NORTH HIGHLANDS, Calif. — A devastated father says he has no idea why gunmen targeted his house over the weekend, firing a barrage of bullets that instantly killed his 10-year-old daughter as she watched television from a chair near the front picture window.

With his own wounded arm in a sling, Ernesto Campos came to look for his wallet Monday in a house whose front was scarred by at least a dozen bullet holes. Blood soaked the carpet and front porch, and the stuffing was blown out of the chair where his daughter, Elvira, had been sitting Saturday night.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Campos told The Associated Press when asked why someone would target his home 11 miles from downtown Sacramento. “Somebody came here from another place. I don’t know.”

Both Campos and his wife, Imelda, suffered minor physical wounds, and both are too distraught to return to the home in a tidy working class neighborhood populated with young families with children.

Sacramento County sheriff’s officials suspected that a family member had gang ties. A 14-year-old brother was at home at the time of the shooting and a 20-year-old was away. Another brother who is 23 lives in the Mexican state of Michoacan, where the family came from 23 years ago.

“They just don’t want to be here. It’s too sad for them,” said Alejandra Vega, who has a daughter with the Campos’ 23-year-old son.

Vega described Elvira as a happy child who was always smiling, just as she was in a portrait framed on top of the television where the family had gathered Saturday night.

Authorities were searching for at least two gunmen whom they believed walked up to the front of the house and opened fire.

“Whoever these gunmen were, they were directly outside the front door,” Sacramento County sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Jason Ramos said Sunday.

At least a dozen shots were fired from two guns.

“This was not a drive-by. These gunmen approached the house and shot inside,” Ramos said.

“You have to be hard pressed to think a 10-year-old girl was the intended target.”

The family had lived in the home for less than a year. They are now staying with relatives and are afraid for their faces to be shown.

Sheriff’s officials were also investigating a separate shooting Sunday morning that took place not far from the home. The victim of that shooting – a 32-year-old man who survived – was “definitely a gang member” and detectives were looking at the possibility the shootings were related, Ramos said.

___

Associated Press writer John Marshall contributed to this report from San Francisco.

Source: huffingtonpost.com

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BATTLEBORO, N.C. — A North Carolina woman is charged with trying to poison five family members after one of them refused to share some cheese with her.

A statement from the Nash County Sheriff’s Office said 24-year-old Tiara Drake wanted some of a relative’s cheese on Friday, but the woman refused to share.

The sheriff’s office said Drake awakened before the rest of the family the next morning and used detergent, window cleaner and a household cleanser to poison the cheese. The rest of the family made breakfast with the cheese and began eating it before one of them determined it was tainted.

Drake is charged with five counts of attempted first-degree murder and jailed under $50,000 bond. She had a court appearance Monday but didn’t have an attorney at the hearing.

Source: huffingtonpost.com

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HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey priest who resigned after admitting he worked unsupervised with kids despite a legal agreement that barred him from doing so is headed to court.

Michael Fugee will appear in court in Hackensack Tuesday after his arrest on charges of contempt of a judicial order.

Fugee confessed to police in 2000 that he grabbed a boy’s crotch and was convicted of aggravated criminal assault three years later. The conviction was thrown out on a legal technicality.

Fugee reached a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to return to the ministry if his job didn’t involve parishioners under 18.

Fugee became a fixture at a Colts Neck parish, where he went on youth retreats and heard confession from minors.

Fugee resigned from the Newark Archdiocese on May 2.

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The mother of a 12-year-old boy who was shot and killed on a Jersey City street Friday night is pleading for justice in her son’s death.

“I need to find out who did this to my baby,” a tearful Fania Williams told NBC 4 New York.

Williams was mourning the loss of her son Gywan Levine Jr., who was playing basketball with his father, Gywan Sr.. outside his house on Rutgers Avenue when two men tried to rob the father. The robbers fired a gun, hitting Gywan Sr. in the leg and striking his son — who everyone called Elijah — in the chest.

“He just got caught up in the crossfire,” said the boy’s uncle, Jacob Levine. “Innocent. He had nothing to do with it.”

“It really is a shame that you can’t even let your kids play outside,” said Williams.

Elijah was a promising football player who also excelled in the classroom. His 5-year-old brother can’t comprehend that his big brother, who walked him to school every day, is gone.

“He’s asking about him since’s he’s been home and just wanting to sleep in his bed,” said Williams, crying. “It’s really hard.”

Family and friends have set up a memorial in Elijah’s memory near the sidewalk where he was murdered. His father is still in the hospital with a gunshot wound to his leg.

“He’s all right now, but I think it’s going to hit him when he sees his son in that casket,” said Tameka Levine, a sister of Gywan Sr.

Hudson County investigators are looking for two suspects in connection with the shooting. Elijah, who was about to finish seventh grade at PS 24, will be laid to rest later this week.

Source: nbcnewyork.com

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The Department of Defense confirms to NBC 5 Investigates that accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan has now been paid more than $278,000 since the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting that left 13 dead 32 injured. The Army said under the Military Code of Justice, Hasan’s salary cannot be suspended unless he is proven guilty.

If Hasan had been a civilian defense department employee, NBC 5 Investigates has learned, the Army could have suspended his pay after just seven days.

Personnel rules for most civilian government workers allow for “indefinite suspensions” in cases “when the agency has reasonable cause to believe that the employee has committed a crime for which a sentence of imprisonment may be imposed.”

Meanwhile, more than three years later soldiers wounded in the mass shooting are fighting to receive the same pay and medical benefits given to those wounded in combat.

Retired Army Spc. Logan Burnett, a reservist who, in 2009, was soon to be deployed to Iraq, was shot three times when a gunman opened fire inside the Army Deployment Center.

“I honestly thought I was going to die in that building,” said Burnett. “Just blood everywhere and then the thought of — that’s my blood everywhere.”

Burnett nearly died. He’s had more than a dozen surgeries since the shooting, and says post-traumatic stress still keeps him up at night.

Burnett is now fighting a new battle; only this one is against the U.S. Army.

The Army has not classified the wounds of the Ft. Hood victims as “combat related” and declines to label the shooting a “terrorist attack”,

The “combat related” designation is an important one, for without it Burnett and other shooting victims are not given combat-related pay, they are not eligible for Purple Heart retirement or medical benefits given to other soldiers wounded either at war or during the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon.

As a result, Burnett, his wife Torey, and the families of other Fort Hood victims miss out on thousands of dollars of potential benefits and pay every year.

To Burnett the shooting felt like combat.

“You take three rounds and lose five good friends and watch seven other people get killed in front of you. Do you have another term that we can classify that as?” asked Burnett.

The Army has categorized the shooting as a case of “workplace violence.”

“Sickens me. Absolutely sickens me. Workplace violence? I don’t even know if I have the words to say,” said Burnett.

“They don’t need to be treated like this. They don’t need to sit and fight every day for this benefit or that,” said Torey Burnett.

As that fight continues, Burnett was stunned to see a letter detailing the more $278,000 Hasan has been paid since his arrest. NBC 5 Investigates received the letter from the Department of Defense in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

“There have been times when my wife and I cannot afford groceries. We cannot afford gas in our car,” Burnett said. “Literally, times where we ate Ramen noodles for weeks on end. This [that Hasan is still earning a paycheck] makes me sick to my stomach,” said Burnett.

Burnett isn’t alone in his outrage.

“We’re giving the defendant in this case every benefit of the doubt. But yet we’re not giving the benefits to the victims,” said Rep. Thomas Rooney (R) Florida

Rooney, a former prosecutor at Fort Hood, recently signed a bi-partisan letter urging defense secretary Chuck Hagel to “…reclassify the victims’ deaths and injuries as ‘combat related’…”

The letter said the current situation has “…resulted in an embarrassing lack of care and treatment for the victims and their families.”

“What happened here is not a case of workplace violence. What happened here was an attack on our military by a terrorist element specifically targeting our military, which just so happened to be in the United States of America,” said Rooney.

Reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed Hasan was communicating with a member of Al Qaida prior to the shooting. Additionally, the government’s National Counterterrorism Center lists the shooting at Fort Hood as a “high fatality terrorist attack.”

Rooney said he’s also willing to consider whether Congress should change the rules, so the Army could suspend the pay of soldiers arrested for crimes against fellow soldiers.

NBC 5 Investigates wanted to ask Pentagon officials about Hasan’s pay and the decision to classify the shooting as workplace violence, but the Army turned down requests for an interview. However, the Army’s Chief of Media Relations told NBC 5 Investigates: “The Department of Defense is committed to the integrity of the ongoing court martial proceedings of Major Nidal Hasan and for that reason will not further characterize, at this time, the incident that occurred at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009.”

Burnett, who recently retired from the Army and moved to Arkansas to live with family and save some money, has joined dozens of other Fort Hood victims in a lawsuit against the Army demanding the benefits they believe they’ve been unfairly denied.

“I refuse to continue letting Nidal Hasan win. And I leave the “Major” part out, because even though, unfortunately, he’s still being paid better than I am, he doesn’t deserve that rank,” said Burnett.

A lawyer who once represented Hasan previously claimed his client couldn’t find a bank that would deposit his Army paychecks, but a spokesman at Fort Hood told NBC 5 Investigates that that issue has since been resolved; meaning Hasan or his family can access the money.

The Army could get some money back from Hasan by demanding re-payment for the cost of treating the wounds he sustained when a police officer shot him during the incident. However, military officials would not tell NBC 5 Investigates if they plan to do that.

With the trial expected to begin this summer, Hasan’s lawyer declined to comment on this story.

Source: nbcdfw.com

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Kentucky teenager known as a “jokester” was strangled by a dog lead he put around his neck while playing with friends at the start of summer vacation, just hours after finishing his freshman year in high school.

Tony Conley, 16, died near his home in Estill County in eastern Kentucky on Friday when he apparently jumped off an outdoor deck staircase and the dog lead tightened around his neck, county Coroner Tony Murphy said Monday.

“It was just so tight that it cut his air and his blood flow off to his head,” the coroner said in a phone interview. “It’s a terrible, terrible tragedy.”

Friends tried but were unable to cut the metal cable, and Conley was pronounced dead at the scene, he said.

Conley had just finished his freshman year at Estill County High School hours before his death.

“He was a good kid,” said his football coach, Mike Jones. “He was kind of goofy at times, just a jokester.”

Conley was among a group of boys who had been playing basketball when the “freak accident” happened, Murphy said.

The other boys told investigators that Conley had picked up the dog lead and snapped it around his neck, the coroner said.

Conley was “just being a kid, goofing off” when he then decided to jump off the stairs leading up to the deck, he said.

“Looks like he maybe just started to flat foot and jump over the rail back down to the ground,” Murphy said. “Somehow the cable got hung on the inside of the post on the top, which caused it to cinch down tight on his neck.”

An autopsy showed that he died of strangulation, he said.

Murphy said that investigators found nothing to indicate the death was due to a “choking game,” which involves strangling oneself or another person to achieve a high.

“Nothing has really led us that way,” he said.

His football coach said Conley had worked hard in the weight room during the off-season in preparation for next season. Conley had put on about 30 pounds and was primed for varsity playing time in the fall as a sophomore, Jones said. Conley, a receiver, played on the freshman and junior varsity teams last fall.

“I don’t know if I ever saw him in a bad mood,” Jones said.

Source: huffingtonpost.com

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Jennifer Kesse should be celebrating 32 years of life today. She should be with friends and family, and she should be looking forward to many more birthday celebrations.

Should be, could be, would be — these words all evoke pain and heartache for her family.

Unfortunately, there have been no joyous birthday celebrations for Jennifer since she turned 24, though there have been many vigils and prayer circles.

In 2006, Jennifer vanished in Orlando, Fla., without a trace. For seven long years, her parents have spent every waking minute of every single day waiting and hoping for answers in her disappearance.

However, there will be no celebration today. For the Kesse family, Jennifer has not aged in their eyes since the day that she vanished.

“She will remain 24 forever,” Jennifer’s father, Drew Kesse, told The Huffington Post.

The daily pain endured by the Kesse family is rooted in the events of Jan. 24, 2006. On that day, the Kesses learned their daughter did not report for work at Central Florida Investments and did not call in sick. Her co-workers said it was completely out of character.

Calls by Jennifer’s parents to her cellphone went directly to voicemail.

Drew Kesse contacted Orlando police, and then he and his wife made the two-hour drive from their home in Bradenton to Orlando.

Inside their daughter’s apartment, the Kesses found nothing out of order. The shower had been used and a few items of clothing were laid out on the bed, but there were no obvious signs of foul play.

By 4 p.m. that day, family and friends of Jennifer had launched a full-scale hunt. Searches were conducted of the area, and fliers were made and distributed within the immediate area of her condominium, located next to the Mall at Millenia in Orlando.

A promising lead developed on Jan. 26, 2006, when Jennifer’s car was found abandoned at a condominium complex roughly one mile from where she lived. Valuables were found inside the vehicle, leading police to believe she was not the victim of a robbery or carjacking. Police bloodhounds tracked a scent from where the car was found to Jennifer’s condo, but the trail ended there.

Police received another clue from surveillance footage from the condo complex where Jennifer’s car was found.

On the video, an unknown person can be seen parking the car and waiting approximately 30 seconds before exiting the vehicle and walking away without looking back. Despite intense media coverage of the video, the gender and identity of the driver remain a mystery.

Prior to her disappearance, Jennifer Kesse had confided in friends that construction workers at her condominium made her feel uneasy. The building was new when she moved in, and only about half of the 447 units were occupied. Work was still being completed on the building, and some of the workers were permitted to stay inside unoccupied units. However, no evidence has ever been found linking any of the workers to her disappearance.

For seven years, the search for Jennifer Kesse has continued without a major break. Jennifer Kesse’s family members said they have spent their life savings on the search, but won’t give up.

But for now, seven long years into their living nightmare, Jennifer’s family has only the memories of their beautiful daughter.

“Joyce and myself welcomed Jennifer into our world with our unconditional love,” Drew Kesse told HuffPost. “Jennifer has given us so many things to remember her by and try and live up to. She is our firstborn and our love for her will never wane — it will only increase as we go on in this life without her present in ours.”

The Kesse family is asking people to celebrate their daughter’s birthday today by donating blood in her name.

“We, her family, are active blood donors, and it does save lives,” Kesse said.

At the time of her disappearance, Jennifer Kesse was 5 feet 8 inches tall and 135 pounds. She had shoulder-length sandy blonde hair and green eyes. Anyone with information or who would like to donate to search efforts may do so at Findjenniferkesse.com. Tipsters may also call the crime line anonymously at 800-423-8477.

“After the events of the past two years, as we have seen five long-term missing loved ones return home,” Drew Kesse said, “it gives this family renewed hope that … Jennifer [will be] found. She is loved and missed beyond what words can tell or convey. Please keep her in your thoughts and prays.”

Source: huffingtonpost.com

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