Billionaire’s wife claims she can use N-word because she knows Alicia Keys
The wife of a billionaire hedge funder claims she’s not racist for using the n-word because she’s friends with Alicia Keys.
Lisa Falcone, the wife of beleaguered hedge funder Philip Falcone, told her former personal chef she wasn’t racist after using the n-word — and said he could ask her black friend Alicia Keys to confirm, according to new court papers.
Falcone allegedly dropped the n-bomb after meeting cook Brian Villanueva’s girlfriend, who is black, according to a wage-dispute lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday against the socialite and her Harbinger Capital hubby.
Villanueva said his gal pal came in to help him cook for a Hamptons dinner party the Falcones were hosting on July 13, 2019 — attended by Keys and her husband Swizz Beatz — and the next morning Lisa commented on how articulate his partner was.
“Your girlfriend speaks very well. She seems educated. I would describe her as a chocolate-covered marshmallow,” the chef claims Lisa said.
Despite Villanueva appearing visibly offended, she went on to ask “Do you use the word ‘n—-’ at home with your girlfriend?” say the court papers.
“Defendant Lisa Falcone noticed the shocked and offended expression on Plaintiff’s face, however, rather than apologize, she said defensively, ‘I’m Puerto Rican and grew up in Spanish Harlem so I can speak like that,’” the suit reads.
The lawsuit says Villanueva asked his boss to explain the comments, and she responded that neither Keys nor her hubby, whose real name is Kasseem Dean, were as well-spoken.
“I meant she speaks really eloquently. Alicia [Keys] doesn’t speak that way. She didn’t have an education and was just discovered by Clive Davis when she was fifteen years old. Swizz [Beatz] definitely doesn’t speak that way either,” Lisa allegedly told him.
Later that day, Villanueva claims he delivered pizza to the Falcones on the beach, and told them he was quitting due to the racist remarks.
“Rather than accepting Plaintiff’s resignation, Defendant Lisa Falcone asked Plaintiff not to resign and stated ‘talk to my black friends’ (seemingly referring to Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz — both of whom were at the beach with the Falcones at that time), and emphasized ‘they will tell you that I am not racist,’” the documents read.
He’s suing for discrimination and violation of New York labor laws, saying he’s owed $4,230.76 in unpaid wages.
The lawsuit also claims Philip said he would only pay Villanueva if he and his girlfriend signed a confidentiality agreement promising to not repeat Lisa’s utterances. They declined to sign.
Reps for Keys and Beatz did not respond to requests for comment.
Philip declined to comment. Lisa did not return messages.
Photo Credit: FilmMagic
Cyclist Who Lost Job for Flipping Off Trump Motorcade Wins Local Office in Virginia
The cyclist who flipped off President Donald Trump’s motorcade in 2017, and lost her job because of it, has won her bid for local office in Virginia.
CNN projected that Juli Briskman on Tuesday night won her race to become supervisor for the Algonkian District in Loudoun County, Virginia. The win comes just over two years after a photo of Briskman flipping off the President’s motorcade as it made its way back to the White House from Trump’s golf course in Sterling, Virginia, went viral in October 2017. Her lawyer said she was forced to resign from her job as a marketing executive at Akima LLC over the photo.
Briskman was able to leverage her viral rebuke of Trump into Tuesday’s win with a campaign that made the image central to her political message.
She announced her campaign on Twitter in September 2018 by sharing a Washington Post article titled “The cyclist who flipped off Trump’s motorcade is running for public office.”
“Today, I am filing my organizational papers in a bid for local office in Loudoun County, Va. Loudoun deserves transparency in government, fully funded schools & smarter solutions to growth,” she said. “It’s time for a change.”
Speaking to CNN’s Jeanne Moos in 2017, Briskman contended she’s “really not” the bird-flipping type, but still made her feelings toward Trump clear.
“Health care doesn’t pass, but you try to dismantle it from the inside,” she said. “Five hundred people get shot in Las Vegas; you’re doing nothing about it. You know, white supremacists have this big march and hurt a bunch of people down in Charlottesville and you call them good people.”
“My finger said what I was feeling,” Briskman said at the time. “I’m angry and I’m frustrated.”
Photo Credit: ktla.com
Pennsylvania Woman Accused of Faking Cancer, Collecting Over $10,000 in Donations
A Pennsylvania woman faces theft charges for allegedly faking cancer and collecting donations exceeding $10,000 through GoFundMe and Facebook, according to a complaint obtained by CNN affiliate KYW.
Chester County resident Jessica Smith, 32, started a GoFundMe page and a Facebook fundraiser claiming she had been diagnosed with hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) and was “facing tremendous medical bills, travel costs, and paying for the care of her children and missed work,” according to the criminal complaint filed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in Chester County. Smith said she was receiving chemotherapy at Penn Medicine, the complaint said.
All the money raised by the fundraisers — which totaled more than $10,000 — was deposited into Smith’s joint bank accounts with her husband, according to the complaint.
In a statement to CNN, GoFundMe maintained that misuse of the platform is very rare.
“In this case, the campaign was reported to our team and we are working with local law enforcement to assist in the investigation,” said GoFundMe spokeswoman Meghan Scripture. “All donations will be refunded to the donors in full and the user has been banned from the platform.”
Smith’s formal charges are theft by deception and receiving stolen property. Her lawyer, Michael DiCindio, told CNN he had no comment at this time.
Uwchlan Township Police Department launched an investigation in June when a friend of Smith’s filed a report alleging that she did not believe Smith had cancer.
Smith’s husband came forward a month later to report the same to police, stating that his wife is covered on his medical insurance through his employer, the complaint said. He provided documentation proving that Smith’s medical bills had not even met the $1,250 deductible, according to the complaint.
Terri Coleman, who helped interview Smith twice for The Ever Evolving Truth podcast, said she was suspicious of Smith very early on.
The podcast invited Smith for an interview after comments circulated on Facebook accusing Smith of lying about her cancer diagnosis.
“We found her to be very vague when discussing her cancer treatment and diagnosis,” Coleman told CNN of the July interview with Smith. “She had no documentation to prove her claims and she told us so many things that turned out to be lies.”
The complaint states that while Smith was a patient at Penn Medicine, she never received chemotherapy there.
Penn Medicine told CNN that they don’t comment on patient matters.
A court docket shows Smith was arraigned Monday and will return to court next week for a preliminary hearing.
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Kansas City votes to remove Martin Luther King’s name from historic street
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved removing Dr. Martin Luther King’s name from one of the city’s most historic boulevards, less than a year after the city council decided to rename The Paseo for the civil rights icon.
Unofficial results vote showed the proposal to remove King’s name received nearly 70% of the vote, with just over 30% voting to retain King’s name.
The debate over the name of the 10-mile (16.1 kilometer) boulevard on the city’s mostly black east side began shortly after the council’s decision in January to rename The Paseo for King. Civil rights leaders who pushed for the change celebrated when the street signs went up, believing they had finally won a decades-long battle to honor King, which appeared to end Kansas City’s reputation as one of the largest U.S. cities in the country without a street named for him.
But a group of residents intent on keeping The Paseo name began collecting petitions to put the name change on the ballot and achieved that goal in April.
The campaign has been divisive, with supporters of King’s name accusing opponents of being racist, while supporters of The Paseo name say city leaders pushed the name change through without following proper procedures and ignored The Paseo’s historic value.
Emotions reached a peak Sunday, when members of the “Save the Paseo” group staged a silent protest at a get-out-the-vote rally at a black church for people wanting to keep the King name. They walked into the Paseo Baptist Church and stood along its two aisles. The protesters stood silently and did not react to several speakers that accused them of being disrespectful in a church but they also refused requests from preachers to sit down.
The Save the Paseo group collected 2,857 signatures in April — far more than the 1,700 needed — to have the name change put to a public vote.
Many supporters of the Martin Luther King name suggested the opponents are racist, saying Save the Paseo is a mostly white group and that many of its members don’t live on the street, which runs north to south through a largely black area of the city. They said removing the name would send a negative image of Kansas City to the rest of the world, and could hurt business and tourism.
Supporters of the Paseo name rejected the allegations of racism, saying they have respect for King and want the city to find a way to honor him. They opposed the name change because they say the City Council did not follow city charter procedures when making the change and didn’t notify most residents on the street about the proposal. They also said The Paseo is a historic name for the city’s first boulevard, which was completed in 1899. The north end of the boulevard is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The City Council voted in January to rename the boulevard for King, responding to a years-long effort from the city’s black leaders and pressure from the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights organization that King helped start.
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a minister and former Kansas City mayor who has pushed the city to rename a street for King for years, was at Sunday’s rally. He said the protesters were welcome, but he asked them to consider the damage that would be done if Kansas City removed King’s name.
“I am standing here simply begging you to sit down. This is not appropriate in a church of Jesus Christ,” Cleaver told the group.
Tim Smith, who organized the protest, said it was designed to force the black Christian leaders who had mischaracterized the Save the Paseo group as racist to “say it to our faces.”
“If tonight, someone wants to characterize what we did as hostile, violent, or uncivil, it’s a mischaracterization of what happened,” Smith said. “We didn’t say anything, we didn’t do anything, we just stood.”
The Rev. Vernon Howard, president of the Kansas City chapter of the SCLU, told The Associated Press that the King street sign is a powerful symbol for everyone but particularly for black children.
“I think that only if you are a black child growing up in the inner city lacking the kind of resources, lacking the kinds of images and models for mentoring, modeling, vocation and career, can you actually understand what that name on that sign can mean to a child in this community,” Howard said.
If the sign were taken down, “the reverse will be true,” he said.
“What people will wonder in their minds and hearts is why and how something so good, uplifting and edifying, how can something like that be taken away?” he said.
But Diane Euston, a leader of the Save the Paseo group, said that The Paseo “doesn’t just mean something to one community in Kansas City.”
“It means something to everyone in Kansas City,” she said. “It holds kind of a special place in so many people’s hearts and memories. It’s not just historical on paper, it’s historical in people’s memory. It’s very important to Kansas City.”
Photo Credit: pix11.com
A mother is charged with murder after delivering a stillborn baby with meth in its system
A 25-year-old woman in central California has been arrested and charged with murder after she delivered a stillborn baby that authorities said had toxic levels of methamphetamine in its system.
The Hanford Police Department said in a news release that Chelsea Cheyenne Becker delivered a stillborn child September 10 that medical professionals believed may have been exposed to drugs while she was pregnant. The death was ruled a homicide after an autopsy by the Kings County Coroner’s Office found methamphetamine in the baby’s system, police said.
Police put out a warrant for Becker, and she was arrested Tuesday night on a felony charge of first-degree murder and booked into the Kings County Jail in Hanford early Wednesday, records show. Her bail has been set at $5 million.
Becker pleaded not guilty at her arraignment on Wednesday morning, and a phone call to her lawyer, Robert Stover, was not returned. Court records indicate her next hearing is November 19.
Detective Sgt. Justin Vallin of the Hanford Police Department said in an interview with CNN affiliate KGPE that three of Becker’s previous children were born with meth in their systems. Police said they learned through an investigation that she had lost custody of multiple children because of substance abuse problems.
Julie Lance, Becker’s aunt, had already adopted Becker’s 3-year-old son and has custody of her 1-year-old. Becker’s oldest child, a 4-year-old, was also adopted, according to KGPE.
CNN has reached out to both Vallin and Lance for comment but has not yet received a response.
Police said Becker admitted to using meth during her most recent pregnancy as late as three days before giving birth.
“The levels of methamphetamine in this baby’s system were such high levels, even for an adult, so we believe that she was using almost the entire time that she was pregnant,” Vallin told KGPE.
Becker’s cousin, Terra Ordonez, said she is optimistic her cousin will recover.
“I’m excited for her to straighten up and get clean because I know she’s smart enough to get out of it,” Ordonez told the affiliate. “Hopefully, it’s an eye-opener for a lot of women who are struggling. If you’re pregnant, scream for help.”
Photo Credit: pix11.com
Grace Millane murder suspect ‘went on Tinder date with her body still in his room’
The man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane went on a Tinder date while her body was still in a suitcase in his room, the court has heard. The first evidence in the five-week trial was presented today in Auckland, New Zealand, where 21-year-old Grace was killed last December.
The suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons, re-entered his guilty plea when the trial began on Monday. He claims Grace’s death was an accident, after “acts designed to enhance sexual pleasure went wrong” during consensual sex.
Grace Millane was on a year-long solo overseas trip when she disappeared on December 1, the eve of her 22nd birthday. That night, the backpacker went on a date with the accused man at SkyCity in Central Auckland after the pair met on Tinder. She was last seen alive at the CityLife hotel in Auckland at 9:41pm, but could not be traced after that. When Grace’s parents received no response to the birthday messages they had sent her, concerns grew and she was reported missing. Essex-born Grace’s body was found in bushland on the outskirts of Auckland a week after she went missing.
Almost a year later, a 12-strong jury made up of seven men and five women is being asked to decide whether Grace was murdered by her date back at his apartment, or whether the young woman was strangled by accident during consensual sex.
“Only two people know what happened in that room,” prosecuting lawyer Robin McCoubrey told Auckland high court. “One of them can’t tell us, and the other hasn’t told the truth about what happened.”
David and Gillian Millane, Grace’s parents, were seated in the front row of the packed public gallery as the trial officially opened today (Wednesday 6 November).
It was the first time the details of the backpacker’s death have been disclosed publicly for the first time, with prosecutor McCoubrey telling the jury that the young woman had died from close-range pressure to her neck. Officials determined she had “bruises that were consistent with restraint” when Grace’s body was later discovered in a suitcase in a shallow grave.
The trial continues.
via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/grace-millane-murder-suspect-went-114700006.html
Photo Credit: Photo credit: REX/Shutterstock – Rex
A woman found dead in Ohio was killed by her own Great Danes
An Ohio woman found dead in her home was likely killed by her own dogs, police say.
Mary Matthews, 49, was found in her Clearcreek Township, Ohio, home, about 40 miles northeast of Cincinnati on Friday, local police told CNN affiliate WLWT.
The cause of death has been determined to be a “dog attack,” Clearcreek Township police Chief John Terrill told WLWT. Matthews suffered multiple wounds, according to an incident report reviewed by the affiliate.
Investigators found two “large but thin” Great Danes on an enclosed deck of the home and blood was present throughout the house, according to WLWT.
Matthews’ husband, Mark Matthews, found his wife unresponsive in the home Friday and called authorities. He had been in county jail since Wednesday and returned home that day, authorities told the affiliate. There was no information on when the attack might have occurred.
Mark Matthews said the family rescued the dogs about two years ago but one had recently become vicious, biting his arm, WLWT reported.
“I wanted to get rid of him, but she wouldn’t,” Mark Matthews told the affiliate. “She loves animals.”
Authorities believe that the dogs attacked the woman and she was able to put them outside before succumbing to her injuries. Police believe she may not have realized the severity of her injuries and there was evidence that she had changed her clothing as well as attempted to clean up the blood with towels, the affiliate said.
Police said the victim suffered from chronic alcoholism and took several prescription medications, which may have impacted her ability to respond to the situation appropriately, according to WLWT. The incident report reviewed by the affiliate says investigators found debris in the home including beer cans and medication bottles.
“Due to this history, it is felt that (Mary Matthews) may not have been in a clear-minded state to judge the severity of her situation and thus failed to call for help,” the police report said.
WLWT reported that the dogs were euthanized.
Photo Credit: fox2now.com
Creepy teacher charged with having sex with student 46 years younger
A 63-year-old veteran high school teacher in North Carolina is charged with having sex with a 17-year-old student, authorities said.
Emma Neil Ogle, of Huntersville, was arrested late Thursday after the victim 46 years her junior reported that the pair began a relationship in the spring that took an intimate turn over the summer, WSOC reports.
Ogle was taken into custody hours after the student told school staffers at Garinger High School in Charlotte about the allegations.
There’s no indication that the sex acts took place on school grounds, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools told WCNC.
“I recognized her,” one senior at the school, Edward Ramon, told the station. “It’s just disgusting. It’s shocking and disgusting.”
The allegations will likely tarnish the school’s reputation, Ramon said.
“It just makes the school look bad,” he continued. “I think she should go to prison for that.”
Attempts to reach Ogle — a career and technical health occupations teacher at the school since 2014 and a district employee since 2005 — were unsuccessful early Tuesday.
She’s facing charges for a sex act with a student, indecent liberties with a student and crimes against nature, WLOS reports.
Ogle has been suspended with pay following her arrest, a school district spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday to The Post.
Ogle, whose bond was set at $10,000, was released from custody on Friday, jail records show.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/11/05/creepy-teach-charged-with-having-sex-with-student-46-years-younger/
Photo Credit: MCSO
Man using racist slurs killed in Waffle House fight
JACKSON, Ga. — The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says a man was shot to death at a Waffle House after calling other patrons racist slurs and starting a fight.
The GBI says Butts County deputies responded Halloween night to three 911 calls that were minutes apart. The first reported an angry customer, the second reported a fight and a third reported shots had been fired.
Responding deputies found 27-year-old Nicholas Phinazee Bryan mortally wounded. An investigation determined that Bryan “was using racial slurs” toward 36-year-old Robert Lewis Henderson Jr. and 39-year-old Antonio DeMarty Evans. Waffle House staff told Bryan to leave. Then their argument became physical. Police say Henderson fired a single shot at Bryan, who later died at a hospital.
The GBI statement does not say whether charges will be filed.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/11/05/police-man-using-racist-slurs-killed-in-waffle-house-fight/
Photo Credit: pix11.com
Leader of Bloods gang set pleads guilty to carving gang name in teen’s chest
Genesee Township, MI (WNEM) — A man has pleaded guilty after prosecutors said he held down a teen and carved a gang name into the boy’s chest.
Doniel A. Heard, 37, of Canton, pleaded guilty on Oct. 29 to assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering, according to US Attorney Matthew Schneider.
In his plea, Heard admitted that at the time of the assault, Nov. 24, 2017, he was the leader of a Michigan set of the national Bloods street gang. Believing that the 15-year-old victim had disrespected two fellow gang members, Heard and three other gang members beat and robbed the boy in Genesee Township, outside of Flint. Investigators said after the beating, the other gang members held the boy down while Heard used a large knife to carve the name of the local Bloods set, “MOB 662” into the boy’s chest.
The teen suffered permanent bodily injury as a result of the assault.
“This was a vicious attack on a 15-year old boy by a violent street gang. This type of senseless violence will not be tolerated. We will continue to work with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to bring the full force of federal law upon gang members who seek to destroy our communities with violence and intimidation,” stated United States Attorney Schneider.
Sentencing is set for March 4, 2020 in Flint. Heard faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
The US Attorney’s Office said two other gang members who participated in the assault are also scheduled to be sentenced that day.
Talasha Willis, a gang member who also participated in the assault, was sentenced in May of this year to 100 months in federal prison.
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