On January 10, the 33-year-old Williams arrived to babysit the baby girl at 8:00 a.m.  In just four hours, Williams reportedly called her husband, Christopher Peters, 16 times to ask him various questions, ranging from diaper changing to removing a car seat from a vehicle, about how to care for the child.

Peters reportedly began to notice that with every phone call, his wife began to sound more and more agitated with her child care duties.  The uneasiness and erratic tone of William’s voice tipped her husband off that he should pay her an on-the-job visit.  When he arrived, Williams insisted on giving him the child.

Afterward, Williams frantically ran to a neighbor’s apartment and tried to convince them that the infant was evil.  Williams explained that she had witnessed the infant’s eye color change to blue.  The neighbors, upon hearing Williams, were so concerned that they summoned the police. A neighbor told authorities:

[She] knocked on her door and said there was a baby in her apartment and she didn’t know how it got there.” The neighbor also said Williams called 4-week-old baby ‘evil.’

By the time police arrived, they discovered that a granular detergent with blue flecks was covering the infant’s face.  The child’s eyes were blood red and bulging and there were burn marks and blood pooling around her mouth.  Police found the detergent’s open container and the blue flecked substance matched what was found on the child’s face.

When questioned by police, Williams said that she saw a man standing by the infant’s crib.  When authorities asked her about the detergent, she defensively denied any wrongdoing.

Williams was arrested and charged with the assault of a child in the second degree and is being held in jail on a $100,000 bond.

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Tyree Lincoln Smith, 35, was arrested Tuesday night on a Connecticut warrant for murder, according to police in Lynn Haven, Fla.

A property inspector discovered the body of Angel L. Gonzalez on Friday on the third floor of an abandoned home in Bridgeport, Conn., according to that city’s police department. A medical examiner determined that the cause of death was blunt head trauma and ruled Gonzalez’s death a homicide.

On Monday a cousin of Smith’s in Connecticut contacted the Bridgeport police about Gonzalez’s death. She told detectives that Smith had arrived at her house Dec. 15 and said he wanted to “get blood on his hands” before going to a park and then to the abandoned home, where he used to live, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The next day, Smith returned to the cousin’s house with blood on his pants, hands and an axe, the affidavit said. Smith’s cousin said he told her that he was sleeping on a porch at the abandoned home when we was awakened by a Hispanic man and invited inside. Then Smith described beating the man’s face and head with the axe and collecting one of his eyes, a piece of his skull some of his brain matter, which he consumed in a nearby cemetery, the affidavit said.

The cousin told detectives she called Smith’s mother, who notified police on Dec. 16 that they may want to check the abandoned home and that her son had “mental issues,” the affidavit said.

Smith had left Connecticut for Florida on Friday on a Greyhound Bus, the cousin told detectives. Police and Smith’s relatives reached Smith by telephone, and in a recorded call Smith admitted that he had been at the abandoned house and that he told a relative that he had killed the man, according to the affidavit.

Federal, state and local law enforcement officers took Smith into custody at an apartment Tuesday night without incident, Lynn Haven police said.

It was not immediately clear whether Smith had an attorney.

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The child’s mom, Karla Noriega (pictured), said that her son, Santiago, received the gas-powered minibike as a Christmas present.  The kindergartner was out riding in his two-day-old bike when he crashed into the vehicle.  When police were called onto the scene, they gave the child several summonses for reckless driving, driving without a license, and not having his vehicle registered.  The fines totaled $183.

Noriega, who thought that her young son’s exorbitant fines were absurd, made the decision to go public.  The media picked up on the boy’s case and now police officials are stating that they regret their hasty ticketing.

Hector Arceluz, the city council secretary, told the AP that as of Thursday, the minibike was released to the family, the fines dismissed, and the officers who ticketed the child will be punished for their actions.

Meanwhile, although Gael is happy that his motorized toy has been returned to him, it went kaput after the car crash.

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The Unicor program is one of the feds best kept secrets.  While it benefits the public with its services, prisoners also benefit as well. The call centers, which cover both the private and public sectors, provides inmates with skills that they can use on the outside.

An MSNBC story adds that the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons will not divulge the names of the companies that utilize the Unicor service.  The prisoner-reform program does provide call center services for some of the “top-companies in America” in an effort to repatriate the jobs that have been outsourced here.

The transfer of day-to-day business functions to an external third-party service provider located outside of this country has been a point of contention for countless Americans.  This “outsourcing” has reduced corporate costs but has also eliminated many jobs here in the United States.

A Unicor fact sheet explains that the service of employing inmates has been around for 70 years, with the company touting their services as reliable, low-cost, and free for taxpayers.  Unicor also offers a commitment to security, which has raised the eyebrows of many critics of the program.

Unicor states the following regarding security issues:

UNICOR takes additional steps to insure that inmates can safely meet the security needs of any call center client. Inmates are not permitted to make calls to private citizens in their homes, and UNICOR carefully reviews potential inbound consumer call work to assure everyone involved that inmates will not have access to personal information. We will not accept any work if there is any question that we can meet all parties’ security concerns.

Still, there are some whose fears won’t be quelled by a guarantee that the inmates pose no threat.  If someone in New York calls the Department of Motor Vehicles, for example, they could quite possibly get an inmate from a nearby facility.  If a consumer knew that they could be chatting with an inmate while their personal information was being exchanged, such knowledge could have someone trembling in their boots.

The corrections department told MSNBC that callers aren’t told they’re talking with a state prisoner, and officials stressed that callers are protected, because no personal information is displayed to the prisoners — they don’t have access to computers.

Still, other critics are up in arms that such opportunities are being handed over to inmates rather than law-abiding citizens who really need the work. Companies most likely opt for inmates as workers because they pay a paltry sum: about 50 cents an hour.

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A Sheriff’s office report states that on the morning of the home invasion, a male victim was struck over the head as he stepped outside his apartment. Rosario, Anthony Lusson, and a third unidentified attacker reportedly dragged the victim back inside his home and then yanked a woman’s hair before throwing her down to the floor. After allegedly choking the male victim, the captors ransacked the apartment, looking for valuables to confiscate while holding their victims at gunpoint, then fled.

Deputies managed to locate Rosario after scouring some leads, and when they entered his home, they found him hiding in a clothes dryer.  The assailant was charged with two counts of home invasion, robbery with a firearm, and one count of aggravated assault with a firearm. Suspect Lusson knew his victims and was cuffed shortly after the crime.  He faces a $150,000 bond.

The third suspect is still at large.

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When Las Vegas police pulled the 22-year-old over, they discovered that Tyga’s warrants ranged from driving without a license to registration violations to unlawful acts of financial responsibility.

Tyga, whose name is an acronym that stands for “Thank You God Always,” was cuffed and hauled off to the Clark County Detention Center, where he spent one night in a cell.  He was released the following day on his own recognizance.

The question remains, did the half-Jamaican, half-Vietnamese entertainer learn the error of his ways?  On Sunday, Tyga tweeted two upbeat messages on his Twitter account that could be hinting that he is a changed man:

Tyga TYGA

#ThankYouGodAlways

8 Jan

Tyga TYGA

Do something Positive today!

8 Jan

Time will tell!

Read the rest at TMZ.

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Doctors at University Hospital declared Keian dead Saturday afternoon, making him the third fatality in the New Orleans area within a bloody 24-hour period. Keian, a fifth grader at George Cox Elementary School in Gretna, liked to play football and basketball. But in order to keep him safe, Johnson-Ester kept him inside at night playing video games. On Friday afternoon she dropped Keian off for a sleepover at the apartment on Beechgrove Boulevard in unincorporated Westwego. Then she went to work as a home health aide, a job that keeps her busy seven days a week.  A day later, with her husband and 10-year-old twin daughters by her side, Johnson-Ester said goodbye to her only son, kissing his still body, crying over him and telling him she loved him. Between Friday night and Saturday afternoon, three people were killed including Keian, and 10 wounded in a spate of unrelated shootings. Four of those wounded were teenagers hit by bullets fired into a crowd after a high-school basketball game. All but two of the shootings occurred in Orleans Parish. The other two killings were in the 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans.

The reason that old saying– the one my mother would sometimes utter to me when I was a teenager leaving the house– isn’t true, is because these bullets seem to have the names of our young people written all over them. Young Keinan was doing nothing more than playing video games while his mother worked to earn money to support him and the rest of her family. And shouldn’t an athletic event be a safe venue for young people to hang out with their friends?

The reason events like these aren’t safe anymore is because guns have now become one of the primary tools of communication in too many communities across America.

Here’s the Time’s Picayune’s description of Keinan’s shooting and the shooting at the basketball game:

After Easton won, the crowd rushed the court — as is tradition — causing some sort of tiff. Those involved were escorted out by school officials and Orleans Parish Sheriff’s deputies, who typically provide security for Easton games, according to the observers, who asked not to be identified. While emotions were definitely high, police and witnesses said they didn’t know what prompted someone to fire into the crowd. Neighbors who live near the apartment where 11-year-old Keian was murdered say they woke up to small white signs placed by police detectives marking seven different bullet holes in the front of the wooden apartment building. Like most of the large complex, the building was largely vacant, they said. Tyrone Coston, 57, said elderly neighbors heard gunfire, hit the floor and spent the night sleeping on the carpet, in fear.

Seven bullet holes?

The person firing that gun was expressing themselves the only way they knew how, the way they were probably taught by the people around them, through violence. And the fact that a school rivalry has to be settled with bullets instead of on a basketball court shows that our kids simply don’t have the language to work out their differences.

Of course the availability of these cheap, deadly weapons is a huge part of the problem. It was just a year ago that a gunman shot U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 12 others, killing six people. Not much has changed on a national policy level involving guns since then.

But don’t we need to take steps to teach our kids to communicate with one another without turning to violence? Maybe schools need to have a course focused on conflict resolution. Parents need to start at home by limiting the amount of conflict their children see as close to nil as possible.

Just because someone skipped you in line in the supermarket does not mean that threats of violence are required (recently witnessed that with my own eyes). If fighting in a child’s home is introduced as the solution to problems, then that is the paradigm kids are going to use in their own lives. There are enough bullets out there to ensure that too many of our kids’ names prematurely wind up on tomb stones.

What do you think we can do to stem the violence in our communities?

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Friends Mark E. Kozelka and Ronald Deavers (pictured below) got into a heated discussion about the marital status of the superstar diva while watching music videos.  According to a police report, Deavers, 31, became irrational when Kozelka, 48, broke the news to him that Beyonce was in fact married to Jay-Z.

Parma Police Detective Marty Compton then says Deavers exploded into a rage:

Both males then faced off during the heated argument, Deavers pulled out a knife and stabbed Kozelka in his left side.

Two witnesses, Jennifer Lee Fornari and Anthony Butler, ended up transporting the victim to a local hospital. Detective Compton added that when police were called to the scene and tried to question Fornari about the incident, the woman told them that Deavers was not in the apartment and that he left the premises.  According to Detective Compton, the 31-year-old woman allegedly tried to stall police while Deavers climbed out of a rear bedroom window to escape:

The officers heard a disturbance coming from the back of the apartment, went to investigate and saw that the window was open,” said Detective Compton.  Officers then tried to take Fornari into custody but she put up a scuffle.  Fornari was eventually cuffed and charged with obstruction of justice and resisting arrest.

Deavers was caught wandering not far from the scene of the crime.  Police apprehended, arrested, and charged Deavers with felonious assault.

Kozelka, a handyman, received severe lacerations, internal injuries, and underwent surgery.  He remains hospitalized and is in stable condition.

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After 10 p.m. on Saturday, the local sheriff’s department was called to a home that had cries coming from the basement.  What police discovered was a 62-year-old man lying on the floor screaming for help. The elderly man, whose name has not been released, had both eyeballs dangling about a quarter inch from his face.

The man reportedly told police that he and his 32-year-old nephew had been fussing over the remote control.  After breaking the remote in a fit of rage, Holman, who is 140 pounds heavier and five inches taller than the uncle, allegedly flung the uncle to the floor and then straddled him. According to the uncle, once Holman dislodged his eyeballs out of their sockets with his thumbs, he pushed him down the basement stairs.

Holman already has a criminal record of 25 arrests, including everything from assault, narcotics, and weapons charges, and has been cuffed and charged with aggravated domestic battery. His bond was set on Tuesday for $1 million.

As for the uncle, he is now reportedly blind in his left eye and can barely see out of his right.  He will have to undergo additional surgery in order to save what little vision is left in his right eye.

Read the rest at the Sun Times.

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The 51-year-old pizza kitchen worker’s surreal experience happened just before midnight earlier this year, when he became another victim of what is generally known as “Knockout King” or simply “Knock Out,” a so-called game of unprovoked violence that targets random victims.

Scattered reports of the game have come from around the country including Massachusetts, New Jersey and Chicago. In St. Louis, the game has become almost contagious, with tragic consequences. An elderly immigrant from Vietnam died in an attack last spring.

The rules of the game are as simple as they are brutal. A group – usually young men or even boys as young as 12, and teenage girls in some cases – chooses a lead attacker, then seeks out a victim. Unlike typical gang violence or other street crime, the goal is not revenge, nor is it robbery. The victim is chosen at random, often a person unlikely to put up a fight. Many of the victims have been elderly. Most were alone.

The attacker charges at the victim and begins punching. If the victim goes down, the group usually scatters. If not, others join in, punching and kicking the person, often until he or she is unconscious or at least badly hurt. Sometimes the attacks are captured on cellphone video that is posted on websites.

“These individuals have absolutely no respect for human life,” St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said.

Slay knows firsthand. He was on his way home from a theater around 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 21 when he saw perhaps a dozen young people casually crossing a street. He looked to the curb and saw Quain sprawled on the pavement.

Slay told his driver to pull over. They found Quain unconscious, blood pouring from his head and mouth.

Quain was hospitalized for two days with a broken jaw, a cracked skull and nasal cavity injuries. He still has headaches and memory problems but was finally able to return to work earlier this month. Hundreds gathered in November for a fundraiser at the restaurant where he works, Joanie’s Pizza, but he still doesn’t know how he’ll pay the medical bills.

“I don’t remember much of what happened,” Quain said. “I was hanging out with a friend, celebrating the Cardinals in the World Series. I went to the store and saw a group of kids who looked out of place, suspicious, but I shrugged it off. I got around to the library, and the next thing I remember is waking up on the corner with the mayor standing next to me. I tried to say `hi’ but my jaw was broken.”

It isn’t clear how long Knockout King has been around, nor is the exact number of attacks known. The FBI doesn’t track it separately, but Slay said he has heard from several mayors about similar attacks and criminologists agree versions of the game are going on in many places.

St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom said the city has had about 10 Knockout King attacks over the past 15 months.

Experts say it is a grab for attention.

“We know that juveniles don’t think out consequences clearly,” said Beth Huebner, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “They see something on YouTube and say, `I want to get that sort of attention, too.’ They don’t think about the person they’re attacking maybe hitting their head.”

Scott Decker, a criminologist at Arizona State, said the attacks are a modern extension of gang-like behavior – instead of painting over another gang’s graffiti as a show of toughness, they beat someone up and post a video on social media sites. The postings spur copycat crimes.

“It’s adolescent and early adults, largely male, showing how tough they are. It’s done to show off,” Decker said.

Earlier this year in Chicago, a group of teens followed an elderly homeless man at a train station. One of the teens walked up to him and punched him in the face, knocking him out as the teen’s friends laughed and mocked the man. The exchange was captured on video and posted on a hip-hop site, where it got about a quarter of a million views within two days. The teen was not arrested because police couldn’t locate the homeless man to see if he wanted to press charges.

The crimes aren’t limited to big cities. In 2009, Adam Taylor had just entered a parking garage in Columbia, Mo. Surveillance footage from the garage showed a group of teens following him. One of the teens attacked, punching Taylor and sending him crashing into a brick wall. A few seconds later, the others joined in, punching and kicking him as he lay on the ground. Taylor suffered bruising on the brain, whiplash and internal bleeding but survived.

Hoang Nguyen wasn’t as fortunate.

The 72-year-old retired schoolteacher immigrated to St. Louis from Vietnam with his wife less than four years earlier to be near their daughter. The couple was returning to their apartment after walking to a grocery store on an April morning in broad daylight.

They took a shortcut through an alley, where they saw a group of young people approaching. Suddenly, one of them charged. Hoang was attacked as he stepped in front of his wife to protect her. The attack went on as he begged for mercy, she told police.

Hoang died of massive injuries. Elex Murphy, 18, was charged with first-degree murder and allegedly told police the attack was part of the Knockout King game. His attorney declined to comment.

St. Louis authorities are going to the source to combat further attacks. A special police squad has been assigned to focus on Knockout King, and a city prosecutor is designated for the attacks. But Isom said equally important is an outreach effort to talk to students.

“Certainly we take this very seriously and we’re making every effort to stop it,” Isom said.

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Donald Vasser was featured on “Washington’s Most Wanted,” a local law enforcement show in the style of “America’s Most Wanted.” It described the 39-year-old man as a “high-violent offender” with more than 20 arrests under his belt.

Seattle police spokeswoman Renee Witt says another parent recognized him and police were called in after the students came back to Lowell Elementary School on Wednesday. Vasser fled before police arrived, and officers were unable to find him even though the school was locked down.

Schools spokeswoman Teresa Wippel says officials are investigating how Vasser was able to get on the trip. She says that schools run background checks on chaperones.

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The MMA fighter, elusively identified only as “Justin” was relaxing in his car. Miranda who was armed, walked up and began the jack move:

“Justin said he handed over the $30 in cash he had stuffed in a his car’s cup holder, but Miranda was not satisfied, Justin said. At that moment, he backs up the gun and he racks it,” Justin recalled. “The gun jammed. He racked it a second time. He ejected the bullet on the ground. He went down and grabbed the bullet and said, ‘Look, m—–f—–, it’s a hollow point. I’ll blow your brains out.’”

Justin was told to get out of the car. He did as he was instructed and was able to wrestle the gun from Miranda. Then he put hands on him like D-Bo did Red in Friday.

Justin said: “He was begging me to let him go. He said he has a baby.”

Nothing makes me feel better than to see a jacker get jacked! Karma is real.

Read the whole story in the Chicago Sun-Times.

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The 29-year-old rapper’s real name is Torrence Hatch. He pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to smuggle codeine, marijuana and ecstasy into two state prisons. They were the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson, La.

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Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings says Hatch was serving a prison term for a separate conviction for marijuana possession when he smuggled the drugs with help from a prison guard.

State District Judge Mike Erwin in Baton Rouge sentenced him to the new prison term.

Hatch also faces a first-degree murder charge in the 2009 death of Terry Boyd. The trial is scheduled to start April 30.

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“The MO in most of the robberies has been the same: The perpetrators appear to be two hungry men, placing a to-go order at the Waffle House counter in the early-morning hours. They order food, then sit and wait while the food is prepared.

But when the food is ready and it’s time to pay, one of the men pulls a gun and demands cash.”

These two got caught, but the crime wave won’t stop. The New York Times cites Waffle House as the place of choice for everything from fugitive pit stops, to terrorist attack meetings. A cross-dressing bank robber was recently seen getting his eat on at a Waffle House. Crime may not pay but it sure does make you hungry.

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Kelly Thrasher, a spokeswoman for Waffle House told reporters:

“You can’t escape stereotypes. It’s not that more of these stories happen at Waffle Houses. It’s just getting more attention when it happens at a Waffle House.”

See the full story here !

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Here are five of numerous professional athletes charged with murder.

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5. Robert Rozier

Robert Rozier was born in Alaska and played six games for the St. Louis Cardinals in the NFL as a defensive end. After leaving the NFL, Rozier would join Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s  ”The Brotherhood,” a Black supremacist cult. He would later admit to killing seven people and testify against leader, Ben Yahweh. Rozier was then placed in the witness protection program; and would later be convicted for writing bad checks and is currently in jail.

4. Mark Rogowski

Mark Rogowski was a professional skateboarder and child icon. In the early eighties, he and Tony Hawk helped popularize skateboarding as a sport. But in 1991, Rogowski became popular for something that isn’t looked upon in a positive manner. He admitted to raping and murdering a friend of his ex-girlfriend as an act of revenge against his ex.

He was sentenced to 31 years in prison.

3. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was a middleweight boxer who would be charged with murder in New Jersey for a shooting at a bar.

Despite questionable evidence and testimony, Carter was convicted of murder in 1967. After the conviction,  Muhammed Ali, Bob Dylan and several other activists, athletes and artists took up his cause and Carter was released from prison after a new trial in 1985.

His story was made into a movie starring Denzel Washington.

2. Rae Carruth

Rae Carruth was a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers who would be charged and convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for setting up the killing of a pregnant girlfriend.

Carruth went on the run and attempted to escape the law, but would be captured hiding in the trunk of a car outside a motel in Tennessee.

1. O.J. Simpson

O.J. Simpson was charged with murdering his wife Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994. After a very high profile case, Simpson would be found not guilty in what many called “The Trial of the Century.”

Later, Simpson would be found liable for wrongful death in civil court, and was ordered to pay $33.5 million. After writing a book titled, “If I Did It,” Simpson would be convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in a case involving his own memorabilia.

Her son, Rayon McIntosh, 31, faces assault and weapons charges after he was seen on tape beating Denise Darbeau and Rachel Edwards, both 24, with a metal rod in a video that went viral on the web, after the two women allegedly verbally assaulted McIntosh and then jumped over the counter.

Fueling the controversy is the fact that McIntosh spent more than a decade behind bars for slaying a classmate in 2000.

Michael Joseph, who was also working that night, testified that one of the women yelled at a third employee: “F–k you! I hope you get deported.”

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Stephen Daniel, 21, can be  seen in surveillance footage walking up to the clerk  and demanding all the cash. What the video does not capture is a police officer standing behind him watching the whole thing unfold.

“The manager was laughing at the time he was putting the money in the bag because he was looking at me over the guy who was robbing him,” Lt. B.W. Brown said.

Read more at wsbtv.com.

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Still, many cities face rampant violence, Detroit being one of them.

In 2010, the “Motor City” led the nation with 345 murders making it the most violent crime-prone city in the nation.

Forbes highlights Detroit and several other cities that top the list of America’s most dangerous cities.

“There’s a complex series of forces at work behind these rates,” says Tom Blomberg, dean of the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State Univeristy. “The state of the economy, demographics, the number of young males at any given time, the rate of imprisonment and the number of police all factor in.”

Read more at the Huffington Post.

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Police say the crooks forced their way into the home and forced victim Trevor Bailey to hand over money and his X-Box.

Bailey’s older sister, who heard the commotion from another room in the house, was also assaulted after she chased the crooks down and jumped in their car.

I was like, ‘oh my God. Are you kidding. No I’m not about to give you my money… next i know I’m laying on the floor, ” Bailey told reporters.

Read more at wftv.com.

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George Wright, 68, was living comfortably in Portugal when fingerprints taken from his his Portuguese ID card matched prints from the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

When Wright escaped, he was serving 15 years for the fatal shooting of a Bronze Star veteran at a N.J. gas station.

By all accounts, he was a model citizen, settling in the town of Sintra, outside Lisbon. But he was foiled after the feds created the New York-New Jersey Fugitive Task Force in 2002 — and made finding Wright a top priority.

Read more at the New York Post.

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Police said Jeremy Combs, 30, arrived home after making an order at a Lee Summit, MO. Taco Bell. Combs returned to the restaurant’s drive-through with a shotgun when he discovered an employee had not included hot sauce with his order.

Combs was arrested and faces 10 years if convicted.

An employee told police that Combs was drunk and threatened the man at the drive-thru window with a 12-gague shotgun.  When police searched Combs’ home, they found a shotgun in the home.

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The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported there were 3.8 million violent crimes last year, down from 4.3 million in 2009.

Experts aren’t sure why. The expectation had been that crime would increase in a weak economy with high unemployment like that seen in 2010.

The reality is that “we’re surprised to find how much it declines,” Professor Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School said Friday.

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More than 80 percent of the decline in violent crime was attributed to a plunge in simple assaults, by 15 percent. Those assaults accounted for nearly two-thirds of all violent crimes in 2010.

The combined total of property crimes and violent crimes was down 6.6 percent last year, from 20 million to 18.7 million.

The numbers come from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which gathers information on nonfatal crimes against people aged 12 or older by questioning a nationally representative sample of U.S. households.

Turning to rates of crime per thousand residents, which takes into account population growth over time, it’s clear that the decline in violent crime is part of a long-term trend that began in 1993.

From 1993 through 2010, the rate of violent crime has declined by a whopping 70 percent: from 49.9 violent crimes per 1,000 persons age 12 or older to only 14.9 per 1,000 in 2010.

Half of this decline came between 1993 and 2001. Between 2001 and 2009, violent crime declined at a more modest annual average of 4 percent, but that rate decline jumped to 13 percent in 2010.

From 2001 through 2010, the rate of property crime fell by 28 percent.

The rate for violent crime is based on the number per thousand population. The rate for property crime is based on the number per thousand households.

Blumstein added that “the victimization survey is basically confirming” the FBI’s preliminary figures from last May on crimes reported to police during 2010. That early, incomplete FBI data showed reported crime fell across the board last year, extending a multi-year downward trend with a 5.5 percent drop in the number of violent crimes in 2010 and a 2.8 percent decline in the number of property crimes. The FBI’s final figures for last year will be released Monday.

The victimization survey figures are considered the government’s most reliable crime statistics, because they count crimes that are reported to the police as well as those which go unreported. Over the last decade, the government has found that only about half of all violent crimes and only 40 percent of property crimes are reported to police.

Because the survey is based on interviews with victims, it gathers no data on murder. But the FBI’s crime figures, based solely on what is reported to police, do provide murder figures, and they are considered quite reliable because murder has always been the least likely crime to go unreported. Murder is by far the least frequent major crime, only 15,241 in 2009.

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Boosie’s message from prison was sent as a letter and read over the phone to the 15-year-old  by one of his close friends.

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You can be better than me. You don’t want a marijuana addiction because it leads to trouble as you can see. Look at me. I’ve been in prison two years for smoking marijuana… most gangstas end up in jail or dead… we never got a letter from our role model telling us to chill out.

See video at Worldstarhiphop.com

10. Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas capitalized off the heroin trade in the 1960s and 1970s by using an East Asian connection during the Vietnam war, cutting off the Italian mafia who  controlled the trade in his Harlem at the time. Lucas, originally from North Carolina, employed members of his family to take over the heroin trade in New York and New Jersey. Lucas would claim to have sold one million dollars worth of heroin a day in his prime and claimed to have a net worth of over $52 million on top of a large supply of liquid assets, namely heroin.

9. Griselda Blanco

Griselda Blanco, also known as the Black Widow or The Cocaine Queen Of Miami, was a drug lord for the Colombian Medellin cartel. She controlled the cocaine trade through violence and intimidation making $80 million a month during the ’70s and ’80s. Reports claim that at her peak Griselda Blanco had more than a half a billion dollars. After serving 10 years in jail on drug charges, Blanco would return to her native Colombia.

8. Al Capone

Al Capone is perhaps the most notorious gangster of all time, and also one of the richest. During prohibition, Capone controlled the illegal alcohol, prostitution and gambling rackets in Chicago which brought in $100 million a year at its prime. Capone’s money allowed him to bribe police officials, judges and even the Mayor of Chicago. Unfortunately, he could not bribe the IRS who convicted him of tax evasion in 1932 and sentenced him to 11 years in prison.

7. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera

“El Chapo” is one of Mexico’s most infamous drug lords. He is the head of the Sinaloa cartel which smuggles in billion of dollars from Colombia through Mexico and into the United States. Guzman became rich enough to make Forbes list of 1000 wealthiest people in the world as well as their top 60 most powerful people in the world, with a net worth of over 5 billion dollars. Guzman was jailed in 1993 but escaped from prison in 2001 and is currently number one of the FBI’s most wanted list with $5 million award for his capture.

6. Anthony “Fat Tony” Salermo

Italian Mobster “Fat Tony” Salermo made his millions running the numbers and drugs racket in East Harlem after most other Italian mobsters left the area as it became more Black and Latino in the 1960s making tens of millions of dollars. As the front man for the Genovese crime family, Salermo was named the America’s Top Gangster by Fortune Magazine in 1986 due to his wealth of more than one billion dollars and influence. In 1988 Salermo was convicted of racketeering charges and was sentenced to 70 years in prison.

5. Carlos Lehder

Lehder was one of the founders of the Colombian Medillin Cartel. While in prison Lehder met Boston-born drug trafficker, George Jung, who helped him import and distribute cocaine from his native Colombia into the United States accumulating $2.7 Billion. Cocaine made Lehder so rich that he owned his own island in the Bahamas and offered to pay of Colombia’s debt. Lehder would eventually be extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison which was reduced after he agreed to testify against former Panamanian President, Manuel Noriega in 1992.

4. Meyer Lansky

Lansky was a Jewish immigrant from Poland who would make a fortune of gambling, both legal and illegal. Lansky would join notorious gangsters, Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Ben “Bugsy” Siegel to run a gang that would be known as Murder Inc. Lansky would later turn to focus on gambling setting up operations in Florida, Las Vegas and Cuba before the Cuban revolution.In 1982, Forbes would name him as one of the 400 richest people in America.  Lansky would be indicted for tax evasion and fled to Israel. He would later return to the U.S. to face charges and was acquitted in 1974. Lanksy would die a free man in Miami at age 83.

3. Joseph Kennedy

Joseph Kennedy is the patriarch of one of America’s most powerful and prestigious families. One of his sons became President, another District Attorney and presidential candidate and another a Senator. At his peak Kennedy was one of the richest men in America but as the saying goes behind every great fortune, there is a great crime. Kennedy was already in the liquor business before prohibition but according to several books and gangsters, became a bootlegger with ties to the New York and Chicago underworlds after liquor was made illegal. After prohibition was ended Kennedy made a fortune off selling legitimate liquor as well as through Hollywood and the stock market. Kennedy was named one of the 20 richest people in America in 1954 by Fortune Magazine and had a net worth of more than $300 Million, which would be in the high billions today . It has been reported that Kennedy contacted mobster Frank Costello, who was known to brag that he was a bootlegger with Kennedy, to use another mobster, Chicago’s Sam Giancana to help his son John get elected through his ties to Chicago and the unions.

2. Pablo Escobar

Escobar is perhaps the most notorious drug lord of the modern era. He ran the Medellin Cartel which imported billions of dollars of cocaine into the United States. Pablo’s money brought him great power as we was able to bribe officials or have them killed if they wouldn’t take his bribes. Forbes Magazine named Escobar the 7th richest man in the world with a net worth of $25 Billion. In 1993, Escobar was killed by Colombian forces with US assistance, after he escaped from a Colombian prison.

1. Amado Carrillo Fuentes

Amado Carrillo Fuentes was the head of the Mexican Juarez Cartel. He was known as “Lord Of The Skies” due to his private fleet of planes, including 22 private 727 jet airliners which were used to import cocaine from Colombia to Mexico where it was later smuggled into the United States. Fuentes had an estimated net value of $25 billion almost twice as much as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the DEA called him the most powerful drug trafficker of his era. He would die while undergoing plastic surgery to alter his appearance in 1997.

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Studies of these crime trends always make for good news headlines because it always makes you wonder “How is this happening?!”

Here’s a list of 8 crime studies and facts that will baffle you.

1. Disney-Made Town Had No Murders For 14 Years

Celebration, Florida, coined “Town that Disney built,” was as perfect as its name for over a decade, until a 58 year-old man was strangled to death in his home over Thanksgiving weekend 2010. The murder went unsolved for almost a week until a 28-year-old homeless man was charged with the crime. Although the crime was a tragic event in this immaculate community’s history, I cannot deny that this incident reminded me of Disney’s children’s movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

2. The 2010 Super Bowl Was Predicted To Attract 10,000 Prostitutes

A study conducted by the Dallas Women’s Foundation about the commercial sexual exploitation of children caused authorities and the media to go into a frenzy about the dangers of human sex trafficking at the Super Bowl last year. Police, advocacy groups, and the media took this information and ran with it, some calling the Super Bowl “a hot bed of underage prostitution“  — but was that what the study exactly meant? After further investigation, many journalists found that there were few to no reports of child prostitution in the past at Super Bowl’s, and there wasn’t much data that could prove that prostitutes attended the Super Bowl.

3. Traffic Crashes Cost More Than Crime In Michigan

Traffic crashes in Michigan cost $9.1 billion — $4.7 billion more than the cost of all crimes in the state, according to a study of the comprehensive costs in 2009. This is mostly due to the fact that Michigan is a No-Fault State, meaning car insurance companies must pay most of the economic losses you suffer in an automobile accident, regardless of who was at fault.

4. Over $35 Million Were Taken During Bank Robberies Last Year

5. Alabama Judges Push For Death Penalties

7. 95% of Music Downloads Are Pirated

8. “Driving While Black” (DWB) Traffic-Stops Do Happen

According to a study released by the Illinois Department of Transportation, after a traffic stop, minority drivers are more likely to receive traffic tickets and have their vehicles searched by police. This study proved that some police do violate the law, and the “Driving while Black” notion does hold some truth.

Link to video

OCAL, Fla. — A Florida woman was shot in the middle of a fight in Ocala and kept fighting before she noticed she was shot in the chest.

Police have now released the video in hopes of finding the gunman responsible for the shooting.

The victim, Brittany Thomas, said she had gone out for a smoke break at the Spring Manor Apartments last Aug. 2 when a woman she doesn’t even know accused her of talking trash.

“It was a shocker,” Thomas said.

Thomas said the war of words turned into a fight with fists, and a crowd grew around the brawl, with pushing and some trying to separate the women. It was then that Thomas said two gunshots were heard.

Read more here

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Jerry Terrell Jackson, 30, was pronounced dead at 9:14 p.m. Thursday at Greensville Correctional Center.

Asked if he had any final words, Jackson shook his head and said “no” under his breath. As he waited for the drugs to be administered, he tapped his foot as he lay strapped to a stainless steel gurney. The execution team took about 15 minutes to insert two intravenous lines, one into each arm. Within four minutes of the lines being inserted, he was pronounced dead.

Jackson was sentenced to death for the 2001 rape and murder of seamstress Ruth Phillips in her Williamsburg apartment.

Like other states, Virginia recently replaced sodium thiopental with pentobarbital after a nationwide shortage of the sedative, which is administered before two other drugs that stop the inmate’s breathing and heart. Attorneys in some states have contested the use of pentobarbital, but federal courts have ruled the change is not significant enough to stop executions.

Pentobarbital has been used in two dozen executions this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Richard Phillips, who found his mother dead on Aug. 26, 2001, said the execution was long overdue. Neither Phillips nor other members of the victim’s family witnessed the execution.

Ruth Phillips, a widow for 30 years, followed her son to Virginia from New Hampshire in the late 1990s. She worked as a seamstress making slip covers and draperies up until her death. Richard Phillips said he had wanted her to move close to him so she would be safe.

Authorities say Jackson broke into her apartment. When she awoke and found him rummaging through her purse, she offered him anything if he would leave. Instead, he put a pillow over her face and raped her, according to authorities. They said Jackson then fled in her car and used the $60 he stole from her apartment to buy marijuana.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Phillips lost her life due to something that I done,” Jackson had said recently. “I’m sorry to Mr. Philips that he hurt so much. I’m sorry that he lost his mother.”

Jackson nearly got a reprieve last year when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema allowed a two-day evidentiary hearing in which Jackson’s brother and sister testified about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and stepfather while growing up.

Brinkema ordered that Jackson at the time should receive a new sentencing hearing, saying the testimony “painted a graphic picture of an unwarranted, continuous, sadistic course of conduct that terrorized and dehumanized Jackson throughout his childhood.” But earlier this year, a federal appeals court overturned that ruling on a technicality.

Recently, Jackson’s attorneys had argued jurors should get a chance to hear those graphic details of childhood abuse.

That argument was not enough to sway Gov. Bob McDonnell, who denied a request to commute Jackson’s sentence to life in prison last week. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request earlier in the day Thursday to block the execution.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press last Friday, Jackson talked about the abuse, which began with a broken arm when he was 19 months old and continued with sexual abuse and beatings with a fist, belt and once a two-by-four for more than a decade.

Jackson acknowledged killing Phillips. Although he said it wasn’t an excuse for what he did, Jackson said he didn’t think it would have happened if he could have escaped the abuse as a child.

“I don’t think I would have ended up this way,” he said. “I don’t think I would be on death row.”

The Rev. Christine Payden-Travers, who has written to and visited with Jackson for several years, called him a loyal and caring friend to many people.

She was with Jackson until he was taken into the death chamber. She then witnessed the execution, holding her Bible, sometimes shutting her eyes and appearing to mouth a prayer. She had called up until the final hours for Jackson’s life to be spared.

Payden-Travers and Jackson’s attorney declined to comment after the execution.

Jackson had followed news reports about the use of pentobarbital, including a recent Georgia execution in which there was some evidence the inmate suffered when the drug was used. He said he was concerned about its use.

Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said the execution team had trained on the amended protocol using the new drug, read to “carry out the order of execution in a professional and constitutional manner.”

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A 79-year-old Dallas woman succumbed to the sweltering Texas heat and died in her home two days after reporting her air conditioner stolen to the police.

Dolores Grissom, lived on a corner in her Oak Cliff neighborhood where her air conditioner was exposed.

On July 14, Grissom reported that her $2,500 unit was stolen. On July 16 she was found dead.

Her air conditioner was targeted by thieves numerous times in the last two years.

Read more at CBSDFW

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The rapper, whose real name is Antwan Patton, was charged with three counts of possession of a controlled substance and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia on Sunday. According to the Miami-Dade County Corrections website, the 36-year-old Patton was also carrying MDMA, which is the main ingredient in Ecstasy.

The rapper was booked around 1:30 p.m. on $16,000 bond.

Phone and email messages were left for Big Boi’s publicists.

Big Boi is best known as half of the groundbreaking rap duo OutKast, which includes Andre 3000. The Atlanta-based group won six Grammys and churned out six platinum-plus albums, including their “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” which sold over 10 million copies.

Just two months ago, Big Boi sat down with urban entertainment website, TheUrbanDaily.com and elaborated on his rapping skills.

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LOS ANGELES–A crazed woman reportedly grabbed a stranger’s baby from out of a stroller, slammed the infant into a pole and tried to break the baby’s arm off so that she could eat it.

The infant’s mother and aunt fought off the suspect Natasha Hubbard, until she fled. With the help of witnesses, the police were able to locate Hubbard. The baby suffered bruises and scratches as a result of the attack.

LA prosecutors have charged Hubbard, 36, with aggravated assault, and it is believed she may have other victims.

Read More At NYDailyNews.com

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According to the recounts of victims, the man usually attacks after a distraction such as clothes falling off a rack. Afterwards, the attacker calmly walks away without drawing attention to himself.

Huffington Post Reports:

A few days ago, an 18-year-old woman was shopping at Forever 21 in Fairfax, Virginia when she felt a sharp pain on her rear end, report from NBC Washington. She told police she thought at first that she had been struck with a clothes hanger. Only after further inspection did she realize she had been cut through her shorts with a box cutter or razor.

Read More At HuffingtonPost.com

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Nelson, 30, pleaded for sympathy after she broke a state law when jaywalking with her three children. Her story attracted national attention from media agencies, the NAACP and transportation advocates, who all said the charges were unfairly pursued.

CNN Reports:

Dozens of the suburban Atlanta woman’s supporters crowded the courtroom Tuesday and applauded as Judge Kathryn Tanksley sentenced her to 12 months of probation and 40 hours of community service.

She also said Nelson could seek a new trial.

Read More At CNN.com

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Raquel Nelson, 30, was convicted on July 12 of second-degree vehicular homicide, reckless conduct, and failure to use a crosswalk during the incident in April 2010.

The drunk driver, Jerry Guy,  spent 6 months in prison after pleading guilty to two hit-and-runs.   Nelson will be sentenced Tuesday.

“I’ve had to accept that he’s gotten six months,” Nelson said Monday in an emotional interview on NBC’s “Today” show. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I’ve had to forgive that portion of it. However, I think to come after me so much harder than they did him, it’s a slap in the face. This will never end for me,” she said.

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Researchers at the University of Toronto believe the growing trend of racial diversity in American cities is contributing to the downward trend.

From TheGrio:

“The association between crime and community characteristics — like the proportion of the population that is black, Hispanic, poor, or foreign-born — diminished considerably over time,” notes the study. “The strength of the relationship between the share of black residents and property crime decreased by half between 1990 and 2008, while the association between the share of Hispanic residents and violent crime all but disappeared

Read more at The Grio.

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A New York times article discusses the growing trend of people impersonating police officers. Across the country, criminals are donning badges and uniforms and claiming to be cops in order to gain the trust of unsuspecting victims.

The NYT reports:

In South Florida, seemingly an incubator of law-breaking innovation, police impersonators have become better organized and, most troubling to law enforcement officials, more violent. The practice is so common that the Miami-Dade Police Department has a Police Impersonator Unit.

Since the unit was established in 2007, it has arrested or had encounters with more than 80 phony officers in Miami-Dade County, and the frequency has increased in recent months, said Lt. Daniel Villanueva, who heads the unit.

Whether it’s traffic stops or home invasions, more and more people are buying fake handcuffs, badges, and sirens. Law enforcement teams are saying there needs to be a crackdown on the ease with which stores are permitted to sell such police replicas.

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Many of the cities on this list are mainstays, while others are new additions.

Check out the list below:

10. Stockton, Calif.

9. Rockford, Ill.

8. Baltimore

7. Little Rock, Ark.

6. Oakland, Calif.

5. Memphis, Tenn.

4. New Haven, Conn.

3. St. Louis

2. Detroit

1. Flint, Mich.

Read The Whole Story

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With a huge drop in homicides in a historically crime-ridden part of Los Angeles County, longtime residents say they finally feel safe sitting on their front porches and visiting neighborhood parks.

Compton, Calif., tallied only 24 homicides in 2010, down from 36 in 2009 and 87 in 1991, according to L.A. Times crime reporters. All in all, homicides plunged by 67 percent in less than five years, and other violent crimes are also way down.

Local authorities credit a 10-year effort to strengthen community ties and fight gangs. Residents tip off cops to possible crimes and help prevent youths from joining gangs, sheriff’s officials say.

Read The Whole Story

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TRENTON — St. Louis overtook Camden, N.J., as the nation’s most dangerous city in 2009, according to a national study released Sunday.

The study by CQ Press found St. Louis had 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 429.4. That helped St. Louis beat out Camden, which topped last year’s list and was the most dangerous city for 2003 and 2004.

Detroit, Flint, Mich., and Oakland, Calif., rounded out the top five. For the second straight year, the safest city with more than 75,000 residents was Colonie, N.Y.

The annual rankings are based on population figures and crime data compiled by the FBI. Some criminologists question the findings, saying the methodology is unfair.

Greg Scarbro, unit chief of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, said the FBI also discourages using the data for these types of rankings.

Kara Bowlin, spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, said the city actually has been getting safer over the last few years. She said crime in St. Louis has gone down each year since 2007, and so far in 2010, St. Louis crime is down 7 percent.

Erica Van Ross, spokeswoman for the St. Louis Police Department, called the rankings irresponsible.

“Crime is based on a variety of factors. It’s based on geography, it’s based on poverty, it’s based on the economy,” Van Ross said.

“That is not to say that urban cities don’t have challenges, because we do,” Van Ross said. “But it’s that it’s irresponsible to use the data in this way.”

Here Are America’s Most Dangerous Cities

1. St. Louis, MO
2. Camden, NJ
3. Detroit, MI
4. Flint, MI
5. Oakland, CA
6. Richmond, CA
7. Cleveland, OH
8. Compton, CA
9. Gary, IN
10. Birmingham, AL
11. Baltimore, MD
12. Memphis, TN
13. New Orleans, LA
14. Jackson, MS
15. Little Rock, AR
16. Baton Rouge, LA
17. Buffalo, NY
18. New Haven, CT
19. Hartford, CT
20. Dayton, OH
21. Kansas City, MO
22. Washington, DC
23. Newark, NJ
24. Cincinnati, OH
25. Atlanta, GA

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Baltimore’s Crime Drops As War On Drugs Becomes War On Violence

A New Jersey father accused of tossing his 3-month-old daughter to her death off a bridge pleaded not guilty Tuesday, as a judge ordered him to have no further contact with the child’s mother.

Shamsid-Din Abdur-Raheem sat silently as his attorney entered the plea in state Superior Court in New Brunswick.

The 22-year-old Galloway Township resident is charged with murder and five other counts related to the infant’s abduction and death. He remains jailed on $2.7 million bail.

Abdur-Raheem is also charged with attempted murder for allegedly assaulting the baby’s maternal grandmother, who was baby-sitting while the child’s mother sought a restraining order against him.

Prosecutors claim Abdur-Raheem abducted Zara Malani-lin Abdur from her grandmother’s East Orange apartment on Feb. 16, choking and assaulting the woman and then hitting her with his van as she attempted to block his escape.

Abdur-Raheem later parked on the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway over the Driscoll Bridge — which spans the Raritan River between Sayreville and Woodbridge — and threw or dropped the baby from the front passenger window, according to court papers.

Text continues after Pictures of the week gallery:

Police launched a massive search for the child. But she wasn’t found until April, when people walking along the riverbank not far from the bridge came across an infant’s body matching her description. An autopsy determined she had drowned.

Deputy Attorney General Andrew C. Fried asked state Superior Court Judge Frederick DeVesa Tuesday to bar Abdur-Raheem from all further contact with the baby’s mother, saying he had sent her a 10-page letter from jail. Fried declined to discuss the letter’s content, but said it could prompt the state to pursue additional charges of harassment or witness tampering.

Abdur-Raheem’s attorney, Richard Klein, told the judge that the letter had been sent in response to a jail visit the baby’s mother had initiated. Fried countered that the mother had only visited to ask Abdur-Raheem if their child was still alive, before the baby’s body had been found.

The judge asked Abdur-Raheem if he understood the order to have no further contact with the child’s mother, to which the defendant, his cuffed hands resting in his lap, nodded and quietly replied: “Yes.”

The case, which New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow has characterized as a tragic example of domestic violence, prompted a review of the state’s guidelines for issuing Amber Alert broadcasts in response to reports of missing children.

Dow ordered the review, and changes to the system, after it was discovered that no alert had been issued for four hours between the time the child was abducted and Abdur-Raheem was arrested, as state law discouraged the use of the alerts in domestic cases at the time.

New Jersey police now issue the alerts even in cases of suspected parental involvement in a child’s abduction.

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A shooting outside a restaurant in downtown Buffalo early Saturday left four people dead and four wounded, police said.

The victims were leaving a large party inside the City Grill bar and restaurant about 2:30 a.m. when gunfire erupted, police and witnesses said. Police were investigating witness reports that an argument may have broken out inside.

“We’re trying to sort all of that out,” Homicide Chief Dennis Richards said. “We’re checking to see if something precipitated this from inside.”

Three victims were pronounced dead at the scene in the city’s business district and a fourth died at a Buffalo hospital. The dead included two men and two women, Richards said. Their identities were not released.

The conditions of the wounded, all men, were not immediately available.

Tommy Dates, 35, of Buffalo, said he was at the bar area of the restaurant with his friends when he noticed a party had broken up. He said people started leaving the restaurant but rushed back inside a few minutes later.

“A lot of people were real upset, just trying to get out of the way,” Dates said. “Nobody know where anything was coming from. Everyone was in a panic.”

Three covered bodies lay in front of the restaurant for several hours, one of them on the sidewalk across the street. About 20 people stood behind yellow crime scene tape, some trying to console grief-stricken relatives and friends.

The window of an office next to the Main Street restaurant was shattered, as was glass in a subway entrance across the street.

Click here to view photos:

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