Couple accused of faking carjacking

FAIRFIELD TWP. - A Middletown couple faces charges involving a car that was set on fire and a story about a carjacking.

Katia White, whose age was unavailable, is charged with insurance fraud. Don Thomas, whose age also was not available, is charged with arson.

The incident occurred about two weeks ago, Fairfield Township police said Tuesday.

Authorities allege that White no longer wanted to keep making payments on her car, so Thomas torched it in Fairfield Township. Meantime, White knocked on doors in West Chester, telling residents and then police that she had been carjacked.

Shooter convicted in boy's wounding

HAMILTON - A Butler County Common Pleas judge Tuesday found a Hamilton man guilty of firing a gun that injured a boy last year.

Rico R. Mace, 21, was found guilty on charges of felonious assault with a gun specification, having weapons while under disability and discharging a firearm on or near prohibited premises. He will be sentenced next month.

Mace fired several shots at a car on Front Street in Hamilton July 28, and one of the bullets struck an 11-year-old boy who as standing outside a friend's house, Butler County Assistant Prosecutor Craig Hedric said. The car contained a person Mace had scuffled with about an hour earlier.

The boy, who is now 12, recovered after spending several days at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

The person in the car, Rashodd Jordan, 23, previously pleaded guilty to the same charges, Hedric said. Jordan also had a gun and fired.

"The witnesses testified Mace was the first to fire," and it was a bullet from Mace's gun that hit the child, Hedric said.