Substitute teacher — whom police caught naked in her car with student and who admitted to having sex with boy — avoids jail



A former Nebraska substitute teacher managed to avoid being sentenced to jail despite police reportedly catching the married woman in a state of undress with a naked underage student in her vehicle.

Erin Ward, 45, was arrested last April. She was charged with one count of felony sexual abuse by a school employee.

She allegedly told officers that the relationship had been going on for a few months and that she and the boy had sex only in her vehicle.

In November, Ward pleaded no contest to an amended charge of felony child abuse.

During her sentencing hearing Wednesday, Ward was sentenced to three years of probation.

As Blaze News reported last year, deputies with the Douglas County Sheriff's Office responded to a call around 3 a.m. April 13, 2024, regarding a suspicious vehicle parked on a dead-end road in the neighborhood of Elkhorn — a western suburb of Omaha.

Responding officers said they found two undressed people in the back seat of a gray 2015 Honda Pilot.

After police confronted the pair, one of the individuals reportedly jumped into the driver's seat, sped off, and allegedly crashed into a yard about two blocks away from police. The driver, a teenage male, reportedly fled on foot.

Deputies reportedly tracked down the teen within an hour of the incident. The driver later was identified as a 17-year-old student at Burke High School in Omaha.

According to the police report, the female passenger in the vehicle was naked in the back seat and trying to put on her clothes as officers approached the crashed car.

Inside the vehicle, police found Ward — a substitute teacher at Burke High School.

The teen and Ward were transported to a local hospital to treat minor injuries from the car crash, police said.

Police said they discovered Ward's ID for Omaha Public Schools and she informed them that she was a substitute teacher.

Investigators claim Ward admitted to having sexual relations with the teen on multiple occasions. She allegedly told officers that the relationship had been going on for a few months and that she and the boy had sex only in her vehicle.

Authorities said the crashed vehicle belonged to Ward and her husband.

Omaha Public Schools spokesperson Bridget Blevins told USA Today that Ward served as a substitute teacher in the district starting in September 2023 but "was not considered a full-time or part-time employee."

Burke High School principal Darren Rasmussen previously said in a statement regarding the substitute teacher's arrest: "We are writing to share that law enforcement has arrested a metro-area substitute teacher for inappropriate conduct with a minor. The individual worked at Burke High several days during the 2023-24 school year. They will not be returning to our school or any others in our district."

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Son who reported J6 father to FBI now 'terrified' of what his dad might do to him after Trump pardons: 'I’ve picked up a gun'



Jackson Reffitt — who reported his father, Guy Reffitt, to the FBI after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots — told CNN's Erin Burnett in an interview Monday night that he's now "terrified" of what his dad might do to him in the wake of President Donald Trump's J6 pardons.

In fact, Reffitt's scared enough that he said he got himself a gun.

'I just cannot feel safe around him. I cannot feel safe around people he knows. I cannot feel safe around the people my mother knows.'

Burnett used the left's favorite word to describe the riots — "insurrection" — and then asked Jackson Reffitt for his reaction to Trump's pardons and sentence commutations, which presumably include his father's.

"I'm honestly flabbergasted that we've gotten to this point," he told Burnett. "I mean, I'm terrified. I don't know what I'm gonna do."

He also said he's "taken as many precautions as I could recently. I’ve picked up a gun, I’ve moved, and I’ve gotten myself away from what I thought would be a dangerous situation and staying where I thought my dad could find me — or [where] other people" also could locate him.

"People that are gonna feel so validated by these actions, by this pardon," he added. "I'm just so filled with paranoia about what could happen. I've been waiting all day [for] a call from the [Department of Justice] to just figure it out and know what to do next 'cause right now I don't."

Reffitt also told Burnett, "I don't even know what my father's thinking. I mean, I've talked to my father before, but I had thought it [had] gotten better, but it really hadn't. My dad is still involved with these militias, he still talks with ... a martyr's status. He has no change; he's more galvanized than ever that I've seen. My mom, too. My sisters are waiting outside the jail ... right now. And ... I feel for them, and I know who they are, and I love them, but I can't feel safe. ... And what could happen when they're released? I mean, who knows? ... My dad once called me a traitor, and he said, 'Traitors get shot.'"

Burnett suggested to Reffitt that January 6 "broke your family apart." Reffitt agreed.

“My father’s actions coming from the Trump presidency and [my dad thinking] what he was doing was right just destroyed [my family]," he said, adding, "I made a very, very disgusting decision to inform authorities about what he was doing, and I still feel horrible about it every day. My sisters are out there right now, and they’re rooting for him. ... I understand that. I come [from a place] of love toward that. I want to be there for them, but I can’t. ... It's hard."

Burnett then asked Reffitt whether he still loves his father — and he replied in the affirmative.

"Of course," Reffitt said. "I love him. I love him. I just cannot feel safe around him. I cannot feel safe around people he knows. I cannot feel safe around the people my mother knows. My mom has used my name to sit in front of a crowded room of these far-right Trump supporters, and whenever she brings up my name and what I've done, the crowd will just roar in ... anger about, like, 'What the hell did that kid do?' ... terrifying."

You can view the video of the interview here.

What else?

Blaze News reported that Guy Reffitt was the first Jan. 6 defendant to go to trial in March 2022. A D.C. jury found him guilty on all five charges, including transporting a firearm in furtherance of a civil disorder, obstruction of justice, hindering communication through force or threat of force, obstructing officers during a civil disorder, and entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds.

But U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich reduced Reffitt's prison time to 80 months from the original 87-month sentence. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had ordered a new sentencing based on the Supreme Court's ruling in Fischer v. United States, which greatly limits use of 18 U.S. Code 1512(c)(2) — a 20-year felony for obstruction of an official proceeding — in Jan. 6 prosecutions.

Newsweek said Jackson Reffitt — a key witness in the government's case against his father — first reported Guy Reffitt's political views to the FBI in December 2020, only days before the Capitol riots.

The magazine said Jackson Reffitt later forwarded text messages from his father to the FBI after Guy Reffitt attended Trump's rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. Prosecutors read some of those messages and played audio of family conversations in court as part of their case against Reffitt, according to Newsweek.

Blaze News investigative reporter Steve Baker weighs in

Steve Baker covered Jan. 6 at the Capitol as an independent journalist and began writing investigative stories about that day for Blaze News in the fall of 2023. Despite only taking video while walking through the Capitol, Baker was arrested last year and pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor charges in November to "avoid the shaming exercise of the trial."

Baker was set to hear his sentence in March — but the DOJ has now filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him. The filing comes after President Donald Trump on Monday night gave around 1,500 January 6 defendants a promised pardon.

Baker also weighed in on Jackson Reffitt's CNN interview for Blaze News:

As I mentioned last night on BlazeTV, many families have been broken apart because of January 6. Divorces, children disowning their parents, and this tragedy in the Reffitt family. Many J6 defendants were turned in by family members, but also by members of their churches, neighbors, coworkers, and classmates. While there already may have been a strained father-son relationship in this case, I think you’ll find the common thread among those who "dropped a dime’" on family members to be a difference in their politics. Especially a hatred for Trump by the ones making those calls to the FBI.

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Jussie Smollett, who staged fake hate crime against himself, gets 150 days in jail, tells judge 'I am not suicidal!' after sentence



Jussie Smollett on Thursday was sentenced to 150 days in jail after a jury in December found him guilty on five of six counts of felony disorderly conduct for staging a hate crime against himself and then lying to police about the hoax.

After his sentence was handed down, Smollett spoke sharply to Cook County Judge James Linn and said, "I am not suicidal, and I am innocent." He added that "I did not do this" and that "if anything happens" to him while in jail that he didn't do it to himself.

The sentence also included 30 months probation, $120,000 of restitution payments, and a $25,000 fine.

'Your very name has become an adverb for lying'

In an address before issuing his sentence, Linn eviscerated Smollett, calling him a "charlatan" and telling him "your hypocrisy is astounding" and "you wanted to make yourself more famous" through the elaborate, "premeditated" caper and then "you threw a national pity party for yourself." But the worst part, the judge said, was that Smollett lied to authorities about it all.

"Your very name has become an adverb for lying," Linn said.

The former "Empire" star — who is black and gay — made national headlines for claiming a pair of supporters of then-President Donald Trump physically attacked him near his apartment in Chicago in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2019.

He claimed the two men wearing ski masks confronted him as he was leaving a Subway restaurant around 2 a.m. in below freezing conditions and yelled "aren't you that f***ot 'Empire' n*****?" before beating him up, putting a rope around his neck, pouring bleach on him, and hollering, "This is MAGA country!" — a reference to Trump's red "Make America Great Again" hats.

But once a police investigation began, Smollett's story began to crumble.

What else happened at the sentencing hearing?

Smollett's defense pushed for a new trial, but the mountain of evidence against their client was too high, and Linn — who presided over Smollett's trial late last year in which he was convicted — denied the new trial request.

Prior to sentencing, the prosecution read a victim impact statement from the city of Chicago that blasted Smollett for making it less likely that actual victims of hate crimes will come forward to law enforcement. The city also requested just over $130,000 in restitution for the resources they said Smollett wasted.

Character witnesses for Smollett implored a sentence without prison time, including his brother who declared to the courtroom that the prosecution had no evidence against Smollett. The defense also detailed numerous letters — including ones from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the president of the NAACP, and a Black Lives Matter representative — that pleaded for mercy in sentencing.

The 39-year-old faced a maximum sentence of up to three years in prison. Legal experts had said the sentencing judge would consider Smollett's otherwise clean criminal record and predicted he'd be sentenced to probation with required community service.

What else happened during the investigation and trial?

Chicago police caught the two suspects in the crime, Nigerian-born brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo — aspiring actors whom Smollett knew from the Chicago set of "Empire" and from the gym. The brothers told police Smollett paid them to stage the attack in an effort to boost his career. In fact, then-Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Smollett used a check to pay the brothers $3,500 to pull off the staged attack.

Johnson added that the hoax "pissed everybody off."

Detectives said surveillance video and in-car taxi videos corroborated the Osundairo brothers' claims, as did telephone logs, ride-share records, and credit card records, according to a case summary document prosecutors released.

During Smollett's trial, prosecutors alleged the actor even arranged a "dry run" of the hoax with his co-conspirators days prior to it taking place — and that the practice session was captured on surveillance video.

The Osundairo brothers testified against Smollett in the trial, each taking the witness stand to repeat their claims that Smollett told them to place a noose around his neck and shout racial and homophobic slurs while roughing him up in view of a street camera.

Smollett testified in his own defense and maintained “there was no hoax" and that the brothers are “liars” who attacked him over homophobia and tried to extort money from him after the fact.

Lead prosecutor Dan Webb wasn't buying it, saying Smollett's lies cost the Chicago Police Department resources and caused racial division.

“Besides being against the law, it’s just plain wrong for Mr. Smollett, a successful black actor, to outright denigrate something as serious, as heinous, as a real hate crime. To denigrate it and then make sure it involved words and symbols that have such horrible historical significance in our country," Webb said according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Anything else?

After Smollett's December conviction, Webb said in his full report regarding State's Attorney Kim Foxx's handling of the case that her office committed several procedural irregularities and ethical missteps — including that the decision to allow Smollett to enter into an "alternative prosecution" agreement constituted an "abuse of prosecutorial discretion."

In addition, former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat, said Smollett "spit in the face of real victims of bigotry" by "lying about being attacked because of his race" and "should be sentenced to the fullest extent of the law to serve as an example and to send a very strong message to anyone who thinks about pulling a hoax like this in the future."

Social media also ripped Smollett after his guilty verdict — but left-wing Hollywood remained more or less silent.

The left, however, had plenty to say immediately after Smollett claimed he was attacked. Vice President Kamala Harris — who at the time was a U.S. senator from California and a week into her presidential campaign — called it "an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate."

Image source: Twitter

Harris' tweet was still active Thursday evening.

This is a breaking new story; updates may be added.