Court Followup: Vazquez-Cortes Sentenced to 74 Months

• Blanca Isabel Vazquez-Cortes, 33, will spend the next six years in the women's prison in Shakopee. Vazquez-Cortes is one of a trio arrested in May during a on a Burnsville home that uncovered methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and almost $30,000 in cash.

Initially, Vazquez-Cortes pleaded not guilty to the charges — five first-degree drug charges and one second-degree count of possession. She was in the minority, however. Her two co-defendants — 21-year-old Salvador Zarate and 54-year-old Raul Perez Garcia — pleaded guilty this summer. 

Garcia agreed to testify against his codefendants. On July 18, he was sentenced to 42 months — a little less than four years — at the prison in St. Cloud. Zarate followed suit. On Aug. 23, he was sentenced to 74 months in prison.

Vazquez-Cortes seemed headed for a jury trial until Oct. 12, when she accepted a plea deal and conceded guilt to one of the six charges against her. She too was sentenced to 74 months of incarceration.

• Derrick Wallace Dahl, a 22-year-old Apple Valley man accused of inadvertently shooting his friend to death, will enter a plea at his next hearing on Dec. 19.  After a tragic incident in July, Dahl was charged with , a felony weapon charge and two additional misdemeanor offenses, including intentionally pointing a gun at another person and recklessly handling a firearm.

• Authorities are looking for Justin John Martner, a man accused of . Martner, 33, faces two felony charges: failure to register as a predatory offender, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, and domestic assault by strangulation, which has a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

On Oct. 17, he pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. He is due for a jury trial at the courthouse in Hastings on Tuesday. However, for at least a month his mail has been returned to court authorities, unopened. There is also a warrant for his arrest out in Ramsey County, where he faces theft charges from a separate incident.

• A man accused of in Burnsville faces new charges of disorderly conduct after an incident at a Caribou Coffee in Apple Valley. On Nov. 7, 46-year-old Dan Vincent Schally allegedly broke a glass table during an argument with employees at the coffee shop.