As with its prior criminal conviction, no one from PG&E will go to prison for the company’s felony crimes. Instead, its plea agreement with the Butte County district attorney’s office calls for PG&E to pay a $4 million fine, the maximum allowed. It will also help pay for efforts to restore access to water for residents affected by the loss of a canal destroyed by what became known as the Camp Fire.
Butte County officials have pegged the 2018 wildfire’s death toll at 85, but Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said he hopes the plea agreement will bring “a bit of a sense of justice done” and disclosed Monday that further evidence cast doubt about whether one of the deaths was directly caused by the blaze.
PG&E is scheduled to enter its plea and face sentencing at a court hearing scheduled for April 24.
The Nov. 8, 2018, fire was fanned by strong winds, forcing thousands of people to quickly flee in their cars as flames ripped through the narrow canyon communities. Survivors described caravans of vehicles engulfed by the fire.
A series of 2017 blazes tore through Northern California and killed 44 people. Although state investigators didn’t find PG&E culpable for those fires, the company is accepting responsibility for them in its bankruptcy case as part of a $13.5 billion settlement that will pay the victims of the 2017 and 2018 fires.
Less than three months after the Butte County fires, PG&E filed for bankruptcy in early 2019 to help shield the utility from more than $50 billion in claimed losses stemming from a badly outdated electrical grid. PG&E has settled those claims for $25.5 billion.
— Associated Press
OKLAHOMA
Man sentenced in plot to bomb bank
An Oklahoma man was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison after being convicted of trying to blow up an Oklahoma City bank with a massive vehicle bomb, according to federal prosecutors.
Jerry Drake Varnell, 26, of Sayre, was sentenced in federal court in Oklahoma City. When he is released from prison, he’ll be under supervision for the rest of his life.
Varnell was arrested in August 2017 as he tried to detonate what he believed was a half-ton bomb outside BancFirst in downtown Oklahoma City. The FBI had learned of Varnell’s plan and an undercover agent posed as someone who could help construct the bomb but instead provided inert materials.
Varnell was convicted in February 2019.
— Associated Press
MISSOURI
Judge approves plea
to extradite man
A federal judge has approved a request to extradite a St. Louis County man to Bosnia to face a war crime charge.
The government of Bosnia says that Adem Kostjerevac raped a pregnant Serbian prisoner in 1992. He was indicted there in 2015, court documents here say, and a prosecutor sought an order to arrest him in April 2017.
Kostjerevac’s attorney, Kayla Williams, pointed out in an email Monday that, “this decision is only a probable cause finding and not a finding of guilt.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Cohen’s order, filed Friday, won’t result in Kostjerevac’s immediate extradition. It says that federal prosecutors provided “sufficient competent evidence to grant the certificate of Kostjerevac’s extraditability” and that the final decision is up to the secretary of state. Williams said neither side can appeal the decision.
The extradition request says Kostjerevac was a military police officer with the 1st Muslim Brigade of the army of Bosnia at the time. The woman was arrested Sept. 17, 1992, after Muslim forces surrounded her village and was held for two weeks in the basement of a mill in another small village.
The woman told investigators that she was pregnant and that the multiple assaults caused her to miscarry. She was later raped multiple times by a guard in a different location, court documents say.
Court documents show Kostjerevac came to the United States about 17 years ago with his wife. He now has five adult children.
— Associated Press
