Richard Donta Cotton, 32, appeared before Judge William Gamboney about 12:30 p.m. at the courthouse on multiple gun felony charges, according to court records.

After Gamboney made his decision, Cotton “ran from the courtroom and exited the courthouse,” according to a statement from the sheriff’s office.

A warrant was issued for his arrest.

Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff’s police at 847-635-1188 or dial 911.

The department made the announcement after reassuring the community Monday that it had increased patrols and was stationing unmarked units in strategic areas, according to its social media page. Police said they’d deemed the threat against a school resource officer, principal and security officer “lower level” after preliminary investigation.

“Our dedicated officers, in collaboration with the Merrillville Community School Corporation, have worked swiftly and diligently to investigate these threats and ensure the safety of our students, staff, and community,” the statement read. “For now, please rest assured that our schools are secure, and we look forward to finishing off the school year as we move towards summer.”

The investigation started seemingly after someone posted screenshots of the threat on another social media page dedicated to the town. The person said they’d contacted police after they were sent the messages, which threatened to included a threat to shoot up and bomb the school and listed names. The Post-Tribune isn’t naming them because they’re the victims.

Merrillville Community School Corporation for its part released on its social media page Sunday that the administration was aware of an “altered image circulating on social media, which references Pierce Middle School.”

“While this image originated from an unrelated incident in another state, it was modified to include specific threats against members of our staff,” the release said. “We have a very credible lead on the source of this altered image, and the matter is currently under active investigation.

“Please know that threats of any kind are taken very seriously and carry serious consequences — both within the school system and through law enforcement.”

School wasn’t canceled Monday for Merrillville students, the release said.

Corporation Spokeswoman Tina Davis-Powell said via email Monday that the schools had no further comment at this time.

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

Police responded just before 4:30 p.m. to the branch at 11960 Western Ave., after reports three men armed with handguns robbed an armored vehicle, according to the FBI.

The men wore dark-colored sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts, a black facial covering and light grey gloves, the FBI said. They fled in a car and are still at large, the FBI said.

The FBI said no injuries were reported.

The FBI asks anyone with information to call 312-421-6700 or go to tips.fbi.gov.

Valentine Torrez initially told police he was a victim, too, on Nov. 13, 2021, when a masked man entered his relative’s unlocked door in Hammond, blindfolded, then sexually assaulted her and the woman’s 12-year-old daughter.

Later, he was charged when his DNA came back, including on the relative’s lower back and the child’s neck and underwear. Torrez, 50, got 33 years in May 2024 after he was convicted of rape, a Level 3 felony; child molesting, and criminal confinement — about half his charges.

Prosecutors Arturo Balcazar and Lindsey Lanham alleged Torrez helped plan the home invasion with co-defendant Garrett Whittenburg to assault the female relative and take her credit cards.

In a 3-0 decision, Appeals Judge Mary DeBoer rejected Torrez’s argument that there wasn’t enough evidence for his conviction. Prosecutors needed to show “concerted action” with the child’s assault.

“His course of conduct during and after the offense also supports that Torrez was an accomplice,” she wrote, later adding, “Torrez left the home rather than assisting or seeking help for them.”

“Clearly, the jury found (the witness’s) testimony credible and could reasonably infer Torrez’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt from the evidence presented at trial,” DeBoer wrote.

At trial, defense lawyer Kerry Connor argued some parts of the woman’s story were inconsistent over time. Torrez can appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court.

His earlier release date is in January 2047. Whittenburg’s trial is scheduled May 12.

Misdemeanor overturned after Gary man shot police dog

The Appeals Court overturned a misdemeanor conviction for Spencer Patterson — after he shot a police dog when an officer was trying to arrest him — saying it violated double jeopardy.

Patterson, 31, got eight years and has to repay $11,000 to Gary Police. Jurors acquitted him of attempted murder in the case of the officer, but they convicted him of battery by means of a deadly weapon, one count each of felony and misdemeanor resisting law enforcement, and one count of striking a law enforcement animal.

Gary Police Sgt. Angel Lozano and his K-9 Falco were chasing Patterson in July 2023 on the 1000 block of E. 35th Place when Patterson shot the dog.

In a 3-0 decision, DeBoer ordered Judge Salvador Vasquez to vacate — or cancel the lesser misdemeanor conviction, saying what happened was too close in time to be convicted twice. His earlier release date is in October 2030.

Sentence upheld in rape case

The court rejected a former Gary man’s argument that his prison sentence was too harsh for a woman’s assault.

Tyron Smith, 32, got 16 years in December after he pleaded guilty to aggravated battery. He was originally charged with rape.

In a 3-0 decision, Appeals Judge Elizabeth Tavitas said his sentence was appropriate.

The woman told police she let him stay at her place in February 2024, then woke up overnight as Smith was having sex with her. She was “very upset” and told him to stop. Smith then forced the woman to perform a sex act, then forcefully raped her, according to court records. He forced her to “consume cocaine” between assaults, the affidavit alleges. The woman said he was abusive to her when drunk or high in the past, court records show.

“Given the brutal nature of Smith’s offense and his poor character, we cannot say that his sixteen-year sentence is inappropriate,” Tavitas wrote.

He can appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court. His earliest release date is in February 2036.

Illinois State Police said Monday they found Tom Mya Lyons, 18, on the Sibley Boulevard ramp northbound to Interstate 94 around 4:30 a.m., and she was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. She was the sole passenger in the vehicle. The 16-year-old male driver was not injured, police said.

The crash followed Homewood-Flossmoor High School’s prom with the theme A Night of Enchanted Elegance at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago that lasted from 8 p.m. to midnight, according to the school’s website.

“Tom Mya was more than just a student — she was a vibrant member of our community, a loyal friend, a dedicated classmate, a committed teammate and a positive presence throughout Homewood-Flossmoor High School,” Principal Clinton Alexander said in a statement. “Her energy, kindness and spirit touched the lives of many, and her absence will be deeply felt by us all.”

A Homewood-Flossmoor High School District 233 statement said Lyons was a dedicated member of the school’s step dance team, which ended its season with a first place win in their division last month.

“Let this time of sorrow bring us even closer as a school community. In moments like these, it is more important than ever to take care of ourselves and one another,” Alexander said in the statement.

The district said members of its crisis team will be available to help students and staff who are grieving or otherwise struggling with Lyons’ death.

Support will be available in each of classes Monday and Tuesday, the district said. There will also be designated spaces in both the high school’s buildings for crisis team members to meet with students.

ostevens@chicagotribune.com

On Sunday, the president announced in a social media post that he would direct the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz to “house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

But if Trump is to get his prison, the bureau will have to first pass a number of environmental reviews, including the National Environmental Protection Act, and the California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA.

President Donald Trump says he’s going to reopen Alcatraz prison. Doing so would be difficult and costly

CEQA requires developers to measure how a proposed project might hurt the environment — from wildlife to impacting water resources — and show how it will mitigate those impacts. Often, groups looking to block a project will sue under CEQA, claiming that an agency’s environmental report hasn’t met the mark.

There are a few major environmental hurdles any prison on Alcatraz would have to clear.

First, the birds.

Several species of waterfowl nest on Alcatraz throughout the year. These include the Western gull, cormorants, and the pigeon guillemot, which are legally protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Parts of the island are closed during seabird breeding season.

Contractors doing rehab work to the historic Alcatraz prison regularly have to pause construction or work around breeding season for these birds, historian John Martini said. Some parts of the island are closed much of the year to the public so the birds can roost. (Even the Escape from Alcatraz triathalon organizers are required to note in their permit that the swim won’t have a significant impact on birds.)

Alcatraz also has historic status. The island was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and was designated a National Historic Landmark — an even more elusive status — in 1986. The National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to minimize harm to National Historic Landmarks when taking on projects that would impact them. Historic resources are also recognized as part of the environment under CEQA.

If the project does receive its environmental clearance, it might not be until Trump is out of office.

Consider how long other Alcatraz projects have taken.

The National Park Service started planning for a new ferry landing on Alcatraz for visitors in 2015. It took nearly two years for NPS to get environmental clearance — in part because the city of Sausalito appealed the project under CEQA, holding the appeal over NPS as leverage to ensure the agency designed it such that new ferries wouldn’t increase traffic around downtown Sausalito. It took another few years to get approvals from the city and Port of San Francisco. The project is finally set to be complete this winter — a decade later.

Even if the project were to pass environmental clearances, a new prison on Alcatraz would be extraordinarily difficult to build, Martini said.

“It’s a rock,” he said of the island. “There’s no soil out there. There’s no source of fresh water. When they built the prison back in the 1910s, they had to bring out everything — huge amounts of water for mixing concrete, let alone what was needed to support the people living on the island.”

Several dozen prospective jurors got a brief description of the sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges against Combs from the judge, Arun Subramanian, who reminded them that Combs had pleaded not guilty and was presumed innocent.

As the judge spoke, Combs sat with his lawyers. He wore a sweater over a white collared shirt and gray slacks, which the judge had allowed rather than jail clothing. Combs, 55, has been held in a grim federal lockup in Brooklyn since his arrest last September. His hair and goatee were almost fully gray because dye isn’t allowed in jail.

Unlike other recent high-profile celebrity trials, Combs’ court case won’t be broadcast live because federal courtrooms don’t allow electronic recordings inside — meaning courtroom sketch artists serve as the public’s eyes in the courtroom.

The trial is expected to take at least eight weeks. If convicted, he faces the possibility of decades in prison.

Several prospective jurors indicated they had seen news reports featuring a key piece of evidence in the case: a video of the hip-hop mogul hitting and kicking one of his accusers in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016. One prospective juror described a still image she saw from the video as “damning evidence.” That woman was rejected from consideration.

After another juror was dismissed, Combs asked for a bathroom break, telling the judge, “I’m sorry your honor I’m a little nervous today.”

The 17-page indictment against Combs — which reads like a charging document filed against a Mafia leader or the head of a drug gang — alleges that Combs engaged in a two-decade pattern of abusive behavior against women and others, with the help of people in his entourage and employees from his network of businesses.

Combs and his lawyers say he’s innocent and any group sex was consensual. They say there was no effort to coerce people into things they didn’t want to do, and nothing that happened amounted to a criminal racket.

Prosecutors say women were manipulated into drug-fueled sexual performances with male sex workers that Combs called “Freak Offs.” To keep women in line, prosecutors say Combs used a mix of influence and violence: He offered to boost their entertainment careers if they did what he asked — or cut them off if they didn’t.

And when he wasn’t getting what he wanted, the indictment says Combs and his associates resorted to violent acts including beatings, kidnapping and arson. Once, the indictment alleges, he even dangled someone from a balcony.

Combs has acknowledged one episode of violence that is likely to be featured in the trial. In 2016, a security camera recorded him beating up his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel. Cassie filed a lawsuit in late 2023 saying Combs had subjected her to years of abuse, including beatings and rape.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, did.

Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, has said Combs was “not a perfect person” and that there had been drug use and toxic relationships, but said all sexual activity between Combs, Cassie and other people was consensual.

The trial is the most serious in a long string of legal problems for Combs.

In 1999 he was charged with bursting into the offices of an Interscope Records executive with his bodyguards and beating him with a champagne bottle and a chair. The executive, Steve Stoute, later asked prosecutors to go easy on Combs, who pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and took an anger management class.

Later that same year, Combs was stopped by police after he and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, fled a nightclub where three people were wounded by gunfire. Combs was acquitted of all charges related to the episode at a 2001 trial, but a rapper in his entourage, Jamal “Shyne” Barrow, was convicted in the shooting and served nearly nine years in prison.

Then in 2015, Combs was charged with assaulting someone with a weight-room kettlebell at the University of California, Los Angeles, where one of his sons played football. Combs said he was defending himself and prosecutors dropped the case.

The homicide figures do not include killings that occurred in self-defense or in other circumstances not measured in Chicago police statistics. Homicide data from the Illinois State Police, which patrols the city’s expressways, also is not included here.

After a two-year spike during the pandemic and national outrage over police accountability, Chicago began to see a decline in homicides in 2022. Homicide and nonfatal shooting totals fell again in 2023, but the city was roiled by robbery and carjacking crews responsible for an overall uptick in violence. Then 2024 was the third consecutive year of decreasing homicides in Chicago.

Data, which is updated on this page weekly, is through April 30, 2025.

The number of people slain so far in 2025: 116.

That’s 35 fewer people killed when compared with 2024.

Austin has recorded the most homicides so far in 2025: 17.

Where each homicide has occurred so far in 2025 (through April 30)

Chicago’s homicide victims in 2025 are often young, Black and male.

Most homicide victims in Chicago died as the result of gunshot wounds.

Sources: City of Chicago; Tribune reporting and archives

The first occurred about 2:50 a.m. in the 1400 block of East 75th Street, where Chicago police said they responded to a call of a man with a knife threatening other residents in the building. The site was the Grand Regency of Jackson Park, an assisted-living facility.

Police said they went to the unit where the man lived in and tried to talk with him. The officers then used Tasers on the man, who had a knife, but the Taser shocks did not subdue him, according to police. The man kept advancing toward the officers with a knife, police said, which led officers to shoot and hit him.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene, and a knife was recovered.

The second police shooting happened in the Roseland neighborhood near the 10600 block of South LaSalle Street, according to COPA. At about 3:05 a.m., officers were responding to a call of a domestic disturbance at a residence, the Police Department said.

During the incident, the department said, an off-duty officer who was in the basement was alerted to the disturbance. That officer went upstairs and confronted and shot at the suspect.

The suspect suffered wounds to the body and was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in critical condition. No other injuries were reported and two firearms were recovered at the scene.

The Police Department said it is cooperating with COPA to investigate both shootings. The officers involved in both shootings will be placed on administrative duties for a minimum of 30 days, which is standard practice.

Police said an unknown man approached the woman, who hadn’t been identified as of Sunday night, and shot her in the head at 1515 S. Laflin St. just before 5:30 p.m. Emergency workers found the woman, estimated to be in her 30s, still breathing, but she was pronounced dead around 6:05 p.m. at Stroger Hospital, according to police.

By 7 p.m., detectives and evidence technicians were moving in and out of an orange tent surrounded by garbage cans and pieces of furniture. Police said the woman had been found inside the tent, which was set up against the southern wall of a vacant lot between two viaducts. Graffiti murals lined both walls.

Police cut the tape on both sides of the lot shortly before 8 p.m. No one was in custody Sunday evening, and Area Three detectives were investigating the shooting.