Posts Tagged ‘murder’
10-year-old gets 5½-year sentence for rape and murder plot
A 10-year-old Washington state boy was sentenced on Wednesday to up to 5 1/2 years in a juvenile detention facility for his role in a foiled plot to rape and kill a girl at his school and harm other children.
The boy was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, juvenile firearm possession and witness tampering in connection with a plot in February at an elementary school in Colville, in the state’s northeast.
Prosecutors said he pleaded guilty last month to all charges.
Stevens County Superior Court Judge Allen Nielson sentenced the fifth-grader to a minimum of just over three years in juvenile detention and a maximum of nearly 5 1/2 years, Stevens County prosecutor Tim Rasmussen said…
The 10-year-old boy will serve his sentence at the Echo Glen children’s juvenile center in Snoqualmie, Wash., 45 miles east of Seattle. As of Thursday he had already spent nearly 100 days in a local juvenile detention facility, Rasmussen said.
The boy told investigators he and his friend had planned to kill a former fifth-grade girlfriend because she was “rude” and “always made fun” of him and friends, according to court documents…
The 10-year-old had taken a Remington Model 1911 pistol that originally belonged to his grandfather from his older brother’s room, according to court records.
The boys had also packed ammunition and a knife, but they were stopped on Feb. 7 shortly after they boarded a school bus, Rasmussen said.
A fourth-grade student spotted the knife and reported it to a teacher’s aide, Rasmussen said. The names of six other targeted classmates were on a list the boys had…
Cripes! No doubt we can come up with any number of sources that influenced the young mind of this kid. How to commit such crimes; perhaps, including plans to escape punishment.
Who was supposed to be playing the role of educator and mentor to this child? Who had the responsibility for instilling a sense of right and wrong, good and evil?
What kind of culture teaches a child the best way to solve questions of love and sex – is with a gun?
World Press Photo of the Year – 2012
Click to enlarge Photo is the work of Paul Hansen
Gaza City, Palestinian Territories
Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and his older brother Muhammad were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their father Fouad was also killed and their mother was put in intensive care. Fouad’s brothers carry his children to the mosque for the burial ceremony as his body is carried behind on a stretcher.
Murder suspect sues for damages to home during shootout
A Utah man is suing his insurance company to cover the damage caused in a deadly shootout with police…
Matthew D. Stewart…returned a check worth $3,321.29 from his insurance company, Fire Insurance Exchange and Farmers Insurance Group, to cover a portion of the estimated $8,400 in damages to his Ogden, Utah, home caused during a drug raid, The Salt Lake Tribune said…
Stewart is charged with aggravated murder for allegedly shooting Webster Morgan Strike Force Agent Jared Francom Jan. 4, 2012. Francom was one of several agents to raid Stewart’s home on suspicion of a marijuana-growing operation inside…Stewart allegedly began firing at officers, striking and killing Francom. Stewart has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
Though Stewart’s lawyer said his client is entitled to the full amount of damages to his home, the insurance company said in a letter it is not liable for “intentional damage” done to the property.
Found guilty of a capital offense in Utah, you have the option of death by firing squad. Phew!
When will it end? 20 children, 6 adults, shot down in an elementary school!
CBS News is reporting that 27 people including numerous children have been killed along with the gunman after a shooting inside a school in Newtown Friday morning.
The scene is being called ‘atrocious’ inside Sandy Hook Elementary School…
According to CBS News, the gunman, who is believed to be 18 to 20 years old, got into an argument with people at the front office at about 9:41 a.m. People have to be buzzed in before entering the school and there is a camera to view whoever is entering the building.
State police said this is one of the worst shootings emergency officials have seen in a long time.
The children inside the school have been evacuated to the nearby Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire Department and reunited with some of their parents at this staging area.
Connecticut has called surrounding states for more medical examiners because they do not have enough to conduct autopsies.
Standing up for good sense, for regulation, for simple procedures to manage access to firearms is long overdue.
I’ve been a gun owner for years and still am – both handguns and long guns. There is no problem passing through a procedure which at a minimum evaluates a purchaser for criminal background, for mental instability, for being a danger to society. That doesn’t take a lot of data mining.
I absolutely reject all the stupid political rationales for existing loopholes, the silliness that guarantees profits before the lives of innocent people. It’s time for ordinary citizens to reject the fanatics who make unregulated gun ownership a religion.
It’s time, now.
BP gets biggest criminal fine in US history for Deepwater disaster
BP has received the biggest criminal fine in US history as part of a $4.5 billion settlement related to the fatal 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Two BP workers have been indicted on manslaughter charges and an ex-manager charged with misleading Congress…
As part of the agreement, BP will also plead guilty to 14 criminal charges…
BP will pay an additional $525m to the Securities and Exchange Commission over a period of three years…
The resolution with the DOJ includes a record criminal fine of $1.26bn, as well as $2.4bn to be paid to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and $350m to be paid to the National Academy of Sciences, over a period of five years.
Attorney General Eric Holder said its resolution “stands as a testament to the hard work of countless investigators, attorneys, support staff members, and other personnel”.
He went on: “In addition to the charges filed against BP, a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging the two highest-ranking BP supervisors, who were on board the Deepwater Horizon on the day of the explosion, with 23 criminal counts – including 11 counts of seaman’s manslaughter, 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter, and alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.
“The grand jury also charged a former BP executive – who served as a deputy incident commander and BP’s second-highest ranking representative at Unified Command during the spill response – with hiding information from Congress and allegedly lying to law enforcement officials.”
The executive, David Rainey, is alleged to have intentionally under-estimated the amount of oil spilling from the well…
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 workers and released millions of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days.
RTFA to be reminded of the enormity of this crime. And crime it was.
I worked in offshore oil beaucoup years ago. Obeying established rules and regulations, living up to oversight long established, severely diminishes the likelihood of a disaster like this. Greedy bastards out to squeeze every penny from the raw resources beneath the floor of the Gulf of Mexico bear the responsibility.
Every beancounter and corner-cutting executive is as guilty as any engineer saving a buck on board that drilling platform. And they all should be locked up in one of Louisiana’s famous garden spots – like the state prison in Angola.
Pastor kills fiancee’s daughter to indulge his necrophilia – WTF?
The pastor, ex-convict John D. White…confessed to killing Rebekah Gay to fulfill a fantasy of necrophilia, police said Friday. White drank four or five beers before going to the woman’s mobile home and repeatedly striking her head with a mallet and strangling her with a zip tie, according to court documents.
Police said White stripped her dead body but does not remember if he carried out his sexual fantasy. After dumping the body early Wednesday, he returned to Gay’s home and dressed her 3-year-old son in his Halloween costume, then later dropped him off with the boy’s father…
“He kept saying he’s a bad person, he’s a pastor, he felt bad for the people in his church. … I don’t recall him bring real remorseful at all with regard to the victim or anything else,” Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski told The Associated Press.
“He just basically said he was attracted to her, thought she was a very cute girl. It’s a crazy, tragic situation,” the sheriff added…
White was engaged to Gay’s mother and regularly watched her young son while she worked, said Donna Houghton, a church elder who had a role in hiring White three years ago to be pastor at Christ Community Fellowship. Church members, she said, were “absolutely floored” by the allegations.
Houghton said the congregation was aware of White’s criminal past when he joined the church. He was released from prison in 2007, after serving nearly 12 years for manslaughter in the death of a 26-year-old woman in Kalamazoo County, according to the Michigan Corrections Department.
He had previously been sentenced to probation for choking and stabbing a 17-year-old Battle Creek girl in 1981.
Members of his congregation say that Satan got to him. Looks to me like he never truly overcame the particularly nasty impulses that put him in the slammer a couple times previously.
“The devil made me do it” has never been a satisfactory excuse in my life and times.
What Tom Friedman means by Pro-Life – and why
Hard-line conservatives have gone to new extremes lately in opposing abortion. Last week, Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, declared during a debate that he was against abortion even in the event of rape because after much thought he “came to realize that life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” That came on the heels of the Tea Party-backed Republican Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois saying after a recent debate that he opposed abortion even in cases where the life of the mother is in danger, because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which a woman would not survive without an abortion. “Health of the mother has become a tool for abortions anytime, for any reason,” Walsh said. That came in the wake of the Senate hopeful in Missouri, Representative Todd Akin, remarking that pregnancy as a result of “legitimate rape” is rare because “the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.”
These were not slips of the tongue. These are the authentic voices of an ever-more-assertive far-right Republican base that is intent on using uncompromising positions on abortion to not only unseat more centrist Republicans — Mourdock defeated the moderate Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana in the primary — but to overturn the mainstream consensus in America on this issue. That consensus says that those who choose to oppose abortion in their own lives for reasons of faith or philosophy should be respected, but those women who want to make a different personal choice over what happens with their own bodies should be respected, and have the legal protection to do so, as well.
Libyan revolutionaries kick Islamist militia out of Benghazi
Demonstrators celebrate clearing out Islamist Ansar al-Sharia militia
An Islamist militia was driven out of the city of Benghazi early on Saturday in a surge of anger against the armed groups that control large parts of Libya…
A spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia, which some U.S. and Libya officials blame for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last week in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed, said it had evacuated its bases “to preserve security in the city”…
The invasion of Ansar al-Sharia’s compounds, which met little resistance, appeared to be part of a sweep of militia bases by police, troops and activists following a large demonstration against militia units in Benghazi on Friday.
Demonstrators pulled down militia flags and set a vehicle on fire inside what was once the base of Gaddafi’s security forces.
Hundreds of men waving swords and even a meat cleaver chanted “Libya, Libya”, “No more al Qaeda!” and “The blood we shed for freedom shall not go in vain!”
“After what happened at the American consulate, the people of Benghazi had enough of the extremists,” demonstrator Hassan Ahmed said. “They did not give allegiance to the army. So the people broke in and they fled.
“This place is like the Bastille. This is where Gaddafi controlled Libya from, and then Ansar al-Sharia took it over. This is a turning point for the people of Benghazi…”
Libya’s government had promised Washington it would find the perpetrators of what appeared to be a well planned attack on the U.S. consulate, which coincided with protests against an anti-Islam video and the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks…
Although Ansar al-Sharia denies any role in the consulate attack, the latest events in the cradle of Libya’s revolution appeared at least in part to vindicate Obama’s faith in Libya’s nascent democracy.
RTFA for a great deal of detail, chronology of events.
This revolutionary period still runs the risk of being subverted by thugs loyal to Gaddafi’s tribe and ideology. There is the danger of pro-government militias run by Islamists and even al Qaeda attaining positions of political power.
A period of immediate post-revolutionary turmoil is rife with opportunities for agents provocateur as well as the standard flavor of political opportunists who flock to a moment of critical change like greed-driven lemmings.
I wish those folks truly dedicated to building a better Libya nothing but the best.
NATO pullback heightens doubts about Afghan strategy
NATO’s decision to scale back joint operations with Afghan forces may protect the lives of Western troops increasingly targeted by “insider attacks,” but it raises troubling new questions about President Barack Obama’s strategy to stabilize Afghanistan.
After ramping up Afghan security forces at a breakneck rate to allow for a drawdown of Western troops, NATO is coming to grips with a rash of deadly assaults by Afghan recruits who turn their guns on Western allies. Muslim rage over a film insulting the Prophet Mohammad has further stoked the risk.
The White House and NATO leaders have stressed that the suspension of some mentoring operations announced on Tuesday is only a temporary step, limited in scope, that does not alter America’s withdrawal timeline. It applies to front-line missions involving units smaller than an 800-strong battalion, and even then, there will be exceptions…
But James Dubik, a retired lieutenant general who oversaw the training of Iraq’s security forces, warned that the move would undoubtedly act as a drag on training of Afghan forces, an urgently needed step to prepare them for the time when most NATO combat troops have gone home at the end of 2014…
How much of an impact the restrictions have depends on how long the policy is maintained, he said…
Marine General John Allen, who leads NATO forces in Afghanistan, said last month that about a quarter of the attacks can be blamed on the Taliban, both by direct infiltration of Afghan forces and coercion of Afghan troops to attack their NATO counterparts.
Other attacks are attributed to disputes between Afghan troops and their foreign partners, or chalked up to the violence that comes with the trauma of a decade of war.
And who gets the credit for that?
Bush and Cheney invaded. Obama followed the “guidance” of Pentagon types who said they could wind it down quickly and easily. Now, we all get to see how well that is working out.
Feds want to send veterinarians into Mexico — where the State Department says tourists shouldn’t risk their lives
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering sending federal veterinarians in Texas across the border into Mexico to inspect cattle, a practice that ended years ago over safety fears.
Government workers have come out against the plan, confounded as to why they would be required to work in a Mexican state under a travel warning by the State Department because of carjackings and robberies…
According to its most recent travel warning, the State Department urges U.S. citizens to “defer non-essential travel” to the Nuevo Leon, except for the major hub of Monterrey, which itself carries other warnings.
The closest major city to the facility is Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, a place known for the drug cartel violence that has been recorded there.
A lawyer for the government veterinarians along the border said the federal workers are unwilling to work there because of fears of being kidnapped or killed.
“Nobody is holding a gun to their head … yet,” said Bill Hughes who represents the National Association of Federal Veterinarians, which opposes the plan. “But USDA officials have told them in no uncertain terms that when they’re assigned there they better go or there are going be serious consequences to their careers, such as losing their jobs…”
Until March 2010, cattle inspections were routinely done in Mexico, but due to the rise in drug cartel violence along the border, U.S. authorities transferred inspections to U.S.-based facilities. During inspections veterinarians are tasked with clearing the cattle for fever ticks, hoof and mouth disease and other illnesses.
“The real question is, why would (the) USDA even be taking a chance? How much risk is acceptable to place its civilian employees into for even the slight convenience of having the animals inspected in Mexico?” Hughes said.
Idiots. Hughes says reassuring things about the bureaucrats considering this decision. All well and good. He represents veterinarians employed by the USDA. No need to jostle the flunkies who can threaten their jobs, their careers.
I doubt there is any portion of the US meatpacking industry that cares much about the safety of veterinary professionals compared to profits. They’ve already proven that by ridding their packing plants of American citizens and replacing them with undocumentados – cutting wages in half. Experience tells me that political pressure with an emphasis on pace and costs is motivating USDA bureaucrats to consider a procedural change this stupid.
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