Tag Archives: #Lexington

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Let the punishment fit the crime

Brandon Combs, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Brandon Lee Combs, who must be presumed innocent of all charges until proven guilty, is currently lodged in the Fayette County Detention Center, charged with “TORTURE DOG/CAT W/SERIAL PHYS INJ OR DEATH”

KRS § 525.135 Torture of dog or cat:

  1. As used in this section, unless the context otherwise requires, “torture” means the intentional infliction of or subjection to extreme physical pain or injury, motivated by an intent to increase or prolong the pain of the animal.
  2. A person is guilty of torture of a dog or cat when he or she without legal justification intentionally tortures a domestic dog or cat.
  3. Torture of a dog or cat is a Class A misdemeanor for the first offense and a Class D felony for each subsequent offense if the dog or cat suffers physical injury as a result of the torture, and a Class D felony if the dog or cat suffers serious physical injury or death as a result of the torture.

It would seem that being charged with “serial” physical injury puts this as a Class D felony. The punishment for a Class D felony is imprisonment for “not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years.”

I wonder: will the Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney, Lou Ann Red Corn, show Mr Combs, if he is in fact the person who tortured Lillah, the same lenience she showed James Edward Ragland, when she allowed Mr Ragland to plead down from murder to manslaughter, setting a total sentence of ten years for fatelly shooting a woman in the back in a fight outside a strip club? If Iesha Edwards’ life didn’t matter more than that to Miss Red Corn, why should the physical pain and injuries to a dog merit five years in the clink?

If Mr Combs is convicted, I know to what punishment I would sentence him, but, of course, I’m not a judge.

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Black lives don’t really matter in Lexington

James Edward Ragland, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, public record.

Meet James Edward Ragland II, 31, from Detroit, Michigan. Mr Ragland was in Lexington, Kentucky, in Jaunary of 2019, at what Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Linda Blackford euphemistically called a “gentlemen’s club” — quotation marks in the original — when, in what the Lexington Police referred to as a “large disorder”, “a fight between several men and women broke out inside the club and moved outside the building just before the shooting.” In that melee, Mr Ragland shot and killed Iesha Edwards.

Mr Ragland fled the scene, but was arrested a month later in Detroit.

    On Jan. 31, Gaige Phillips, 29, was arrested in Detroit by U.S. Marshals on a charge of criminal facilitation to commit murder in the case, according to Lexington police. Phillips is accused of helping Ragland escape after the shooting.

Iesha Edwards, from her Facebook page. Click to enlarge.

Returned to Lexington, Mr Ragland faced a long list of charges, including murder, being a persistent felony offender, and two wanton endangerment, first degree, charges. But, because black lives really don’t matter, Mr Ragland was allowed to plead down! Fayette County Judge Julie Goodman sentenced Mr Ragland to ten years in prison after he accepted a plea bargain deal:

    Ragland had previously been charged with murder in the case but accepted a plea deal, reducing his charges and his sentence. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of wanton endangerment and one count of assault. He was sentenced to five years for each wanton endangerment charge, but Goodman decided to run those sentences at the same time as his manslaughter sentence.

    His fourth-degree assault conviction carried a sentence of 30 days, but because Ragland already had more than 2.5 years of custody credit while waiting for his case to be resolved, he won’t have to serve any additional time for that charge.

Mr Ragland was transferred to the Bluegrass State from Michigan, and booked into the Fayette County Detention Center on May 22, 2019. That means that he has been locked up in Kentucky for 964 days. With a sentence of 3652 days — 10 years, assuming two leap years — and 964 days already served, Mr Ragland has 2,688 days remaining on his sentence, if he’s not credited for three months in Michigan. That would put him completing his sentence on May 22, 2029, just a hair over seven years from now . . . . when Miss Edwards will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

Supporting domestic violence survivor at the 2021 DV vigil. Photo from Commonwealth’s Attorney website. Click to enlarge.

So, I have to ask: did the Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney, Lou Ann Red Corn, believe that the evidence against Mr Ragland was shaky enough that he might be acquitted if he went to trial? Or did the life of Miss Edwards, the mother of two, just not matter all that much? Did Judge Goodman have no choice, via the plea deal, but to allow Mr Ragland’s multiple sentences to run concurrently, or did she have the option to have them run consecutively?

Miss Red Corn’s website has a couple of photos streaming through, one of them about domestic violence survivors, and another about helping victims, dominated by smiling white women, but, when the victim, when a murder victim, is a black woman killed outside a “gentlemen’s club,”[1]The natural assumption is that Miss Edwards was an employee of the Fox Club, and a stripper, but I have been unable to locate any confirmation of that, and do not take that assumption myself. well, we haven’t really been given enough information as to why Mr Ragland was offered a sweetheart plea deal which gets him out of jail while he’s still in his thirties, but the optics here aren’t very good.

Let’s face it: I’m a white man, one who has been very unimpressed with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. To me, much of it has been used as a way to excuse crime! But when I look at the attitude of the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Lexington Herald-Leader, and at the prosecutors in Philadelphia and Fayette County, and examine what they actually do, rather than what they say, my conclusion is that #BlackLivesMatter is, to them, nothing more than lip service.

We know one thing: while there is a possibility that Miss Red Corn’s evidence was weaker than that in which she felt confident, in the end, Iesha Edwards’ black life didn’t matter very much.

References

References
↑1 The natural assumption is that Miss Edwards was an employee of the Fox Club, and a stripper, but I have been unable to locate any confirmation of that, and do not take that assumption myself.
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I missed one Two murders in Lexington in the first week of the year

On Saturday, I reported on Lexington’s first homicide of the year. The mistake I made was that it wasn’t the first!

    Lexington police investigating city’s first homicide of 2022, coroner confirms identity

    by Christopher Leach | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 | 7:23 AM EST | Updated: 1:49 PM EST

    Lexington police are investigating its first homicide of 2022 after a shooting near Deep Springs Elementary School left one person dead, according to police.

    Police said they responded to the area of Anniston Drive at 8:51 p.m. Monday. A 24-year-old male was found shot inside his residence.

    The Lexington Fire Department responded and advised the victim had died, per police. The Fayette County Coroner confirmed the victim’s identity as D’Andre Green.

There are a couple more paragraphs, but they basically say that the police have released no other information about the crime or suspects, and give contact information for the police for anyone who has information for them.

In an update to yesterday’s story, the Fayette County Coroner identified the victim in Friday’s homicide as Kobby Lee Martin, a 26-year-old man living in Lexington.

In a surprise to absolutely no one, the Lexington Police have not kept their homicide investigations page up to date, and neither killing has been listed. But the 2021 homicide investigation page shows that the first two murders in the city occurred on January 9th and January 21st, so 2022 has seen two killings earlier in the year than the first one in Lexington’s record-setting 2021.

Out of last year’s 37 homicides, the investigations page lists 13 as having been solved. That’s 35.14%.

Only nine days into the New Year, with ‘just’ two homicides, there is not enough information on which to justify any conclusions, but I will point out here that January of last year saw six murders, although one victim lingered on until early February and another late February before he expired.

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Happy New Year! Lexington picks up where the city left off last year!

On December 30, 2021, Lexington recorded its 37th murder of the year, as 14-year-old Larry Perez-Morales was gunned down on Betsy Lane near the Lexington Cemetery. The 37 killings set a new annual record, topping the old number of 34 in 2020, which was, itself, a then-new record, topping the old record of 30 in 2019.

With 37 homicides in 365 days, Lexington was seeing one killing every ten days.

    Shooting victim found in Lexington street dies at scene Friday night

    by Karla Ward | Saturday, January 8, 2022 | 12:25 AM EST

    Lexington police were investigating after a person with a gunshot wound died after being found lying in the street Friday night.

    Police and the Lexington Fire Department were dispatched to a report of a person down on the 1700 block of Cantrill Drive, off Eastland Parkway, at 9:09 p.m., said Lexington police Lt. Brian Martin.

    When they arrived, (they) found the victim, who was suffering from a gunshot wound, in the street.

    The person, whose identity has not been released, was pronounced dead at the scene, Martin said. He said the shooting happened within “a short time frame” of when police were called.

The city’s first murder of 2021 was on January 9th, so a killing on January 7th of this year is pretty much right on schedule.

Friday was bitterly cold in the area, and temperatures Friday night in the city were around 10º and 15º Fahrenheit. Following Thursday’s 9.9 inches of snow,[1]My younger daughter measured 6½ inches on the backyard table, and claims that is the Official Snow Measurement Station for Lexington. the streets and sidewalks had snow and ice on them, but such did not keep the victim, and his killer, off the streets.

We have to realize something: we treat crime as an event, but it really isn’t. Rather, crime is a culture, one we measure, grossly, through events. Whether it’s Philadelphia, and its 562 homicides last year, or Chicago and the 797 murders there in 2021, or much smaller Lexington, and its 37, crime exists because the culture which accepts it and enables it exists.

References

References
↑1 My younger daughter measured 6½ inches on the backyard table, and claims that is the Official Snow Measurement Station for Lexington.
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37 murders for Lexington this year, a new record

I noted, on December 10th, that Lexington, Kentucky, was on pace for 37 homicides for the year, 37.4633 the way the math worked out. Sadly, it looks like I was right, though there are still a few hours, and the New Year’s Eve parties, to top that number.

    14-year-old boy dead after shooting near Lexington Cemetery

    by Christopher Leach | Friday, December 31, 2021 | 1:14 PM EST

    A 14-year-old boy was shot and killed Thursday night on Betsy Lane near Lexington Cemetery, according to Lexington police.

    The shooting happened around 9 p.m. Thursday in the 300 block of Betsy Lane, which is near the cemetery, police said. When officers arrived on scene, they found a 14-year-old male juvenile, who was later identified by the Fayette County Coroner as Larry Morales, in a yard with life-threatening injuries.

    CPR was administered on Morales until the fire department arrived, according to police. He was transported to a hospital, where he later died at 9:53 p.m.

Further down:

Lexington set a new record of 30 homicides in 2019, but that didn’t last long, as 34 people were murdered in 2020. Then that record was broken with the killing of Ramon Pennie on December 7th.

With a population of 324,604, Lexington’s homicide rate is 11.40 per 100,000 population, far lower than smaller St Louis’s, but still way, way, way too high.

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A couple of updates

We have previously reported on the arrests of three men for the murder of Mykel Waide in Lexington. However, it seems that the Commonwealth’s Attorney was unable to present sufficient evidence to get the grand jury to indict any of the three men accused of the killing:

    Lexington men no longer face murder charges in death of former Tates Creek student

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Monday, December 27, 2021 | 3:50 PM EST

    Three Lexington men are no longer facing murder charges in the death of a college student after a grand jury declined to indict two of them and prosecutors dropped the charge for the third.

    Antwone Davenport, Tayte Patton and Antonio Turner had all been charged with Mykel Waide’s death. Waide, who was 18 when he was shot and killed in August 2020, was set to start school at the University of Louisville the same week he died. He was also a former basketball player at Tates Creek High School.

    “A grand jury dismissal is without prejudice, meaning if new and or additional evidence is found the charges may be resubmitted to the grand jury for indictment,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn said. “Our office considers this to be an open case and those responsible for killing Mykel Waide will be held accountable.”

There’s more at the original.

We have also reported on the University of Pennsylvania’s Women’s Swimming and Diving Team’s Will Thomas, a male who believes he’s female, and has been allowed to compete on the women’s team after having taken testosterone suppressants for a year. It seems that the real women on the women’s team considered a boycott:

    Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’ teammates considered boycotting final meet in protest

    By Yaron Steinbuch | Wednesday, December 29, 2021 | 1:49 PM EST | Updated: 3:42 PM EST

    UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

    A group of UPenn swimmers were so upset by transgender athlete Lia Thomas’ advantages that they mulled boycotting their final home meet — but decided not to for fear they’d be banned from the Ivy League championship, according to a report.

    Thomas, 22, who has smashed several records at the University of Pennsylvania this season, has sparked outrage for being eligible under NCAA rules to swim in women’s collegiate events after taking one year of testosterone suppressants.

    A source close to the team of 41 women who considered the boycott told the Daily Mail that “they’ve been ignored by both Penn and the NCAA.”

    The source told the outlet that “there is a feeling among some of the girls that they should make some sort of statement, seize the opportunity while they have a spotlight on them to make their feelings about the issue known.”

However, in the end, they athletes decided against the boycott, because they viewed it as likely to end their ability to participate in the Ivy League championships in February.

    Another source told the Daily Mail that Thomas will likely blow away the upcoming competition.

    “It’ll be like the last couple meets. Lia will finish and nobody will give a s—. Then when the first biological female finishes, there will be a huge eruption of applause,” the source said.

Of course, the women on the team all have to worry about their futures, and whether they’ll be blacklisted for being “transphobic.” They could get kicked off the team, or even kicked out of school, because even in an Ivy League school, where everybody is supposed to be oh-so-smart, they can’t tell the difference between males and females . . . or if they can, they aren’t allowed to tell the truth about it.

But while the real women on the team have to keep quiet, it seems as though the spectators have made their views known, with their silence as Mr Thomas wins his races. The common people, it seems, have some common sense.

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36

A man’s life, reduced to four paragraphs. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

    Coroner releases name of man, 21, who died after shooting in Lexington

    by Karla Ward | Saturday, December 18, 2021 | 12:44 PM EST | Updated: 1:48 PM EST

    A 21-year-old man died after being shot in a neighborhood near downtown Lexington late Friday.

    Lexington police said they were called to the shooting on the 800 block of Oak Hill Drive, off Loudon Avenue, at 10:56 p.m. When they arrived, police found the man inside a residence, Lexington police said in a news release Saturday.

    The Fayette County coroner’s office said the man, Devon Sandusky, was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:25 p.m.

    They said the investigation is ongoing. No suspect information was released.

There was a fifth paragraph, but one which simply told readers where to report information to the police. A sixth paragraph noted that this was the city’s 36th homicide of the year, a new record. The previous record was 34, set in 2020. At the current pace, Lexington is projected to see one or two more killings before 2021 is over.

To me, this was sadly reminiscent of the stories I see in The Philadelphia Inquirer, where a murder victim’s life is reduced to a few short paragraphs, often without even the victim’s name being published. But, unlike the Inquirer, the Herald-Leader will print more about the murder as more information is released. With ‘only’ 36 homicides on which to report, the newspaper’s staff can put a little bit more time into reporting on it; the Inquirer’s staff are overwhelmed, with 535 homicides through Thursday, December 16th, and the City of Brotherly Love on pace to record another 23 killings, for a total of 558.

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Lexington breaks the record!

In 2019, Lexington, where I lived from 1971 through 1984, and, since my return to the Bluegrass State in 2017 is the closest ‘major’ city to me, set a new city homicide record of 30. In 2020, it broke that record, with 34 murders.

Well, that didn’t last long, as the city has now seen 35 homicides, with the murder of Ramon Pennie on December 7th. 35 killings in 341 days works out to one every ten days, and projecting the current homicide rate further, the city could see 37.4633 murders by the end of the year. Unlike Philadelphia, city leaders have at least touched on the reasons for the increased homicide numbers:

    ‘It’s a community problem.’ Lexington police chief addresses record homicide numbers.

    by Christopher Leach | Wednesday, December 8, 2021 | 5:03 PM EST | Updated: 5:10 PM EST

    The city of Lexington broke its annual homicide record after a 51-year-old man was shot and killed on Tuesday evening.

    Ramon Pennie was shot and killed on Hill Street Tuesday night, marking the 35th homicide in Lexington in 2021. That surpassed the record number of 34 in 2020. With a few weeks until the calendar flips to 2022, it’s possible the new-record homicide count could rise.

    Lexington Chief of Police Lawrence Weathers hosted a press conference Tuesday afternoon to address the high number of homicides. He said a number of factors play into the disturbing trend, but the root of the problem starts within the community.

    “What I know for a fact is that this is not just a police problem, it’s not a city, government problem, it’s a community problem,” Weathers said. “Where we can do things immediately on the front end, I think all of us working together in the community, with the community’s help, can do things not just to alleviate and reduce criminal activity, especially homicides in the short long, but in the long run.”

Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/crime/article256427956.html#storylink=cpy

The Lexington Police Department’s Homicide Investigations page is somewhat in arrears in its data: only 33 homicides are listed, the last on November 20th. In only 12 of the 33 listed killings is there an indication that a suspect has been apprehended.

One thing that the homicide page does not include in its public data is the race and sex of the deceased, but the non-fatal Shootings Investigations page does. Out of 127 non-fatal shootings, 20 of the victims are listed as white, and 12 are listed as Hispanic, which means that 95 of the victims are listed as being black. That’s 74.80%, in a city in which only 14.61% of the population are listed as black.

Out of those 127 non-fatal shootings, the police list 11 as solved. That’s a whopping 8.66% of cases. 🙁

Chief Weathers was right: it is a community problem. He just couldn’t bring himself to say which community.

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Court-ordered idiocy

So far, 11:30 AM EDT, the Lexington Herald-Leader has nothing on this story, but if they do publish it, watch them not publish the offender’s mugshot, not try to help the police catch the malefactor.

    Lexington Police search for missing inmate

    By: Web Staff | Posted at 10:50 AM, Nov 07, 2021 and last updated 10:50 AM, Nov 07, 2021

    Alan Tatman. Photo by: Division of Community Corrections.

    LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Lexington Police are searching for a missing inmate named Alan Tatman.

    According to the Division of Community Corrections, Tatman did not return to jail on Saturday after a court-ordered pass.

    In a press release, Lieutenant Richard Frans said Tatman was released at 9 a.m. and was supposed to return at 5 p.m. but failed to do so.

    Frans said Tatman is being held on two counts of theft by unlawful taking and one count of failure to appear for a charge of burglary in the third degree.

    He is also being held on two warrants for probation violations out of Jessamine County.

    Tatman is 47-years-old, 5-foot-7, and weighs 185 pounds, has brown hair and hazel eyes.

Mr Tatman is already a convicted criminal, as the fact he was being held for probation violations attests. But, more incredibly, why would any judge issue a “court-ordered pass” to someone being held on a failure to appear warrant? Isn’t that pretty much the definition of a flight risk?

Any items he steals, any damage he causes, and any expenses he incurs in the police locating and apprehending him should be borne by whichever oh-so-wise judge ordered a day pass for him. Hold the judge accountable!

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Update: 5:53 PM EDT

As predicted, when the Herald-Leader did finally cover the story, in an article by reporter Jeremy Chisenhall time stamped at 4:45 PM, the fugitive’s mugshot, which was freely available to it, did not appear in the article, as screen captured on the right; you can click on the image to enlarge it.

Mr Tatman is not someone who has simply been charged but not convicted; he has previous criminal convictions. Now he’s a fugitive from justice, and if WLEX-TV, Channel 18, the NBC affiliate in Lexington could show his mugshot, and perhaps have some random citizen spot the fugitive and recognize him as such, why couldn’t what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal? Perhaps, just perhaps, a reader of the newspaper’s website might be the one top spot the man and call the cops.

The Herald-Leader is more concerned with protecting the anonymity of convicted criminals and fugitives from justice than with the safety of its readership.