Category: Community News

Defense attorney Robin Puchek recently told a local judge that autopsy results are needed before there can be meaningful plea negotiations in a criminal case involving a Mohave Valley shooting death. Puchek represents James Manker, who told authorities that the death of his girlfriend, Tina Marie Stimmell, was a mercy killing. Few details in the case have surfaced through court proceedings or from law enforcement. Most information comes from a probable cause statement featuring Manker’s purported admissions. That statement indicated that Manker, 29, first told dispatch that he killed Stimmell, 56, when he called the sheriff’s office at 9:45 a.m….

Investigation has determined that a jail inmate used a body cavity to smuggle dangerous drugs into the Mohave County Adult Detention Center in Kingman. That’s the primary update from the Mohave County Sheriff’s office regarding the April 16 hospitalization of five jail inmates for treatment of overdoses within the jail. Detectives learned that inmate Jonathan Hutchinson, 24, of Parker, had smuggled contraband into the Detention Facility in his body cavity,” a news release stated. “The investigation revealed that Hutchinson had smuggled into the Detention Facility approximately 30 counterfeit hydrocodone 30 mg pills and an unknown amount of methamphetamine.” Sheriff’s office…

A distraught Bullhead City woman begged for reconsideration when it became clear that a judge was rejecting probation and  sending her to prison during a May 3 sentencing hearing in Kingman. Debra Couch, 53, told Mohave County Superior Court Judge Derek Carlisle she entered a plea agreement resolving two drug cases hoping to avoid prison. “I would have won at trial,” Couch said. “Ms. Couch. You didn’t take it to trial. You pled guilty,” Judge Carlisle responded. Carlisle told Couch that her guilty plea to attempted possession of dangerous drugs for sale discounted her claim that she was merely present in…