Arizona Police Officer Gives Bike to Teen Who Walks Nine Miles to Work

ABC News(PHOENIX) -- For one man in Arizona, getting pulled over by a police officer might have been the best thing to ever happen to him.

Phoenix Police Sgt. Natalie Simonick, 46, was on patrol around 11 p.m., when she saw a young man walking alone in a dark and desolate area who she thought might be violating curfew.

“And I pulled over and I asked him what he was doing,” Simonick told ABC News. “He said, ‘Walking home, I missed the bus.’”

After the young man, Christian Felix, showed Simonick his ID proving he was 18 years old, the sergeant offered Felix a courtesy ride home. Then Simonick learned Felix had never ridden a bike before.

“He never had a father in his life, so he had no one to teach him,” Simonick said.

By the end of the ride home Simonick was shocked.  It turned out Felix would walk the 9 mile distance to his home from his job at McDonald’s if he missed his bus.

Simonick was impressed by the young man. “He doesn’t drink and doesn’t smoke,” she said. “He had never had any contact with police as far as negative contact.”

After that night, Simonick spoke to her husband, who said she could give Felix their extra bike.  The other members of her squad agreed to help teach Felix how to ride a bike.

“It’s really something when someone comes up on the street and offers to do a kindness for you,” Felix told ABC affiliate KNXV. “These days you don’t see anything like that.”

Last month, Felix had his first bike lesson at the Phoenix police precinct parking lot.

"Two of my officers stood on either side of him and pushed him," Simonick said. "He was a little wobbly and rode into one of the poles, but my guys were right there to catch him."

After 45 minutes, Felix was riding on his own, and he and Simonick rode together around the lot.

Since then, the two have kept in touch, and Simonick said she wants to continue to help Felix.  So what’s Simonick’s next project?

“Well he did say that he’s never driven a car before,” Simonick joked.  "First things first I’ll see how he does with the bicycle.”

As for the attention, Simonick said she just wanted to show Felix that there are people out there who care.

“If everybody could help just one person in the world like this, I think it would definitely be a better place to life.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Ariz. Couple Who Won Million-Dollar Lottery Twice Credits Persistence

ABC News(PHOENIX) -- An Arizona couple who beat overwhelming odds to win a million-dollar lottery jackpot twice in less than 20 years says it was not luck, but persistence and a healthy dose of superstition that led to their wins.

Diane and Kerry Carmichael have just bagged a million dollars in the Arizona state lottery. The Tempe, Ariz., couple won $2.5 million in 1995.

“The odds of winning twice are in the billions to one,” Diane told ABC News.

She says that shattering such odds had little to do with gambling, but more with self-belief.

“When we first won, it wasn’t, if we were going to win again, it was when,” Diane said.  “About two years or so ago, the feeling returned.”

They say they have dropped $200 on lottery tickets every week, adding up to $10,000 every year, since 1984.  So, now, they’ve spent about $200,000 on tickets.

“It’s persistence,” she said.

They also mix in a little superstition.  They always buy from the same lottery office in Phoenix, and they have their method.  Still, the odds of this double win are stratospherically high.

Diane says that despite the two huge windfalls, she and her husband still live relatively modest lifestyles.

“We’re just not big spenders,” she said.  “We don’t have a big-screen TV.  Our cars are nine years and 13 years old, respectively.”

After their first win, the couple asked for their money in $125,000-per-year installments, with the last payment due next year.  They said they’re still going to play every week.

“I still think there’s one out there,” she said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Jodi Arias Finishes Testimony Describing Killing

ABC News(PHOENIX) -- Jodi Arias stepped down from the witness stand Wednesday after mounting an emotional effort to save herself from death row, insisting to the Arizona jury that an explosive fight with ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander led to his death, and that her lies about killing him masked deep regret and plans to commit suicide.

Arias, 32, will now face what is expected to be a withering cross-examination beginning Thursday from prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has been aggressive to many witnesses throughout the trial and who is expected to go after Arias' claim that she was forced to kill Alexander or be killed herself.

She has been charged with her ex-boyfriend's murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Wednesday's dramatic testimony started with Arias describing the beginning of the fight on June 4, 2008 when she and Alexander were taking nude photos in his shower and, she claims, she accidentally dropped his new camera, causing Alexander to lose his temper. Enraged, he picked her up and body-slammed her onto the tile floor, screaming at her, she told the jury.

Arias said she ran to his closet to get away from him, but could hear Alexander's footsteps coming after her down the hall. She grabbed a gun from his shelf and tried to keep running, but Alexander came after her, she said.

"I pointed it at him with both of my hands. I thought that would stop him, but he just kept running. He got like a linebacker. He got low and grabbed my waist, and as he was lunging at me the gun went off. I didn't mean to shoot. I didn't even think I was holding the trigger," she said.

"But he lunged at me and we fell really hard toward the tile wall, so at this point I didn't even know if he had been shot. I didn't see anything different. We were struggling, wrestling, he's a wrestler."

"So he's grabbing at my clothes and I got up, and he's screaming angry, and after I broke away from him. He said, 'F***ing kill you b****,'" she testified.

Asked by her lawyer whether she was convinced Alexander intended to kill her, Arias answered, "For sure. He'd almost killed me once before and now he's saying he was going to." Arias had earlier testified that Alexander had once choked her.

But Arias' story of the death struggle ended there as she told the court that she has no memory of stabbing or slashing Alexander, whose body was later found with 27 stab wounds, a slit throat and two bullets in his head. She said she only remembered standing in the bathroom, dropping the knife on the tile floor, realizing the "horror" of what had happened, and screaming.

"I have no memory of stabbing him," she said. "There's a huge gap. I don't know if I blacked out or what, but there's a huge gap. The most clear memory I have after that point is driving in the desert."

Arias said that she decided in the desert not to admit to killing Alexander, a decision that would last for two years as Arias lied to friends, family, investigators and reporters about what really happened in Alexander's bathroom.

She eventually confessed to killing her ex-boyfriend, but insisted it was self-defense.

"The main reason [for lying] is because I was very ashamed of what happened. It's not something I ever imagined doing. It's not the kind of person I was. It was just shameful," she said. "I was also very scared of what might happen. I didn't want my family to know that I had done that, and I just couldn't bring myself to say that I did that."

"From day one there was a part of me that always wanted to (tell the truth) but didn't dare do that. I would rather have gone to my grave than admit I had done something like that," she said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Steven Seagal Calls Sheriff Joe’s Posse Critics ‘Embarrassment to Human Race’

Matthew Simmons/WireImage(NEW YORK) -- Hollywood action star Steven Seagal has a few choice words for critics of his latest role.

On Saturday, the actor and martial arts expert guided members of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s volunteer posse through a simulated school shooting. Members of the volunteer posse, some of them armed, began patrolling areas surrounding schools in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, in January.

Seagal’s involvement was called a “mockery” by an Arizona state legislator, while a group of protesters also voiced their concern over Arpaio’s school posse protection plan.

“Anybody who has criticized me or the sheriff for standing up to help the children, in my opinion, is an embarrassment to the human race,” Seagal told reporters on Saturday.

Two dozen high school students volunteered to participate in the simulation Saturday, while SWAT deputies posed as the shooters.

In one scenario, which was allowed to be filmed, students hid under cafeteria tables while under siege by a gunman, who was then taken down by volunteer posse members.

“I want everybody to know that we are going to be around those schools and if you do something, we will be armed and we are going into the schools to save our kids,” Arpaio said on Saturday.

The volunteer posse, which is nearly 3,500 members strong, has been used to patrol shopping malls during the holiday season, scope out undocumented immigrants, and investigate President Obama’s birth certificate.

Seagal occasionally worked as a deputy for the Jefferson Parish sheriff in Louisiana and had a reality show Steven Seagal: Lawman.

Arpaio, the self-styled “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” began sending armed posse members to patrol schools in January, following the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre and a more local threat that resulted in the Dec. 20 arrest of a 16-year-old student at Red Mountain High School in Mesa, Ariz., for a plot to bomb the school and shoot the students and faculty.

“We’re not going to wait for all the politicians,” Arpaio said. “Talk, talk, talk.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Jodi Arias Expected to Testify This Week

ABC News(PHOENIX) -- Alleged killer Jodi Arias is expected to take the stand this week and will try to convince an Arizona jury that her third version of how her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander died -- that she killed him in self defense -- is what really happened when she stabbed and shot him in his bathroom.

Her attorneys will also try to paint a sympathetic picture of Arias as a soft-spoken aspiring artist and photographer who was a recent and devout convert to Mormonism.

Her lawyers will have to overcome the prosecution's image of a woman who can glibly lie to friends as well as police, about things as mundane as where she worked to how she killed Alexander.

"I don't know how she can not take the stand, getting her up there you can have her crying and sobbing, saying she loved him, how horrible it was.  I can't conceive how you wouldn't," said Melvin McDonald, a criminal defense attorney and former judge and prosecutor.  McDonald has opposed Arias' prosecutor Juan Martinez in the past.

"She has got be likeable, tearful, show remorse for what happened.  She has got to talk about the great times they had, talk about how he turned on her, how he was mean and ugly and demeaning, and the pictures he took and the pressure he would put on her, that sort of stuff," McDonald said.

Arias, now 32, has been in jail since admitting to killing Alexander, 29, in 2008.  She dated Alexander for a year and continued to have a sexual relationship with him for a year after they broke up.  Her attorneys claim she killed him in self-defense, and that he was a controlling, abusive boyfriend who took advantage of a nice girl who fell in love.

Alexander's friends, however, have depicted Arias as a jealous woman and a stalker.  Prosecutors argue that her jealousy drove her to plot Alexander's murder, driving from California to his house in Mesa, Ariz., to have sex with him, luring him into a vulnerable position, and then stabbing him 27 times and shooting him in the head.

The jury in the case will have to sort through the divergent portraits of Arias, who sits in court each day in conservative blouses and large glasses and who cries each time prosecutors discuss Alexander's death.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Hikers Trapped by Raging Flood Waters Rescued in Arizona

Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(TUCSON, Ariz.) -- Search and rescue teams rescued dozens of hikers Saturday who were stranded by raging flood waters in Bear Canyon near Tucson.

The teams used ropes and flotation devices to rescue the 40 to 50 adult and children hikers who were trapped in high waters after heavy rains caused surprise floods. Waters apparently rose in Bear Canyon hours after a heavy downpour ended. Police responded to 911 calls on foot and in the air and used infrared technology to locate the stranded hikers.

A Pima County Deputy said police were able to rescue all of the hikers who called in.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Jodi Arias' Jailhouse Art Sells for $300 on eBay During Murder Trial

ABC News(PHOENIX) -- Drawings by Jodi Arias, the California woman facing the possibility of the death penalty for stabbing and shooting her boyfriend, are selling like collector's items online.

Colored pencil drawings by Arias have fetched hundreds of dollars so far on eBay, where a supporter outside of the Maricopa County jail has been posting and selling drawings she composes inside.

At least two drawings by Arias, one of actress Grace Kelly and one of an unidentified female model, are still posted on eBay for sale, with current bids at $300 and $405, respectively.  The money will go toward Arias and her family, according to the descriptions with the items.

"All profits go towards Jodi's family traveling expenses to the trial, other fees, and of course money for Jodi so she can eat better food than what they serve in jail," some of the descriptions have said.

The drawings are being sold by an anonymous eBay user, 0817soldierofchrist, who declined to comment when reached by ABC News.  The next two items to be posted, according to the user, will be drawings of Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball.

Arias, 32, has admitted to killing former beau Travis Alexander in his home in 2008, claiming it was an act of self defense against an abusive lover.

Prosecutors, however, argue that Arias only admitted to killing Alexander and claiming it was self defense after she was caught, telling investigators multiple times that she had nothing to do with the murder and was not in Mesa, Ariz., when Alexander was killed.  She later changed her story to say he was killed by two masked intruders, a man and a woman, before admitting that she killed Alexander.

Prosecutors allege she killed Alexander out of jealousy during a 24-hour road trip to Mesa.

Arias was an aspiring photographer when she was arrested in July 2008, nearly one month after Alexander's body was found.

The drawings posted on eBay have received free advertising from one of Arias' most vocal supporters, the website JodiAriasIsInnocent.com.  The person who runs that website, identified to ABC News as S.J., said they are not directly involved in the sale or auction of the drawings.

"All the artwork has been hand drawn by Jodi while she has been incarcerated," the website owner added.

Arias' attorneys are expected to begin presenting her defense on Tuesday, Jan. 29, after the prosecution rested last week.  The trial took a one-week hiatus this week.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Jodi Arias Even Lied in Her Diary After Travis Alexander Was Dead

ABC News(PHOENIX) -- Jodi Arias, who has admitted to lying about killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander, even lied in her diary in the weeks after his death, according to entries obtained exclusively by ABC News.

The page of diary entries, found in court motions, was seized by police from Arias' bedroom in her grandparents' California home.  The entries are dated from June 10 through June 13, 2008, days after Alexander was shot and stabbed to death on June 4.  His body was found by friends on June 9.

Arias, now 32, has admitted killing Alexander, claiming it was in self defense and that Alexander, 30, was an abusive lover.

The page begins ".. that Travis is dead. What happened?!? Travis, what is this?"

The next entry is dated June 11 and said in part, "Last night was so hard... I wanted so badly to call Travis, but knowing he wouldn't answer was too much to bear. And knowing he wasn't calling me anytime soon was just killing me. I broke down as I climbed into bed and just cried and cried and cried until I fell asleep."

Testimony in her murder trial that cited her phone records showed that Arias did call Alexander four times after she killed him and as late as June 15.  The first call was just hours after he died and one call lasted 16 minutes, which Verizon official Jody Citizen suggested indicated Arias was listening to Alexander's messages and possibly deleting her own messages to him.

On June 12, Arias wrote to her diary, "It just feels like he hasn't called me in too long. I hear him singing. I hear him laugh."

And in the final entry on the page, Arias wrote on June 13 that she sent 13 white irises to someone she called "Mums."

"Travis always told me he liked the name Iris for a girl...If I ever have a son I'll name him Alexander," she wrote.

The diary entries are the latest twist in the Arias investigation.  Police interrogation tapes played in court over the last few days shows her adamantly denying that she traveled from her home in California to Alexander's home in Mesa, Ariz., on the day Alexander was killed.

When presented with overwhelming evidence that she was present and that she killed Alexander, she tells Detective Esteban Flores, "I'm not the brightest person but I don't think I could stab him. I think I would have to shoot him continuously until he was dead."

At another point while still insisting on her innocence, she tells Flores, "If, IF I had it in me.. [I would] make it as humane as possible... make it quick."

Alexander was stabbed 27 times, his throat was slashed and he was shot in the head.

Arias eventually admitted to Flores that she was in Mesa that day, but claimed that Alexander was killed by a masked man and woman who took her driver's license and threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

The prosecution claims that Arias killed Alexander in a jealous rage after one last tryst in which they took nude photos of each other.  The assault began as Arias was taking pictures of Alexander in the shower, prosecutors claim.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Jodi Arias Denied Guilt After Told of Sex Photos, DNA

ABC News(PHOENIX) -- A defiant Jodi Arias insisted she was innocent of killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander even after a detective told her that he had nude photos of them together on the day he died.

"Are you sure it's me?  Because I was not there," Arias is heard saying in the police interrogation tape played for the Arizona jury on Monday.

When Detective Esteban Flores tells Arias she is seen in pigtails in the photos, she asks with a tone of incredulity, "Pigtails?"

As Flores laid out more incriminating evidence, including that investigators found DNA of their blood mixed together, her hair stuck with blood and her palm print in blood, Arias was insistent.

"I would not hurt Travis.  I would not hurt Travis.  I would not do that to him," she told Flores.

At another point Arias said, "If I hurt Travis I would beg for the death penalty."

"Jodi, this is over. … you have to tell me the truth," Flores says.  The detective suggests a motive for the killing to be jealousy, and cites the opinion of Alexander's friends.

"They don't just say you were jealous.  You were absolutely obsessed… a fatal attraction," Flores is heard on the tape.

Arias, now 32, has since admitted to killing Alexander following their tryst in 2008, but has claimed it was self-defense.  She is accused of stabbing Alexander 27 times in the chest, back and head, slashing his throat from ear to ear, and shooting him in the head with a .25 caliber handgun.

Arias is charged with murdering her ex-boyfriend in a "heinous and depraved" way and could face the death penalty if convicted.  The interrogation tape was played after the jury was shown sexually graphic photos that police recovered from Alexander's digital camera.  Among the pictures were shots of Arias and Alexander posing naked on Alexander's bed, as well as pictures of Alexander in the shower.

Those photos were the last pictures of Alexander while he was alive.

The final photos in the series show a body partly covered in blood on the bathroom floor.

Arias looked away from the screen in the courtroom where the sexual photos were shown, as her mother watched from the gallery.  Alexander's sisters, also seated in the gallery, looked away from the photos of their brother.

Computer analysts for the city of Mesa, Ariz., where Alexander lived, went over the photos in detail during the sixth day of testimony in the trial.  The photos were time stamped June 4, 2008, beginning around 1:45 p.m.

Prosecutors have said that Arias drove from her California home to Alexander's house, arriving early in the morning on June 4.  The pair had sex in the afternoon, took photos of one another, and then Arias killed Alexander, age 30, around 5:30 p.m., they said.

The photos on the bed occurred around 1:45 p.m., according to the data on the camera.  The shower photos and the pictures of a bloody body part occurred around 5:30 p.m.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Jodi Arias: 'No Jury Will Convict Me' for Murdering Ex-Boyfriend

ABC News(PHOENIX) -- The jury in the Jodi Arias murder trial watched a television interview on Thursday in which Arias said "no jury will convict me" for killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.

Arias added that she could never imagine committing such a violent act as killing Alexander.

"I understand all the evidence is really compelling," she said in the interview.  "In a nutshell, two people came in and killed Travis.  I've never even shot a gun.  That's heinous.  I can't imagine slitting anyone's throat."

She went on to tell the interviewer, "No jury will convict me and you can mark my words on that. ... I am innocent."

Arias made the statements to the television show Inside Edition after she was indicted for murdering Alexander.  Months later, she would confess to killing him in his Mesa, Ariz., home and say it was in self-defense.

The tape was played on the fifth day of testimony in Arias' trial, in which police allege that she carried out the murder with such brutal force that she stabbed Alexander 27 times, slashed his throat from ear to ear, and shot him in the head.

Arias, now 32, has claimed Alexander was a controlling and abusive "sexual deviant" who she was forced to kill in self-defense.

She could face the death penalty if convicted of Alexander's murder.

The defense petitioned the court to declare a mistrial at the end of testimony on Thursday, but the request was denied by Judge Sherry Stephens.  Arias' attorneys claimed that testimony presented by Det. Esteban Flores about whether Arias shot Alexander first or at the end of the attack was different from his earlier testimony and, therefore, affected whether Arias was "especially cruel" during the killing -- but Stephens denied that it had any effect.

The jury also watched as dozens of photos of blood-spattered walls, flooring, stained carpets and a blood smeared sink were explained in detail by a forensic analyst from the Mesa Police Department, who noted that on many of the stains water had been mixed with the blood and diluted it.

The prosecution has alleged that Arias tried to wash away the evidence of the killing with water.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio