|
Post by Sher on May 30, 2005 5:21:56 GMT -5
FREEPORT, N.Y. -- A 12-year-old girl choked her mom to death, police said yesterday.
Police went to the home Saturday just before midnight where a 45-year-old woman was found not breathing. She later died.
The county medical examiner found she had been strangled. Investigators determined the strangler was the woman's daughter, who is expected to be charged, cops said.
|
|
|
Post by Sher on May 31, 2005 9:11:28 GMT -5
NEW YORK (AP) - A nine-year-old girl fatally stabbed an 11-year-old girl in the chest with a kitchen knife during a fight over a ball, authorities said.
The nine-year-old, whose name wasn't released, was charged with manslaughter.
Police spokesman Paul J. Browne told the New York Times that he was "unaware of anyone younger implicated in such an act in New York City."
The victim, Queen Washington, 11, was pronounced dead at a hospital.
"I don't understand how this could happen," Joyce Porter, Queen's grandmother, told the Times. She said Queen's mother had called her earlier that afternoon. "She told me, 'Queen is dead,"' Porter said, adding, "It was over a ball."
The girls had been playing together at the nine-year-old's apartment, but the girl's mother had stepped out to borrow something from a neighbour, police said.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney's office said the case would go to family court because the girl is younger than 14.
In 1999, 12-year-old Lionel Tate became the youngest person in modern U.S. history to be sentenced to life in prison for the killing of six-year-old Tiffany Eunick in Florida.
He won a new trial on appeal and went free in January 2004 under a deal that placed him under house arrest for a year followed by probation for 10 years. Now 18, he was arrested this month for allegedly holding up a pizza delivery man at gunpoint
|
|
|
Post by Sher on Jun 17, 2005 1:20:34 GMT -5
WATERTOWN, N.Y. — A convicted rapist became a foster parent for several children even after disclosing his past sex crimes on his application, officials said Wednesday.
The disclosure did not raise any flags, and Nicholas A. Chaney (search) became a foster parent in 2001 along with his wife after moving from the Seattle area.
"His application warranted closer scrutiny and should have been more aggressively investigated than it was," Jefferson County Social Services Commissioner Patricia Connelly (search) said after the county completed an internal investigation into the matter.
No children were harmed in the Chaney household, she said.
Chaney told a local television station that he may have cared for as many as 50 foster children since late 2001 and even adopted a child while living in New York state. The county has said Chaney cared for 23 children.
Chaney was convicted in 1989 of two counts of third-degree rape, authorities said. He told WWNY-TV in Watertown he had been convicted of having sex with a 16-year-old girl.
Connelly said her department did a complete review of its foster care program and found that Chaney's case was "the exception." Nevertheless, the agency has revamped its certification system to try and make sure it does not happen again. The investigation also said the state of New York must share some of the blame with the county. Chaney, his wife, their three biological children and the adopted child recently moved away from the Watertown area to escape the media attention.
|
|
|
Post by Sher on Jun 24, 2005 13:02:40 GMT -5
NEW YORK — A 9-year-old girl fatally stabbed an 11-year-old girl in the chest with a steak knife during a fight over a ball, authorities said.
The 9-year-old, a fourth-grader whose name wasn't released, was charged with manslaughter.
Police spokesman Paul J. Browne told The New York Times that he was "unaware of anyone younger implicated in such an act in New York City."
The victim, Queen Washington, 11, was pronounced dead at a hospital. Family members said the fifth-grader was a straight-A student who loved books, dancing and playing double Dutch jump rope.
"I don't understand how this could happen," Joyce Porter, Queen's grandmother, told the Times. She said Queen's mother had called her earlier that afternoon. "She told me, 'Queen is dead,"' Porter said, adding, "It was over a ball."
Queen's grandfather Earl Washington described her as the "star of the family. She was going places."
Relatives said the girls' mothers were best friends, and Queen had been invited to the 9-year-old's home in the East New York section of Brooklyn for a Memorial Day barbecue.
The girls had been playing together, but the 9-year-old's mother had stepped out to borrow something from a neighbor, police said.
By the time the mother returned, the 9-year-old had plunged the knife into Queen's chest, police said. Queen stumbled into the hallway and collapsed.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney's office said the case would go to family court because the girl is younger than 14.
Neighbors said the 9-year-old was a troubled child.
"She was a little thug," neighbor Diva McPhatter told the Daily News. "I always asked her to behave, but she was rude. She fought all the time. She was out of control. I'd confront her, but she'd just roll her eyes."
In 2001, Lionel Tate (search), 14, became the youngest person in modern U.S. history to be sentenced to life in prison, after being convicted of killing 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick (search) in Florida. He was 12 at the time of the killing in 1999.
He won a new trial on appeal and went free in January 2004 under a deal that placed him under house arrest for a year followed by probation for 10 years. Now 18, he was arrested May 23 on charges of holding up a pizza delivery man at gunpoint.
|
|
|
Post by Sher on Jun 24, 2005 13:11:41 GMT -5
June 24, 2005
Police in Manhattan are hunting for a rapist who has been targeting women on the Upper East and West Sides.
Investigators believe the same person may be behind at least three attacks this month, entering through an open window and blindfolding the victims before attacking.
The most recent attack was early Thursday morning, inside an apartment on East 89th Street. The attacker then robbed the woman. Police an attacker robbed another victim in a similar attack.
Women in the area say they are taking precautions.
"You have to be safe: doors, windows, everything locked. I mean, I'm lucky I live with a friend, so that's extra comfort. But, you always have to be aware of yourself," said Upper East Side resident Danielle Kinzer.
"I always feel safe. I get up early in the morning, go to the gym. I feel very safe. But, I'll keep my eyes open now," said another Upper East Sider Alfreda Griffiths.
Police say the attacker is believed to be a dark-skinned man in his thirties, between 5 foot 8 and 5 foot 10, 180 pounds, with a strong build.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.
|
|
|
Post by Sher on Jun 30, 2005 15:26:48 GMT -5
NEW YORK (AP) -- A white man faced hate-crime charges after police said he and two friends set upon three black men with a baseball bat, leaving one with a fractured skull, in a neighborhood that became infamous for a fatal racial confrontation two decades ago.
The attack Wednesday happened in the Howard Beach section Queens -- the same neighborhood where three black men were beaten in 1986 after their car broke down, stirring tensions in what became one of the city's ugliest racial episodes.
Nicholas Minucci, 21, was to be charged Thursday with first-degree assault as a hate crime, menacing, criminal possession of a weapon and other charges, police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
"I think that New York City learned a great lesson back in '86 and we are not going to let anything like that happen again," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
Two of the three black men told investigators they were looking for a luxury sedan to steal but changed their minds. They said a white man in a car spotted them and then returned with two friends.
The three white men got out and one threw a metal baseball bat toward the three black men, shouting racial epithets, authorities said. Minucci then attacked one of the black men, Glen Moore, with the bat, according to police.
Moore, 20, suffered a fractured skull, police said. He was in serious condition at Jamaica Hospital. His sneakers and an earring were stolen, police said.
The other two black men escaped and later summoned police officers. Moore's sneakers and the bat believed to have been used in the attack were found in the vehicle he was driving, police said.
Police were looking for the two other suspects.
The hate crime charge Minucci faces is punishable by a minimum of eight years in prison.
Bloomberg said he and the police commissioner would not allow such "an ugly incident" to divide the city.
On December 20, 1986, three black men who were stranded in the neighborhood after their car stalled were attacked by a group of white teenagers.
One of the black men, Michael Griffith, 23, was struck by a car and killed as he fled. Another was beaten with a baseball bat and tree branches. The third got away.
The attack ignited racial tension in the community and was compared with a lynching by then-Mayor Ed Koch. Eight of the whites were convicted or pleaded guilty to manslaughter, assault, conspiracy and rioting.
|
|
|
Post by Sher on Aug 4, 2005 15:50:43 GMT -5
RYE, New York (AP) -- A 7-year-old boy was found dead in the water of a boat ride at an historic amusement park Wednesday after he didn't emerge from a tunnel, authorities said.
The boy apparently climbed out the boat and got caught in the conveyor belt of the Ye Old Mill, a boat-in-the-dark ride, at Playland in Westchester.
The ride that killed the Norwalk, Connecticut, boy, whose name was not released, is "one of our most benign," County Executive Andrew Spano said at a news conference.
The ride consists of 14 boats propelled into a tunnel. The water is 2 1/2 feet deep at its deepest, and instructions tell riders to stay seated and keep their hands inside their boats.
The boy, who was at the park with his mother, got on the ride by himself after passing the 42-inch height requirement for riding alone and was the only person in his boat, Spano said.
The ride and nearby attractions were shut down after the child's death. Spano said the state Department of Labor would investigate the death, which was the park's second in 15 months.
In May 2004, a 7-year-old girl was killed on the park's spinning Mind Scrambler ride. Investigators concluded that the girl wriggled free of a restraining bar, knelt on the ride's seat and fell soon after it started.
Playland, a National Historic Landmark, opened in 1928. The amusement park scenes in the movie "Big," starring Tom Hanks, were filmed there.
The park has more than 50 rides, a pool and a beach on Long Island Sound, and receives more than a million visitors a year.
|
|
|
Post by Sher on Feb 26, 2006 19:17:59 GMT -5
NEW YORK (AP) - Investigators exhuming the body of an 82-year-old woman last year made a shocking discovery: Many bones in the lower half of her corpse had been removed and crudely replaced with plastic plumbing pipe.
Prosecutors allege the woman and her family were victims of a biomedical supply house that secretly carved up bodies and sold the parts for use in transplants across the country. On Thursday, the owner of the company was charged along with three other men in the scheme that prosecutors said made millions of dollars for the defendants.
The case was "like something out of a cheap horror movie," Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said.
Prosecutors said the defendants obtained the bodies from funeral homes in three states and forged death certificates and organ donor consent forms to make it look as if the bones, skin, tendons, heart valves and other tissue were legally removed.
The indictment was the first set of charges to come out of a widening scandal involving scores of funeral homes and hundreds of bodies, including that of Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004. The investigation has raised fears that some of the body parts could spread disease to transplant recipients.
"I think we can agree that the conduct uncovered in this case is among the most ghastly imaginable," said Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city Department of Investigation. "It was shockingly callous in its disregard for the sanctity of human remains."
Michael Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., was charged along with Brooklyn funeral home owner Joseph Nicelli.
Mastromarino was an oral surgeon who went into the tissue business after losing his dentist licence, prosecutors said. Nicelli was a partner in the business, they said. The other defendants were Lee Crucetta and Christopher Aldorasi.
All four pleaded not guilty to charges of enterprise corruption, body stealing and opening graves, unlawful dissection, forgery and other counts.
A judge in Brooklyn set Mastromarino's bail at $1.5 million US and Nicelli's at $250,000. Bail for Crucetta and Aldorasi was $500,000 each.
Prosecutors said the defendants took organs from people who had not given consent or were too old or too sick to donate. The defendants forged consent forms and altered the death certificates to indicate the victims had been younger and healthier, authorities said.
Prosecutors said the body parts were sold to tissue suppliers and ultimately used in disk replacements, knee operations, dental implants and a variety of other surgical procedures performed by unsuspecting doctors in the United States and Canada.
The bodies came from funeral homes in New York City, Rochester, Philadelphia and New Jersey that contracted with the Brooklyn funeral parlour for embalming. Prosecutors said more arrests were possible.
Nicelli was paid up to $1,000 per body to deliver corpses to a secret operating room at his funeral parlour, where Mastromarino would remove body parts, authorities said. Crucetta, a nurse, and Aldorasi allegedly helped.
Mastromarino made up to $7,000 a body by selling the tissue. The corpses were then returned to unsuspecting funeral directors for burial. In some cases, Hynes said, bones had been removed from corpses and replaced with plastic plumbing pipe to conceal the thefts.
The scheme began to unravel in late 2004, when a detective responded to a report from the new owner of Nicelli's funeral home that he allegedly cheated customers out of funeral deposits. The detective grew suspicious when she saw the hidden operating room, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Mastromarino "vehemently denies doing anything illegal or wrong," defence lawyer Mario Gallucci said. Mastromarino contends he "was not responsible for interacting with the families of the deceased nor in obtaining the documentation needed to harvest the tissue."
Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration closed Biomedical Tissue Services, saying it had evidence the company failed to screen for contaminated tissue. The agency warned that patients who received the company's products could have been exposed to diseases, although the FDA insisted the risk was minimal.
No infections have been reported in Canada or the United States since the FDA warning.
|
|