PROVIDENCE, R.I.

Former youth coach gets life term for child molestation

A former youth sports coach in Bristol has been sentenced to life in prison on child molestation charges.

Attorney General Peter Kilmartin said Friday that 61-year-old Jesse Perry of Fall River, Massachusetts, was sentenced on two counts of first-degree child molestation and one count of second-degree child molestation. He also was ordered to undergo sex offender counseling.

Perry was found guilty in January of molesting a young man on multiple occasions between 1990 and 1997. Perry was a youth football coach.

Perry’s lawyer said his client maintains his innocence and will appeal.

Perry’s younger brother, Richard, also was involved in Bristol youth sports and pleaded no contest to molesting three boys more than a decade ago.

Richard Perry of Warren was sentenced in January to 10 years in prison.

CLAREMONT, N.H.

Police still looking for man who disappeared April 10

New Hampshire authorities are still searching on land and in the Connecticut River for a man who’s been missing for a month.

Claremont police said they responded to a domestic violence incident the night of April 10. They said 26-year-old Nick Washburn was a suspect, but he left before they arrived.

A short time later, there was an accident on the Main Street Bridge. The vehicle was identified as Washburn’s, but he wasn’t there.

The Eagle Times reported that divers from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department went into the river this week and didn’t find anything related to the case.

Capt. Mark Chase of the Claremont Police Department asks anyone who has information on the case to call.

BOSTON

State’s highest court grants victim of stroke a new trial

Massachusetts’ highest court has granted a new trial for a Waltham man sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his estranged wife’s lover.

The Supreme Judicial Court on Friday upheld a lower court ruling and granted James Brescia a new trial, citing a stroke Brescia suffered while testifying. A lower court judge said the stroke’s effects may have damaged Brescia’s credibility.

Brescia said while testifying at his 2008 trial that he was having trouble understanding questions and he had a bad headache. Testing showed he had a stroke.

Brescia was convicted of paying Scott Foxworth of Dracut $10,000 to kill Edward Schiller, who was fatally shot in the head in a Newton parking garage in 2006. Foxworth is serving life in prison.

MONTPELIER, Vt.

Panel supports eliminating exemption for vaccinations

The chairman of the Health Care Committee in the Vermont House says a majority of the panel supports eliminating the philosophical exemption for parents who don’t want to have their children vaccinated.

Rep. William Lippert said the committee voted 7-3 in an informal straw poll to support the change. The issue is set to be the subject of a public hearing Monday evening.

Lippert also said he expects there is time to have the full House vote on the question before lawmakers go home for the year, most likely next Friday or Saturday.

Gov. Peter Shumlin said Friday he would rather have waited for more time to study changes made to Vermont’s vaccination law in 2012. But he said he’s OK with having the debate now.

– From news service reports