Across Virginia
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A federal jury convicted on Friday three members of a Virginia family of conspiring to coerce another family member to perform domestic services by verbally assaulting and physically abusing the victim over 12 years, according to a federal prosecutor.
Zahida Aman, 80; Mohammed Rehan Chaudhri, 48, and Mohammad Nauman Chaudhri, 54, each were convicted of conspiracy to commit forced labor, Jessica D. Aber, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a news release.
Evidence and court records showed that in 2002, the victim married Aman’s son and the brother of defendants Nauman and Rehan Chaudhri. The woman lived in the home of the defendants, and over the next 12 years, the three defendants forced her to perform domestic services.
The victim, a native of Pakistan, had temporary immigration status in the U.S., but Aman took the victim’s immigration documents and also threatened her with deportation if she didn’t obey their demands, prosecutors said. The defendants also threatened to separate the victim from her children to coerce her labor, according to the news release.
A sentencing date for the three has not been set yet.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) – A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit against two former police officers accused of protecting a sex trafficking ring in northern Virginia in exchange for sex can move forward.
The former Fairfax County officers had asked a judge at a hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria to have the case tossed out. In a ruling issued Wednesday, the judge tossed out some counts on technicalities but is allowing the case to go forward. The dismissed counts can be refiled to comply with technical failings.
A Costa Rican woman identified in the lawsuit only as “Jane Doe” says the officers would tip off her traffickers about upcoming sting operations so they could avoid detection.
Virginia Capitol Police are investigating after a bullet pierced a window at the office of the Attorney General in downtown Richmond. News outlets report that police said officers were called to the Barbara Johns Building on Monday evening and found a small round hole at the top of the window. The Attorney General’s office says housekeeping staff found the bullet in a sixth-floor office. The Attorney General’s office says there’s “no indication that this incident was targeted at the OAG specifically or any individual employee.” Capitol Police say there will be additional patrols in the area in coming days and an increased presence at the building for the foreseeable future.
Virginia’s attorney General is criticizing high school students who walked out of their classrooms to protest a leaked Supreme Court draft decision. WFIR’s Clark Palmer explains.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — William & Mary has dedicated a brick memorial that recognizes people who were enslaved by the university.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the memorial is 20 feet high and 16 feet wide. It cost more than $2.9 million to build, including construction and material costs that were impacted by supply chain delays and construction inflation.
The university was chartered in 1693. It benefited from enslaved labor for 170 years.
It’s unclear how many people the university enslaved, but historians have discovered the names of more than 100 people owned by the college or its employees and students.
Enslaved people made the bricks that built the Wren Building, and they erected the building itself.
“Slaves were as inseparable a part of the college as the old bricks of the College Building itself,” Jennifer Oast wrote in a book about slavery in Virginia.
The design for the memorial, created by Richmond-based architectural firm Baskervill, was chosen in 2020. Richmond-based Kjellstrom & Lee built the memorial.
Its cost was covered by private funds and contributions from the board of visitors.
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — There’s not much room for middle ground in the testimony thus far from Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in Depp’s libel suit against his ex-wife.
One of them is lying.
Heard has not yet finished telling the jury her side of things. Her testimony will continue May 16 once the trial — which has already stretched on for four weeks — resumes after a one-week break. Then she will face what one can safely assume will be an aggressive cross-examination in a case where both sides have employed scorched-earth tactics going back years to when the suit was first filed.
Depp is suing Heard in Virginia for libel over an op-ed she wrote in December 2018 in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” The article doesn’t mention Depp by name, but his lawyers say the article defames him nevertheless because it’s a clear reference to the highly publicized allegations Heard made when she filed for divorce in 2016 and obtained a temporary restraining order against him.
Depp says he never physically abused Heard, while Heard says she was assaulted on more than a dozen occasions.
AMBER HEARD
He said, she said: Accounts from Depp and Heard rarely match
Heard takes stand, accuses Depp of violent sexual assault
Amber Heard testifies she was assaulted by Johnny Depp
Depp trial: Psychologist testifies actor assaulted Heard
Below are synopses of a few incidents and their divergent accounts.
THE FIRST TIME
Heard says the first time Depp ever struck her was in 2013, when she made the mistake of laughing at one of his tattoos. Heard said there was an older tattoo she couldn’t make out, and Depp told her it said “Wino.”
In fact, it used to say “Winona Forever,” a tattoo that Depp got when he was dating actor Winona Ryder. He had it altered to “Wino Forever” when they broke up.
Heard said she laughed, and Depp responded by slapping her. Thinking the slap must be a joke, she laughed. Depp responded by slapping her twice more, with the third slap knocking Heard off balance.
“It was so stupid, so insignificant,” Heard told the jury. “I thought it must be a joke.”
Depp, while he was on the stand, flatly denied it occurred.
“It didn’t happen,” he said. “Why would I take such great offense to someone making fun of a tattoo on my body? That allegation never made any sense to me.”
THE FINGER AND THE BOURBON BOTTLE
Both sides say the worst violence occurred in March 2015 in Australia, when Depp was shooting the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.
Heard said Depp sexually assaulted her with a liquor bottle — for the first time Thursday she identified a bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon as the offending instrument after she said she saw a photo of the distinctively square bottle — as part of an alcohol-fueled rage. Heard came to Australia after shooting her own film and Depp immediately accused her of sleeping with her co-stars, she said.
Depp, for his part, says he was the victim of the violence. He testified that Heard was irate over efforts by Depp’s lawyers to have her sign a post-nuptial agreement, as well as the fact that Depp wasn’t adhering to pledges of sobriety to Heard’s satisfaction.
He said he escaped the argument by pouring himself a drink, at which point Heard threw a vodka bottle at him. Depp said he responded by pouring another drink, and this time Heard threw another vodka bottle at him that smashed against his hand while it rested on a counter and severed the tip of his middle finger.
Photos of the aftermath show Depp wrote vulgar messages to his wife in blood on the walls of the house. Jurors have also seen contemporaneous text messages Depp sent to others in which he said he cut off his own finger. Depp said he made up that story to protect Heard and avoid police involvement.
ALCOHOL AND DRUGS
While not a specific incident, Depp and Heard painted very different portraits of Depp’s drug and alcohol use.
Heard said drugs and alcohol — along with paranoid jealousy — is what turned him from the man she loved into the “monster” who made her fear for her life. She said he hid his drug and alcohol use from her and from his family but his behavior made it clear he was high or drunk, often to the point of incoherence.
”Johnny on speed is very different from Johnny on opiates. Johnny on opiates is very different from Adderall and cocaine Johnny, which is very different from Quaaludes Johnny, but I had to get good at paying attention to the different versions of him,” Heard said.
Indeed, Heard sys Depp’s denials of physical abuse lack credibility in part because he would black out and forget what he’d done.
Depp, for his part, admitted that he’d become addicted at one point to oxycodone and underwent a detox process in 2014. But he said the allegations of uncontrolled drug and alcohol use are grossly embellished.
“I’ve always had a pretty big tolerance for alcohol,” he testified. “I’ve never had a physical addiction to alcohol.”
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — A former commissioner of revenue for a Virginia county has pleaded guilty to attempted witness tampering, and his son pleaded guilty to a related charge of heroin distribution, prosecutors said.
Larry Vernon Snow, 73, pleaded guilty on Friday to a charge related to efforts to harass and dissuade a confidential informant from cooperating in a federal investigation of both himself and his son, and to prevent the confidential informant from aiding law enforcement in other investigations, said a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Bryant Austin Snow, 33, pleaded guilty to one related count of distributing heroin.
Court documents indicate Bryant Snow was arrested on two state drug charges in November 2017. Bryant Snow pleaded guilty in April 2018 to one count of distribution of methamphetamine in Greene County, Virginia.
While imprisoned, Bryant Snow received video and audio of the recorded narcotics buys by the confidential informant from him. He made multiple calls to his father, Larry Snow, to discuss one of the confidential informants.
After being notified in May 2019 that they were the targets of a federal investigation involving their conduct toward the informant, Larry Snow drafted approximately 12,000 leaflets to be mailed to residents of Greene County in an attempt to harass the informant from helping prosecutors, the news release said.
In connection with his guilty plea, Larry Snow resigned as commissioner of revenue in Greene County, a position he has held since 1987 and had been re-elected to while under federal indictment.
The Snows are scheduled for sentencing on July 25.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — U.S. service members were injured Thursday when a helicopter they were riding in made a hard landing at a military base in Virginia, U.S. Navy officials said in a statement Friday.
The service members were participating in a routine training at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in Virginia Beach, according to the statement from Capt. Sarah Self-Kyler, director of public affairs for U.S. Fleet Forces Command.
The statement did not say how many service members were involved. The statement also did not detail the extent of their injuries, although they were taken to local medical facilities for treatment.
The joint base is shared between the U.S. Army and Navy and is located at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The base houses and trains some of the nation’s “expeditionary forces,” which are troops mobilized for action. The base is also home to some of the nation’s elite Navy SEAL teams.
The cause of the incident remains under investigation, the U.S. Navy stated.
Roanoke Fire-EMS crews responded to a multi vehicle accident involving a tractor trailer at the intersection of Burrell Street and Orange Avenue. One person was pulled from a vehicle and transported to the hospital. No word on the extent of their injuries.