Category Archives: US crime

‘We will heal together’: Maine residents relieved as shooter found dead

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After three days of lockdown, fear and grief, residents of Lewiston and Lisbon prepare to move forward as manhunt ends

The terrified residents of Lewiston, Maine, were afforded a sense of relief amid their shock and grief on Saturday after the “armed and dangerous” gunman who had kept them on lockdown since killing 18 people on Wednesday was found dead.

The body of suspected shooter Robert Card, 40, was found on Friday evening near a recycling area 10 miles from Lewiston, with what the authorities confirmed on Saturday was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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New York animal control officer arrested in yorkie dognap plot

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Hope the purloined pooch was returned to Jeannine Staller after she was told by Scott Casterline that her dog was dead

A New York state animal control officer was arrested after selling a stolen pet and telling the owner that the animal had died, authorities have said.

Scott Casterline, 51, was arrested on Thursday and charged in connection with stealing the dog, a nine-year-old Yorkshire terrier called Hope, and later selling it while working as an animal control officer, according to a press release from the Steuben county sheriff’s office.

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Maine shootings: ‘more and more concern’ as search for suspect goes on

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Shelter in place order for the region rescinded almost 48 hours after the shooting even as ban on hunting continues on

Maine authorities continued a massive manhunt on the second day of their intensive search for an army reservist accused of fatally shooting 18 people and wounding 13 at a bowling alley and a bar in the town of Lewiston.

People scoured the woods and searched hundreds of acres of family-owned property. They event sent dive teams with sonar to the bottom of a local river and scrutinized a possible suicide note as they hunted for Robert Card who disappeared shortly after the massacre.

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George Santos pleads not guilty to new fraud charges

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Republican accused of making tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges on credit cards belonging to campaign donors

US congressman George Santos pleaded not guilty on Friday to revised charges accusing him of several frauds, including making tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges on credit cards belonging to some of his campaign donors.

The New York Republican appeared at a courthouse on Long Island to enter a plea to the new allegations. He had already pleaded not guilty to other charges, first filed in May, accusing him of lying to Congress about his wealth, applying for and receiving unemployment benefits, even though he had a job, and using campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses like designer clothing.

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An avid bowler, a beloved manager: details emerge of Maine shooting victims

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Eighteen people were killed in Wednesday’s shooting, the largest mass shooting of 2023 so far

The mass shooting in Maine left 18 people dead in attacks at a restaurant and a bowling alley in Lewiston on Wednesday night.

Law enforcement is still searching for shooting suspect Robert Card, 40, who is considered armed and dangerous. So far this year, the US has witnessed the second-highest number on record of mass killings to this point in a single year. Only 2019 had more mass killings.

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Maine shootings: at least 16 people dead and dozens injured, police say

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Local authorities say agencies are investigating ‘two active shooter events’ as police warn residents to shelter in place

At least 16 people were killed in Wednesday night shootings at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine, police say, sending the state’s second-largest city into despair.

It appeared there were incidents at two locations and that the shooter remained at large late into the evening as the city was on lockdown.

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Chunk of change: four charged with stealing millions of US dimes from truck

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Defendants allegedly left coins scattered across parking lot after breaking into truck and taking 10-cent pieces worth $234,500

Robberies in the US are a dime a dozen, but one in particular had investigators perplexed. Now, more details about a scandal involving the theft of dimes by the million, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, have been released by federal authorities.

A newly unsealed indictment charges that on the evening of 13 April, four Philadelphia men made off with $234,500 – made up of more than 2m dimes – after breaking into a tractor-trailer carrying the coins. The truck driver, who had pulled into a parking lot to sleep at the time of the heist, had picked up the dimes from the US Mint and was headed to Miami. There was $750,000 worth of dimes in the truck before the robbery – a shipment that weighed about six tons and cost a pretty penny.

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No evidence of hate crime in synagogue president’s killing, say Detroit police

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Authorities have confirmed no motives and are ‘just short’ of naming one person a suspect in murder of Samantha Woll

Detroit police officials on Monday reiterated their belief that the killing of synagogue president Samantha Woll over the weekend does not appear to be a hate crime – but have yet to describe any theory or motivation for her murder.

“Right now the evidence doesn’t take us there,” said Detroit’s police chief, James White, at a press conference on Monday. “When we talk about hate crimes, there are certain tracks they take. We’re confident that we don’t have any indication of that at this point.”

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Funeral held for Detroit synagogue president as police search for motive

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Officials say they have found no proof of antisemitism as Samantha Woll killing brings wave of grief to Jewish and Democratic circles

A funeral was held on Sunday for the president of a Detroit synagogue who was killed over the weekend, as police searched for a motive.

Samantha Woll, an adviser to Democratic politicians and president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, was found stabbed to death outside her home in the Lafayette Park neighborhood of Detroit on Saturday.

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Nashville police chief’s son is suspect in shooting of two officers outside store

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John C Drake, 38, is estranged son of metro police chief; officers treated in hospital after incident in city of La Vergne

Authorities in Tennessee were searching on Sunday for the estranged son of Nashville’s police chief as the suspect in the shooting of two police officers outside a Dollar General store.

Officers in La Vergne, a city about 20 miles (32km) south-east of Nashville, were investigating a stolen vehicle outside the store on Saturday afternoon when they struggled with the suspect, who pulled a handgun and shot them, said the local police chief, Christopher Moews.

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Ex-MLB player arrested in connection to 2021 Lake Tahoe shooting death

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Danny Serafini was one of two people arrested after investigation into fatal shooting of Robert Spohr and wounding of his wife

A former professional baseball player was one of two people arrested on Friday in connection to an infamous Lake Tahoe shooting that killed a man and badly wounded his wife in 2021.

After a two-year investigation, Danny Serafini, 49, and Samantha Scott, 33, were arrested separately in Nevada, hundreds of miles apart in Las Vegas and north-west of Reno.

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Father found guilty of terrorism in US case linked to 2018 toddler kidnapping

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Jury found Siraj ibn Wahhaj and three others guilty of a range of charges including kidnapping resulting in death

Jurors on Tuesday delivered split verdicts in a case that stemmed from the search for a three-year-old boy who went missing from Georgia and was found dead hundreds of miles away at a squalid compound in northern New Mexico.

Four members of the family were on trial. Three were found guilty on federal kidnapping charges. Two were convicted on related terrorism charges. The boy’s father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, was one of the two people found guilty of terrorism-related charges.

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Illinois community lays to rest ‘kind’ Palestinian boy killed in hate crime

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As family and friends attended the six-year-old’s funeral, elected officials, including Joe Biden, condemned the brutal attack

Crowds of mourners in a Palestinian Chicago suburb paid respects on Monday to a six-year-old Muslim boy killed in an alleged anti-Islamic hate crime, hours after authorities revealed new details about the evidence used to charge the family’s landlord with stabbing the child and his mother.

Wadea Al-Fayoume, who had recently had a birthday, died on Saturday after being stabbed dozens of times in a brutal attack that drew condemnation from local elected officials to the White House. Authorities said the family’s landlord, Joseph Czuba, was upset over the Israel-Hamas war and attacked them after the boy’s mother proposed they “pray for peace”.

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FBI report shows stark increase in US hate crimes and drop in violent crime

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New statistics for 2022 show decrease in violent offenses and rise in hate crime incidents, a majority of which targeted Black people

Data from the FBI’s annual crime report shows an overall dip in US violent crime, but a stark increase in hate crimes.

The new statistics from the federal agency, released on Monday, show that in 2022, violent offenses decreased to pre-pandemic levels.

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New Orleans ex-police officer awaiting execution loses chance at clemency

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Antoinette Frank, the only woman on Louisiana’s death row, was convicted in the 1995 death of a fellow officer and two others

A New Orleans ex-police officer awaiting execution for the murders of a fellow officer and two other people during a 1995 restaurant robbery lost a chance at clemency Friday during a meeting of Louisiana’s pardon board.

Antoinette Frank’s bid for a clemency hearing failed on a 2-2 vote after emotional testimony.

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Elijah McClain: one Colorado officer convicted and one acquitted in 2019 killing

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The 23-year-old Black man was stopped as he was walking home from a store, placed in a neck hold and injected with ketamine

A jury has convicted one Colorado police officer and acquitted another for the 2019 homicide of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old whose death at the hands of law enforcement while on a walk home sparked international outrage and years of protests.

A jury found Randy Roedema, an Aurora police department (APD) officer, guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault on Thursday. A second officer, Jason Rosenblatt, was found not guilty of manslaughter and assault. Both had held him on the ground and ignored his cries saying he couldn’t breathe. A third officer, who was the first to approach McClain, is also facing charges and has an upcoming trial.

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Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions committed while in office, lawyers argue

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Lawyers say ‘allegedly improper’ behavior by president falls within ‘outer perimeter’ of duties and is protected from prosecution

Lawyers for Donald Trump have urged a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, advancing a sweeping interpretation of executive power that contends that presidents cannot face prosecution for any conduct they engaged in while in office.

The request to throw out the indictment, handed up earlier this year by a federal grand jury in Washington, amounts to the most consequential court filing in the case to date and is almost certain to precipitate a legal battle that could end up before the US supreme court.

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California official who opposed #MeToo movement accused of killing fiancee

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Maga darling Joseph C Roberts arrested after Rachel Elizabeth Imani Buckner’s remains found on San Francisco Bay shoreline

A former San Francisco Republican official who claimed to be a victim of the #MeToo movement has been accused of dismembering his fiancee.

On 6 September, Alameda, California, officials arrested the 42-year-old Navy veteran Joseph C Roberts after DNA evidence from the autopsy of Rachel Elizabeth Imani Buckner, 27, allegedly pointed in his direction.

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One of last living witnesses and ex-gang leader indicted in Tupac Shakur murder

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Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis, a former Los Angeles drug dealer, was indicted Friday for one count of murder with a deadly weapon

Las Vegas police have arrested a man for the 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur, a long-awaited break for one of the most infamous unsolved murders in hip-hop history.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who has described himself as one of the last living witnesses of the shooting, was taken into custody early Friday morning after he was indicted by a grand jury for one count of murder with a deadly weapon in affiliation with a criminal gang, Marc DiGiacomo, the Clark county prosecutor, said in court on Friday. The 60-year-old was arrested while on a walk near his home in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb.

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Peruvian man arrested for making more than 150 bomb threats to US schools

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Suspect, arrested in Peru, allegedly threatened schools after failing to ‘sextort’ nude photos from schoolchildren

A Peruvian man was arrested in Peru for sending more than 150 fake bomb threats to US schools, airports and a synagogue.

Eddie Manuel Núñez Santos, 33, was arrested by Peruvian officials on Tuesday in Lima, according to a press release from the justice department.

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