WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Bethel man was arraigned Friday on charges he sexually abused a child he knew over the course of two years, according to Windsor County prosecutors.
Scott Benoit, 44, pleaded not guilty to six sex crime charges including sexual assault and lewd and lascivious conduct in Windsor Superior Court on Friday afternoon.
Prosecutors asked that he be held without bail, but Windsor Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Mann ordered him released on conditions, including no contact with the child or other children under the age of 16, according to prosecutors.
The charges stem from a series of incidents starting in 2016, when Benoit allegedly began abusing a child he knew who was younger than 16 years old, according to an affidavit written by Vermont State Police Detective Trooper Christopher Blais.
The abuse continued into 2018; last month, the boy told his father about the incidents, Blais wrote.
During the investigation, police also spoke with a juvenile who knew Benoit, the affidavit said. She told police Benoit had once made her watch a sexually explicit video, according to the affidavit.
Detectives questioned Benoit, who denied wrongdoing, the affidavit said.
Initially, Benoit was charged with nine counts, but it was reduced to three ahead of his arraignment.
CONCORD — A White River Junction man pleaded guilty last week to unlawfully possessing a firearm as a felon and possession of fentanyl, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office
Hallet Merrick, 34, was initially charged in November 2019 after Lebanon police arrested him for failing to appear at Grafton Superior Court.
When police searched Merrick they found 6 grams of fentanyl and a handgun in his pocket, according to the news release.
Merrick faces a three-year sentence for the charges, according to a copy of the plea agreement.
Merrick has a 2017 conviction out of Massachusetts for breaking and entering, for which he served nearly seven months in jail, according to the affidavit.
His sentencing on the gun and drug charges is scheduled for Dec. 10 in U.S. District Court in Concord.
WOODSVILLE — A man fired a single gunshot at his neighbors when they came to talk to him about a neighbor dispute Sunday, according to a news release from the Haverhill Police Department.
No one was injured, but Caleb Holden, 34, was charged with felony counts of reckless conduct with a deadly weapon, criminal threatening with a deadly weapon and falsifying evidence following the incident.
Police were called to Holden’s apartment at 2 Perkins Place in Woodsville around 6 p.m. for a report of a “large brawl” according to the release. Witnesses told officers that Holden had been “harassing” two women at the scene so neighbors knocked on his door to confront him, according to a police affidavit written by Haverhill police Officer Jared Mitchell.
When Holden came to the door, he fired one gunshot through the screen, nearly missing one of the neighbors, witnesses told police, according to the affidavit.
Witnesses were able to get the gun from Holden and restrain the 34-year-old while they waited for police to arrive. Officers brought Holden to Cottage Hospital and asked to test his hands for gunshot residue, which Holden refused. At the hospital, Holden was seen “frantically” washing his hands, leading police to issue an additional falsifying evidence charge. Holden was scheduled to appear for an arraignment Monday afternoon, but information about the outcome of the arraignment was not available Tuesday.
BURLINGTON — A Canadian man is facing charges stemming from an attempt to smuggle 226 pounds of marijuana into the United States from Canada, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
The court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington said two Border Patrol agents were watching a spot in the woods in the town of North Troy along the Vermont border with Quebec at about 7:45 p.m. Monday when they first heard, and then saw, three men carrying large backpacks. When the men were about 40 feet from the agents, the suspects dropped the backpacks and ran back toward Canada.
The Border Patrol agents pursued the subjects. After identifying themselves as agents, one agent fire a stun gun that incapacitated a suspect later identified as Scott Allen Cameron, Border Patrol said.
There was also a marijuana smuggling incident in the same area on June 22, according to court papers.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown University is the latest Rhode Island institution to drop the word “plantations” from its official name.
The Ivy League school’s governing board, the Brown University Corp., voted Aug. 19 to shorten its seldom-used official name from Brown University in Providence in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations to simply Brown University. The shortened name became official Monday, the university said in a statement Tuesday. The name change was one of a number of racial justice initiatives announced by the school.
The longer name, which included the full state name, had been in place since 1804.
“The word ‘plantation’ did not carry connotations of slavery in 1636, when the colony of Providence Plantations was established by Roger Williams,” the university said in a statement. “Over time, however, the word has come to conjure painful reminders of one of the ugliest times in our nation’s history.”