Two murder cases to go trial in Wichita next week, both with robbery as the possible motives.
Adrian Hopper, 28, faces trial before Judge Warren Wilbert. Hopper is charged with breaking into an apartment near Central and Oliver in January 2007 and shooting Deandre Reed and Princess Sears.
Reed, 24, died later that night. Sears, 23, was sent home from the hospital but died the next month. Sal Intagliata is prosecuting the case. Steven Rosel represents Hopper.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Kim Parker, meanwhile, will argue against defense lawyer Richard Ney in the case of Eric Huerta. Huerta, 20, was charged with killing Chad Clayton, 27, May 2007. Judge Rebecca Pilshaw will preside over the case. Huerta is also a co-defendant in the killing of Rosann Kapaun, 33, in a shooting five days earlier. That case is set for trial separately.
The trials begin with jury selection Monday in Sedgwick County District Court. Each trial is expected to last four days or more.
Update: Huerta’s trial has been continued. No new date has yet been set.
A day after her daughter was sentenced to five years in federal prison, Amber Goff’s mother said she wants to set the record straight about her daughter’s participation in helping two men escape from a state penitentiary.
Goff, 24, said in her plea this spring she had bought a prepaid cell phone last summer, which was then smuggled by someone else to Steven Ford and Jesse Bell at the El Dorado Correctional Facility. Goff added minutes onto the phone, which Ford and Bell used to plan their escape.
But Goff, who still worked as a correction officer in the state pen at the time, wasn’t aware of their plans to escape, her mother Laurie Nutter told me this morning.
Nutter said Goff didn’t know of the plan to escape until 11 days before the men made their break on Oct. 28. Then Goff arranged to cut through fences inside the prison grounds and left the men wire cutters and provided guns to help them escape. They were arrested later in New Mexico.
“She wasn’t quite as involved in this incident as the officials would like the public to think,” Nutter said.