Category Archives: US crime

YouTuber prankster shot and wounded by target of practical joke

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Tanner Cook, 21, was reportedly playing joke on man at Virginia mall when victim of prank shot him in abdomen

A popular US YouTube creator who prides himself on making videos in which he displays odd behavior to put people off intends to keep at it, even after one of his targets allegedly shot him nearly to death.

Tanner Cook – who regularly makes videos of himself pranking strangers for nearly 40,000 subscribers of the channel Classified Goons – was reportedly playing a practical joke on a man at a mall in the Washington suburb of Dulles, Virginia, at about midday on Sunday. A friend was recording him when things took an almost deadly turn, according to authorities as well as an interview Cook gave to the local TV station WUSA.

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Trump addresses indictment in brief – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. You can read our full story on Trump’s arraignment here.

After listing off a number of grievances, attacking those involved in the multiple investigations and criminal cases against him, and rambling a number of of-repeated falsehoods about the 2020 elections, he walked off stage.

The speech was in many ways a standard performance, but shorter.

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Second autopsy performed on South Carolina teen after Alex Murdaugh case

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Stephen Smith was found dead on a highway in 2015 but lawyers for mother say no evidence links death to Murdaugh family

A second autopsy was completed this weekend on the exhumed body of a teenager found dead nearly eight years ago on a South Carolina road, according to the family’s lawyer, after the public attention surrounding Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial boosted a mother’s search for answers in the unsolved case.

Lawyers for the mother of Stephen Smith have said there is no evidence linking his death to the Murdaugh family, and state investigators have remained tight-lipped since taking the case around the same time police said Murdaugh killed his wife and son.

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New York police name three murder suspects in alleged drugging robberies

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Jayqwan Hamilton, Robert Demaio and Jacob Barroso accused of killing two men after visits to gay nightclubs

Police have identified three suspects charged in the murders of two men who were robbed and fatally drugged last year in Manhattan after they visited gay nightclubs in New York City.

The suspects are Jayqwan Hamilton, 35, and Robert Demaio, 34, of Brooklyn as well as Jacob Barroso, 30, from Harlem.

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Donald Trump indicted by grand jury over hush money payment to Stormy Daniels

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Ex-president is expected to appear for his arraignment on Tuesday where he will be fingerprinted, photographed and processed for arrest

A grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump in New York over a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.

No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls.

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Nashville school shooter carefully plotted attack that killed six, say police

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A former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday, armed with two “assault-style” weapons and a handgun after elaborately planning the massacre by drawing a detailed map and conducting surveillance of the building, police said.

Nashville chief of police John Drake told NBC News the shooter had planned to attack several different places, saying a manifesto belonging to the suspect “indicates that there was going to be shootings at multiple locations, and the school was one of them”.

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Florida plastic surgeon charged with murder in case of vanished lawyer

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Steve Cozzi took a break and never returned – but blood and video pointed to Tomasz Kosowski, who was suing Cozzi’s clients

One day last week, Steve Cozzi, a south Florida attorney, got up from his desk to use the bathroom. He never came back to work and has not been seen since.

Police say he was apparently murdered during that bathroom break, by a plastic surgeon at the center of a lawsuit in which Cozzi represented the opposing side.

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Mysterious death of New York fashion designer ruled as homicide

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Kathryn Marie Gallagher’s July 2022 death linked to ‘drug-facilitated theft’ after medical examiner’s findings of intoxication

The death of a rising New York fashion designer last year could be linked to a spate of “drug-facilitated theft” crimes in the city, authorities have revealed.

A mystery has surrounded the death of Kathryn Marie Gallagher, 35, since she was found dead in her apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on 24 July last year.

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Miami Beach imposes curfew on unruly crowds as spring break turns deadly

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Police in Florida city implement midnight-to-six ban after two fatal shootings and could do likewise next weekend

Two deadly shootings and unruly crowds which police have struggled to control during spring break prompted officials in the Florida city of Miami Beach to impose a curfew late on Sunday – and there could be a similar one next weekend.

City officials said in a news release that they implemented a curfew from 11.59pm Sunday until 6am Monday, and another is likely to be put in place on Thursday through next Monday, 27 March. The curfew mainly affected South Beach, spring breakers’ most popular party spot.

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‘Heinous, calculated’: Colorado dentist suspected of wife’s murder by poisoning

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James Toliver Craig, 45, of Aurora held for murder after taking wife Angela to hospital with severe headaches and dizziness

In what authorities have called a “heinous, complex and calculated murder”, a dentist from the Denver area is facing accusations that he poisoned his wife and killed her.

James Toliver Craig, 45, of Aurora, Colorado, came under scrutiny after he drove his 43-year-old wife Angela to a hospital on Wednesday night as she complained of severe headaches and dizziness, according to police. Her condition quickly worsened, and medical staff placed her on a machine meant to help her breathe before declaring her dead.

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Trump in panic mode as he braces for likely charges in Stormy Daniels case

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Manhattan district attorney expected to file criminal charges against ex-president for payment to adult film star in 2016

Donald Trump is bracing for his most legally perilous week since he left the White House, with the Manhattan district attorney likely to bring criminal charges against him over his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as he huddled this weekend to strategize his legal and political responses.

The former US president has posted in all-caps on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be “ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK” and called for his supporters to engage in protests – an ominous echo of his tweets urging protests in the lead-up to the January 6 US Capitol attack.

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Podcaster and husband allegedly killed by stalker in Washington state

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Zohreh Sadeghi, 33, and Mohammed Naseri, 35, found dead along with Texas trucker Ramin Khodakaramrezaei who died by suicide

A Texas truck driver allegedly broke into the home of a woman who hosted a podcast to which he listened and killed her as well as her husband before dying by suicide in what authorities are describing as a stalking case.

Authorities identified the victims as 33-year-old podcaster Zohreh Sadeghi and her husband Mohammed Naseri, 35, according to the Daily Beast. The suspect, meanwhile, is Ramin Khodakaramrezaei, a 38-year-old trucker.

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Authorities identify Massachusetts ‘Granby girl’ 45 years after she was shot

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Advanced genetic testing revealed the murder victim as Patricia Ann Tucker, who was found dead on the side of a logging road

For nearly 45 years, authorities did not know the name or life story of a woman who was shot dead and left off the side of a logging road in western Massachusetts.

But authorities ultimately turned to advanced genetic testing to help them solve the mystery, and they recently figured out the murder victim was Patricia Ann Tucker, who was 28 and had a 5-year-old son when she was killed without her loved ones knowing for decades.

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Investigation finds fatal drugging of two men in New York City to be homicide

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Julio Ramirez, 25, and John Umberger, 33, were drugged and robbed while leaving gay bars last year

Two men who were fatally drugged in New York City while leaving gay bars last year and whose bank accounts had been drained were both homicide victims, according to the local chief medical examiner’s office.

The medical examiner said Friday that the deaths of social worker Julio Ramirez, 25, and political consultant John Umberger, 33, were caused by a “drug-facilitated theft”, NBC News reported.

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Alex Murdaugh found guilty of murder of wife and son

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South Carolina lawyer, 54, to be sentenced on Friday after jury returns guilty verdict following three hours of deliberation

Richard “Alex” Murdaugh has been found guilty of the murders of wife Maggie and son Paul, after a six-week televised trial that culminated with the defendant unexpectedly taking the stand to plead his innocence.

The jury returned with the verdict after three hours of deliberation. Murdaugh was found guilty on two counts of murder and two weapons-related charges.

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DNA used to identify California mother whose body was found 27 years ago

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Amanda Deza’s remains were found in canal in 1995 and remained unknown until daughter’s DNA was used to identify them

On a spring day in 1995, a group of recyclers scavenging along a northern California canal made a grim discovery – the remains of a woman bound and gagged inside a partly submerged refrigerator.

Authorities believed the body, described as being that of a woman between 29 and 41 years old with strawberry blond hair, had been underwater for several months. For the next three decades, the case would stump homicide investigators in San Joaquin county, east of the San Francisco Bay Area, some of whom spent their entire careers trying to identify the woman.

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Alex Murdaugh jurors visit crime scene as murder trial winds towards its close

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Closing arguments to be delivered in gripping case of prominent state attorney, accused of killing wife and son at family estate

After six weeks of testimony, including 62 prosecution witnesses and 14 for the defense, including the defendant himself, the closing days in the double-murder trial of Richard “Alex” Murdaugh has resembled a fairytale of dynastic corruption and deep south Gothic horror.

As the last prosecution witness stepped down from a South Carolina courtroom stand on Tuesday, closing the rebuttal phase of the trial, jurors on Wednesday headed off to tour the 1,700-acre country estate where Murdaugh’s wife Maggie and son Paul were found dead on 7 June 2021.

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‘Far from justice’: why are nearly half of US murders going unsolved?

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Homicide ‘clearance rates’ have plummeted over the past four decades, compounding relatives’ trauma

Every night since May, two-year-old Nylah Cheese has slept with a crocheted doll wearing a white tee, black pants and a silver chain. The toddler’s aunt, Silvia Lopez, had the figurine made in the likeness of Nylah’s father, Brandon Cheese, who was shot and killed at a park in San Francisco the month before.

“She instantly knew it was him and screamed, ‘It’s Dada!’” Lopez, Brandon Cheese’s older sister, said. The toddler has since named it “Dada doll”.

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Photographer describes Florida ordeal that killed journalist: ‘He kept shooting’

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Jesse Walden and his colleague Dylan Lyons were reporting on shooting allegedly by same attacker when Lyons was killed

In interviews from his hospital room, a wounded news photographer has described surviving the harrowing shooting on Wednesday that killed his fellow Florida journalist while they reported on an earlier shooting allegedly committed by the same attacker.

The photographer, Jesse Walden, said that he and his colleague Dylan Lyons had just arrived at a street in the Pine Hills neighborhood of Orlando where a local woman, Nathacha Augustin, had been murdered earlier the same day.

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Journalist and child killed near scene of fatal Florida shooting earlier in day

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Police say man involved in earlier killing returned to scene and fired on news van before walking to nearby home and shooting girl

A central Florida television journalist and a young girl were fatally shot on Wednesday afternoon near the scene of a fatal shooting from earlier in the day, authorities said.

The Orange county sheriff, John Mina, said during a news conference on Wednesday evening that the police had detained Keith Melvin Moses, 19, who they believe is responsible for both shootings in the Orlando-area neighborhood.

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