The local news stories tucsoncitizen.com readers clicked on most often this week
1 Crime spree: Howard Ned McMonigal III, 36, is sentenced to 128.75 years after being convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault, theft, conducting an illegal enterprise, aggravated assault, illegal possession of a vehicle and possession of methamphetamine. McMonigal and his half-brother, who received a sentence of 24 years, ran a criminal enterprise that took advantage of vulnerable women.
2 A bobcat walks into a bar . . . : It sounds like the setup of a joke, but no one at the Chapparal Bar in Cottonwood was laughing. Two men are bitten inside the tavern after a bobcat wanders in. Earlier, the cat had scratched a woman who thought she had hit it with her car. Officers called to the bar find the animal in the parking lot, where they shoot and kill it. The bobcat was to undergo rabies testing; it wasn’t clear how seriously the men were bitten.
3 “Very severe, permanent injuries.” That’s how attorney Brick Storts describes the injuries eye doctor Bradley Schwartz has suffered after Schwartz was beaten by other inmates four times in one year while being housed in the Arizona Department of Corrections’ Rincon Unit, 10000 S. Wilmot Road. Schwartz, convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his former business partner, is blind in one eye and has suffered a broken nose, Storts says. Schwartz has filed a $750,000 claim against ADOC.
4 Bad childhood: A forensic psychologist testifies that Christopher Mathew Payne, facing the death penalty after being convicted of murdering his children, was reared in a dysfunctional atmosphere, surrounded by drug addicts.
5 Street fair post mortem: Key numbers from the 40th annual Spring Street Fair: a healthy 300,000 visitors, but a 20 percent decline in sales, organizers say.