Saturday,  April 27, 2013 • Vol. 14--No. 282 • 30 of 38 •  Other Editions

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• Forty-year-old Jana Harford, of Redfield, was convicted in federal court last October on charges of theft of government funds and misuse of benefits by a representative payee, which is a person who manages money for someone else who is unable to do so.
• U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson says Harford misused money from a Social Security program between December 2010 and June 2011.

SD woman who attacked parents headed to group home

• RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- A South Dakota woman ruled by a judge to be insane after she tried to kill her parents 3 ½ years ago is beginning a controlled re-entry into society.
• Casey Eleeson stabbed her father with a kitchen knife in his Rapid City home in December 2009 then drove across town and shot her mother at her mother's home. She was apprehended almost a month later, hiding in a remote cabin in Colorado. Both parents recovered.
• Judge Thomas Trimble in February 2011 found Eleeson not guilty by reason of insanity and committed her to a human services center. Eleeson, 25, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
• Doctors testified during a hearing Thursday that Eleeson has cooperated with their care plan. She takes her medication, has a job, is saving money and participates in programming, said David Olson, her psychiatrist.
• Galen Van Clay, a clinical psychologist who has worked with Eleeson for two years, told the court that she had "reached the maximum benefit" from her time at the Yankton facility, according to KEVN-TV.
• Pennington County Chief Deputy State's Attorney Lara Roetzel, who has handled Eleeson's case from the beginning, did not oppose Eleeson's move to a transitional facility.
• "She tried to kill her mother and her father. It was a very serious crime -- attempted first-degree murder -- but society needs to have an understanding of mental illness and the stigma and the fear associated with psychiatric disorders," the prosecutor said, according to the Rapid City Journal.
• Trimble is allowing Eleeson to move into a transitional facility, most likely in Watertown, under several conditions including that she continue to take her medication, not drive, and not possess a gun or knife. She eventually could move into a group home in Rapid City.
• "I am ready for this," Eleeson said during the hearing.

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