Man charged with murder of New Jersey woman found dead in Pennsylvania dumpster
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(COOPERSBURG, Pa.) — A man has been arrested in the murder of a New Jersey woman whose body was found in a Coopersburg, Pennsylvania, dumpster over the weekend.
Rolando Corte, 42, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Lucrecia Jadan Sumba, 39, from Elizabeth, New Jersey, according to the Union County Prosecutor’s Office.
Sumba was reported missing by friends and family on Jan. 9 to the Elizabeth Police Department. Sumba was killed last Wednesday, according to prosecutors.
Corte was identified and arrested on Sunday. He is being held at the Union County Jail in New Jersey and is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.
If found guilty, he could face up to life in prison.
It’s unclear if the suspect and victim had any connection or what led police to identify Corte as a suspect.
The woman was found in a dumpster on S. 3rd Street in Coopersburg just before 6 p.m. on Saturday, according to police.
Coopersburg, a suburb of Allentown, is about 80 miles west of Elizabeth.
An autopsy revealed Sumba’s cause of death was sharp force injuries and her death was ruled a homicide, according to the county coroner.
“A joint investigation conducted by the Union County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide Task Force, Elizabeth Police Department, Coopersburg Police Department, and the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office led to the identification and arrest of Corte,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
Coopersburg Police did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors on Long Island plan to announce a “significant development” in their case against accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann on Tuesday, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
The architect and father has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the murders of six women whose remains were found in a remote spot along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach and parts of eastern Long Island.
Prosecutors have also linked him to the death of several other unsolved killings — including that of Valerie Mack, a New Jersey woman whose remains were discovered in Manorville and near Gilgo Beach. Like the other women, the prosecutors have said she was also involved in sex work.
Prosecutors named Heuermann a suspect in Mack’s death in June based on evidence allegedly found on an electronic device seized from Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park on Long Island. Prosecutors have said Heuermann kept detailed notes about serial killings, body disposal and torture pornography.
A spokeswoman for Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney declined to comment.
Heuermann, 61, is scheduled to appear in court in Riverhead at 9:30 a.m.
(NEW YORK) — A wintry blast is slamming the Great Lakes region with 3 to 5.5 feet of snow — and more lake effect snow is in the forecast for later this week.
Monday’s intense lake effect snow band from Lake Michigan brought 7.5 inches of snow and whiteout conditions near Hartford in western Michigan, where a pileup closed Interstate 94 in both directions.
About 14 passenger vehicles and three semitrucks were involved in the crash, according to the Michigan State Police. One driver was critically hurt.
A winter storm warning is ongoing in western Michigan.
“Please drive safely and just stay home if it’s unnecessary to drive,” state police said.
Cars left abandoned in Erie, Pennsylvania Hard-hit Erie, Pennsylvania, which has been blanketed in snow since late last week, remained under an emergency declaration Tuesday.
Crews there were having a difficult time with snow removal efforts due in part to the number of abandoned vehicles on snow-covered roads.
There were an estimated 240 vehicles scattered across the city, “which have greatly impacted our ability to remove the snow,” Erie Bureau of Fire Assistant Chief Gregory Purchase told reporters Tuesday.
“We have deployed more resources, personnel and equipment from every part of the state, as far as Philadelphia, to come to Erie County to help support the situation here and to continue to clean out the state route system,” said PennDOT District Representative Brian McNulty.
McNulty characterized it as the “largest statewide response to a snow event in recent history.”
In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency in the area around Cleveland and four Northeast Ohio counties in response to the heavy snowfall there — with the possibility of more snow this week. The counties affected are Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga and Lake counties. The governor’s office said snow squalls and gusty winds leading to some gales across Lake Erie are possible.
Meanwhile, from a separate storm system in Iowa, three people were killed in a car crash on Monday when a driver crossed into the oncoming traffic lane to try to pass a snowplow, according to The Associated Press. Two people were also killed in Kentucky on Monday in a crash on an interstate, the AP said.
A lake effect snow warning remains in effect through Tuesday evening for Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, where another 4 to 8 inches of snow is expected.
A new storm system will move in Wednesday, behind this system. One to 2 feet of lake effect snow is forecast for Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
The heaviest snow will be closer to the lakes, but a rain and snow mix is possible from northern New Jersey to Maine Tuesday night into Wednesday.
No snow accumulation is forecast for the Interstate 95 corridor, but up to 9 inches of snow is possible from Vermont to northern Maine.
(NEW YORK) — The New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, has denied President-elect Donald Trump’s request to halt his sentencing Friday in his criminal hush money case.
Trump on Wednesday launched an eleventh-hour request to New York’s highest court to pause the hush money case, on the same day that he also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his sentencing.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office argued in a Thursday morning filing, before the court made its ruling, that Trump’s argument to delay his sentencing rests on an “utterly baseless” concept of president-elect immunity.
Responding to Trump’s argument, lawyers for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg urged the New York Court of Appeals to reject Trump’s request for a delay because a president-elect does not benefit from the immunity reserved for the sitting president.
“The President-elect is, by definition, not yet the President,” the filing said. “The President-elect therefore does not perform any Article II functions under the Constitution, and there are no Article II functions that would be burdened by ordinary criminal process involving the President-elect.”
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced Friday after he was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Bragg also urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to reject Trump’s request to block his sentencing, on the grounds that “there is no basis” for the country’s highest court to intervene.
“Defendant now asks this Court to take the extraordinary step of intervening in a pending state criminal trial to prevent the scheduled sentencing from taking place — before final judgment has been entered by the trial court, and before any direct appellate review of defendant’s conviction. There is no basis for such intervention,” Bragg wrote to the court.
Prosecutors argued that presidential immunity does not extend to Trump, who does not take office until Jan. 20.
“It is axiomatic that there is only one President at a time,” Bragg said. “No judicial decision or guidance from the Department of Justice has ever recognized that the unique temporary immunity of the sitting President extends to the President-elect.”
The district attorney’s office warned that delaying Trump’s sentencing would only make things worse, arguing “any stay here risks delaying the sentencing until after January 20, when defendant is inaugurated and his status as the sitting President will pose much more severe and potentially insuperable obstacles to sentencing and finality.”
Prosecutors told the New York Court of Appeals that the jury in Trump’s trial saw “overwhelming” evidence of Trump’s guilt. The filing also criticized the president-elect’s conduct in court.
“And notwithstanding defendant’s past and upcoming service as President, his history, character, and condition — and especially his open disregard for the justice system — do not support dismissal,” the filing said.
Prosecutors criticized Trump for repeatedly delaying the sentencing — leading to the Jan. 10 sentencing date — and exaggerating the harm he would face if the sentencing continued as planned.
Trump faces up to four years in prison, but New York Judge Juan Merchan has signaled that he plans to sentence Trump to an unconditional discharge — effectively a blemish on Trump’s record, without prison, fines or probation — in order to respect Trump’s transition efforts and the principle of presidential immunity.
Prosecutors highlighted in their New York Court of Appeals filing that Merchan intends to sentence Trump to the lowest allowable sentence.
“Indeed, if defendant is ever to be sentenced in this proceeding, the least burdensome time to do so is now, before his inauguration on January 20, 2025,” the filing said.
