• Jenny Schlueter, a Chicago animal control officer, said it will take several weeks to complete a DNA test to determine if a coyote that was tranquilized and captured in a North Side neighborhood is the same animal that attacked a 6-year-old boy.
• Karyn Turk, 47, a conservative commentator who was named Mrs. Florida 2016, was sentenced to a month in jail and five months of house arrest for stealing her mother's Social Security checks rather than using the money to pay for nursing home care, prosecutors said.
• Shauna Altizer, office manager at a construction company in La Vergne, Tenn., that donated $39,200 to eight schools to offset part of the school district's unpaid meals debt, said everyone needs help occasionally and that children shouldn't have to suffer.
• Ryan Gagnon, a police lieutenant in Auburn, Mich., said two people, ages 16 and 18, have been charged after they illegally entered a shed under an electronic billboard along a freeway last September and used a laptop inside to substitute X-rated videos for the regular billboard advertising.
• Steve Kruse, police chief of Maplewood, Mo., called it "alarming when children become involved in a crime like this," after two boys, ages 11 and 14, both now in custody, pulled a 41-year-old woman from a car as she was leaving work and robbed her.
• Allison Johnson, 46, of Norman, Okla., was ordered to undergo mental health treatment after apologizing and pleading guilty to spray-painting racial, anti-gay and anti-Semitic graffiti on state Democratic Party offices and other properties in 2019.
• Aubrey Ferguson, 31, of Richland, Mo., convicted of child abduction for keeping her 6-year-old son hidden in an attic during a custody dispute with the boy's father, was sentenced to five years of supervised probation.
• Marissa Cohen, 45, of Andrews, S.C., was sentenced to 35 years in prison for hiring someone to set her empty mobile home on fire so she could collect insurance money, a blaze that killed her 12-year-old son, who she did not know was inside.
• Creg Sullivan, 47, who witnesses said got into an argument with a panhandler at a Palmdale, Calif., intersection, was charged with assault with a deadly weapon after he rammed his BMW into the panhandler as the man stood in front of the car with his hands on the hood, deputies said.
A Section on 01/11/2020