Eideard

Two of Belniak’s victims – Denise and Gerard Bassi, dead

David Belniak had drugs in his system and never braked when he slammed into the back of a family’s car stopped at a red light on Christmas Day 2007. Three people died.

In August, Belniak pleaded guilty to three counts of DUI manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He never said a word in court, not even when the victims’ children begged him for an apology…

Now, he’s saying he’s not responsible for the crash. And he wants to be paid for his suffering…

The suit asks for the victims’ relatives to pay Belniak, 38, for his “pain and suffering … mental anguish … loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life” and the medical bills he got as a result of a crash he pleaded guilty to causing…

Georgette DeFranco lost her mother, Linda McWilliams, 66; her sister, Denise Bassi, 50, and her brother-in-law, Gerard Bassi, 51, in the crash. DeFranco’s stepfather, Ray McWilliams, was injured but survived. Family members said he never fully recovered and he died last March at age 68…

The crash happened about 2:20 p.m. Dec. 25, 2007…Authorities said Belniak was driving between 75 and 85 mph when his pickup smashed into the back of McWilliams’ Chevrolet Tahoe. The SUV crumpled. Gerard Bassi died at the scene. Denise Bassi died in surgery that day. Linda McWilliams was taken off life support a week later.

Authorities said Belniak had alcohol, Xanax and evidence of cocaine in his system.

Belniak had a history of driving infractions. He’d faced DUI charges twice before. One of those times, in 2003, New Port Richey police searching his Ford Mustang found a gallon of the intoxicant GHB, commonly known as the “date rape” drug. Belniak served 17 months in prison after pleading no contest to trafficking the drug…

Maureen M. Deskins, the Tampa attorney representing the estate of Linda and Ray McWilliams, said the lawsuit is “gut-wrenching” and the relatives are “stunned.”

“It seems there is no end to the pain David Belniak is willing to inflict on this family,” Deskins said.

One more case added to the sum of frivolous litigation that has become the American standard for lawyers. My friends who practice that craft with justice and honor are as embarrassed as our whole nation must be – especially by the lack of concern that results from drunk driving convictions.

Members of a Scarborough mosque have expressed shock and disbelief that their “nice” and “humble” religious leader has been charged with a string of sexual assaults. Mohammad Masroor, the imam at the Baitul Mukarram Islamic Society…faces 13 charges involving sexual offences and death threats relating to five alleged victims…

Det. Const. Karen Armstrong said Masroor used his position of leadership “to his advantage.” She said Masroor, who teaches in the mosque as well as in private homes, knew the alleged victims…

“The victims are both male and female,” Armstrong said. “We believe there are other victims as (the accused) has lived and worked worldwide.”

Masroor taught in Florida, Michigan and Bangladesh before coming to Canada, according to police. He has also lived and taught in Germany, France, Hungary, Singapore and Sri Lanka but police said the investigation is not limited to those areas…

Members of the mosque were especially upset that the allegations come during the holy month of Ramadan…

Yes, I think he’s actually a Romulan pretending to be a Vulcan.

Thanks, James

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The rally, particularly huge in a nation of fewer than five million people, took place hours after Anders Behring Breivik appeared in a closed court charged with the murders.

The rose is the symbol of the Norwegian Labour party, whose youth camp members were cut down in Breivik’s gun rampage on Utoya island on Friday.

Prime minister Jens Stoltenberg told the crowd: ‘We will not let fear break us. The warmth of response from people in Norway and from the whole world makes me sure of this one thing – evil can kill a single person but never defeat a whole people…’

Earlier, a scheduled minute’s silence stretched on for five minutes in Oslo, while similar tributes were held not only across the country but in neighbouring Sweden and Denmark. Flags flew at half-mast across the capital, where a sea of bouquets is growing around the cathedral.

Mechanic Sven-Erik Fredheim, 36, said: ‘This is a tragic event to see all these young people dying due to one man’s craziness.

‘It is important to have this minute of silence so that all the victims and the parents of the families know that people are thinking about them.’

The turnout was so great the scheduled “march” had to be canceled. The whole of downtown Oslo was already filled with mourners leaving no room for a march route.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Whoever killed four prostitutes, and possibly four other people, and then dumped their bodies in heavy underbrush along a beachfront causeway on Long Island appears to have a sophisticated understanding of police investigative techniques…

A series of taunting phone calls made to the teenage sister of one of the victims — calls that the police suspect came from the killer — were made from in or around some of the most crowded locations in New York City, including Madison Square Garden and Times Square, according to the people briefed on the case and to the mother of Melissa Barthelemy, that victim.

The locations, detectives say, were probably chosen because they allowed the caller to blend into crowds, so that if investigators pinpointed his location from the cellphone’s signal, they would be unable to pick him out of the crowd using any nearby surveillance cameras, one of the people said.

This fact, as well as the killer’s use of disposable cellphones to contact the four victims who have been identified — women in their 20s who advertised their services on Craigslist — suggested to some investigators that the killer was well versed in criminal investigative techniques, gleaned either through personal experience or in some other way, and could even be in law enforcement himself…

Also, the caller kept each of his vulgar, mocking and insulting calls to less than three minutes, according to the dead woman’s mother, Lynn Barthelemy. The caller made about a half-dozen calls over roughly five weeks to the victim’s sister.

One investigator said the brief duration of the calls thwarted efforts by the New York Police Department to use the signal to pinpoint the caller’s location and find him, something Lynn Barthelemy said they told her they tried to do four times…

Ms. Barthelemy’s body was one of four uncovered over the course of three days in December in the thick undergrowth along Ocean Parkway, near Gilgo Beach, in the town of Babylon. All were dumped in burlap sacks.

RTFA for a bit more detail. I guess back in the day before the multiplicity of CSI variants on TV it would have required a bit of research to know how forensic investigation has moved on since the days of Quincy.

We even had a suicide here in New Mexico that imitated an episode of CSI in an attempt to make it look like murder. Life imitates art, once again.

Daylife/Getty Images

Thousands of cottages housing hurricane victims on the Mississippi Gulf Coast will be vacated next month, even though many of their occupants aren’t ready to move and may have no place to go if forced out.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency distributed the one-, two- and three-bedroom structures to temporarily house displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. There are still 2,300 occupied cottages in Mississippi, said Mike Womack, director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. Many of the cottages sit on residents’ lots while they rebuild wrecked homes, he said.

According to agreements between the state agency and cities, the cottages will need to be emptied by the end of January and removed by March, Womack said. Uh, is there some terrific beancounter reason why the residents aren’t part of the agreement?

Housing advocates, residents and some local officials worry that forcing out residents, many of whom are trying to rebuild their homes, will aggravate an already dire housing situation.

FEMA distributed the cottages, free of charge, as an alternative to the temporary trailers that first housed hurricane victims. The program was applauded as Mississippi officials acquired and distributed thousands of the cottages; neighboring Louisiana lagged behind.

The cottages were always meant to be temporary, not a permanent housing solution, Womack said. The structures may not withstand another powerful storm and many violate zoning rules, he said.

“We just can’t allow these cottages to stay in place where they’re unsafe or degrading the property values of homes around them,” Womack said.

Ah-hah! There’s the rub. Can’t have property values degraded by hurricane survivors continuing in temporary housing while they sort out their lives, can we?

This was the gruesome moment an illegal immigrant who murdered his neighbour was captured on bus CCTV carrying his victim’s head in a bag.

Mohamed Boudjenane had murdered Lakhdar Ouyahia two days earlier, just hours after he had raped a Phillipino woman in his flat. The 45-year-old Algerian was obsessed with the woman and shaved off her hair after assaulting her.

He then killed Mr Ouyahia after believing the pair were having an affair, a court heard.

He was captured on CCTV carrying the head of Mr Ouyahia in a plastic bag on a bus to the Regents Canal in Maida Vale, west London. Boudjenane showed police where he had thrown the head in a canal and police divers recovered it from the water.

The CCTV did its job. Police were aided in tracking down the killer and providing evidence for his trial.

Crime-prevention is only aided by publicizing CCTV evidence in getting convictions. Spying on the public in general is only a hobby. So far.

Bill Mullins-Johnson, free after 12 years

The Ontario government said it would compensate victims after a judicial inquiry concluded that poor oversight of an inadequately trained Canadian pathologist led to the wrongful convictions of several people accused of killing small children.

Justice Stephen Goudge has made public his report on the work of Dr. Charles Smith, whose expert testimony led to an undetermined number of wrongful convictions.

Smith’s testimony played a key role in the conviction of a man who spent 12 years in jail for sexually assaulting and strangling his 4-year-old niece. Evidence later surfaced that showed the girl died of natural causes, and William Mullins-Johnson was exonerated last year.

Goudge concludes Smith as well as Ontario’s former chief coroner James Young and his deputy, Jim Cairns, played a critical role in the wrongful convictions. Goudge urged the Ontario government to compensate victims and Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley later said he would.

“To those who have suffered an injustice we are truly sorry,” Bentley said. “We are committed to compensating.”

Bentley said they would review every case involving Smith from 1981 to 2002.

Too often, positions like coroner and staff are sinecures based on political association. Qualification is determined by who you know and play golf with – rather than investigative talent and ability.

This result is neither unique nor confined to a parochial division of one Canadian province.

A couple in South Africa who were having sex on a railway track in Mpumalanga Province have been killed by a goods train, police say.

Spokesman Abie Khoabane said it took place on Friday evening and the victims were yet to be identified. He told local newspapers that the couple ignored the driver’s shouts as he moved the train into the disused station in Kinross town.

“They continued with their business.”

But not for long.