(AP) Two firearms charges were dismissed Thursday amid preparations for a trial against an extended family arrested in a 2018 law enforcement raid on a ramshackle desert compound in northern New Mexico and the discovery of a young boy’s decomposed body.
The changes narrow the case to terrorism and kidnapping charges against five defendants in a trial scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection at U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.
Authorities had been searching for a sickly 3-year-old who had been reported missing by his mother in Georgia when, in August 2018, they burst into a ramshackle encampment in the remote desert surrounded by berms of used tires with an adjacent firing range.
