Lando Voyles, Pinal County Attorney, said in a statement on Friday that a January 2nd email he sent to reporters may have left a "mistaken impression" about a group of fired prosecutors.

Pinal County Attorney Lando Voyles wants the public to know that a group of prosecutors he fired a few months ago were never suspected of any crimes.

The unusual email blast sent to reporters and others today is intended to clarify a January 2nd email that "may have left the mistaken impression" that the prosecutors were involved in an embezzlement case he mentioned in the same January email.

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Gerald Lee Culverson of Chandler was released from jail Monday, and police are backing off on the accusation that he killed his girlfriend.

Gerald Lee Culverson of Chandler has been released from jail without any pending charge, despite Monday's allegation by police that he killed his girlfriend.

Based on preliminary information from the county medical examiner, Chandler police today retracted two key details from the probable-cause statement from which we quoted in Monday's blog post about Culverson:

See also: Gerald Lee Culverson of Chandler Killed Girlfriend and Chewed Her Breasts, Cops Say

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Image: Facebook

James Drorbaugh says that he's about to be sentenced to at least four years in prison -- all because someone else downloaded child porn on his computer.

James Drorbaugh describes every computer user's worst nightmare:

While he was away or inattentive, an unscrupulous, perverted acquaintance downloaded hundreds of disgusting images and videos of child pornography, resulting in a raid of Drorbaugh's home and, ultimately, a pending prison sentence of at least four years.

We wrote about the Arizona man on Friday, and Drorbaugh contacted us today to take issue with a couple of aspects of our article, notably the headline that calls him a "child-porn collector." The article reports the recent plea agreement by Drorbaugh, who's admitting to the possession of at least one image of child pornography in return for a four- to six-year prison sentence.

See also: James Oliver Drorbaugh of Arizona, Child-Porn Collector, Faces Four to Six Years in Slammer

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Phoenix Police Department

Daniel Albert Alvarado

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Image: AZ Department of Corrections

Bryan J. Teague of Peoria was arrested on February 8 and accused by the United States Forest Service of kicking a propane can into a campfire on August 8, sparking the 5,220-acre "Mistake Peak Fire" in the Tonto National Forest.

Putting a propane tank in a campfire turns out to be an even stupider idea than we thought.

After Bryan J. Teague of Peoria put a 16-ounce tank in a campfire on August 8 while on an off-roading trip in the Tonto National Forest, the predictable explosion sparked the 5,220-acre "Mistake Peak Fire," court documents state.

Investigators quickly figured out where the fire, which had started at about 6 p.m., originated. Later that same night, Teague, 56, was caught skulking in woods and questioned. He lied initially about the details of the incident, records state, but confessed a week later to kicking the propane tank in the fire ring, watching it explode, and leaving the site after the fire grew out of control.

The U.S. Forest Service filed a federal criminal complaint against Teague on Thursday, and he was arrested in Peoria on Friday, court records show.

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Sorry, Lisa Aubuchon.

Yesterday, we published a blog post stating -- incorrectly, it turns out -- that Aubuchon had filed a motion to stay her appeal to get her job back as a Maricopa deputy county attorney. We compounded the mistake by suggesting Aubuchon thought she might be disbarred when a State Bar disciplinary panel makes its decision on her potential punishment.

But she's the plaintiff in the Maricopa Merit Commission job-appeal proceedings, not the defendant, like we thought -- and it was the defendant (Maricopa County) that filed the motion to stay the proceedings.

In fact, (as we've now learned), Aubuchon and her attorney, Ed Moriarity, opposed the motion to stay, which implies Aubuchon does think she'll still have a law license if and when the Merit Commission decides to put her back on the job. Moriarity informed us of the error this afternoon and asked us to retract the earlier article, which we did.

We regret the error.

Late last year, we published a story about a guy known as "Raven," a mentally ill man who had been living for more than a year in a central Phoenix park.

​The piece described how several of Raven's "neighbors," folks who live in the area around the big park, had gotten to know the usually friendly middle-aged man and helped him out with food, water and companionship.

Sadly, not a happy ending to this story. (Photographic hint to the left, i.e. an angry mob).

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Bruce Branscom and Jose Alfredo Rivera were arrested on New Year's Day in separate cases on suspicion of molesting little girls.

The arrest of men on suspicion of sexual misconduct with their own family members makes for a journalistic conundrum: Name the suspect, and you've all but identified the victim.

Local media was presented with this challenge yesterday -- twice. Court records show that two men -- Jose Alfredo Rivera of Glendale and Bruce Branscom of Mesa -- were arrested on New Year's Day in separate cases after being accused of sexual activity with 12- and 13-year-old girls.

In our blog post yesterday, you'll see that we decided to name the men without stating their relationship to the victims. Not sure if that's the best way, but when a guy is accused of committing a horrific crime like that, we tend to believe that he doesn't deserve anonymity.

The Arizona Republic, on the other hand, decided for inexplicable reasons to name one suspect -- and describe his relationship with the victim -- but not the other.

The story by reporter Angela Piazza about Rivera states clearly that the victim is his stepdaughter. (Thus defeating New Times' attempt to cloak the relationship between the two, as New Times accidentally defeated the Republic's attempt to hide the suspect's identity.)

The Republic states that, "the suspect's name is being withheld by The Arizona Republic to protect the victim's identity."

But now the truth is out, for better or worse -- as it is in the Branscom case.

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An 18-year-old girl who was run over by a Mesa school bus yesterday has "survivable" injuries, Mesa police say.

Wynnona Brooks had been walking eastbound on Crismon Road in a crosswalk at about 6:50 a.m. when the bus, carrying about 20 students and driven by Kenneth Bischof, 59, struck her during a turn off of Broadway Road.

The impact knocked down Brooks, but the bus continued for a few more feet and stopped on top of her.

With a dislocated hip, broken femur and extensive road rash, cops say she remained trapped under the bus until rescue workers showed up and extricated her.

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AZ Urbanathlon, an obstacle course scheduled for November 5, changed its name last week to AZ Urban Race following a federal trademark complaint.

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AZ Urbanathlon, an obstacle-course race scheduled to take place on November 5 near Scottsdale, has changed its name to AZ Urban Race following a federal trademark complaint.

Rodale, the publisher of Men's Health magazine, says it owns the rights to the name "Urbanathlon" in the complaint it filed last week. Men's Health has operated its own Urbanathlon event since 2006 in various U.S. cities and overseas. One's taking place in New York on October 29, another in San Francisco on November 13.

In the events, participants jump over obstacles, climb walls, crawl under cars or perform other unusual challenges during a race of eight or 10 miles.

The local version runs through a three-mile, barrier-filled course and is scheduled to take place at the Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.
    

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