News briefs

Thursday, Jan. 6, 2000 | 11:38 a.m.

Moapa housing official charged

A Moapa Indian Housing Authority official was indicted Wednesday on federal theft charges in connection with the disappearance of $33,000.

According to her indictment, Hazel Ann Mike was making $25,000 a year as executive director of the Moapa Indian Housing Authority when she "knowingly embezzled, stole and converted to her own use" checks made out to the authority between May 1995 and March 1997.

The majority of the 75 checks were made out for about $429, according to the indictment.

The authority is an agency of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and provides housing, rental subsidies and home loans to Indians.

Mike was indicted on 75 counts of theft of government property.

Judge overruled in racketeering case

A judge erred when he gave a one-year sentence to a reputed mob boss and must resentence him, a federal appeals court has ruled.

U.S. District Judge John Corbett O'Meara sentenced Jack Tocco, 72, to a year and a day in prison after his 1998 conviction for taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included attempts to gain hidden interests in Nevada casinos. Federal prosecutors had sought a sentence of 15 1/2 to 19 1/2 years.

A panel for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati concluded Wednesday that the judge's sentence violated the law and directed O'Meara to promptly consider a motion by the U.S. attorney to revoke Tocco's bond.

Tocco and three others were found guilty of taking part in a 30-year racketeering conspiracy that included loan-sharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice and attempts to gain hidden interests in Nevada casinos.

Tocco completed his original sentence shortly before Thanksgiving and is on supervised release.

Nine miners died in Nevada accidents

Nine miners died in Nevada in 1999, making the state the leader in non-coal mine deaths, according to the Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration.

In all, 87 miners died in on-the-job accidents last year nationwide, 53 in hard rock and metal mines; 34 in coal mines.

"The loss of any miner is unacceptable," Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman said. "We must continue to do everything we can to make this industry safer."

The nation averaged 103 mining deaths annually between 1990 and 1994 and 88 between 1995 and 1999. Nevada is the nation's leading producer of gold.

One of the workers, Roberts Dotts, 59, was killed in Clark County near Logandale while working for Royal Cement Co., according to a Department of Labor report. Dotts died after coming in contact with a 4,160-volt transformer, the report said.

Sex-slave killer's penalty delayed

Convicted sex-slave killer Gerald Gallego, facing execution the week of Jan. 17, got an expected stay Wednesday.

District Judge John McGroarty of Las Vegas had imposed the death sentence in Lovelock in mid-November. His stay was automatic because all death penalties are automatically appealed in Nevada.

Gallego was sentenced to die for two 1980 murders that authorities believe were part of killing spree of as many as 10 people. It marked the second time he has been ordered to be executed.

The resentencing was necessary after the Nevada attorney general's office missed a deadline in response to an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court over jury instructions in the original sentencing.