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An appeal by an Altoona man in prison for drug offenses has been dismissed by the Pennsylvania Superior Court due to a procedural error.
Derrick Dewight Dawson, 35, was charged in September 2011 with making three cocaine sales to a police confidential informant.
The sales occurred on different dates, and each charge was docketed under a different number in the Blair County Prothonotary’s Office.
Dawson eventually was convicted of possession with intent to deliver and related offenses for each sale.
He was sentenced to 33 to 66 years in prison and is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon.
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A Williamsburg-area teenager who for no apparent reason allegedly stabbed a hospice nurse visiting his home last April will be tried for attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault in adult criminal court, according to a decision late last week by Blair County President Judge Elizabeth A. Doyle.
On Jan. 5, the judge presided over a hearing in which a clinical psychologist from Allentown and a forensic psychiatrist from Philadelphia presented opposing views as to whether 16-year-old Michael Douglas Watson of Stone Row Drive could be rehabilitated by the time he becomes 21, the age at which he would no longer be under the supervision of the
Phil Ray
HOLLIDAYSBURG Whether an Altoona teenager will be tried in the fatal shooting of a classmate in the adult or the juvenile court now rests with Blair County President Judge Elizabeth A. Doyle.
Doyle completed a second day of hearings on where Damien Green, 16, will face charges of second-degree murder and robbery in connection with the Feb. 25 fatal shooting of 15-year-old Devon Pfirsching, a 10th grader at Altoona Area High School.
On Dec. 28, Doyle heard from a forensic psychologist, Alice A. Applegate of Pittsburgh, who concluded Green was not a principal participant in the robbery and murder of Pfirsching.
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HOLLIDAYSBURG A registered nurse for UPMC’s Family Hospice and Palliative Care agency held a courtroom spellbound Tuesday as she related how she survived a brutal knife attack upon visiting the home of one of her patients.
For seemingly no reason, the patient’s 15-year-old grandson, identified as Michael Douglas Watson of Stone Row Drive near Williamsburg, while escorting her out of his grandfather’s home, struck her on the back as she was about to enter her car.
She turned and looked at him and saw a knife.
He struck her in the abdomen with the knife also described as a sword during the lengthy hearing before Blair County President Judge Elizabeth Doyle.