Eideard

Streets closed around the federal building after the shootout

A dispute between federal immigration agents that left one of them dead and another injured in southern California prompted the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to travel to the scene on Friday.

Federal officials said the incident occurred during a counseling session regarding performance…

“The situation began … as an incidence of workplace violence involving two federal agents in their office space,” said Steven Martinez, assistant director of the FBI office in Los Angeles. “When the incident escalated, one agent fired several rounds at the other agent, wounding him.”

A third colleague intervened and fired at the shooter, killing him, Martinez said.

Kevin Kozak, 51, a deputy special agent in the Los Angeles area, suffered multiple injuries and is undergoing treatment at a hospital. He is in stable condition.

Federal agent Ezequiel Garcia, 45, was killed during the incident…

Must have been a helluva counseling session. Job evaluations can be a trying time.

Logan, Ohio — A man repeatedly shot his adult son and two sisters-in-law in his living room, killing them in front of his terminally ill wife, then fatally shot himself on the front porch as family tension about the cancer-stricken woman’s care apparently boiled over…

An earlier dispute about whether the woman should have been fed tea and toast or the orange her husband had peeled for her apparently set off the shooter Monday, 63-year-old Paul Gilkey…

The sick woman, 59-year-old Darlene Gilkey, witnessed the shootings from a hospital bed in her living room but wasn’t injured, the sheriff said. The family friction escalated into violence in the evening when Paul Gilkey went to a bedroom, retrieved a semiautomatic handgun and began threatening relatives, North said…

Gilkey, known as David or Dave because he went by his middle name, served a decade in prison beginning in 1974 for killing a man in Athens County in May of that year, according to court records. He also had a 1986 arrest for felonious assault, according to the sheriff…

Which didn’t keep him from having a gun in the house.

Darlene Gilkey was receiving hospice care through a company in nearby Lancaster, whose chief executive declined to comment Tuesday because of privacy restrictions. Investigators said she was taken to a hospital after the shootings rattled the normally quiet area.

I’m never surprised when people do something crazy and criminal. I am perpetually astounded over the candyass and cowardly politicians who are so cowed by the NRA and nutballs whose guns are grafted replacements for their sexual organs.

RTFA for the details.

Pierce County prosecutors have charged Anthony T. Clark with first-degree murder, unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of a controlled substance…

Prosecutors allege Clark shot 16-year-old Devondre Davis in the back of the head on Wednesday…

Clark gave conflicting statements about what happened in the apartment and to Davis.

According to court documents, he initially said he didn’t know why he was arrested. He later said he’d shot Davis but it was an accident. He then told detectives that Davis had arrived at the apartment with rock cocaine and a gun. Clark said Davis was near the bedroom closet because they were looking for Clark’s mother’s jewelry to steal and sell.

The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office has identified the the 16-year-old boy found slain in a garbage bin on Tacoma’s East Side this week as Devondre D. Davis…

Tacoma police arrested the man Wednesday after he asked some neighbors if he could put a dead body in their trash can in an alley in the 500 block of East 36th Street. The neighbors reported the encounter to officers, who found Davis’ body.

Unlawful possession of a controlled substance? Charge him with unlawful possession of a brain!

Cecil Coley – my hero

A shopkeeper who stabbed a 30-year-old intruder to death has been told he will not be charged with any offence.

Cecil Coley stabbed Gary Mullings, 30 – who was attempting to rob his flower shop in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester – in July. The 72-year-old was arrested on suspicion of murder after Mullings was pronounced dead in hospital…

Nathan Walters, 26, of Salford, Joseph Mullings, 25, of Liverpool and 19-year-old Kyle Mullings, of no fixed address, have been charged with robbery and will appear at Manchester crown court in October.

Coley, who was injured during the incident, was questioned by detectives after his release from hospital. He had been playing cards with a 60-year-old friend, who was also injured, at the time of the incident.

Police said a number of men had tried to rob the shop and that a gun had been found at the scene…

Nazir Afzal, the chief crown prosecutor for the north-west area, said he was satisfied that Coley was “acting in reasonable self-defence at the time”.

He said he had considered all the evidence gathered by Greater Manchester police and decided Coley should not be prosecuted for any offence over the death of Gary Mullings.

“It is difficult to envisage a more frightening set of circumstances than these,” he said. “Four men, armed with guns and a knife, forced their way into the shop as Mr Coley was locking up.

“Mr Coley received a number of injuries, including a serious facial injury, and his friend was knocked unconscious. At some point in the incident, one of the guns, a blank firing pistol, was fired.”

The sentence for armed robbery, for committing a crime of violence, life-threatening to the victim – should be life. Warehouse the bastards until and unless a jury of warders decides that any sort of rehabilitation has taken place.

Yes – we do a lousy job at that here in the United States and I doubt the UK is much better. That still doesn’t justify diminishing public safety because all the other institutions failed similarly.

An Israeli family has been given legal permission to extract and freeze eggs from the ovaries of their 17-year-old daughter, who died in a road accident.

The ruling by the magistrates court in the town of Kfar Sava sets a legal precedent in Israel and, according to a lawyer with 10 years experience in similar cases, is possibly the first of its kind in the world.

According to the Ha’aretz news organisation, the family of Chen Aida Ayash agreed for her organs to be donated following her death a week after she was hit by a car. She was declared brain dead on Wednesday.

They also petitioned the court in Kfar Sava, where they live, for permission for her eggs to be harvested and frozen.

Ha’aretz quoted a medical source as saying the family had requested that the eggs be fertilised with donated sperm, as embryos stand a better chance of surviving the freezing procedure than unfertilised eggs, but the court denied permission for fertilisation at this stage…

The Ayash family has made no public comment…

If you’re not harming a human being – and in this case you’re beyond any possibility of consent or denial – I think the courts should stick to parking tickets. Family is family and so what if her parents may not have an idea of what we they wish for the future – yet. Who is being harmed?

An off-duty Chicago police officer dressed up as a clown for a South Side fundraiser shot and killed a teen who held him at gunpoint tonight after the event, authorities said.

The officer…was in his clown outfit for a fundraiser for a day-care business. The event, attended by a group of 50 children, was near West 87th Street and South Damen Avenue.

At 10:10 p.m. after the event ended, the officer went to his car and a teen approached him, asking him for money, authorities said. When the officer said he had no money, the teen pulled a gun on him, authorities said.

During a struggle with the teen, the officer grabbed hold of the gun, opened fire and killed him.

The officer sustained minor injuries, according to a release from police News Affairs.

Don’t carry a gun unless you’re prepared to use it. Don’t pull a gun on someone unless you’re capable of using it. Don’t get close enough to let someone take your gun away – and use it on you.

In this case – I’d say instant justice was meted out.

American soldier [L], Iraqi translator [R] = same risks

An administrative law judge has referred a U.S. insurance company for criminal investigation after the firm failed to pay benefits to survivors of nine Iraqi translators killed while working for the American government.

Under a federally funded program, Chicago-based CNA Financial Corp. provides insurance coverage to contractors killed or injured while working overseas for the U.S. The slain translators were helping to train Iraqi police recruits.

CNA withheld information from the federal government and avoided making payments to the families who lost relatives in a 2006 attack, according to court files and interviews. One widow was unable to keep up the payments and lost her home after her son and other translators were ambushed by insurgents in the southern city of Basra, one of her attorneys said.

In a ruling last week, administrative law Judge Daniel Solomon ordered CNA to begin making payments to the families. In an unusual move highlighting the government’s concern over potential fraud, the judge also told the Labor Department, which oversees the program, to investigate whether the insurance carrier should face criminal charges. A Labor Department spokesman said the agency would “fully investigate” the allegations to determine whether to ask the Justice Department to prosecute the case…

Attorneys for the families said they believed that CNA withheld documents to avoid making payments.

“These were people who helped the U.S. in Iraq,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, an attorney for the families. “Their families were kicked to the curb when they were most in need of help.”

It will take a decade or so to complete all the revelations of corruption and war profiteering by the corporations invited into Bush’s war.

The Victoria County [Texas] Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate the shooting death of a 4-year-old Victoria boy late Wednesday night.

The boy, whose name has not been released, was fatally shot in the abdomen by a 5-year-old sibling who was playing with a bolt action rifle in the back room of their home, Chief Deputy Terry Simons of the Victoria County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.

The call came in at 10 p.m. from a home on Farm-to-Market Road 444, just south of Telferner, Simons said.

The parents were at the home at the time of the shooting, but the sheriff’s office is investigating to determine why the boy and his sibling were left unsupervised, Simons said…

The boy’s parents drove him to the Telferner Grocery and Market to meet with paramedics, who then rushed the boy to Citizens Medical Center.

The boy was pronounced dead at 10:31 p.m., Simons said.

Too sad. I think I’ll leave thoughts and comments up to you.

 
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed Sunday in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan and his body was recovered, President Barack Obama announced Sunday.

“Justice has been done,” Obama said in a dramatic, late-night White House speech announcing the death of the elusive mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the New York and Washington.

Obama said U.S. forces led the operation that killed bin Laden. No Americans were killed in the operation and they took care to avoid civilian casualties, he said.

“The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of men, women and children,” Obama said…

U.S. officials said that after searching in vain for the al Qaeda leader since he disappeared in Afghanistan in late 2001, the Saudi-born extremist was killed in the Pakistani town of Abbotabad and his body recovered.

Having the body may help convince any doubters that bin Laden is really dead.

He had been the subject of a search since he eluded U.S. soldiers and Afghan militia forces in a large-scale assault on the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan in 2001.

The trail quickly went cold after he disappeared and many intelligence officials believed he had been hiding in Pakistan.

While in hiding, bin Laden had taunted the West and advocated his militant Islamist views in videotapes spirited from his hideaway.

Besides September 11, Washington has also linked bin Laden to a string of attacks — including the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in Yemen.

This death alone does not mean victory. But, this death is a significant moment and hopefully may be the beginning of an end to a deadly chapter.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the IT geek’s tweets – Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual – who live-blogged the raid without knowing what he was watching. Getting away from the city for the day, relaxing in the mountains.

Police found a woman fatally shot in her Miramar apartment Wednesday evening, after receiving a 911 call in which someone said the woman’s toddler son somehow pulled the trigger.

Officers were interviewing a man who may know what happened, said Tania Rues, Miramar police spokeswoman.

Police would not identify the shooting victim until family members were notified. They also would not say what type of gun was fired.

Neighbors said at about 7 p.m. they heard one gunshot in an apartment in the Ashlar complex in the 8200 block of Sherman Circle North. Several Miramar police officers were already in the apartment complex when the shot rang out, searching for a missing 6-year-old who was quickly found unharmed, witnesses said. When the shot was fired, officers ran to the victim’s apartment and kicked in the door, said Abel Hernandez, 19, who lives in an adjacent building in the complex.

“The police brought out a small boy wearing a striped shirt and shorts,” Hernandez said.

Rues said the child, who was not injured, did not appear to understand what had happened. Police were trying to locate family members who could take custody of the child.

Yup. Let’s keep all our guns handy for whenever someone needs one.