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In the end, a Kandiyohi County jury believed that Olga Franco was behind the wheel of a van when it plowed into a loaded Cottonwood school bus nearly six months ago, killing four students and injuring 17. The 24-year-old Guatemalan native, who had claimed that her boyfriend was driving the van, showed no emotion when the verdict was read -- guilty on all 24 counts, including criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular injury. Family members of the victims wept quietly as the verdict was read about 10 p.m. Over more than four days of testimony from crash experts and other...

Franco was driving van, and not a passenger, state investigator says...... Olga Franco was already in the driver's seat of her boyfriend's minivan — and couldn't have been thrown into it — during the collision with a school bus this winter, a crash expert testified Friday. The details of the crash came on the second day of Franco's trial in Kandiyohi County, where she faces charges in the Feb. 19 accident that killed four children near Cottonwood. It was also the newest bit of testimony to put Franco into the driver's seat of the van, a place defense attorney Manuel...

The first emergency workers to arrive at the fatal Cottonwood school bus crash scene in February described for a jury Thursday how they found Olga Franco pinned in the driver's seat of the van that hit the bus. Franco's right leg was stuck under the van's crumpled dashboard, her foot wedged between the gas pedal and the dashboard's center console, witnesses said in Kandiyohi County District Court. In the trial's first day of testimony, Lyon County Attorney Rick Maes hammered at that key point -- that Franco was the driver of the van -- one that Franco's defense attorneys are...

The trial of a woman charged in a fatal school bus crash has been moved from Marshall to Willmar. Lyon County District Judge David Peterson granted the change of venue Wednesday. He also scheduled the trial of Olga Marina Franco del Cid of Minneota to begin July 28 at the Kandiyohi County courthouse. Four children from Lakeview School in Cottonwood died when a van ran a stop sign and hit their bus Feb. 19. Prosecutors say Franco, 34, was driving the van, but she claims it was her boyfriend. He hasn't been found. In his order Wednesday, the judge wrote...

The lawyer for Olga Franco, the woman charged in the fatal Cottonwood, Minn school bus crash, has filed a motion demanding a speedy trial for his client. Olga Marina Franco del Cid, of Minneota, has been in the Lyon County Jail since her arrest on February 20. Franco is charged with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide in the deaths of brother Hunter and Jesse Javens, Reed Stevens, an Emilee Olson. In filing the motion, attorney Manuel Guerrero cites the length of Franco’s jail stay, and says prosecutors have failed to return phone calls and provide him with their evidence...

The van driver who struck a school bus and killed four children was charged Wednesday with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide. Olga Marina Franco del Cid, 24, was indicted by a grand jury on a total of six federal counts. In April, she was charged with two counts of identify theft, two counts of false representation and two counts of using a false document for employment. On Feb. 19, four students were killed when Franco del Cid hit their school bus on Minnesota Highway 23 near Cottonwood in Lyon County. According to a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement,...

The air bags from the van a woman is accused of crashing into a school bus killing four children will be tested for DNA to help establish who was driving. Olga Franco, 24, appeared in court in Marshall, Minn. on Tuesday for a hearing to determine if Franco's statements to investigators should be thrown out, and at the same time revealed new information about the case. Police say Franco was driving the van on Feb. 19 that hit a school bus in Cottonwood back in February. She is charged with criminal vehicular homicide after four students from the Lakeview School...

The $200,000 bail set for a woman charged with causing a school bus crash that killed four children in Lyon County will stand. On Tuesday, Lyon County District Judge David Peterson denied a defense motion to reduce the bail amount in the case of 24-year-old Olga Marina Franco del Cid. She is charged with criminal vehicular homicide following the bus crash that killed four students from the Lakeview School District on February 19th. Franco's attorney, Manuel Guerrero, argued that another judge did not consider all the facts in the case when he set the bail amount. Lyon County Attorney Rick...

The way Olga Franco tells it, she was a passenger the afternoon of Feb. 19, heading toward work in Cottonwood and arguing with her boyfriend, who was behind the wheel, when she saw the school bus. She yelled at him to be careful, but the van's brakes weren't working well, she said, and they went through the intersection and into the bus. Franco is now charged with criminal vehicular homicide in the deaths of four schoolchildren who were on the bus and has become a flashpoint in the debate on undocumented immigrants. Speaking publicly Tuesday for the first time, Franco,...

Family members of the woman charged with causing the fatal school bus crash last month near Cottonwood say she left her native Guatemala two years earlier, hoping to make a better life for her family. The parents of Olga Franco tell the St. Paul Pioneer Press that she was sending them small amounts of money to help supplement about five dollars a day they earn growing corn. Franco is charged with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide in the crash that killed four students aged 9 to 13. Family members recall her as a loving daughter who helped care for...

<p>The Good Book instructs us to render unto Caesar what is his. But what do you do when Caesar casts his greedy eye on your local church -- in order to replace it with a discount retailer?</p> <p>This tale comes from Orange County, California, once known as Reagan Country. On Tuesday night the Cypress City Council voted 4-0 to invoke its powers of eminent domain to seize land owned by the Cottonwood Christian Center, which would then be sold to Costco. The growing non-denominational Christian church had bought the mostly vacant land in 1999 because its existing building was bursting at the seams.</p>

Officials with the Cottonwood Christian Center in Los Alamitos, Calif. are promising a court battle after the city council in nearby Cypress decided not only to squash the center's plans for a religious campus, but took a major step to seize the center's 18-acre tract of land through eminent domain for the construction of a shopping center. "I have never seen in my years of working with local government, a city do this, what they are doing, that is processing development on a property they don't own, but also going toward this path of condemning and taking property from a...