Police say they seized ‘Trump-shaped ecstasy pills’
PERU, Ind. — Some drug traffickers appear to be using President Donald Trump’s image to brand their illegal wares.
An Indiana State Police news release about 129 arrests in a series of drug busts in northern Indiana includes a photo of what police describe as “Trump-shaped ecstasy pills.”
They are orange and stamped with a face. On the back are the words “great again,” an apparent reference to Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Traffickers sometimes produce uniquely shaped or colored drugs as a marketing technique to encourage buyers to return for more.
Friday’s release doesn’t provide details, including how many of the pills were seized.
The six-day operation in June involved traffic stops by state and city police, as well as sheriff’s departments. LSD, cocaine and other drugs were also seized.
via: https://pix11.com/2018/07/01/police-say-they-seized-trump-shaped-ecstasy-pills/
LeBron James Signs 4-Year, $154 Million Contract With L.A. Lakers
LeBron James chose the Lakers.
After five years of missing the playoffs, infighting, turmoil, bad contracts and snubs in free agency, the Lakers got the man whose opinion matters more than anyone else’s every four summers.
James agreed to a four-year deal worth $154 million. His camp let the Lakers know minutes before releasing a one-sentence announcement on the Twitter account of Klutch Sports, the agency that Represents James.
Late Saturday night, Magic Johnson went to James’ Brentwood home to court the league’s biggest star, according to a source not authorized to speak publicly. James slept on their conversation. Sunday evening, his camp let the Lakers know he’d chosen them, minutes before releasing a one-sentence announcement through the Twitter account of Klutch Sports, the agency that represents James.
After 15 years in the NBA, James didn’t need lots of convincing or elaborate proposals. He knew how much he loved living in Los Angeles, how his family enjoyed summers in Brentwood. He knew what the Lakers once meant to the NBA. He believed enough in this team’s future and its leadership to sign a four-year deal worth $154 million.
James’ decision changes the league’s balance of power and gives the Lakers front office led by Johnson and Rob Pelinka its long-anticipated offseason triumph.
In James, they get a four-time NBA most valuable player who’s reached the NBA Finals for the past eight years, winning with his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016 and with the Miami Heat in 2012 and 2013. He was named MVP of all three championship series.
Now he’ll try to match Johnson and Kobe Bryant, both five-time NBA champions, as a member of the team they made famous.
“Y’all really thought he was gonna pass up the greatest city in the world… #TheKingIsHere,” Lakers point guard Lonzo Ball wrote on Twitter.
“The SHOW is back,” teammate Josh Hart tweeted. Kyle Kuzma posted a video graphic of himself hugging James.
“Welcome to the family,” Bryant tweeted, and offered congratulations to Johnson, Pelinka and Lakers co-owner Jeanie Buss.
James’ agent, Rich Paul, had conversations with the Cavaliers and reportedly a meeting with the Philadelphia 76ers in Los Angeles. James flew into L.A. from Anguilla, where he and his family vacationed last week, on Saturday morning and spent the day at home.
That night Paul George, another free-agent star the Lakers were targeting to return to his L.A. roots, shunned the team, opting to return to the Oklahoma City Thunder on a four-year deal worth $137 million without even taking a meeting with the team he grew up dreaming he’d play for.
This is the second time James has left Cleveland. He did it before in 2010, making his announcement at the end of an hour-long show on ESPN. This time he left with much less fanfare, and having delivered in 2016 Cleveland’s first professional sports championship in 52 years.
That season James and the Cavaliers came back from down three games to one to beat the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, in the second of four straight Finals matchups with them. But last month, after being swept in the series, James seemed acutely aware of the chasm between the teams’ levels of talent, and his team’s increasing inability to topple the Warriors juggernaut.
Now, James comes to a Lakers team loaded with a young players that won just 35 games last year, well below the organization’s level of historic excellence.
For five years the Lakers wandered through an NBA desert, amid the twilight of Bryant’s career as his body no longer allowed him to be the player who helped lead the Lakers to titles. For five years the 16-time champions couldn’t make the playoffs.
In three of those years they set franchise records for futility. The 55 games they lost in the 2013-14 were the most in the franchise’s history. Until the next year when they lost 61 and the year after that when they lost 65.
No superstar free agent came to save them. But the Lakers front office kept hoping and assuming.
Dwight Howard, then a coveted center seen as the second coming of Shaquille O’Neal, arrived in a 2012 trade and left as soon as he could in 2013, unmoved by billboards the Lakers unveiled that said, “Stay.” Carmelo Anthony didn’t come in 2014. DeAndre Jordan didn’t come in 2015. LaMarcus Aldridge didn’t like what he heard that same year. Kevin Durant wouldn’t even listen in 2016.
Then the Lakers tied themselves up by giving long, bloated contracts to free agents Timofey Mozgov and Luol Deng, suffocating their own future. That summer, many teams did the same.
All of it fell on the heads of Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak, then the Lakers’ top front office executives. Buss fired them in the spring of 2017. She installed Johnson, one of her closest friends, as the president of basketball operations, fought off an attempted coup from her two older brothers Jim and Johnny, and then took a step back to see what her hand-picked team could do.
What she wanted more than anything else was to turn the team her late father, Jerry, left her and her siblings back into one that would make him proud.
Johnson and Pelinka came in with a plan to rid the team of bad contracts, assemble young talent and then attract stars starting in the summer of 2018. They traded Mozgov and D’Angelo Russell, freeing millions in salary-cap space. They traded Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. to the Cavaliers, of all teams, freeing up more space to add stars.
What if they couldn’t do it?
Johnson wouldn’t even entertain the thought.
“Do you know how many Finals I have been in?” Johnson said last week. “So you think I am worried about this? I have played against Larry Bird in the Finals. I mean, come on man. I have been in nine Finals. I have been in college NCAA championships.
“I’m Magic Johnson.”
Then he gave himself an ultimatum. If two summers passed and no star free agents joined the Lakers, Johnson would resign from his position.
Woman hits her mother with car during fight on Long Island
MASSAPEQUA, N.Y. — A woman allegedly struck her mother with a car during a verbal argument on Long Island, the Nassau County police said Thursday.
Shaquay Minter and her mother, 42, got into an argument in a driveway just after 1 p.m. on Wednesday, according to detectives.
The argument quickly escalated and Minter, 25, got into her car, detectives said.
When her mother attempted to remove her purse from the vehicle, Minter backed out of the driveway, dragging and possibly running her over with the car, according to detectives.
The victim was taken to the hospital with multiple injuries, detectives said.
Minter was arrested and charged with second-degree assault and first-degree criminal contempt.
via: https://pix11.com/2018/06/28/woman-hits-mother-with-car-during-fight-on-long-island-police/
Mom who strangled newborn, threw body in trash sentenced
A New Jersey woman was sentenced to eight years in prison after she admitted to strangling her newborn daughter to death two years ago.
Jade Fanz was sentenced on Friday, People reported. The now 21-year-old strangled her daughter when she was just “minutes old,” according to NJ.com. She then put the infant’s body in a dumpster behind her home in Franklin Township.
Fanz’s crime came to light after she visited a local hospital due to a medical complication related to giving birth, according to ABC13. The young woman was initially charged with murder, unlawfully disturbing, moving or concealing human remains and abuse or neglect of a child, NJ.com reported.
She was later charged and pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in April.
Fanz has been in jail since the incident occurred, according to FOX5.
She must serve at least 85 percent of her sentence before she will be eligible for parole, per the terms of her plea agreement, according to People.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/06/26/mom-who-strangled-newborn-threw-body-in-trash-sentenced/
Woman trashes eatery, hit owner’s car over wrong food order
A Louisiana woman was arrested for allegedly trashing a Chinese restaurant and hitting the owner’s vehicle after her food order “was not made properly,” police say.
According to a police report released Monday, the customer, identified by police as 20-year-old Jasmine Thompson, visited China King in Slidell, La., last Thursday.
Thompson reportedly become irate at the employees after her food was “not made properly,” Slidell police confirm.
Thompson began throwing utensils and sauces around the restaurant while yelling racial slurs at the staff.
As Thompson fled the restaurant, she hit the owner’s car with her own vehicle, according to the report.
Police were called to the scene around 6:30 p.m. by witnesses who gave authorities her license plate information.
Thompson was stopped by police and charged with criminal damage, disturbing the peace, hit-and-run and not having insurance.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/06/25/woman-trashes-eatery-hit-owners-car-over-wrong-food-order-police/
Woman forced ex to have sex holding machete to his face
A Montana woman broke into a man’s house with a machete, ordered him to take off his clothes and forced him to have sex with her, police said.
Samantha Ray Mears, 19, was charged Friday with two felonies — aggravated burglary and assault with a weapon — as well as several misdemeanors for the incident at her ex-boyfriend’s Great Falls home, according to the Great Falls Tribune.
Mears reportedly broke into her ex of seven years’ house Friday while he was away. When he returned, she confronted him with the large knife, demanded that he take off all his clothes and ordered him to lie on his bed.
Fearing bodily harm, the victim complied and she proceeded to remove her pants and climb on top of him.
Mears then began to engage him in sexual intercourse — all while still holding the machete.
When he tried to get her to stop, Mears refused and bit him on the arm, according to KFBB.
After she finished, she sat naked on the bed, brandishing the weapon. At that point, the victim was able to take several photos of her, which he turned over to the police as evidence.
When an argument ensued soon after, an enraged Mears ripped a piece of trim from the victim’s wall and deliberately urinated in his bed, according to KFBB.
The ex-boyfriend was able to alert the authorities after claiming he needed to call a friend, then escaping from the room to dial 911.
According to the Tribune, Mears was also arrested in April after a previous argument at the victim’s home where she grabbed his hair, hit him in the face and attempted to strangle him.
The state has also filed a restraining order against the defendant, according to KFBB.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/06/26/woman-forced-ex-to-have-sex-holding-machete-to-his-face-cops/
Couple’s adopted kids fed only oatmeal, kept in plastic lined rooms, court document says
OSCEOLA, Iowa – A couple in Iowa is accused of neglecting and abusing two children they adopted from Ghana, and investigators say their five biological children did not face any abuse.
For two years, Barbara Holton has lived across from Kenny and Kelly Fry, the couple accused of neglecting and endangering their two adopted children. The Frys were arrested and charged on Sunday, but have since bonded out of jail.
“I wouldn’t have tolerated knowing something like that was going on with any children at all. It’s just not right. I had no clue,” Holton told WHO.
On occasion, Holton says she would see children playing outside the house and everything looked “perfectly normal,” but she never saw any children of color. Holton was unaware the Frys had adopted children from Ghana.
Court documents show the Frys had adopted the eight-year-old and nine-year-old a few years ago. Records reveal the children were sleeping on plastic mats, using buckets in their room as toilets, and were forced to stay in their room otherwise an alarm would sound and they would be punished.
Neighbors question why a family would take in children if they then chose to mistreat them.
“I was adopted and had wonderful parents. I can’t imagine anyone taking on children that don’t want to love them or take care of them. I don’t get it,” says Holton.
The behavior was first reported to the Department of Human Services by a neighbor who let the children inside their home when they were begging for help. WHO reached out to DHS for comment, but did not immediately hear back. The two adoptive children were immediately removed from the home and into a family member’s house, but it’s unclear where the five biological children are staying.
The Frys were both graduates of Simpson College in Indianola. Jill Johnson, the school’s Vice President for Marketing and Public Relations says the Simpson community is “shocked and appalled by the allegations.” The Frys were both standout student-athletes and were inducted into the Simpson College athletic hall of fame. Kelly is a 1999 graduate and is one of the most decorated athletes in Simpson College history, having led the softball team to two national titles. Kenny graduated the same year and was a letter winner and first team all-conference football player.
The husband and wife are due in court for preliminary hearings on July 3.
Man sentenced for slashing child’s throat, stuffing her in backpack during kidnapping
LANCASTER, Pa. — A 37-year-old Lancaster man was sentenced Thursday to a 26- to 52-year prison term for slashing his infant daughter’s throat during a kidnapping attempt in 2014, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office.
David W. Sleets was convicted in April of attempted murder and related charges in connection to the Nov. 11, 2014 incident, which began on East Frederick Street and ended in the Lancaster General Hospital parking lot.
Sleets kidnapped the child, slashed her neck, and placed her inside a backpack. While running, he tossed the bag — with the baby still inside — under a parked car in the hospital parking lot.
The child’s mother, who was pursuing, found the child and took her to the hospital, where she underwent life-saving emergency surgery.
Lancaster County Judge Donald Totaro called Sleets “an extreme danger to society” when outlining Sleets’ criminal past, which includes court appearances for 20 separate criminal cases and parole or probation violations. Totaro said he also considered Sleets’ mental illness — he is a diagnosed schizophrenic — before administering the sentence.
Sleets stopped taking his medication a few days before the crimes, and became angry and resentful toward the child’s mother. According to testimony at trial, Sleets said he “would kill (his) own,” Totaro pointed out.
Sleets declined to make a statement prior to sentencing.
Joe Jackson Hospitalized With Terminal Pancreatic Cancer
Joe Jackson, patriarch of the Jackson family, has terminal cancer and has been hospitalized, several outlets reported Friday morning.
The 89-year-old father of Michael Jackson has pancreatic cancer that took a turn for the worse this week, the Daily Mail reported. Family members, including wife Katherine Jackson, finally saw him earlier this week after first being denied access by handlers, the paper said.
“We were not being told where he was and couldn’t get the full picture. Even from the doctor. My mother was worried sick,” Jermaine Jackson told the Mail earlier this week.
Toddler dies after being left in car for 10 hours while mom socialized, officials say
WILLITS, Calif. – A Northern California mother was arrested after allegedly leaving her young child in a car parked outside a friend’s house while she went inside to hang out, officials said Friday.
Alexandrea Raven Scott, 23, is accused of causing her 18-month-old son’s death by leaving him in the back seat with the windows rolled up for about 10 hours, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
She allegedly deserted the boy around 3 a.m. Wednesday after arriving to visit with friends in Willits, along the 101 Freeway about halfway between Eureka and Santa Rosa.
Scott and the boy, identified as Chergery Teywoh Lew Mays, lived in Trinidad, a coastal town about 150 miles north of Willits near Redwood National Park, authorities said.
A San Jose State professor and former National Weather Service meteorologist told the Mercury News that Mays’ is the first vehicular heatstroke death in California this year. The temperature in Willits was about 80 degrees when the boy was found at 1 p.m., meaning it was about 130 degrees in the car, Jan Null said.
“It doesn’t have to be a blazing hot day for these to happen,” he told the newspaper. “They can happen anywhere, and happen to anyone.”
Sheriff’s officials became aware of the fatality around 1:30 p.m. after Scott took her son to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Investigators then went to the home where she had allegedly been socializing, where the vehicle Mays died in was still located, to collect evidence and speak with witnesses.
Scott was subsequently arrested on suspicion of willfully causing or permitting a child to suffer death and was being held without bail, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Detectives are now looking to speak with anyone who may have information on Scott’s whereabouts between Tuesday, June 19, and Wednesday, June 20. Anyone with information can contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office tip line at 707-234-2100.