Tag: Murder
Man snaps woman’s neck for refusing marriage proposal
A Pennsylvania man on Halloween snapped the neck of a female friend and beat her with a hatchet after the woman refused his marriage proposal, The Morning Call reported, citing police.
Christopher R. Tucker, 34, was charged with murder and criminal homicide for allegedly killing Tara M. Serino, 19.
He reportedly asked Serino to marry him at his home in Berks County. She said no and told him that she was sleeping with other men, NBC Philadelphia reported. He allegedly told police that she told him that he should kill her.
Police said Tucker told them that he snapped and choked her. He poked her eyes out and snapped her neck, police said, according to the station. He allegedly wrapped her in a rug and left.
The NBC report said Tucker was caught at a truck stop in Champaign County, Illinois. He will be extradited to Pennsylvania.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/11/07/man-snaps-womans-neck-for-refusing-marriage-proposal-cops/
26 Teenage Girls Found Dead At Sea
Italian authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of death of 26 teenage girls whose bodies were recovered in the Mediterranean Sea on Sunday.
8-Year-Old Jump Rope Champ Killed After Being Struck by a Jeep While Walking Home From Fundraiser
An 8-year-old jump roping champ was killed over the weekend after a Jeep struck him while he was walking home from a fundraiser with his award-winning team.
Jeremiah “Jerry” Grant, who was a member of the renowned double Dutch jump roping team the Honey Bees, was rushed to a nearby medical center after the incident Saturday, but it was too late, NBC 4 New York reports.
According to the report, the driver of the Jeep, a 60-year-old man, initially drove off after hitting Jerry at the intersection of Christopher Columbus Drive and Grove Street in Jersey City, N.J.
“We all stopped at the corner and Jerry heard ‘Go’ from another jumper and ran in the street,” Honey Bees founder Takeria Clark told NJ.com. “The car was going so fast. It hit him so hard.”
However, witnesses were able to flag down the driver, who then remained at the scene until police arrived. The driver told authorities that he thought he had hit a book bag, according to the report. So far, he has not been charged in the incident, NBC 4 New York notes.
Article via: http://www.theroot.com/8-year-old-jump-rope-champ-killed-after-being-struck-by-1820001110
Utah Couple Charged With Murder, Child Abuse in Connection With Death of 13-Day-Old Baby
A Utah man has been charged with murder and child abuse in connection with the death of his girlfriend’s 13-day-old boy and the child’s mother also faces charges because she did not do anything to stop the abuse, officials said.
Maria Elena Sullivan, 26, and Dylan James Kitzmiller, 21, were charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of child abuse in the death of Sullivan’s infant son, according to court documents filed on Friday, KTLA sister station KSTU reported.
Sullivan was arrested at a Georgia hospital where she was seeking treatment and will face a judge to determine if she will be extradited back to Utah. Kitzmiller was arrested in a West Jordan, Utah, where the couple lived with a relative.
While officials don’t think Sullivan caused any of the abuse directly, she still faces a murder charge because she was aware of the abuse and took no steps to stop it or take the child to safety.
The child was born September 4 with no known health problems, and on September 17 the child was pronounced dead by medical responders.
Prosecutors allege Kitzmiller was abusing the child regularly and that Sullivan knew about the abuse, but did nothing to stop it or to get treatment for the injuries.
On the day of the child’s death, Sullivan told police she was on the phone with a friend and speaking about her desire to “get away from Kitzmiller’s abuse” of her and her son.
As this call was occurring, the baby was in Kitzmiller’s care. When Sullivan went downstairs, she found the baby wearing only a diaper while Kitzmiller moved the boy’s legs “in a rough weird bicycle thing.” Kitzmiller told Sullivan the boy would be fine and to just put him to sleep, she told police.
She picked him up and he seemed calmer, but later that night she heard the boy making noises and gasping for air. She pinched the boy to try to get him to respond and said she heard the baby gasp a few more times before the child stopped breathing.
The couple went upstairs to use a relative’s phone to call 911. First responders performed CPR but life-saving measures were ultimately unsuccessful.
Charging documents say Sullivan told police that Kitzmiller was rough with the baby, but she continued to leave him in his care. She also said she had learned the man was using heroin daily and said he was verbally abusive toward her.
She said Kitzmiller would abuse the boy, including grabbing him by the shoulder and throwing him in the air, swaddling him face down and on one occasion covering the boy’s mouth and nose with his hand as the baby cried. She said he once threw the baby back and forth between his hands and also slapped him in the face and bite his hands.
Charging documents state Sullivan was aware of the injuries but never sought medical care for her son.
Police said Kitzmiller told officers that Sullivan and a relative had yelled at him for being too rough with the baby and that Sullivan did not cause any of the boy’s injuries.
A doctor examined the boy and found he had lost 14 percent of his body mass in weight in the 13 days since his birth, going from 5 pounds 6 ounces to 4 pounds and 8 ounces at death. He had abrasions and bruises on his face and body. The boy also suffered a spinal fracture and a broken rib along with a “massive” amount of swelling in his brain.
via: http://ktla.com/2017/10/23/utah-couple-charged-with-murder-in-death-of-13-day-old-baby/
Man shouting “Allahu Akbar” kills two at French train station
Man Shouting What Could Have Been “Allahu Akbar”, And Kills Two At French Train Station Before Being Shot Dead
Two women were stabbed to death and their assailant shot dead by soldiers in the southern French port city of Marseille on Sunday in what police sources described as a “likely terrorist act”.
Three police sources said the suspect had shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) as he carried out his attack at Marseille’s main railway station.
The two victims – one aged 17 and the other 20 – suffered gory injuries, two police sources said, saying one had her throat slit while the other was stabbed in the stomach.
“If the military had not been there, we would have had a lot more deaths,” Samia Ghali, lawmaker for the Marseille region, told France Bleu Province radio.
Some 200 police officers had cordoned off the area and all roads were closed to traffic, with security forces saying the operation was still ongoing.
The Paris prosecutor opened a counter-terrorism probe.
France has been in a state of emergency following a spate of attacks by Islamist militants over the last two years, including attacks in Paris in November 2015 which killed 130 people. Other countries, including Britain, Germany and Belgium, have also suffered attacks using knives, guns, explosives and vehicles.
A witness told Reuters she saw a man take out a knife from his sleeve and then stab a young girl and then a second woman, shouting what could have been “Allahu Akbar”.
She added that she saw soldiers from France’s Sentinelle force who were patrolling in the area arrive on the public square at the Gare Saint-Charles station.
Transgender teen’s eyes gouged, genitals stabbed, authorities say
Some of Ally Lee Steinfeld’s burned remains were found in a bag in a rural southern Missouri chicken coop. Authorities say both of the transgender teen’s eyes had been gouged out and she had been stabbed in the genitals.
As questions swirl about why the quiet 17-year-old was killed in such a ghastly manner, authorities aren’t saying what led to the killing. But they dismiss the possibility the death was a hate crime.
Authorities identified the remains as those of Joseph Matthew Steinfeld Jr. – Ally Lee Steinfeld’s birth name. They were found last week in the town of Cabool, near the mobile home of one of the alleged killers, 24-year-old Briana Calderas, with whom Steinfeld was living.
Calderas and two 18-year-olds, Andrew Vrba and Isis Schauer, are charged with first-degree murder and other counts. A fourth suspect is charged with abandonment of a corpse and tampering with evidence.
Both Sheriff James Sigman and prosecutor Parke Stevens Jr. insist the crime was not motivated by Steinfeld’s gender identity.
“I would say murder in the first-degree is all that matters,” Stevens said. “That is a hate crime in itself.”
Yet the killing has drawn the attention of transgender advocates and others across the U.S. who believe Steinfeld was targeted for her gender identity, despite what the Texas County sheriff and prosecutor say.
“This violence, often motivated by hatred, must come to an end,” said Chris Sgro, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, who said Steinfeld was the 21st transgender person killed this year in the U.S. “We will continue to mourn Ally and fight back against transphobia and anti-trans violence.”
Steinfeld had been missing for weeks, and initial news reports referred to her as a male, in part because missing-person posters distributed by the family used Steinfeld’s birth name, as did police documents.
Steinfeld’s mother, Amber Steinfeld, still refers to her child as Joey, but said the teen identified as female to family and to friends on social media. She said her child was “loving and kind-hearted.”
Steinfeld was engaged to a woman until they broke up in August, Amber Steinfeld said, and soon after began dating Calderas. She said Steinfeld and the two 18-year-old suspects were all living at Calderas’ mobile home. She said Steinfeld was upbeat before she disappeared, telling relatives that she loved them and was happy.
Steinfeld grew up mostly in House Springs, Missouri, near St. Louis, Amber Steinfeld said. The family moved briefly to Florida, then to Texas County, an area of rugged hills in southern Missouri.
Steinfeld dropped out of high school upon turning 17, Amber Steinfeld said. At about the same time, the rest of the family moved back to House Springs, but Steinfeld stayed in Houston, Missouri, living with different friends.
In May, Steinfeld posted on Instagram that she was coming out and was “mtf,” or male-to-female. In a posting on June 13, Steinfeld referred to herself as “Trans male to female and I am mostly lesbian but pansexual.” In another that same day she wrote, “I am proud to be me I am proud to be trans I am beautiful I don’t care what people think.”
Vrba told investigators he initially tried to poison Steinfeld, then described how he stabbed Steinfeld in the living room of Calderas’ mobile home, Deputy Rowdy Douglas wrote in a probable cause statement. The female suspects said Vrba bragged to them about how he gouged Steinfeld’s eyes and stabbed Steinfeld in the genitals, Douglas wrote. The probable cause statement does not offer any motive.
Authorities say the three suspects burned Steinfeld’s body, placed some of the bones into a garbage bag and put the bag in the chicken coop. Calderas admitted helping burn the body and led authorities to the knife used in the killing, Douglas wrote.
An attorney for the three suspects, Michael Jacobs, said Tuesday that it was too early to comment.
Linda Camara, 61, a friend of Steinfeld’s family, was struck by the gruesome nature of the killing.
“People kill each other, which is bad, but to do it that way, that’s something you see in movies,” Camara said. “And the three people who did this, they were kids, too.”
via: http://abc7.com/officials-transgender-teens-eyes-gouged-genitals-stabbed/2468026/
Woman accused of fatally shooting sleeping boyfriend, cutting up body with a machete
A Texas woman fatally shot and then dismembered her boyfriend with a machete before leaving his remains in dumpsters of her apartment complex, court documents allege.
Cierra Alexis Sutton has been charged with murder in connection with the death of Steven Coleman, who was last seen on the evening of Aug. 16 in Baytown.
According to investigators, Sutton admitted to others that she had shot Coleman in the head as he slept after an argument. Because his body was too heavy for her to carry, Sutton allegedly hacked it into smaller pieces with a machete and then disposed of the smaller pieces in various local dumpsters.
On Sunday, Coleman’s close friend Dominique Clark spoke to Eyewitness News about Sutton’s arrest.
“Devil. That’s the mind of a bad spirit,” Clark said. “That’s not a normal mind. That’s not a mind of God. That’s not one of God’s children.”
On Aug. 22, a male torso was found in a Chambers County landfill that receives trash from dumpsters throughout Baytown and Pasadena. While the torso has yet to be definitively identified as Coleman’s, investigators say some key physical characteristics do match.
Before the torso was found, Clark said Sutton stayed with Coleman’s family as they looked for their missing loved one.
“She played the role of an innocent person,” Clark said. “She played the role of an innocent person, and she played it to the fullest.”
Coleman’s credit cards were used at a Harris County Walmart after he went missing, according to investigators, and the woman caught on surveillance camera buying duct tape and a mattress pad with Coleman’s card closely matched Sutton’s description.
Witnesses reported seeing Sutton and other men moving furniture out of Coleman’s apartment on Aug. 20; by the time investigators searched the apartment on Aug. 24, most of the furniture had been removed from the unit, but crime scene investigators did find blood in several rooms, including the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. Investigators said they also found blood in Sutton’s Jeep.
In an interview with detectives, one of Coleman’s friends told detectives that Coleman “told her on numerous occasions if he was ever to go missing, she needed to make sure police looked into [Sutton] as the cause,” according to court documents.
Investigators say they had attempted to interview Sutton about Coleman’s disappearance, but she failed to show up for interviews. A third party tipped authorities off after Sutton allegedly spoke openly about the crime to others.
As Coleman’s family and friends wait for justice, they can’t help but think back on the man they lost.
“He was an original,” Clark said. “He was a unique guy. One of those you walk in the room and you can’t help but notice.”
Now he’s hoping the person who took his friend away will spend years behind bars.
“I thank God every day for even giving me the opportunity to experience a person like that,” Clark said. “I will never meet a person like that ever again.”
According to Baytown police, Sutton was taken into custody on Thursday in Louisiana.
via: http://abc7ny.com/woman-allegedly-shoots-boyfriend-cuts-up-body/2427137/
Teen kills mom in her sleep after she told him he couldn’t keep puppy
MASON – A Wheatfield Township teenager fatally shot his mother as she slept hours after she told him he couldn’t keep a puppy he had brought home a few weeks earlier, police said.
Andrew David Willson, 19, was arraigned Monday in 55th District Court on one count each of murder and felony firearm possession.
Magistrate Mark Blumer denied bond for Willson, who has been in police custody since Friday.
Andrew Willson called police shortly before 7 a.m. Friday and said he had come home from a drive to find that his mother had been murdered, an Ingham County Sheriff’s detective told Blumer in a hearing that led to charges being issued against the teen.
Lisa Marie Willson, 51, was found dead in a bedroom of her home in the 200 block of Linn Road near Williamston, police said. She was shot once in the back of the head.
Investigators determined that no one besides her and her son had been inside the house the night of the killing, Detective Charles Buckland testified.
Andrew Willson had talked to his mother about the puppy Thursday evening, and she told him he would have to bring the dog to his father’s home in Dansville, Buckland testified.
The teen told detectives that in the overnight hours he removed a .22 Magnum rifle from a locked cabinet, then went into his mother’s room and shot her in the back of the head as she slept, Buckland said.
He then drove around back roads for awhile before discarding the rifle. Police recovered the weapon, which had a spent shell casing and a live round in it.
Andrew Willson has no criminal history, police said.
An attorney for Willson, Stephen Milks, declined to comment after the hearing.
A preliminary hearing has been set for Sept. 28.
Daughter Living at Home Allegedly Killed Her Father After Her Parents Tried to Evict Her
A 31-year-old woman was accused in the Tuesday shooting death of her 66-year-old father in South Carolina.
Brittany Simpson, who was charged with murder and possession of a firearm during a violent crime, was denied bond on Thursday, according to WCBD News 2.
The murder suspect had been staying at her parents’ house without paying rent, according to court reports obtained by The Post and Courier, though she had allegedly helped cover the utility costs until March, when her mother allegedly sought her eviction.
Simpson had allegedly first implicated an intruder in father Robert Simpson’s shooting death, which allegedly occurred early Tuesday, until Mount Pleasant police said they found her clothes and a gun submerged in a creek, according to The Post and Courier.
The suspect’s attorney, David Aylor, could not comment to PEOPLE on whether Simpson has been speaking with her family, nor her eviction notices by her family. This is her “first run-in with the law,” he said.
“The only thing that I can confirm is that Brittany was currently on disability and was not working,” Aylor told PEOPLE. “Though she wasn’t currently working, she was still a pretty active person in regards to recreational activities and things like that, her disability wasn’t hampering her from that.
In Brooke Simpson’s alleged 911 call, which she placed shortly after 6 a.m. Tuesday, Brittany had said, “Someone just came in the back door. Someone just came right in.”
According to The Post and Courier, Brittany’s sister Brooke reportedly questioned how she knew what happened to their father, and police claimed Brittany later confessed to carrying out the crime herself.
Brooke reportedly told officers she did not know of anyone who would want to hurt her father, but that Brittany had been given a 24-hour notice to leave the home by that day, according to the court reports cited by Live 5 News.
The victim was still alive when officers arrived and one of them kicked in the master bedroom door to help him, according to supplemental reports released by Mount Pleasant police. Firefighters were sent in and began providing medical care but Simpson died, the reports said.
The suspect attended the University of Miami and the College of Charleston and “was very well liked in both of those communities,” Aylor tells PEOPLE.
“Obviously, it’s a tragic situation for this family as a whole,” he said. “She’s taking it day by day, as we will the case, to determine what our next steps are and how the case will proceed.”
The Mount Pleasant police were unable to comment to PEOPLE about the case.
via: https://www.yahoo.com/news/daughter-living-home-allegedly-killed-170408307.html
MAN HID MOTHER’S BODY PARTS IN REFRIGERATOR, COURT DOCUMENTS SAY
A Hawaii man accused of killing his mother months ago stuffed her dismembered body parts in seven plastic bags in the kitchen freezer of the Waikiki apartment they shared, according to court documents made public Monday.
Yu Wei Gong has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Liu Yun Gong.
He called 911 on April 11 and said: “‘I killed my Mom,'” according to a detective’s affidavit supporting an arrest warrant. When officers arrived and could not find the woman, Gong told them she was “in the fridge,” the complaint said.
An officer found what appeared to be body parts.
“Another covered object in the freezer felt to a different officer like a human leg and foot,” the complaint said.
Yu Wei Gong didn’t speak or enter a plea during a brief court appearance Monday. Deputy Public Defender Diamond Grace requested a Mandarin interpreter for his preliminary hearing, scheduled for Wednesday. He remained in custody with bail set at $2 million.
Grace didn’t immediately return a phone message seeking comment after the hearing.
Authorities say Yu Wei Gong told officers that he accidentally killed his mother in September after she became angry when the 26-year-old said he wanted to work instead of going to school.
Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Rachel Lange determined Liu Yun Gong had suffered blunt force injuries to the head, the complaint said. Her identity was confirmed by comparing fingerprints to those on file under her Hawaii driver’s license.
The manager of the apartment building where they lived told police he had not seen the man’s mother since before Christmas, the complaint said.
It said Liu Yun Gong did not show up for work on Aug. 21, 2016. When a supervisor called her phone, it went unanswered. Yu Wei Gong called the supervisor the next day, saying his mother was on another Hawaiian island and had left her phone at home.
Three women watched the hearing and said outside court they wanted to support Gong spiritually because he had attended their church.
Gong and his mother, who they knew by different names, attended Waipahu United Church of Christ, said former pastor Norma Desaegher.
“He has nobody. No family as far as we can tell,” she said, adding that it’s been several years since she last saw him. “We wanted to give him that spiritual support.”
Gong moved to Hawaii from China when he was 19, after his mother married an active church parishioner she met online, the women said. Mother and son stopped going to church after the man died in 2014.
The women said Gong took English classes at the church and moved with his mother and step-father to Waikiki so she could pursue a massage business.
“We just wanted people to know they were a good family” Desaegher said.