Feds decline to charge cops in Tamir Rice case
The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it will not file any federal charges against two Cleveland cops in the controversial 2014 killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
Officials said Tuesday that video footage of the incident was inconclusive and did not warrant federal charges against the two officers.
Rice was playing with a pellet gun near a recreation center when a man waiting at a nearby bus stop called 911 to report someone brandishing a firearm.
He told the dispatcher that the person was likely a minor and that the weapon was possibly a toy — but that information was never relayed to responding cops.
Officer Timothy Loehmann, who came to the scene with partner Frank Garmback, fatally shot Rice soon after their arrival.
Both men argued that they ordered Rice to show his hands and that he was drawing the apparent weapon before being shot.
The footage, the Justice Department said, did not confirm or disprove those assertions.
The boy’s slaying set off protests and fueled ongoing national tensions over the use of police force against minorities.
A state grand jury previously declined to charge Loehmann with a crime.
In order to bring fresh federal raps, the Justice Department would have had to determine that he purposefully broke the law rather than exercised poor judgement.
Loehmann was fired from his department in 2017 after investigators learned that he had lied about his job history.
In his application, Loehmann obscured the fact that he was allowed to resign after a six-month probationary period with another department instead of being fired.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/29/cops-in-tamir-rice-case-will-not-be-charged-by-feds/
Photo Credit: AP
A homeless man rescued all the animals at a shelter after it caught on fire
(CNN) — A homeless man risked his life to save several cats and dogs trapped at an Atlanta animal shelter after it caught fire, the facility’s founder said.
Keith Walker, 53, rushed into the W-Underdogs shelter on December 18 after a fire engulfed its kitchen.
“I was nervous as hell, I’m not going to lie. I was really scared to go in there with all that smoke. But God put me there to save those animals,” Walker told CNN. “If you love a dog, you can love anyone in the world. My dog is my best friend, and I wouldn’t be here without him, so I knew I had to save all those other dogs.”
While the shelter was not completely destroyed, the fire left it uninhabitable, according to W-Underdogs founder Gracie Hamlin.
Luckily, W-Underdogs was only a week away from moving into its new facility in Atlanta, where the animals now reside.
“He is my guardian angel,” Hamlin told CNN. “Even the firefighters didn’t want to handle the dogs. They called animal control, but Keith was already in the building pulling out the cats and dogs until they were all safe.”
Hamlin previously knew Walker, who has been homeless since he was 13 years old, because she lets him keep his dog, a pitbull named Bravo, at the shelter every night.
Walker was on his way to pick up Bravo and take him for a walk when he saw the fire. He was able to rescue all the animals — six dogs and 10 cats.
“I can’t thank him enough for saving my animals,” Hamlin said. “I’m still in disbelief, because I’ve been around a fire and I know how fast they flare up. He is my hero.”
via: https://www.kmov.com/news/a-homeless-man-rescued-all-the-animals-at-a-shelter-after-it-caught-on-fire/article_eb074d1c-8f1f-5b45-ad5c-1f13c960448b.html
Photo Credit: Grace Hamlin
190,000 ceiling fans recalled because the blades detach and fly off
(CNN) — More than 190,000 ceiling fans have been recalled because the fans’ blades can detach while in use.
King of Fans, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company that makes the 54-inch Mara ceiling fans, announced the recall on Wednesday after receiving 47 reports of blades detaching, according to a statement from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. The fans had been sold at nationwide Home Depot stores.
Two of those reports indicated a detached fan blade hit someone, the commission said. Four reports said a blade caused property damage.
King of Fans noted that not all of its Mara ceiling fans are being recalled. The CPSC said the recall applies to the company’s Mara ceiling fans with matte white, matte black, black and polished nickel finishes. The commission instructed consumers who have purchased these items to “immediately stop” using them.
“If consumers observe blade movement or uneven gaps between the blades and fan body or movement of the clip during inspection, consumers should immediately contact King of Fans for a free replacement ceiling fan,” the commission said.
King of Fans said the ceiling fan malfunctions were caused by “an isolated manufacturing defect with the assembly of the fan blade’s locking clip to the fan flywheel.”
“One of the two screws retaining the locking clip is not adequately secured to the flywheel,” the company said in a statement posted on its website. “If this occurs, the blade may detach from the fan during use, posing an injury hazard.”
The CPSC said the recalled ceiling fans cost about $150 and were sold exclusively at nationwide Home Depot stores and on the company’s website from April 2020 through October 2020.
Home Depot confirmed via email that it sold about 80,000 of the fans before the recall order was issued pulling them from stores. When it discovered the issue, the retailer said it “voluntarily recalled the product and stopped sales.”
“We’re committed to the safety and quality of our products,” a Home Depot spokesperson said via email.
via: https://www.kmov.com/news/190-000-ceiling-fans-recalled-because-the-blades-detach-and-fly-off/article_93ab81c2-e7f6-5320-9c2c-aa81724ad240.html
Photo Credit: From US Consumer Product Safety Commission
Napoleon re-enactor Oleg Sokolov sentenced for dismembering student-turned-lover
A Russian professor who beheaded his student-turned-lover — and then planned to commit suicide as Napoleon Bonaparte — has been sentenced to more than 12 years in a stockade, according to a report.
Oleg Sokolov, 64, a former history professor at St. Petersburg State University, was found boozed up in a river in November 2019 with a bag containing the severed arms of 24-year-old Anastasia Yeshchenko.
Her severed head was discovered in an IKEA bag in his luxury apartment, while her torso and legs were recovered from the Moika River in St. Petersburg, East2West News reported.
Sokolov — Russia’s most famous Napoleon re-enactor — sat impassively while wearing a mask as a court in St. Petersburg sentenced him to 12½ years in a penal colony on Friday.
“He shot her, then tried to strangle her, but she continued showing signs of life so he shot her again,” Judge Yulia Maksimenko said, adding that he shot her four times with a rifle before dismembering her with a knife and saw.
One of the bullets, which were fired from a Soviet-era TOZ-17 stylized as a 19th-century cavalry rifle, went through the woman’s right eye, East2West reported.
After killing her and hiding her body parts under a bed, Sokolov partied with friends.
“His friends visited him, they all drank cognac,” the court heard.
Once they left, he beheaded and dismembered the corpse in his bathroom.
Sokolov was caught when he was found in the icy river trying to dispose of his lover’s arms, which he had chopped off at her shoulders.
The disgraced academic pleaded guilty to her murder, but told the court it had not been premeditated and that the PhD student had driven him to “a state of complete insanity” by making insulting remarks about his children from another relationship.
It emerged that he had suspected Yeshchenko of cheating on him — and became violent when she told him she planned on going to a friend’s birthday party.
She had told him that her freedom must be respected, but the judge said Sokolov was fiercely jealous amid the 40-year age difference.
Sokolov — who had lectured at the Sorbonne and was awarded the Legion of Honour order of merit by France — and Yeschenko had both taken part in Napoleonic re-enactments in full historic regalia.
Earlier, Sokolov said in court: “I want to express deep and complete remorse for what I have done. I not only believe that I must be punished, I want to be punished to atone for the crime I committed.”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/28/napoleon-re-enactor-gets-12-5-years-for-dismembering-student/
Photo Credit: Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS
Business teacher, 38, could face prison for ‘kissing and inappropriately touching’ her teen boy student
A former Morton, Illinois, teacher is facing charges following allegations she engaged in sex abuse of a male student, News Break reports.
The incident between the Morton, Illinois, high school business teacher and the student allegedly occurred in September.
Erin Kemp, 38, was slapped with a subpoena earlier this month.
The former Morton, Illinois, teacher was ordered to appear in Tazewell County Circuit Court for her alleged sex crime.
A conviction on the sex abuse charge could put the the Morton, Illinois, teacher away for seven years.
Or, if the judge is more lenient with Kemp, she could get off with just probation.
Kemp was a business teacher at Morton High School in Illinois before her downfall following sex-abuse charges, Patch reports.
She resigned from her post in September, shortly after the scandal broke.
Hill’s statement did not clarify any details about the exact nature of the sex abuse allegedly committed by the Morton, Illinois, teacher.
Kemp first began working as a teacher in the Morton, Illinois, school district in 2007 — a career soon destroyed by the sex abuse allegations.
During the last school year, she received about $70,000 in salary and benefits.
The Journal Star was able to learn that Kemp told school officials that she kissed the student in question and touched him in an inappropriate way.
When questioned by the Morton, Illinois, school officials, the student ultimately disclosed that the teacher had sexually preyed upon him.
The student permitted a forensic download of his phone.
There, investigators found sexualized text messages between the Morton, Illinois, teacher and her student.
Kemp expressed numerous romantic fantasies about herself and the child as well as worries that the boy would leave her in the dust in the end, Week.com reports.
via: https://knewz.com/morton-illinois-teacher-sex-charges/?utm_source=nypost
Photo Credit: knewz.com
Video shows woman falsely accusing Keyon Harold’s son of stealing her phone – later found in Uber
A woman falsely accused a jazz musician’s 14-year-old son of stealing her cellphone — lunging at the teen during a wild caught-on-camera incident in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel.
Footage of the altercation, posted by New York-based trumpeter Keyon Harrold, was shared widely on Sunday, with many saying it was yet another example of racial profiling and bogus accusations launched against black people.
“I am furious!!! We see this crap happening all the time, but it hits different when it hits home!!!,” Harrold, who is black, wrote in the caption.
Harrold said the woman’s phone was returned to her by an Uber driver a few minutes after the incident.
The video shows the unidentified woman frantically telling a manager at the Arlo Hotel in SoHo that Harrold’s son had her phone.
“Take the case off that’s mine. Literally get it back,” she says, attempting to have the manager intervene.
The teen insists that he’s holding his own phone, as Harrold incredulously asks the woman “You think there’s only one iPhone made in the world?”
“My son has nothing to do with her,” the dad adds to the manager.
But the unhinged woman continues to say that “he has my phone” — before telling the dad and son she won’t let them leave the hotel and lunging at them.
At one point, Harrold can be heard asking the woman if she accused them simply because of their race.
The musician, who has worked with the likes of Jay-Z and Beyoncé, said he and his son were on their way to breakfast on Saturday when the woman “assaulted” them.
“This person quote on quote ‘lost’ her iPhone, and apparently, my son magically acquired it, which (is) merely ridiculous,” he wrote.
While his video is about a minute long, Harrold, 40, says the encounter lasted about five, during which the woman scratched him and tackled his son.
He also blasted the manager for “advocating” for the woman, who he said was no longer a guest of the boutique hotel, while he and his son were still staying there.
“Watch as the manager advocates for the lady who is not even a hotel guest, insisting and attempting to use his managerial authority to force my son to show his phone to this random lady,” Harrold wrote.
“He actually empowered her!!!”
She didn’t apologize for the “traumatic” situation for his son, or to him, and neither did anyone at the hotel, Harrold said.
An Arlo spokesman did later apologize to Harrold and his son in a statement and said that while the manager called the cops and hotel security stepped in, “more could have been done to de-escalate the dispute.”
“We’re deeply disheartened about the recent incident of baseless accusation, prejudice and assault against an innocent guest of Arlo hotel,” the statement said.
Police confirmed they were called to the hotel on Saturday afternoon for a report of harassment, saying the woman had grabbed and shoved the dad and son after accusing them of taking a cellphone she had misplaced.
The encounter drew comparisons to notorious Central Park ‘Karen’ Amy Cooper — who touched off a firestorm in May when she called the cops on a black birdwatcher who asked her to keep her dog on a leash.
Speaking to The New York Times on Sunday, Harrold said he was left “shell-shocked” by the incident and that he believed his son, Keyon Harrold Jr., was racially-profiled by the woman.
“I wonder what would happen if it were different, if it were a black woman and there was a white 14-year-old,” he said.
He said he worried about what would have happened if he hadn’t been there to protect his son, noting “I’ve seen people be hurt or even killed for less.”
In a follow-up post on Instagram, Harrold — who appeared on the Grammy-winning soundtrack for the 2016 Miles Davis biopic “Miles Ahead” — thanked fans for their support but warned Internet sleuths not to falsely accuse others of being the woman in the video.
“Let’s be mindful and spread love through this hatefulness,” he wrote.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/27/woman-falsely-accuses-keyon-harrolds-son-of-stealing-phone/
Photo Credit: nypost.com/Earl Gibson III
Breonna Taylor sculpture smashed by vandals in California
A bust sculpture honoring police shooting victim Breonna Taylor was smashed by vandals over the weekend, prompting a probe by Oakland police, according to reports.
The memorial, installed two weeks ago in downtown Latham Square, was smashed in several places sometime Saturday, ABC affiliate KGO-TV reported.
The bust includes a plaque that reads: “Say Her Name, Breonna Taylor,” the station said.
“At first I was stunned and shocked and hurt and angry,” artist Leo Carson, who created the sculpture, told the outlet.
“Just a whole bunch of emotions,” he said. “It felt like I was personally attacked and also they attacked Breonna Taylor and the BLM movement.”
Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT technician, was shot and killed in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, during a botched raid on March 13.
Taylor’s death, and the May 25 police-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, were among the catalysts that sparked massive Black Lives Matter protests throughout the world, including in the Bay Area city.
Oakland police said in a statement that a report had been filed in the vandalism of the Taylor bust and that police were investigating the incident, the Mercury News said.
Carson said he paid for the statue “out of my own pocket.”
He hopes to raise enough money to repair the statue and have it bronzed to make it more durable. He’s launched a GoFundMe page with a goal of $5,000.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/27/breonna-taylor-sculpture-smashed-by-vandals-in-california/
Photo Credit: GoFundMe
11-year-old among 4 arrested for attempted robbery in Wentzville, MO
WENTZVILLE, Mo. (KMOV.com) — An 11-year-old was one of four people arrested for an attempted robbery early Saturday morning in Wentzville.
Officials with the Wentzville Police Department said a woman was inside her car in the parking lot of Wentzville Commons around 7:30 a.m. when she noticed four teenagers looking at her. She told police she was approached by a 15-year-old who asked for directions and then demanded her car at gunpoint.
The woman then pulled out her own gun and refused to get out of the car. The teen then went back to his group and they all ran away from the area. This is in the 1900 block of Wentzville Parkway off of Interstate 70.
The woman called police and all four were eventually arrested without incident. Police said all of them were young: two were 15, an 11-year-old and a 17-year-old.
Officers recovered one gun. The 15-year-olds and the 11-year-old were taken to the Juvenile Justice Center and the 17-year-old was taken to the Wentzville Police Department.
The teen who approached the woman was charged with first-degree attempted robbery and armed criminal action. The three others were charged with conspiracy to commit robbery.
No other information was released.
via: https://www.kmov.com/news/11-year-old-among-4-arrested-for-attempted-robbery-in-wentzville/article_4365df98-47c8-11eb-8c52-4f483c14852f.html?block_id=990844
Photo Credit: kmov.com
Cops removed bullets from teen ‘by hand’ after shooting him
Cops in California shot a teenager twice in the back — then removed the bullets “by hand” before paramedics arrived, a federal lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit filed this week claims that officers in the Bay Area city of Hayward wrongfully shot the 17-year-old in the back in June, then took out the bullets themselves and dropped the teen off at a juvenile facility, the Mercury News reported.
“It’s barbaric, the way in which they tried to minimize the harm they caused this young man,” Adante Pointer, the lawyer for the teen’s family, told the newspaper.
“It’s completely inappropriate and fortunately it didn’t cause more severe damage to him,” the attorney added.
Pointer also posted photos of the unnamed teen’s wounds on Twitter.
“The cops did this to a kid when the eyes of the world were looking!” he wrote in another post. “Imagine what happens when NO ONE is looking!”
The lawsuit, filed Monday, claims the teenager fell asleep in his cousin’s car near the scene of looting in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests in the city.
Police said cops were dispatched to a CVS pharmacy in the area on reports of looting.
The teenager, however, claims he woke up around 4 a.m. on June 1, frightened and confused, and drove past the cops — who opened fire and struck him in the back.
Hayward Police Officer Samuel Tomlinson said he believed the vehicle was going to hit him so he opened fire, the Mercury News said.
The second cop, Police Officer Stephen Akacsos, also fired, believing “his partner had either been shot or struck by the vehicle,” Hayward police said in a statement after the shooting, the outlet said.
The teen crashed the car and fled, and hid in bushes, where he was found by police and arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.
The charge was later dropped, the newspaper said.
“I feel like all they saw was a black face and just believed he did (a crime),” said the teen’s mother, Jael Barnes. “Not only does he now have these physical wounds, he has these mental wounds as well, which will never go away.”
Hayward police referred questions to the city attorneys office, the outlet said.
City Attorney Michael Lawson declined to comment comment because the city had not yet been served with the lawsuit.
It is unclear what happened to the bullets allegedly removed by the cops.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/25/california-cops-removed-bullets-from-teen-after-they-shot-him-lawsuit/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Doctor reportedly has severe allergic reaction to Moderna COVID vaccine
A Boston doctor suffered a serious allergic reaction to Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine, the first of its kind documented, a report said Friday.
Dr. Hossein Sadrzadeh, a geriatric oncologist at Boston Medical Center, became dizzy and felt his heart racing minutes after receiving the vaccine on Thursday, he told The New York Times.
“It was the same anaphylactic reaction that I experience with shellfish,” Dr. Sadrzadeh told the paper, noting that his tongue became numb, his blood pressure plummeted and he broke into a cold sweat.
“I don’t want anybody to go through that.”
Sadrzadeh self-administered an EpiPen he brought in the event of such a reaction, and was discharged following a brief emergency room examination, the report said.
Though a handful of recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have reported allergic reactions to that inoculation — including a New York City health care worker — Sadrzadeh’s symptoms mark the first known reaction of its severity to the Moderna shot.
The vaccines, which have similar ingredients, both require two shots administered a few weeks apart.
Neither Moderna nor the federal Food and Drug Administration, which approved the vaccines, commented on the Times’ report.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/25/boston-doctor-has-severe-allergic-reaction-to-moderna-covid-19-vaccine-report/
Photo Credit: nypost.com