Reviewing the WVU basketball recruiting class: 2020

A former supervisor of the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver, West Virginia was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Thursday for covering up an assault by correctional officers that led to the death of a 35-year-old inmate, Quantez Burks, three years ago.

A federal jury convicted former lieutenant Chad Lester in January of three counts of felony obstruction charges that included witness tampering, conspiracy to tamper with witnesses, and giving false statements. In his efforts to cover up the assault, Lester allegedly threatened subordinate officers with violence and retaliation, added false statements to multiple officers’ reports, and instructed officers to give a false cover story to investigators in addition to personally giving his own false statements.

Seven other officers involved in the fatal assault of Burks pleaded guilty and testified against Lester during his trial last year. Specifically, Mark Holdren, Corey Snyder and Johnathan Walters pleaded guilty to conspiring to use unreasonable force that ultimately led to Burks’s death while Ashley Toney and Jacob Boothe pleaded guilty to “violating Burks’s civil rights by failing to intervene when other officers used unreasonable force.” Steven Wimmer and Andrew Fleshman pleaded guilty to conspiring to use unreasonable force.

Aside from Lester, Wimmer is the only other corrections officer to be sentenced as of Thursday. Five of the remaining officers are scheduled to be sentenced next month while Fleshman’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for July.

Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of Virginia, Lisa Johnston, said after the sentencing:

On the defendant’s watch, correctional officers killed an inmate, and the defendant conspired with them to cover up their crimes…The defendant violated the public’s trust in the law enforcement system he had sworn to uphold

The case was investigated by the FBI field office in Pittsburgh.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Meteorologists across the state are warning citizens of a low-pressure system likely affecting many counties in West Virginia Friday evening.

The first part of the day will consist of mostly cloudy and sticky conditions in most areas before potentially devastating conditions roll through.

“It’s kind of a combination,” Charleston-based National Weather Service Meteorologist Megan Kiebler said on MetroNews Midday Thursday morning. “We’re focusing a lot on our winds because we can already see that forecast of the stronger, 60-mile-per-hour winds or more, but these storms are going to be very much capable of producing the large hail, continuing risk of tornadoes that form just outside of our area, and the heavy downpours as well.”

Kiebler says residents should prepare for the worst of the storm to blow through during the early evening hours.

“It’s really that evening timeframe that we’re seeing that main event where we could see winds greater than 50 to 60 miles per hour or more in the intensity of those storms,” Kiebler said.

Kiebler says the storms will almost certainly hit western counties hard, but for now, it doesn’t show signs of tailing off as it moves across the state.

“Typically, that’s going to be near the Tri-State area. They’re going to evolve first in the Mississippi Valley and then they have to travel hundreds of miles before they get to us, and it’s really going to be whether they can sustain themselves. It’s always going to be that western part of the state that will be in the brunt of it,” Kiebler said. “They typically start to weaken as the press across the state, but in this case, we’re kind of looking at an area-wide risk for these strong storms. They start to move in sometime after 5 p.m.”

Though Kiebler was able to give some warnings for the potentially dangerous storms, she reminds all residents that the back end of the day could be unpredictable.

“This is very evolving and that’s why there is still a lot of that uncertainty. That’s why we’re always saying to have multiple ways to receive warnings just in case something does form or is moving towards an area in our state,” Kiebler said.