Posts Tagged ‘murdered’
Manchester coppers failed to contact father about his son’s murder — before he read about his death on Facebook
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Police have apologised after it emerged that the father of a student shot dead in Manchester on Boxing Day found out about his son’s murder on Facebook.
Anuj Bidve, 23, was shot in the head at point-blank range as he walked with friends near their hotel in the inner-city Ordsall district of Salford in the early hours of December 26. The murder of the Indian student is being treated by detectives at Greater Manchester Police (GMP) as a hate crime which may have been racially motivated.
Assistant Chief Constable Dawn Copley, who has overall command for the investigation, confirmed that Subhash Bidve, the victim’s father, read a post on the social networking site before officers were able to get in touch to deliver the news first.
She said: “That is not the way anyone should have to find out something so devastating and we completely understand how upset the family are. Social networking is instantaneous and we have no control over when and what people post on such sites, but no one should hear such tragic news in this way.”
Fundamentalists in India kill Dalit boy over his name
A low-caste Dalit boy has been killed in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh for sharing a name with a man of a higher caste, police say. They said Neeraj Kumar’s father Ram Sumer had been asked to change the names of two sons as they were the same as those of Jawahar Chaudhary’s sons.
The body of Neeraj, 14, was found on 23 November in a field. Two friends of the Chaudhary family have been arrested. Mr Chaudhary denies the involvement of his family in the murder…
Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables”, are at the bottom of the Hindu caste system in India. Although caste discrimination is illegal, biases remain in many areas.
The latest incident took place in Radhaupur village in Basti district.
Both Ram Sumer and Jawahar Chaudhary have sons named Neeraj and Dheeraj and that has long been an issue between the two families, Sub-inspector Praveen Kumar said. Mr Chaudhary, who belongs to a higher caste, had given several warnings to Mr Sumer to change the names of his boys.
On 22 November, Neeraj left home after dinner to watch television at a friend’s house. His body was found the next day.
Police said he was strangled.
There is a great deal of this sort of backwardness threaded through the corruption that remains in the Indian democracy. In many ways, life in that young nation is not improving on the past. It’s criminal for a culture to retain bigotry on this level heading into the 21st Century – and pretending to have dealt with the question.
Always hang onto evidence: Coppers arrest man in 1983 murder
DA Gerry Leone initiated the cold case program after taking office in 2007
State Police arrested and charged a Holyoke man last night with a 1983 slaying, moving to close an investigation that had been open for 28 years.
The Middlesex district attorney’s office said Shawn Marsh, 46, of Holyoke, had been indicted by a Middlesex grand jury and arrested by State Police in connection with the homicide after evidence against him emerged through new fingerprint testing technology…
The case dates to Aug. 22, 1983, when Malden police, responding to reports of gunshots, found Rodney Wyman, of Simsbury, Conn., suffering from a gunshot wound at the Town Line Motel in Malden. Wyman was rushed to Malden Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Authorities said an immediate investigation into the case yielded no arrests at the time because of a lack of evidence…
The technology, including a national fingerprint identification database, had not been developed at the time of the homicide. The system was launched by the FBI in 1999 and contains the fingerprints, criminal history, and physical description of more than 66 million criminal subjects. It is the largest biometric database in the world…
Authorities alleged that the defendant and another suspect, who has yet to be identified, shot Wyman after breaking into his hotel room with the intention of robbing him.
Bravo. I’m enough of a CSI-freak as it is. But, re-opening and solving cold cases like this one are a special benefit of advances in forensic science.
Last Bloody Sunday march takes place in Derry
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Thousands of people have marched in what is intended to be the last Bloody Sunday march in Londonderry.
The marchers started from the Creggan area walking behind a banner carried by the families which read “vindicated”.
They completed the route begun in 1972 – the march usually stops at Free Derry Corner, but instead went all the way to the Guildhall. Organisers said they believe the annual event should come to an end following the publication of the Saville Report.
A statement said the protest was no longer necessary after the inquiry exonerated those who died in the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings.
It was signed by the majority of the victims’ families.
Some relatives of the victims have called the proposal premature. They broke off from the parade at William Street and finished their march at Free Derry corner.
Earlier, hundreds gathered at the monument for the wreath-laying on the first Bloody Sunday anniversary since the publication of the Saville Report…
Fourteen people lost their lives on 30 January 1972 when British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights march in Derry’s Bogside area…
Tony Doherty, whose father Paddy was…killed on Bloody Sunday, said he supported the ending of the march.
He added: “The vast majority of the families felt that what we had brought about, what we had achieved on 15 June, with the Saville Report as an exoneration, with the words of David Cameron, with apology and accepting political responsibility for the atrocity of Bloody Sunday, that it was now time for us all to consider moving on.”
Perhaps it’s time for some of the newspapers that supported the lies of various British governments over the years to declare remorse for their complicity. The way in which society as a whole learns of political events depends so much on the ideology of the owners of the media.
Whether some crass clown like Berlusconi is warping the news to support his quest for power – or Murdoch and Ailes are marching along on their merry dance in praise of 19th Century robber barons – too many people are willing to settle for a short answer and an aphorism from the Old Testament.
Collaboration is still a crime.
Congressional Dem shot, six dead in attack on community meeting
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot at a Tucson event Saturday morning; five others have been reportedly killed.
Arizona state Sen. Linda Lopez, who is at University Medical Center in Tucson, said she spoke to Giffords’ parents and that they said she is in the emergency room undergoing surgery and is in very serious condition…
At least four people are dead, University Medical Center spokesman Darci Slaten said. They were among five to seven people who were being treated.
The NBC affilliate in Tucson reports that the FBI has taken over the investigation…
Giffords, 40, a Democrat, serves the 8th Congressional District…
Giffords was re-elected to her third term last November. She was a member of the Arizona House and Senate before coming to Washington.
She first won election to Congress amid a wave of Democratic victories in 2006. In November, she edged a tea party favorite.
There never is a shortage of violent, ignorant thugs in this land who fervently believe they can enforce their political will upon the land by force of arms, assault and murder.
UPDATE: Jared Laughner is the name of the shooter, an Arizona resident.
Ah, the Middle Eastern tradition of pastoral life
While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around,
And glory shone around
But, then, there’s this -
Yesterday morning Salama Abu Hashish, 20 years, was herding his sheep and goats in Beit Lahya, in northern Gaza, when the Israeli Occupation Forces shot him without any warning. The bullet hit his back and went straight through one of his kidneys. He had surgery and was in the intensive care unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where he died at 5.30 pm. The IOF has not only taken a life away from the Abu Hashish family; it widowed a young woman and orphaned a baby that was only born the previous evening. Salama Abu Hashish had just become a father, but has not even been able to name his first born…
Riad Abu Hashish, the victim’s uncle, says that Salama regularly took his sheep and goats to the northern border area to graze. Yesterday, he was approximately 150 to 200 meters from the border when he was hit by an IOF sniper. As ambulances cannot reach the buffer zone without Israeli coordination, nearby scrap collectors carried Salama away on their donkey cart.
“This is all because of the occupation and the poverty it has brought to Gaza! He only risked going to the dangerous buffer zone, because there are no other possibilities for feeding his animals”, said Riad Abu Hashish in shock.
Killed by the allies our government serves and supports in unquestioning dedication.
Ex-con dies trying to stop Chicago robbery
Heroin addict Bobby Butler had vowed to turn his life around before. But this time — at the ripe age of 55 — it seemed finally to have stuck.
Just five months out of prison, where he had spent much of the last 20 years for a series of drug offenses, the fast-talking father of four was drug-free and church-going, proudly working as a telemarketer downtown and saving up to move into a new apartment with his mom.
His days on the street were done, he had told family and friends.
But as he walked home from the Central Park L stop in Lawndale at 6 p.m. Monday, the street claimed him anyway.
Gunned down by a robber as he ran to the aid of a young woman whose purse had been snatched, Butler died not a criminal, but a hero.
Chicago police search the alley where Bobby Butler died
“When he got out of prison we had a big long talk,” his brother, Jeffrey Butler, said Tuesday as detectives hunted for the killer. “He regretted that he wasn’t there when his other brother died of cancer, and he really wanted to make a difference — but he’d have helped this woman even when he wasn’t in his right frame of mind, before he got clean. It’s just how he was.”
Butler died of a gunshot wound in his chest during surgery Tuesday at Mount Sinai Hospital…
“There was one shot, and as the shooter ran away down the alley he was lying in the middle of the street, saying, ‘I can’t feel my legs!’ ” said a witness who spoke with police but asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.
Regular readers know I haven’t much respect for cons doing time for robbery and violent crime. And my tolerance for junkies is even lower. I spent too much hard time with both growing up in a factory town in decline.
But, yes, there’s always the exception, someone who deserves a chance to do better – and doesn’t deserve to die at the hand of some creep still stuck into a life of crime.
When they catch the thug who did in Brother Butler, they should throw away the key.
Pic of the Day
Guatemalan soldiers carry 1 of 3 coffins – part of a group of 72 migrants killed in Mexico
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Body of kidnapped mayor dumped in northern Mexico
Security forces have found the body of a slain mayor near Mexico’s richest city, days after he was abducted by hitmen in the latest attack on a public official by increasingly bold drug cartels.
President Felipe Calderon, who has staked his presidency on a faltering drug war, condemned the “cowardly assassination” of Edelmiro Cavazos, the mayor of a town on the outskirts of Monterrey, an industrial center with close U.S. business ties…
Cavazos, a 38-year-old, U.S.-educated mayor from Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, was found dumped on a rural road outside his town of Santiago. He was blindfolded and his hands were tied…
Alejandro Garza, the attorney general in the border state of Nuevo Leon, which includes Santiago and Monterrey, 140 miles from Texas, said Cavazos was shot three times and accused drug cartels of being responsible for the killing.
Nuevo Leon Governor Rodrigo Medina urged Calderon to send more troops to Monterrey and surrounding areas, echoing a plea from Mexican business groups published in newspapers across the country.
Medina said this week that Cavazos, who took office last year, was probably targeted for his efforts to clean up Santiago’s corrupt police force, part of a nationwide effort to curb endemic police graft…
Santiago, a popular weekend getaway for Monterrey residents, has also become a staging post for drug gangs smuggling narcotics north into the United States. Many capos have taken refuge in mansions nestled in surrounding hills.
RTFA for the details. Not the murder. That’s bad enough.
Reflect that there are enough people profiting from the dollars dripping from the bloody hands of these gangsters, enough landlords, crooked cops and politicians skimming their percentage of graft – to keep away honest jobs for honest people.
The model isn’t new. It was perfected in the days of Al Capone. It had to be stopped back then. And it must be, now.
Mexican candidate murdered while campaigning
A Mexican politician who was expected to win a state election has been killed on the campaign trail.
Rodolfo Torre Cantu, who was running for governor in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, was shot along with four of his supporters.
Police say he was on his way to a series of campaign rallies when his convoy was ambushed by hooded gunmen…
Tamaulipas has been the scene of a fierce turf war between rival drug gangs fighting over access to lucrative drug smuggling routes to the United States.
The BBC’s Julian Miglierini in Mexico City says Mr Torre Cantu had made the fight against drug-related violence his central campaign promise.
Our correspondent says that only hours before he was killed, Mr Torre Cantu told a rally that he wanted the people of Tamaulipas to feel safe and to be able to walk the streets without fear.
So much for campaign hopes and promises vs. corruption and drug gangs in Mexico.
