A Utah jury determined a 28-year-old man acted with “depraved indifference” when he drove 120 mph while high on methamphetamine and plowed through horse stables where he hit and killed two toddlers who were playing with toy trucks.

Kent Cody Barlow was convicted Friday of depraved indifference homicide in the deaths of 3-year-olds Odin Ratliff and Hunter Jackson. Barlow on May 2, 2022, was driving recklessly and ignoring his passengers’ repeated pleas for him to slow down as he was sped along Tiffany Lane in Eagle Mountain, which is about 30 miles northwest of Provo. He lost control and crashed into the Cedar Valley Stables, the Utah County Attorney’s Office said in a press release.

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Michael Starrs, deputy Utah County attorney, told jurors in his closing argument the boys were having a great time playing with each other, picking up chicken eggs and chasing cats, according to a courtroom report from local NBC affiliate KSL. But that fun turned into tragedy when Barlow floored the accelerator, traveling 120 mph in a 45 mph zone and headed toward the stables despite seeing all the activity there.

“The signs of life were there,” Starrs said. “The signs of life were ignored. The signs of life were obvious. They weren’t hidden, they weren’t concealed. We know that Kent Barlow would have seen all those cars.”

Prosecutors also pointed out he had previously been convicted of driving over 100 mph some three years before the fatal crash and ignored a judge’s warning that his speeding could prove deadly.

The scene inside a Colorado courtroom looked a grim picture of human action on Friday as a young and condemned man testified to his onetime best friend’s alleged glee in violence.

Joseph Edwin Koenig, 20, was a high school senior, but 18 years old, when he and two friends were charged with “extreme indifference” murder over the April 19, 2023, death of Alexa Bartell, 20.

On the day in question, the windshield of the victim’s Chevy Spark was struck and smashed by what authorities termed a “large landscaping rock.” The impact sent the young woman’s car careening “off the roadway” on a remote stretch of road in Jefferson County.

Bartell died a horrible death in the ensuing crash; prosecutors previously testified the victim’s brain was found in her backseat.

Michael Dietz was not shy about his alleged actions when Ohio cops asked him about the vandalism at the home of a woman with whom he was involved in a car crash over a year ago.

“I f—ing spray painted a—hole on her house,” Dietz told Westlake cops, according to body camera video viewed by Law&Crime.

“Why?” asked the cop.

“Because she’s an a—hole,” he retorted.

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While in the patrol car on the way to jail, Dietz went further.

“That b— is lucky I didn’t go over with a .357 and start shooting the place up,” he proclaimed.

Now Dietz, 64, is facing charges of vandalism and aggravated menacing.

Officers in Westlake, a suburb of Cleveland, responded to the victim’s home on Thursday morning after she saw the damage to her home and vehicle. Ring camera footage showed a man arrive shortly before 5 a.m. and try to pour sugar down a SUV parked in her driveway, a criminal complaint said. He proceed to spray paint the word “a—hole” several times, though it was misspelled, police said.

While tagging the home, Dietz apparently saw the camera and spray painted over it, a video showed. Not even the University of Alabama flag in the front yard was spared.

When asked who may want to vandalize the property, the woman and her husband suggested Dietz. She and the suspect had been involved in a car accident in August 2023.

A mother in Minnesota is heading to prison for murdering her 23-month-old son by slamming his head repeatedly into a bedroom wall and then lying to police about what happened, claiming he was run over by his father — who happened to have his car in the shop at the time.

“She took my baby’s life,” said Robert Ortez, father of Aaryan, who was killed by his mom Larena Jackson in August 2023. “I still don’t know, to this day, what really happened because she isn’t saying anything,” Ortez told Valley News Live. “I’m still trying to figure out why she did it. I don’t know why[.]”

A Michigan man who accidentally left his 3-year-old son to die inside of a hot car for several hours last summer may, in the end, avoid significant jail time altogether, a judge ruled this week.

In January, Chad Martin, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of leaving a child in a vehicle causing death.

On Thursday, the judge overseeing the case sentenced Martin to spend nine months in the Kalamazoo County Jail — with two favorable conditions. First, the sentence is delayed to start until February 2026. Second, the judge also scheduled a conference for December of this year that could lead to the sentence being jettisoned entirely.

Regardless of his time behind bars, however, the defendant was sentenced to three years of probation that began this week.

A mother in Michigan was arrested last week for the death of her 18-month-old daughter, who suffocated between the driver’s seat and front door of the woman’s pickup truck after being left with three other kids while her mom grabbed lunch for her husband, police say.

Angelica Linda Arechiga, 27, of Grand Rapids, is charged with “child abuse: leaving a child in a vehicle resulting in death” for the October 2024 incident, according to local NBC affiliate WOOD. It’s reportedly the first time that the charge has been handed down to anyone in Kent County. The station spoke to Arechiga after her arrest last week about what allegedly happened that day to her daughter, Juliet Magdelena.

“I just want people to know that this was an accident,” Arechiga said while crying, per WOOD. “Yes, I could have done things differently that day. But I’ve learned from my mistakes. If I could go back in time to change things, I would, but I can’t.”

A sheriff’s deputy who crashed on body camera lied by omission by initially hiding the fact that he was looking at porn at the time, says the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

“Gosh darn it,” he said on footage after the crash. “Yeah, that f—ing really sucked.”

The internal affairs report from the Office of Professional Standards determined that he lied, was looking at porn on his phone while driving the patrol vehicle, and also failed to wear his seat belt.

Law&Crime is not naming him because he has not been charged with a crime. The deputy resigned during the investigation, Cpl. Chanel Martin of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office told Law&Crime in an email.

The crash

His bodycam from the afternoon of Nov. 6, 2024, shows him with his phone out, though it is unclear what it has on. But what is clear is that the yellow air bag bursts out.

He indicated to at least one passerby he was OK. He walked over to another vehicle that apparently got caught up in the crash. Law&Crime is omitting this encounter because it shows the woman, but in it, the deputy is checking on her.

“Hello, ma’am,” the deputy tells the other driver in the video. “Are you OK? I’m so sorry.”

“It’s OK,” she said.

“My brakes locked up,” he said.

She said she was OK.

A 24-year-old woman in Michigan who drove away after a friend fell out of her moving car and died in the middle of the road will be going to jail. An Oakland County judge ordered Kentia M. Fearn to spend ninety days in jail for her role in the death of Mia Kanu, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

Fearn pleaded no contest in October to one count of leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death as well as one count of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated. In addition to her incarceration, Fearn was also sentenced to three years of probation.

The deadly incident took place shortly after Fearn and Kanu left a party in the early morning hours of June 3, 2023, in a car that Fearn was driving.

A 10-count indictment has been unsealed in a murder and insurance fraud case out of New Orleans, in which lawyers and residents are accused of orchestrating “staged collisions” around the Crescent City for money — with paid “spotters,” “slammers” and “runners” in on the take — and one of the alleged schemers being killed off for talking to cops, according to federal prosecutors.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office unsealed the indictment this week and listed charges for New Orleans residents Ryan “Red” Harris, 36; Sean Alfortish, 57; Vanessa Motta, 43; Jason Giles, 45; Leon “Chunky” Parker, 51; Diaminike Stalbert, 34; Carl Morgan, 66; and Timara Lawrence, 34; as well as the local law firms Motta Law, LLC, and The King Firm, LLC.

Giles and Motta are both attorneys based in the Big Easy, while Alfortish — Motta’s fiance — is disbarred.

Charges were first filed in the homicide and insurance fraud case back in May against Harris and his girlfriend, Jovanna Gardner, 39, of Chalmette, Louisiana for first-degree murder of a government cooperator after the alleged widespread fraud conspiracy was uncovered. Several others who were involved have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, including convicted “slammer” Damian Labeaud, who is scheduled to be sentenced in January, and his partner Roderick Hickam. Prosecutors initially declined to release the identities of the lawyers and firms that were allegedly involved.