Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Crime Alert 10.19.23

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Plea change for woman who shoved voice teacher to her death. For more crime and justice news go to crimeonline.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Alert, I'm Nancy Grace, breaking crime news now. A perfectly healthy 27-year-old woman gets drunk and high and shoves a beloved 87-year-old voice coach. She hits her head and the voice coach dies. Lauren Pazienza says her defense is, I was so drunk and high, I don't know what happened. Really?

In the last hours, a stunning guilty plea and what many believe to be a sweetheart sentence. Lauren Ponzienzo was charged with manslaughter in the first degree. Under the terms of the plea agreement, Ponzienzo will be with manslaughter in the first degree in the shoving death of 87-year-old voice teacher Barbara Mayer Gustern. After a night of drinking, Ponzienza shoved Gustern for no apparent reason as she waited on the street outside of her building. Ponzienza shoved Gustern to the ground and walked away. Guston was taken to the hospital, but died several days later. The two did not know each other.

More crime and justice news after this. Now with the latest crime and justice breaking news, Crime Online's John Lumley. In a confrontation that police initially claimed involved a driver lunging at an officer with a knife outside a vehicle, a judge has now dismissed murder and other charges against a Philadelphia cop who shot and killed the driver through a rolled-up window. With the latest, Sydney Sumner with Crime Online. Municipal Judge Wendy Pugh agreed with the defense counsel who claimed the officer might

have feared for his life because he believed the driver, 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry, had a gun. Irizarry was seen clutching a knife close to his right leg as officers approached his stopped vehicle in footage from a police body camera that was played at the preliminary hearing of dismissed officer Mark Dial. After a brief pursuit caused by erratic driving, the officers had stopped Irizarry on a residential street. The decision was reached following a 20-minute viewing of the terrifying film in a courtroom that was crowded with police and Irizarry's family members. According to his lawyers, it was shortly after noon on August 14th that Dial discharged his weapon at close range, acting in self-defense. Irizarry's family members seem shocked and upset by Pew's decision,

which prosecutors expect to appeal. The victim's relatives told the press that police shouldn't have to shoot someone dead just because they are speeding or acting unreasonably. Body cam video reveals Dial shot Irizarry roughly seven seconds after exiting a police SUV and approaching the vehicle. He discharged a total of six rounds. Now to Iowa. As a month after one man was found guilty for his parts in the killings, jurors have now acquitted another defendant accused of murder in the shooting deaths of two students at a Des Moines alternative school. Our friends with the Des

Moines Register report that 20-year-old Bravon Tukes was found not guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and one count each of attempted murder, involvement in a criminal gang, and willful damage inflicting serious injury. About a month prior, 19-year-old Preston Walls was found guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and willful damage inflicting serious injury for his involvement in the January 23rd shooting at the Starts Right Here program. The prosecution's aim was also to find Walls guilty of first-degree murder. A Louisiana man who escaped his attempted murder conviction in 1991

has now been apprehended more than three decades later after police discovered him hiding in Mexico. Once again, Crime Online's Sydney Somner. The FBI says 63-year-old Greg Lawson was located in Mexico and returned to the United States. In 1991, Lawson was charged with shooting a man in Bienville Parish. According to our friends with KSLA, Lawson left the courthouse as the jury was about to enter the courtroom to find him guilty of the charge of attempted murder. His truck later discovered a block from the courthouse. The FBI shared a video of Lawson being escorted by police at an airport on X, formerly known as Twitter.

In the footage, Lawson seems to laugh nervously as police restrain him with handcuffs. A mother from western Michigan has been given a sentence of up to five years in jail after she crashed her SUV into an ice-covered pond, killing her three young sons. Letitia Gonzalez had entered a no-contest plea in August to three misdemeanor charges of a moving infraction resulting in death, as well as operating a vehicle while drunk causing serious injury. According to our friends at WOOD TV, Gonzalez informed the court that she has been plagued with survivor's guilt ever since her children's murders, and an Ottawa County judge sentenced the Holland-area mother to a minimum of two years and a maximum of five years.

It was in February of 2022 when Ottawa County police say Gonzalez drove her SUV off the side of a Holland Township road, jumped a curb, and rolled into an ice-covered retention pond. The woman's three sons, four-year-old Jerome III, three-year-old Jeremiah, and one-year-old Josiah, were strapped into child safety seats at the time and drowned during the incident. For the latest crime and justice news, go to CrimeOnline.com. For this Crime Alert, I'm Nancy Grace. This is an iHeart Podcast.