Category Archives: US crime

Ohio officer indicted in fatal shooting of pregnant Black woman

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Ta’Kiya Young had been suspected of shoplifting when Connor Grubb and another officer approached her car

A police officer in Ohio was indicted by a grand jury on murder charges on Tuesday for the 2023 fatal shooting of Ta’Kiya Young, a pregnant Black woman who had been suspected of shoplifting, authorities said.

Young, who was 21, had been suspected of stealing bottles of alcohol from a store last August when Connor Grubb, a Blendon township police officer, and another officer approached her car, the Associated Press reported at the time.

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Briton dies before clearing name after 38 years in US jails for murders he denied

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Body of Kris Maharaj, who died in Florida prison hospital despite judge finding him innocent, will be taken to UK by his wife for burial

During the 38 years Kris Maharaj spent incarcerated in Florida prisons insisting he was innocent of murder, his wife, Marita, dreamed of a life together back in Britain.

This week they will finally be reunited on home soil but not in the way she had hoped.

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Man charged in three 1970s California murders after DNA match

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Warren Luther Alexander, 73, was arrested for the decades-old killings of three women in southern California

A 73-year-old man has been charged in the strangulation deaths of three southern California women in 1977, after cold case detectives obtained a DNA match. Authorities said they believe there could be more victims.

Warren Luther Alexander of Diamondhead, Mississippi, made his first court appearance on Thursday but his arraignment on three counts of first-degree murder was postponed until later in August, the Ventura county district attorney’s office said. Alexander remained jailed without bail.

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New Orleans Catholic priest accused of raping teen in 1975 gets trial date

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Lawrence Hecker will face court on kidnapping and rape charges in September pending a final competency ruling

A doctor’s report says that Lawrence Hecker, the retired New Orleans priest who faces charges of raping a teenager after strangling him unconscious in 1975, has dementia – but it says nothing about Hecker’s competency to stand trial.

On Thursday, after seven hearings and still no definitive determination on Hecker’s competency, his trial on rape and kidnapping charges has been set for 24 September.

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US judge derails Mexico’s $10bn trafficking suit against US gunmakers

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Lawsuit seeks to hold American manufacturers responsible for trafficking of firearms to drug cartels across border

A US judge has dismissed much of Mexico’s unprecedented $10bn lawsuit seeking to hold US gun manufacturers responsible for facilitating the trafficking of firearms to violent drug cartels across the US-Mexico border.

US district judge Dennis Saylor in Boston dismissed claims against six of the eight companies Mexico sued in 2021, including Sturm, Ruger and Glock, citing jurisdictional problems.

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Illinois governor calls for resignation of sheriff whose deputy killed Sonya Massey

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JB Pritzer calls on Jack Campbell to step down over ‘failures’ that led to Sean Grayson fatally shooting Massey

JB Pritzker, Illinois governor, has called for the resignation of the sheriff whose deputy fatally shot Sonya Massey in her home last month after the Black woman had called 911 for help.

Pritzker, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that the sheriff, Jack Campbell, should step down.

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Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran charged in foiled plot to kill US leaders

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Asif Merchant, 46, tried to recruit people for scheme to assassinate figures including Donald Trump, says FBI

A Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran has been charged over a foiled conspiracy to carry out political assassinations on US soil, the justice department said on Tuesday as it disclosed what officials say is the latest murder-for-hire plot to target US public figures.

Asif Merchant, 46, sought to recruit people in the United States to carry out the plot in retaliation for the US killing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ top commander, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020, according to a criminal complaint.

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Alabama jailer pleads guilty in death of prisoner who froze to death in cell

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Joshua Jones reportedly admits that ‘collectively we did it. We killed him’ after Tony Mitchell died of hypothermia

A former corrections officer at an Alabama jail has pleaded guilty in the case of a mentally ill man who died of hypothermia after being held naked in a concrete cell for two weeks.

The officer, Joshua Conner Jones, entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors over the treatment of two prisoners at the Walker county jail.

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US man who planned 2020 Venezuela coup attempt arrested for arms smuggling

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Jordan Goudreau, 48, was charged in New York for smuggling and conspiracy alongside partner Yacsy Álvarez

A former US Green Beret who, in 2020, organized a failed crossborder raid of Venezuelan army deserters to remove President Nicolás Maduro has been arrested in New York on federal arms smuggling charges.

A federal indictment unsealed this week in Tampa, Florida, accuses Jordan Goudreau and a Venezuelan partner, Yacsy Álvarez, of violating US arms control laws when they allegedly assembled and sent to Colombia AR-styled weapons, ammo, night vision goggles and other defense equipment requiring a US export license.

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Son of El Chapo pleads not guilty in Chicago as mystery cloaks cartel arrests

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Officials have mixed accounts around arrest of Sinaloa co-founder El Mayo after Guzmán López turned himself in

Joaquín Guzmán López, the son of Sinaloa cartel co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges in federal court in Chicago, days after his arrest in a dramatic operation in which he may have delivered his father’s former business partner to US authorities.

Guzmán López, 38, was detained on Thursday alongside Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, the other co-founder of one of Mexico’s most powerful organised crime groups, after touching down in a small plane in El Paso, Texas.

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Illinois officer charged with killing Sonya Massey had history of ‘bullying’

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Sean P Grayson worked for six law enforcement agencies in four years, with allegations of abuse of power and lying

As vigils for Sonya Massey take place across the US this weekend, a history of unethical and aggressive behavior by the officer who shot her, Sean P Grayson, is emerging. Grayson’s disciplinary file includes accusations of bullying behavior and abuse of power, according to CBS News.

Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman and mother of two living outside Springfield, Illinois, had called 911 when she thought a prowler was lurking outside her home on 6 July. Grayson and another officer from the Sangamon county sheriff’s office were dispatched and arrived at her home. Instead of helping Massey with a possible intruder, Grayson shot her in the face after she moved a pot of water from her kitchen stove at their request.

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Kamala Harris calls Sonya Massey family to give ‘heartfelt condolences’

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James Wilburn, father of Black woman shot dead by Illinois police, says vice-president ‘let us know she is with us 100%’

Vice-President Kamala Harris on Friday called the family of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy in her Illinois home, according to Massey’s family members, who spoke to NBC News.

Massey was killed on 6 July after she called the Sangamon county sheriff’s office because she was afraid there might be a prowler outside, according to an attorney for her family and Illinois state police.

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Mexico president calls for ‘transparency’ amid secrecy over Sinaloa cartel arrests

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US announces arrest of two leaders of organised crime group as Mexican authorities say they were in the dark

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has called for “transparency” after the sudden and secretive arrests by US authorities of two top leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful organised crime groups.

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, 76, founded the Sinaloa cartel with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and has been a top target of US law enforcement for decades, with a $15m bounty on his head.

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Sonya Massey killing: family accuse police of attempted cover-up

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Audio obtained by the Guardian reveals police dispatcher was told Black woman’s fatal wound was ‘self-inflicted’

The family of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was shot in the face and killed by a white sheriff’s deputy in Illinois, have said police initially tried to cover up her killing.

Police audio obtained by the Guardian features someone on scene the night of Massey’s killing – presumably a deputy – saying Massey’s wound was “self-inflicted”. A dispatcher asks to confirm, and the person on scene repeats “self-inflicted”. The recording is in line with what the family says was misleading information given by police when Massey was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

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Utah to use pentobarbital to execute man instead of three-drug combination

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Defense attorneys said the use of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride could cause ‘excruciating suffering’

Utah officials said on Saturday that they are scrapping plans to use an untested lethal drug combination in next month’s planned execution of a man in a 1998 murder case. They will instead seek out a drug that’s been used previously in executions in numerous states.

Defense attorneys for Taberon Dave Honie, 49, had sued in state court to stop the use of the drug combination, saying it could cause the defendant “excruciating suffering”.

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Former classmate describes Trump rally gunman as ‘definitely conservative’

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Another schoolmate tells Inquirer the suspect wasn’t ‘harshly bullied’, while 20-year-old’s motive remains unclear

As mystery continues surrounding the possible motivations of the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man accused of trying to kill Donald Trump at a campaign rally, one former classmate of his has come forward to describe him as being “definitely conservative” while they were in school together.

“It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate,” Max R Smith told the Philadelphia Inquirer of the shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks.

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Former Pennsylvania fire chief identified as victim killed at Trump rally

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Corey Comperatore, 50, was a ‘hero’ who ‘had so much life left to experience’, his sister says

Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer fire company in Pennsylvania, has been identified as the victim who was shot and killed amidst an assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday.

“He was a hero that shielded his daughters. His wife and girls just lived through the unthinkable and unimaginable,” Comperatore’s sister, Dawn Comperatore Schafer, said in a post on Facebook.

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Alec Baldwin trial: judge mulls dismissal after claim that state withheld evidence

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Actor’s defense team at Rust film set shooting trial accuses state of concealing ammunition turned over to police

The judge in Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial is considering a motion from the defense to dismiss the case after the actor’s lawyers argued that the state improperly withheld evidence.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the Rust armorer who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year, was initially expected take the stand at Baldwin’s trial on Friday. But the proceedings took a dramatic turn as Baldwin’s defense team accused the state of concealing evidence that would have been favorable to the actor and asked Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to throw out the case.

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One-year-old child survives two days on side of busy highway in Louisiana

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Truck driver rescued baby near where the child’s four-year-old brother was found dead; the mother is now in custody

A Texas truck driver is being praised for rescuing a one-year-old boy who was seen crawling along a busy highway after surviving on his own for two days amid weather from Hurricane Beryl.

Reginald Walton, a driver for DHL Supply Chain, spotted the infant near a section of Interstate 10 in Calcasieu parish, Louisiana, near the state’s south-western border.

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Billionaire Sung Kook ‘Bill’ Hwang convicted of fraud by New York jury

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Archegos Capital Management’s founder guilty of 10 of 11 criminal counts over investment firm that collapsed in 2021

Sung Kook “Bill” Hwang, the Archegos Capital Management founder, was convicted of fraud and other charges by a jury in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday. Prosecutors at a criminal trial had accused him of market manipulation ahead of the 2021 collapse of his $36bn private investment firm.

The jury, which began deliberations on Tuesday, found Hwang guilty on 10 of 11 criminal counts and Patrick Halligan, his Archegos deputy and co-defendant, guilty on all three counts he faced. Hwang and Halligan sat flanked by their lawyers as the verdict was read by a soft-spoken foreperson.

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