Halifax child porn suspect sentenced after fleeing to Indiana

(Halifax, Va.) – A Halifax man has been sentenced to 63 years in prison following his conviction on nine child pornography charges.

But Jessie Randall Coates had to be found before the sentence could be meted out.

The 42-year-old disappeared during a lunch break at his trial in Halifax County Circuit Court Tuesday afternoon. Sheriff’s investigators learned that Coates had fled to Indiana, where he was staying with family members.

The trial continued in his absence, and the jury convicted Coates on nine felony counts and recommended a 63-year sentence.

When he failed to return to the courtroom Tuesday, the judge issued a capias order for his arrest. Yorktown Police and the U.S. Marshal Service found him in Indiana, where Coates was arrested without incident.

Coates is being held without bond pending extradition to Halifax County.

 

 
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Snow released on $15 million bond

(Eden, N.C.) — Mickey Snow has been released on bond, again. The 77-year-old Eden businessman had been free since his arrest in 2015 but was taken into custody again last week after traveling to Florida.

Snow is accused of paying an Eden woman money for sexual acts with her mentally disabled teenage daughters.

Snow told the court he was seeing a specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Florida last week.

 
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Hurricane Irma shifts, again

(Miami) — The National Hurricane Center says Irma’s projected path is continuing to shift to the west, just a few crucial miles, that should keep its eye just off Florida’s west coast on a track to hit St. Petersburg, not Miami or even Tampa.

The hurricane’s leading edge was already lashing the Florida Keys with hurricane force winds. If the center of the storm keeps moving over warm Gulf of Mexico water, it may regain more strength before making landfall again.

St. Petersburg, like Tampa, has not taken a head-on blow from a major hurricane in nearly a century. Clearwater would be next, and then the storm would finally go inland northwest of Ocala.

At midnight, the storm had top sustained winds of 120 mph  and is moving northward at about 6 mph.

 
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