Take The Money And Run?

A 15-year-old boy stole a handgun and money from a relative’s Palm Bay, Florida home Sunday before he and his 16-year-old girlfriend headed north on Interstate 95 to the boy’s home state, according to deputies.

The Orlando Sentinel states that Zane Terryn and his 16-year-old girlfriend wanted to die together in Ohio, authorities claimed.

A state trooper’s inquiry about the teenagers’ broken headlight at a Pilot Travel Center in Cocoa about 9:45 p.m. halted their plan when Terryn started shooting at the trooper.

Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Channing Taylor was shot in the shoulder and he then fired back at Terryn, which killed him.

Terryn’s girlfriend tried to escape in her vehicle but soon struck a boat that was being pulled by a pickup on State Road 520.

She was charged with attempted murder of a law-enforcement officer and second-degree murder.

Are the charges appropriate?

The attempted-murder charge is from the trooper’s injury, authorities said.  She did not pull the trigger, but authorities say she played a “key role” in the shooting.

“[S]he provided access to the firearm. It was in her truck [that] they traveled in,” said Florida Highway Patrol Major Tod Goodyear, “and she fled the scene after the event.”

The murder charge is from her boyfriend’s death.  She did not shoot her boyfriend.  However, “(s)ince a person died while she and the deceased suspect were in the commission of a felony crime, she was charged with felony murder,” Goodyear said.

She is being held without bond.

So, it seems that an unarmed 16-year-old girl is being charged for the murder of her boyfriend and the attempted murder of a police officer.

Officer Taylor is recovering from the shoulder wound, which was treated at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne.  He has since been released from the hospital.  He is on paid administrative leave, said Major Goodyear.

“Lieutenant Taylor is currently on paid administrative leave and is recuperating from his injuries, which is the normal practice in cases of this nature,” Goodyear wrote in a statement Monday.

Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) claims that the teens were traveling to Ohio – Terryn’s home state – to commit suicide.

The teens had stopped at the gas station to get food. Officer Taylor noticed the broken headlight and walked over to the teens to talk about the “safety equipment problem,” the release said.

While Taylor was talking to the girlfriend, who was in the driver’s seat, “Terryn, who was the passenger in the vehicle, produced a firearm and began shooting at the trooper,” Goodyear said.

The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the incident while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is looking into the use of force with a parallel but independent investigation.

Taylor began his career as a trooper in 1994.  He was promoted to lieutenant in 2007 and is supervisor of traffic homicide for the Brevard district.

It’s unclear whom Terryn lived with in Palm Bay.

The girlfriend is also from the same city in Brevard County.

According to The Orlando Sentinel, anyone with information about this incident is asked to call Crimeline at 800-423-8477 as the investigations continue.

(Updated article)

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/2015/06/15/investigators-teen-shooter-driver-made-suicide-pact/71258284/

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-zane-terryn-dead-trooper-shooting-20150615-story.html

http://www.floridatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2015/06/15/photos-trooper-involved-shooting-near-cocoa/71237224/

Building Collapse In Bangladesh

euronews

Police said at least five people were killed and about 100 feared trapped after a cement factory collapsed in Bangladesh on Thursday, according to Reuters.

Soldiers and sailors in the port town of Mongla helped emergency services search through the rubble and pull out more than 40 survivors, according to Reuters

Euronews claims at least six people have died and 30 more have been injured in the collapse.

Another 50 are still feared trapped, according to euronews.  Authorities said that up to 100 people were inside five-story cement factory at the time of the accident.

“Most of the people inside the building were the construction workers including the people who recovered alive … The recovery efforts are going on very carefully to avoid further risk” said Khulna district police chief Nizamul Haque Mollah, Reuters reported.

Strange? Georgia Cop Shoots Unarmed Naked Man

Where could the man possibly have hidden a gun?

A naked man, Anthony Hill, who was a veteran, was shot and killed by a police officer on Monday at an apartment complex in Chamblee, GA, northeast of Atlanta, states the New York Times.

He was black, unarmed, and was acting mentally ill, sources claim.

TYT Network

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The Death Penalty Of Indonesia

Last Wednesday, two Australian drug smugglers in Indonesia were taken from their Bali prison to an island where they will be executed.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia said his country was “revolted” by their looming deaths after frantic diplomatic efforts to save them.

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the ringleaders of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug smuggling gang, left Bali’s Kerobokan jail in two armored vehicles and were taken to the airport.

The pair, sentenced to death in 2006 for trying to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia, were woken up in the early hours and given a few minutes to get ready, said local justice ministry official Nyoman Putra Surya.

They said “thank you” before leaving, and “we handcuffed them and they were quiet” before their transfer on a chartered flight, added Surya.

About 200 police, 50 soldiers and a water cannon were stationed outside the Bali prison as the men, in their early 30s, were driven out, said an AFP reporter.

The two men were being flown to Cilacap, on Java island, and will then be transferred to Nusa Kambangan island, home to several high-security prisons.  The executions take place in a jungle-skirted clearing on Nusa Kambangan.

Officials are yet to announce a date for their executions, but the transfer indicates it is imminent. Authorities must give convicts 72 hours notice before they are put to death.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has repeatedly called for Indonesia not to go ahead with the executions, said Australians were sickened by the developments, according to The Telegraph.

“We frankly are revolted by the prospect of these executions,” he said, adding that “right now millions of Australians are feeling sick in their guts”.

Australia has outlawed the death penalty.

The British newspaper The Guardian states that the two Australians are a part of a group of 11 prisoners being prepared for execution, and “the spotlight has been thrown on the use of the death penalty in the country.”  Dozens more are on death row and the government has declared there will be no mercy for those convicted of drug offenses.

Britain has also outlawed the death penalty.

The Guardian spoke to a police officer who has been part of the firing squad which operates on the prison island, Nusa Kambangan.  The officer is part of a wing of the Indonesian police corps known as the Mobile Brigade (“Brimob”).

His story is one that reveals Indonesia’s justice system and the conflicting emotions of those responsible for upholding the death penalty.

He says that pulling the trigger is the easy part.  The worst part is the human touch, he says, the connection with those who are about to die.  The executioner has to lace the prisoner’s limbs, hands and feet to a cross-shaped pole with thick rope.  The intimacy haunts people, he claims.

In the darkness of the night a light will be shined onto a circle drawn over the prisoner’s heart.

The firing squad, made up of 12 Brimob officers, will be five to 10 meters away and will shoot their M-16s when given the order.

“The mental burden is heavier for the officers that are responsible for handling the prisoners rather than shooting them,” he says. “Because those officers are involved in picking them up, and tying their hands together, until they are gone.”

The brigade carries out the executions on top of its regular duties, claims The Guardian.

Five Brimob officers are assigned to each prisoner, to escort them from the isolation cells in the middle of the night and accompany them to the clearing.

One team is assigned to escort and shackle the prisoners, a second team is the firing squad.

The officer says prisoners can “decide if they want to cover their face” before they are tied up.  They are tied up to make sure their heart or the position of their body does not move.

Using a thick rope known as “tali tambang” in Indonesian, the officer says he avoids speaking to the prisoners when he binds their hands behind their back and onto the poles, kneeling or standing as they wish.  He treats the prisoners gently.

“I don’t make conversation with the prisoners. I treat them like they are a member of my own family,” he claims. “I say only, ‘I’m sorry, I am just doing the job.'”

He says that by the time he escorts the prisoners from their cells to the clearing “they are resigned to their fate…”

There’s a limit to the number of executions an officer can take, states The Guardian.

When asked whether shooting someone in this way takes a psychological toll, the man says, “If we do the executions once or twice it is not a problem, but if we have to do it many times we will certainly be subject to psychological problems.”

Mother Found Guilty Of Murder Of Son

Lacey Spears, a Kentucky woman whom authorities say force-fed her 5-year-old son salt through a stomach tube for the attention that a sickly child brought her, has been found guilty of murder in the child’s 2014 death at a hospital in New York state.

A White Plains jury handed down the second-degree murder verdict in 5-year-old Garnett-Paul Spears’ death Monday after three days of deliberations.

Spears will be sentenced in early April, and she can reportedly expect no sympathy from the district attorney.

Spears, 27, had blogged for years about her son’s constant health woes, and prosecutors said she killed the boy because she feared he would start telling people she was the one making him sick.

Video showed Spears twice taking the boy into a hospital bathroom with a connector tube and the boy suffering afterward.

“The motive is bizarre, the notion is scary, but it exists … She apparently craved the attention of her family, her friends, her co-workers and most particularly the medical profession,” Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy said in closing arguments Thursday.

Murphy called Spears’ actions “nothing short of torture.”

Updated post

Boston Marathon Bombing Trial Begins

MSNBC

Yesterday, the Boston Marathon bombing trial began.

The trial could last until June, according to Jose Diaz-Balart.

The Boston Globe’s Mike Bellow joins Balart at MSNBC to discuss the federal murder trial of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

U.S. Blogger Stabbed To Death In Bangladesh

CNN

A Bangladeshi-American blogger was killed in a brutal attack on Friday. Daily Mail: “The Bangladeshi-American blogger who was hacked to death by machete-wielding Muslim extremists on his way back from a book fair had taken another stand against violent religious extremism days before his death.”

“Dr Avijit Roy, a scientist from Atlanta, Georgia, and a prominent atheist thinker in Bangladesh, was killed on a university campus in Dhaka on Thursday night – apparently in retaliation for criticizing religion.”

More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2973415/Avijit-Roy-article-Murdered-U-S-blogger-criticized-violent-radicals-hacked-death-Bangladeshi-street-Muslim-militants-crime-against-Islam.html#ixzz3T6JJfUYi

Killer Of ‘American Sniper’ Found Guilty

Eddie Ray Routh – the shooter of Chris Kyle – was found to be guilty, as opposed to “not guilty by reason of insanity.” CNN reports.

CNN

I.S. Hostage Kayla Mueller Confirmed Dead; How She Died Not Confirmed

euronews

The United States has confirmed the death of aid worker and ISIL hostage Kayla Mueller.

Her family says they are heartbroken.

It comes four days after her Islamist captors claimed she had been killed by a coalition airstrike by Jordanian fighter jets outside Raqqa, the capital of the extremists’ self-proclaimed caliphate.

President Obama said the U.S. “would find and bring to justice the terrorists who were responsible.”

Three Muslim-American Students Killed In Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Three Muslims, including a newly-wed couple, were shot dead in their home in a North Carolina neighborhood in the US.  All three victims were shot in the head, sources told WRAL News.  A motive has not yet been confirmed.

Students Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were found dead at their apartment in Chapel Hill near the University of North Carolina (UNC) campus, according to Yahoo News.

Barakat was a second-year dental student at UNC, and Mohammad was due to begin her dental studies.  They were married in December.

A 46-year-old man, identified by police as Craig Stephen Hicks, has been charged with three counts of first degree murder.

Police arrived at the building complex following reports of gunshots at 5:11pm on Tuesday. The man reportedly turned himself in later than evening.

“It is with deep sadness that we share with you the news that the victims included Deah Barakat, a second-year student in the School of Dentistry, and his wife, Yusor, who had planned to begin her dental studies here in the fall. Her sister, Razan, a student at N.C. State University, was also killed,” UNC said in a statement.

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