The world of rap is in mourning today (November 17) following reports of Young Dolph's shooting death in his hometown of Memphis.
According to local...
CHICAGO — Teddy bears and flowers adorned a Chicago church Tuesday as pastors prayed for strength at the funeral of a 6-month-old baby girl killed when a gunman fired at a minivan as she sat on her father’s lap. Hundreds attended the service at a church in the Woodlawn neighborhood where the shooting of Jonylah Watkins occurred. “All of us need to apologize to her for not doing our best to make the world a better place,” Pastor Marshall Hatch said. “She deserved better.” The girl’s father, Jonathan Watkins, who was seriously wounded in the March 11 shooting, bowed his head over her small casket for about 10 minutes. The 29-year-old, who had nicknamed his daughter Smooch, wore a white hooded sweatshirt. Jonylah’s death was the latest to draw national attention to Chicago’s struggle with gang violence and murder. The city registered more than 500 homicides last year for the first time since 2008. Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy recently told reporters that homicides are down this year ...
Former Chicago homicide detective, James Griffin, 77, shot and killed his son, Michael Griffin, 48, after mistaking him for an intruder in their Northwest Side home, reports the Chicago Tribune.[1] SEE ALSO: Florida Boy Dies After Lightning Bolt Strikes Him On Football Field[2] According to the Cook County medical examiner’s office, Michael was shot once in the face and his death was ruled a homicide. The elder Griffin was rushed to the hospital with chest pains following the incident. The Tribune [3]reports: Stephen Griffin said his brother had been watching television with his father when he went outside. Michael Griffin was shot when he came back into the apartment. “They were watching television together and they fell asleep, and my brother went out of the house and my dad assumed he was home, sleeping,’’ Stephen Griffin said. He said another brother called him in the middle of the night and told him “something happened at dad’s house, that he shot an intruder,” Stephen Griffin said. “At ...
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Mother of a University of South Alabama freshman killed by a campus police officer said Monday she’s been told he never touched the officer who shot him. Gil Collar (pictured right) of Wetumpka was naked when he was shot at 1:30 a.m. Saturday outside the campus police station. University officials said Collar, a star wrestler at Wetumpka High School before enrolling in South Alabama, assumed a “fighting stance” and chased the officer before being shot. The university said security video captured the events. Watch news coverage of the killing: “I have been told by someone involved in the investigation that the videotape shows my son never touched the police officer,” Bonnie Smith Collar (pictured) said in a phone interview. She did not elaborate on how the person was involved in the investigation. The university said the officer heard a bang on a window at campus police headquarters and went outside to investigate. The officer tried to retreat numerous times to ...
The mother who shot her four children and herself dead at her Port St. John, Fla., home on May 15 had two times the legal limit of alcohol in her system, Florida Today reports[1]. Scroll down for video SEE ALSO: Obama, Please Don’t Forget White Women[2] For reasons unknown to family and friends, Tonya Thomas, 33, used a Taurus .38-caliber revolver to fire shots into her children Joel Johnson, 12, Jazzlyn Johnson, 13, Jaxs Johnson, 15, and Pebbles Johnson, 17, before killing herself within a 35 minute period. SEE ALSO: Debate Pundits: What Happened To Obama?[3] During that time, three of Thomas’ children ran to a neighbor’s house before the mother called them back home, according to police. Though, an autopsy report states that Pebbles likely passed out after returning. Thomas was found dead on her couch from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The gun was still in her hand when cops found her. Florida Today has more on this tragic story: Brevard County Medical Examiner Dr. Sajid ...
Los Angeles chef, David Viens, 49, has been convicted of second-degree murder after confessing to slow-cooking his wife, Dawn, in a 55-gallon drum filled with water in 2009, reports People.com[1]. Viens claims that he didn’t murder his wife, but that after an argument he tied her up and duct taped her before going to sleep. When we awoke the next morning, he claims that she was dead. Panicking, he took her body to his restaurant, Thyme Contemporary Café, and dumped her 105 lbs body into the drum where he slow cooked her for four days. That is the story he also told his daughter, Jacqueline, who claims that her father and her stepmother seemed ” like they loved each other.” People.com[2] reports: After discovering his wife’s dead body, Viens “panicked because he did not expect to wake up and find her dead,” defense attorney Fred McCurry told the jury. Police used a ruse to capture Viens. After he read a story planted in a local newspaper[3] saying police found his wife’s blood in their h ...
HOUSTON — Mental illness prompted Brian Claunch (pictured) to get rid of his own left arm and leg. Then, despite his disabilities, he spent the better part of a decade finding opportunities to run away from residential care facilities, preferring to live on the streets. SEE ALSO: Man, Once On Death Row, Arrested For Allegedly Killing His Wife[1] Yet in recent months, the 45-year-old man who was in a wheelchair and had paranoid schizophrenia seemed to settle into some stability, staying put, taking his medications. That all abruptly ended this past weekend in a confrontation with police in which a Houston police officer fatally shot Claunch. Despite his history of harming himself, Claunch’s criminal and mental health backgrounds don’t indicate he was violent toward others. John Garcia, owner of the Healing Hands Assisted Home Care facility, where Claunch was living and where the confrontation with police happened, recalled a loving but also at times quarrelsome man. Watch Garcia talk about ...
