History > 2008 > USA > Violence, Crime (I)

War Torn

In More Cases,

Combat Trauma Is Taking the Stand

January 27, 2008
The New York Times
By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ

When it came time to sentence James Allen Gregg for his conviction on murder charges, the judge in South Dakota took a moment to reflect on the defendant as an Iraq combat veteran who suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

“This is a terrible case, as all here have observed,” said Judge Charles B. Kornmann of United States District Court. “Obviously not all the casualties coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan come home in body bags.”

Judge Kornmann noted that Mr. Gregg, a fresh-faced young man who grew up on a cattle ranch, led “an exemplary life until that day, that terrible morning.” With no criminal record or psychiatric history, Mr. Gregg had started unraveling in Iraq, growing disillusioned with the war and volunteering for dangerous missions in the hope of getting killed, he testified.

Nonetheless, the judge found that Mr. Gregg’s combat trauma had not rendered him incapable of comprehending his actions when he shot an acquaintance in the back, fled the scene, and then pointed the gun at himself as a SWAT team approached — the helmeted officers “low crawling,” Mr. Gregg testified, and looking “like my own soldiers turning on me.”

When combat veterans like Mr. Gregg stand accused of killings and other offenses on their return from Iraq and Afghanistan, prosecutors, judges and juries are increasingly prodded to assess the role of combat trauma in their crimes and whether they deserve special treatment because of it.

That idea has met with considerable resistance from prosecutors and judges leery of creating any class of offenders with distinct privileges. In Mr. Gregg’s case, for instance, Judge Kornmann cautioned the jury that nobody got “a free pass to shoot somebody” because they “went to Iraq or Afghanistan or the moon.”

Still, more and more, with the troops’ mental health a rising concern, these defendants are succeeding in at least raising the issue of psychological war injuries. Aggressive defense lawyers, many in the military bar, are insisting that Iraq or Afghanistan be factored into the calculus of justice in these cases. They are arguing that war be seen as the backdrop for these crimes, most of which are committed by individuals without criminal records.

“I think they should always receive some kind of consideration for the fact that their mind has been broken by war,” said Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, Western regional defense counsel for the Marines.

Last year, California became the first state to pass legislation dealing with the small fraction of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who end up entangled with the law. Updating a Vietnam-era statute, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger quietly signed a bill that permitted judges to divert troubled veterans into treatment programs.

“This is going to be on my tombstone, this bill,” said Pete Conaty, a Vietnam veteran who lobbied for it. “It has been a personal crusade of mine to make sure we don’t make the same mistake with Iraqi vets as we did with my generation.”

But the California law applies only to lesser crimes, as, in all likelihood, will any bills that it inspires, like one being debated in Minnesota.

Iraq and Afghanistan veterans facing homicide charges must defend themselves without the benefit of such laws. And in so doing, they often provoke intense moral and legal wrangling, turning local courthouses into unlikely forums for debate on the effects of the war.

Generally that debate takes place behind closed doors during plea negotiations. In cases that go to trial, however, the scene can be surreal, with Iraq commanding center stage as testimony about fingerprints and blood spatter alternates with questioning about mortar attacks in Baquba and civilian casualties in Baghdad.

Service members, sometimes wearing dress uniforms and spit-shined shoes, introduce their psychiatric evaluations into evidence and put their military colleagues on the stand to argue that the crime in question was completely out of character.

Tim Long, for instance, a company first sergeant with the South Dakota National Guard, testified about Mr. Gregg, whom he had nominated for a Bronze Star. “He’s a young farm boy, you know?” he said. “Competent young man. My friend.”

A Disorder Is Recognized

Born during the Vietnam War era, the combat version of what became known as the PTSD defense is being dusted off for a new generation of war veterans.

“I’m seeing it all the time now,” said David P. Sheldon, a civilian lawyer in Washington who represents military personnel. “And I will not be surprised to see this resonate as a consistent theme over the next few decades when people will be committing crimes after suffering repeated traumas in Iraq.”

It was in 1980, five years after the Vietnam War ended, that the psychiatric establishment first recognized post-traumatic stress disorder. Vietnam veterans quickly summoned it as a primary legal defense. In many cases, the veterans argued that they had been rendered temporarily insane as a result of flashbacks to the war while committing their crimes.

One of the first murder defendants to do so successfully was Charles G. Heads, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing his brother-in-law a decade after he left Vietnam. Medical experts contended that Mr. Heads believed he was “cleaning out a hooch,” or hut, in Vietnam when he kicked in a door and shot his victim.

As time went on, the PTSD defense met increasing resistance just as the use of the insanity defense was limited by many states.

Taking a more cautious approach, the current generation of war-era defendants is most often using combat trauma not to escape culpability but to explain state of mind.

Were it not for their deployment to Iraq, they argue, they probably never would have committed the crime. Before Iraq, they claim, they were not paranoid, aggressive, jumpy or suicidal; they did not carry around loaded weapons, drink to excess, misread threats or explode in anger.

“In many of these cases, you have a nasty mix: a gun, intoxication and someone inaccurately assessing their environment and the consequences of their behavior,” said Thomas Grieger, a recently retired Navy forensic psychiatrist.

In general, the veterans raise their combat trauma during plea negotiations or in the sentencing phase of trials, hoping for reduced charges or a lesser sentence.

Occasionally it works.

Anthony J. Klecker, a former marine, pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular homicide for a drunken crash that killed a high school cheerleader, Deanna Casey, in Minnesota in 2006. But his lawyer argued that Mr. Klecker, 29, who had already spent a year in jail, should be sentenced to six months of inpatient treatment instead of the 48 months in prison called for by sentencing guidelines.

“Tony would never, ever claim his war experiences, associated psychological injuries and alcoholism should excuse him from responsibility for Ms. Casey’s death,” his lawyer, Brockton D. Hunter, wrote the judge. But, he said, Mr. Klecker was a “psychological casualty of the war in Iraq who unsuccessfully sought treatment from an overstrained Veterans Administration.”

The state judge agreed to impose the alternative sentence, and Mr. Klecker was admitted to a dual program for substance abuse and PTSD at the Veterans Affairs hospital in St. Cloud, Minn.

But then things got complicated. After getting into a verbal fight with another veteran, Mr. Klecker lost his residency privileges. He was returned to jail; the prosecutor is seeking once more to send him to prison.

‘A Tale of Two Places’

“This is really a tale of two places,” James Gregg’s lawyer said during his opening statement in 2005 in the federal courthouse in Pierre, S.D.: the Crow Creek Indian Reservation where the killing took place and “a very, very faraway” place, “a place called Iraq.”

By framing the case this way from the start, the lawyer, Timothy J. Rensch, made it clear that Mr. Gregg’s explanation for the “murder in Indian country,” as the charge read, would be inextricably bound to his year as a National Guardsman in Iraq.

That approach rankled the prosecutor, who referred to it as “waving the flag,” although Mr. Rensch stated that he was not trying to use Iraq “as an excuse” since Mr. Gregg was arguing self-defense.

“But you need to understand about Iraq and what happened to Jim over there for you to be able to see things from his point of view, and understand his thinking, and especially understand, really, his desperation at the end,” Mr. Rensch said.

On the evening of July 3, 2004, Mr. Gregg, then 22, spent the night with friends in a roving pre-Independence Day celebration on the reservation where he grew up, part of a small non-Indian population. They drank at a Quonset hut bar called the Pit Stop, in a trailer community and finally at a mint farm where they built a bonfire, roasted marshmallows and made s’mores.

According to the prosecutor, Mr. Gregg got upset because a young woman accompanying him gravitated to another man. This, the prosecutor said, led to Mr. Gregg spinning the wheels of his truck and spraying gravel on a car belonging to James Fallis, 26, a former high school football lineman who grew up performing American Indian dances on what is called the powwow circuit.

Some time later, a confrontation ensued. Mr. Gregg was severely beaten by Mr. Fallis and, primarily, by another man, suffering facial fractures. Later that night, with one eye swollen shut and a fat lip, he drove to Mr. Fallis’s neighborhood.

Mr. Fallis emerged from a trailer, removed his jacket, asked Mr. Gregg if he had come back for more and opened the door to Mr. Gregg’s pickup truck. Mr. Gregg then reached for the pistol that he carried with him after his return from Iraq. He pointed it at Mr. Fallis and warned him to back away.

Mr. Fallis moved toward the trunk of his car, and Mr. Gregg testified that he believed Mr. Fallis was going to get a weapon. He started shooting to stop him, he said, and then Mr. Fallis veered toward his house. Mr. Gregg fired nine times, and struck Mr. Fallis with five bullets.

Mr. Gregg drove quickly away, ending up in a pasture near his parents’ house. From there, he spoke on the phone to his best friend, Jacob Big Eagle, who told him that Mr. Fallis was dead.

According to Mr. Gregg’s testimony, he then put a magazine of more bullets in his gun, chambered a round and pointed it at his chest.

“Jim, why were you going to kill yourself?” his lawyer asked in court, seeking to rebut the prosecutor’s contention that guilt had driven him to suicidal despair.

“Because it felt like Iraq had come back,” Mr. Gregg said. “I felt hopeless. All that happened, no one would believe me. That I didn’t want this to happen. I never wanted to shoot him. Never wanted to hurt him. Never. Everything happened just so fast. I mean, it was almost instinct that I had to protect myself.”

Tense Courtroom Atmosphere

The atmosphere in the courtroom was tense throughout the trial, with American Indians on one side of the aisle and white ranchers on the other. Complicating matters, the participants in Mr. Gregg’s case traveled, in a sense, back and forth between the bluffs of the Missouri River and those of the Tigris as they grappled with the relevancy of his military experience.

Mr. Gregg joined the National Guard at 18. He was studying at a technical school, with the goal of becoming a diesel mechanic, when his combat engineering company, whose expertise resided in bridge building, was shipped to Iraq in the spring of 2003.

“He left for Iraq enthusiastic and energetic and eager to serve his country,” wrote one of four mental health professionals, including two government officials, who diagnosed PTSD in Mr. Gregg. He “returned impaired by PTSD complicated by his disillusionment with the military operation in Iraq.”

After building a bridge across the Tigris River, his National Guard company effectively became an infantry unit. Mr. Gregg estimated that he searched well over 10,000 vehicles and fired over 1,000 rounds.

Mr. Gregg found checkpoint duty unbearable, said Michael Furois, a Department of Veterans Affairs psychologist who treated him after his arrest. According to Mr. Furois’s testimony, Mr. Gregg disliked “standing guard at a gate when the Iraq civilians would bring in their dead or wounded and would be yelling and crying and blaming those at the gate for that occurring.”

After many months in Iraq, Mr. Gregg testified, he began to think about suicide, hoping that his “chance” at death would come if he volunteered for dangerous missions. His superior officer, Sergeant Long, testified that he selected him for a nighttime patrol team, instructing them never to hesitate when they perceived a threat because “if you hesitate, you’re dead.”

Cross-examining Sergeant Long, Mikal G. Hanson, an assistant United States attorney, asked him if he were implying that his instruction about hesitating had caused Mr. Gregg, on his return to the United States, to shoot “an unarmed civilian.”

“I hope not,” Sergeant Long said.

When Mr. Gregg’s tour of duty ended in March 2004, he started drinking heavily to ease his stress and expressed the wish that he had died in Iraq.

Mental health experts for the defense said, as one psychiatrist testified, that “PTSD was the driving force behind Mr. Gregg’s actions” when he shot his victim. Having suffered a severe beating, they said, he experienced an exaggerated “startle reaction” — a characteristic of PTSD — when Mr. Fallis reached for his car door, and responded instinctively.

Mr. Gregg’s trial lawyer put it theatrically: When Mr. Fallis rushed at Mr. Gregg, he said, Mr. Gregg switched into military mode. “What does he think?” the lawyer said. “Lethal threat, lethal threat, lethal threat, neutralize threat, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, continues to shoot.”

The prosecutor, reflecting his skepticism about this explanation, asked Mr. Gregg if he had been a “walking time bomb” since Iraq. “You’re not telling this jury,” Mr. Hanson said, “that National Guard members like yourself that went through that experience are a threat to kill people?”

Mr. Gregg: “I wouldn’t know.”

The prosecutor also referred to Mr. Gregg’s military experiences for his own purposes, asking whether military trainers tried to strengthen soldiers’ minds as well as bodies.

“Not really,” Mr. Gregg said. “They actually break down your mind.”

“Break down your mind,” Mr. Hanson said. “Explain that to the jury.”

“They break down your mind, and then they try to build you back up,” Mr. Gregg said.

“Into a killer?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Gregg said.

The jury found Mr. Gregg guilty of second-degree but not first-degree murder. The judge later referred to this as having “dodged a bullet, so to speak.”

The Sentence: 21 Years

Judge Kornmann also said in court that he found the case troubling, calling the sentencing hearing “one of those days” when he wondered whether he should have declined the offer by Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, to nominate him for a federal judgeship.

“I see these stickers that people have on their vehicles saying, ‘Support the troops,’ ” Judge Kornmann said. “I don’t see much support for the troops as years go on when these people come back injured and maimed.”

Nonetheless, the judge said that Mr. Gregg did not deserve any of the “downward departures” from sentencing guidelines that his lawyers had requested in consideration of his military service, his PTSD and his crime-free record. The mandatory minimum for a federal offense involving a gun is 10 years, and Mr. Gregg’s lawyers indicated that they hoped he would be sentenced to no more than 12.

Judge Kornmann handed down a 21-year sentence.

Through a relative who works for the prominent law firm of WilmerHale, Mr. Gregg secured the company’s services; his case was taken pro bono.

In late June, Mr. Gregg’s lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition, seeing to vacate his conviction on the basis of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Mr. Rensch, they argue, did not demonstrate that Mr. Gregg’s state of mind was heavily influenced by being “vividly aware of specific, dramatic instances of past violent acts” by his victim.

While Mr. Gregg awaits the outcome, he is locked in a federal medical prison in Rochester, Minn., where he tried to kill himself on one occasion and has been placed on suicide watch episodically. If all efforts to free him fail, he is projected to be released on July 22, 2023, a few weeks shy of his 42nd birthday.

    In More Cases, Combat Trauma Is Taking the Stand, NYT, 27.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/us/27vets.html?hp

Shaker Heights Journal

A Suburb Looks Nervously at Its Urban Neighbor

January 17, 2008
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MAAG

SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — A week after six black teenagers nearly beat her husband to death, Marybeth McDermott looked out her big living room window at the neighborhood she loves, pursed her lips, then looked away.

She has found great friends here in the Ludlow neighborhood, one of the first places in suburban America where blacks and whites came together to live as neighbors. But for the first time in 19 years, Mrs. McDermott has thoughts of leaving.

“For now, I think we’ll stay put,” Mrs. McDermott said, just before driving to visit her husband in the hospital. “After that, I can’t say. We love the diversity here. But we have to weigh that against our safety.”

The attack on her husband, Kevin McDermott, a 52-year-old white lawyer, has raised concerns about safety, race and integration that many people here thought were laid to rest long ago.

Mr. McDermott was taking a walk early New Year’s Eve when a group of young African-Americans attacked him from behind. They slashed his face, kicked him, and mashed his leg with a lead pipe, the police said. A neighbor banging on a window scared the teenagers away.

“It was so random and mindless, and that’s what makes people afraid,” said Chris Luciani, a white Ludlow resident.

Six suspects, ages 14 to 19 and all Cleveland residents, are in custody. They have been charged with felonious assault and attempted murder. “But for the neighbor, he probably would have been killed,” said Bill Mason, the prosecutor for Cuyahoga County, which includes Shaker Heights and Cleveland.

Scott Lee, the acting police chief of Shaker Heights, said the beating was a random crime of opportunity and was not gang-related.

Ludlow is a neighborhood of tidy Tudor and colonial homes with small yards shaded by mature sycamore trees. Part of the neighborhood lies in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights and the other part lies in Cleveland, the fourth-poorest city in the country, according to the Census Bureau. Children on both sides of the neighborhood attend Shaker Heights public schools. The only way to know which city you are in is to look for the street signs, which in Cleveland are blue and in Shaker Heights are white.

Mr. McDermott was attacked on a quiet street one block south of Ludlow Elementary School, which in the 1950s and ’60s became the center of Shaker Heights’s successful integration effort.

“The concept that something like that could happen here literally never crossed my mind,” said the Rev. Diane Ford Jones, an African-American resident of Ludlow.

Petty thefts are rising near the edges of Shaker Heights, so two years ago the city increased its police budget by $50,000 annually to pay for more patrols along the border, said Mayor Earl M. Leiken. Since the attack, unmarked police cars circle the Shaker Heights streets of Ludlow every five minutes. There is no increased police presence on the Cleveland side, residents say.

Since the beating, Ludlow residents say they pay more attention to their surroundings as they walk their dogs at night. They make sure to lock their doors, even when they are at home. Some plan to install motion-detector lights, alarm systems and security cameras.

What has surprised Ludlow residents most since the attack is the reaction of people around the region. Cleveland has grown steadily poorer over the last five decades. Many people in the surrounding area believe that Shaker Heights will eventually be overwhelmed by Cleveland residents, many of them African-Americans, trying to escape the city’s high crime rate and struggling schools. They wonder why residents of Shaker Heights have not moved to more distant — and safer — suburbs.

“So move,” Dick Feagler, a columnist for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote after the attack. “But do it like we all have — like the whole three-county area has — don’t call it racism. Call it reality.”

Underneath this fear of urban decay lies the quiet thread of resentment. For many years, Shaker Heights was one of the richest cities in the United States. As presidents of Cleveland’s largest companies, a few Shaker Heights citizens were bosses to generations of Clevelanders. In the middle of what the Census Bureau found in 2002 to be America’s third-most-segregated urban area, Shaker Heights flouts local racial attitudes by actively encouraging integration. Of the town’s 27,245 residents, 61 percent are white and 34 percent are black, according to the census.

For many outsiders, the attack on Mr. McDermott is seen as comeuppance for a community that seemed smug about its wealth, security and racial diversity.

“I wonder how much ‘tolerance’ the ‘progressive,’ snooty, pseudo-intellectual limousine liberal, socialists of Shaker Heights will show now that the thugs are in their neighborhood too,” a reader wrote on a Cleveland Plain Dealer blog.

Ludlow residents understand that for a place just seven blocks across, their little neighborhood carries tremendous symbolic weight.

“People in the Cleveland area resent us because we’re a repudiation of everything they believe,” said Brian Walker, 56, who was among the first African-Americans to attend Ludlow school. “We’re proof that white people and black people can live together.”

Rather than flee, Ludlow residents say they plan to stay and organize.

“You can’t run forever,” said Tom Chelimsky, co-president of the Ludlow Community Association. The beating occurred on Mr. Chelimsky’s front lawn. “We’re not naïve. We’re tough, and we’re going to stand together.”

Christine Branche, 80, an African-American who moved into Ludlow in 1956, said, “I’ll move from this house into an urn.”

Five days after the attack, neighbors met at Ludlow school to grieve and plan a response. Another meeting is planned for this weekend. So many friends, black and white, have offered to help the McDermotts that the family will not need to cook for itself until March, Mrs. McDermott said.

“I don’t know Kevin McDermott,” said Ms. Jones, the minister. “But when I see him I’m going to give him a big hug and say: ‘Your neighbors love you. We’re glad you’re here.’ ”

    A Suburb Looks Nervously at Its Urban Neighbor, NYT, 17.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/us/17shaker.html?hp

MySpace and 45 States Team Up to Fight Online Predators

January 14, 2008
Filed at 10:53 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- MySpace.com has agreed with more than 45 states to add extensive measures to combat sexual predators.

An official familiar with the multistate agreement said MySpace, the huge online social networking Web site, has agreed to include several online protections and participate in a working group to develop age-verification and other technologies.

The official said MySpace will also accept independent monitoring and changes to the structure of its site.

The agreement is scheduled to be announced today in Manhattan by attorneys general from New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement hadn't yet been announced.

The attorneys general have been seeking greater controls for online networking sites to prevent sexual predators from using those sites to contact children.

There was no immediate comment from MySpace, a unit of News Corp.

Investigators have increasingly examined MySpace, Facebook.com and similar social networking sites that allow people to post information and images on the Web and invite contacts from others.

Last year, New York investigators said they set up Facebook profiles as 12- to 14-year olds and were quickly contacted by other users looking for sex.

A multistate investigation of the sites -- announced last year -- was aimed at putting together measures to protect minors and remove pornographic material, but lawsuits were possible, officials said.

''We have to find the best way to make sure parents have the tools ... to protect their children when they're on social networking sites,'' North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said in September.

    MySpace and 45 States Team Up to Fight Online Predators, NYT, 14.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-MySpace-Agreement.html

When Crime Was Always on Our Minds

January 14, 2008
The New York Times
By THOMAS J. LUECK

In the bad old days of street crime, an era most New Yorkers would think of as before 1990, it was a personal quandary and a public obsession: If assaulted, do I run, hand over the money or stand and fight? And should I carry a weapon?

They were the days of “mugger’s money,” or cash carried simply to placate a robber who might otherwise use a knife or gun. People flocked to martial arts classes for self-defense. For many, carrying a concealed knife or pepper spray became a prudent precaution.

Now, in a city that prides itself as being one of the nation’s safest, a bloody melee on a Harlem street is flashing New Yorkers back to the era of anticrime tactics. Just before midnight Thursday, the police said, Maurice Parks, 39, a subway motorman who had just ended his shift, was preyed upon by a group of muggers armed with at least one knife.

Mr. Parks, who had fended off an attack in Queens in 1994 and had studied martial arts, was prepared. After he was knocked down and robbed, he pulled a knife of his own, and fought back in a ferocious exchange that killed a man who may have been trying to intervene, and left two others — including Mr. Parks — hospitalized with bloody stab wounds.

The actions of Mr. Parks, who has not been charged with a crime, have prompted people across the city to go through the mental what-ifs that once were an everyday burden.

“I would have done the same thing,” said Diamond Torres, 26, a native New Yorker who said she was robbed when she was 13. Ms. Torres, who lives on the Lower East Side, said she carries a box-cutter knife for her own protection. Under city law, it is legal to carry knives with blades shorter than four inches, except for some that are specifically outlawed, including switchblades.

“I might be scared at first,” she said, “but my next reaction would be to defend myself.”

But Joshua Stokes, 28, a resident of the East Village who has been living in the city since 1999, did not share Ms. Torres’s concerns. “I don’t ever find myself in fear of getting mugged,” he said. If he were confronted on the street, he “would try to avoid an altercation,” he said, adding, “I would give them whatever I had.”

Although many details remain unclear — including who struck the first blow — the case involving Mr. Parks provided a grim reminder that violence escalates and can lead to unintended consequences. The police said that the man who was killed, Flonarza M. Byas, 28, was stabbed by Mr. Parks. Although Mr. Byas did not appear to have been among those who first attacked Mr. Parks, the police did not know whether he joined the robbery, was a bystander, or perhaps was a good Samaritan who tried to intervene, as his family maintains.

The police arrested Leandro Ventura, 15, on Friday on a charge of first-degree robbery. Another suspect, Edwin Bonilla, 18, was arrested Sunday on a robbery charge, and a third was in the hospital.

“While I don’t think people should carry knives, some undoubtedly do,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch, whose tenure at City Hall, from 1978 through 1989, included the shooting in 1984 of four aggressive teenage panhandlers on a Manhattan subway train by Bernard Goetz. The case provoked passions across the nation, with some condemning Mr. Goetz as a vigilante, and others calling his action a galvanizing event for a city that had been too willing to accept a relentless rise in crime.

All four teenagers survived, but one was paralyzed. Mr. Goetz was convicted of illegal weapons possession, and served eight months in prison.

“I think Bernard Goetz was part of a national syndrome,” Mr. Koch said. “There was a feeling that crime had gotten so far out of hand that you could not depend on government to stop it.”

He added, “That feeling stopped in the early 1990s.” The case involving Mr. Parks “is an aberration, not a norm,” he said.

Reactions to the assault on Thursday night, which came after Mr. Parks was approached at 139th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, differed widely. Some said they were surprised that anyone would even think of fighting back against armed assailants. Some praised Mr. Parks’s foresight in carrying a knife, and his courage in using it.

Kenneth Roberts, 57, a subway conductor who said he did not know Mr. Parks, said he was impressed that Mr. Parks had stood his ground. “When I heard that he fought back, I thought it was a good thing.” But, he added, “it’s sad that it’s still happening in this day and age.”

Mr. Roberts, a powerfully built man who stands 5 feet 11 inches, said he did not carry a weapon. But he said he believed he carried himself in a way that would discourage troublemakers.

“You walk upright,” he said. “You walk strong.”

Law enforcement experts say that there is no way to measure how many New Yorkers carry weapons like knives or pepper spray for self-defense, but that their prevalence in the city has all but certainly declined as street robberies and assaults have become less frequent.

Police data does not separate muggings from other forms of robbery, including bank robbery, but the incidence of all robberies has fallen almost steadily for more than 20 years. Compared with 1981, when the city reached a dismal point in recording 107,495 robbery complaints, there were 21,577 such complaints in 2007, the police said.

To a large degree, the experts said, people sense that a threat has been lifted. “I used to get questions all the time about Mace and knives and whether teens should carry these things around,” said Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a group that monitors crime and police policies. “I don’t anymore, and my sense is people don’t feel as much need for self-protection.”

And although martial arts training remains a popular pursuit for New Yorkers, their reasons appear to have changed. “In the early 1990s, people were training in all kinds of martial arts primarily for self-defense,” said Jason McCarthy, the owner of New York Jiu Jitsu, a martial arts school in Greenwich Village. Now, he said, “New York is cleaner and safer, and they tend to look for other benefits,” including exercise and camaraderie.

And the shift in attitude is warranted, Mr. McCarthy said, since even the most advanced forms of martial arts provide little protection against some armed assailants. “If someone is skilled with a knife, there is no martial art that gives you a real chance,” he said. “I tell people to run.”

Although it is now far more common for New Yorkers to carry iPods, some city residents said they do carry “mugger’s money,” usually a small amount of cash, sometimes kept apart from their wallet. But most said the practice was a vestige of a darker past.

“I don’t carry anything, specifically,” said Cynthia Rodriguez, 54, as she left her church on Friday night on 139th Street, only a few blocks from where Mr. Parks was assaulted the night before. “It’s a different climate, a different culture.”

Out of curiosity, Dave Moody, 35, a Harlem resident, made it a point to stop by the intersection where Mr. Parks was attacked. “I wanted to get a personal view of the place,” he said. He said he had always felt safe in the neighborhood, and “that hasn’t changed.” If confronted, he said, he would avoid a fight. “If I pull out a knife, it would just exacerbate it,” he said.

Law enforcement experts looking for parallels between Mr. Parks’s confrontation and that of Mr. Goetz 23 years earlier said there were few to be found.

Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker, included an analysis of the Goetz case in his 2000 book, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,” as an example of how change can gain momentum swiftly across a broad spectrum of social phenomenon — from shoe fashions to crime rates.

“These two events are just not comparable,” Mr. Gladwell said. “The Goetz incident was when we hit rock bottom.”

“There was a spontaneous outpouring, with people calling him a hero,” he said. “We are so far from that now.”
 

Jason Grant, Christine Hauser and Mathew R. Warren contributed reporting.

    When Crime Was Always on Our Minds, NYT, 14.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/nyregion/14defense.html

Killing of a Young Hiker Puts North Georgia on Edge

January 14, 2008
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA — In the days after a young woman was killed after being abducted on a popular North Georgia hiking trail, instructors offering a crash course in personal safety found classes filling up as fast as they were scheduled, and that they had to turn some women away.

“To be honest with you, I asked my wife and some of my friends to come to the one we held yesterday because I wasn’t sure anyone was going to show up,” Jim Stratton, an instructor at Atlanta Budokan, a martial arts studio in Smyrna, said Saturday as he watched a line of women waiting for the next class snake around the building.

Mr. Stratton need not have worried.

The classes, hastily arranged throughout the region by the studio and the local radio station WWWQ, known as Q100, clearly met a need in a community struggling to come to grips with the apparently random attack on the hiker, Meredith Emerson, 24, of Buford, who disappeared near Blood Mountain on New Year’s Day with her dog, a black Labrador retriever mix named Ella. Her body was found Jan. 7.

“It hit close to home because I’m an avid runner and hiker, and I do those things by myself,” said Amanda Lancaster, 25, of Post Ridge, who estimated that she ventured outdoors alone four or five times a week.

Nearly 300 people, mostly women in their 20s and 30s, showed up Friday to the first personal-safety class offered this month in the Midtown area of Atlanta. An estimated 250 women quickly filled the studio at the Smyrna location on Saturday morning, and another overflow crowd packed an afternoon session the same day.

Jenny Hass, 39, an elementary-school teacher and personal trainer from Kennesaw who attended the morning class on Saturday, said that she used to go on walks with her young son every day, but that after Ms. Emerson’s death, her husband asked her to stop. The couple even discussed buying a gun.

“It’s definitely put a deterrent on my outdoor exercise activity,” Ms. Hass said.

The search for Ms. Emerson and the subsequent discovery of her body riveted North Georgia.

Search-and-rescue crews combing the area where she was last seen, a popular path that leads to the Appalachian Trail, found a water bottle and a dog’s leash. Fellow hikers told the police that she had been talking to an older man in a yellow jacket who was also walking a dog.

Ms. Emerson’s parents flew from Longmont, Colo., to Georgia while they waited for word of their daughter’s whereabouts. They described her as a feisty and gregarious person who knew how to handle herself outdoors and said that if anyone could survive the chilly overnight temperatures, she could.

But hopes dimmed after the police identified the man last seen with her as Gary M. Hilton, 61, a drifter with a criminal history who had intimidated hikers on other local trails.

Mr. Hilton was apprehended in the parking lot of a convenience store near Cumming as he was cleaning out his van. The police recovered three blood-soaked fleece shirts, Ms. Emerson’s wallet and her University of Georgia identification card, and they found a bloody seat belt in a nearby trash bin. Ms. Emerson’s dog was found wandering the parking lot of a grocery store across the street. The police also said that Mr. Hilton had tried to use Ms. Emerson’s A.T.M. card.

After making a deal with prosecutors that spared him the death penalty, Mr. Hilton led investigators to Ms. Emerson’s body on Jan. 7. It was near Dawsonville, and the authorities said her head had been severed. An autopsy revealed that Ms. Emerson was probably killed on Jan. 4, a fact that haunted many of the police officers and volunteers who had been searching tirelessly for her since Jan. 1.

Mr. Hilton was charged with murder. He is being held without bail in the Dawson County Jail.

Since his arrest, the authorities in Leon County, Fla., have named Mr. Hilton a prime suspect in the death of Cheryl H. Dunlap, 46, a Sunday school teacher from Crawfordville, Fla.

Ms. Dunlap was found dead and dismembered on Dec. 15 in the Apalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee. Cameras caught a masked man trying to use her A.T.M. card after her disappearance on Dec. 1, and an agent for the state forestry service encountered Mr. Hilton near where Ms. Dunlap’s body was found. The agent ran a check on Mr. Hilton’s license plate number but did not detain him.

Investigators in North Carolina said Mr. Hilton may also have been involved in the disappearances of an elderly couple, John and Irene Bryant, 79 and 84, who were last seen alive in the Pisgah National Forest on Oct. 20. The body of Mrs. Bryant, which had been beaten, was found three weeks later. Mr. Bryant remains missing and is believed to be dead.

But it is the attack on Ms. Emerson that has continued to rattle North Georgia residents, many of whom endure 90-minute commutes into Atlanta so that they can live near the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian Trail.

“We’ve had a lot of people yesterday and today call and ask what the law says about taking firearms into national parks,” said Randy Gambrell, assistant manager of Vogel State Park. “It has darkened the mood on the trails, for sure.”

Trail-maintenance volunteers have planned a memorial walk and a smudge ceremony, which is an American Indian cleansing ritual that involves burning sage to rid a place of evil spirits, on Sunday to honor Ms. Emerson and to try to calm their own nerves.

“The lasting effect something like this has on an area is terrible,” said Jennifer R. Morse, a clerk at Mountain Crossings, a backpacking supply store toward the southern end of the Appalachian Trail.

Ms. Morse said she used to relish her ability to hit the trail with nothing more than her dog and a water bottle, but that she had not been hiking by herself since Ms. Emerson’s body was found.

“I think all of us saw ourselves out there,” Ms. Morse said. “It’s hard to say why it was her.”

    Killing of a Young Hiker Puts North Georgia on Edge, NYT, 14.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/us/14hiker.html

Police:

Man sodomized stepson

to avenge daughter's rape

12 January 2008
USA Today

FORT WORTH (AP) — A father sodomized his 18-year-old stepson to avenge the teenager's alleged rape of the man's 8-year-old daughter, police said.

The father, 32, turned himself into to authorities on Friday and was released from jail Saturday after posting a $17,500 bond. He faces a charge of aggravated sexual assault.

The stepson was arrested Jan. 2 and charged with suspicion of aggravated sexual assault. Police say the father caught him assaulting his daughter, and a subsequent examination at a hospital revealed the girl had been sodomized.

Sgt. Cheryl Johnson, supervisor of the Fort Worth sex crimes unit, said in a story posted Saturday on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's website that people need to "allow the criminal justice system to work for them."

"This is a very unique case, but we have a criminal justice system in place, and no one can take the law into their own hands," Johnson said.

The Star-Telegram didn't identify the father or the stepson to protect the identity of the girl. Fort Worth police didn't immediately return phone and e-mail messages from The Associated Press.

When the stepson was arrested, the man warned his wife not to get the teenager out of jail. She posted bond for the teen's release. When he called home Jan. 3 after getting released, the father took the call and picked him up, police said.

Instead of taking the teenager home, the Arlington man drove to an abandoned house in Fort Worth, beat his stepson with a baseball bat and sodomized him with a metal tool, police said.

After the man left, the stepson found a pay phone and called police, who searched the abandoned home.

"We did find evidence at the scene to corroborate our victim's story," Johnson said.

    Police: Man sodomized stepson to avenge daughter's rape, UT, 12.1.2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-12-texas-stepsonassault_N.htm

Mom Confesses She Killed Autistic Child

January 12, 2008
Filed at 2:36 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

PEKIN, Ill. (AP) -- A woman accused of killing her autistic daughter testified Friday that she attempted to suffocate the 3-year-old with a pillow three days before she succeeded with a plastic garbage bag.

Karen McCarron said she couldn't go through with it using the pillow. When prosecutor Kevin Johnson asked her how long she held the bag over the toddler's head soon after, she replied about two minutes -- until little Katie stopped struggling.

In a videotaped confession played in court Thursday, McCarron said she began having thoughts of hurting her daughter a year before the May 2006 slaying but put them out of her mind. On the day of the killing, though, the thoughts were stronger than ever.

''They were so intense,'' McCarron said.

McCarron, 39, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murder, obstructing justice and concealment of a homicidal death. She was found mentally fit to stand trial, but a medical expert hired by her attorneys has said she was insane at the time of the killing.

The trial resumes Monday.

McCarron, a former pathologist, testified she felt responsible for Katie's autism because she allowed the child to get vaccinated. Some people believe autism is caused by a mercury-containing preservative once used in childhood vaccines.

It ''brought me a great deal of guilt,'' she said.

Using a plastic bag and the prosecutor's arm, McCarron demonstrated for jurors in Tazewell County Circuit Court how she placed a bag over her daughter's head and pushed her to her knees, the (Peoria) Journal Star and the Pekin Daily Times reported.

''Were you able to see her face as she fell to the floor?'' Johnson asked.

''Yes. I could see her face through the trash bag,'' McCarron answered.

McCarron said she listened for a heartbeat after Katie stopped struggling.

''I just put my ear to her chest,'' McCarron said. ''I heard one, then I heard nothing.''

The child had scratch marks on her head and bite marks were found inside her mouth and on the bag as she apparently tried to free herself, according to other testimony.

The taped confession was made while McCarron was hospitalized after attempting suicide, investigators said. Wearing a hospital gown, she appears sitting on a bed next to her husband, Paul McCarron.

Karen McCarron said she killed her child hoping to ''fix her'' and give her peace in heaven.

''Maybe I could fix her this way, and in heaven she would be complete,'' she said on the tape.

Karen McCarron said on the videotape that she took her daughter's body back to her own house and put her in bed. She then went to the store, bought ice cream and returned to her mother's home to get the garbage bag because, ''if things get bad, their house would be searched.''

Interviewers asked McCarron if she knew what she did was criminally wrong.

''I have enough education to know that,'' she answered.

McCarron told police she felt like a failure because of the child's autism and was sad and hurt because the child couldn't interact with her very well.

''I loved Katie very much, but I hated the autism so, so much,'' McCarron said. ''I hated what it was doing to her. ... I just wanted autism out of my life.''

    Mom Confesses She Killed Autistic Child, NYT, 12.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Autistic-Girl-Killed.html

In Corpse Episode, Echoes of a Grittier Time

January 10, 2008
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

You would see them around Hell’s Kitchen, the men neighbors knew as Jimmy and Fox. They were relics of the past in the once-notorious neighborhood, and now they lived on its edges.

Jimmy, James O’Hare, lived with Fox, Virgilio Cintron, in a second-story apartment on West 52nd Street. Both men were in their 60s and Mr. Cintron was ailing, so Mr. O’Hare often took care of laundry and grocery errands. He shopped for soda and sweets at Adam Altareb’s 99-cent discount store on 10th Avenue, counting out change or small bills at the counter. They regularly lined up for a free meal around the corner at the Sacred Heart rectory.

They were tolerated, even treated with affection, although they could be trouble: Each had been arrested numerous times since the 1960s on charges including robbery, drug possession and burglary. Their neighborhood was slowly improving, and in some ways, it was leaving them behind.

“They are a throwback to the old Hell’s Kitchen,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman.

But nothing in their records, or in their daily appearances around the neighborhood, could foretell what became the macabre final chapter of a bond reminiscent of the days when Hell’s Kitchen was known more for its drugs and robberies than its fashionable bistros and high-rises. Neighbors described them as “vein brothers,” addicts who use intravenous drugs.

After Mr. Cintron recently died, Mr. O’Hare, 65, and another friend, David Daloia, also 65, whose last known address was in Queens, tried, without success, to cash a Social Security check of Mr. Cintron’s, the police say. They realized that they needed their dead buddy’s help.

So on Tuesday afternoon, the police say, they dressed Mr. Cintron’s corpse, carried him down a flight of stairs and heaved his body into a computer chair with wheels. Outside, they rolled him over the uneven sidewalk, pulling the chair toward Pay-O-Matic, a check-cashing shop on Ninth Avenue.

But as the men turned the corner, trying to steady the floppy corpse, they ran into the law. At Empanada Mama, a restaurant next door to the Pay-O-Matic, Travis L. Rapp, a detective, had sat down to lunch.

Detective Rapp looked out the window and saw the unwieldy trio. Something about the way they struggled to balance the man in the chair caught his eye.

“At this point, when they approached closer, I saw the body and I said, ‘Well, this is a dead guy,’ ” Detective Rapp said on Wednesday in a phone briefing.

“I ran out and said, ‘Where are you guys going, what’s going on?’ ” the detective said. “The roommate, O’Hare, said: ‘I am cashing my friend’s check. I have to bring him inside to cash his check. He needs to cash his check.’ ”

Detective Rapp identified himself as a police officer and called an ambulance. He noticed that the body was stiff.

“When they dragged his feet, his feet were just very rigid and they were bouncing off the edge of the sidewalk, and I knew right then and there that he was dead.”

Still, Mr. O’Hare was trying to get Mr. Cintron’s body into the check-cashing store.

“I said: ‘You are not bringing him anywhere. Just leave him alone.’ I said, ‘Don’t touch him.’ ”

It was not clear what had caused Mr. Cintron’s death, although the police do not suspect any foul play. An autopsy was completed on Wednesday but more tests were needed, the city medical examiner’s office said.

The two men were to be arraigned on Wednesday on charges of attempted forgery, attempted possession of a forged instrument and petty larceny, the police said.

The episode was the talk of the neighborhood. Mr. Cintron had spent his childhood in the same apartment building on 52nd Street. At a secondhand store a block away, Annette Magana, the owner, called out to a neighbor.

“Hey, did you hear what happened up there?” she said to the neighbor, Edwin Lubin, walking his dog.

Mr. Lubin was aghast. “It is the freakiest thing that I have ever heard happen in this area,” he said, pausing on the sidewalk as Mrs. Magana rang up his purchase of used jeans. “It has come to a point where the community has become more wholesome, with a sense of community. It is more than shocking.”

At the Pay-O-Matic on Wednesday, an employee waved away a reporter seeking a comment. “We are not giving any interviews,” he said.

Neighbors in the building where the two men lived said that they appeared sickly, and they described the apartment as filthy. One, Leyla Tletuha, 42, said she once came across Mr. Cintron lying flat on the floor in the threshold of his apartment and had to help him inside. She always sniffed the air outside his door to make sure that the gas oven had not been left on, she said, a common habit of the pair that she attributed to attempts to get high.

The three men had a history of heroin addiction, the police said.

But residents said Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Cintron were often kind.

“They seemed down on their luck,” said P. J. Sosko, who lives on the floor below their apartment. “They looked down, they looked bad. But kind.”

“Age got the best of them,” Ms. Tletuha said.

Neighbors said that the men appeared so sickly that they had trouble climbing the two short flights of stairs to their apartment. To some, to see the two men reminded them of the years of neglect and hard living of a different era in the neighborhood.

“A man who drags himself across the wall to get upstairs is pretty sick,” said Noel Valentine, a maintenance worker in the building. “They were on a path of destruction, the babies of Hell’s Kitchen,” he said. “That’s what is left of Hell’s Kitchen, dying out.”

On Wednesday, a young woman tried to deliver food from God’s Love We Deliver to the apartment. But a policeman turned her away. The apartment, for the moment, had become a crime scene.

Al Baker contributed reporting.

    In Corpse Episode, Echoes of a Grittier Time, NYT, 10.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/nyregion/10dead.html

2 Bring Corpse to Store to Cash Check

January 9, 2008
Filed at 9:51 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Two men wheeled a dead man through the streets in an office chair to a check-cashing store and tried to cash his Social Security check before being arrested on fraud charges, police said.

David J. Dalaia and James O'Hare pushed Virgilio Cintron's body from the Manhattan apartment that O'Hare and Cintron shared to Pay-O-Matic, about a block away, spokesman Paul Browne said witnesses told police.

''The witnesses saw the two pushing the chair with Cintron flopping from side to side and the two individuals propping him up and keeping him from flopping from side to side,'' Browne said.

The men left Cintron's body outside the store, went inside and tried to cash his $355 check, Browne said. The store's clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O'Hare told the clerk they would go and get him, Browne said.

A police detective who was having lunch at a restaurant next to the check-cashing store noticed a crowd forming around Cintron's body, and ''it's immediately apparent to him that Cintron is dead,'' Browne said.

The detective called uniformed New York Police Department officers at a nearby precinct. Emergency medical technicians arrived as O'Hare and Dalaia were preparing to wheel Cintron's body into the check-cashing store, Browne said. Police arrested Dalaia and O'Hare there, he said.

Cintron's body was taken to a hospital morgue. The medical examiner's office told police it appeared Cintron, 66, had died of natural causes within the previous 24 hours, Browne said.

''He was deceased in the apartment when he was removed by these two,'' Browne said.

Dalaia and O'Hare, both 65, were being held by police and faced check fraud charges, Browne said.

A call to a telephone number listed for Cintron at the apartment he shared with O'Hare went unanswered Tuesday evening. Police said they didn't have an address for Dalaia or attorney information for him or O'Hare.

    2 Bring Corpse to Store to Cash Check, NYT, 9.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Dead-Mans-Check.html

Dogfighting Evidence in NYC Suburbs

January 9, 2008
Filed at 7:51 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- Maybe the dogs had lost a bout before a frenzied crowd in a basement. Maybe they had been used to whet the bloodlust of other dogs. But dead or alive, the two shredded pit bulls were no longer of any use to their owners.

The crippled, bloodied terriers were thrown into a trash bin at a gas station late Saturday or early Sunday and left to die, police said. One survived.

The discovery Sunday by workers at the Yonkers gas station was the latest of several recent signs of dogfighting in Westchester County, just north of New York City.

In October, six scarred dogs trained for fighting were found alive in a Yonkers garage. Two months earlier, five Rottweilers and a pit bull were rescued in Mount Vernon, not long after an injured pit bull was found in a pool of blood on the street.

Experts say the gruesome discoveries reflect the pervasiveness of dogfighting, which has gained attention with the sentencing of suspended NFL quarterback Michael Vick, who was convicted on federal charges of operating a dogfighting ring at his property in rural Virginia. Dogs that did not perform well in test fights were killed by electrocution, drowning, hanging and other means.

''It's everywhere,'' said Martin Mersereau, spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Norfolk, Va. ''It's urban, it's rural, it's suburban. As long as there are cowards and there are pit bulls available to them there is going to be a dogfight.''

Ken Ross, police chief for the Westchester County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said there likely has not been an increase in dogfighting in the county, but people have become more aware of it because of the Vick case.

Dogfighting is a felony in every state except Wyoming and Idaho, punishable in New York by four years in prison and a $25,000 fine.

Ross said he sees a link between dogfighting and gang activity in Westchester County.

''Sometimes it's just the status thing with gangs, and gangs will battle each other's dogs or two guys meet in somebody's basement to see whose dog is tougher,'' he said.

The dog that survived the weekend mauling was doing much better Tuesday, responding to intravenous fluids and antibiotics, Ross said.

But he noted that if the animal was trained as a vicious attack dog, it may have to be euthanized as a public safety risk once it recovers.

''You may save the dog,'' Ross said, ''but then you may have to put down the dog.''

    Dogfighting Evidence in NYC Suburbs, NYT, 9.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Discarded-Dogs.html

Man Cuts Off, Microwaves His Own Hand

January 9, 2008
Filed at 10:27 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

HAYDEN, Idaho (AP) -- A man who believed he bore the ''mark of the beast'' used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.

The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff's deputies arrived Saturday in this northern Idaho town. He was in protective custody in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.

''It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived,'' sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. ''He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he didn't bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad.''

It was not immediately clear whether the man has a history of mental illness. Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Johnson would not say whether an attempt was made to reattach the hand, citing patient confidentiality.

The Book of Revelation in the New Testament contains a passage in which an angel is quoted as saying: ''If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink the wine of God's fury.''

The book of Matthew also contains the passage: ''And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for you whole body to do into hell.''

Wolfinger said he didn't know which hand was amputated.

    Man Cuts Off, Microwaves His Own Hand, NYT, 9.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Microwaved-Hand.html

Police: Dad Threw 4 Children Off Bridge

January 9, 2008
Filed at 12:35 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. (AP) -- A man angered after a dispute with his wife confessed to tossing his four young children off a bridge, authorities said Wednesday as they searched murky waters for the bodies.

Lam Luong, 37, who is charged with four counts of capital murder, told authorities Tuesday night that he drove to the Dauphin Island bridge and dropped the children from a span that reaches 80 feet in places, said Detective Scott Rivera.

Luong came to coastal Alabama from Vietnam in 1984 and worked in the commercial fishing industry as a shrimper, Police Chief John Joyner and a relative said. He had argued with his wife, Ngoc Phan, before taking the children, he said.

Missing and presumed dead were 4-month-old Danny Luong; 1-year-old Lindsey Luong; 2-year-old Hannah Luong; and 3-year-old Ryan Phan. Phan is not the man's biological child, but Luong raised him from infancy, authorities said.

At least three boats were being used in the search, and the Coast Guard was sending another boat and a helicopter, Riva said.

Joyner said he feared the search of the Intracoastal Waterway below the bridge would be hampered by bad weather and choppy waters. The bridge extends from the mainland to Dauphin Island, which lies between the waterway and the Gulf of Mexico.

''It's been a nightmare,'' said Riva.

The couple lived with Phan's mother at Bayou La Batre, a fishing village with a large Southeast Asian community. Phan's brother-in-law Kam Phengsisomboun, who is from Thailand, said the couple moved back to the area from Hinesville, Ga., only a couple of weeks ago.

They argued Sunday night and again Monday, he said. Luong left the home with two of the children, then later came back for the other two, he said.

The family initially feared the children had been traded to support a drug habit, Phengsisomboun said. Luong had a crack cocaine habit and had spent an insurance settlement from an automobile accident rapidly, he said, and authorities confirmed Luong had a history of drug offenses.

Luong reported the children missing Monday, and told police that a woman who had the children failed to return them, authorities said. Phengsisomboun said he was later told by investigators that a witness had seen someone throw a bundle from the bridge and then saw three children in a nearby car.

Phan, 23, was in seclusion Wednesday morning at her mother's brick home, the front porch cluttered with children's shoes.

    Police: Dad Threw 4 Children Off Bridge, NYT, 9.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Children-Bridge-Deaths.html

3 Students Stabbed; Pa. School Evacuated

January 9, 2008
Filed at 12:57 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

READING, Pa. (AP) -- A junior/senior high school was evacuated Wednesday morning after three students were stabbed, emergency and hospital officials said.

The stabbings happened around 8:15 a.m. at Antietam Middle-Senior High School in Lower Alsace Township, according to a dispatcher at the Berks County Communications Center.

A 16-year-old girl was taken to Reading Hospital with cuts to both hands, hospital spokesman William J. Rudolph Jr. said. Doctors also treated a 15-year-old girl with a small wound to her upper back and a 14-year-old boy with a small wound to his upper right arm, he said. The boy was later released, Rudolph said.

The Reading bomb squad and numerous police agencies were called to the scene, said state police Lt. Thomas G. McDaniel said.

Ninth-grader Jim Greager, 14, said he was in a hallway when he saw another student running down the hall screaming, ''Help! Help! Help!''

Brian Macluskie, 15, also a ninth-grader, said students thought it was a drill when the school was evacuated, ''until we saw cop cars out front.''

''People were crying; they were scared. Everyone was calling parents on cell phones. Rumors started flying,'' Macluskie said.

Antietam School District officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The school enrolls grades seven through 12 and is located about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

------

On the Net:

Antietam Middle-Senior High School:

http://www.antietamsd.org/secondary/index.html

    3 Students Stabbed; Pa. School Evacuated, NYT, 9.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-School-Stabbing.html

1 Dead, 2 Injured in Shooting in Market

January 7, 2008
Filed at 1:47 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CHINO, Calif. (AP) -- A man opened fire in a grocery store Sunday afternoon, shooting and injuring his girlfriend and her sister before police shot him to death, authorities said.

The man arrived at the Rio Ranch Market in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, at about 1 p.m. with his two young children in tow, Chino Police Lt. Al Cheatam said.

He shot at four people inside, but hit only his girlfriend and girlfriend's sister. The girlfriend worked in the store's bakery.

''At first everyone thought it was a balloon that went off in the store,'' Fabio Cebreros, a customer in the store, told KABC-TV. ''But then after you heard two more shots just randomly go off, POW! POW! It was chaos.''

Police said the man, 25, was holding his girlfriend hostage when they confronted him.

''She had been shot, we could tell that by her bleeding, and he was holding her in a position where he had his gun to her head,'' Cheatam said. ''One of our officers was able to get a good line of sight between him and the hostage and the shooter, and we were able to resolve the situation by the officer firing a round at the suspect.''

The girlfriend's sister was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition, authorities said. The girlfriend was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

It was unclear if the sister also worked at the store.

No names were released.

The two children were in custody of Child Protective Services, authorities said.

    1 Dead, 2 Injured in Shooting in Market, NYT, 7.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Market-Shooting.html

Violent Crime on the Decline, Data Show

January 7, 2008
Filed at 11:09 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Crime rates dipped slightly for the first half of 2007, the FBI reported Monday, signaling a stop to a 2-year increase in violence nationwide.

Violent crime -- including murders, rapes and robberies -- dropped by 1.8 percent between January and June last year, the FBI's preliminary data show. Property crimes also decreased, including a 7.4 percent drop in car thefts and arsons by nearly 10 percent.

The FBI data, compiled from local and state police departments around the nation, offer a snapshot of crime rates over the six month period. The numbers will not be finalized until later this year.

Still, the data appears to end two years of rising violent crime rates, which increased by 2.3 percent in 2005 and 1.9 percent in 2006.

''The latest numbers from the FBI are encouraging,'' Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said. ''The report suggests that violent crime remains near historic low levels.''

Carr acknowledged some communities continue to face violence, and said the Justice Department ''is committed to assisting our state and local partners in combating violent crime wherever it exists.''

The data show that violent crime dropped dramatically in big cities with 1 million or more residents, where murders decreased by 6.5 percent and rapes by 14 percent.

Smaller cities and rural areas, however, saw a slight 1.1 percent increase in violence. And murder rates jumped by 5 percent in suburbs and by 3.2 percent in cities with between 50,000 and 100,000 residents, the FBI reported.

    Violent Crime on the Decline, Data Show, NYT, 7.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Crime.html

Boy, 12, Charged in Baby's Beating Death

January 7, 2008
Filed at 7:09 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

LAUDERHILL, Fla. (AP) -- A 12-year-old boy beat a toddler to death with a baseball bat because she was crying while he was trying to watch TV, authorities said.

The boy, who was not identified, was arrested Saturday on first-degree murder charges, Lauderhill police spokesman Lt. Mike Cochran said.

He was arraigned in juvenile court Sunday and remained in custody, but it was not clear if he had an attorney or if anyone else would be charged in the girl's death.

Cochran said the boy confessed to authorities that he was home alone Friday baby-sitting a 10-year-old and the 17-month-old girl and became angry when the toddler began to cry. The relationship between the three was not clear.

At some point, an adult called 911. The girl, Shaloh Joseph, was rushed to a hospital where she was pronounced dead of blunt force trauma to the head, Cochran said.

The Miami Herald identified the boy's mother as Guerla Joseph. A telephone listing for a Guerla Joseph in Fort Lauderdale had been disconnected.

The case is not the first in Florida where a boy so young has been charged in the death of a child. Lionel Tate was 12 when he beat and stomped to death a playmate half his age in Florida.

At the time, Tate was the youngest person in modern U.S. history to receive a life prison sentence. His attorneys initially said he accidentally killed 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick in 1999 while imitating pro wrestling moves.

Tate was convicted as an adult of first-degree murder, but the conviction was thrown out in 2004, and Tate pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

    Boy, 12, Charged in Baby's Beating Death, NYT, 7.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Infant-Killed.html

Authorities Find Grisly Scene in Texas

January 7, 2008
Filed at 7:21 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

TYLER, Texas (AP) -- Deputies responding to a 911 call in this East Texas town found a gruesome scene: a human ear boiling in a pot on a stovetop and a hunk of flesh impaled on a fork sitting atop a plate on the kitchen table.

Authorities believe that the man arrested in the death of his 21-year-old girlfriend cooked parts of her body and may have tried to eat them -- actions they said he described to them in the emergency call that led them to the grisly discovery.

Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, was scheduled to be arraigned Monday on a capital murder charge. He was in solitary confinement at a jail on a $2 million bond Sunday night and did not have an attorney, officials said.

Authorities say it is unclear whether McCuin consumed any part of the woman's body.

''We cannot prove that he did,'' Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith said Sunday. ''He was either going to, had been or led us to think that he was doing it.''

McCuin is also the suspect in the early Saturday morning stabbing of a man described as his estranged wife's boyfriend, Smith said.

McCuin has a criminal record that includes driving while intoxicated and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges. When he was arrested, McCuin had an outstanding felony retaliation warrant.

Smith said McCuin was known to authorities and had ''a history of violence,'' including assaulting his estranged wife, his girlfriend and his sister.

Officials believe the horrific chain of events began when Jana Shearer, McCuin's girlfriend, was taken by McCuin from her home late Friday night and killed.

Smith said McCuin then drove to his estranged wife's home, where he stabbed his wife's boyfriend, William Veasley, 42. Veasley was in intensive care Sunday night.

McCuin was still in that home when deputies arrived, but he jumped into his car and escaped after a short chase, Smith said. ''We did not know at the time that he had murdered anyone,'' Smith said. ''We thought it was a disturbance or an assault.''

McCuin wasn't seen again until Saturday morning, when he arrived at the home he shared with his mother and called her into the garage so she could ''come see what he had done,'' Smith said.

His mother and her boyfriend saw the remains of Shearer, authorities said. McCuin's mother and her boyfriend fled the home and flagged down a police officer. McCuin dialed 911 after they left and told an emergency dispatcher he had killed Shearer and was boiling her body parts, Smith said.

When sheriff deputies arrived, McCuin barricaded himself in the home for a short time before coming out. After he emerged, a tactical team entered and found Shearer's body, Sgt. Gary Middleton said. They also found the grisly scene in the kitchen.

After McCuin was arrested and placed in the back of a patrol car, he kicked out the vehicle's side window before being put in additional restraints, Middleton said.

Shearer appeared to have died from blunt trauma to her head, Smith said. She may have been kidnapped Friday night, when her mother saw her get into McCuin's truck.

Detectives were trying to determine where the killing happened. They think McCuin drove to his mother's home with the dead woman in the back seat of his extended-cab pickup, Smith said.

------

Associated Press writer Jeff Carlton in Dallas contributed to this report.

    Authorities Find Grisly Scene in Texas, NYT, 7.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Texas-Slaying.html

Man Arraigned in Child's Taped Beating

January 6, 2008
Filed at 5:29 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

DETROIT (AP) -- A man was arraigned Sunday on child abuse charges in the beating of his girlfriend's 2-year-old son that was captured on a convenience store surveillance tape.

The video from Dec. 21 shows a man hitting, kicking and stepping on a child over a four-minute span. The man also is seen hitting the child with a cooler door and pauses when other customers walk nearby.

Joseph Gray, 27, of Detroit, was arrested Friday night after viewers saw his photo on televised news reports that also broadcast portions of the tape. Detroit police had released the tape that day to help capture him.

Police said investigators were assured by the boy's relatives that the child was OK.

Gray was arraigned by video on charges of second- and third-degree child abuse, and a preliminary examination was set for Jan. 17. Gray didn't have a lawyer present at the hearing.

Messages seeking comment left at two telephone listings in Detroit for the name Joseph Gray were not immediately returned.

    Man Arraigned in Child's Taped Beating, NYT, 6.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Videotaped-Beating.html

Man Accused of Setting Girlfriend Ablaze

January 5, 2008
Filed at 3:02 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. (AP) -- A man suspected of setting his girlfriend on fire out of jealousy was arrested after police found him hiding in an attic, authorities said.

Shannon McGee, 34, is accused of attacking his 29-year-old girlfriend on Dec. 22. Authorities say he punched her, poured a bottle of rubbing alcohol on her and set fire to her. She was treated for burns at a Grand Rapids hospital.

Police used a Global Positioning System on Friday to track a cell phone McGee had with him in the attic.

McGee was being held early Saturday in the Muskegon County Jail on $10,000 bond. Sheriff's Sgt. Todd Gilchrist said McGee would be arraigned Monday on a warrant charging him with assault to do great bodily harm less than murder.

Gilchrist said he did not know if McGee had a lawyer.

Police said McGee accused his girlfriend of being with another man. She said she was Christmas shopping with her mother.

    Man Accused of Setting Girlfriend Ablaze, NYT, 5.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BRF-Girlfriend-Set-Afire.html