WASHINGTON – Seattle police say the 17-year-old suspect in the shooting death of a man in the Greenwood neighborhood has been taken into custody.
Police say the teen was getting ready to board a plane at SeaTac airport. He was taken into custody by the Port of Seattle police.
KING 5 has learned the 17-year-old is Byron White, a senior at Ballard High School. (more…)
Via NY Daily News – It was an Oscar-worthy performance.
The South African “Blade Runner” clasped his ears and burst into tears Tuesday after his lawyer began describing how “some fragments of the bullet” he fired were removed from his girlfriend’s skull. It was the first display of waterworks from Oscar Pistorius since his murder trial started and he practically doubled over in the dock when he started bawling.
The tears ended almost as quickly they started when a relative handed Pistorius a tissue.
[…] Before the brief torrent of tears, defense attorney Barry Roux tore into witness Michelle Burger’s claim that she heard doomed model Reeva Steenkamp scream after the fatal shots were fired. (more…)
(Reuters) – The first witness at Oscar Pistorius’ murder trial told the court on Monday she heard “bloodcurdling screams” from a woman followed by shots, a dramatic opening to a case that could see one of global sport’s most admired role models jailed for life.
Taking the stand after the Paralympic and Olympic star pleaded not guilty to murdering his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day last year, neighbor Michelle Burger testified that she was woken in the middle of the night by a woman shouting for help.
“I was still sitting in the bed and I heard her screams,” Burger, who lives 177 meters (194 yards) from Pistorius’ home in an adjacent housing complex, told the Pretoria High Court.
“She screamed terribly and she yelled for help. Then I also heard a man screaming for help. Three times he yelled for help,” she said, speaking in Afrikaans through an interpreter. (more…)
(The Courant) Everyone knew there would be some gun owners flouting the law that legislators hurriedly passed last April, requiring residents to register all military-style rifles with state police by Dec. 31.
But few thought the figures would be this bad.
By the end of 2013, state police had received 47,916 applications for assault weapons certificates, Lt. Paul Vance said. An additional 2,100 that were incomplete could still come in.
That 50,000 figure could be as little as 15 percent of the rifles classified as assault weapons owned by Connecticut residents, according to estimates by people in the industry, including the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation. No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as 350,000.
(Via Daily Caller) Police charged a New Jersey man with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer, but recently revealed footage from a dashboard camera told a different story: Not only did the officers start beating the man for no apparent reason, but they actually crashed one of their vehicles into the man’s car.
Then they allegedly lied about what transpired and suppressed the evidence, but were somehow found innocent during an internal investigation.
Prosecutors, however, dropped all charges against 30-year-old Marcus Jeter, a black man, once they saw the incredible video footage, which fully corroborates Jeter’s side of the story.
Jeter was not resisting in the slightest. And yet he was eventually charged with eluding arrest, resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. Prosecutors offered him a plea deal of 5 years in prison, according to Watchdog Wire.
FLORIDA – A Davie woman spent one night in jail after she used a cellphone to record a Broward Sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop.
The minute Brandy Berning, 33, told Lt. William O’Brien she was recording the conversation they had when he pulled her over for driving in the HOV lane at the wrong time, O’Brien responds on Berning’s audio with: “I have to tell you, you just committed a felony.”
For more than four minutes, the two argue: O’Brien insisting that Berning hand over her phone and that she is under arrest, and Berning insisting that she has done nothing wrong.
NEW YORK – Kerry Kennedy has been found not guilty of drugged driving — and gave herself a hearty round of applause after jurors were dismissed from court by a Westchester County judge.
The jury handed down the verdict after just 30 minutes of deliberation Friday morning. The six-member panel had deliberated about 45 minutes Thursday night after being handed the case.
Kennedy — who had faced up to a year in jail if convicted — hugged both her lawyers as the verdict was read, and then began clapping after the jurors left the courtroom.
Her lawyers and a band of supporters, including mom Ethel, joined the ovation. (continue reading)
MARYLAND – A chilling video of Maryland police silencing an innocent student who was recording the arrests of two other people has civil libertarians outraged.
The arrests were made at night on the streets of Towson, Maryland. A University of Maryland-Baltimore County student who witnessed the arrests decided to record them using his cell phone. The student, 21-year-old Sergio Gutierrez, was soon approached by officers who objected — wrongly — to his actions.
Gutierrez repeatedly told the officers that he knew he had the right to film them, but the cops were prepared to use any excuse to shut him down. First they told him that he was hampering their investigation, even though he was standing well enough away while the arrests were being made. (more…)
Trayvon Martin’s father, Tracy, appeared on MSNBC yesterday to talk about the second anniversary of Trayvon’s death. Tracy Martin discussed America’s obsession with guns.
However, as with all things from Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton the TRUTH is 180 degrees divergent.
Apparently Tracy Martin was all for Trayvon having a gun, until after Trayvon was killed and then he changed his position. You see, he was all for teens with guns, before he was against them. (more…)
Germanys former Ministry of State Security – “Stasi”: One of Stasi’s main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants.
How does pre-1990’s East German “Stasi” apply to modern 2014 New York ? The answer is within the following article:
YORKTOWN — A Putnam County special patrol officer resigned from his position Friday, one day after being accused of illegally possessing weapons, authorities said.
Steven P. Zagorski, a former Putnam Valley police officer who worked as a Putnam County Sheriff’s deputy before retiring in 2004, was arrested by Yorktown police about 5:45 p.m. Thursday after a search of his home yielded several unregistered guns, Yorktown police said.
Zagorski, who has more than 30 years in law enforcement, had most recently been working as a special patrol officer assigned to the Putnam County Board of Elections in Carmel, officials said. Putnam County Sheriff’s Capt. William McNamara said Zagorski’s resignation was accepted.
McNamara said his office began investigating Zagorski last month after receiving information that the 66-year-old illegally owned several guns.