held pending trial, with a coming court date of Sept. 5. Later, outside the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, Latisha McMillen said she hadn't expected to hear the outlines of Eric's homicide; she hadn't wanted to know. 'I haven't learned to live with it yet,' she said. 'I'm still trying to understand — why my husband?' She'd been angry since he was killed, but she said she felt bad for Johnson that day in court too. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. 'You (allegedly) killed someone, now you're gonna lose your life,' she said. 'You literally made somebody else's life more important than yours.' The last time Erica McMillen — another of the McMillen daughters — talked to her dad, she'd been making plans for her 5-year-old's birthday the next month. Her daughter had requested a ball pit at her party, she said, and Eric McMillen had already set about finding a way to make it happen. Erica, 31, said she often consulted her parents for advice navigating marriage and raising children. Her dad would advise hearing a partner out and would lay out 'the rights and wrongs' of a situation, but would assure his kids that he was on their side as a rule. Her parents had met through family and were together for 32 years, she said. Latisha described herself as a person who could burn a pan of eggs, so she cleaned their family's South Chicago house, while Eric did the cooking and handled the laundry. They ran errands together, coordinated their outfits down to the shoes and talked on the phone to their kids together — though their children said that some of this was due to Eric being a champion eavesdropper on speakerphone conversations. The last of the couple's seven children had moved out earlier this spring. They'd been thrilled to be empty nesters. At the same time, Latisha said Eric was clear with their kids: 'If anything happens, come on back.' The night before her husband's death, they had been debating whether to drive or fly to South Carolina for an anniversary trip this September. They'd been worried about a spate of plane crashes earlier this year, though Latisha said she'd been reassured by the fact that 'if anything happened, we'd be together.' She had asked her husband, 'what would I do without you?' He looked back at her, she said, and replied, 'Nothing. Because I'm not going nowhere.'
NBC News
6 days ago
- NBC News
Sha'Carri Richardson addresses domestic violence arrest and apologizes to boyfriend
Sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson addressed her recent domestic violence arrest in a video on social media and issued an apology to her boyfriend Christian Coleman. Richardson posted a video on her Instagram account Monday night in which she said she put herself in a 'compromised situation.' She issued a written apology to Coleman on Tuesday morning. 'I love him & to him I can't apologize enough,' the reigning 100-meter world champion wrote in all capital letters on Instagram, adding that her apology 'should be just as loud' as her 'actions.' 'To Christian I love you & I am so sorry,' she wrote. Richardson was arrested July 27 on a fourth-degree domestic violence offense for allegedly assaulting Coleman at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. She was booked into South Correctional Entity in Des Moines, Washington, for more than 18 hours. Her arrest was days before she ran the 100 meters at the U.S. championships in Eugene, Oregon. In the video, Richardson said she's practicing 'self-reflection' and refuses 'to run away but face everything that comes to me head on.' According to the police report, an officer at the airport was notified by a Transportation Security Administration supervisor of a disturbance between Richardson and her boyfriend, Coleman, the 2019 world 100-meter champion. The officer reviewed camera footage and observed Richardson reach out with her left arm and grab Coleman's backpack and yank it away. Richardson then appeared to get in Coleman's way with Coleman trying to step around her. Coleman was shoved into a wall. Later in the report, it said Richardson appeared to throw an item at Coleman, with the TSA indicating it may have been headphones. The officer said in the report: 'I was told Coleman did not want to participate any further in the investigation and declined to be a victim.' A message was left with Coleman from The Associated Press. Richardson wrote that Coleman 'came into my life & gave me more than a relationship but a greater understanding of unconditional love from what I've experienced in my past.' She won the 100 at the 2023 world championships in Budapest and finished with the silver at the Paris Games last summer. She also helped the 4x100 relay to an Olympic gold. positive marijuana test at the U.S. Olympic trials.
6 days ago
Sha'Carri Richardson addresses domestic violence arrest and apologizes to Christian Coleman
Sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson addressed her recent domestic violence arrest in a video on social media and issued an apology to her boyfriend Christian Coleman. Richardson posted a video on her Instagram account Monday night in which she said she put herself in a 'compromised situation.' She issued a written apology to Coleman on Tuesday morning. 'I love him & to him I can't apologize enough," the reigning 100-meter world champion wrote in all capital letters on Instagram, adding that her apology 'should be just as loud' as her 'actions.' 'To Christian I love you & I am so sorry," she wrote. Richardson was arrested July 27 on a fourth-degree domestic violence offense for allegedly assaulting Coleman at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. She was booked into South Correctional Entity in Des Moines, Washington, for more than 18 hours. Her arrest was days before she ran the 100 meters at the U.S. championships in Eugene, Oregon. In the video, Richardson said she's practicing 'self-reflection' and refuses 'to run away but face everything that comes to me head on.' According to the police report, an officer at the airport was notified by a Transportation Security Administration supervisor of a disturbance between Richardson and her boyfriend, Coleman, the 2019 world 100-meter champion. The officer reviewed camera footage and observed Richardson reach out with her left arm and grab Coleman's backpack and yank it away. Richardson then appeared to get in Coleman's way with Coleman trying to step around her. Coleman was shoved into a wall. Later in the report, it said Richardson appeared to throw an item at Coleman, with the TSA indicating it may have been headphones. The officer said in the report: "I was told Coleman did not want to participate any further in the investigation and declined to be a victim.' A message was left with Coleman from The Associated Press. Richardson wrote that Coleman 'came into my life & gave me more than a relationship but a greater understanding of unconditional love from what I've experienced in my past.' She won the 100 at the 2023 world championships in Budapest and finished with the silver at the Paris Games last summer. She also helped the 4x100 relay to an Olympic gold. at the U.S. Olympic trials.
