BRIEFS - Automotive items among stolen secrets

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP):

The Advocate reported that 75-year-old Wen Chyu Liu, also known as David Liou, was sentenced Wednesday by US District Judge James J. Brady.

Dow held the patent for production of Tyrin CPE, a chlorinated polyethylene polymer used in vinyl siding, plastic jackets for electrical wire, flexible automotive and industrial hoses, as well as other products before Liu sold the firm’s secrets for approximately US$600,000.

VINCENNES, Ind. (AP):

The father of a four year-old boy who died after a police cruiser collided with a van during a police pursuit has sued a south-western Indiana sheriff’s department and several other officials over the child’s death.

Stuart Walls’ suit names the Knox County sheriff’s department, the county commissioners, Sheriff Mike Morris and deputy John Fuller as defendants and seeks unspecified damages against all the defendants.

Police investigators said Fuller was trying to stop a motorist on September 17, 2011, when his patrol car entered an intersection without stopping and slammed into a van carrying the boy.

COLUMBIA, SC (AP):

German automaker BMW is adding 300 new jobs at its South Carolina, USA, plant and making a US$900 million investment to expand the site over the next three years.

Company officials said Thursday the move will ramp up production at the plant to at least 300,000 cars this year and introduce a new X4 model.

At an event held at the plant, the company also celebrated the milestone of 2 million vehicles rolling off its lines since it opened in 1994.

COLUMBIA, SC (AP):

A South Carolina man who avoided prison in a 2009 car crash that killed a Greenville homeowner is going to jail for three years on a probation violation, a judge ruled Friday.

The jail sentence is the first for Ludwig, whom state probation officials began investigating after the 39-year-old was arrested in November and charged with criminal domestic violence.

At the time, the once-wealthy businessman was still on probation as part of a guilty plea to reckless homicide. Ludwig was originally charged with murder after his Maserati hurtled through a field at speeds of at least 85 mph, launched off an embankment and plowed into the back of Frederic Bardsley’s home, killing the 62-year-old homeowner as he sat watching television.

ERIE, Pa (AP):

An Erie man has been ordered to stand trial on charges that he stole prescription painkillers from a man driving a motorised scooter chair.

Thirty-two year-old Jason Speed was ordered to stand trial after a preliminary hearing last Thursday.

The victim testified that he was in his driveway when Speed pulled up in a car behind him and jumped out to take the Vicodin prescription the victim just had filled. The victim testified that he took Speed’s cellphone during the robbery, but had previously told police Speed dropped it.

KNOX, Ind (AP):

A man accused of stealing a police cruiser while handcuffed in northwest Indiana, then using the police radio to ask how to unlock the cuffs, has turned himself in after two days on the run, authorities said early Friday.

William Francis Blankenship, 22, was taken into custody late last Thursday night at his family’s home in Knox, a small town about 50 miles southeast of Chicago.

Blankenship had been arrested last Tuesday on drug charges at a gas station in nearby Kouts. Police said that as the arresting officer searched Blankenship’s vehicle, the suspect somehow escaped from the police car’s backseat, climbed into the front and drove off. He then used the police radio to ask where to find the car’s cigarette lighter and a key to unlock his handcuffs.

The officer whose squad car was stolen said he only realised the cruiser was gone when he looked up and saw the taillights leaving the parking lot.

“I probably had a really dumb look on my face for maybe half a second,” Kouts police Sgt Dave Johnston told The Associated Press last Thursday.