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PRAIRIE COUNTY, AK — Police in two states are trying to determine why two caregivers of an elderly man allegedly stuffed his body in a suitcase and then loaded him into a car and drove more than 1,000 miles from Syracuse, in upstate New York, to dump the corpse in an Arkansas rice field.

Union leader says some stations continue to follow Obama 'catch and release' directives Some border patrol stations have been slow to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement executive order and instead have continued former President Barack Obama’s “catch-and-release” policies, according to a union official. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told LifeZette that he raised concerns Thursday with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Ronald Vitiello. He said he is confident that issue soon will be corrected. But Judd said as recently as Thursday, some border patrol stations were still releasing border-jumpers, often without even issuing notices to...

Officials in Florida say an Orlando police officer who arrested a man after mistaking doughnut glaze for meth has been disciplined. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins was given a written reprimand for making an improper arrest. An internal affairs report released Thursday by the Orlando Police Department found no evidence she acted in bad faith. The report says the department never trained its officers to use the department-issued roadside drug tests. Daniel Rushing was arrested in December 2015 when Riggs-Hopkins spotted flakes of glaze on his floorboard and thought they were pieces of crystal methamphetamine. Rushing told...

An attorney with the Internal Revenue Service’s professional standards office in Washington has been charged with conspiring to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine, U.S. prosecutors said. Jack Vitayanon, 41, an IRS attorney since 2012 allegedly participated in a meth ring with others in Arizona and on Long Island between about September 2014 and January, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday. Public records show Vitayanon living in the U Street corridor. In the criminal complaint, prosecutors noted that during one alleged transaction, Vitayanon directed a buyer to make a cash deposit of $1,650 to...

A former NBC producer was found dead in a drug-filled Manhattan apartment — and two men he had been hanging out with were arrested after they called 911, police said Thursday. Thomas Felty, 36, died Jan. 4 at the Upper East Side apartment where George Lopez, 50, and Patrick Walsh, 33, were arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance, police said. Walsh and Lopez met up with Felty earlier that day and the three went back to Lopez’s apartment, police said. Walsh and Lopez fell asleep and then awoke to find that Felty wasn’t breathing. Lopez called 911...

Smuggling illicit drugs across the U.S border is a lucrative business. From hiding hundreds of pounds of cocaine or marijuana in vehicles, funneling it through tunnels under fenced areas or shipping it across the Florida coastline, drug dealers based in countries like Mexico and Cuba are pretty inventive in finding ways to get their contraband past border agents and into the United States. So inventive, in fact, that U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that over the weekend, drug smugglers in Mexico used an air cannon to launch a pile of weed across the border into the U.S. According to...

A Florida man arrested last year after police mistook doughnut glaze in his car for meth is suing the city of Orlando and a drug-testing kit company. The Orlando Sentinel reports Daniel Rushing filed a lawsuit last week, claiming negligence by the city and the kit's manufacturer. Rushing was arrested on drug charges last December when Orlando police officers spotted four tiny flakes of glaze on his floorboard and thought they were pieces of crystal methamphetamine. Rushing told officers it was likely sugar from Krispy Kreme doughnuts he'd eaten, but two roadside drug tests were positive for the illegal substance....

It started innocently enough: Andreas H. Koertel, 46, was pulled over in a traffic stop. Then things got hairy in hurry. Turns out Koertel, a German national, was in possession of meth and illegal weapons, according to the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, so he was booked into jail on multiple charges, KXTV-TV reports. Wisely the deputies called the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department to see if they could check out a property in Rio Linda where Koertel had been staying. But detectives encountered quite a bit more than they bargained for Friday. Here’s what they found, KTXL-TV reports: Several explosive materials,...

Seizures of methamphetamine soared at the US-Mexico border during fiscal year 2014, accelerating a trend that began several years ago as new laws that limited access to the drug's chemical ingredients made it harder to manufacture it in the U.S. Meth seized by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's San Diego field office accounted for nearly two-thirds -- 63 percent -- of all the meth seized at all ports of entry nationwide in the fiscal year. U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show a 300 percent increase in meth seizures at California ports of entry from fiscal 2009 to 2014.

When an 11-year-old purchased a game from GameStop Wednesday afternoon, he opened the case to find a baggie of drugs. The game was purchased from the GameStop location on Nelson Road in Lake Charles. According to the boy's father, there was a baggie inside. He returned the game to the store and called Lake Charles police. Det. Rebecca Reed with the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office confirms the substance was meth. Dustin Varos, the manager on duty, told KPLC that if the game was shipped from another store, it was not checked before being sold again. GameStop's Director of Public Relations...

LITTLE SAIGON – Las Vegas casinos employ a deceptive bargain: They offer free drinks to gamblers, knowing the booze will impair judgment and loosen wallets. The latest incarnation of underground gambling in Little Saigon takes a harsher tack – free meth. Gambling has long been endemic in the Vietnamese American community in Orange County, a thinly veiled cultural touchstone. Friends and family gather at houses to win one another’s money during the Lunar New Year. Indian tribes’ casinos set up booths at Little Saigon festivals to lure potential customers to their establishments. For years, the so-called bikini coffee shops in...

The scene Wednesday morning in apartment number 808 of the Arroyo Villas complex was like something out of a horror movie. A man and a woman had allegedly drugged a little girl, then raped, killed and dismembered her. Most would expect the girl’s mother to fight with everything she had to save her daughter. But Michelle Martens, according to her own reported account to police, is not that kind of mother. In her statement to police, it appears that Martens wanted to watch as her boyfriend, Fabian Gonzales, 31, and his cousin Jessica Kelley, 31, raped her 10-year-old daughter Victoria...

An FBI-led SWAT team arrested the leader of a Louisiana militia Thursday morning (Aug. 25) in Mandeville on federal charges of dealing methamphetamine and possessing a firearm "in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime," according to the U.S Attorney's Office in New Orleans. James Moore, 46, of Talisheek, a small St. Tammany Parish community near the Mississippi border, reportedly came to the attention of federal authorities during an FBI Domestic Terrorism investigation. Federal investigators suspect Moore was dealing "large quantities" of methamphetamine.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- On the day a girl was going to celebrate her 10th birthday, she was found dead in her family's apartment by Albuquerque police officers, her dismembered remains wrapped in a burning blanket. Details of what Gov. Susana Martinez and law enforcement officials described as an unspeakable crime emerged Thursday in a criminal complaint made public and filed against the girl's mother, her boyfriend and his cousin. The three were taken into custody late Wednesday night. Police say the girl was injected with methamphetamine, sexually assaulted, strangled and stabbed before being dismembered. They did not identify her because...

A 10-year-old Albuquerque girl was brutally slain in her family’s Northwest Albuquerque apartment early Wednesday, hours before she was to celebrate her birthday at a party complete with manicures and cake. Late Wednesday night, Albuquerque police released horrific details of the crime allegedly perpetrated by the girl’s mother, her boyfriend and another woman. APD spokesman Tanner Tixier said the trio injected the 10-year-old with methamphetamine “to make her calm down so they could do whatever they want with her.” She was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend and the other woman, and Tixier said the mom showed “no remorse.” They...

Charges have been brought against three people in connection with the horrific death of a 10-year-old girl at a westside apartment complex. Police found the slain girl inside a unit at the Arroyo Villas Apartment Complex on Irving Boulevard near Golf Course Road on Wednesday morning. Late Wednesday night, 31-year-old Fabian Gonzales and 35-year-old Michelle Martens were booked into custody. Police say they are dating. 31-year-old Jessica Kelley was hospitalized, an APD spokesperson said, and will be booked after she is released. She is Gonzalez's cousin. Police also confirmed Martens is the girl's mother. According to APD, the three tortured...

AMHERST, N.Y. -- A suspected meth lab was uncovered in the heart of Amherst, N.Y. Police believe a culvert is how the suspect or suspects got underground, WKBW-TV reports. All of it was happening in a very busy section; the suspected meth lab was found underneath a Walmart. Covered head to toe in protective gear, members of the state police hazmat team descended into a manhole, busting what they call a suspected underground meth lab. One by one, police reeled in buckets of evidence, including pop bottles, suspected methamphedamine, spray paint cans and other meth-making materials. But perhaps the most...

North Korea 'feeding workers crystal meth' to speed up skyscraper project By James Rothwell 10 August 2016 • 10:42am North Korean workers are being given a methamphetamine-based drug in the hope it will speed up a major construction project, according to reports. Project managers in the city's capital of Pyongyang are said to be under so much pressure to finish the job on time that they have resorted to openly providing builders with the drug. Nicknamed "ice," it is a form of the powerful stimulant methamphetamine, which is also known as crystal meth. When snorted or inhaled, crystal meth gives...

The mayor of Fairfax City has been arrested and charged in connection with what authorities say was a methamphetamine-for-sex scheme. Richard “Scott” Silverthorne, 50, was arrested as part of an undercover operation by police, authorities announced Friday. The scheme involved offers of meth in exchange for group sexual encounters with men, police allege.

A Florida man told the Orlando Sentinel the he was arrested and brought to jail after police in Orlando mistook a few flakes of donut glaze in his car for bits of crystal methamphetamine. Daniel Rushing, 65, said in an interview with the newspaper that he had just dropped off a neighbor for chemotherapy when he was pulled over on Dec. 11, around 1 p.m. Earlier, he had eaten a Krispy Kreme donut, he said. The officer spotted "a rock like substance on the floor board where his feet were," according to a police report obtained by the Orlando Sentinel....