More bad news for US Forces Japan. The strangest thing to me about this story is how do you assault someone for 90 minutes on airplane?:
A Navy lieutenant was arrested Friday following allegations that he groped and punched a female passenger aboard a Japan-bound flight, police and Navy officials said.
The lieutenant, 33, assigned to Naval Air Facility Atsugi, is suspected of touching the 19-year-old college student’s clothed thigh, then punching her in the head several times during a flight from San Diego to Narita International Airport, an airport police spokesman said.
Police allege the officer assaulted the woman for about 90 minutes aboard the Japan Airlines flight, beginning around 11 a.m. Thursday, according to police and media reports.
The woman changed seats after another passenger reported the incident to a flight attendant, police said.
The officer had been drinking on the flight, though how much he had consumed is unclear, the police spokesman said.
Police arrested the lieutenant and took him into custody shortly after midnight, following an investigation that began after the plane arrived Thursday afternoon. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest of this crazy story at the link.
Below are the January 2016 USFK Court Martial and ROK criminal prosecution results results from the USFK website. Really nothing of interest this month other than a Lieutenant Colonel being convicted of larceny and fined $20,000. The results did not specify what he did, but I would not be surprised if it was BAH fraud. You can read the rest below:
Results of US Court-Martials for January 2016
On 5 January 2016, at a Summary Court-Martial, Private (E-2) Emanuel C. Morrison, 94th Military Battalion, Material Support Center-Korea, was found guilty of one specification of committing abusive sexual contact (Article 120, UCMJ). His adjudged sentence was to be reduced to the grade of E-1; to forfeit $1,049.00 pay for one month; and to be confined for 30 days.
On 12 January 2016, at a Special Court-Martial, Staff Sergeant Kenneth S. Clark, 121 Combat Support Hospital, 65th Medical Brigade, was found guilty of one specification of larceny (Article 121, UCMJ). He was sentenced to be reduced to the grade of E-4, to forfeit $1,200 per month for three months, and to be confined for 90 days.
On 14 January 2016, at a General Court-Martial, Lieutenant Colonel Halbert Brown, Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, Eighth Army, was found guilty of two specifications of larceny (Article 120, UCMJ), and four specifications of false official statement (Article 107). He was sentenced to be reprimanded and to be fined $20,000.
On 20 January 2016, at a Summary Court-Martial, Private (E-1) Kiwon C. Butts, 304th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, 1st Signal Brigade, was found guilty of one specification failure to go to formation (Article 86, UCMJ), and two specifications of disobeying a lawful general order or regulation (Article 92). He was sentenced to forfeit $1,044.00 and to be confined for 30 days.
Results of ROK Criminal Prosecutions for January 2016
In Uijeongbu District Court, on 7 January 2016, SPC Myeshia M. Hendrix, 618th Dental Co, USAG Casey, was convicted of traffic law violations. Her adjudged sentence was a 700,000 Won fine.
In Seoul Central District Court, on 8 January 2016, PFC Vaughn W. Herrald, E Co, 2-2 AHB-16, was convicted of Intrusion upon Habitation. His adjudged sentence was a 500,000 Won fine.
In Suwon District Court, on 13 January 2016, Capt John M. Pulli, 303d IS, Osan Air Base, was convicted of DUI. His adjudged sentence was a 3,000,000 Won fine.
In Suwon District Court, on 18 January 2016, SSG Jerill JC Cotton, 630th CCT, 411th CSB, Osan Air Base, withdrew his request for a formal trial and thus the DUI conviction and 5,000,000 Won fine through the summary order became final.
In Seoul Central District Court, on 22 January 2016, 1Lt Daniel J. Brom, 8th FW, Kunsan Air Base, was convicted of Destruction and Damage of Property. His adjudged sentence was a 1,000,000 Won fine.
In Seoul Central District Court, on 27 January 2016, MSG Channon W. Green, HHC, MSC-K, USAG Daegu (Carroll), was convicted of traffic law violations. His adjudged sentence was a 4,000,000 Won fine.
In Suwon District Court, on 28 January 2016, PV2 Audrea N. Johnson, C Co, 304th ESB, USAG Humphreys, was convicted of Infliction of Bodily Injury. His adjudged sentence was a 1,000,000 Won fine.
This is one of these crime stories just begging for a picture, but I could not find one unfortunately:
Yongsan police have arrested a man who dressed as a woman to steal money and valuables from drunken people in Itaewon.
The man, identified as Kim, 44, allegedly stole a credit card, an identification card and a smartphone from a man, identified as Choi, 46, when he fell asleep at 2 p.m. on Jan. 28.
The two had been drinking together at a pub in Itaewon, police said.
Kim allegedly stole 1.5 million won from three men in Itaewon and the Incheon area last December.
Police said Kim dressed like a woman and befriended men to steal money when they were drunk. He allegedly used stolen identity cards to obtain credit cards, and also bought smartphones. [Korea Times]
The horrible crime where parents in Bucheon killed and dismembered their 7-year old son led to a nationwide investigation of kids who stopped attending school. This investigation caused police to uncover another horrible crime:
The mummified body of a girl who stopped attending middle school more than 10 months ago was discovered by police in a room surrounded by air fresheners Wednesday.
The Bucheon Sosa Police Precinct on Wednesday arrested the girl’s parents on suspicions of child abuse and murder. Under questioning, the father, a 47-year-old pastor surnamed Lee, admitted to beating the 13-year-old for five hours with a broomstick on March 17 last year. He and the stepmother, surnamed Baek, later found the daughter dead, covered her in blankets and kept the body inside their house for over 10 months.
Baek’s 39-year-old younger sister was also arrested Wednesday on suspected abuse charges.
The girl did not get along with her stepmother, aged 40, and lived with her step-aunt starting in 2012. She ran away from the step-aunt’s home on March 15 last year and called on a former elementary school teacher. The teacher brought her to her parents.
“I asked her why she had run away from her aunt’s home, hit her with a broomstick and a drying rack to discipline her, and told her to go to sleep,” Lee told police in the first round of questioning. “I took a nap in another room and woke up to find her dead.”
Lee and Baek refused to provide a statement on why they kept the body in a room in the house for nearly a year.
The discovery was the result of an ongoing police investigation of 220 children who have been missing from school for unknown reasons. The investigation was sparked by the case of an 11-year-old girl who had been held captive by her parents and starved for two years in Incheon last December. Police have already discovered another grisly find: the remains of a 7-year-old boy were found in his parents’ freezer years after he had stopped attending school. That incident also occurred in Bucheon, Gyeonggi. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
What a mess this entire Burger King murder case has been over the past 2 decades, but fortunately some justice appears to have finally be served in this case. Still 20 years in prison still seems too lenient for this guy:
Arthur Patterson
A Seoul court on Friday convicted U.S. citizen Arthur Patterson of murder in the lurid Itaewon murder case and sentenced him to 20 years in prison, almost 19 years after the murder.
The Seoul Central District Court found the 36-year-old guilty of fatally stabbing Hongik University student Cho Jung-pil on April 3, 1997, in a Burger King in the capital’s popular Itaewon district.
Cho was found dead in the restroom of a fast food restaurant, stabbed nine times in the neck and chest.
“There was credibility in confessions by Edward Lee, while Patterson’s comments were inconsistent and contradicted evidence,” the Seoul Central District Court said in the ruling.
Patterson was extradited to Korea in September to face charges in a reopened investigation into the case and maintained his innocence throughout.
Patterson has denied the murder charge, blaming Lee. The two men were both in the restaurant at the time of the murder, and both accused the other of being the killer.
The court said Patterson’s bloodstained clothes and hands pinpointed him as the assailant. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
This is some pretty harsh punishment for not helping make a lunchbox. Unsurprisingly the assault involved alcohol:
A father, identified only as Jeong, 40, has been arrested for stabbing his teenage son for not listening to him, Yonhap reported Sunday.
Police in Ulsan said Jeong stabbed his son, 14, twice – once in the chest and once in the leg on Jan. 13. He told them he stabbed the teenager because the boy did not help him prepare a lunchbox for the daughter, 10. The father was drunk, having consumed half a bottle of soju, police said.
Jeong then carried his son to an emergency room. The boy is in a hospital receiving treatment.
The man recently separated from his wife and was raising the two children, police said. Jeong did not have a criminal record but was arrested to protect the boy, they said [Korea Times]
Ultimately the authorities were able to catch the crazy man threatening passengers with a knife, but I am not sure what authorities in Seoul can do to prevent crazy people from doing crazy things:
Authorities on Tuesday apprehended a middle-aged man who was alleged to have brandished a 10-inch knife and threatened passengers onboard a subway train in Seoul during morning rush hour.
The suspect, determined later to be a 51-year-old homeless man, was caught more than an hour after the episode, in which he brandished a knife onboard a train on subway line No. 1 around 8:20 a.m., before exiting at Jonggak Station.
No injuries were reported, though the incident highlighted a barrage of loopholes present in subway security systems in the capital, with a population density almost twice that of New York City and where more than 7 million people on average use the trains daily.
Last year, police recorded 3,040 crimes at local subway stations, up 58 percent from the 1,922 cases in 2013.
The most apparent oversight, however, is the lack of security resources and personnel. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
This crime is absolutely horrible. It almost seems like they wanted to get caught though leaving body parts of their son at their friend’s house:
Parents accused of the murder and dismemberment of their 7-year-old boy return to their former residence in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, for a reenactment of the crime, Thursday. The father, left, surnamed Choi, 34, and the mother, surnamed Han, 34, allegedly beat their son for about two hours prior to his death in November, 2012, and then dismembered him. / Yonhap
A couple, detained by police on suspicion of killing their seven-year-old son before dismembering and abandoning the severed body parts, have participated in a reenactment of the alleged offenses.
Officers at the Wonmi Police Station in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, on Thursday took the father, surnamed Choi, 34, and the mother, surnamed Han, 34, to four places where the murder and mutilation of the corpse allegedly took place ― a public restroom at a community center located in Bucheon, their former and current residences in Bucheon and Incheon, respectively, and the home of Choi’s friend in Incheon.
Handcuffed and wearing masks and baseball caps, Choi and Han did not make any comments to reporters. According to officers they did not show agitation or remorse while taking part in the crime reenactment.
Also according to police, the boy’s remains were found in a bag in the home of a friend of Choi last Friday. The couple initially said that their son was injured after falling in the bathroom while resisting being washed in October 2012. They said they did not take the boy to a hospital and he died about a month later. They also said they mutilated the body and kept the remains in the refrigerator of their home even after they moved to Incheon, and had recently put them in the bag and asked the friend to look after it. But they deny killing the boy.
However, according to police, they told a different story on Wednesday. Choi, who frequently inflicted violence on his son, beat him for about two hours on the night of Nov. 7, 2012, allegedly while under the influence of alcohol.
The next day, Han went to work and Choi realized in the afternoon that the boy had died. [Korea Times]
On April 15, 2006 a group of USFK Soldiers Private First Class. Nicholas Acosta, Private Jesse D. Findley, Specialist Nick W. Davis and Specialist Shawn R. Kiely along with Davis’ wife and one of her friends went out to the A1 Club in the Dongducheon ville to celebrate a birthday. After spending some time at the club the group decided to leave which is when something happened that would have profound consequences for the Soldiers in the group:
Upon leaving, a South Korean man downstairs gave Acosta, Findley and Kiely “a weird look” and began speaking in Korean to Kiely, Acosta said.
“I told Kiely, ‘Just go, go,’” Acosta said. “I tried to calm the Korean down, but there was a lack of communication. Then he came between me and the wall, and hit Kiely.”
The Korean man, 19-year-old Lee Yong-whan, told police the fight started when he and a soldier bumped shoulders. [Stars & Stripes]
So basically people who had been drinking and could not properly communicate bumped shoulders and the confrontation ultimately turned into a brawl. Some how during the fight the Korean group with Lee got access to a metal pipe to beat the Soldiers with.
This photo, provided by Pfc. Nicholas Acosta’s defense attorney, shows what Acosta claims are injuries from an April 15 incident in which he says he was hit with a metal pole outside a bar. The attorney and Acosta said the photo was taken shortly after the incident. (Stars & Stripes)
The group of Americans tried to get away from the group of Koreans by exiting the club and jumping into a taxi cab. Unfortunately the taxi cab’s window was down and SPC Kiely was still getting punched through the window. The Soldiers screamed at the taxi driver to start moving, but the Koreans demanded that the taxi driver get out. The driver exited the taxi and the attack on the Americans continued. This is when PFC Acosta decided to jump into the driver’s seat and steal the taxi:
“I didn’t want to steal the taxi,” Acosta said. “Davis was a mess and Kiely was still getting hit. The only thing we could do was take the vehicle and get out of it.”
Acosta drove for about a mile before being stopped by Korean National Police, he said. [Stars & Stripes]
Stealing the taxi worked to escape the brawl, but it ended up turning an already bad situation into an even worse one. The Korean police stopped the group by firing warning shots into the air telling them to exit the taxi. The Soldiers exited the taxis and took out their military ID cards, but the police according to the group began to beat them with batons. The police deny this accusation. Acosta and the other Soldiers decided not to file a complaint against the Dongducheon police because they did not want to complicate the legal process any more than they needed to.
The ROK Legal Process
Since Acosta stole the taxi he was charged with the most serious crimes of assault, illegal use of a vehicle, property damage, drunken driving and driving without a license. Korean prosecutors were seeking an 18-month jail sentence for Acosta. The other Soldiers involved in the fight all received fines from the city of Uijeongbu. During the legal proceedings a common issue for Soldiers in ROK court surfaced again when PFC Acosta complained that he could not understand his court appointed translator:
Pfc. Nicholas Acosta enters the Uijeongbu District Court on Wednesday prior to his hearing on charges of assault, illegal use of a vehicle, property damage, drunken driving and driving without a license in connection with a fight outside a bar in Dongducheon on April 15.
The soldiers repeatedly asked the translators to clarify questions, and defense attorney Jin Hyo-keun had to translate some of the proceedings for his clients. Also, Judge Jung Jin-ho ordered the junior of the two translators to take over the duties over the senior translator’s objections.
When the soldiers left the courtroom before noon, both complained to their attorney, saying they didn’t understand what was happening in court. (………)
During Wednesday’s testimony, a Stars and Stripes translator heard the judge ask both soldiers, separately, whether they “admitted” to various aspects of their cases. The court translators, however, asked the soldiers only whether they were “aware” of those aspects. The soldiers answered “yes” to nearly every question. [Stars & Stripes]
Acosta’s defense lawyer lodged a complaint which led the court to replace the translators for the sentencing hearing. He did not want to demand a re-trial because he felt that the $9,000 restitution Acosta agreed to pay to the Koreans that beat him would lead to a suspended sentence. Acosta’s defense lawyer would be proven correct when he received a suspended sentence from the Korean court:
Judge Jung Jin-ho sentenced the soldier, Pfc. Nicholas Acosta, to eight months in prison for assault, property damage, drunken driving and driving without a license in connection with the incident. Jung suspended Acosta’s sentence for two years on the condition the soldier stays out of trouble in South Korea.
Acosta blew a sigh of relief and smiled at fellow soldiers as he left the courtroom, but he refused to comment. Prosecutors had sought an 18-month jail sentence. [Stars & Stripes]
Acosta followed good legal advice by apologizing to the court, paying restitution and keeping quiet during the ROK legal process. This is the best way to try and receive a suspended sentence. On the Korean side of this incident the only person to face punishment was the instigator of the fight, Lee Yong-whan who admitted to starting the fight and was fined $2,000 which was later dropped to $1,500:
Jung dismissed an appeal by 19-year-old Lee Yong-whan, the South Korean accused of starting the April 15 fight. Lee complained that his 2 million won (about $2,000) fine is excessive.
The judge said he understood that Lee faces financial difficulties and knocked off 500,000 won (about $500) for the one day that Lee spent in police confinement.
But Jung warned Lee that since he started the fight, the remaining fine was just.
Lee told Stars and Stripes that while he feels “partly responsible” for the fight, the fine isn’t fair.
Seeing Acosta in his dress uniform — Lee was in the courthouse audience as he waited for his separate appearance — was difficult, Lee added.
“Yes, when seeing the soldier, I feel furious,” he said. [Stars & Stripes]
I am not sure what Lee feels so furious about when Acosta is the one that was beaten down with a metal pipe and forced to pay $9,000 in restitution which is enough money for Lee to pay off his own fine.
Conclusion
The biggest lesson people should learn from this 2006 incident is that you do not necessarily have the right to self defense in Korea, especially as a foreigner. PFC Acosta was assaulted and beaten with a metal pipe and he was the one facing serious jail time and forced to pay $9,000 in restitution to the people that beat him. Getting into a physical altercation in Korea should be the absolute last resort and whatever you do never pull out a weapon because that just makes things worse. It is always better to just apologize and if that doesn’t work, run away from a possible altercation. Just make sure not to steal a taxi cab in the process of escaping.
Note:You can read more GI Flashbacks articles by clicking on the below link:
Here is the latest on the Itaewon Burger King murder trial:
Arthur Patterson
Prosecutors on Friday demanded 20 years in jail for a U.S. citizen charged with slaying a Korean man nearly two decades ago.
Arthur Patterson, who was 17 at the time, is accused of stabbing 22-year-old college student Cho Joong-pil multiple times to his death inside a bathroom at a Burger King in Itaewon, a neighborhood popular with foreigners here, in 1997.
During a hearing at the Seoul Central District Court, prosecutors demanded the maximum term for minors under the age of 18, saying the suspect should in fact be jailed for life.
In demanding the sentence, they cited the brutality of the crime, Patterson’s attitude during the trial, and their judgment based on reenactments of the scene at the time.
Patterson has insisted on his innocence, saying his then-friend Edward Lee committed the crime.
Lee was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998 but later acquitted by the Supreme Court due to lack of evidence. [Yonhap]
