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LAGRANGE â An Elkhart man sentenced to prison for his role in the armed robbery of a Howe homeowner nearly five years ago was denied a plea to have his sentence modified.
Joseph Phillips is one of the four people convicted of the June 2016 home invasion and armed robbery of former LaGrange resident and former LaGrange County Commissioner Phil Curtis.
Phillips was with Alan Anyul, Milton Garcia, and Shandale Rogers, all of Elkhart, as they broke into Curtisâs home early in the morning, roused him from the couch where he was sleeping. They threatened Curtis with a handgun, demanding he open a safe they found in the home. The armed robbers didnât realize Curtisâs wife was sleeping upstairs and she managed to call the police. All four men were arrested and charged in connection with the robbery. Anyul and Rogers are all serving 20-year prison sentences. Garcia, said by police to be the ringleader, was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
LAGRANGE â Saying it would be tough to enforce a county building mask mandate once the state backs away from a state-wide mask mandate, the LaGrange County Commissioners voted Monday to ease rules their regulations and no longer require those entering county buildings to wear a mask. Instead, the mandate is now merely a recommendation.
The move comes as coronavirus pandemic policies across the state are being eased. LaGrange County remains a blue county, meaning it has one of the lowest metrics for community spread of the coronavirus as calculated by the Indiana Department of Health. LaGrange is one of 53 blue counties in the state, down from more than 60 last week.
With COVID-19 keeping a lot of people home in 2020, there were fewer people out committing crimes in northeast Indiana.
Although, not so much in Steuben County, where they had an approximately 30% increase in the number of criminal charges filed compared to previous years.
Overall criminal filings in 2020 were down compared to 2019, with DeKalb, LaGrange and Noble county prosecutors all filling fewer charges last year than in previous years.
Steuben County, however, went the opposite direction, seeing an increase in filings. As the least populous county in the area, Steuben usually has the lowest amount of filings of the four counties, but this past year it saw an unusual increase.