BB shooter pleads guilty

A 15-year-old Green Township boy who used a BB gun to fire plastic BBs at children getting off an Oak Hills school bus pleaded guilty Thursday in Hamilton County Juvenile Court to a misdemeanor charge of inducing panic.

A charge of criminal damaging was dropped because there was no damage to the bus and nobody was injured in the Feb. 24 incident in the area of Garmar Lane and Hearne Road.

Magistrate Tina Ernst will sentence the teen on March 17.

She ordered that the BB gun be destroyed.

Va. SUV driver killed in crash

SPRINGFIELD TWP. - A 35-year-old Wytheville, Va., man was killed Wednesday when his vehicle went off Hamilton Avenue, slid down an embankment and hit a tree.

Jeffrey Brandt Conrad was driving a sports utility vehicle south about 5:30 p.m. when it went off the road and crossed Pinney Lane.

Conrad was dead at the scene. The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

Three bound over in dismemberment

HAMILTON - Three men accused of dismembering and burning a man's body after one of them shot the man to death had their cases bound over to a Butler County grand jury after a preliminary hearing in Hamilton Municipal Court on Thursday.

Cardale A. Goens, 36, of Hamilton is charged with aggravated murder, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. Anthony C. Ruffin, 44, of East Price Hill and Gary Benson, 50, of Hamilton are both charged with tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse.

Goens was ordered held on a $1 million bond, while Ruffin and Benson were each ordered held on $250,000 bonds.

Authorities charge that Goens shot Jeffrey Glenn Watson to death, and mutilated and discarded the remains with the help of Ruffin and Benson. Watson's burned torso was found New Year's Eve near a Milford Township cornfield.

Local counties get witness funds

Hamilton, Butler and eight of Ohio's other most populated counties are getting a total of $135,000 in state money to protect witnesses who testify against potentially dangerous suspects.

Hamilton County will get $15,000 from Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro, his office announced Thursday.

The county will use its grant for a pilot witness protection program that county Prosecutor Mike Allen and Commissioner Phil Heimlich have been developing, Allen said. Details of the program are not final, he said.

"Obviously we would like it to be more money," Allen said, "but any little bit helps."

Butler County will get $10,000 when the attorney general starts giving out the grants April 1. Smaller counties can also apply for grants if they are prosecuting an extraordinary number of organized-crime or gang-related cases.