WTH is goin on around here lately????
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wo...Revelus_Killed_Sisters_Before_Police_Shot_Him
A man killed two of his sisters at a birthday party and stabbed a third with a knife before police shot him dead.
Samantha, left, was killed by her brother while Sarafina was injured
Kerby Revelus, 23, attacked his sisters in the home they shared with their parents and grandmother in the Boston suburb of Milton.
He stabbed 17-year-old Samantha to death with a household knife while their grandmother was in the basement.
Nine-year-old Sarafina called the police and an officer on patrol in the neighbourhood arrived in less than a minute.
The policeman broke into the house and witnessed Revelus decapitating five-year-old Bianca, whose birthday cake was on the kitchen table.
"He actually walked into a killing field. He walked into such carnage, as far as the atrocity of it, I've never seen it," said Milton police chief Richard G Wells Jr.
Police investigators at house
Within minutes, four police officers were inside the house and two of them shot Revelus dead as he tried to attack Sarafina with a knife.
She has been taken to the Boston Medical Centre with defensive wounds to her hands and stab wounds in her stomach and one of her legs.
Revelus had been involved in a fight with a man who lived next door 24 hours before the attack on his sisters, Mr Wells said.
"Blows were exchanged," he said. "I don't know the cause of it, but we're confident that did happen. He had been agitated in the hours that followed that."
He had also recently served a prison sentence for a gun offence, Mr Wells said.
The police chief added that officers had been called to the same house in 2004 after a report of Revelus allegedly punching one of the women living there.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/30/BAFN16PCHC.DTL&tsp=1
(03-30) 07:10 PDT SANTA CLARA -- Six people, including three children, were shot and killed and a seventh victim is fighting for her life in what Santa Clara police are investigating as a murder-suicide, one of the deadliest such incidents in the Bay Area in recent memory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Images
View Larger Images
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Video
View Larger Size
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More Bay Area News
Six members of family dead in murder-suicide 03.30.09
From the archives: Manson sentenced to death 03.30.09
Walter Kuhlman dies - abstract expressionist 03.30.09
S.F.: New 'Stop' lettering on Masonic 03.30.09
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The suspected gunman, a man, is believed to be among the dead inside a home on Headen Way in the city's upscale Rivermark community north of the Montague Expressway, said Santa Clara police Lt. Phil Cooke.
"We do believe this appears to be a family-on-family murder-suicide," Cooke said.
The identities of the victims weren't immediately released.
Police were called to the home at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday by a neighbor reporting that a woman was injured outside the home, Cooke said. Officers arrived and found five people dead inside the home, Cooke said. All had been shot.
Two of the dead were men, one of whom was believed to be the gunman, Cooke said. The other slain victims were children, including a boy, a girl and a young teenage girl or young adult woman, police said.
The woman found outside the home had also been shot, Cooke said. She was taken to a local hospital, where she was reported to be in critical condition.
An infant girl found injured at the home died early today, Cooke said.
Two handguns were found inside the residence, but police are awaiting the results of ballistics tests before determining whether one or both weapons were used, authorities said.
Police had no previous reports of problems at the home, Cooke said. Authorities would not disclose a motive or say whether any notes were found.
Santa Clara, a city of 108,000, is usually immune to the kind of gun violence that has plagued other communities.
But in November, an engineer who was fired from his job returned to the firm and shot and killed three colleagues at SiPort, a startup that makes wireless chips.
The latest tragedy has shaken the Silicon Valley city anew and is prompting city leaders to urge community members to look out for each other.
"Certainly it is a grievous tragedy, and the city's thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims," Santa Clara Mayor Patricia Mahan said today. "Words just can't describe the enormity of the tragedy."
She added, "When things get tough in life, in the world, it seems that these kinds of incidents erupt, and I would just urge all of our community to pay attention to your neighbors. So often the greatest regret is the feeling that this could have been prevented if somebody had seen something or someone could have intervened in some way."
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7205652&page=1
Police: 'Heroic' Cop Was Only Officer on Duty in Small Town
By ALICE GOMSTYN and LEE FERRAN
March 30, 2009
51 comments FONT SIZE
EMAIL
PRINT
RSS
DIGG
SHARE North Carolina police are investigating whether the man accused of killing eight people in a nursing home shooting spree may have targeted the home because his estranged wife worked there, according to The Associated Press.
Lone gunman is in police custody facing first degree murder charges. At 10 a.m. Sunday morning, while many residents of Carthage, N.C., were sitting quietly in church, police said 45-year-old Robert Stewart entered a local nursing home armed with multiple guns. Stalking from room to room, he shot several residents, even those bound to wheelchairs.
By the time the only on-duty officer for the Carthage Police Department arrived at the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center and put a stop to the massacre, seven nursing home patients and one nursing home employee had died.
"He came in with a shotgun, a rifle and a couple other kinds of weapons and he just went around shooting people, people in wheelchairs and this type of thing," Sen. Harris Blake of the North Carolina State Assembly said. "This could not be any more barbaric."
Hero Cop Only One On Duty
The lone officer, 25-year-old Justin Garner, has been praised as a hero and did "exactly what he was trained to do," Carthage Police Chief Chris McKenzie said at a press conference today.
McKenzie, who said he couldn't recall the last time the town of about 1,800 had a murder, told reporters it is standard procedure for an officer to go in without backup for some emergency situations "where multiple lives are at stake."
Garner hit the suspect with the only round he fired, McKenzie said, and was shot himself by several "pellets," possibly from a shotgun. Within minutes, other officers responded to assist Garner, but the policeman had already shot Stewart.
Garner was "born and raised" in the area, McKenzie said.
"He acted nothing short of a heroic day today," Moore County District Attorney Maureen Kruger said Sunday. McKenzie told "GMA" the officer's impact on saving lives that day was "immeasurable."
While police have not released a possible motive, their investigation revealed that Stewart's estranged wife works at the home.
McKenzie told the AP that he believed that the couple were recently separated but that he did not have any other details. He was not sure if the woman was at the nursing home at the time of the shootings.
"We're certainly looking into the fact that it may be domestic-related," McKenzie told the AP
Nursing Home Gunman Was 'Calm' and 'Deliberate'
Michael Cotten, who was at the nursing home visiting his aunt Sunday, said he was pulling up in the driveway when all of the sudden he had to duck for cover.
"He was very calm had a very calm demeanor very deliberate," Cotton said. "He just leveled the gun and pointed it at my truck."
Among the dead are Jerry Avent, a nurse at the center and seven Pinelake residents: Tessie Garner, 88; Lillian Dunn, 89; Jessie Musser, 88; Bessie Hendrick, 78; John Goldston, 78; Margaret Johnson, 89 and Louise Decker, 98.
Avent's father called his son a "good boy" who "really loved nursing."
McKenzie said that in his nearly 20 years in law enforcement, he had never seen an incident like this.
Related
Mom Snitches on Son in Alleged 'Saw' Plot"It's a horrible event, in any size town, particularly though when you deal with a small town such as Carthage," McKenzie said Sunday. "It's hard. This is my town, I was born and raised here, so yeah, I take it to heart a little, bit but … all you can do is move forward."
The town of Carthage has a population of about 1,800 people and a police force consisting of 18 officers. The Police Department generally only has one officer on duty on Sundays.
"This is a small community built on faith, and faith will get us through," McKenzie said.
The shooter face eight counts of first degree murder and a charge of felony assault on a law enforcement officer, Moore County District Attorney Maureen Kruger said.
Cars belonging to police and relatives of the nursing home filled the road near the home.
Howard McMillian, of Lakeview, N.C., said he raced to the scene because his 56-year-old sister lives at the home. He said his brother had gotten calls from officials saying the woman was unharmed.
"I know she's nervous," he said. "I just want to make sure
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7131800&page=1
Mom Snitches on Son Allegedly Planning 'Saw'-Inspired Murders
Court Documents Allege Utah Teens Plotted to Kidnap, Torture Three People
By SARAH NETTER
March 20, 2009
74 comments FONT SIZE
EMAIL
PRINT
RSS
DIGG
SHARE It was an alleged murderous plot ripped from the movies: Police say two teenage boys hatched a plan to kidnap, torture and kill two students and a school police officer.
Two teens were charged after one's mother heard them discussing an alleged murder plot inspired by the 2004 movie "Saw" in which the Jigsaw killer, inset, tortures his victims.
(ABC News Photo Illustration/Sepa)But they were apparently foiled by one boy's mother, who, according to court documents, told police she had overheard her son and his friend discussing how to lure their intended victims to locations they had already selected.
John, 15, and Noor, 14, were charged in suburban Salt Lake City, Utah, as juveniles with three counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping after telling police they planned to model the killings on the torture scenes in the horror blockbuster "Saw," according to court documents.
ABC News has chosen to use the boys' first names only because of their ages.
The court documents, which by Utah state law can be released with the boys' full names despite their juvenile status, say that John's mother called police March 7 after listening in on her son's conversation.
His mother told police that "they wanted to make sure to have cameras and camcorders so they could take pictures of what they were doing, because they wanted people to know who did it, so they could become famous," the documents say.
John's father also reported hearing part of the conversations and confirmed, in the court documents, "that they were discussing killing several people and the different locations this would happen."
John's parents could not be reached by ABCNews.com and Noor's father declined to comment on the charges against his son. When asked who represents the teens, the District Attorney's office referred ABCNews.com to a local law firm where a woman who answered the phone said the firm would not confirm or deny that John and Noor were clients.
After being taken into custody, the two boys admitted their plan to Murray Police Detective Cameron Jarvis, according to the court documents, and told him they had planned to make a more detailed list of people they wanted to kidnap, torture and kill.
On the list was a female student from Midvale Middle School in suburban Salt Lake City, which Noor attends, as well as the school's police officer. The local media have reported that the third intended victim, also female, attends another middle school in another district.
At one point, according to the court documents, John told Jarvis that "we weren't joking" and both teens said they wanted to harm people "who had done harm to others."
It was during this interview, according to court documents, that both boys told the detective they wanted their crime to emulate scenes from "Saw."
In the 2004 movie, a serial killer named Jigsaw devises complex puzzles for his victims to solve, leading to their gruesome deaths if they fail the tests. The movie also spawned several sequels with the same theme.
Jarvis declined to comment on the boys' interviews, referring all questions to the district attorney's office, which, in turn, deferred to the juvenile court.
'Difficult and Heartbreaking'
Steven Dunham, a spokesman for the Jordan School district, which includes Midvale, where Noor was enrolled in the eighth grade, said the school district, which is the largest in the state, learned about the charges against the boys from the local media. Midvale officials were notified shortly after the arrests were made March 7, he said.
"We really feel this is a police matter," he said, adding that no crimes or activity related to the alleged plot took place on school grounds as far as the district knows.
Crisis counselors, he said, were made available at the school "to talk with anybody who wanted to talk."
Once the story hit the news, Midvale Middle School principal Paula Logan released an e-mailed statement to parents, reassuring them that the school is still a safe environment for their children.
"I am grateful to the parent who was aware of concerns and her efforts to involve the police," Logan said in the e-mail. "What a difficult decision it must be to call the police regarding your own child. I cannot imagine the pain she must be going through."
Logan also praised the police and the school staff for their response and for assisting the student who was allegedly targeted by the teens.
"This has been difficult and heartbreaking," she wrote. "But even more so, the families of both the involved student and the victim are struggling."
The district's Dunham said he couldn't comment specifically on what disciplinary action Noor could or has faced. John attended West High School in the Salt Lake City School District.
But, in general, district policy is to remove the child from the school pending a police investigation. Once that investigation is complete, the district will hold an expulsion hearing.
Turning In Their Children
The Salt Lake City Deseret News quoted a neighbor of Noor's as saying positive things about the teen and his family, which she said immigrated from Iraq.
But the same newspaper quoted Elisa Johnson, a neighbor of John's, who called the teen "creepy" and claimed he had spoken to her children about violent and sexual subjects.
While a wrenching decision for any parent, John's mom isn't the first to report a child to police.
Last week, Melvin Bardwell appeared in an Atlanta court, accused of murdering another man during a robbery, after Bardwell's father tipped off police, according to the local ABC affiliate.
Also last week, on March 14, two brothers, Terry McElveen, 24, and Thatcher McElveen, 30, were found guilty in a New Orleans court of second-degree murder in the 2002 killing of a 21-year-old man.
The men's mother, Janice McElveen, not only turned her sons into police, according to The Associated Press, but collected an $18,000 reward and testified for the prosecution, although police said they had her arrested as a material witness to ensure she'd follow through on the latter.
And a Milwaukee mother last year turned in both of her teenage children, a son and a daughter, after she recognized them from a police surveillance video aired in a news report about a robbery at a store, earning praise from police and bloggers alike.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=6788681&page=1
Teens Who Murder Over Loss of Phones, Video Games
Experts Say Some Teens Unable to Cope With Loss of Gadgets
By SARAH NETTER
Feb. 5, 2009
55 comments FONT SIZE
EMAIL
PRINT
RSS
DIGG
SHARE When a 13-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., girl decided to exact revenge on the grandmother who took away her cell phone, authorities say she planned carefully.
Daniel Petric, top left, Marshall Sosby, bottom left, and Jermea Simmons, right, have all been either accused or convicted of murder after having their cell phones or video games taken away.
(ABC/AP Photo/Adrian Police Department)Jermea Simmons allegedly waited a week, then packed her clothes, doused her house with lighter fluid and set it ablaze while 10 members of her family slept inside, including her 8-year-old sister who suffers from cerebral palsy. Her step-grandfather didn't make it out alive.
"I thought I was close to her," said her grandmother, Gennie Fairfax, who escaped the June 2007 fire. "I wasn't angry. I was distraught. I didn't understand it."
Simmons is one of an increasing number of teens who have made headlines for apparently resorting to violence in the face of losing their beloved computers, video games and cell phones. It's a type of violence that shocks generations that came of age before the home electronics revolution, but not the experts who study today's kids.
From the Michigan teen who reportedly shot both of his parents over a cell phone last year to the Ohio teen convicted last month of killing his mother over a video game, experts say a small subset of young people are ill-equipped to balance their electronic life with the real world.
When their whole world is wrapped up in text messaging or video games, being cut off leaves them frantic.
Peter Sheras, a clinical psychologist and professor at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, said there's no hard evidence that points to why this sort of extreme violence has become the reaction for some teens as it's a fairly new phenomenon.
Teens, in general, often carry a lot of anger and "incredible levels of frustration as they are trying to flex their muscles," Sheras said.
Today's teenagers are also so wrapped up in virtual communication, he said, that they are not as equipped to handle inter-personal relationships. Combine that with a media and Internet culture that seems obsessed with extreme behavior, such as the well-publicized beatings posted on YouTube.com, and "we've almost institutionalized rage as a positive behavior," he said.
"These kids have no sense of perspective," said Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy and security lawyer and founder of WiredSafety.org. "If you hit them where it matters ... they will react."
Simmons has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Vincent Fairfax, according to local news reports, and her case has been transferred to family court. Gennie Fairfax said she has not yet apologized for the fire.
"I don't hate her, but I think what she did was wrong," Fairfax said.
The fire, she said, appeared to have been set at the door of Jermea's uncle, Darran Booker. It then swept through the house, destroying all the family's belongings. Fairfax said the alarm above her bedroom door never went off and she suspects her granddaughter may have disabled it beforehand.
"She was angry," she said. "I wouldn't wish it on nobody."
Fairfax had raised Jermea and her siblings since the teen was 5 years old. Fairfax said she was teaching her granddaughter to cook and to braid hair. She'd had her phone taken away before as punishment.
"If I had to do it all over again, she would never get a cell phone," Fairfax said.
Fairfax said her granddaughter would use the phone to talk to boys and, sometimes, to pick fights with other girls at school. When Fairfax took away Jermea's phone for the last time, she also yanked her access to the teenager's MySpace account after finding out she'd been talking to adults "about things she shouldn't have been."
"No kids should be on MySpace at that age," she added.
Aftab said parents all too often take the easy way out and choose to placate their kids with more games and electronics, rather than take a chance at disciplining them. If computers or cell phones or video games interfere with day-to-day life, she said, that's a red flag that something is wrong.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=5920480&page=1
A troubled Florida teenager who allegedly bragged to his friends about nearly decapitating a neighbor appeared in court today as police investigated whether he might have killed before.
16-year-old admits to police that he stabbed a woman to death during a robbery.Alan Michael Tanguay, whose first arrest came at age 12, has been charged with the murder of 58-year-old Patricia Kaliszeski, a woman known in her neighborhood for taking walks with her beloved birds on her shoulder.
The 5-foot-7-inch, 145-pound 16-year-old was taken into custody before dawn Monday after his friends confided in their parents that Tanguay allegedly recounted the killing in great detail, also gloating that he had stolen $6 from her and bought beer.
"It was bothering them so much they just couldn't keep it in. They told their parents, and they called us," Palm Bay Police Detective Ernest Diebel told ABCNews.com.
Police, he said, had released few details about the murder, yet Tanguay's friends "knew it all," he said, including that he had been wearing Vans sneakers, which left bloody imprints in the house.
'Just Send Somebody Please'
Diebel said police believe Kaliszeski was murdered sometime Thursday evening. She had been stabbed more than 20 times, left for dead in her bedroom with her throat slit.
Related
WATCH: Ex-Husband: 'There's Blood All Over'Persons of Interest ID'd in Waitress DeathPolice: Mom Kept Kids' Bodies on IceHer ex-husband, whose girlfriend works at a catering business with Kaliszeski, found his ex-wife's body just before 6 p.m. Friday, concerned that she hadn't shown up for work and wasn't reachable by phone.
"There's blood all over the place," he can be heard saying on the 911 tape, calling from a neighbor's house.
When the 911 operator asked him several questions about the appearance of the body, he urged, "just send somebody please."
Also disturbing, Diebel said, is that the teen's friends told police that Tanguay allegedly boasted that he'd killed before and that he has a rule that if he finds someone in the house during a burglary, he has to kill them.
"He claims that was just bragging," he said.
His MySpace page, which has since been made private, reportedly made violent references about how he liked to cut people with knives, Diebel said.
One sentence, according to the police report, read "I like gory sh**, like people getting their neck slit and tounge [sic] pulled out."
Now police are checking with local and state police in areas where Tanguay previously lived, including Maryland, to look for any connection to unsolved murders.
"It's hard to know," Diebel said. "It's hard to think that a 16-year-old kid would, first time out, stab someone numerous times ... cut their throat."
That type of savage killing, he said, is typically reserved for more seasoned offenders.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wo...Revelus_Killed_Sisters_Before_Police_Shot_Him
A man killed two of his sisters at a birthday party and stabbed a third with a knife before police shot him dead.
Samantha, left, was killed by her brother while Sarafina was injured
Kerby Revelus, 23, attacked his sisters in the home they shared with their parents and grandmother in the Boston suburb of Milton.
He stabbed 17-year-old Samantha to death with a household knife while their grandmother was in the basement.
Nine-year-old Sarafina called the police and an officer on patrol in the neighbourhood arrived in less than a minute.
The policeman broke into the house and witnessed Revelus decapitating five-year-old Bianca, whose birthday cake was on the kitchen table.
"He actually walked into a killing field. He walked into such carnage, as far as the atrocity of it, I've never seen it," said Milton police chief Richard G Wells Jr.
Police investigators at house
Within minutes, four police officers were inside the house and two of them shot Revelus dead as he tried to attack Sarafina with a knife.
She has been taken to the Boston Medical Centre with defensive wounds to her hands and stab wounds in her stomach and one of her legs.
Revelus had been involved in a fight with a man who lived next door 24 hours before the attack on his sisters, Mr Wells said.
"Blows were exchanged," he said. "I don't know the cause of it, but we're confident that did happen. He had been agitated in the hours that followed that."
He had also recently served a prison sentence for a gun offence, Mr Wells said.
The police chief added that officers had been called to the same house in 2004 after a report of Revelus allegedly punching one of the women living there.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/30/BAFN16PCHC.DTL&tsp=1
(03-30) 07:10 PDT SANTA CLARA -- Six people, including three children, were shot and killed and a seventh victim is fighting for her life in what Santa Clara police are investigating as a murder-suicide, one of the deadliest such incidents in the Bay Area in recent memory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Images
View Larger Images
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Video
View Larger Size
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More Bay Area News
Six members of family dead in murder-suicide 03.30.09
From the archives: Manson sentenced to death 03.30.09
Walter Kuhlman dies - abstract expressionist 03.30.09
S.F.: New 'Stop' lettering on Masonic 03.30.09
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The suspected gunman, a man, is believed to be among the dead inside a home on Headen Way in the city's upscale Rivermark community north of the Montague Expressway, said Santa Clara police Lt. Phil Cooke.
"We do believe this appears to be a family-on-family murder-suicide," Cooke said.
The identities of the victims weren't immediately released.
Police were called to the home at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday by a neighbor reporting that a woman was injured outside the home, Cooke said. Officers arrived and found five people dead inside the home, Cooke said. All had been shot.
Two of the dead were men, one of whom was believed to be the gunman, Cooke said. The other slain victims were children, including a boy, a girl and a young teenage girl or young adult woman, police said.
The woman found outside the home had also been shot, Cooke said. She was taken to a local hospital, where she was reported to be in critical condition.
An infant girl found injured at the home died early today, Cooke said.
Two handguns were found inside the residence, but police are awaiting the results of ballistics tests before determining whether one or both weapons were used, authorities said.
Police had no previous reports of problems at the home, Cooke said. Authorities would not disclose a motive or say whether any notes were found.
Santa Clara, a city of 108,000, is usually immune to the kind of gun violence that has plagued other communities.
But in November, an engineer who was fired from his job returned to the firm and shot and killed three colleagues at SiPort, a startup that makes wireless chips.
The latest tragedy has shaken the Silicon Valley city anew and is prompting city leaders to urge community members to look out for each other.
"Certainly it is a grievous tragedy, and the city's thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims," Santa Clara Mayor Patricia Mahan said today. "Words just can't describe the enormity of the tragedy."
She added, "When things get tough in life, in the world, it seems that these kinds of incidents erupt, and I would just urge all of our community to pay attention to your neighbors. So often the greatest regret is the feeling that this could have been prevented if somebody had seen something or someone could have intervened in some way."
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7205652&page=1
Police: 'Heroic' Cop Was Only Officer on Duty in Small Town
By ALICE GOMSTYN and LEE FERRAN
March 30, 2009
51 comments FONT SIZE
RSS
DIGG
SHARE North Carolina police are investigating whether the man accused of killing eight people in a nursing home shooting spree may have targeted the home because his estranged wife worked there, according to The Associated Press.
Lone gunman is in police custody facing first degree murder charges. At 10 a.m. Sunday morning, while many residents of Carthage, N.C., were sitting quietly in church, police said 45-year-old Robert Stewart entered a local nursing home armed with multiple guns. Stalking from room to room, he shot several residents, even those bound to wheelchairs.
By the time the only on-duty officer for the Carthage Police Department arrived at the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center and put a stop to the massacre, seven nursing home patients and one nursing home employee had died.
"He came in with a shotgun, a rifle and a couple other kinds of weapons and he just went around shooting people, people in wheelchairs and this type of thing," Sen. Harris Blake of the North Carolina State Assembly said. "This could not be any more barbaric."
Hero Cop Only One On Duty
The lone officer, 25-year-old Justin Garner, has been praised as a hero and did "exactly what he was trained to do," Carthage Police Chief Chris McKenzie said at a press conference today.
McKenzie, who said he couldn't recall the last time the town of about 1,800 had a murder, told reporters it is standard procedure for an officer to go in without backup for some emergency situations "where multiple lives are at stake."
Garner hit the suspect with the only round he fired, McKenzie said, and was shot himself by several "pellets," possibly from a shotgun. Within minutes, other officers responded to assist Garner, but the policeman had already shot Stewart.
Garner was "born and raised" in the area, McKenzie said.
"He acted nothing short of a heroic day today," Moore County District Attorney Maureen Kruger said Sunday. McKenzie told "GMA" the officer's impact on saving lives that day was "immeasurable."
While police have not released a possible motive, their investigation revealed that Stewart's estranged wife works at the home.
McKenzie told the AP that he believed that the couple were recently separated but that he did not have any other details. He was not sure if the woman was at the nursing home at the time of the shootings.
"We're certainly looking into the fact that it may be domestic-related," McKenzie told the AP
Nursing Home Gunman Was 'Calm' and 'Deliberate'
Michael Cotten, who was at the nursing home visiting his aunt Sunday, said he was pulling up in the driveway when all of the sudden he had to duck for cover.
"He was very calm had a very calm demeanor very deliberate," Cotton said. "He just leveled the gun and pointed it at my truck."
Among the dead are Jerry Avent, a nurse at the center and seven Pinelake residents: Tessie Garner, 88; Lillian Dunn, 89; Jessie Musser, 88; Bessie Hendrick, 78; John Goldston, 78; Margaret Johnson, 89 and Louise Decker, 98.
Avent's father called his son a "good boy" who "really loved nursing."
McKenzie said that in his nearly 20 years in law enforcement, he had never seen an incident like this.
Related
Mom Snitches on Son in Alleged 'Saw' Plot"It's a horrible event, in any size town, particularly though when you deal with a small town such as Carthage," McKenzie said Sunday. "It's hard. This is my town, I was born and raised here, so yeah, I take it to heart a little, bit but … all you can do is move forward."
The town of Carthage has a population of about 1,800 people and a police force consisting of 18 officers. The Police Department generally only has one officer on duty on Sundays.
"This is a small community built on faith, and faith will get us through," McKenzie said.
The shooter face eight counts of first degree murder and a charge of felony assault on a law enforcement officer, Moore County District Attorney Maureen Kruger said.
Cars belonging to police and relatives of the nursing home filled the road near the home.
Howard McMillian, of Lakeview, N.C., said he raced to the scene because his 56-year-old sister lives at the home. He said his brother had gotten calls from officials saying the woman was unharmed.
"I know she's nervous," he said. "I just want to make sure
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7131800&page=1
Mom Snitches on Son Allegedly Planning 'Saw'-Inspired Murders
Court Documents Allege Utah Teens Plotted to Kidnap, Torture Three People
By SARAH NETTER
March 20, 2009
74 comments FONT SIZE
RSS
DIGG
SHARE It was an alleged murderous plot ripped from the movies: Police say two teenage boys hatched a plan to kidnap, torture and kill two students and a school police officer.
Two teens were charged after one's mother heard them discussing an alleged murder plot inspired by the 2004 movie "Saw" in which the Jigsaw killer, inset, tortures his victims.
(ABC News Photo Illustration/Sepa)But they were apparently foiled by one boy's mother, who, according to court documents, told police she had overheard her son and his friend discussing how to lure their intended victims to locations they had already selected.
John, 15, and Noor, 14, were charged in suburban Salt Lake City, Utah, as juveniles with three counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping after telling police they planned to model the killings on the torture scenes in the horror blockbuster "Saw," according to court documents.
ABC News has chosen to use the boys' first names only because of their ages.
The court documents, which by Utah state law can be released with the boys' full names despite their juvenile status, say that John's mother called police March 7 after listening in on her son's conversation.
His mother told police that "they wanted to make sure to have cameras and camcorders so they could take pictures of what they were doing, because they wanted people to know who did it, so they could become famous," the documents say.
John's father also reported hearing part of the conversations and confirmed, in the court documents, "that they were discussing killing several people and the different locations this would happen."
John's parents could not be reached by ABCNews.com and Noor's father declined to comment on the charges against his son. When asked who represents the teens, the District Attorney's office referred ABCNews.com to a local law firm where a woman who answered the phone said the firm would not confirm or deny that John and Noor were clients.
After being taken into custody, the two boys admitted their plan to Murray Police Detective Cameron Jarvis, according to the court documents, and told him they had planned to make a more detailed list of people they wanted to kidnap, torture and kill.
On the list was a female student from Midvale Middle School in suburban Salt Lake City, which Noor attends, as well as the school's police officer. The local media have reported that the third intended victim, also female, attends another middle school in another district.
At one point, according to the court documents, John told Jarvis that "we weren't joking" and both teens said they wanted to harm people "who had done harm to others."
It was during this interview, according to court documents, that both boys told the detective they wanted their crime to emulate scenes from "Saw."
In the 2004 movie, a serial killer named Jigsaw devises complex puzzles for his victims to solve, leading to their gruesome deaths if they fail the tests. The movie also spawned several sequels with the same theme.
Jarvis declined to comment on the boys' interviews, referring all questions to the district attorney's office, which, in turn, deferred to the juvenile court.
'Difficult and Heartbreaking'
Steven Dunham, a spokesman for the Jordan School district, which includes Midvale, where Noor was enrolled in the eighth grade, said the school district, which is the largest in the state, learned about the charges against the boys from the local media. Midvale officials were notified shortly after the arrests were made March 7, he said.
"We really feel this is a police matter," he said, adding that no crimes or activity related to the alleged plot took place on school grounds as far as the district knows.
Crisis counselors, he said, were made available at the school "to talk with anybody who wanted to talk."
Once the story hit the news, Midvale Middle School principal Paula Logan released an e-mailed statement to parents, reassuring them that the school is still a safe environment for their children.
"I am grateful to the parent who was aware of concerns and her efforts to involve the police," Logan said in the e-mail. "What a difficult decision it must be to call the police regarding your own child. I cannot imagine the pain she must be going through."
Logan also praised the police and the school staff for their response and for assisting the student who was allegedly targeted by the teens.
"This has been difficult and heartbreaking," she wrote. "But even more so, the families of both the involved student and the victim are struggling."
The district's Dunham said he couldn't comment specifically on what disciplinary action Noor could or has faced. John attended West High School in the Salt Lake City School District.
But, in general, district policy is to remove the child from the school pending a police investigation. Once that investigation is complete, the district will hold an expulsion hearing.
Turning In Their Children
The Salt Lake City Deseret News quoted a neighbor of Noor's as saying positive things about the teen and his family, which she said immigrated from Iraq.
But the same newspaper quoted Elisa Johnson, a neighbor of John's, who called the teen "creepy" and claimed he had spoken to her children about violent and sexual subjects.
While a wrenching decision for any parent, John's mom isn't the first to report a child to police.
Last week, Melvin Bardwell appeared in an Atlanta court, accused of murdering another man during a robbery, after Bardwell's father tipped off police, according to the local ABC affiliate.
Also last week, on March 14, two brothers, Terry McElveen, 24, and Thatcher McElveen, 30, were found guilty in a New Orleans court of second-degree murder in the 2002 killing of a 21-year-old man.
The men's mother, Janice McElveen, not only turned her sons into police, according to The Associated Press, but collected an $18,000 reward and testified for the prosecution, although police said they had her arrested as a material witness to ensure she'd follow through on the latter.
And a Milwaukee mother last year turned in both of her teenage children, a son and a daughter, after she recognized them from a police surveillance video aired in a news report about a robbery at a store, earning praise from police and bloggers alike.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=6788681&page=1
Teens Who Murder Over Loss of Phones, Video Games
Experts Say Some Teens Unable to Cope With Loss of Gadgets
By SARAH NETTER
Feb. 5, 2009
55 comments FONT SIZE
RSS
DIGG
SHARE When a 13-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., girl decided to exact revenge on the grandmother who took away her cell phone, authorities say she planned carefully.
Daniel Petric, top left, Marshall Sosby, bottom left, and Jermea Simmons, right, have all been either accused or convicted of murder after having their cell phones or video games taken away.
(ABC/AP Photo/Adrian Police Department)Jermea Simmons allegedly waited a week, then packed her clothes, doused her house with lighter fluid and set it ablaze while 10 members of her family slept inside, including her 8-year-old sister who suffers from cerebral palsy. Her step-grandfather didn't make it out alive.
"I thought I was close to her," said her grandmother, Gennie Fairfax, who escaped the June 2007 fire. "I wasn't angry. I was distraught. I didn't understand it."
Simmons is one of an increasing number of teens who have made headlines for apparently resorting to violence in the face of losing their beloved computers, video games and cell phones. It's a type of violence that shocks generations that came of age before the home electronics revolution, but not the experts who study today's kids.
From the Michigan teen who reportedly shot both of his parents over a cell phone last year to the Ohio teen convicted last month of killing his mother over a video game, experts say a small subset of young people are ill-equipped to balance their electronic life with the real world.
When their whole world is wrapped up in text messaging or video games, being cut off leaves them frantic.
Peter Sheras, a clinical psychologist and professor at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, said there's no hard evidence that points to why this sort of extreme violence has become the reaction for some teens as it's a fairly new phenomenon.
Teens, in general, often carry a lot of anger and "incredible levels of frustration as they are trying to flex their muscles," Sheras said.
Today's teenagers are also so wrapped up in virtual communication, he said, that they are not as equipped to handle inter-personal relationships. Combine that with a media and Internet culture that seems obsessed with extreme behavior, such as the well-publicized beatings posted on YouTube.com, and "we've almost institutionalized rage as a positive behavior," he said.
"These kids have no sense of perspective," said Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy and security lawyer and founder of WiredSafety.org. "If you hit them where it matters ... they will react."
Simmons has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Vincent Fairfax, according to local news reports, and her case has been transferred to family court. Gennie Fairfax said she has not yet apologized for the fire.
"I don't hate her, but I think what she did was wrong," Fairfax said.
The fire, she said, appeared to have been set at the door of Jermea's uncle, Darran Booker. It then swept through the house, destroying all the family's belongings. Fairfax said the alarm above her bedroom door never went off and she suspects her granddaughter may have disabled it beforehand.
"She was angry," she said. "I wouldn't wish it on nobody."
Fairfax had raised Jermea and her siblings since the teen was 5 years old. Fairfax said she was teaching her granddaughter to cook and to braid hair. She'd had her phone taken away before as punishment.
"If I had to do it all over again, she would never get a cell phone," Fairfax said.
Fairfax said her granddaughter would use the phone to talk to boys and, sometimes, to pick fights with other girls at school. When Fairfax took away Jermea's phone for the last time, she also yanked her access to the teenager's MySpace account after finding out she'd been talking to adults "about things she shouldn't have been."
"No kids should be on MySpace at that age," she added.
Aftab said parents all too often take the easy way out and choose to placate their kids with more games and electronics, rather than take a chance at disciplining them. If computers or cell phones or video games interfere with day-to-day life, she said, that's a red flag that something is wrong.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=5920480&page=1
A troubled Florida teenager who allegedly bragged to his friends about nearly decapitating a neighbor appeared in court today as police investigated whether he might have killed before.
16-year-old admits to police that he stabbed a woman to death during a robbery.Alan Michael Tanguay, whose first arrest came at age 12, has been charged with the murder of 58-year-old Patricia Kaliszeski, a woman known in her neighborhood for taking walks with her beloved birds on her shoulder.
The 5-foot-7-inch, 145-pound 16-year-old was taken into custody before dawn Monday after his friends confided in their parents that Tanguay allegedly recounted the killing in great detail, also gloating that he had stolen $6 from her and bought beer.
"It was bothering them so much they just couldn't keep it in. They told their parents, and they called us," Palm Bay Police Detective Ernest Diebel told ABCNews.com.
Police, he said, had released few details about the murder, yet Tanguay's friends "knew it all," he said, including that he had been wearing Vans sneakers, which left bloody imprints in the house.
'Just Send Somebody Please'
Diebel said police believe Kaliszeski was murdered sometime Thursday evening. She had been stabbed more than 20 times, left for dead in her bedroom with her throat slit.
Related
WATCH: Ex-Husband: 'There's Blood All Over'Persons of Interest ID'd in Waitress DeathPolice: Mom Kept Kids' Bodies on IceHer ex-husband, whose girlfriend works at a catering business with Kaliszeski, found his ex-wife's body just before 6 p.m. Friday, concerned that she hadn't shown up for work and wasn't reachable by phone.
"There's blood all over the place," he can be heard saying on the 911 tape, calling from a neighbor's house.
When the 911 operator asked him several questions about the appearance of the body, he urged, "just send somebody please."
Also disturbing, Diebel said, is that the teen's friends told police that Tanguay allegedly boasted that he'd killed before and that he has a rule that if he finds someone in the house during a burglary, he has to kill them.
"He claims that was just bragging," he said.
His MySpace page, which has since been made private, reportedly made violent references about how he liked to cut people with knives, Diebel said.
One sentence, according to the police report, read "I like gory sh**, like people getting their neck slit and tounge [sic] pulled out."
Now police are checking with local and state police in areas where Tanguay previously lived, including Maryland, to look for any connection to unsolved murders.
"It's hard to know," Diebel said. "It's hard to think that a 16-year-old kid would, first time out, stab someone numerous times ... cut their throat."
That type of savage killing, he said, is typically reserved for more seasoned offenders.
