Crime - OrlandoSentinel.com

Pickax killer gets life in St. Cloud murder

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:31:52 -0500

"I would give anything to have more time with him," Kelly Graham of Pennsylvania told Judge Scott Polodna Jr. at the Osceola County Courthouse. "They took what he valued most – his next breath."

On the night of Feb. 10, 2010, Kilpatrick was lying on the sofa of his St. Cloud home when two young men fresh out of drug rehab broke in looking for money to get high. At 71, Kilpatrick was incapacitated by emphysema and needed a walker to shuffle across the living room, according to testimony.

That's when Michael Corrales, now 29, began striking Kilpatrick in the head with a pickax while Christopher "California" Shipley, now 29, waited outside. The pair had met less than a week earlier at Parkplace Behavioral Center in Kissimmee and went to Kilpatrick's home where Shipley had rented a room until being evicted.

Unfazed by the murder, the pair stole $45 cash along with a pickup and drove to Sanford where they got high for a day before splitting up and eventually getting arrested.

Each continued to blame the other for the murder right through their sentencing Wednesday afternoon.

"Your honor, you're making a big mistake," Corrales bellowed in the courtroom after being sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder and 40 years more for related crimes. "I didn't kill that old man."

Shipley already knew he would be sentenced to 20 years and had prepared a lengthy statement to Kilpatrick's family.

"I am a coward," he said. "I have to live the rest of my life knowing that."

hcurtis@tribune.com or 407-420-5257.

911 call: Kids 'tried to break in' neighbor's house to get away from mom before fatal shootings

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:10:00 -0500

The neighbor tried to help, deputies say, but Thomas, 33, coaxed her kids to return to their home on Bright Avenue in Port St. John.

Minutes later, "now there's more gunshots," the neighbor told a dispatcher. It was the sound, deputies say, of a mother murdering her children.

Brevard County deputies were just arriving at 4:54 a.m. Tuesday when they heard the shots that ended the lives of Joel, Jazzlyn and Jaxs Johnson. They were 12, 13 and 15. Deputies think Thomas shot Jaxs while he slept.

Their oldest sibling, 17-year-old Pebbles Johnson, was stretched out in the front yard motionless when deputies arrived. They drove onto the lawn and loaded her into the back of a deputy's cruiser, but by the time they could get her to paramedics waiting nearby, she was dead.

When deputies approached the home again just after 5 a.m., a person with a gun they later realized was Thomas came out but quickly turned and went back inside.

After killing all four of her children, Thomas shot herself to death at 5:26 a.m., said Lt. Tod Goodyear, a sheriff's spokesman.

Arelis Hernandez of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Man pleads guilty to pointing lasers at planes near OIA

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:30:00 -0500

A Central Florida man pleaded guilty Wednesday to aiming a laser pointer at aircraft departing from Orlando International Airport, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Glenn Stephen Hansen, 49, faces up to five years in federal prison.

Prosecutors said Hansen aimed a laser at passenger aircraft at least 23 times from January to March.

The light caused pilots to take evasive maneuvers during takeoff, placing the aircraft in danger during a critical time in flight.