Celebration featuring dozens of unique Christmas trees set for this weekend
Man in 2008 Palm Springs murder sentenced to life without parole
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Thursday, November 23-November 29, 2023
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NO. 148
Lawsuit filed against Virginia sheriff's office that hired homicidal deputy
Health insurers have been breaking state laws for years
By Paul J. Young, City News Service
By Maya Miller & Robin Fields, ProPublica
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hesurviving daughter of a Riverside couple who were killed, alongside their other daughter, by a mentally disturbed Virginia law enforcement officer out to abduct a girl from their home filed suit last week against the agency that hired the deceased lawman, alleging negligence and other factors. "Our law enforcement agencies and their process for screening new hires must be held to the highest standards," plaintiffs' attorney Alison Saros said. "These individuals are meant to protect us, but the Washington County Sheriff's Office failed to follow the proper processes." Saros, who represents Mychelle Blandin, 44, and her niece, identified in court documents only as "R.W.," filed the civil action on their behalf Nov. 16 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The suit, which seeks unspecified monetary
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
sionals. "They are indiscriminately bombing people's homes," Moamer Shurrab, a pharmaceutical company employee and member of the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley, told City News Service. "It's hard to imagine the scale of this massacre. It's especially horrific to see the scores of children who are killed. What did those little children do to
Series: Uncovered:How the Insurance Industry Denies Coverage to Patients ealth insurers reject millions of claims for treatment every year in America. Corporate insiders, recordings and internal emails expose the system and its harm. In North Carolina, lawmakers outraged that breast cancer patients were being denied reconstructive surgeries passed a measure forcing health insurers to pay for them. In Arizona, legislators intervened to protect patients with diabetes, requiring health plans to cover their supplies. Elected officials in more than a dozen states, from Oklahoma to California, wrote laws demanding that insurance companies pay for emergency services. Over the last four decades, states have enacted hundreds of laws dictating precisely what insurers must cover so that consumers aren’t driven into debt or forced to go without medicines or procedures. But health plans have violated these mandates at least dozens of times in the last five years, ProPublica found. In the most egregious cases, patients have been denied coverage for lifesaving care. On Wednesday, a ProPublica investigation traced how a Michigan company would not pay for an FDA-approved cancer medication for a patient, Forrest VanPatten, even though a state law requires insurers to cover cancer drugs. That expensive treatment offered VanPatten his only chance for survival. The father of two died at the age 50, still battling the insurer for access to the therapy. Regulators never intervened. These laws don’t apply to every type of health plan, but they are supposed to provide protections for tens of millions of people. AHIP, a trade group that used to be known as America’s Health Insurance Plans, said new mandates are costly for consumers and states, “tie insurers’ hands and limit plan innovation” by requiring specific benefits. Nevertheless, its members take steps to make sure they are following these mandates, the trade group said. State insurance departments are responsible for enforcing these laws, but many are ill-equipped to do so, researchers, consumer advocates and even some regulators say. These agencies oversee all types of insurance, including plans covering cars, homes and people’s health. Yet they employed less people last year than they did a decade ago. Their first priority is making sure plans remain solvent; protecting consumers from unlawful
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H Sharie Winek, left, Mark Winek and Brooke Winek. | Photos courtesy of the Riverside Police Department
damages for the plaintiffs' loss and suffering, was filed just about a year since the murders of Mark James Winek, 69, Sharie Anne Winek, 65, and their daughter — R.W.'s mother — Brooke Elizabeth Winek, 38. All were slain by 28-yearold Austin Lee Edwards of North Chesterfield, Virginia, on Nov. 25, 2022, according to court documents and the
Riverside Police Department. He took his own life hours later during a confrontation with San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department personnel. "Edwards never should have been hired by the Washington County Sheriff's Department," plaintiffs' co-counsel David Ring said.
"He was barred by the courts from owning or possessing a gun because of his mental illness and because he was a danger to the community." Edwards drove roughly 2,500 miles to rendezvous with Brooke Winek's 15-yearold daughter at her grandparents' home at 11261 Price Court. Police said Edwards
See Homicidal deputy Page 23
Inland Empire residents offer opposing views on Gaza, Israel
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VOL. 9,
he destruction in Gaza amid hostilities between Israel and Hamas shows how Palestinians are treated as "less than human" and the Jewish State engages in "unfathomable carelessness" to achieve its goals, two Inland Empire residents from Palestine said, while a Riverside rabbi equated condemnations of Israel with "antisemitism," and a member of a Corona synagogue viewed Hamas'
By Paul J. Young, City News Service actions as forcing Israel to react. The Israeli military's bombardment of Gaza has been continuous since the deadly Oct. 7 incursion in southern Israel by groups of armed militants identifying as Hamas "freedom fighters," which the Israeli government said resulted in more than 1,000 fatalities on kibbutzim and at a music festival. Figures published by multiple outlets report-
ing from the Middle East estimate more than 11,000 Gazans have been killed in the ensuing Israeli military missile and air strikes, including more than 4,600 children — numbers based on figures provided regularly by the Hamas-run health ministry. Israeli and U.S. officials have expressed doubts about the figures, but ministry officials insist they are based on fatalities verified by medical profes-