A 19-year-old Bellevue woman accused of stabbing a classmate Saturday during an anger-management class has been charged with second-degree assault.
By Christine Clarridge
Seattle Times staff reporter
Originally published Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 4:04 PM
Talk about a teachable moment.
A 19-year-old Bellevue woman has been charged with second-degree assault after she allegedly stabbed a classmate Saturday during an anger-management class.
Bellevue police say Faribah Maradiaga "blew up out of control" and stabbed the classmate's arm and shoulder several times after the two women exchanged words.
Police said Maradiaga, who already has a pending assault charge, told them that the other woman had threatened her first, according to charging documents.
Maradiaga walked into a classroom on the Bellevue College campus, where a court services agency rents space for the anger management class, around 9 a.m. Saturday while a video on anger management was being shown, according to the charges. Maradiaga started complaining about the movie and disrupting the class, according to the documents, when the victim told Maradiaga "the video was good and to give it a chance."
Maradiaga, who was sitting two rows behind the victim, then stood up and started talking "trash" before pulling out a knife with a 3-inch blade and stabbing the other woman, police and prosecutors say.
The charges say Maradiaga then threatened to kill the victim's family.
Maradiaga is being held on $50,000 bail in King County Jail and is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 25.
From: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013164351_stabbing15m.html
Friday, October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Mountain goat kills man in Olympic National Park
By Nicole Tsong
Seattle Times staff reporter
Originally published October 17, 2010 at 9:26 PM | Page modified October 18, 2010 at 2:12 PM
Robert H. Boardman set out on a hike Saturday with his wife and a friend on an Olympic National Park trail popular because it is short, beautiful and close to town.
The Port Angeles man never completed it.
Boardman, 63, died after trying to shoo away a mountain goat at the top of Klahhane Ridge, about four miles north of the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center, National Park Service officials said Sunday.
He is believed to be the first person to have died in an incident involving an animal in the park, spokeswoman Barb Maynes said. Rangers found and killed the animal, which was to be taken to Monroe for a necropsy, she said.
Accounts of the incident are murky.
The goat began acting aggressively when Boardman, his wife, Susan Chadd, and their friend Pat Willits encountered the animal on the trail, according to an account in the Peninsula Daily News. Willits said Boardman told them to head back down the trail while he shooed the goat away.
Nobody saw the goat attack, but Willits said she and Boardman's wife heard him yell, the newspaper report said.
Other acquaintances — Jessica and Bill Baccus and their three children — were hiking the same trail. When they reached the saddle at the top of the trail, they found Willits, frantic and cellphone in hand. Willits told them a mountain goat had attacked Boardman and that the goat wouldn't let people get near him.
Boardman was lying motionless farther up the trail, about 100 feet away, while the animal stood over him, Jessica Baccus said.
"The mountain goat was terribly aggressive," she said. "It wouldn't move. It stared us down."
Bill Baccus, a park scientist, had his park radio and immediately called a dispatcher. Because Baccus has spent a lot of time around mountain goats, he led the effort to try to lure the goat away from Boardman.
Three people spread out along a slope, shouting and pelting the animal with rocks, Jessica Baccus said. The goat, distracted by the reflective light of a hiker's silver space blanket, finally backed away after about 15 minutes.
Helicopter dispatched
The first call for help came in around 12:30 p.m., the park service said, but Jessica Baccus, a former park ranger trained in first aid, wasn't able to reach Boardman to give him CPR until 1:20 p.m. He had no pulse and had blood on one leg, she said. Another hiker, meanwhile, kept an eye on the goat, still nearby.
Soon after Baccus started trying to resuscitate Boardman, a local doctor on a day hike came upon the group and took over, she said.
The U.S. Coast Guard arrived about 20 minutes later with a helicopter to airlift Boardman out of the park. The noise of the helicopter scared the goat away, Baccus said.
Boardman was taken to Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles, where he was pronounced dead, the park service said.
A musician of note
Boardman was an avid hiker and played guitar and mandolin for contradances, a type of folk dance, up and down the West Coast, family members said.
He also served as a diabetes educator at Olympic Medical Center and worked for many years as a nurse for the Makah and Lower Elwha Klallam tribes, according to the Peninsula Daily News. The musician helped organize community dances and once worked for The Leader newspaper in Port Townsend.
"He [Boardman] is a very visible member of the community here and much loved and respected," Baccus said.
About 300 goats live in the Olympic National Park, and rangers have been tracking eight or so that have acted aggressively toward hikers on trails in the Hurricane Ridge area, sometimes following people on trails or not getting out of the way when people approach, said Maynes, the park spokeswoman.
Rangers have shot nonlethal firecrackers and beanbag rounds at the animals, which are not native to the Olympic Mountains, to discourage them from approaching people, Maynes said. The park service had a program to relocate some goats to the Cascades in the 1980s in part because they were affecting the terrain, but the population rebounded in the 2000s.
Maynes said it is possible people have fed the animals. The Olympic Mountains also don't naturally produce a lot of salt, so goats and other animals, always on the hunt for it, sometimes are drawn to areas where people urinate on rocks, she said.
Rangers advise staying at least 100 feet from goats.
From: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013189753_olympicpark18m.html
Goat sacrifice row spurs fatal stampede in Bihar
Ten people killed, several injured in the temple premises where more than 45,000 had gathered
Posted On Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 11:23:23 PM
An argument over sacrificing goats on the last day of Navratri festival triggered a stampede that killed 10 people on Sunday in a packed temple here.
“More than 45,000 devotees had thronged the temple at Tildiha village under Sambhuganj Police Station area for offering prayers and sacrificing goats when the stampede occurred," said Director General of Police (DGP) Neelmani.
He said the injured are being treated at hospitals in Tarapur and Banka.
“As the worshippers lined up before the butcher, a scuffle broke out and some people were trampled,” Banka district spokesman Gupdeshwar Kumar said.
“People were vying with each other to get their goats sacrificed first, and they had a verbal duel with the butcher,” Kumar said.
Four women and six men died in the stampede, and another 11 were injured, three of them critically," Neelmani said.
Umesh Kumar, 35, a villager an eyewitness said, "The temple was so full, people didn't have any place to walk around.
There was commotion when people tried to get their goats sacrificed."
The district spokesman said that over 40,000 goats were sacrificed at the temple on Saturday.
Another eyewitness, Usha Rani who got injured in the stampede said, “The temple area was very crowded and people were literally fighting with each other to get their goats sacrificed first.”
From: http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/11/2010101720101017232323545cf4ffb7c/Goat-sacrifice-row-spurs-fatal-stampede-in-Bihar-.html
Posted On Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 11:23:23 PM
An argument over sacrificing goats on the last day of Navratri festival triggered a stampede that killed 10 people on Sunday in a packed temple here.
“More than 45,000 devotees had thronged the temple at Tildiha village under Sambhuganj Police Station area for offering prayers and sacrificing goats when the stampede occurred," said Director General of Police (DGP) Neelmani.
He said the injured are being treated at hospitals in Tarapur and Banka.
“As the worshippers lined up before the butcher, a scuffle broke out and some people were trampled,” Banka district spokesman Gupdeshwar Kumar said.
“People were vying with each other to get their goats sacrificed first, and they had a verbal duel with the butcher,” Kumar said.
Four women and six men died in the stampede, and another 11 were injured, three of them critically," Neelmani said.
Umesh Kumar, 35, a villager an eyewitness said, "The temple was so full, people didn't have any place to walk around.
There was commotion when people tried to get their goats sacrificed."
The district spokesman said that over 40,000 goats were sacrificed at the temple on Saturday.
Another eyewitness, Usha Rani who got injured in the stampede said, “The temple area was very crowded and people were literally fighting with each other to get their goats sacrificed first.”
From: http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/11/2010101720101017232323545cf4ffb7c/Goat-sacrifice-row-spurs-fatal-stampede-in-Bihar-.html
Man run over twice was left "like a piece of litter"
NZPA
October 21, 2010, 5:12 pm
The distraught sister of Tom Fry, the North Otago farm worker who was twice run over within the space of a few minutes in May, today questioned how the drivers could have left her brother "like a piece of litter, lying across a highway".
Elizabeth Fry made an emotion-charged victim impact statement to the Invercargill District Court during the sentencing of one of the drivers, Cam Paul Kennedy.
Kennedy, 26, had earlier admitted one charge of wilfully attempting to obstruct the course of justice, by taking all identification from, then burning, a vehicle.
Judge Kevin Phillips said Mr Fry, 18, was first run over and killed about 3.50am on May 13, on a road north of Oamaru, by a truck driven by Richard Eion Gent.
"That driver drove on and left the body on the road."
Soon after, the vehicle driven by Kennedy ran over Mr Fry, causing the car to run off the road. Kennedy and his female passenger returned to the scene to see what he had hit. Thinking he had killed Mr Fry, Kennedy drove off in panic, the judge said.
Kennedy then drove his Nissan Skyline car through the back roads before he crashed it. He removed all identifying features from the car including the registration plates and window labels, before pouring oil over the car and setting it on fire.
The pair then walked to a farmhouse where they used the phone to contact an associate. They were picked up and on the trip back to Invercargill Kennedy threw the registration plates out the window. Once home, he burnt his clothes and two cellphones.
Miss Fry said although the family knew and accepted Kennedy was not responsible for Mr Fry's death, he was inextricably entwined in the events that followed his death.
She said by burning his car, Kennedy had diverted police attention and created an air of mystery surrounding her brother's death, leading to nationwide media interest and much speculation. Her family played out a variety of scenarios in their heads in an attempt to understand what had happened.
"The death was so simple it was ludicrous. Kennedy's actions were so out of proportion to what he had done," she said.
Miss Fry described her brother as a loyal and devoted friend and son who lived life to the fullest.
In handing down sentence Judge Phillips said he accepted Kennedy had originally driven off in a panic but his attempts afterwards to avoid responsibility were calculated and planned. And even though he told his mother what had happened two days later, it was another three days before Kennedy went to police.
"You focused on your children and not on how the family of the man lying on the road would feel."
The judge sentenced Kennedy to six months' home detention, 150 hours' community work and disqualified him from driving for nine months.
Last month Gent, 35, was jailed for 26 months for the hit-and-run killing after earlier admitting careless driving causing death, perverting the course of justice, failing to render assistance after an accident, and failing to report an injury accident.
From: http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/mp/8175695/man-run-over-twice-was-left-like-a-piece-of-litter/
October 21, 2010, 5:12 pm
The distraught sister of Tom Fry, the North Otago farm worker who was twice run over within the space of a few minutes in May, today questioned how the drivers could have left her brother "like a piece of litter, lying across a highway".
Elizabeth Fry made an emotion-charged victim impact statement to the Invercargill District Court during the sentencing of one of the drivers, Cam Paul Kennedy.
Kennedy, 26, had earlier admitted one charge of wilfully attempting to obstruct the course of justice, by taking all identification from, then burning, a vehicle.
Judge Kevin Phillips said Mr Fry, 18, was first run over and killed about 3.50am on May 13, on a road north of Oamaru, by a truck driven by Richard Eion Gent.
"That driver drove on and left the body on the road."
Soon after, the vehicle driven by Kennedy ran over Mr Fry, causing the car to run off the road. Kennedy and his female passenger returned to the scene to see what he had hit. Thinking he had killed Mr Fry, Kennedy drove off in panic, the judge said.
Kennedy then drove his Nissan Skyline car through the back roads before he crashed it. He removed all identifying features from the car including the registration plates and window labels, before pouring oil over the car and setting it on fire.
The pair then walked to a farmhouse where they used the phone to contact an associate. They were picked up and on the trip back to Invercargill Kennedy threw the registration plates out the window. Once home, he burnt his clothes and two cellphones.
Miss Fry said although the family knew and accepted Kennedy was not responsible for Mr Fry's death, he was inextricably entwined in the events that followed his death.
She said by burning his car, Kennedy had diverted police attention and created an air of mystery surrounding her brother's death, leading to nationwide media interest and much speculation. Her family played out a variety of scenarios in their heads in an attempt to understand what had happened.
"The death was so simple it was ludicrous. Kennedy's actions were so out of proportion to what he had done," she said.
Miss Fry described her brother as a loyal and devoted friend and son who lived life to the fullest.
In handing down sentence Judge Phillips said he accepted Kennedy had originally driven off in a panic but his attempts afterwards to avoid responsibility were calculated and planned. And even though he told his mother what had happened two days later, it was another three days before Kennedy went to police.
"You focused on your children and not on how the family of the man lying on the road would feel."
The judge sentenced Kennedy to six months' home detention, 150 hours' community work and disqualified him from driving for nine months.
Last month Gent, 35, was jailed for 26 months for the hit-and-run killing after earlier admitting careless driving causing death, perverting the course of justice, failing to render assistance after an accident, and failing to report an injury accident.
From: http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/mp/8175695/man-run-over-twice-was-left-like-a-piece-of-litter/
Killer in Connecticut home invasion slay says William Petit was 'coward' who could have saved family
BY Meena Hartenstein
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, October 20th 2010, 8:20 PM
It's been three years since Dr. William Petit Jr. survived a brutal home invasion that left his wife and daughters dead, but the pain of the gruesome crimes his family endured is far from over.
The latest twist? One of the attackers claims Petit could have saved his loved ones, but didn't because he was a "coward."
Steven Hayes, convicted two weeks ago for the grizzly torture and murders of Petit's wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit and their two daughters, 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela, is now at the mercy of a jury to decide what his fate will be.
He faces execution or life in prison for the killings.
But lawyers for Hayes, trying to get their client a lighter sentence, argued this week that he was no murder mastermind and simply acted on the orders of partner-in-crime Joshua Komisarjevsky, according to CBS News.
To prove that Komisarjevsky was the architect of the crimes, diaries seized from him in jail were read aloud to the jury this week, including one entry that places blame on Petit himself for not stepping in to save his wife and daughters.
"Mr. Petit is a coward, he ran away when he felt his own life was threatened," Komisarjevsky wrote in diary entries obtained by ABC News. "Time and time again I gave him the chance to save his family."
"If you don't want to defend your family, then take your chances with the criminal while police sit outside and follow protocol," he continued, referring to the fact that law enforcement arrived on the scene and were roping off the area outside the home while the two assailants were still inside committing the horrific murders.
The entries also include sickening passages in with Komisarjevsky admits to molesting Michaela, though he wrote he "resented" the accusation that he raped the 11-year-old.
In diary excerpts presented in court and posted online, Komisarjevsky wrote that he "spared her that degree of demoralization" but that "in a vulgar display of power, I ejaculated onto her."
Komisarjevsky will be tried next year.
Authorities have said he spotted Jennifer and her daughters at a grocery store, followed them home, and then returned to the scene with Hayes.
The criminals separated Petit from his family, tied him to a pole in the basement, and beat him savagely. They then forced Hawke-Petit to take out money from a bank before raping and choking her to death.
Komisarjevsky and Hayes tied the daughters to a bed, placed pillow covers over their heads and poured gasoline on them before setting the house on fire, according to police.
In court on Wednesday, psychiatrist Dr. Paul Amble testified that Hayes is suicidal and has tried to kill himself multiple times while behind bars.
"[Hayes] described his persistent desire to die were because of his feelings of guilt, remorse and his condition of confinement," Amble said, according to ABC.
Amble told the jury Hayes is hoping to be executed rather than face life in prison.
From: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/10/20/2010-10-20_killer_in_connecticut_home_invasion_slay_says_william_petit_was_coward_who_could.html
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, October 20th 2010, 8:20 PM
It's been three years since Dr. William Petit Jr. survived a brutal home invasion that left his wife and daughters dead, but the pain of the gruesome crimes his family endured is far from over.
The latest twist? One of the attackers claims Petit could have saved his loved ones, but didn't because he was a "coward."
He faces execution or life in prison for the killings.
But lawyers for Hayes, trying to get their client a lighter sentence, argued this week that he was no murder mastermind and simply acted on the orders of partner-in-crime Joshua Komisarjevsky, according to CBS News.
To prove that Komisarjevsky was the architect of the crimes, diaries seized from him in jail were read aloud to the jury this week, including one entry that places blame on Petit himself for not stepping in to save his wife and daughters.
"Mr. Petit is a coward, he ran away when he felt his own life was threatened," Komisarjevsky wrote in diary entries obtained by ABC News. "Time and time again I gave him the chance to save his family."
The entries also include sickening passages in with Komisarjevsky admits to molesting Michaela, though he wrote he "resented" the accusation that he raped the 11-year-old.
In diary excerpts presented in court and posted online, Komisarjevsky wrote that he "spared her that degree of demoralization" but that "in a vulgar display of power, I ejaculated onto her."
Komisarjevsky will be tried next year.
Authorities have said he spotted Jennifer and her daughters at a grocery store, followed them home, and then returned to the scene with Hayes.
The criminals separated Petit from his family, tied him to a pole in the basement, and beat him savagely. They then forced Hawke-Petit to take out money from a bank before raping and choking her to death.
Komisarjevsky and Hayes tied the daughters to a bed, placed pillow covers over their heads and poured gasoline on them before setting the house on fire, according to police.
In court on Wednesday, psychiatrist Dr. Paul Amble testified that Hayes is suicidal and has tried to kill himself multiple times while behind bars.
"[Hayes] described his persistent desire to die were because of his feelings of guilt, remorse and his condition of confinement," Amble said, according to ABC.
Amble told the jury Hayes is hoping to be executed rather than face life in prison.
From: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/10/20/2010-10-20_killer_in_connecticut_home_invasion_slay_says_william_petit_was_coward_who_could.html
Mozambique boy mutilated for body parts
Posted Fri Oct 15, 2010 4:45pm AEDT
A court in Mozambique has sentenced two men to 20 years in prison for mutilating a 12-year-old boy in order to sell his body parts to a witchdoctor in Malawi.
The court heard that the boy's uncle and another man lured the boy to come bush-rat hunting with them by offering him biscuits.
In the attack, one of the men covered the youth's mouth while the other hit him on the chest with a rock. They then cut off the boy's testicles, penis and eyes and left him for dead.
One of the men then took the body parts to a middleman in Malawi, where they hoped to sell them for about $US560.
The boy was discovered alive the next day and taken to hospital in Malawi.
"The crime they committed was horrible. The court condemns them to 20 years imprisonment," judge Jorge Langa said.
Many people from Mozambique believe in witches, who use human parts in remedies to cure diseases.
From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/15/3039829.htm?section=justin
A court in Mozambique has sentenced two men to 20 years in prison for mutilating a 12-year-old boy in order to sell his body parts to a witchdoctor in Malawi.
The court heard that the boy's uncle and another man lured the boy to come bush-rat hunting with them by offering him biscuits.
In the attack, one of the men covered the youth's mouth while the other hit him on the chest with a rock. They then cut off the boy's testicles, penis and eyes and left him for dead.
One of the men then took the body parts to a middleman in Malawi, where they hoped to sell them for about $US560.
The boy was discovered alive the next day and taken to hospital in Malawi.
"The crime they committed was horrible. The court condemns them to 20 years imprisonment," judge Jorge Langa said.
Many people from Mozambique believe in witches, who use human parts in remedies to cure diseases.
From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/15/3039829.htm?section=justin
Murder charge in fight over 4-year-old
October 21, 2010
A Chicago man was charged Tuesday with fatally stabbing a father in front of his 4-year-old son in a fight over the boy's affection.
Terry Page, 55, of the 2200 block of North Clybourn, was charged with murdering Nick Lamar Seay, the boy's biological father. Page acted as a father figure to the boy and has a child with the boy's mother.
Seay was killed at his 30th birthday party, officials said.
From: http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2822232,CST-NWS-father21.article
A Chicago man was charged Tuesday with fatally stabbing a father in front of his 4-year-old son in a fight over the boy's affection.
Terry Page, 55, of the 2200 block of North Clybourn, was charged with murdering Nick Lamar Seay, the boy's biological father. Page acted as a father figure to the boy and has a child with the boy's mother.
Seay was killed at his 30th birthday party, officials said.
From: http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2822232,CST-NWS-father21.article
Woman, 89, dies trying to light stove
October 21, 2010
An 89-year-old woman died Wednesday after her clothes caught fire as she attempted to light her stove's pilot at her Bridgeport home.
Consuelo Gandara, of the 400 block of West 31st, suffered burns on more than 90 percent of her body when her nightclothes caught fire, officials said. The fire did not spread, and no one else was injured, officials said.
Gandara was pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center, the medical examiner's office said.
From: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2822490,CST-NWS-fire21.article
An 89-year-old woman died Wednesday after her clothes caught fire as she attempted to light her stove's pilot at her Bridgeport home.
Consuelo Gandara, of the 400 block of West 31st, suffered burns on more than 90 percent of her body when her nightclothes caught fire, officials said. The fire did not spread, and no one else was injured, officials said.
Gandara was pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center, the medical examiner's office said.
From: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2822490,CST-NWS-fire21.article
Woman dies in de-icing accident in Widnes
21 October 2010 Last updated at 14:19 GMT
A mother-of-two died after she became caught underneath her car as she was trying to de-ice it, police said.
Andrea Southern, 43, of Whickham Close, Widnes, was found trapped under her Fiat Panda outside her home by a neighbour on Wednesday morning.
She was taken to Whiston Hospital but died later that day.
Cheshire Police believe the car rolled backwards as the woman was de-icing it and she was dragged under the front wheels.
Mrs Southern is thought to have been trapped for about half-an-hour before her neighbour found her.
'Utter tragedy'
Mr Southern was too upset to talk and was being comforted by family and friends.
A Cheshire Police spokeswoman said: "Her family are devastated at the loss of a loving wife and mother."
The black Fiat Panda, which was on the sloping driveway of the home she shared with her husband John and two daughters, aged eight and 12, has been removed for examination.
Ryan Gregson, 21, who lives across the road, witnessed paramedics battling to save Mrs Southern.
He said: "It's an utter tragedy.
"She was a lovely woman, quite quiet and they had two young daughters."
A police spokeswoman appealed to anyone in the area between 0615 and 0700 BST on Wednesday to get in touch.
"This may help police piece together the sequence of events resulting in the woman's tragic death," she added.
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-11594571
A mother-of-two died after she became caught underneath her car as she was trying to de-ice it, police said.
Andrea Southern, 43, of Whickham Close, Widnes, was found trapped under her Fiat Panda outside her home by a neighbour on Wednesday morning.
She was taken to Whiston Hospital but died later that day.
Cheshire Police believe the car rolled backwards as the woman was de-icing it and she was dragged under the front wheels.
Mrs Southern is thought to have been trapped for about half-an-hour before her neighbour found her.
'Utter tragedy'
Mr Southern was too upset to talk and was being comforted by family and friends.
A Cheshire Police spokeswoman said: "Her family are devastated at the loss of a loving wife and mother."
The black Fiat Panda, which was on the sloping driveway of the home she shared with her husband John and two daughters, aged eight and 12, has been removed for examination.
Ryan Gregson, 21, who lives across the road, witnessed paramedics battling to save Mrs Southern.
He said: "It's an utter tragedy.
"She was a lovely woman, quite quiet and they had two young daughters."
A police spokeswoman appealed to anyone in the area between 0615 and 0700 BST on Wednesday to get in touch.
"This may help police piece together the sequence of events resulting in the woman's tragic death," she added.
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-11594571
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Topless woman, 61, attacks police in Portland with large meat cleaver
By Michael Sheridan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Originally Published:Wednesday, October 13th 2010, 9:33 AM
Updated: Wednesday, October 13th 2010, 3:11 PM
Two police officers were attacked by a topless woman swinging a meat cleaver on Tuesday.
The bizarre assault came after two veteran cops in Portland, Ore., were called to an apartment complex after a call came because a naked woman was allegedly outside the building and screaming, according to police.
When the officers arrived, a neighbor informed them a woman had pushed out the window screen from her second floor apartment. The two retrieved the screen and knocked on the woman's front door.
They could hear vacuuming inside, and spoke briefly with 61-year-old Phyllis Ann Lasich through the door, the police report states. A few moments later, after hearing a crash inside, the door flew open and the half-naked woman emerged.
"Die *expletive*," the police report claims Lasich yelled as she swung a large meat cleaver.
She allegedly struck one of the cops, who was unharmed as the blade hit his radio holder and left hip.
One officer drew his weapon while the other held a Taser, police said. Lasich allegedly swung the cleaver around briefly, threatening to kill the police officers, before getting caught on the screen from her window. She eventually listened to the cops' commands and laid on the ground.
Police took her into custody, during which time Lasich thanked them, according to authorities.
"Thank God you are here! They've been coming to kill me all day!" she said, the report says.
The 61-year-old has not been charged.
From: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/10/13/2010-10-13_topless_woman_61_attacks_police_in_portland_with_large_meat_cleaver_cops.html
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Originally Published:Wednesday, October 13th 2010, 9:33 AM
Updated: Wednesday, October 13th 2010, 3:11 PM
Two police officers were attacked by a topless woman swinging a meat cleaver on Tuesday.
The bizarre assault came after two veteran cops in Portland, Ore., were called to an apartment complex after a call came because a naked woman was allegedly outside the building and screaming, according to police.
When the officers arrived, a neighbor informed them a woman had pushed out the window screen from her second floor apartment. The two retrieved the screen and knocked on the woman's front door.
They could hear vacuuming inside, and spoke briefly with 61-year-old Phyllis Ann Lasich through the door, the police report states. A few moments later, after hearing a crash inside, the door flew open and the half-naked woman emerged.
"Die *expletive*," the police report claims Lasich yelled as she swung a large meat cleaver.
She allegedly struck one of the cops, who was unharmed as the blade hit his radio holder and left hip.
One officer drew his weapon while the other held a Taser, police said. Lasich allegedly swung the cleaver around briefly, threatening to kill the police officers, before getting caught on the screen from her window. She eventually listened to the cops' commands and laid on the ground.
Police took her into custody, during which time Lasich thanked them, according to authorities.
"Thank God you are here! They've been coming to kill me all day!" she said, the report says.
The 61-year-old has not been charged.
From: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/10/13/2010-10-13_topless_woman_61_attacks_police_in_portland_with_large_meat_cleaver_cops.html
Fairfield Mom Stabbed Kids With Sword
FAIRFIELD, Calif. (CBS13) ― A Fairfield mother is facing murder charges after allegedly stabbing two twin toddlers to death in an apartment and then setting a fire, authorities said.
The Fairfield Police Department said firefighters responded to a fire alarm at 10:46 p.m. Tuesday night on the 3000 block of North Texas Street, finding two dead three-year-old girls who appeared to be suffering from traumatic wounds.
The toddlers' mother, 28-year-old Christine McCarrick, was found wounded from several lacerations that were apparently self-inflicted, authorities said.
A source within the investigation told CBS13 that McCarrick allegedly stabbed the girls with a sword, cutting their throats.
The source also said McCarrick cut her own throat with the sword but survived. Firefighters had difficulty entering the apartment when the call was first made because the victims were placed against the front door, blocking the entrance.
A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said neighbors tried to kick the door down but were unable to save the children.
The step-grandfather of the two dead girls didn't want to comment on the arrest, but said he will always remember the toddlers and was "praying for their souls."
"Both beautiful, very smart, very loving," Ralph Wuerker said.
McCarrick has been charged with two counts of murder, two counts of child abuse resulting in death, arson and destruction of evidence.
From: http://cbs13.com/local/twin.toddlers.killed.2.1960168.html
10 killed in stampede at goat sacrifice festival
Posted 10/17/2010
At least 10 people died in a stampede at a temple in the eastern Indian state of Bihar where tens of thousands of devotees had gathered for an annual Hindu festival, police said.
Another 15 people were injured in the stampede, which occurred late Saturday (local time) outside a temple in Banka district, some 200 kilometres from Patna, the state capital, senior police officer P K Thakur said.
The victims had gathered to witness the traditional sacrifice of goats, Mr Thakur said, adding 40,000 devotees had thronged the temple at the time of the stampede.
Four women were among those killed.
The state government offered compensation to relatives of those killed at the temple, where celebrations were marking Durga Puga, one of the major Hindu festivals.
Stampedes at public events in India are common as large numbers of people crowd into congested areas. Panic can spread quickly and, with few safety regulations in place, the result is often lethal.
In March, police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh blamed lax safety for the deaths of 63 people - all of them women and children - in a stampede outside a Hindu temple.
From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/17/3040526.htm
At least 10 people died in a stampede at a temple in the eastern Indian state of Bihar where tens of thousands of devotees had gathered for an annual Hindu festival, police said.
Another 15 people were injured in the stampede, which occurred late Saturday (local time) outside a temple in Banka district, some 200 kilometres from Patna, the state capital, senior police officer P K Thakur said.
The victims had gathered to witness the traditional sacrifice of goats, Mr Thakur said, adding 40,000 devotees had thronged the temple at the time of the stampede.
Four women were among those killed.
The state government offered compensation to relatives of those killed at the temple, where celebrations were marking Durga Puga, one of the major Hindu festivals.
Stampedes at public events in India are common as large numbers of people crowd into congested areas. Panic can spread quickly and, with few safety regulations in place, the result is often lethal.
In March, police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh blamed lax safety for the deaths of 63 people - all of them women and children - in a stampede outside a Hindu temple.
From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/17/3040526.htm
1 killed, 1 injured after being struck by furniture delivery truck
Chris Jose | Web Staff KDVR Denver
9:50 PM MDT, October 16, 2010
ARAPAHOE COUNTY- Authorities say one woman was killed and another left injured after being struck by a furniture truck that was backing up near a community mailbox Saturday afternoon.
At about 1 p.m., deputies responded to the 7100 block of East Briarwood Drive to investigate a report of an injury accident.
According to investigators two women were standing near a community mailbox when the furniture delivery truck, backing eastbound on East Briarwood Drive, struck both of the victims.
"I heard the screams and that's when I came," said Ernie Medina, a witness.
They fell to the ground and 62-year-old Margaret Ann Hermansen, was hit by the rear wheels of the truck.
Frantically, Medina ran to their aid and called 9-1-1.
"I'm yelling at this guy to stop, but he wasn't stopping right away. So, the truck was kind of dragging the ladies," said Medina. "They were half way between the truck when he finally stopped."
Both were transported to Littleton Hospital, where Hermansen was pronounced dead. A 70-year-old victim was treated for minor injuries.
Deputies are investigating the case, but no arrests have made.
Investigators say the driver is cooperating with the investigation.
From: http://www.kwgn.com/news/kdvr-fatal-truck-accident-txt,0,1490305.story
9:50 PM MDT, October 16, 2010
ARAPAHOE COUNTY- Authorities say one woman was killed and another left injured after being struck by a furniture truck that was backing up near a community mailbox Saturday afternoon.
At about 1 p.m., deputies responded to the 7100 block of East Briarwood Drive to investigate a report of an injury accident.
According to investigators two women were standing near a community mailbox when the furniture delivery truck, backing eastbound on East Briarwood Drive, struck both of the victims.
"I heard the screams and that's when I came," said Ernie Medina, a witness.
They fell to the ground and 62-year-old Margaret Ann Hermansen, was hit by the rear wheels of the truck.
Frantically, Medina ran to their aid and called 9-1-1.
"I'm yelling at this guy to stop, but he wasn't stopping right away. So, the truck was kind of dragging the ladies," said Medina. "They were half way between the truck when he finally stopped."
Both were transported to Littleton Hospital, where Hermansen was pronounced dead. A 70-year-old victim was treated for minor injuries.
Deputies are investigating the case, but no arrests have made.
Investigators say the driver is cooperating with the investigation.
From: http://www.kwgn.com/news/kdvr-fatal-truck-accident-txt,0,1490305.story
Friday, October 15, 2010
'Depraved' gang leader who forced 91-year-old woman to perform sex act on her elderly carer is jailed indefinitely
Last updated at 4:14 PM on 14th October 2010
A depraved gang leader who filmed himself humiliating a 91-year-old woman and her carer at knife-point has been jailed indefinitely for an attack that filled a judge with 'utter revulsion'.
Michael Lewis, 21, who led the Brixton Hill Blood gang in south London, is believed to have made the film as a 'trophy' to show other members.
The fiend broke into the 91-year-old woman's flat and filmed her carrying out sex acts with her elderly carer before cutting the phone line and threatening to return if they called the police.
Lewis, known as 'Joker 187 General' - 187 being the code for murder in the US - will serve at least eight years before he can be considered for parole after being branded a 'danger to the public'.
Sentencing him at Inner London Crown Court, Judge Roger Chapple described the case as one of the most 'sickening and harrowing' he had ever heard.
He said: 'It demonstrates that there are no limits to the depths of depravity that some will descend to.
'The reasons for your behaviour are to me entirely unfathomable.
'The ordeal suffered at your hands by these two women has properly been described as horrific.
'The emotional scars you have inflicted upon them are deep and permanent.
'I am faced with a defendant who, for no reason I can begin to understand, has committed behaviour of the utmost gravity.
'You were not affected by drink or drugs and have no disability.
'What you did fills me with utter revulsion.
'Having behaved in this way, there is a significant risk you will do so again and do serious harm to your next victim.'
Earlier Gillian Etherton, prosecuting, told Inner London Crown Court he had caused 'shock, terror and humiliation'.
'Through physical force, controlled aggression and at knifepoint he forced the younger woman to perform a number of degrading and humiliating sexual acts,' she said.
'He further terrified the two women by cutting the phone line and threatening to kill them a number of times.'
She said the carer had tried to fend Lewis off when he first barged in.
'She tried to push the door shut but he was too strong,' she said. 'He got behind her, grabbed her shoulders and as if he knew where she was going, forced her towards her friend's front door.'
He ordered: 'Don't scream. Open the door.'
They went into the resident's room and found her sitting on her bed. She told him to get out but Lewis growled: 'Tell her to be quiet, or I'll hurt you.'
The carer did as she was told and he assaulted her as the older woman continued to scream.
He warned: 'Tell her to stop, because for me killing is no fear.'
The carer led him to a jar containing £100 hoping to end their ordeal but Lewis, who continues to deny his involvement, kept going.
The attacks - captured on his phone - continued for several more minutes while the courageous older woman tried to fight him off with her walking stick.
'Her carer was shaking so much she could not stand,' Miss Etherton added.
He eventually returned his blade to his waistband and fled, warning: 'No police or I'll be back.' He stole money and the carer's mobile phone.
The shell-shocked carer began writing down an account of what had happened, before finishing her chores and handing over to the next helper.
She went home and took two baths but said nothing to her husband and continued with her own household duties.
The following day she went to the police but only to try and stop an attack on someone else.
She described Lewis' hunched stance and DNA tests on a body hair found stuck to some carpet tape led officers to him.
Mobile cell site evidence and CCTV from a nearby takeaway also suggested he had been very near the scene that night.
Paul Raudnitz, defending, said Lewis had a 'troubled and difficult' upbringing with a 'violent' father and a mother jailed for 12 years for drug trafficking when he was just 12. He worked occasionally as a security guard at music festivals.
Lewis, of Vauxhall, south-west London, was found guilty of false imprisonment, false imprisonment with intent to commit a sexual offence, robbery, sexual assault, causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent, assault by penetration and making threats to kill.
The women have not been named.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1320460/Depraved-gang-leader-forced-91-year-old-woman-perform-sex-act-carer-jailed-horrified-judge.html
Man arrested in murder with toilet seat
Published Monday, October 11, 2010
Buzz up!Authorities have arrested an ex-con who they say used a toilet seat lid to bludgeon an Athens man to death early Sunday then kidnapped and later raped a woman who witnessed the attack.
Investigators arrested 40-year-old William Thomas Valentine Jr. shortly before 12:30 p.m. this afternoon at his brother’s house in Oglethorpe County, police said.
He is accused of murdering Alfred Lorenzo Harris, 51, in the victim’s home at Garden Apartments on Spring Court off North Avenue.
Valentine also kidnapped a woman who witnessed the attack, then took her to Madison County and raped her, according to police.
A friend discovered Harris’ body at about noon Sunday, when he brought over some food, police said.
Investigators determined that Harris had been dead at least nine hours, and identified a lid from his apartment’s toilet as the murder weapon, according to police.
They quickly identified Valentine as a suspect and a judge signed a murder warrant late Sunday afternoon.
Valentine has served five stints in state prison, once for an aggravated assault involving a gun in Clarke County, according to the Department of Corrections.
Madison County sheriff’s investigators are looking into the reported rape while Athens-Clarke police detectives continue to investigate the murder and kidnapping.
From: http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/101110/bre_718909017.shtml
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
'Layabout' son, 35, stabbed middle-class parents to death after they found him in bed at lunchtime, jury told
Last updated at 5:34 PM on 12th October 2010
A layabout knifed his mother and father, a retired headmaster, to death in a frenzied attack in their living room after a row about him being hungover, a court heard yesterday.
Daniel Dighton was a 'fantasist' and 'pathological liar' with a double life who made up to friends that his mother had died, even inventing a funeral and a wake, and put on fake tan to pretend that he had been abroad, the jury were told.
While in prison after his arrest, the 35-year-old offered a fellow inmate who was a major fraudster £10,000 for advice about how to feign mental illness so he could get off the murder charge, the Old Bailey heard.
Dighton, an only child, was 'much loved' by Barry and Elizabeth Dighton, both retired popular teachers at the same private boys' prep school, but was a 'source of anxiety' because he had no drive and spent his days 'loafing around the house and his nights drinking'.
They had to lock away any cash they had in the house to stop him taking it, the court heard, and after the murders police found a note saying, 'Please don't take any more of our drinks, Danny.'
The day before the murder while out for lunch with his parents and grandmother Olive, Mr Dighton noticed that £80 was missing from his wallet and they all looked at Daniel but didn't say anything.
A regular at his local pub The Folly in Croydon, Dighton never told his friends there that he still lived with his parents and was renowned amongst fellow drinkers as a personality and comic storyteller.
The evening before the murder, Dighton went out drinking and on to a strip club until late.
The following day, September 30, 2009, Dighton and his parents were due to travel to their home in Normandy, France. The couple returned from shopping at midday.
Crispin Aylett QC, prosecuting, said: 'They came back at about lunchtime to find their layabout of a son still in bed with a hangover.
'A quarrel broke out, probably the sort of argument that perhaps you might expect to have with a teenager, less with a 35-year-old man.'
Mr Aylett said the routine argument turned violent.
'Arming himself with two knives the defendant stabbed both of his parents to death in an attack of brutal ferocity.
'He stabbed his father four times. His mother got by far the worst of it, She was stabbed over 20 times.'
A neighbour heard her screams of 'Barry, Barry. No, no,' and then 'growling noise' from a male voice and called police who arrived within minutes.
They found Mr Dighton, 61, slumped in the armchair and Mrs Dighton, 60, lying on the floor, both dead.
Dighton was found in the loft, having just finished a cigarette.
As he was arrested, he said: 'It's just an argument that got out of hand. I don't normally lose my rag like that. I wish I could turn back time.'
Dighton lived with his parents all his life, save for a brief failed stint in a flat which his parents had bought for him in a bid to help him strike out by himself.
He first got a job as an assistant caretaker at Elmhurst School for Boys in Croydon, South London where his father was headmaster until his retirement in 2006 and was then promoted to teaching assistant.
But he resigned last July after getting a job to teach at a school in Thailand.
The job fell through but unable to face the humiliation of telling his friends at The Folly, Dighton pretended that he had gone to Thailand anyway and sending them text messages from abroad.
To their surprise, he returned four weeks later, announcing that he was back in the country because his mother had died and told them where the funeral and wake would be held.
His friends organised a 'whip round' for a wreath and one of them ended up driving round every church in the area unable to find the funeral.
A group of them then went to the venue for the wake to find there was no booking.
To their puzzlement, Dighton arrived at the pub later that day wearing a dark suit, telling them that the funeral had gone as well as expected.
The next day he pretended to jet back to Thailand, sending a text to a friend that it was '80 degrees and he was off to see his girlfriend' who didn't exist.
A fortnight later at the end of August, Dighton returned to the pub again and told his friends that the job hadn't worked out.
His mother, who knew he was using fake tan because of the dirty bedsheets, kept his secret for him.
Dighton denies murder but admits murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
The trial continues.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319848/Son-35-stabbed-parents-death-bed-hangover.html
Jemez Pueblo man accused of gruesome murder
Crime/Justice - Criminal Cases
Albuquerque, New Mexico (AP) October 2010
A 22-year-old Jemez Pueblo man is facing a murder charge in the gruesome stabbing death of a fellow tribal member.
Federal prosecutors have accused Lucas Toledo of killing 21-year-old Matthew Panana in the early hours of Sept. 29 outside his home on the Jemez reservation after Panana repeated knocked on his window while he tried to sleep.
A criminal complaint alleges that Toledo stabbed Panana with a box-cutter razor and a kitchen knife before repeatedly striking him with a shovel, stabbing his face and then slashing his throat and abdomen.
Toledo is also accused of pulling out handfuls of Panana’s entrails and throwing them on Panana’s body and wrapping some of them around the victim’s neck.
Toledo was taken into federal custody.
A trial date has not been set.
From: http://indiancountrynews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10181&Itemid=109
Albuquerque, New Mexico (AP) October 2010
A 22-year-old Jemez Pueblo man is facing a murder charge in the gruesome stabbing death of a fellow tribal member.
Federal prosecutors have accused Lucas Toledo of killing 21-year-old Matthew Panana in the early hours of Sept. 29 outside his home on the Jemez reservation after Panana repeated knocked on his window while he tried to sleep.
A criminal complaint alleges that Toledo stabbed Panana with a box-cutter razor and a kitchen knife before repeatedly striking him with a shovel, stabbing his face and then slashing his throat and abdomen.
Toledo is also accused of pulling out handfuls of Panana’s entrails and throwing them on Panana’s body and wrapping some of them around the victim’s neck.
Toledo was taken into federal custody.
A trial date has not been set.
From: http://indiancountrynews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10181&Itemid=109
Trio guilty of Ben Gardner 'Halloween hat' murder
Three men have been found guilty of murdering an IT worker on Halloween in a row over his girlfriend's hat.
Ben Gardner, 30, was punched and kicked in Sutton, south London, in October 2009 after the hat was snatched.
Allanna Devine, 28, was also punched as her boyfriend lay injured. The attack happened after Ms Devine asked for her hat back, the Old Bailey heard.
Daniel Ransom and Ross Collender, both 21, and Jordan Dixon, 18, of Carshalton, had denied murder.
Mr Gardner, who worked for insurance firm Legal & General, had been to a club with Ms Devine to celebrate her birthday.
In the early hours of the morning, Ms Devine was waiting for him outside a kebab shop when a group of men snatched a pirate's hat and black wig she was wearing, the court heard.
'Like a penalty kick'
They did not react to the provocation.
But later in the evening as they returned to Ms Devine's home they saw the group loitering, the court heard.
When she asked for the hat back she was verbally abused.
Collender then "suddenly and unexpectedly" punched Mr Gardner in the face. He was also punched by Dixon, falling on to his back in the road.
It was described by witnesses as being like a "penalty kick" and Mr Gardner died on 1 November from catastrophic brain damage.
Mr Gardner's father, David, said, in a statement which was read out in court: "I cannot forgive these people for what they have done, they have destroyed me and my family for the rest of our lives."
A further statement from the family after the verdict, added: "We are satisfied with the verdict today as Ben has been deprived of his life and it's only right that these murderers should be deprived of enjoying their lives."
Outside court, Det Insp Bob Campany said: "This tragic case highlights just how easy the transition from anti-social behaviour to standing trial at the Old Bailey for murdering another human being really is.
"Sadly, the stage is set every Friday and Saturday night for innocent young lives, like Ben's, to be taken in this way.
"Some young men are just hell-bent on violence, usually when under the influence of drink or drugs or a combination of both, and they plague our town centres."
Ransom, Collender and Dixon were remanded in custody to be sentenced on Friday.
Judge Richard Hone said they would be jailed for life but he had to fix a minimum sentence.
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11501043
Teenage mother of baby found at Fleet station sentenced
12 October 2010 Last updated at 16:48 GMT
A 16-year-old stabbed her newborn baby to death while in shock after giving birth without realising she had been pregnant, a court has heard.
The baby was found in a rubbish bin at Fleet railway station, wrapped in towels and several bags on 26 May.
Winchester Crown Court heard the baby had suffered 27 stab wounds caused by a pen knife.
The girl, now aged 17, who had admitted infanticide, was sentenced to a 12-month community supervision order.
The young mother, who cannot be named because of her age, was also sentenced to a youth rehabilitation order.
She was not required to sit in the dock during the hearing earlier.
Distinctive bag
Sentencing, Judge Mr Justice John Royce, said the girl must have given birth in "thoroughly frightening circumstances."
"You have to live with that and that is a heavy burden to carry," he said.
"But the law recognises that people in a similar predicament do, on occasions, kill their offspring while the balance of their mind is disturbed.
"The law recognises it is important for the court to act in a constructive way and mercifully rather than concentrate on the punishment.
"You are fortunate that you have two totally supportive parents."
Kerry Maylin, prosecuting, told the court the baby had suffered 27 stab wounds, many of them superficial injuries, caused by a pen knife with a 3cm blade.
'Shame and horror'
She said the teenager, who was also sentenced to a youth rehabilitation order, was traced by a distinctive bag used to contain the body which was recognised by the girl's parents.
Ms Maylin said: "The parents acted with great composure by telephoning the police and taking their daughter to hospital to ensure she got appropriate medical attention.
"She appeared to have been genuinely unaware of her pregnancy, she had no real criminal intent and her actions were driven out of panic and emotional and physical shock."
Defending, Laura Brickman said the girl wanted to make clear "the profound shame and horror" she felt at having committed the offence.
"This incident is one she will never forget, as time progresses her memory may not fade and become more vivid," she added.
"The concern is if she were to give birth again, her memories may come back again and there may be need for psychiatric assistance."
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11526492
A 16-year-old stabbed her newborn baby to death while in shock after giving birth without realising she had been pregnant, a court has heard.
The baby was found in a rubbish bin at Fleet railway station, wrapped in towels and several bags on 26 May.
Winchester Crown Court heard the baby had suffered 27 stab wounds caused by a pen knife.
The girl, now aged 17, who had admitted infanticide, was sentenced to a 12-month community supervision order.
The young mother, who cannot be named because of her age, was also sentenced to a youth rehabilitation order.
She was not required to sit in the dock during the hearing earlier.
Distinctive bag
Sentencing, Judge Mr Justice John Royce, said the girl must have given birth in "thoroughly frightening circumstances."
"You have to live with that and that is a heavy burden to carry," he said.
"But the law recognises that people in a similar predicament do, on occasions, kill their offspring while the balance of their mind is disturbed.
"The law recognises it is important for the court to act in a constructive way and mercifully rather than concentrate on the punishment.
"You are fortunate that you have two totally supportive parents."
Kerry Maylin, prosecuting, told the court the baby had suffered 27 stab wounds, many of them superficial injuries, caused by a pen knife with a 3cm blade.
'Shame and horror'
She said the teenager, who was also sentenced to a youth rehabilitation order, was traced by a distinctive bag used to contain the body which was recognised by the girl's parents.
Ms Maylin said: "The parents acted with great composure by telephoning the police and taking their daughter to hospital to ensure she got appropriate medical attention.
"She appeared to have been genuinely unaware of her pregnancy, she had no real criminal intent and her actions were driven out of panic and emotional and physical shock."
Defending, Laura Brickman said the girl wanted to make clear "the profound shame and horror" she felt at having committed the offence.
"This incident is one she will never forget, as time progresses her memory may not fade and become more vivid," she added.
"The concern is if she were to give birth again, her memories may come back again and there may be need for psychiatric assistance."
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11526492
Man accused of killing girlfriend in Pasco says he did it and he's glad
By Drew Harwell, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Tuesday, October 12, 2010
HOLIDAY — The man charged with brutally murdering and raping the 22-year-old mother of his son said he feels neither sadness nor remorse.
"I have never been more at peace with myself, ever," Thomas Cacacie, 26, said Monday during an interview with the Times at the Land O'Lakes jail. "I feel like now she's in a better place. … I'm kind of happier now knowing no one else can touch her."
Cacacie was unapologetic during his gruesome retelling of the murder of Sarah Ann Capps, his longtime girlfriend with a past as dark as his. He said he loved her. He said he killed her. And he welcomed the spare accommodations of a life in prison — far better, he said, than his "out there" life as a heroin addict fantasizing of murder.
"I know I'm not going to die a junkie," he said. "For the rest of my life, the taxpayers are going to pay everything for me."
Cacacie said he punched and slowly strangled Capps about 3:30 a.m. Friday, a week after he had traveled from New York to reunite with her. He said he sexually assaulted her body, cleaned her in a bathtub and sent a picture of her corpse to a friend in Virginia Beach.
That woman's call to the police led Pasco deputies to Capps' Golden Nugget Drive apartment 10 hours after the murder. Cacacie had spent the morning outside in a white plastic chair, smoking a cigar and drinking a Coke. When investigators arrived, he was standing across the street with onlookers, watching.
• • •
Cacacie said he had beaten, abused and fantasized of killing Capps often during their six-year relationship. In 2006, on Mother's Day, Cacacie said, he nearly strangled Capps for having sex with another man. In 2007, he went to state prison for two years for domestic violence against her. And in 2009, after he moved back in with Capps, his plan to kill her before she went to work one morning failed only because he overslept.
In July, Cacacie checked into a Pasco mental health facility for depression and thoughts of murder. He told nurses he had left his job as a line cook in Crystal River to move in with Capps in Holiday, that she had promised they could "start anew and be a family," but that his dreams of killing her never went away.
Nurses at the Harbor Behavioral Health Care center in New Port Richey told deputies these types of threats were common among patients, but that Cacacie's seemed more earnest. He appeared, a discharge planner said, "very calm and very matter-of-fact." They alerted deputies, who told Capps of the threats. She said she would move within the week.
Cacacie was released that month. Due to patient confidentiality, officials at the Harbor could not discuss his case.
In his discharge report, Cacacie wrote, "I don't have any plans. But if I stay in the area, I will go back to my son's mothers house and take her life."
• • •
Cacacie said he and Capps met seven years ago — he was 19, she was 15 — as homeless kids on the streets of Tampa. He had run out on his adoptive parents, who he said beat and dosed him with psychotropic drugs. She had been kicked out of a Nebraska Avenue motel by her uncle, he said, for refusing to sell her body at a Circle K across the street.
Within a few years she gave birth to a daughter, Sierra, who wasn't his, and a son, Thomas J., who was. Both children were placed into state custody.
They grew closer as Capps entered and left foster care, Cacacie said, though their relationship was scarred with brutality and deceit. Cacacie, months into a heroin addiction, would lash out at Capps for going out by herself or seeing other men. The violence, he said, was "how I was brought up. I know how to scream and fight."
Cacacie had been arrested more than two dozen times, including once, when he was 14, on a charge of aggravated battery with a weapon. A 1998 judgment from his adoptive parents' divorce stated that he suffered from severe mental problems and needed long-term assistance to deal with anger.
Before Capps' murder, Cacacie said, he had moved to New York and enrolled in a drug detox program. When Capps invited him to stay with her, he dropped everything to move back down.
A month clean of heroin, he said, he grew bitter and angry when she went out to drink. He said he had packed his bags to leave again when she stopped him the night of her murder. She told him she wasn't afraid of him, he said. That's when he attacked.
"Once it happened, it was like, all or nothing," said Cacacie, whose arm bears a prison tattoo of a woman dangling a man-puppet who is being jabbed by two demons — an image inspired, he said, by his relationship with Capps. "If I'm going to f--- up, why not just f--- up with a capital F?"
Cacacie told detectives "if he couldn't have her, no one could."
"It's a thousand times worse to be a junkie than a murderer," he said told the Times. Behind bars, he said, he and his family could know he was safe from heroin. "For me, out there — it scares me. I'm a junkie. There's comfort in this.
"I'm not using drugs or alcohol, I'm not fighting the police, I'm not raising my voice. Everything just feels so surreal," he said. "I can finally say it's over."
From: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/man-accused-of-killing-girlfriend-in-pasco-says-he-did-it-and-hes-glad/1127415
In Print: Tuesday, October 12, 2010
HOLIDAY — The man charged with brutally murdering and raping the 22-year-old mother of his son said he feels neither sadness nor remorse.
"I have never been more at peace with myself, ever," Thomas Cacacie, 26, said Monday during an interview with the Times at the Land O'Lakes jail. "I feel like now she's in a better place. … I'm kind of happier now knowing no one else can touch her."
Cacacie was unapologetic during his gruesome retelling of the murder of Sarah Ann Capps, his longtime girlfriend with a past as dark as his. He said he loved her. He said he killed her. And he welcomed the spare accommodations of a life in prison — far better, he said, than his "out there" life as a heroin addict fantasizing of murder.
"I know I'm not going to die a junkie," he said. "For the rest of my life, the taxpayers are going to pay everything for me."
Cacacie said he punched and slowly strangled Capps about 3:30 a.m. Friday, a week after he had traveled from New York to reunite with her. He said he sexually assaulted her body, cleaned her in a bathtub and sent a picture of her corpse to a friend in Virginia Beach.
That woman's call to the police led Pasco deputies to Capps' Golden Nugget Drive apartment 10 hours after the murder. Cacacie had spent the morning outside in a white plastic chair, smoking a cigar and drinking a Coke. When investigators arrived, he was standing across the street with onlookers, watching.
• • •
Cacacie said he had beaten, abused and fantasized of killing Capps often during their six-year relationship. In 2006, on Mother's Day, Cacacie said, he nearly strangled Capps for having sex with another man. In 2007, he went to state prison for two years for domestic violence against her. And in 2009, after he moved back in with Capps, his plan to kill her before she went to work one morning failed only because he overslept.
In July, Cacacie checked into a Pasco mental health facility for depression and thoughts of murder. He told nurses he had left his job as a line cook in Crystal River to move in with Capps in Holiday, that she had promised they could "start anew and be a family," but that his dreams of killing her never went away.
Nurses at the Harbor Behavioral Health Care center in New Port Richey told deputies these types of threats were common among patients, but that Cacacie's seemed more earnest. He appeared, a discharge planner said, "very calm and very matter-of-fact." They alerted deputies, who told Capps of the threats. She said she would move within the week.
Cacacie was released that month. Due to patient confidentiality, officials at the Harbor could not discuss his case.
In his discharge report, Cacacie wrote, "I don't have any plans. But if I stay in the area, I will go back to my son's mothers house and take her life."
• • •
Cacacie said he and Capps met seven years ago — he was 19, she was 15 — as homeless kids on the streets of Tampa. He had run out on his adoptive parents, who he said beat and dosed him with psychotropic drugs. She had been kicked out of a Nebraska Avenue motel by her uncle, he said, for refusing to sell her body at a Circle K across the street.
Within a few years she gave birth to a daughter, Sierra, who wasn't his, and a son, Thomas J., who was. Both children were placed into state custody.
They grew closer as Capps entered and left foster care, Cacacie said, though their relationship was scarred with brutality and deceit. Cacacie, months into a heroin addiction, would lash out at Capps for going out by herself or seeing other men. The violence, he said, was "how I was brought up. I know how to scream and fight."
Cacacie had been arrested more than two dozen times, including once, when he was 14, on a charge of aggravated battery with a weapon. A 1998 judgment from his adoptive parents' divorce stated that he suffered from severe mental problems and needed long-term assistance to deal with anger.
Before Capps' murder, Cacacie said, he had moved to New York and enrolled in a drug detox program. When Capps invited him to stay with her, he dropped everything to move back down.
A month clean of heroin, he said, he grew bitter and angry when she went out to drink. He said he had packed his bags to leave again when she stopped him the night of her murder. She told him she wasn't afraid of him, he said. That's when he attacked.
"Once it happened, it was like, all or nothing," said Cacacie, whose arm bears a prison tattoo of a woman dangling a man-puppet who is being jabbed by two demons — an image inspired, he said, by his relationship with Capps. "If I'm going to f--- up, why not just f--- up with a capital F?"
Cacacie told detectives "if he couldn't have her, no one could."
"It's a thousand times worse to be a junkie than a murderer," he said told the Times. Behind bars, he said, he and his family could know he was safe from heroin. "For me, out there — it scares me. I'm a junkie. There's comfort in this.
"I'm not using drugs or alcohol, I'm not fighting the police, I'm not raising my voice. Everything just feels so surreal," he said. "I can finally say it's over."
From: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/man-accused-of-killing-girlfriend-in-pasco-says-he-did-it-and-hes-glad/1127415
Westboro Baptist Church Lawyer: Opposing Cordoba House Is 'Un-American'
A member of the Westboro Baptist Church who represented the fringe church before the Supreme Court in a freedom of speech case on Wednesday tells TPMMuckraker that they support the right of Muslims to build an Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero.
"Of course" Muslims should be able to build the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center in New York City, Margie J. Phelps told TPMMuckraker in an interview Thursday. She said it would be hypocritical for the United States to not allow construction to proceed, and called opponents of the mosque un-American.
"We say we're the melting pot, we say you get to practice your faith according to your conscience with no restraint from the government, you have that liberty," said Phelps, the daughter of Westboro patriarch Fred Phelps. Margie talked about how important freedom of religion was to the nation's founding fathers.
"Why, against that framework, would anybody be so un-American as to suggest that Muslim Americans cannot worship their God according to their conscience," Phelps said. "Now it's a false religion, no question about that, but they don't have to agree with me on that."
The Westboro Baptists are no fans of Islam -- they burned a Koran on the anniversary of Sept. 11 this year and previously joined up with Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center in Florida. But they are fans of freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
"I think it is disgraceful [to oppose the Cordoba House project]... Priests rape children, but you'd let them build a Catholic Church," she said. "You get to pick your poison in this country, and it's not the government's business, and it's not my right to shut them up, it's not your right to shut them up, it's not anybody's right to shut them up. Let them worship their false God."
Reflecting on her oral argument before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, where she defended the right of her tiny congregation to protest with signs with slogans like "God Hates Fags" near military funerals, Phelps predicted a unanimous decision on her behalf.
Phelps, a part time lawyer who got her J.D. back in the late 70s at the encouragement of her father, said she had the "unique" combination of not only studying first amendment law, but also participating in the controversial protests which the case centered on.
Several court observers said that Phelps conducted herself well in court, even outperforming her counterpart arguing on behalf of the family of a Marine killed in Iraq in 2006.
Phelps said she wasn't surprised that some of the justices on the court characterized the signs her group holds as "obnoxious" and "nasty."
"I mean, there's three Jews and six Catholics on that court, and three of our signature signs are 'Jews Killed Jesus,' 'Priests Rape Boys,' and 'Pope In Hell' -- so we've got a little bit of a cultural conflict here," Phelps said. "We happen to think it's a bad idea for one priest to rape one boy, and we're going to tell the nation that when you do that, by a multiplier, you bring the wrath of God down on you."
"You've got 310 million saying 'God Bless America.' You've got 60 saying 'God Curse America.' That stinking First Amendment isn't worth the paper it's written on unless it protects those 60," she said. "There's a lot of people in this country today who are not just Bible dumb, they're history and government dumb."
Phelps said that despite the personal feelings of the justices sitting on the Supreme Court, she believes they will ultimately decide in her favor.
"What I honestly believe, is that as difficult personally as it may be or seem for some of them, they're going to rule nine to zero that the Constitution is still alive and well in this country," Phelps said. "They're going to have to ground themselves in a rich, strong history of jurisprudence and follow the law."
"That's nine people who know what the law is," she said.
A message left Thursday for representatives of the military family suing the Westboro Baptist Church was not immediately returned.
From: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/westboro_baptists_ground_zero_mosque_opponents_are_un-american.php?ref=fpb
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Jury hears police interview with admitted Kennewick killer
Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
KENNEWICK -- Araceli Camacho Gomez fought to get out of the car she was locked in before she was stabbed to death and her baby cut from her womb, said Phiengchai Sisouvanh Synhavong in a police interview in June 2008.
A Benton County Superior Court jury listened Tuesday to a recording of the first 35 minutes of a Kennewick Police Department interview with Sisouvanh Synhavong, who is charged with aggravated first-degree murder.
"I hit her. I stabbed her. This and that," Sisouvanh Synhavong is heard saying. "I don't know what went through my mind."
The interview with Detective Wes Gardner started at 2:05 a.m. after Sisouvanh Synhavong had been released from Kennewick General Hospital after initially claiming she just had a baby.
She told her story to Gardner with little prompting, saying, "I'm willing to confess and do what I have to do, instead of lying, lying, lying and getting smacked in my face at the end."
June 27, 2008, started with the purchase of a burrito and a decision to drive around Pasco, she said.
She had told her family she was pregnant and they were asking about the baby, which had been due nine days ago, she said.
"Everything was going through my mind," she said. "I need to have a baby. I need to have a baby."
When she saw an obviously pregnant Camacho Gomez waiting at a Pasco bus stop with her two children, she stopped and struck up a conversation, she said. Sisouvanh Synhavong offered to give the young mother some baby clothes later that day.
That evening she had trouble finding Camacho Gomez's house and called her from a mini-mart in east Pasco, asking a customer there to interpret for her, she said. The store was so close that Camacho Gomez walked out of her house, still holding her cordless telephone, Sisouvanh Synhavong said.
The young mother willingly got into the back seat of her car, she said.
"At first the killing part never went into my mind," she said.
Sisouvanh Synhavong planned to drive to her home in Kennewick, but halfway across the blue bridge Camacho Gomez "starts freaking out," she said.
She pulled off the road in a turnout just south of the bridge, got out of the car and climbed in the back seat, she said. Camacho Gomez did not speak English and was saying things like "vamonos" and "mi casa," Sisouvanh Synhavong said. The young mother also promised not to call the police, Sisouvanh Synhavong said.
Camacho Gomez began hitting the car window with her cordless phone and Sisouvanh Synhavong told her to stop, saying fixing the window would be very expensive, she said.
Sisouvanh Synhavong said she had the child locks on because she sometimes drove a young relative in the car and both of the women were trapped in the car. Sisouvanh Synhavong said she tried several times to crawl into the front seat so she could drive off, but was so large she couldn't do it.
At one point Camacho Gomez calmed down, Sisouvanh Synhavong said in a sometimes disjointed narrative. But then she freaked out.
"She hit me first," Sisouvanh Synhavong said. The pregnant woman was scratching her, biting her, pulling her hair and twisting her arm," she said.
Sisouvanh Synhavong had a knife in her first aid kit and took it out, she said.
"I just grabbed her," she said. "I did what I did."
Camacho Gomez was still breathing as Sisouvanh Synhavong climbed between the front seats and drove off, she said. But the young mother was "just slowly dying," she said.
In part of the police interview -- particularly as she drew a diagram to show where the turnout was -- Sisouvanh Synhavong sounded cheerful and even animated, but her voice grew soft as she talked about what happened next after she stopped in Columbia Park.
She cut the baby out of Camacho Gomez's womb and dragged her out of the car, Sisouvanh Synhavong said quietly and without further explanation in the part of the interview the jury heard Tuesday.
"Then I called the police officer," she said.
The day in court also included witnesses for the prosecution showing what they said had been found in Sisouvanh Synhavong's purse and recounting what she reportedly said to police, nurses and a doctor before she was interviewed at the Kennewick police station.
Among the contents of her purse entered as evidence was a baby bottle and a suction bulb of the type the prosecution said is used to clear out the airways of newborn babies. The suction bulb had blood on it, but defense attorney Dan Arnold questioned whether the blood could have contaminated the bulb while it was inside the purse.
The purse also had bloody tissue or gauze, mechanics' gloves and a box cutter, according to the prosecution.
Law enforcement officers testified that a knife and a cordless telephone were found in Columbia Park near Camacho Gomez's body.
When Sisouvanh Synhavong arrived at the hospital after telling police she had just had a baby, she was sweaty, bloody and marked with scratches, said nurse Alexis Montgomery. She also had what looked like a bite mark on her abdomen, Montgomery said.
She seemed "very calm for the situation," the nurse said.
In the emergency department, Sisouvanh Synhavong heard a baby crying and wrongly assumed it was the baby she had claimed as her own. She had a contented look and said that was her baby and he was OK, said officer Ryan Kelly, who talked with her at the hospital.
"Don't you think it is more important that the baby is OK than the lady?" Kelly said Sisouvanh Synhavong asked as he drove her to the police station. "If the lady was OK, I could ask her for forgiveness," Kelly remembered her saying.
Sisouvanh Synhavong's lawyers plan an insanity defense. The prosecution will continue to present its case today. Juan Campos Gomez Sr., the husband of Camacho Gomez and father of her children, has attended most of the trial.
From: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2010/10/06/1197904/jury-hears-police-interview-with.html
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
KENNEWICK -- Araceli Camacho Gomez fought to get out of the car she was locked in before she was stabbed to death and her baby cut from her womb, said Phiengchai Sisouvanh Synhavong in a police interview in June 2008.
A Benton County Superior Court jury listened Tuesday to a recording of the first 35 minutes of a Kennewick Police Department interview with Sisouvanh Synhavong, who is charged with aggravated first-degree murder.
"I hit her. I stabbed her. This and that," Sisouvanh Synhavong is heard saying. "I don't know what went through my mind."
The interview with Detective Wes Gardner started at 2:05 a.m. after Sisouvanh Synhavong had been released from Kennewick General Hospital after initially claiming she just had a baby.
She told her story to Gardner with little prompting, saying, "I'm willing to confess and do what I have to do, instead of lying, lying, lying and getting smacked in my face at the end."
June 27, 2008, started with the purchase of a burrito and a decision to drive around Pasco, she said.
She had told her family she was pregnant and they were asking about the baby, which had been due nine days ago, she said.
"Everything was going through my mind," she said. "I need to have a baby. I need to have a baby."
When she saw an obviously pregnant Camacho Gomez waiting at a Pasco bus stop with her two children, she stopped and struck up a conversation, she said. Sisouvanh Synhavong offered to give the young mother some baby clothes later that day.
That evening she had trouble finding Camacho Gomez's house and called her from a mini-mart in east Pasco, asking a customer there to interpret for her, she said. The store was so close that Camacho Gomez walked out of her house, still holding her cordless telephone, Sisouvanh Synhavong said.
The young mother willingly got into the back seat of her car, she said.
"At first the killing part never went into my mind," she said.
Sisouvanh Synhavong planned to drive to her home in Kennewick, but halfway across the blue bridge Camacho Gomez "starts freaking out," she said.
She pulled off the road in a turnout just south of the bridge, got out of the car and climbed in the back seat, she said. Camacho Gomez did not speak English and was saying things like "vamonos" and "mi casa," Sisouvanh Synhavong said. The young mother also promised not to call the police, Sisouvanh Synhavong said.
Camacho Gomez began hitting the car window with her cordless phone and Sisouvanh Synhavong told her to stop, saying fixing the window would be very expensive, she said.
Sisouvanh Synhavong said she had the child locks on because she sometimes drove a young relative in the car and both of the women were trapped in the car. Sisouvanh Synhavong said she tried several times to crawl into the front seat so she could drive off, but was so large she couldn't do it.
At one point Camacho Gomez calmed down, Sisouvanh Synhavong said in a sometimes disjointed narrative. But then she freaked out.
"She hit me first," Sisouvanh Synhavong said. The pregnant woman was scratching her, biting her, pulling her hair and twisting her arm," she said.
Sisouvanh Synhavong had a knife in her first aid kit and took it out, she said.
"I just grabbed her," she said. "I did what I did."
Camacho Gomez was still breathing as Sisouvanh Synhavong climbed between the front seats and drove off, she said. But the young mother was "just slowly dying," she said.
In part of the police interview -- particularly as she drew a diagram to show where the turnout was -- Sisouvanh Synhavong sounded cheerful and even animated, but her voice grew soft as she talked about what happened next after she stopped in Columbia Park.
She cut the baby out of Camacho Gomez's womb and dragged her out of the car, Sisouvanh Synhavong said quietly and without further explanation in the part of the interview the jury heard Tuesday.
"Then I called the police officer," she said.
The day in court also included witnesses for the prosecution showing what they said had been found in Sisouvanh Synhavong's purse and recounting what she reportedly said to police, nurses and a doctor before she was interviewed at the Kennewick police station.
Among the contents of her purse entered as evidence was a baby bottle and a suction bulb of the type the prosecution said is used to clear out the airways of newborn babies. The suction bulb had blood on it, but defense attorney Dan Arnold questioned whether the blood could have contaminated the bulb while it was inside the purse.
The purse also had bloody tissue or gauze, mechanics' gloves and a box cutter, according to the prosecution.
Law enforcement officers testified that a knife and a cordless telephone were found in Columbia Park near Camacho Gomez's body.
When Sisouvanh Synhavong arrived at the hospital after telling police she had just had a baby, she was sweaty, bloody and marked with scratches, said nurse Alexis Montgomery. She also had what looked like a bite mark on her abdomen, Montgomery said.
She seemed "very calm for the situation," the nurse said.
In the emergency department, Sisouvanh Synhavong heard a baby crying and wrongly assumed it was the baby she had claimed as her own. She had a contented look and said that was her baby and he was OK, said officer Ryan Kelly, who talked with her at the hospital.
"Don't you think it is more important that the baby is OK than the lady?" Kelly said Sisouvanh Synhavong asked as he drove her to the police station. "If the lady was OK, I could ask her for forgiveness," Kelly remembered her saying.
Sisouvanh Synhavong's lawyers plan an insanity defense. The prosecution will continue to present its case today. Juan Campos Gomez Sr., the husband of Camacho Gomez and father of her children, has attended most of the trial.
From: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2010/10/06/1197904/jury-hears-police-interview-with.html
1 Ohio school, 4 bullied teens dead at own hand
By MEGHAN BARR (AP) – 10/08/2010
MENTOR, Ohio — Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.
The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.
It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died at his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.
Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.
If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.
Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket — and laughed.
"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."
___
Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room.
"Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English.
At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.
Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic.
"Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."
Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her.
She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself.
When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.
Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana.
"Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile."
___
Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says.
He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class.
"It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges."
Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.
"They called him fag, homo, queer," says his mother, Jan. "He told us that."
Bullies once knocked a pile of books out of his hands on the stairs, saying, "'Pick up your books, faggot,'" says Dan Hughes, a friend of Eric's.
Kids would flick him in the head or call him names, says 20-year-old Drew Juratovac, a former student. One time, a boy called Mohat a "homo," and Juratovac told him to leave Mohat alone.
"I got up and said, 'Listen, you better leave this kid alone. Just walk away,'" he says. "And I just hit him in the face. And I got suspended for it."
Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007, two weeks before a choir trip to Hawaii.
His parents asked the coroner to call it "bullicide." At Eric's funeral and after his death, other kids told the Mohats that they had seen the teen relentlessly bullied in math class. The Mohats demanded that police investigate, but no criminal activity was found.
Two years later, in April 2009, the Mohats sued the school district, the principal, the superintendent and Eric's math teacher. The federal lawsuit is on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court considers a question of state law regarding the case.
"Did we raise him to be too polite?" Bill Mohat wonders. "Did we leave him defenseless in this school?"
___
Meredith Rezak, 16, shot herself in the head three weeks after the death of Mohat, a good friend of hers. Her cell phone, found next to her body, contained a photograph of Mohat with the caption "R.I.P. Eric a.k.a. Twiggy."
Rezak was bright, outgoing and a well-liked player on the volleyball team. Shortly before her suicide, she had joined the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and told friends and family she thought she might be gay.
Juratovac says Rezak endured her own share of bullying — "name-calling, just stupid trivial stuff" — but nobody ever knew it was getting to her.
"Meredith ended up coming out that she was a lesbian," he says. "I think much of that sparked a lot of the bullying from a lot of the other girls in school, 'cause she didn't fit in."
Her best friend, Kevin Simon, doesn't believe that bullying played a role in Rezak's death. She had serious issues at home that were unrelated to school, he says.
After Mohat's death, people saw Rezak crying at school, and friends heard her talk of suicide herself.
A year after Rezak's death, the older of her two brothers, 22-year-old Justin, also shot and killed himself. His death certificate mentioned "chronic depressive reaction."
This March, her only other sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose at age 21.
Their mother, Nancy Merritt, lives in Colorado now. She doesn't think Meredith was bullied to death but doesn't really know what happened. On the phone, her voice drifts off, sounding disconnected, confused.
"So all three of mine are gone," she says. "I have to keep breathing."
___
Most mornings before school, Jennifer Eyring would take Pepto-Bismol to calm her stomach and plead with her mother to let her stay home.
"She used to sob to me in the morning that she did not want to go," says her mother, Janet. "And this is going to bring tears to my eyes. Because I made her go to school."
Eyring, 16, was an accomplished equestrian who had a learning disability. She was developmentally delayed and had a hearing problem, so she received tutoring during the school day. For that, her mother says, she was bullied constantly.
By the end of her sophomore year in 2006, Eyring's mother had decided to pull her out of Mentor High School and enroll her in an online school the following autumn. But one night that summer, Jennifer walked into her parents' bedroom and told them she had taken some of her mother's antidepressant pills to make herself feel better. Hours later, she died of an overdose.
The Eyrings do not hold Mentor High accountable, but they believe she would be alive today had she not been bullied. Her parents are speaking out in hopes of preventing more tragedies.
"It's too late for my daughter," Janet Eyring says, "but it may not be too late for someone else."
___
No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program.
Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies.
But that's not so different from most high schools. Senior Matt Super, who's 17, says the suicides unfairly paint his school in a bad light.
"Not everybody's a good person," he says. "And in a group of 3,000 people, there are going to be bad people."
StopCyberbulling.org founder Parry Aftab says this is the first time she's heard of two sets of parents suing a school at the same time for two independent cases of bullying or cyberbullying. No one has been accused of bullying more than one of the teens who died.
Barbara Coloroso, a national anti-bullying expert, says the school is allowing a "culture of mean" to thrive, and school officials should be held responsible for the suicides — along with the bullies.
"Bullying doesn't start as criminal. They need to be held accountable the very first time they call somebody a gross term," Coloroso says. "That is the beginning of dehumanization."
From: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEpyXZfAYtTMJfExhdUiyljw45rgD9INEU2O0?docId=D9INEU2O0
MENTOR, Ohio — Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.
The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.
It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died at his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.
Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.
If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.
Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket — and laughed.
"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."
___
Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room.
"Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English.
At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.
Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic.
"Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."
Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her.
She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself.
When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.
Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana.
"Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile."
___
Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says.
He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class.
"It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges."
Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.
"They called him fag, homo, queer," says his mother, Jan. "He told us that."
Bullies once knocked a pile of books out of his hands on the stairs, saying, "'Pick up your books, faggot,'" says Dan Hughes, a friend of Eric's.
Kids would flick him in the head or call him names, says 20-year-old Drew Juratovac, a former student. One time, a boy called Mohat a "homo," and Juratovac told him to leave Mohat alone.
"I got up and said, 'Listen, you better leave this kid alone. Just walk away,'" he says. "And I just hit him in the face. And I got suspended for it."
Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007, two weeks before a choir trip to Hawaii.
His parents asked the coroner to call it "bullicide." At Eric's funeral and after his death, other kids told the Mohats that they had seen the teen relentlessly bullied in math class. The Mohats demanded that police investigate, but no criminal activity was found.
Two years later, in April 2009, the Mohats sued the school district, the principal, the superintendent and Eric's math teacher. The federal lawsuit is on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court considers a question of state law regarding the case.
"Did we raise him to be too polite?" Bill Mohat wonders. "Did we leave him defenseless in this school?"
___
Meredith Rezak, 16, shot herself in the head three weeks after the death of Mohat, a good friend of hers. Her cell phone, found next to her body, contained a photograph of Mohat with the caption "R.I.P. Eric a.k.a. Twiggy."
Rezak was bright, outgoing and a well-liked player on the volleyball team. Shortly before her suicide, she had joined the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and told friends and family she thought she might be gay.
Juratovac says Rezak endured her own share of bullying — "name-calling, just stupid trivial stuff" — but nobody ever knew it was getting to her.
"Meredith ended up coming out that she was a lesbian," he says. "I think much of that sparked a lot of the bullying from a lot of the other girls in school, 'cause she didn't fit in."
Her best friend, Kevin Simon, doesn't believe that bullying played a role in Rezak's death. She had serious issues at home that were unrelated to school, he says.
After Mohat's death, people saw Rezak crying at school, and friends heard her talk of suicide herself.
A year after Rezak's death, the older of her two brothers, 22-year-old Justin, also shot and killed himself. His death certificate mentioned "chronic depressive reaction."
This March, her only other sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose at age 21.
Their mother, Nancy Merritt, lives in Colorado now. She doesn't think Meredith was bullied to death but doesn't really know what happened. On the phone, her voice drifts off, sounding disconnected, confused.
"So all three of mine are gone," she says. "I have to keep breathing."
___
Most mornings before school, Jennifer Eyring would take Pepto-Bismol to calm her stomach and plead with her mother to let her stay home.
"She used to sob to me in the morning that she did not want to go," says her mother, Janet. "And this is going to bring tears to my eyes. Because I made her go to school."
Eyring, 16, was an accomplished equestrian who had a learning disability. She was developmentally delayed and had a hearing problem, so she received tutoring during the school day. For that, her mother says, she was bullied constantly.
By the end of her sophomore year in 2006, Eyring's mother had decided to pull her out of Mentor High School and enroll her in an online school the following autumn. But one night that summer, Jennifer walked into her parents' bedroom and told them she had taken some of her mother's antidepressant pills to make herself feel better. Hours later, she died of an overdose.
The Eyrings do not hold Mentor High accountable, but they believe she would be alive today had she not been bullied. Her parents are speaking out in hopes of preventing more tragedies.
"It's too late for my daughter," Janet Eyring says, "but it may not be too late for someone else."
___
No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program.
Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies.
But that's not so different from most high schools. Senior Matt Super, who's 17, says the suicides unfairly paint his school in a bad light.
"Not everybody's a good person," he says. "And in a group of 3,000 people, there are going to be bad people."
StopCyberbulling.org founder Parry Aftab says this is the first time she's heard of two sets of parents suing a school at the same time for two independent cases of bullying or cyberbullying. No one has been accused of bullying more than one of the teens who died.
Barbara Coloroso, a national anti-bullying expert, says the school is allowing a "culture of mean" to thrive, and school officials should be held responsible for the suicides — along with the bullies.
"Bullying doesn't start as criminal. They need to be held accountable the very first time they call somebody a gross term," Coloroso says. "That is the beginning of dehumanization."
From: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEpyXZfAYtTMJfExhdUiyljw45rgD9INEU2O0?docId=D9INEU2O0
'I hate myself,' says teen rapist sentenced to 28 years in prison
By Andy Sedlak, Staff Writer
Updated 3:11 AM Saturday, October 9, 2010
HAMILTON — A 15-year-old Liberty Twp. boy convicted of raping a 64-year-old woman was sentenced to 28 years in prison Friday in Butler County Common Pleas Court.
Alexis Ramirez, a former Monroe Local Schools student, sobbed and stared blankly at the floor as Judge Keith Spaeth handed down his ruling.
“I hate myself,” Ramirez said prior to sentencing. “People look at me as a monster. They have every right to.
“I’m guilty and whatever you give me, I’ll do it,” he said.
Ramirez could have been handed a maximum sentence of 83 years in prison for the nine felony charges. The teen, who is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, will likely face deportation when he is released from prison.
Ramirez’s victim, Phyllis Mays of Liberty Twp., who agreed to be named, and her family sat quietly in the back of the courtroom during the proceeding.
Josh Colon, a pastor who translated for Ramirez’s Spanish-speaking mother, Ava Ramirez, quoted her as saying: “Physically, our heart hurts for what he did.”
Ramirez was convicted Aug. 26 on charges of felonious assault, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, two counts of kidnapping, three counts of rape and tampering with evidence. He was also classified as a Tier III sex offender, which requires him to register with the sheriff’s office for the rest of his life.
Armed with a pellet rifle, Ramirez, who was 14 at the time, attacked Mays in the early morning hours of Jan. 11 after storming into her residence in the Countryside Mobile Home Community. According to police, he then beat her, raped her and forced her to drive to an ATM machine to get money.
When Spaeth asked the teen what motivated him to commit such a brutal act, Ramirez said he didn’t know.
“I thought she would be scared and give me all her money,” Ramirez said. “I don’t know what made me do all that.”
Son: Attack still has devastating effect on victim, family
The image is still fresh in Jon Feltner’s mind: Kneeling down on his hands and knees, scrubbing his mother’s blood from the floor of her Liberty Twp. mobile home where she had just been brutally beaten and raped by then 14-year-old Alexis Ramirez.
“I couldn’t believe the amount of blood that was shed,” Feltner said during a sentencing hearing for Ramirez, who was convicted in August of raping 64-year-old Phyllis Mays, who agreed to be identified.
The impact of Ramirez’s actions continue to have a devastating effect on his mother and their family, Feltner said.
“I have no faith at all there’s (anything) that can be done with Mr. Ramirez based on what I’ve seen with my own eyes,” he said.
Butler County Common Pleas Judge Keith Spaeth sentenced Ramirez on Friday to 28 years in prison without the possibility of parole. Spaeth said the decision was a challenging one because of the defendant’s age. Despite being a teenager, Ramirez was tried as an adult.
“This is a very difficult case for the court. It is a very difficult case for the parties involved,” Spaeth said before adding, but “a 14-year-old is supposed to have some value system.”
Ramirez was found guilty Aug. 26 of forcing his way into Mays’ residence in the Countryside Mobile Home Community in Liberty Twp. on Jan. 11, where he brutally beat and raped her. He then forced Mays to drive him to an ATM to get money.
Prior to sentencing, Ramirez’s defense attorney, David Brewer, asked the court to consider “what it’s like to be a 14-year-old boy.” He acknowledged the severity of his client’s actions, calling them “unspeakable” and “horrendous,” but he tried to convince the judge that’s not who Ramirez is today.
“I think society wants him to look evil, and that’s what he was (in January),” Brewer said. “But now the reality is, that’s not who he is.”
Brewer said he looks at Ramirez, now 15, as “a little kid” with low intelligence and no impulse control.
Ramirez himself tried to make the case that he’s different now.
Before the incident, Ramirez, a former Monroe Local Schools student, said he had people to drink and do drugs with, but no friends. He called that behavior “stupid.”
“I know I can change, but I can’t change what I did,” the Liberty Twp. teen said prior to sentencing.
Ramirez also penned a handwritten-letter to Mays that his attorney read aloud to the judge and the victim who was sitting the back of the courtroom.
“I’m only a low-life kid,” Brewer quoted from the letter as Ramirez stood nearby, sobbing, with his eyes fixed on the floor.
“One of the things I did was ruin your life ... I wish I could experience your pain 10 times worse.”
From: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/i-hate-myself-says-teen-rapist-sentenced-to-28i-hate-myself-says-teen-rapist-sentenced-to-28-years-in-prison-971509.html?cxntlid=cmg_cntnt_rss
NC Woman Arrested After Boyfriend's Body Found in Freezer
Wendy Edmond Green, 41, is being held without bond in the Wake County Jail on charges of first-degree murder in the death of her live-in boyfriend, 52-year-old David Reuben Green Jr.
Investigators had been looking for David Green since early September, when family members reported him missing. On Sept. 7, authorities conducted a search of the couple's Raleigh home but were unable to locate him, Wake County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Phyllis Stephens said.
"They continued to investigate, and went back out there [Wednesday] to do another search," Stephens told AOL News. "[Investigators] were looking around, and they saw a freezer. They opened [it up], and there he was."
Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison told The News & Observer that investigators detected a "powerful smell" during their second search of the home. The power inside the home had been shut off in August.
On Thursday, authorities found found Wendy Green living at a home in nearby Robeson County. She was arrested and taken into custody without incident.
A preliminary autopsy by the state Medical Examiner's Office in Chapel Hill found that Green died of blunt-force trauma. Investigators suspect he was killed sometime in April. Authorities do not yet have a motive in the case. Stephens said.
Although the Greens were not married, police say Wendy Green had assumed her boyfriend's last name. The couple had two teen children, a daughter, Alexis, and a son, David Reuben Green III.
Alexis Green, 17, has been incarcerated at the Wake County Jail since Sept. 16 on multiple charges, including contempt of court and failure to appear, stemming from a July arrest on burglary charges, WRAL-TV in Raleigh reported.
Stephens said 15-year-old David Green III is missing and investigators are concerned about his safety.
"We do not have a photograph of him, but I wish we did," Stephens said. "We may find one as we continue our investigation, but we would like to know if anybody knows of his whereabouts. Is he safe? We would like to know that."
From: http://www.aolnews.com/crime/article/wendy-edmond-green-charged-with-murder-in-death-of-boyfriend-david-reuben-green-jr/19666645
Killed by a temper tantrum: Wheelchair man plunges to his death down elevator shaft after ramming lift doors
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:16 PM on 8th October 2010
This is the horrifying moment a wheelchair-bound man plunged to his death down an elevator shaft after he deliberately rammed the lift door in a fit of anger.
The Korean man just misses a lift in a shopping centre after the woman inside pressed the button to go down.
As the doors closed a split-second before he reached the lift, the man, known only as Mr Lee, slammed his vehicle into them.
The 40-year-old just misses the lift, as a women presses the button to operate it
Mr Lee fell to his death after missing the lift at a Korean shopping centre
After bashing in to the lift door with his motorised vehicle, the door springs open and he plunges down
The 40-year-old pressed the button to no avail and the elevator left. Mr Lee then reversed his vehicle slightly and drove into the doors again, making a dent.
He reversed back for one more attempt. This time the doors gave way and he plunged to his death.
He is believed to have fallen about 19ft.
The incident, which happened in August, was caught on security cameras in the shopping centre in Daejon, South Korea.
Police said the accident was caused by Mr Lee’s anger at the woman not holding the door for him.
Shopping centre officials have vowed to strengthen the doors of the lifts to ensure the accident is never repeated.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318802/Korean-man-wheelchair-falls-death-missing-lift.html
Last updated at 11:16 PM on 8th October 2010
This is the horrifying moment a wheelchair-bound man plunged to his death down an elevator shaft after he deliberately rammed the lift door in a fit of anger.
The Korean man just misses a lift in a shopping centre after the woman inside pressed the button to go down.
As the doors closed a split-second before he reached the lift, the man, known only as Mr Lee, slammed his vehicle into them.
The 40-year-old pressed the button to no avail and the elevator left. Mr Lee then reversed his vehicle slightly and drove into the doors again, making a dent.
He reversed back for one more attempt. This time the doors gave way and he plunged to his death.
He is believed to have fallen about 19ft.
The incident, which happened in August, was caught on security cameras in the shopping centre in Daejon, South Korea.
Police said the accident was caused by Mr Lee’s anger at the woman not holding the door for him.
Shopping centre officials have vowed to strengthen the doors of the lifts to ensure the accident is never repeated.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318802/Korean-man-wheelchair-falls-death-missing-lift.html
7 arrested in string of anti-gay hate crimes, police commissioner says
By Marina Landis, CNN
October 8, 2010 2:32 p.m. EDT
New York (CNN) -- Seven people have been arrested and two more are sought in a series of brutal, anti-gay hate crimes against four men, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced Friday.
"Three victims were held against their will by as many as nine assailants who beat them" in a vacant apartment, and "the fourth individual was beaten and robbed elsewhere in connection to these attacks," Kelly said in a news conference.
The string of attacks, which occurred Sunday, began when members of a street gang calling themselves the Latin King Goonies learned that an aspiring member was gay, the police commissioner said.
According to Kelly, the 17-year-old pledge was forced into an unoccupied apartment around 3:30 a.m. Sunday and questioned about his contact with a 30-year-old man. He was thrown into a wall, forced to strip naked, hit in the head with a beer can, cut with a box cutter and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger, the commissioner said.
His assailants let him go, but threatened to hurt him or his family if he talked, Kelly said.
The victim went to a hospital for treatment, but claimed his injuries were from an attack by unknown assailants on the street, the commissioner said.
At about 8:30 p.m on Sunday, another 17-year-old was beaten and questioned about the same 30-year-old man, robbed of jewelry and held against his will in the same vacant apartment, Kelly said.
At 9:30 p.m., the 30-year-old man was lured to the location where that 17-year-old was being held, was forced to strip naked and was tied to a chair opposite the teenager, Kelly said. The teenager was forced to hit the older male several times in the face and burn him with cigarettes, after which the suspects assaulted him with their fists and a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat, the commissioner said. The 30-year-old man was later dumped outside his home, he added.
Five of the suspects then went to the apartment the victim shared with his older brother and let themselves in using a key they'd taken from the man, Kelly explained. They beat the man's brother and demanded money from him. When he refused, the assailants put a cell phone to his ear and he heard his younger brother say that he was being held against his will and to "give them the money," the commissioner said. The older brother told the suspects where they could find the money, after which they tied him up and left the apartment, Kelly added.
The commissioner said a search of the apartment Wednesday where three of the victims said they were beaten revealed very little. He said the suspects likely returned to the scene and cleaned the rooms with bleach and repainted the walls.
The hate crimes task force took over the investigation, Kelly said, and coordinated with the Bronx Gang Division and Bronx Special Victims Squad to help identify and capture the seven suspects. Pending charges against them include: unlawful imprisonment, abduction, sodomy, assault, robbery, and menacing, all as hate crimes, the commissioner said.
From: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/08/new.york.hate.crimes/index.html?hpt=Sbin
October 8, 2010 2:32 p.m. EDT
New York (CNN) -- Seven people have been arrested and two more are sought in a series of brutal, anti-gay hate crimes against four men, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced Friday.
"Three victims were held against their will by as many as nine assailants who beat them" in a vacant apartment, and "the fourth individual was beaten and robbed elsewhere in connection to these attacks," Kelly said in a news conference.
The string of attacks, which occurred Sunday, began when members of a street gang calling themselves the Latin King Goonies learned that an aspiring member was gay, the police commissioner said.
According to Kelly, the 17-year-old pledge was forced into an unoccupied apartment around 3:30 a.m. Sunday and questioned about his contact with a 30-year-old man. He was thrown into a wall, forced to strip naked, hit in the head with a beer can, cut with a box cutter and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger, the commissioner said.
His assailants let him go, but threatened to hurt him or his family if he talked, Kelly said.
The victim went to a hospital for treatment, but claimed his injuries were from an attack by unknown assailants on the street, the commissioner said.
At about 8:30 p.m on Sunday, another 17-year-old was beaten and questioned about the same 30-year-old man, robbed of jewelry and held against his will in the same vacant apartment, Kelly said.
At 9:30 p.m., the 30-year-old man was lured to the location where that 17-year-old was being held, was forced to strip naked and was tied to a chair opposite the teenager, Kelly said. The teenager was forced to hit the older male several times in the face and burn him with cigarettes, after which the suspects assaulted him with their fists and a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat, the commissioner said. The 30-year-old man was later dumped outside his home, he added.
Five of the suspects then went to the apartment the victim shared with his older brother and let themselves in using a key they'd taken from the man, Kelly explained. They beat the man's brother and demanded money from him. When he refused, the assailants put a cell phone to his ear and he heard his younger brother say that he was being held against his will and to "give them the money," the commissioner said. The older brother told the suspects where they could find the money, after which they tied him up and left the apartment, Kelly added.
The commissioner said a search of the apartment Wednesday where three of the victims said they were beaten revealed very little. He said the suspects likely returned to the scene and cleaned the rooms with bleach and repainted the walls.
The hate crimes task force took over the investigation, Kelly said, and coordinated with the Bronx Gang Division and Bronx Special Victims Squad to help identify and capture the seven suspects. Pending charges against them include: unlawful imprisonment, abduction, sodomy, assault, robbery, and menacing, all as hate crimes, the commissioner said.
From: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/08/new.york.hate.crimes/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Friday, October 8, 2010
Monkey steals baby from living room
A newborn baby girl has died after being snatched from her family's living room by a monkey.
Published: 6:00AM BST 07 Oct 2010
The four-day-old infant has been left alone for just a few minutes when she disappeared.
Her body was found shortly later outside the home in central Negri Sembilan state, Malaysia's Star and the New Straits Times newspaper reported.
The baby, who was found by her mother and grandmother, had bite marks on her neck and face.
Her father was quoted as saying a macaque monkey had been seen roaming near the house in recent weeks.
The baby's grandmother said that she was in the kitchen when the infant, who had not yet been named by her parents, was snatched.
"When my daughter-in-law placed the baby in the living room after bathing her, she went into the bathroom again to get something," she said.
"Just for the short while, she found the baby missing when she returned to the living room. We were all anxious when blood stains were spotted on the floor."
Ishak Muhamad, a state wildlife official, said that the monkey may have been attracted by a female pet monkey that the family kept in a cage.
"We suspect the macaque was rummaging for food inside the house. It could have taken the baby to the roof thinking the newborn was food," he told the paper.
"The baby died when it fell to the ground. The monkey had apparently released the newborn, probably because it was alarmed by the parents' shouts."
Malaysian authorities have battled a booming macaque population in cities.
From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/8047537/Monkey-steals-baby-from-living-room.html
Published: 6:00AM BST 07 Oct 2010
The four-day-old infant has been left alone for just a few minutes when she disappeared.
Her body was found shortly later outside the home in central Negri Sembilan state, Malaysia's Star and the New Straits Times newspaper reported.
The baby, who was found by her mother and grandmother, had bite marks on her neck and face.
Her father was quoted as saying a macaque monkey had been seen roaming near the house in recent weeks.
The baby's grandmother said that she was in the kitchen when the infant, who had not yet been named by her parents, was snatched.
"When my daughter-in-law placed the baby in the living room after bathing her, she went into the bathroom again to get something," she said.
"Just for the short while, she found the baby missing when she returned to the living room. We were all anxious when blood stains were spotted on the floor."
Ishak Muhamad, a state wildlife official, said that the monkey may have been attracted by a female pet monkey that the family kept in a cage.
"We suspect the macaque was rummaging for food inside the house. It could have taken the baby to the roof thinking the newborn was food," he told the paper.
"The baby died when it fell to the ground. The monkey had apparently released the newborn, probably because it was alarmed by the parents' shouts."
Malaysian authorities have battled a booming macaque population in cities.
From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/8047537/Monkey-steals-baby-from-living-room.html
'My mother is going to kill me': Anti-abortion billboard with a straight-talking message is causing controversy... and confusion
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 4:17 AM on 8th October 2010
A billboard advert that deals with the topic of abortion in a matter-of-fact way has been causing controversy in Wisconsin.
The billboard, in Marinette near the local high school, shows a pregnant young woman - her unborn child clearly visible curled up in her womb.
A speech bubble coming from the worried-looking woman says: 'My mom's going to kill me.' A similar speech bubble from the unborn baby says: 'My mom REALLY is going to KILL ME.'
The no-nonsense language of the advert by LifeCore - an anti-abortion organisation - has made some residents uncomfortable. Others have misunderstood the sign, thinking it has a pro-abortion message
The sign, which has been up for about two weeks and is scheduled to stay up for another month, has been getting a mixed reaction from people on both sides of the abortion issue.
Marinette High School sophomore Samantha Bosch said: 'It's a little awkward and offensive.'
And, in an interpretation that will alarm the organisation behind the advert, Miss Bosch added: 'It also gives off the statement that it kind of scares the pregnant people. Like, saying my parents are going to kill me when they find out - so the only thing I should do is get an abortion or something along those lines.'
Michael Ebert, the president of LifeCore - a pro-life organisation that paid for the advert - defended the message, saying: 'It's the way teenagers talk. If someone is out too late they say "my mother's going to kill me".
'This girl has gotten pregnant and she says 'my mom's going to kill me'. Bay Area Pregnancy Services provides alternatives for abortion and helps the girls who get into this situation.
'We have the message of what the problem is, and we have the message of where the girls can go to get help. No girl should have to go through this alone and they shouldn't have to have an abortion.' Ebert.
Another young female high school student - for whom the adverts are clearly aimed - agreed with the anti-abortion message, but not in the blunt way it was protrayed.
'I think it's very graphic,' said sophomore Marie Arnold. 'It could have been expressed in a completely different way.'
Others have complained about having to explain the billboard to inquisitive children.
But Mr Ebert said if a child was old enough to understand reproduction, the child is also old enough to understand the issue. A similar billboard is on display on Highway 41 just across the river in Menominee, Mich.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318711/My-mother-going-kill-Anti-abortion-billboard-straight-talking-message-causing-controversy--confusion.html
Last updated at 4:17 AM on 8th October 2010
A billboard advert that deals with the topic of abortion in a matter-of-fact way has been causing controversy in Wisconsin.
The billboard, in Marinette near the local high school, shows a pregnant young woman - her unborn child clearly visible curled up in her womb.
A speech bubble coming from the worried-looking woman says: 'My mom's going to kill me.' A similar speech bubble from the unborn baby says: 'My mom REALLY is going to KILL ME.'
The sign, which has been up for about two weeks and is scheduled to stay up for another month, has been getting a mixed reaction from people on both sides of the abortion issue.
Marinette High School sophomore Samantha Bosch said: 'It's a little awkward and offensive.'
And, in an interpretation that will alarm the organisation behind the advert, Miss Bosch added: 'It also gives off the statement that it kind of scares the pregnant people. Like, saying my parents are going to kill me when they find out - so the only thing I should do is get an abortion or something along those lines.'
Michael Ebert, the president of LifeCore - a pro-life organisation that paid for the advert - defended the message, saying: 'It's the way teenagers talk. If someone is out too late they say "my mother's going to kill me".
'This girl has gotten pregnant and she says 'my mom's going to kill me'. Bay Area Pregnancy Services provides alternatives for abortion and helps the girls who get into this situation.
'We have the message of what the problem is, and we have the message of where the girls can go to get help. No girl should have to go through this alone and they shouldn't have to have an abortion.' Ebert.
Another young female high school student - for whom the adverts are clearly aimed - agreed with the anti-abortion message, but not in the blunt way it was protrayed.
'I think it's very graphic,' said sophomore Marie Arnold. 'It could have been expressed in a completely different way.'
Others have complained about having to explain the billboard to inquisitive children.
But Mr Ebert said if a child was old enough to understand reproduction, the child is also old enough to understand the issue. A similar billboard is on display on Highway 41 just across the river in Menominee, Mich.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318711/My-mother-going-kill-Anti-abortion-billboard-straight-talking-message-causing-controversy--confusion.html
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"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."
"Being is substance and life; life manifests by movement; movement is perpetuated by equilibrium; equilibrium is therefore the law of immortality.
"The doctrine of equality!... But there exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice.... "Equality for equals, inequality for unequals" that would be the true voice of justice: and, what follows from it, "Never make equal what is unequal."
