Paths Not Taken

I’ve always wondered if the county where I was born (Chesterfield, South Carolina) would ever make national news. Well, it finally did dammit, and the shit ain’t cute:

Bomb suspect to face WMD charge
The teen was accused of planning to bomb his high school

CHESTERFIELD, S.C. - An 18-year-old accused of planning to bomb his high school will be charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a possible life sentence, the top federal prosecutor in South Carolina said Tuesday.

Ryan Schallenberger also will face two lesser federal charges stemming from what authorities say was a scheme to detonate explosives in a suicide attack on his high school in the small town of Chesterfield. The straight-A student will be charged in federal court in Florence on Tuesday afternoon, said Kevin McDonald, the acting U.S. attorney for South Carolina.

McDonald said the federal charge comes into play mostly because Schallenberger ordered materials that can be used for bombs through the mail.

William Spencer, the teen’s court-appointed attorney, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Schallenberger was arrested on state charges Saturday. Authorities say his parents called police because he had ordered 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate, which they retrieved after getting a delivery notice from the postal service. Ammonium nitrate is a fertilizer that was a component in the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Bombs easily made within minutes
Authorities have said Schallenberger could have assembled deadly bombs within minutes with the materials they found. Police said they also discovered bombing plans including a hand-drawn map of the school, a hate-filled journal lauding the Columbine killers and an audiotape that authorities say was to have been played after Schallenberger died.

Schallenberger has been charged by the state with making a bomb threat, and county prosecutor Jay Hodge planned Tuesday to charge him with possession of bomb-making materials.

Schallenberger was to appear in a Chesterfield courtroom Tuesday afternoon for a bond hearing during which state prosecutors said they planned to request that he undergo a mental evaluation. He was to be taken to federal court later in the day.

McDonald said the federal charges will be resolved before the state case.

Authorities said Schallenberger’s journal did not specify targets of an attack, or a date that he planned to carry it out. Police Chief Randall Lear said Schallenberger was “just mad at the world.”

Parents are ‘heartbroken’
Schallenberger’s mother and stepfather, Laurie and John Sittley, are “heartbroken,” according to Sheriff Sam Parker.

“They were very concerned about his future education. I kind of explained to them and told them we’ve got to deal with two options here, we’ve got to deal with his education or with his life,” Parker told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.

The Sittleys have not commented publicly on the case. Their phone number is unlisted, they did not attend a court hearing Monday, and their home about 10 miles from the school was blocked by “No Trespassing” signs later that day. Authorities said Schallenberger has eight siblings and step-siblings.

McDonald said Schallenberger will be charged with federal counts of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempting to use explosives on a building that gets federal funding, and using interstate commerce to obtain explosives to be used against people and property.

Authorities have said Schallenberger bought the ammonium nitrate off eBay and that company said it’s cooperating in the investigation.

Chesterfield is a town of about 1,500 people in northeastern South Carolina near the North Carolina line.

DETROIT - Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a one-time rising star and Detroit’s youngest elected leader, was charged Monday with perjury and other counts after sexually explicit text messages contradicted his sworn denials of an affair with a top aide.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy also charged the popular yet polarizing 37-year-old mayor with obstruction of justice and misconduct in office.

Former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty, 37, who also denied under oath that she and Kilpatrick had a romantic relationship in 2002 and 2003, was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice.

“Some have suggested that the issues in this case are personal or private,” Worthy said. “Our investigation has clearly shown that public dollars were used, people’s lives were ruined, the justice system severely mocked and the public trust trampled on. … This case is about as far from being a private matter as one can get.”

The charges could signal the end of Kilpatrick’s six-year career as mayor of one of America’s largest cities.

Perjury is a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. A felony conviction would mean Kilpatrick’s immediate expulsion from office under the Detroit City Charter. Calls for his resignation have surfaced since late January and the Detroit City Council asked him to step down last week.

Kilpatrick was to hold a noon news conference but had not yet appeared and his office and lawyers were not commenting. A message seeking comment from Beatty’s attorney, Jeffrey Morganroth, was not returned.

Kilpatrick has said he would not resign and last week said he expects to be vindicated when all aspects of the scandal are made public.

Worthy said she expected the mayor and Beatty to turn themselves in by 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Worthy began her investigation the day after the Free Press published excerpts of the embarrassing text messages in late January. The messages called into question testimony Kilpatrick and Beatty gave in a lawsuit filed by two police officers who alleged they were fired for investigating claims that the mayor used his security unit to cover up extramarital affairs.

In court, Kilpatrick and Beatty denied having an intimate relationship, but the text messages reveal that they carried on a flirty, sometimes sexually explicit dialogue about where to meet and how to conceal their trysts.

Kilpatrick is married with three children. Beatty was married at the time and has two children.

The city agreed to pay $8.4 million to the two officers and a third former officer who filed a separate lawsuit. Documents released last month showed Kilpatrick agreed to the settlement in an effort to keep the text messages from becoming public.

The text messages published by the Free Press revealed a romantic discourse.

“I’m madly in love with you,” Kilpatrick wrote on Oct. 3, 2002.

“I hope you feel that way for a long time,” Beatty replied. “In case you haven’t noticed, I am madly in love with you, too!”

Worthy filed eight counts against Kilpatrick and seven against Beatty.

Kilpatrick faces charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice, misconduct in office, perjury in a court proceeding and two counts of perjury other than in a court proceeding.

Beatty is charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury in a court proceeding and two counts of perjury other than in a court proceeding.

For Beatty, who attended high school with Kilpatrick and managed his campaigns for Michigan’s state House and the mayor’s office, the scandal forced her to resign.

City lawyers and Kilpatrick’s attorneys waged a futile legal battle to keep documents related to the lawsuit settlement and text messages from public eyes.

Calls for his resignation surfaced in late January from some city union leaders and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox repeated that call.

KC teen charged after son, two other toddlers eat cocaine:

A Kansas City teenage mom faces child endangerment charges after hospital tests revealed that her 2-year-old son and two other young children ingested crack cocaine.

The children apparently sampled crumbs that the mom left behind when she darted out to sell drugs, court records allege.

Children’s Mercy Hospital staff contacted police after one of the children suffered seizures earlier this week.

Jackson County prosecutors on Thursday charged Tasha Cole, 17, with four felony counts of endangering the welfare of a child. They requested a $75,000 bond.

After giving police several false stories, Cole admitted that she left the children with a friend while she sold drugs, according to the affidavit filed in court to support the charges.

According to court records:

Cole told police that when she returned to the apartment in the 3000 block of Harrison Street, she found the children playing with the plate on which she had “cut” the crack cocaine. A razor blade lay on the floor.

Cole told detectives that when she put the plate down earlier, it had crumbs of cocaine on it. She told police that she picked up the razor blade but left the plate. About 10 minutes later she realized the children were playing with the plate, and she took them across the hall and told relatives what happened.

One relative wanted to take the children to the hospital, but Cole told her not to because she was “scared.” Later, when her son began having seizures, she took him to the hospital.

Not told about the cocaine, hospital staff treated the boy, took a urine sample and released him. Later, the sample came back positive for cocaine.

Hospital staff asked Cole to return and notified police.

As part of the investigation, the other two children who had been in the apartment, ages 3 and 2, were checked. Both tested positive for cocaine, according to the court documents.