A mother who abandoned her young son on a dark, narrow highway on a rainy February night pleaded guilty in court Monday.

Heather Adkins was emotional at times during the hearing. A kidnapping charge was dropped, but she admitted her responsibility in a child endangering charge.

“How do you plead as to that one charge,” the judge asked.

“Guilty,” Adkins answered.

Adkins dropped her 5-year-old, non-verbal son off on a dark, narrow road in Colerain Township on Feb. 17.

The boy was seen wandering through neighborhoods in a steady rain, trying to get help.

Strangers eventually found the boy walking near the intersection of Sheeds and Gains roads.

Despite all of that, Adkins mother stands by her.

Sharon Eads believes her daughter should not only be let out of jail but that she should get her children back.

“I believe she should have her children back because her children are her whole life. She loves her children very much,” Eads said.

Adkins defense said during the hearing that someone else, who has not been charged, was also in the vehicle. Adkins and her mother put blame on that person.

“I didn’t willingly, intentionally do anything, but I take accountability because allowing a certain person into my life led to this,” Adkins said. “It would not have happened had I not let that person around my child.”

Adkins faces 36 months in jail.

The sentencing was delayed until Sept. 28. The judge wants to review Adkins’ latest mental evaluation.

A 27-year-old man charged for fatally hitting "Gone Girl" actress Lisa Banes last year with an electric moped and then leaving the scene pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday, prosecutors say.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Brian Boyd pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and leaving the scene of an incident without reporting.

Prosecutors said he is expected to be sentenced on November 30, as he faces one to three years in prison.

“Brian Boyd drove recklessly with no regard for pedestrians, fatally striking a beloved actress and New Yorker before speeding off to avoid accountability,” said Bragg in a news release. “Lisa Banes will be remembered for her contributions to the rich fabric of New York City through her roles on screen and on Broadway. I offer her friends, family, and the many who loved her during her decades-long career my deepest condolences.”

On June 4, 2021, Banes was crossing a street in New York City when Boyd drove through a red light at the intersection and hit her with a moped he was operating.

Prosecutors said Boyd did not have a driver’s license and was riding an unregistered electric moped without a license plate.

Banes was hospitalized but succumbed to her injuries on July 14, 2021. She was 65.

Prosecutors said Boyd, who fled the scene, was later arrested on August 5, 2021.

According to the Associated Press, Banes' career included appearances in the 1988 movie “Cocktail" and on TV shows, including “Nashville,” “Madam Secretary,” “Masters of Sex,” and “NCIS.”

“That '70s Show” star Danny Masterson was led out in handcuffs from a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday and could get 30 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty on two of three counts of rape at his second trial, in which the Church of Scientology played a central role.

Masterson's wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, gasped when the verdict was read and wept as he was taken into custody, while a group of family and friends who sat stone-faced behind him throughout both trials.

The jury of seven women and five men reached the verdict after deliberating for seven days spread over two weeks. They could not reach a verdict on the third count, that alleged Masterson raped a longtime girlfriend. They had voted 8-4 in favor of conviction.

Masterson, 47, will be held without bail until he is sentenced. No sentencing date was set.

“I am experiencing a complex array of emotions — relief, exhaustion, strength, sadness — knowing that my abuser, Danny Masterson, will face accountability for his criminal behavior,” one of the women, whom Masterson knew as a fellow member of the church and was convicted of raping at his home in 2003, said in a statement.

A second woman, a former girlfriend, whose count left the jury deadlocked, said in the statement: “While I’m encouraged that Danny Masterson will face some criminal punishment, I am devastated that he has dodged criminal accountability for his heinous conduct against me.”

A spokesperson for Masterson declined comment, but his attorneys will almost certainly appeal.

After a deadlocked jury led to a mistrial in December, prosecutors retried Masterson, saying he forcibly raped three women in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. They told jurors he drugged the women’s drinks so he could rape them. They said he used his prominence in the church — where all three women were also members at the time — to avoid consequences for decades.

“We want to express our gratitude to the three women who came forward and bravely shared their experiences," Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement after the verdict Wednesday.

Masterson did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses. The defense argued that the acts were consensual, and attempted to discredit the women’s stories by highlighting changes and inconsistencies over time, which they said showed signs of coordination between them.

“If you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something in this case,” defense attorney Philip Cohen told jurors, going through their instructions in his closing argument, “You should consider not believing anything that witness says.”

The Church of Scientology played a significant role in the first trial but arguably an even larger one in the second. Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo allowed expert testimony on church policy from a former official in Scientology leadership who has become a prominent opponent.

The church said in a statement after the verdict that the “introduction of religion into this trial was an unprecedented violation of the First Amendment and affects the due process rights of every American. The Church was not a party to this case and religion did not belong in this proceeding as Supreme Court precedent has maintained for centuries.”

Tensions ran high in the courtroom between current and former Scientologists, and even leaked into testimony, with the accusers saying on the stand that they felt intimidated by some members in the room.

Actor Leah Remini, a former member who has become the church’s highest-profile critic, sat in on the trial at times, putting her arm around one of the accusers to comfort her during closing arguments.

Remini said on Twitter that the two guilty verdicts in the retrial are “a relief. The women who survived Danny Masterson’s predation are heroes. For years, they and their families have faced vicious attacks and harassment from Scientology and Danny’s well-funded legal team," she posted. "Nevertheless, they soldiered on, determined to seek justice.”

Video below: A-List celebrities associated with the Church of Scientology

The alleged harassment, which the church denies engaging in, is the subject of a civil lawsuit filed by two of the accusers.

The Scientology statement said “there is not a scintilla of evidence supporting the scandalous allegations that the Church harassed the accusers.”

Founded in 1953 by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology has many members who work in Hollywood. The judge kept limits on how much prosecutors could talk about the church, and primarily allowed it to explain why the women took so long to go to authorities.

The women testified that when they reported Masterson to church officials, they were told they were not raped, were put through ethics programs themselves, and were warned against going to law enforcement to report a member of such high standing.

“They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against,” Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller told jurors in his closing argument. “Scientology told them there’s no justice for them. You have the opportunity to show them there is justice.”

The church called the “testimony and descriptions of Scientology beliefs” during the trial “uniformly false.”

“The Church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone — Scientologists or not — to law enforcement,” the statement said.

Next week Olmedo will hold a hearing to determine how a lawyer who represents the Church of Scientology had evidence that the prosecution had shared with the defense. The evidence involved links that the lawyer accidentally included in an email to Mueller.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they’ve been sexually abused.

Testimony in this case was graphic and emotional.

The two women whose testimony led to Masterson's conviction said that in 2003, he gave them drinks and that they then became woozy or passed out before he violently raped them.

The third, Masterson’s then-girlfriend of five years whose count left the jury deadlocked, said she awoke to find him raping her, and had to pull his hair to stop him.

Olmedo allowed prosecutors and accusers to say directly in the second trial that Masterson drugged the women, while only allowing the women to describe their condition in the first trial.

Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there was no toxicology evidence to back up the assertion.

The charges dated to a period when Masterson was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s “That ’70s Show” — the show that made stars of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace.

Masterson had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.

NEW YORK, N.Y. — R. Kelly has been convicted on all counts in a sex trafficking trial held in Brooklyn.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York announced the verdict on Twitter.

A federal jury found the disgraced singer guilty on one count of racketeering and eight counts of violating of an anti-sex trafficking law called the Mann Act. He now faces the possibility of decades in prison after he's sentenced on May 4, 2022, The New York Times and NBC News report.

The 54-year-old singer of the hit “I Believe I Can Fly” was charged in July of 2019 with racketeering predicated on criminal conduct including sexual exploitation of children, kidnapping, forced labor and Mann Act violations involving the coercion and transportation of women and girls in interstate commerce to engage in illegal sexual activity.

Kelly was also charged with four counts of violating the Mann Act related to his interstate transportation of a victim to New York to engage in illegal sexual activity, and his exposure of her to an infectious venereal disease without her knowledge.

Court documents allege Kelly and individuals who served as his managers, bodyguards, drivers, personal assistants, runners, and his entourage comprised a racketeering enterprise that operated for over two decades in New York, Illinois, Connecticut, California, and elsewhere.

Kelly allegedly used his fame to recruit women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity with him and others.

Kelly is accused of identifying girls and women before directing members of the “enterprise” to escort them backstage or to events following his musical performances, according to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office.

“Kelly also exchanged contact information with girls and women so that he and other members of the enterprise could arrange travel and lodging for them to visit Kelly and engage in the charged illegal sexual conduct,” the office wrote in a press release in 2019.

Kelly allegedly issued rules that many of his sexual partners were required to follow, including that the women and girls were to call him “Daddy.” They were reportedly not allowed to leave their rooms to eat or visit the bathroom without receiving his permission. Officials say the women and girls were also required to wear baggy clothing when not accompanying Kelly to an event, and they were directed to keep their heads down and not look at other men.

“Kelly also isolated the women and girls from their friends and family, and made them dependent on him for their financial well-being,” wrote the office.

A New Jersey gym owner and a Washington state man on Friday became the first people charged in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to plead guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer during the insurrection.

The pair of plea deals with federal prosecutors could be a benchmark for dozens of other cases in which Capitol rioters are charged with attacking police as part of an effort to halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. 

Both defendants face more than three years in prison if a judge adheres to estimated sentencing guidelines spelled out in the plea agreements.

The pleas come less than two weeks after a group of police officers testified at a congressional hearing about their harrowing confrontations with the mob of insurrectionists. Five officers who were at the Capitol that day have died, four of them by suicide.

SEE MORE: 2 More Officers Who Responded To Jan. 6 Capitol Attack Dead By Suicide

The Justice Department has said rioters assaulted approximately 140 police officers on January 6.

About 80 of them were U.S. Capitol Police officers and about 60 were from the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department.

More than 560 people have been charged with federal crimes, and authorities are still searching for hundreds more. 

At least 165 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or Capitol employees, including more than 50 people charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer, the Justice Department said in July.U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth set a sentencing date of Sept. 27 for both men.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

This story was originally reported by Jay Strubberg on Newsy.com

A New Jersey gym owner and a Washington state man on Friday became the first people charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to plead guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer during the deadly siege.

The pair of plea deals with federal prosecutors could be a benchmark for dozens of other cases in which Capitol rioters are charged with attacking police as part of an effort to halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. Both defendants face more than three years in prison if a judge adheres to estimated sentencing guidelines spelled out in the plea agreements.

The estimated sentencing guidelines for Scott Kevin Fairlamb range from about 3 1/2 to 4 1/4 years in prison. But the judge isn't bound by that recommendation when he sentences Fairlamb, a 44-year-old former mixed martial arts fighter who owned Fairlamb Fit gym in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Fairlamb's lawyer and prosecutors can seek a sentence above or below those guidelines.

The sentencing guidelines in Devlyn Thompson's plea deal recommend a slightly higher sentence than Fairlamb, ranging from less than four years to 4 3/4 years in prison. After Fairlamb's hearing, Thompson, 28, of Puyallup, Washington, pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon, a baton.

The same judge who accepted Fairlamb's guilty plea ordered Thompson to be jailed in Seattle. Thompson had been free since his participation in the Capitol riot.

The pleas come less than two weeks after a group of police officers testified at a congressional hearing about their harrowing confrontations with the mob of insurrectionists. Five officers who were at the Capitol that day have died, four of them by suicide. The Justice Department has said that rioters assaulted approximately 140 police officers on Jan. 6. About 80 of them were U.S. Capitol Police officers and about 60 were from the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department.

Fairlamb, whose brother is a U.S. Secret Service agent, was one of the first people to breach the Capitol after other rioters smashed windows using riot shields and kicked out a locked door, according to federal prosecutors. After leaving the building, Fairlamb harassed a line of police officers, shouting in their faces and blocking their progress through the mob, prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

A video showed him holding a collapsible baton and shouting, “What (do) patriots do? We f——— disarm them and then we storm the f——— Capitol!”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tejpal Chawla said Thompson was on the front lines of the most violent clashes that day, in a tunnel at the Capitol.

“This is one of the largest domestic terrorism events in U.S. history, where a group of individuals attacked the citadel of our constitutional democracy in an effort to overthrow the valid election results of the president of the United States,” Chawla said.

Thomas Durkin, one of Thompson's attorneys, said Jan. 6 was a “horrible, horrible event” but disputed the prosecutor's characterization of the attack.

“I think it's dangerous to start throwing around ‘domestic terrorism’ in circumstances like this,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth set a sentencing date of Sept. 27 for both Thompson and Fairlamb, who has been jailed since his Jan. 22 arrest at his home in Stockholm, New Jersey.

Thompson wasn’t arrested after he was charged last month with one count of assaulting a Metropolitan Police officer. His attorneys said in a court filing that he has autism spectrum disorder.

Fairlamb's lawyer, Harley Breite, said he will ask the judge for a sentence below the government's recommended guidelines.

Fairlamb’s involvement in the riot has “eviscerated large parts of his life,” his attorney said.

“He has lost his business. The mortgage on his home where he lives with his wife is in peril. And he has been publicly disgraced,” Breite said during an interview after Friday’s remote hearing.

Breite said his client wanted to “pay the price for what he had done and then move on with his life.”

“It wasn’t so much about the deal. It was about his desire to own up to what he had done, make himself a better person for the future and move on,” the lawyer added.

Fairlamb pleaded guilty to two counts, obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting a Metropolitan Police Department officer. The counts carry a maximum of more than 20 years in prison.

Another video captured Fairlamb shoving and punching a police officer in the head after he left the Capitol, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

“As a former MMA fighter, the defendant was well aware of the injury he could have inflicted on (the officer),” prosecutors wrote. “His actions and words on that day all indicate a specific intent to obstruct a congressional proceeding through fear, intimidation, and violence, including violence against uniformed police officers.”

Fairlamb’s brother was one of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect former first lady Michelle Obama, Breite said.

Fairlamb’s social media accounts indicated that he subscribed to the QAnon conspiracy theory and promoted a bogus claim that former President Donald Trump would become the first president of “the new Republic” on March 4, prosecutors wrote. QAnon has centered on the baseless belief that Trump was fighting against a cabal of Satan-worshipping, child sex trafficking cannibals, including “deep state” enemies, prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.

The rioters believed Trump's lies that he was robbed of a second term because of massive voter fraud nationwide. In fact, claims of massive fraud have been refuted by numerous judges, state election officials and even Trump’s own administration.

On July 27, a House panel investigating the deadly riot heard emotional testimony from four police officers who tried to defend the Capitol when the mob of Trump supporters stormed the building.

At least nine people who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 died during or after the rioting, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who collapsed after he was sprayed by rioters with a chemical irritant. Four other police officers have died by suicide, including two Metropolitan Police officers who were found dead within the past month.

Police shot and killed a woman, Ashli Babbitt, who was part of a group of people trying to beat down the doors of the House chamber. Three other Trump supporters who died had suffered medical emergencies.

More than 560 people have been charged with federal crimes, and authorities are still searching for hundreds more. At least 165 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or Capitol employees, including more than 50 people charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer, the Justice Department said in July.

Fairlamb and Thompson are at least the 32nd and 33rd defendants to plead guilty. Most of the others have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, including parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

SPRINGDALE, Ohio —

Springdale police officers once again proved how strong their brotherhood and sisterhood is as they boarded a bus outside the police department Friday morning.

"You can just feel it around the PD every single day. There is a greater sense of unity," said Springdale police Chief Thomas Wells.

Their destination Friday was the Hamilton County Courthouse.

Although the sun shined down as they stepped off the bus and walked inside, their mood was dark.

They filled a courtroom seeking justice for two of their own -- Officer Kaia Grant and Sgt. Andy Davis.

"There are other agencies covering for us so that we could all be here together for this," Wells said. "That's that bond in public safety, that we take care of each other, and that's what they're doing for us today."

Terry Blankenship, 43, the man who killed Grant by intentionally swerving his truck into her last year pleaded guilty to aggravated murder. Blankenship also injured Davis.

Now retired, Davis sat among his peers as Grant's mother, Gina Mobley, found the courage to speak about her daughter.

"She grew to become a kind, loving, smart, honorable, gracious human being. She loved her family. She loved her dog Athen, and she loved the life of a public servant," Mobley said. "The defendant's malicious, evil actions ended my daughter's life. He stole her future and her dreams."

Blankenship was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.

"This is as close, in my opinion, to getting the death penalty as possible. Thirty years is a long time given Mr. Blankenship's age, and in all likelihood, it probably will be a death sentence," Wells said.

After the hearing, Grant's family released the following statement:

"No parent should ever have to outlive their child. Kaia's father will never walk his daughter down the aisle. Kaia's mother will never experience having a baby shower for her daughter. The fabric of the family's soul has been shredded by the senseless act by someone who can only be described as evil. We ask for prayers to help the family through the grieving process and to let go of anger of having our beautiful daughter, sister, niece, and granddaughter taken away from us far too soon.

"Well educated and bilingual, Kaia Grant could have been anything she wanted to be. She chose a life of service to people. She exemplified best in what every police chief wants in an officer. Professionalism, disciplined, well spoken, and empathetic. The family is honored and humbled by the many stories of Kaia's service and the tremendous impact she had on the Springdale Police Department and the greater community at the age of thirty-three (33).

"The family received such a tremendous outpouring of support from friends, law enforcement and the community we can not name all of them. However, we do want to recognize and acknowledge the following:

Seth Hagaman, Senior Special Agent of the Ohio Attorney General's Office

Kim Schneidt, Advocate for the Hamilton County Victims/Witness Program

David Yost, State Attorney General

Joseph T. Deters, Prosecuting Attorney for Hamilton County and

Chief Thomas Wells and the Springdale Police Department

"Kaia was totally committed to being a police officer. Kaia was also totally committed to keeping her professional life and her private life separate. To that end, the family asks that you respect their need for privacy as we continue to mourn the loss of Kaia Grant."