9-year-old Florida boy charged with attempted murder in stabbing of 5-year-old sister – telling her “die, die”
A 9-year-old Florida boy who allegedly stabbed his 5-year-old sister — telling her, “Die, die” — will be charged with attempted first-degree murder, according to new reports.
The Ocala boy, whose name was not released because of his age, was playing in his room with his sister Monday afternoon when their mom slipped outside to check the mail, WKMG-TV reported.
When the mother returned, she found her son stabbing his sister repeatedly with a kitchen knife, the outlet reported.
She grabbed the knife from her son, who fled into a maintenance shed, and then picked up her daughter and called 911, authorities said. The girl was reported alert and responsive after the attack.
The boy told authorities that the thought of killing his sister “had entered his head two days earlier” and wouldn’t go away, according to an arrest report obtained by FOX 35.
He told cops he grabbed a knife from the kitchen, entered the bedroom, grabbed his sister by the neck while she was bent over and began attacking her, the station reported.
“Die, die,” the boy told his sister during the unprovoked attack, according to the report.
The boy allegedly told investigators he stabbed his sister because “he wanted to be able to go outside.”
Investigators found probable cause to charge the boy, the arrest report said.
He is being held in secured detention ahead of a psychiatric evaluation ordered by a Marion County circuit judge Monday.
A public defender has been appointed to represent the boy, who is set to reappear in court Feb. 5.
Photo Credit: Ocala PD
Police scold TMZ after outlet was first to report death of Kobe Bryant
New York (CNN Business)At 2:24 p.m. ET, TMZ posted the story that stunned the world on Sunday: Basketball legend Kobe Bryant, at the age of 41, had died in a California helicopter crash.The tectonic news, which the celebrity-gossip website was first to report, swept the nation as other news organizations quickly confirmed the story.It also upset police who suggested the speed in which TMZ had reported the news — a little more than an hour after police said they received reports of a downed aircraft — outpaced that of officers who were seeking to notify the family members of victims.During a press conference, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva took a swipe at the website when explaining to reporters why he would not yet confirm the identities of those who were aboard the helicopter when it crashed.
“It would be extremely disrespectful to understand that your loved one … perished and you learn about it from TMZ,” Villanueva said. “That is just wholly inappropriate.”Los Angeles County Undersheriff Tim Murakami also jabbed TMZ in a tweet.”I am saddened that I was gathering facts as a media outlet reported … Kobe had passed,” Murakami wrote. “I understand getting the scoop but please allow us time to make personal notifications to their loved ones. It’s very cold to hear of the loss via media. Breaks my heart.”A representative for TMZ, which is owned by WarnerMedia, CNN’s parent company, did not respond on Sunday to requests for comment.Bryant’s death was the latest in a string of tragic celebrity-death scoops TMZ has landed since it launched in 2005. In 2009, the website first reported the death of Michael Jackson. In 2012, the outlet broke news that Whitney Houston had died in a bathtub. And in 2016, TMZ was first to inform the world about Prince’s death.”When it comes to high-profile people, they have an ‘in’ with the kinds of people who know this information,” Matthew Belloni, the editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter, told CNN in a phone interview on Sunday.Belloni added, “If TMZ reports that a celebrity has died in Los Angeles County, it is almost always correct. For whatever reason, and you can read into this, their accuracy rate in Los Angeles is very, very good.”TMZ has developed a large network of tipsters over the years. According to a 2016 profile in The New Yorker, the network includes entertainment lawyers, court officials, and others.The New Yorker reported in its 2016 story that the website sometimes compensates tipsters, something most newsrooms do not.But Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, has downplayed the tactics the website uses to land scoops. During a 2014 interview with Fox News, Levin was asked, “How does TMZ get this stuff?””It’s so funny to me that people ask that question,” Levin responded. “We’re a news operation. I mean, that’s what you’re supposed to do as a news operation is chase down stories. And it always kind of amuses me when people ask that question. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing? I mean, that is the job.”
Despite TMZ’s track record of scoops, news organizations are still wary to cite the outlet until they’ve independently confirmed the news.Belloni told CNN that when he saw TMZ’s story on Bryant’s death, “I thought it was probably right.”That said, Belloni added, “We always verify and don’t take them at face value. But when I saw that it was TMZ reporting a death in Los Angeles County of a very prominent person, I thought it’s probably right.”Sharon Waxman, the founder and CEO of The Wrap, expressed a similar sentiment to The Washington Post for a 2016 article the newspaper published on TMZ’s history.”When they report something, it makes me think they’re probably right, but it might be premature or incomplete,” Waxman said. “Maybe someone had a heart attack, but, no, he didn’t die. That they had much of the story, but not all of the story.”
via: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/26/media/tmz-death-report-kobe-bryant/index.html
Photo Credit: wgntv.com
Whole Foods looks like a ghost town after supplier shutters
Whole Foods? More like, um, only some of the food. Thank you, thank you, and for the love of God, please keep reading. Shoppers have reported that the Amazon-owned grocery giant has been woefully understocked of late, leaving huge gaps in the inventory at stores in D.C., New York, Richmond, and more. Check out the photos on Business Insider—it’s so out of stock you’d think there’s a pre-hurricane panic.
Business Insider visited a store in Richmond, Virginia and found empty shelves where all kinds of groceries should’ve been: prepared foods, dairy, produce, juices, and soup broths. I had a similar experience in Los Angeles in early January, where my nearby Whole Foods 365 was weirdly understocked; I was frustrated to find totally empty shelves in the coffee aisle. (But since I’m a Midwestern woman I just found some way to blame the inconvenience on myself.) Whole Foods says that its supplier of beans, grains, lentils, and rice has suddenly shuttered, and it might take the store months to find a new supplier. And due to unusual weather, its lettuce supply from California has been temporarily affected, too. But those two explanations don’t account for the many other understocked departments encountered by reporters and social media users alike.
Some Twitter users have pointed out that such shortages were never an issue until Amazon bought Whole Foods, aiming their frustrations at Jeff Bezos. And while I can’t confirm whether that allegation is entirely accurate, I’m very comfortable with blaming multi-bajillionaires whenever there’s a dearth of canned beans.
Article via The Takeout
Father accused of abandoning 5-year-old son at Walmart
GAINESVILLE, Ga. (WGCL) — A father is accused of abandoning his 5-year-old son at a Georgia Walmart.
Gainesville police said someone found the little boy wandering around the store alone on Saturday. With the public’s help, investigators identified the child and his father.
The father, Alejandro Cruz-Cervantes, 36, was arrested and charged with reckless conduct. Authorities said he left the boy by himself and made “no attempt to retrieve the child.”
His 5-year-old son is now in the custody of the Department of Family and Children Services.
Additional charges are possible, according to police.
Photo Credit: Hall County Sheriff
Former first lady Michelle Obama wins her first Grammy
(CNN) — Former first lady Michelle Obama has snagged her first Grammy win for the audiobook version of her best-selling memoir “Becoming.” It’s the third Grammy win for the Obama household.
Obama’s husband won for the audiobook recordings of his memoirs “Dreams of My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” in 2006 and 2008.
Obama’s win for best spoken word album beat out nominees John Waters and the Beastie Boys, among others. She did not attend the ceremonies.
The text version of “Becoming” has sold millions of copies, and had the longest streak at No. 1 on Amazon for any book since “Fifty Shades of Grey” in 2012. The memoir traces Michelle Obama’s Chicago roots to her time in the White House.
Obama isn’t the only former first lady to win a Grammy for best spoken word album. Hillary Clinton won in 2003 for “Living History.”
Photo Credit: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
Stephen King says Oscars are ‘rigged in favor of white people’
Someone give this guy an Oscar for flip-flopping.
Less than two weeks after appearing to poo-poo the need for dedicated diversity efforts when it comes to Academy Awards recognition, best-selling author Stephen King is sounding off on the ongoing need for inclusion in the film industry.
“I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong,” the 72-year-old tweeted Jan. 14, sparking heated backlash from “When They See Us” filmmaker Ava Duvernay and activist-author Roxane Gay.
Cue the cultural mea culpa: The Oscars “are still rigged in favor of white people,” King, 72, now declares in a new op-ed for the Washington Post.
The man whose pop-lit catalog spawned cinematic classics such as “Carrie,” “The Shining” and “Shawshank Redemption” goes on to proclaim that “creative excellence comes from every walk, color, creed, gender and sexual orientation, and it’s made richer and bolder and more exciting by diversity, but it’s defined by being excellent.”
King continues, “Judging anyone’s work by any other standard is insulting and — worse — it undermines those hard-won moments when excellence from a diverse source is rewarded (against, it seems, all the odds) by leaving such recognition vulnerable to being dismissed as politically correct.”
Referencing the initial tweets that sparked online outrage, the “It” author stands by his pronouncement that “judgments of creative excellence should be blind” — but apparently this could only be “the case in a perfect world, one where the game isn’t rigged in favor of the white folks.”
The bottom line, King contends in his column, is that the Motion Picture Academy’s voting body stubbornly remains dominated by white males, citing stats that rank female membership at 32% of voters and members of color at 16% even after the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite forced the academy to adopt diversity reforms.
Still, not everyone in the Twitterverse was buying his newfound enlightenment.
“Came a long way in a week there, Stephen,” tweeted one snarky pundit, summing up the feelings of more than a few social media users.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/01/27/stephen-king-says-oscars-are-rigged-in-favor-of-white-people/
Photo Credit: WireImage
L.A. Landmarks Lit in Purple and Gold to Honor Kobe Bryant
Los Angeles lit up its landmarks in Lakers’ purple and gold Sunday night to honor the legacy of Kobe Bryant.
Aerial video from Sky5 over downtown showed the U.S. Bank Tower and Los Angeles City Hall both bathed in the Lakers’ colors. The Intercontinental Hotel at Wilshire Grand Center also displayed Kobe’s original number 8 in lights on the side of the building.
A purple and gold water show greeted visitors to downtown’s Grand Park and Santa Monica’s ferris wheel displayed a dazzling light show.
Even travelers arriving and departing from LAX couldn’t miss the tribute to the basketball legend, as the iconic pylons were illuminated overnight in the Lakers’ colors.
Bryant played his entire 20-year career with the Lakers.
He won five NBA championships with the club, including back-to-back-to-back titles alongside Shaquille O’Neal in 2000, 2001 and 2002.
“There are no words to express the pain I’m going through now with this tragic and sad moment of loosing my neice Gigi & my friend, my brother, my partner in winning championships, my dude and my homie,” O’Neal said upon learning of his former teammate’s death.
Bryant also won back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010.
He was killed on Sunday, along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others, in a helicopter crash in Calabasas.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
via: https://ktla.com/2020/01/27/l-a-landmarks-lit-in-purple-and-gold-to-honor-kobe-bryant/
Photo Credit: ktla.com
Husband of woman who died in crash that killed Kobe Bryant speaks out about tragedy
“I got three small kids and am trying to figure out how to navigate life with three kids and no mom,” Matt Mauser said of the death of his wife, Christina.
The husband of a woman who died Sunday along with Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna in a helicopter crash said there are “no words” to describe the tragedy.
“It’s horrible,” Matt Mauser said, holding back tears while talking about the death of his wife, Christina Mauser.
“I got three small kids and am trying to figure out how to navigate life with three kids and no mom,” he said during an interview Monday on the “TODAY” show.
Christina Mauser, 38, was one of seven people, in addition to Bryant, 41, and his daughter, 13, who died Sunday morning in the Calabasas crash. She was the assistant coach for Gianna Bryant’s Mamba Academy basketball team, a job for which Mauser said Bryant personally selected her.
“He picked her because she was amazing,” Mauser said. “I was so proud of her and she was so happy.”
Matt and Christina Mauser, whose three kids are ages 11, 9 and 3, were both teachers working at a small private school that Bryant’s daughters attended. Mauser said he was the basketball coach and his wife was the assistant coach when Bryant noticed “what an amazing mind” Christina Mauser had for the game and brought her on his coaching team.
“He asked her to teach the kids defense,” Mauser said of his wife, adding Bryant said that wasn’t his specialty. “They called her the mother of defense.”
“She was beautiful, smart, funny,” he said of Christina Mauser. “She was incredibly deep … just an amazing person.”
Other victims included John Altobelli, the head baseball coach at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California; his wife, Keri; and their daughter Alyssa. The college, in confirming the deaths, said in a statement that Altobelli had coached there for 27 years.
“John meant so much to not only Orange Coast College, but to baseball,” the school’s athletic director Jason Kehler said in a statement. “He truly personified what it means to be a baseball coach.”
Altobelli led his team to four state championships during his career, and was named the National Coach of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association in 2019.
Kehler said Altobelli, who people called “Coach Alto,” treated his players like family and offered the school’s deepest condolences to the whole family.
Payton Chester, a 13-year-old basketball player, and her mother, Sarah, were also passengers on the helicopter. Calling the crash a “freak accident,” Payton’s grandmother Catherine George told NBC News that “they had to get on the helicopter as a convenience today, they usually drove by car.”
Mauser said he and his family have been trying to avoid watching the news, but when he briefly turned on SportsCenter last night, one of his daughters turned to him and said it was “nice to know everyone was hurting along with us.“
“I’m scared, I think more than anything, I’m a little scared about the future,” Mauser said of his life without his wife.
Article via NBC
A Georgia death row inmate who argued a racist juror voted for his sentence has died, attorneys say
A Georgia death row inmate who had argued a racist juror voted to put him to death because he was black has died, according to the Georgia Resource Center. Keith Tharpe died Friday night, likely from complications of cancer, the organization said. He was 61. In appeals following his sentencing nearly 30 years ago, Tharpe’s lawyers pointed to an interview with juror Barney Gattie, who used a racial slur in reference to African-Americans and also questioned whether “black people even have souls.”The US Supreme Court stayed Tharpe’s scheduled execution on September 26, 2017. The court said the death row inmate’s legal team produced a “remarkable” affidavit from a juror that presented a “strong factual basis” for Tharpe’s argument. The court sent the case back to the 11th US Circuit Courtof Appeals, which again ruled against him. The country’s highest court refused to take up the case in 2019. “The courts’ failure to confront the racism tainting Mr. Tharpe’s death sentence remains a stain on the judicial system and calls for increased efforts to eradicate the poison of racism in our criminal courts,” Georgia Resource Center attorney Marcia Widder said in a statement Saturday. Widder was one of Tharpe’s attorneys at the nonprofit organization, which offers free legal representation to prisoners on death row.The center said Tharpe had spent the last years of his life “strengthening his bonds with family and friends, and deepening his Christian faith.” CNN has reached out to the Georgia Department of Corrections to confirm the death.
Juror ‘harbored very atrocious, racist views,’ attorney said
Tharpe was convicted in 1991 for the murder of his sister-in-law, Jaquelin Freeman. Duringthe trial, prosecutors alleged he stopped Freeman and his estranged wife on their way to work, shot Freeman, threw her into a ditch and shot her again, killing her. Then, prosecutors said he raped his wife and took her to withdraw money from a credit union where she was able to call police for help, court documents showed. Tharpe was sentenced to death three months after his conviction. In his appeals, he did not deny killing Freeman but sought a stay of execution based in part on racist comments from a juror who voted to put him to death.Seven years after the sentencing, the Georgia Resource Center conducted interviews with each juror as part of a routine investigation to prepare for a petition. In his interview, Gattie showed that he “harbored very atrocious, racist views about black people,” Georgia Resource Center attorney Brian Kammer said. According to his affidavit, Gattie said, “In my experience I have observed that there are two types of black people: 1. Black folks and 2. “N****rs.”Gattie went on to say in his affidavit, “I felt Tharpe, who wasn’t in the ‘good’ black folks category in my book, should get the electric chair for what he did.” As of 2001, Georgia carries out its executions by lethal injection.”After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls,” Gattie said.Gattie later said in a deposition that he did not intend to use the n-word as a racial slur, according to court documents.Following that interview, the state — doing “damage control,” Kammer said — had Gattie sign a second affidavit that undercut his statements to Tharpe’s attorneys, claiming he was drunk at the time he made them.Gattie also had said during jury selection he had no connection to Freeman’s family. But in the same affidavit he made his remarks, he admitted to knowing the Freemans.
Article via CNN
Kobe Bryant killed in helicopter crash in Calabasas
Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas Sunday morning, Yahoo Sports confirmed. TMZ first reported the news.
Bryant played his entire 20-year career for the Los Angeles Lakers and won five NBA championships prior to retiring in 2016. He was named Finals MVP twice and league MVP in 2008. Bryant was 41.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department responded to reports of a helicopter that crashed into a hillside and caught fire, NBC Los Angeles reported. The crash was called in at 9:47 a.m. local time, per the report, and flames that spread a quarter acre were put out by 10:30. The fire department reported no survivors.
The helicopter, a Sikorsky S-76, crashed under unknown circumstances with five people on board, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. An investigation is ongoing.
Bryant and his wife, Vanessa, have four daughters: Gianna, Natalia, Bianca and Capri, who was born in June 2019.
Photo Credit: (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images) currently.att.yahoo.com