Father charged with murder in apparent case of mistaken identity, police say
Harris County Jail
(HOUSTON) — A man has been arrested and charged with murder in an apparent case of mistaken identity that turned deadly early Christmas Day, according to police.
Jonathan Ross Mata, 39, was charged on Wednesday with the murder of 25-year-old Desmond Butler, according to the Houston Police Department.
Investigators said that Mata and his wife received a phone call from their daughter telling them she had been assaulted by her boyfriend. They then drove to a gas station parking lot in the 9900 block of Bellaire, expecting their daughter to be dropped off, according to Houston Police.
As Butler’s gray Honda Pilot drove into the parking lot around 1 a.m., police said he passed Mata’s black GMC, which was parked at one of the pumps. As Butler drove past, a woman got out of the GMC and began chasing his vehicle and attempting to open the back passenger door of the Honda, believing Mata’s daughter was inside, police said.
At the same time, Mata exited the GMC and fired his gun at the victim’s vehicle as it exited the parking lot, according to police.
Butler, police said, then attempted to drive away when he was struck by gunfire and crashed his vehicle into a pole in an adjacent parking lot. The suspects got back into their vehicle and drove northbound on the feeder road, authorities said.
Butler was taken to a local hospital by paramedics and was later pronounced dead, according to police.
Mata and Butler did not know each other, police said.
Mata turned himself into police on Wednesday and has been booked into the Harris County Jail.
Morgan Geyser booking photo, Nv. 23, 2025. Posen Village Police Department
(POSEN, Ill.) — “Slender Man” stabbing assailant Morgan Geyser is scheduled to appear in an Illinois courtroom on Tuesday for a hearing in which prosecutors are expected to request that she be extradited to Wisconsin, where she allegedly fled a group home over the weekend.
The 23-year-old Geyser’s court appearance comes a day after the Wisconsin district attorney, whose office prosecuted her in the high-profile 2014 stabbing case, called on the state Department of Health Services to send her back to a mental institution.
A Wisconsin judge signed an order in September allowing Geyer a conditional release from a psychiatric facility, where she had been held for a decade, to a group home in Madison. At the time, prosecutors objected to her conditional release, alleging she had “violent” communication with a man outside the facility and had read a book in the facility with “themes of sexual sadism and murder.”
As part of the conditions of her release, Geyser was ordered to wear an ankle monitoring device.
On Saturday night, Geyser allegedly cut off her monitoring device and bolted from her group home with a 43-year-old person she told authorities she met a couple of months ago at a church event, according to a criminal complaint.
Following a massive search, Geyser and her companion were captured on Sunday night at a Posen, Illinois, truck stop, more than 165 miles from Geyser’s group home.
Geyser’s companion, identified by the Posen Police Department as Chad Mecca of Madison, was charged with criminal trespassing and obstructing identification, police said. Mecca was released on a citation and notified to appear in court on Jan. 15.
Waukesha County District Attorney Lesli Boese, whose office prosecuted Geyser in the 2014 stabbing case, expressed her hope that the state Department of Health Services, which has custody of Geyser, will file a petition to revoke the conditional release she had been granted.
“When we learned of Morgan’s escape over the weekend, it unfortunately validated the concerns we have raised from the very beginning,” Boese said. “We have been consistently and adamantly opposed to her release because her conduct has repeatedly demonstrated she poses a risk to the community.”
Boese added, “Her alleged actions this weekend only reinforce our position that a conditional release is unsafe and unacceptable.”
But attorney Anthony Cotton, who represented Geyser in the stabbing case, told ABC News correspondent Juju Chang on Monday that Geyser does not present a danger to her victim, the public, or to herself.
“The question becomes, going forward, is she still a risk to society? And I stand by every word of what I’ve said earlier. She is not a violent risk to others. I don’t believe that she is. And that’s why we found out that during her time out, she engaged in no violence whatsoever and had no weapons on her,” Cotton said.
Cotton said he hopes Geyser will be allowed to go back to a community group home.
“It will certainly present complications because we’re gonna have to go back to court eventually to try to get Morgan back into a community group home,” Cotton said. “So definitely this is not a good development and something that’s gonna have a negative impact on the work we do. It’s a setback.”
Geyser and another girl, Anissa Weier, were charged as adults and pleaded guilty to stabbing a classmate, Payton Leutner, 19 times in 2014, when they and the victim were 12 years old. Geyser and Weier, who were both prosecuted as adults, claimed they committed the attack on Leutner to appease “Slender Man,” a faceless, fictional internet-based character that garnered a cult-like following.
Geyser pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted intentional homicide and was sent to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in 2018. Geyser was later found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect and was sentenced to up to 40 years in a psychiatric institution.
Weier was also found not guilty by mental disease or defect after pleading guilty to a lesser charge. She was sentenced to up to 25 years in a psychiatric institution. In 2021, at the age of 19, Weier was granted supervised release.
David Barnes appears in court in Russia on Feb. 13, 2024 (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — Paul Carter and his friend David Barnes have been speaking with each other since their days in first grade in Huntsville, Alabama, more than 60 years ago.
Yet since Jan. 13, 2022, their conversations over the phone haven’t been the same.
“It’s hard to sit there and hear him just plea, ‘Somebody get me home,'” Carter told ABC News in an interview.
Barnes, a 68-year-old father of two boys, is serving the longest prison sentence of any American who is currently being held in Russia. He was recently relocated to a penal colony hundreds of miles from Moscow.
Tuesday marks four years since Barnes was taken into custody.
His family says Barnes’ arrest came after he traveled from his apartment in The Woodlands, Texas, to Russia at the end of 2021 to try to gain visitation or custody rights to his sons through Moscow’s family court system.
Barnes’ ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva, had taken their children to her native Russia following bitter divorce and child custody proceedings in Montgomery County, Texas. Upon learning of Barnes’ arrival in Russia, his family says she contacted law enforcement in Moscow and accused him of having abused the two boys.
“[She] did not want him to have access to his children, so she made the worst possible accusation that she could come up with,” Margaret Aaron, Barnes’ sister, told ABC News.
Moscow prosecutors’ case against Barnes was unlike any other involving an American jailed in Russia in recent memory, since Barnes was not accused of committing a crime on Russian soil.
Instead, Moscow prosecutors alleged that he abused his sons in suburban Houston, even though Texas law enforcement says they had no involvement in the Russian trial and previously found those allegations to not be credible after conducting their own investigation in response to Koptyaeva’s claims.
“I stand firmly by the allegations against Mr. Barnes,” Koptyaeva wrote to ABC News in an email Monday. “They are supported by my sons’ testimonies and evidence presented in both U.S. and Russian courts.”
Barnes was convicted by a judge in Moscow in 2024 and sentenced to more than 21 years in prison.
“Was it a fair trial? By no means,” Carter said.
After spending years in a detention center in the Russian capital, Barnes was recently transferred to the IK-17 penal colony, according to a spokesperson for his family. The facility previously housed other high-profile detainees like American Paul Whelan, who was freed from Russia in 2024 as part of a prisoner swap.
“We can’t speak for the other people that are in jail in Russia but we absolutely know without a doubt that David is an innocent guy that’s being held on some horrendous charges,” Carter said.
‘Nothing to justify what happened’
While Barnes already stood trial in Moscow, prosecutors more than 6,000 miles away in Texas are hoping that his ex-wife will face a different set of accusations in a courtroom 40 miles north of Houston.
The criminal case against Koptyaeva dates back nearly seven years.
From 2014 to 2019, Texas court records show that Barnes and Koptyaeva were going through an acrimonious divorce and child custody dispute.
“It gradually deteriorated,” Carter said. “He married a woman that he loved and brought two children into the world and, through forces that he didn’t understand or see, it went downhill.”
Koptyaeva raised serious accusations against Barnes during this time, accusing him of abusing their children, which he vehemently denied.
“I can say that the allegations against Mr. Barnes were investigated and evaluated by law enforcement here in Montgomery County and charges were not brought against him,” Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney Kelly Blackburn told ABC News on Monday.
The custody battle between Barnes and Koptyaeva ultimately resulted in a family law trial.
“A jury also heard evidence regarding the allegations during his custody dispute in the family law trial and even after hearing about the allegations, still awarded Mr. Barnes custody of his two children,” Blackburn said. “And that is when his ex-wife fled with them to Russia.”
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office alleged that despite a judgment giving Barnes partial custody of their children, Koptyaeva “failed to comply with any condition for travel outside of the United States with the children,” and left the country with the boys on a Turkish Airlines flight from Houston to Istanbul on March 26, 2019.
Interpol published yellow global police notices containing pictures of the children and Koptyaeva was subsequently charged with interference with child custody, a felony crime in Texas.
A warrant for Koptyaeva’s arrest in connection with this charge is still active, according to Blackburn.
“I am not planning to return to the United States,” Koptyaeva told ABC News. “However, if I were to do so, I would plead not guilty, as I did nothing wrong. My actions were solely to protect my children from severe abuse, something any parent would do in my situation.”
A Texas court subsequently designated Barnes as the primary guardian of the children, but since the boys were believed to have ultimately ended up in Russia with Koptyaeva, he was unable to have a relationship with them.
Barnes’ friends and family maintain that Barnes’ desire to legally reunite with his children is what prompted him to travel to Moscow after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. Instead, he ended up in a series of Russian detention centers.
“There’s nothing to justify what happened,” Carter said.
New Year, new hope?
As Barnes begins his fifth year of detention in Russia, for the first time he is being held in a penal colony a long distance away from Moscow
“From what we understand, the climate is quite a bit different,” Carter said, explaining that while Barnes was often housed in a cell with 14 to 17 other people in Moscow, he has more room to walk around in his new facility.
Carter said that the penal colony is a labor camp of sorts, but Barnes’ labor has largely been restricted to shoveling show. He is worried about his friend’s medical condition though, noting that Barnes has lost around 10 teeth since he has been in custody.
Koptyaeva has maintained that Barnes was justifiably charged and convicted, while Barnes’ relatives and acquaintances have been advocating for the U.S. government to declare that Russia is wrongfully detaining Barnes.
“We commend all efforts to secure Mr. Barnes’ release,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Rep. Dale Strong and Sen. John Cornyn wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in November. “As the Administration continues negotiations with Russia, we urge you to utilize every tool available to facilitate his return to the United States.”
Blackburn, the Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney, said he is not in a position at this time to say whether Barnes’ detention in Russia is wrongful, noting, “I don’t know what evidence was presented during the trial or anything else about how the proceeding[s] [were] conducted.”
The State Department has not answered ABC News’ questions over whether it considers Barnes’ detention to be wrongful.
“The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and welfare of American citizens,” the agency said in a statement to ABC News. “U.S. Embassy officials continue to provide consular assistance to Mr. Barnes.”
Carter said that there has been increased advocacy against Barnes’ detention recently and that he is hopeful that the Trump administration will be able to bring his friend home — but fears Barnes being devastated if he is left out of another prisoner exchange.
“He’s been in some insufferable conditions and it doesn’t need to continue,” his friend said.
ABC News’ Tanya Stukalova contributed to this report.
A makeshift memorial of flowers and American flags stands outside the Farragut West Metro station on December 01, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the 29-year-old Afghan national accused of shooting two West Virginia National Guard members, killing one, in Washington, D.C., has been formally charged with murder.
Lakanwal, of Bellingham, Washington, appeared before a judge remotely on Tuesday from his hospital bed, where he is recovering from gunshot wounds he suffered when another National Guard member shot him during the incident.
Lakanwal was wearing a hospital gown and was lying in a hospital bed, covered in a blanket, during the remote court appearance.
Through a Pashtu interpreter, Lakanwal was charged with one count of murder, two counts of assault with the intent to kill and one count of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.
Lakanwal pleaded not guilty to the charges through a court-appointed attorney.
At one point during the hearing, Lakanwal, speaking in Pashtu, said through the interpreter, “I cannot open my eyes, I have pain in my ear.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
