Locked up 25 years and was innocent

As he put 25 years of prison time served for a crime he didn't commit, Monday marked the first day in the rest of Darryl Pinkins' life.
The 63-year-old Indiana father walked out of Lake County jail after spending just a month shy of a quarter-century behind bars after he was convicted in 1991 for what prosecutors said was his participation in a horrific 1989 gang rape.
After years of unflinchingly maintaining his innocence, Pinkins was set free thanks to one of the newest innovations in DNA analysis.
The technology is so new, in fact, that Pinkins is the first inmate ever set free with its help.

"It feels like this day was - was meant to be. And I know it was," Pinkins told reporters outside the jail after friends and family greeted him in a tearful reunion. "This is a new beginning."
One of the emotional family members waiting for Pinkins was his son, who hadn't even been born.
Pinkins maintained during his 1991 trial that he'd been in bed with his wife when prosecutors said five men raped a woman for hours after the victim identified him as one of her attackers.
"I stood back as an innocent man watching it fold out before me, and it wasn't right," Pinkins said.
 For decades, Pinkins continued to campaign to have his name cleared.
"Until recently, there was no technology that could really do what I call, dissects DNA mixture," Fran Watson, Pinkins' attorney with the Indiana Innocence Project told reporters.
The new technology is a DNA analysis program called TrueAllele. The process can be used to tease out the DNA of individuals from DNA mixtures.
"Once they explained to us what DNA was, we told them to bring the test on because we know where we were," Pinkins said.
After the test, Pinkins found himself cleared of the rape conviction and Lake County prosecutors have declined to put him back on trial. 
Darryl Pinkins was convicted in 1991 of the rape, along with four other men, of an Indiana woman--but his name's been cleared after 25 years. "We were 100 percent certain that we did in fact have the right person," Bernard Carter, Lake County prosecutor said. However, "when you look at the evidence that stands now, it would be an injustice for us to even attempt to try Mr. Pinkins. We would not convict him."

Man runs man over with truck in racist rant

A Florida man has been charged with murdering an 81-year-old man by violently running over him with his pickup truck, police say.
Kyle Hannover, 26, was allegedly intoxicated the evening of April 13 when he got into an argument with Luis Angel Dominguez before telling the Cuban grandfather to "get out of his country" and "to speak English," according to witnesses quoted in an arrest report.
Broward County Sheriff's officials say Hannover, 26, hurled rocks at Dominguez's car, prompting the victim to step out of the vehicle.
"Hannover then got into his white Ford Ranger truck and drove directly toward the victim striking him with the pickup," a police statement said.

In surveillance footage, police say Hannover's truck was seen to "violently bounce up and down as if running over a large object," according to the police report.
As they watched the elderly man bleed to death, bystanders made a desperate call to 911 operators, who they asked to forgo an ambulance and just send a medivac helicopter, a witness recalled.
Hannover was at the Everglades area park fishing with an acquaintance prior to the alleged murder. However, the acquaintance left before Dominguez was killed, police said.
The acquainance drove a white Ford F-150 towing a boat that was captured by the park’s security cameras leaving the park and initially identified as the suspect's.
After news reports showed footage of the truck, the acquaintance went to Fort Lauderdale police.
Hannover was arrested Thursday on suspicion of commiting homicide without premeditation. He appeared in a courtroom Friday where he was ordered held without bail.

FBI rathers agents kill suspects than shoot tires

When Jameel Harrison, a suspected drug dealer, attempted to escape from F.B.I agents trying to arrest him near a Baltimore shopping center two years ago, agents opened fire. Two bullets hit his Infiniti FX37’s left front tire. Six bullets struck him in the head and neck, killing him.
After investigating the case, a state prosecutor and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division declined to prosecute the agents. That left the F.B.I.’s shooting incident review group, a panel of officials who decide whether shootings comply with bureau policy on the use of lethal force and that rarely punishes agents. In 2013, The New York Times reported that of more than 150 episodes in which an agent shot another person dating back at least two decades, the group deemed every one justified.
In the case of the Baltimore shooting, however, the bureau took the unusual step of deeming part of that case a “bad shoot” in agents’ parlance. But the group did not fault the two agents who killed Mr. Harrison. Instead, it chastised only the agent who shot the tire, recommending that the agent be suspended for a day without pay, according to documents obtained by The Times in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
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The review group’s reasoning was that the bureau’s policy on using lethal force forbids firing a gun to disable a vehicle, and it concluded that this had been the agent’s motive in shooting the tire. But the same policy permits firing a gun to protect people from danger, and the panel decided that the two agents who shot Mr. Harrison were trying to keep him from driving into bystanders.
The F.B.I. review group made its decision about the Baltimore case in November 2014. In February of that year, the group also termed an episode in which an off-duty agent in Queens, N.Y., shot and wounded a car burglar outside his house a “bad shoot,” as documents disclosed by the F.B.I. in August 2015 previously revealed.
Those two “bad shoot” findings ended a years-long pattern in which the F.B.I. had deemed proper every intentional shooting by its agents, according to thousands of pages of bureau records obtained in Freedom of Information Act litigation.
Before the Baltimore incident, the last time the F.B.I. tried to discipline an agent for intentionally firing a gun was 2003, after an off-duty agent fired a warning shot during an altercation with day laborers outside a Home Depot in Los Angeles. Before the Queens shooting, it is not clear when, if ever, the F.B.I. tried to discipline an agent for intentionally shooting someone; there are no records of any such episode in the documents obtained through the litigation, which date to 1993.
The disclosure of the two recent “bad shoot” findings comes at a time of heightened national scrutiny of shootings by law enforcement officials. Mr. Harrison was black, as is Adrian Ricketts, the victim of the shooting in Queens who later admitted to investigators that he had helped burglarize the agent’s Lexus before the agent shot him from the second-story window of his house. Mr. Ricketts and that agent, Navin Kalicharan, agreed not to testify against each other, and neither was charged.
The F.B.I. declined to comment on the shooting reviews.
A month after his death, the Baltimore Sun reported that a police report identified Mr. Harrison as a member of the Black Guerrilla Family gang and that he had been arrested many times. He was unarmed when he was shot, but the F.B.I. documents said Mr. Harrison had more than $1,800 and two bags of heroin in his possession at the time of the shooting. His killing attracted relatively little attention, in contrast with the widespread protests, rioting and arson that followed the death last spring of Freddie Gray while he was in police custody in Baltimore.
The decisions by the 11-member shooting review group to fault both the Queens agent and the Baltimore agent who shot the tire were unanimous. One member also elected to find the other two Baltimore agents’ shooting of Mr. Harrison unjustified, but was outvoted; the report did not specify that member’s objections.
The names of the four agents involved — the fourth did not shoot — were redacted. But a Baltimore County police report about the episode, obtained by the Baltimore Sun in 2014, listed their last names as James, Lipsner, Nye and Reagan. The police report did not identify each agent’s role in the incident.
Lawrence Berger, a lawyer representing the agent who shot the tire, said his client is appealing the sanction. The review documents included a statement from that agent saying that he or she shot the tire in an attempt to "immobilize the vehicle and neutralize the threat” it posed to nearby people.
Mr. Berger, the general counsel of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, also represents the agent in the Queens case, Mr. Kalicharan. The Times reported in August that the F.B.I. was trying to fire Mr. Kalicharan, but he was fighting dismissal.
Additional documents newly disclosed by the bureau provide an update to the Queens case. They include a December 2015 letter to Mr. Kalicharan from Candace Will, the agency’s assistant director for professional responsibility, saying she was “dismissing you from the rolls of the F.B.I.”
Mr. Berger said Mr. Kalicharan is appealing Ms. Will’s decision and maintained that the punishments the F.B.I. is trying to impose in the Queens and Baltimore incidents will ultimately be rescinded.
“In both situations, both individuals reacted appropriately to the overt threat that was presented to them,” Mr. Berger said.
The newly disclosed documents also include shooting review reports about the F.B.I.’s killing of a Chechen man, Ibragim Todashev, in Orlando, Fla., during an interrogation in May 2013 about the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. Other documents describing the investigation into that matter, including those from a Florida prosecutor and the Civil Rights Division, were already public.

Faked his death to escape child porn charges

A Georgia man who was thought to be missing at while kayaking off the coast was arrested in Oklahoma City Wednesday after trying to avoid criminal charges.
Cody Magee, 38, of Effingham, was presumed missing after he failed to return home from kayaking near Tybee Island on April 17. He was found in Oklahoma City Wednesday after a traffic stop, Savannah-Chatham County police spokesman Sonny Cohrs told the Savannah Morning News.
Oklahoma City police Sgt. Gary Knight said authorities found a handgun and rifle in Magee’s car. Magee had been indicted in Effingham County for criminal attempt to commit child molestation, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and child pornography, police said.
Sheriff's deputies arrested Magee last June after undercover investigators posing online as a young teenager lured him to a home, said Sgt. Don White of the Effingham County Sheriff's Office.

"He was chatting with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl," White said. "He wanted to act out some rape fantasies with her."
The Savannah Morning News reported Magee’s wife called police Monday morning after he failed to return home from a kayak trip in Lazaretto Creek. The U.S. Coast Guard and the Savannah-Chatham police marine patrol unit searched the waters.
Hours after his disappearance was reported, Magee’s kayak was found washed ashore on a beach, Cohrs said. Authorities still scoured the area for any signs of Magee, but eventually stopped before his arrest.
Cohrs said Magee staged his disappearance to avoid a court appearance in Effingham County. Police issued a bench warrant for his arrest Monday when he didn’t show up for court.
White called the situation unique, but the search wasted a lot of resources.
“(Incidents) like this don’t happen very often,” he said. “It’s very weird for us. Cases like this draw the attention of officers from everywhere and take the attention away from other crimes that are actually committed, and it hurts the community.”
Georgia authorities were working to extradite Magee.

Posting your child's photo to Facebook could land you in jail

Your Facebook feed could have fewer photos of smiling, giggling tots soon.
France's national police force recently released a statement urging parents to take caution when posting pictures of their children to Facebook in an effort to protect children from sexual predators and other online dangers. And under the country’s strict privacy laws, parents could end up facing jail time if they are convicted of violating the laws.
The statement comes in response to a recent viral challenge that urged parents to post pictures of their children and urge others to do the same.
French privacy laws prohibit anyone from publishing photos of other individuals without their consent, and the French police's post links to a newspaper article in which one expert explains that the law carries fines of up to around $49,000 and/or a year in prison. Also, your children have grounds to sue you in the future if they feel their rights have been violated.
"If, in a few years, the children feel they are victims of infringement of privacy by their own parents, they may demand restitution," Éric Delcroix said. "Teenagers are often criticized for their Internet behavior, but parents are no better."
Further complicating matters is that parents are jointly responsible for their children's privacy; even if they're separated, they have to consult one another before posting pictures of their kids.
France joins Germany in the campaign – the latter similarly warned citizens against digital over-sharing last year. America, meanwhile, continues to assign Instagram accounts at birth

7 dead in execution style murder

Seven people, including a 6-month-old child and a newborn, were found shot to death Friday in rural Ohio in what the state attorney general and local sheriff said was an "execution-style killing." Officials said an eighth body was also found in Pike County, but the connection to the killing spree was not immediately clear.
The seven initial victims, apparently all members of the same family, were found in three homes in the small community of Peebles, about 75 miles east of Cincinnati.
A joint statement by the offices of Attorney General Mike DeWine and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader, said no arrests had been made, but the incident was not being treated as an active shooter situation. "The investigation is in its very early stages, and authorities are still investigating to determine a motive, identify the deceased, and determine if the gunman is among the deceased individuals or on the loose," the statement said.
Phil Fulton, pastor of the Union Hill church, said the victims were all from the same family. Circumstances surrounding the shooting were not immediately clear.
Fulton described the victims as a woman, her ex-husband, her adult children and two grandchildren. He said he received the information on victims from family members and law enforcement officials.
A Pike County victims advocate said the victims included a 6-month-old and a 5-day-old child.
The pastor said the mother and children used to attend services at his church but hadn’t been there for some time.
Dozens of officers from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation were on the scene at the request of the Pike County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities allow crime scene investigation vehicles to pass a perimeter checkpoint near a crime scene, Friday, April 22, 2016, in Pike County, Ohio. Shootings with multiple fatalities were reported along a road in rural Ohio on…
Three ambulances were parked along Union Hill Road, which winds through a rural area of farms, widely spaced houses and open fields near Peebles, a town of 1,800 people. Police erected barricades to keep out traffic. Several schools in the area were placed on lockdown as a precaution.
The killings took place near the county line between Adams and Pike counties. Officers from both jurisdictions responded to the call, as did officers from Ross County.
The FBI office in Cincinnati tweeted it is closely monitoring the situation in Pike County and has offered its assistance.

Tiger found roaming Houston

Police in a small city in Texas have appealed for help with finding the owner of a pet tiger that was found roaming the streets.
The young female cub was found in Conroe, near Houston, and taken into captivity by the authorities without incident.
Photos of the animal were later posted to the Conroe Police Department Facebook page.
The department said: "We received a report of a tiger wandering the area of Coral Cove Pass near Longmire and League Line.

“Animal control officers were able to locate and capture the animal. We are asking for assistance in locating the owner. The female tiger has a collar and a leash.”
The post has since been shared over 4,000 times.
The tiger – who reportedly knew the commands of ‘sit’ and ‘stay’, was found by local residents Jonathan Gessner and Erin Poole, who saw it in some undergrowth. Their call to police was initially considered a hoax.
“I saw something run into the bushes—it was really big,” Ms Poole said.
"Out of nowhere she took off running towards me,” Mr Gessner said. “She put her paws on my shoulders and started licking me in the face. I was really scared at first.”
“She’s very friendly,” Ms Poole said. “She was playing just like a cat would.”
“She would brush up against your leg and let you pet her,” Ms Poole said. “I thought she would have made a great pet. But she’s still a wild animal, and this is a harsh environment for her. I don’t think she’s in her rightful home.”
A man, identified only as Cody, told local news outlet that he has some association with the tiger but his status remains unclear.
  “Her name is Nala,” Cody told the broadcaster. “She's very nice. She's a 4-5 month old tiger. We dropped her off at a friend's and I don't really know how she got out.”
Despite it being legal to own exotic animals in some parts of Texas, Conroe has legislation against the practice.
“It seems to be a tame animal, seems very playful and friendly,” said Sgt. Dorcy McGinnis of the Conroe Police Department.
However, she added: “It is a very strong animal. It definitely would not be appropriate here in the City of Conroe.”
Despite the friendly temperament of the Conroe cub, tigers remain potentially dangerous creatures. Earlier in April, 38-year-old tiger keeper Stacey Konwiser was killed by a Malayan tiger she was looking after at Palm Beach Zoo in Florida.

Teen girl killed in school fight

A fight in a high school restroom involving several female students ended with the death of a 16-year-old sophomore Thursday, authorities said.
The victim was a 10th-grader from New Castle who had gotten involved in a confrontation involving two other students at Wilmington's Howard High School of Technology, spokeswoman Kathy K. Demarest said in a statement. She said no weapons were involved. Police are questioning the other students, Demarest said.
The girl had been flown to A.I. DuPont Children's Hospital in critical condition, police spokeswoman Sgt. Andrea Janvier said.
Student Kayla Wilson said she was in a stall in the girl's restroom when the fight broke out.
"She was fighting a girl, and then that's when all these other girls started banking her — like jumping her — and she hit her head on the sink," Philadelphia TV station WPVI quoted Wilson as saying about the victim.
Neither Demarest nor police released the victim's name or would say how she died. Officers were first called to the school about 8:15 a.m. as students were arriving for the day, Demarest said.
Police Chief Bobby Cummings said Howard isn't known as a violent school, and he did not know of any other problems in recent days.
"My heart bleeds for the family," Mayor Dennis Williams told a news conference.
State agencies will help provide support for those affected by the tragedy, Gov. Jack Markell said in a statement.
Wilmington City Councilwoman Sherry Dorsey Walker said she has known the victim and her family for quite some time and had been asked by the family to speak on their behalf.
The family is asking for calm and prayers in the community, she said, not retaliation.
"They're just asking people to ... be calm and pray for them," she said.
Dorsey Walker described the victim as "a wonderful human being."
"Her loss is a big void, not just in the family," she said.

Teen drown as police watch

Dashcam footage released show that sheriff's deputies did not try to save three Florida teens who drowned after driving into a cemetery pond in a stolen car last month.

Dominque Battle, 16, and Ashaunti Butler and Laniya Miller, both 15, died on March 31, following a car chase with officers. The Pinellas County Sheriff's office had previously claimed that the deputies had taken off their gun belts and entered the pond once they realized that the girls were trapped inside. The officers, however, said that their feet sank in the bottom of the pond, causing them to deem any attempt at rescuing too risky.
However, in the audio of the footage, deputies can be heard standing by their cruiser discussing whether to go in after the girls.
"I hear them yelling, I think!" one officer says.
“They’re done. They are 6-7, dude” another officer replies.
“They were yelling,” a deputy responds. “I thought I heard yelling.”
“But now, they’re done. They’re done," the deputy says as the car continues to sink.

Michigan officials to charged in water plight

Michigan's attorney general will announce criminal charges Wednesday against two state regulators and a Flint employee, alleging wrongdoing related to the city's lead-tainted water crisis, according to government officials familiar with the investigation.
The charges — the first levied in a probe that is expected to broaden — will be filed against a pair of state Department of Environmental Quality officials and a local water treatment plant supervisor, two officials told The Associated Press late Tuesday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
The felony and misdemeanor charges include violating Michigan's drinking water law, official misconduct, destruction of utility property and evidence tampering, according to one official.
Attorney General Bill Schuette speaks at the Detroit Police Officers Association in Detroit. Michigan’s attorney general Schuette will announce criminal charges Wednesday, April 20… For nearly 18 months after Flint's water source was switched while the city was under state financial management, residents drank and bathed with improperly treated water that coursed through aging pipes and fixtures, releasing toxic lead. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder announced in October that the city would return from the Flint River to its earlier source of treated water, the Detroit municipal system. But by that time, dangerously high levels of the toxic metal had been detected in the blood of some residents, including children, for whom it can cause lower IQs and behavioral problems.
The city has been under a state of emergency for more than four months, and people there are using filters and bottled water.
In January, Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette opened an investigation and appointed a special counsel to lead the probe because his office also is defending Snyder and others in lawsuits filed over the water crisis. The state investigation team has more than 20 outside attorneys and investigators and a budget of $1.5 million.
Schuette, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, special counsel Todd Flood and other investigators scheduled a news conference for Wednesday afternoon in Flint to make a "significant" announcement, according to an advisory distributed to the media.
A spokesman for Schuette's office declined comment Tuesday night.
In addition to the lead contamination, outside experts also have suggested a link between the Flint River and a deadly Legionnaires' disease outbreak. There were at least 91 cases, including 12 deaths, across Genesee County, which contains Flint, during a 17-month period. That represents a five-fold increase over what the county averaged before.
The failure to deploy lead corrosion controls after the city's switch to the Flint River is considered a catastrophic mistake. The DEQ has acknowledged misreading federal regulations and wrongly telling the city that the chemicals were not needed.
Michigan's attorney general named a former prosecutor on Monday to spearhead an investigation into the process that left Flint's drinking water tainted with lead, though Democrats questioned… State officials were slow to respond to experts' and residents' concerns. After the crisis broke open, DEQ Director Dan Wyant and the department's communications director Brad Wurfel resigned.
Snyder announced the firing of Liane Shekter Smith, the former chief of the DEQ's Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance. A district supervisor in the office, Stephen Busch, is on paid leave after being suspended earlier. Mike Prysby, a district engineer, recently took another job in the agency.
A supervisor at Flint's water plant, Mike Glasgow, testified at a legislative hearing that Prysby told him phosphate was not needed to prevent lead corrosion from pipes until after a year of testing.
Susan Hedman, the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Chicago-based Midwest office, also resigned.

500 believed dead in shipwreck

The UN refugee agency said on Wednesday it feared around 500 migrants from Africa had drowned in the Mediterranean after witnesses said their overcrowded boat sank.
UNHCR spokeswoman Carlotta Sami said in a statement sent to AFP that survivors from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt who were rescued from a small boat had described seeing "a large shipwreck that took place in the Mediterranean Sea claiming the lives of approximately 500 people".
The survivors -- 37 men, three women and a three-year-old child -- said between 100 and 200 people had set off from near Tobruk in Libya in a large, unseaworthy vessel.
"In the middle of sea, the smugglers brought in more passengers, transferring them with a smaller boat. Due to the overcrowding, the large boat sank," the statement said.

The survivors drifted at sea before being spotted and rescued on April 16 and arrived the following day in Kalamata, in Greece, the UN agency added.
It said the date of the sinking was still unclear, and gave no information about who rescued the migrants.

Extreme sporter killed

An avalanche in the Swiss Alps on Tuesday swept two-time world extreme snowboard champion Estelle Balet to her death, police said.
The 21-year-old Swiss woman, who had won her second title on the Freeride World Tour only two weeks ago, was making a film when she was killed, Swiss police said in a statement.
Balet was speeding down a slope on her snowboard when the avalanche started and carried her away, police added.

Donald Trump mixes up 9/11 date

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday mistakenly referred to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as "7-11."
"I was down there and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-11, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I've ever seen in action," he said during a rally Monday.
"I saw the bravest people I've ever seen, including the construction workers, including every person down there," he continued.
"That's what New York values are about."

Elementary school kids cuffed and arrested

Police handcuffed multiple students, ages 6 to 11, at a public elementary school in Murfreesboro on Friday, inspiring public outcry and adding fuel to already heightened tensions between law enforcement and communities of color nationwide.
The arrests at Hobgood Elementary School occurred after the students were accused of not stopping a fight that happened several days earlier off campus. A juvenile center later released the students, but local community members now call for action — police review of the incident and community conversation — and social justice experts across the country use words such as "startling" and "flabbergasted" in response to actions in the case.
Parents and community members sharply criticized the arrests of the students at a church meeting Sunday. The Murfreesboro police chief on Sunday cited the incident as a learning experience, a chance to "make things better so they don't happen again." The city manager said Sunday: "If something needs to be corrected, it will be."

It remains unclear exactly how many children were arrested. State law prohibits the release of juvenile law enforcement records, and police have denied a media request for the information. Murfreesboro police didn't say what state law the kids violated, but parents of several of the arrested children say the kids were charged with "criminal responsibility for conduct of another," which according to Tennessee criminal offense code includes incidents when a "person fails to make a reasonable effort to prevent" an offense.
At least five of the 10 children reportedly involved are black. The race of the arresting officers is unknown. Police officials have said they plan to complete a review of the arrest incident within the next 15 days.
At a time of heightened tension in the country between police and the residents of the neighborhoods they protect — particularly minority communities — the incident raises concerns regarding several national issues, including the over-disciplining of kids of color, the criminalization of childhood behaviors and the growing mistrust some residents have with law enforcement.
"It's unimaginable, unfathomable that authority figures would ... do something that has such implications," said Bishop Joseph Walker III, pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Nashville. "When we, as a community, are telling our kids don’t get involved in violence and don’t get in harm's way, (arresting them for not intervening) is the most amazing paradox of our society — and it is devastating to us."
Children, by definition, are immature, said Stephanie Bohon, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and the founder of the school's Center for the Study of Social Justice. It's appropriate to ground them or give them detention, she said, but "when you deal with that kind of behavior by handcuffing children and running them through the legal system, the first thing they learn is the police are there to punish them, and they are not there to help them."
Children should be held to a different standard when it comes to accountability, Walker said.
"They don’t have the maturity to understand certain situations," like when to intervene, he said. And to be arrested for not taking action, "They will be forever scarred because of that."
More than 150 people, almost entirely African-American, gathered at First Baptist Church in Murfreesboro on Sunday afternoon to discuss the incident. One attendee asked why the charges against the children could not be dismissed.
In addition to angry parents and supporters, Murfreesboro Police Chief Karl Durr and City Manager Rob Lyons were in the crowd. Christopher Williams, the school safety and education officer at Hobgood on the day of the incident, said that the Hobgood administration and office staff "handled the situation as wonderfully and as good as they could have."
A video was taken of the incident, and officers later obtained arrest warrants for students who did not break up the disturbance, said the Rev. James McCarroll, pastor of First Baptist Church. Information about who took the video and how the police obtained it is not clear.
Such arrests, experts say, can damage a decades-old movement by many police forces working to build trust in their districts using community policing.
Fundamentally, community policing is a proactive partnership with citizens to address public safety issues that induce crime, fear and social disorder. It involves police transparency and collective problem-solving where police engage with residents outside of typical law enforcement interactions to address worrisome conditions.
When it works well, the practice helps community members assist police in controlling crime in their neighborhoods. Residents feel valued and validated, and they are invested in the actions and outcomes, rather than feeling that officers only enforce laws with aggressive actions, such as bullying, handcuffs, guns and abuse.
But, with headlines dominated by incidents such as the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., relationships between police and the residents of the neighborhoods they protect — particularly minority communities — have become strained.
Nationally, the number of cases where students have been arrested for incidents on campus are plentiful.
One such case in Baltimore parallels the one in Murfreesboro, where four students younger than 10 were arrested at school for an incident that occurred off campus.
In the 2012 case, Baltimore city police charged four elementary school students with aggravated assault after a fight and were arrested on the Morrell Park Elementary/Middle School campus, according to WBAL-TV.
The American Civil Liberties Union said they were outraged by actions of the officers involved, according to reports. The police department, however, defended their actions saying when there is an arrest that it’s their policy to arrest the individual, regardless of the age, according to Baltimore’s WJZ TV.
In Tennessee, police departments set their own policies and procedures for detaining a student, according to Maggi Duncan, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police.
The number of incidents involving young children arrested doesn't raise eyebrows among societal experts.
"Unfortunately, I am not surprised," said Victor Rios, professor of sociology at University of California Santa Barbara. Rios is author of the book Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (NYU Press, 2011) and analyzes how juvenile crime policies and criminalization affect the everyday lives of urban youth.
Nationally, Rios said, experts see the collapse of school-based discipline, with educational systems relying more on criminal justice-based punishment where a teacher may call or text a school resource officer for a fistfight or even a spitball flung across the room. In the 1970s, less than 30 percent of high schools across the country had school resource officers, but today 70 percent of schools do, Rios said.
And students often get mixed messages. They are taught to be active bystanders, but then are punished when they don't step in.
"It's counterproductive," Rios said. "It's teaching them the reverse. You can’t teach people to be peacemakers by violating their own peace, threatening them and making them feel terrified.
"It's time this behavior towards children and young people stop."
Walker agrees: "Yes, this is righteous anger," Walker said. "They are looking for solutions. Looking for accountability.
"Those of us who continue to work tirelessly at bringing the community together to deal with these difficult issues feel a tremendous blow has come to the work we attempted to do."
So what comes next?
Children should be exposed to what Rios calls restorative justice. Instead of calling police, kids who are caught engaging in or watching a fight and not stopping it should be approached by a facilitator — something known in the business world as conflict resolution and in the therapy world as group therapy. Kids should be asked what happened and then help them learn the lesson: "Hey, you didn’t stop that fight," Rios said. "Let's talk about that. What can you do to improve?"
And in the community, what can be done to improve there?
"Really, it takes leadership," said Gary Howard, an educator with more than 40 years of experience working with issues of civil rights, social justice and diversity, including 28 years as the founder of the REACH Center for Multicultural Education in Seattle.
Leadership, he said, from police, the black community, the white community, public officers and officials.
"Rather than it being a race-based contentious issue, we as a community have to learn from and with each other so we can not just heal this situation but the larger issues that this situation touches.
"The worst thing to do is blame and denial. Trying to blame kids, police, anybody."
Being proactive together, he said, could be a catalyst for conversation and a catalyst for growth within the community. A coalition of concern.

Stranded man was prepared to die when found by TV crew

Temperatures had hit triple digits when the camera crew spotted a stranded, sun-soaked fisherman on an island surrounded by rough waters off Australia’s northern coast.
Animal Planet host Jeremy Wade and his crew were searching for a rare fish called the Queensland grouper, for a segment for the documentary series “River Monsters,” when the man emerged from a cave on an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, some 60 miles from the nearest town.
Dehydrated and disoriented, he was waving his arms and calling for help.
“He immediately came down to the water and he’s yelling out, ‘Give me something to drink, give me something to drink,'” Wade said in the segment, which aired on Animal Planet this month.
The crew members found the castaway in November, after they took a turn to find calmer water for the shoot.”
“We first of all saw a cooler on the rocks and then one of us spotted — so there’s somebody there, there’s somebody there,” Wade said in the segment, adding that the man was “pretty desperate.”
He was identified by the film crew only as Tremine, a hobby fisherman from Borroloola, a tiny town in Northern Territory, Australia. They estimated he had been alone on the island for about two days.
“I was up in here and down here because I seen turtle nests and heaps of empty bottles,” Tremine told the “River Monsters” crew moments after his rescue. “So I was hoping that one of the bottles might have a bit of water in it.
“But I didn’t see no water in it.”
Stephen Shearman, the episode’s director, said the man told crew members that he had been “preparing to die.” 
“He had said he last prayer,” Shearman told “Inside Edition.”
“He was prepared to die and meet his maker.”
Tremine said he had been fishing and decided to leave his boat to dig for oysters, Shearman told “Inside Edition.”
But he never found his way back.
“He had tried to walk back, got beaten by the sun, and made his way back to the beach,” Shearman told the show. “Meanwhile, he had suffered from sunstroke and was unable to go any further. He then spent that first night on the beach, and the next morning he tried again, but the sun had gotten to be too much for him, and at this point, he is now trapped.
“This guy is super experienced, goes out fishing a lot, he knows the landscape, he knows the dangers, and yet he succumbed to it so quickly.”
  In the “River Monsters” segment, Tremine was seen sipping water on the film crew’s boat.
The director told “Inside Edition” that the crew tried to help him hydrate but he threw up.
“His body wasn’t ready for that at all,” Shearman said. “His condition was quite serious.”
Shearman said the crew took Tremine took to their lodge, and the next day he went home.
“His strength gained straight back,” he told “Inside Edition.” “His recovery was quick.”
The Northern Territory police could not immediately be reached for comment.

Johnny Football is headed for the sidelines

Johnny Manziel said he still is focused on preparing to be in the NFL this year, even after another tumultuous day for the troubled former Cleveland Browns quarterback.
"I’m hoping to take care of the issues in front of me right now so I can focus on what I have to do if I want to play in 2016,” Manziel said in a statement provided to USA TODAY Sports. “I also continue to be thankful to those who really know me and support me."
Agent Drew Rosenhaus dropped Manziel as a client Tuesday, according to an ESPN report. Rosenhaus said last week that he would drop Manziel if the former Heisman Trophy winner and Texas A&M standout didn’t take “immediate steps,” which included getting treatment, to right himself.
Nike also confirmed it no longer endorsed Manziel, Nike spokesman Brian Strong told USA TODAY Sports in an email. ESPN was the first to report Tuesday that the sponsorship relationship was terminated after last season.
Also Tuesday, the Dallas County District Attorney's office announced it would present his assault case to a grand jury Thursday. Manziel faces up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine if the grand jury chooses to indict him on the misdemeanor assault charge, which stems from allegations made by his ex-girlfriend.
“So many people only have one image of Jonathan but, believe it or not, he takes all this very seriously,” said Denise Michaels, Manziel’s spokesperson. “He’s hoping that he can clear up his personal issues, start interviewing agents and see what he needs to do if he wants to play this year.”

Houston Mayor called lier by flooded neighborhood

Residents of one Houston neighborhood took it upon themselves to perform water rescues as flooding submerged the area on Monday, April 18.
Greenspoint, in northern Houston, was one of the hardest-hit areas after nearly a foot of rain fell in less than 24 hours. Water levels rose as high as the top of cars, turning parking lots into lakes.
Though officials encouraged residents to wait for rescue officials, some thought the situation was dire enough to warrant an immediate, neighborly response.
People used mattresses, empty refrigerators, empty bins and anything else they could find to move people, especially children, out of the floodwaters.

A shelter was opened at Greenspoint Mall for those who had to flee their residence. Still, some questioned if the government's response was adequate.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner addressed questions of equal assistance at a press conference on Monday evening before touring the area with other officials.
"No one has been ignored. This has been a dynamic situation across the city," Turner said. "No area has been ignored. No area has been treated treated unduly, unfairly..."
"For anyone to suggest that a community isn't being attended to or we are not placing the proper resources there, that would be a serious misstatement."
Turner said the city's command center was set up in Greenspoint around 4 a.m. on Monday. Rescue efforts began for those in the worst danger, including moving some residents of first floor apartments to the second floor. Others were moved to shelters.
Ten MetroHouston buses were used to transport displaced Greenspoint residents from the mall to M.O. Campbell Center, an indoor arena where food, clothing and other necessities were distributed.
Many took to social media to highlight the community efforts in Greenspoint as neighbors helped those they felt were in immediate danger.

UPDATE: Brothers charged in murders on run

Two brothers wanted in the disappearance and presumed slayings of a Washington state couple may be heading for the Mexican border, authorities said Tuesday as they charged the pair with first-degree murder.
Detectives found a car in Phoenix that had been driven by John Blaine Reed and his brother, Tony Clyde Reed, and they said two friends of the brothers gave them a different car — a gold Acura sedan — and $500, knowing they were on the run from police.
A license plate reader captured the Acura's plate near Calexico, California, on Monday, authorities said.
The brothers are wanted in the disappearance of John Reed's former neighbors, Patrick Shunn, 45, and his wife, Monique Patenaude, 46, who were reported missing a week ago. Investigators say they found evidence the couple were killed, and teams were searching for their bodies in a wooded 23-square-mile area around their home near Oso, 50 miles northeast of Seattle.

"The exact location of the Reed brothers is unknown, but there is reason to believe they may be trying to flee to Mexico," the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office in Washington said in an email Tuesday.
Authorities described them as convicted felons who should be considered armed and dangerous, as several guns seemed to be missing from John Reed's former home. Charging documents filed Tuesday said authorities found blood in the home's bathtub, as well as in John Reed's pickup, the victims' vehicles, and on gasoline-soaked clothing found in bags underneath a mattress outside the home.
The state crime laboratory is analyzing the blood for DNA evidence.
The victims' vehicles had been driven or pushed down a steep, forested embankment, and at 3:30 a.m. on April 12, a neighbor's surveillance camera caught the vehicles being simultaneously driven up the remote road on the way to where they were later discovered, a prosecutor wrote. The camera also recorded John Reed's pickup traveling up the same road the next day, he said.
Authorities found the pickup at the home of the brothers' parents, in the central Washington city of Ellensburg. Clyde Reed, their father, told investigators he had just cleaned the truck and added "that he did not know where his two sons were, but if he did, he would not tell law enforcement," the charging papers said.
When the brothers left Ellensburg last Thursday, they were driving the parents' red Volkswagen — the same car authorities found in Phoenix, detectives said.
The grim mystery played out on land abutting the nation's worst landslide disaster, the 2014 Oso landslide, which wiped out a rural neighborhood and killed 43 people. In an interview shortly afterward, John Reed, 53, told The Seattle Times he watched the slide as it roared past his front yard.
The county bought out Reed's house last month to ease any risks from future flooding, but investigators believe Reed had been returning to the home since then. According to charging documents, John Reed was upset that his property had been condemned, and he recently had been angry because the couple had complained that he was squatting at his old house, prompting authorities to warn him to leave.
Shunn and Patenaude had long worried about getting on the wrong side of John Reed, who lived a little ways up an old logging road from their 21-acre spread in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. When they sued other neighbors over a property dispute more than two years ago, they avoided naming him as a defendant because they didn't want to irk him, their former lawyer, Thomas Adams, said Monday.
Court documents say John Reed had threatened to shoot the couple for cutting brush between their two properties in 2013.
John Reed has been cited for a number of mostly minor offenses, but also was convicted of felonies for growing marijuana and eluding law enforcement.
Tony Reed, 49, has amassed dozens of arrests and twice was under state supervision — from 1989 to 1991 on drug charges, and from 1994 to 2003 for three misdemeanors, including an assault charge.
Authorities believe they are now driving a 2002 gold Acura 3.2TL with Arizona plate BNN-9968.

Brothers sought in murder

Patrick Shunn and Monique Patenaude worried about getting on the wrong side of the man who lived a little ways up an old logging road from their 21-acre spread in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.
When they sued other neighbors over a property dispute more than two years ago, they avoided naming him as a defendant because they didn't want to irk him, their former lawyer said Monday.
Now the couple is missing and investigators believe they were killed. Authorities are trying to track down the man, John Blaine Reed, 53, along with his brother, Tony Clyde Reed, 49. They say both are armed and dangerous. Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary said surveillance video linked the brothers to the dumping of the victims' cars over an embankment in a remote, wooded area near Oso, about 50 miles north of Seattle.
"They weren't looking forward to any kind of conflict with Mr. Reed," the couple's former lawyer, Thomas Adams, said Monday. "They didn't want to provoke any kind of an issue with him."
Both brothers had previously been convicted of felonies, the sheriff's office said.
Court documents say John Reed had threated to shoot the couple for cutting brush between their two properties, according to The Seattle Times. The newspaper reported that Reed threatened to shoot or assault them if they didn't leave him alone, according to an affidavit for a search warrant.
Neighbors reported Shunn and Patenaude missing last Tuesday, after noticing that their animals had not been cared for. A crew in a Snohomish County Sheriff's Office helicopter found their vehicles two days later a few miles north of their home.
After searching the vehicles and the home where John Reed recently lived, detectives concluded the couple had been slain, even though their bodies have not been found.
John Reed's car was found in Ellensburg on Saturday, and detectives said the brothers had taken their parents' red 2007 Volkswagen EOS Coupe.
The grim mystery played out on land abutting the nation's worst landslide disaster, the 2014 Oso landslide, which wiped out a rural neighborhood and killed 43 people. In an interview shortly afterward, John Reed told The Seattle Times he watched the slide as it roared past his front yard.
"This mountain of dirt taller than any trees near me cut off my view like a curtain," he said. "And it shot right in front of me, right by my house."
The county bought out Reed's house last month to ease any risks from future flooding, but investigators believe Reed had been returning to the home since then, the sheriff's office said.
In 2013, Shunn and Patenaude joined two other property owners in suing neighbors David and Shelly Dick over the use of the old logging road, which crosses their property. They alleged that the Dicks had been allowing people to trespass on their land to reach an unoccupied riverfront parcel owned by the Dicks.
Last month, the Dicks asked the court to dismiss the complaint.
John Reed's property was further along the logging road, and he too used it regularly, but the couple didn't want to sue him, Adams said. It's possible he had a right to use the road because of his historical practice of doing so, Adams said.
John Reed has been cited for a number of mostly minor offenses.
Tony Reed has amassed dozens of arrests and twice was under state supervision — from 1989 to 1991 on drug charges, and from 1994 to 2003 for three misdemeanors, including an assault charge.

Flooding in Houston

Flood control has long been a challenging issue in Houston, dating back to the city's infancy on the banks of the Buffalo Bayou when its first flood was recorded more than 170 years ago.
Major reservoirs built in the 1940s helped alleviate some of problems, but a population explosion and urban sprawl since then enveloped the reservoirs. Experts said the city's efforts since then have fallen woefully short of the massive needs. And there is climate change, which has increased the frequency of large rainfalls, climatologists said. The result this week was that sudden downpours overwhelmed infrastructure and inundated whole sections of the city, leaving at least seven people dead.
"To throw up your hands and say we're going to be vulnerable and have hundreds of millions of dollars of impact every year in Houston just because it rains a lot is not the attitude we need to take," said Sam Brody, a professor of regional planning at Texas A&M University at Galveston. "We are not thinking about the big picture."
Thousands of people were routed from their homes and major highways when Houston's spaghetti-like web of bayous spilled over banks after rains that began Sunday night.

Family sues Lyft over death

Eighteen months after an accident claimed the life of a 24-year-old Sacramento man taking a Lyft ride home on a rainy night, his mother and boyfriend are suing the San Francisco ride company. They claim that Lyft is dragging its heels on taking financial responsibility for a crash that the California Highway Patrol says was the Lyft driver’s fault.
“Losing my son is a black hole I live with all the time,” said Donna Dinapoli, 55, a Folsom resident. “And I’m angry because it was so senseless and didn’t have to happen if the driver had been more careful.”
Lyft, despite its vaunted $1 million insurance liability policy, has not offered her compensation or even condolences, she said. “I think it’s a disgrace for a company as large as Lyft” to try to duck responsibility, Dinapoli said.
“Our hearts go out to the victims of this tragic accident,” Lyft wrote in a statement. “Lyft’s $1 million liability policy, which includes uninsured/underinsured liability coverage, is designed to provide coverage for Lyft drivers to protect passengers and third parties.”
Sources familiar with the case said Lyft has not disclaimed responsibility for the accident, which was the young company’s first fatality. The delays stemmed from the investigation of the crash by Lyft’s insurance carrier — James River Insurance Co., which also insures Uber rides — a process that is still ongoing, they said. The legal case, which is still in the discovery process, also is likely to have a lengthy timeline. Dinapoli’s attorney said he hopes to go to trial by the end of the year.
In the early hours of Nov. 1, 2014, Dinapoli’s son, Shane Holland, 24, and his boyfriend, Brady Lawrence, 27, summoned a Lyft car to take them home from a Halloween party. Holland had promised his mother that the couple would be safe and not get behind the wheel.
Heading westbound on I-80 near Citrus Heights in Sacramento County, Lyft driver Shanti Adhikari, then 31, abruptly swerved to avoid a disabled vehicle up ahead, lost control of his Toyota Camry and spun out onto the shoulder, where the car smashed into two trees, killing Holland and injuring Lawrence and the driver, according to the CHP report on the incident.
“(Adhikari) caused this collision by making an unsafe turning motion,” said the CHP report, adding that the Lyft driver’s actions were “the proximate cause” of Holland’s fatal injuries and amounted to “involuntary manslaughter without gross negligence.” Moreover, the Lyft driver had no proof of insurance, the CHP said. Adhikari said he was struck from behind, rather than having swerved, the report said. “After inspecting (the Lyft car) on scene, I was unable to locate damage which would substantiate (that) claim,” the investigating officer wrote. Adhikari, who could not be reached for comment, has not been charged.
Over speed limit
Kevin Morrison, the attorney for Dinapoli and Lawrence, said data from the Camry showed it was going at 75 mph at the time of the crash, over the legal speed limit and particularly unsafe in rainy conditions.
Morrison said Adhikari, who had been driving for Lyft for about a month at the time, had a speeding conviction from a year before the accident. That wouldn’t have disqualified him from driving for Lyft. Its website states that a driver can have up to three moving violations in the past three years and up to one major moving violation.
To a layperson, Lyft’s legal responses to the lawsuit may seem harsh. Its “affirmative defense” appears to blame the victims. “Injuries or damages to decedent, if any, were proximately caused by negligence, recklessness or intentional conduct of decedent in that he failed to exercise ordinary care under the circumstances,” says its answer to the case filed in San Francisco Superior Court.
While heartless-sounding, such wording is commonplace, said Andrew Bradt, assistant professor at UC Berkeley School of Law. “They have to put that language into their early filings in order to avoid waiving the possibility of contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiffs,” he said. For instance, if the passengers were found not to have been wearing seat belts, Lyft’s and its insurer’s liability could be reduced, he said. “Failure to assert a possible defense can result in losing it forever.”
Still, he said, Lyft’s responses are unlikely to play well in the court of public opinion — and could hurt the company’s reputation. “It seems like misdirection if one of their main selling points is protection by an insurance policy, but the realities of recovering under that policy are extremely onerous,” Bradt said.
Independent contractor
Lyft’s response also uses the driver’s status as an independent contractor as a defense, another commonplace legal placeholder for a possible future defense. The driver “was an independent contractor responsible for their own means and methods, making the doctrine of respondeat superior inapplicable,” Lyft’s response said. That doctrine holds that an employer is responsible for wrongful actions an employee performs within the scope of his or her work.
At the time of the accident, both Lyft and outside experts said its insurance would cover any claims.
While the lawsuit doesn’t seek a specific amount, “I’m sure it’s more than a million-dollar case, by a lot,” said Bradt, the Berkeley Law professor.
Uber’s similar battle
Lyft’s arch-rival Uber notoriously prolonged a battle over a fatal accident. After an Uber driver struck and killed a 6-year-old girl in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve in 2013, Uber allegedly disclaimed responsibility because the driver was in between ride assignments. That case was finally settled in July 2015 for an undisclosed amount before it was to go to trial.
The other passenger in the Lyft accident, Lawrence, who spent three days in a hospital intensive care unit after the accident, said he racked up $92,000 in medical bills. A massage therapist, Lawrence said he was unable to work for almost a year after the accident as he healed from internal injuries and multiple contusions. He’s still emotionally traumatized from losing the man he expected to spend his life with.
“I grew up in a fundamental Christian family and had issues with accepting my sexuality,” Lawrence said. “Shane was the first person who made me feel loved, accepted and understood.”
Holland, who had struggled with Tourette syndrome, was attending Sierra College, a community college in Rocklin, full time as a physics major with the goal of transferring to UC Davis, then pursuing medical school to be a radiologist, his mother said.
Both Lawrence and Dinapoli said it adds to their pain to have to pursue a legal battle.
“It’s hard to keep having to relive and replay everything I went through that night,” Lawrence said. “It makes me sad and it makes me angry.”

Boy of 4 killed by stepmother

Warren County's prosecutor says a Franklin woman could spend the rest of her life in prison for the death of her stepson.

Prosecutor David Fornshell said 4-year-old Austin Cooper was held in scalding water for more than 20 minutes.
His injuries were so severe, his heart stopped working and organs shut down, Fornshell said.
His stepmother, 25-year-old Anna Ritchie, is charged with murder.
A Warren County Grand Jury indicted Ritchie on six counts, including two counts of murder, two counts of endangering children, felonious assault and involuntary manslaughter.
"I cry every day. I break down all the time. Having my kids, I still yell for Austin when I yell for them," Austin's mother, Jessica Vanhoosier said. "I feel him all the time."
She said it tears her apart knowing she'll never share another trip to the park or even a hug with her 4-year-old son.
"I don't forgive her. I don't think I ever can or will," said Vanhoosier.
Cooper died last month of hypovolemic shock -- his heart stopped working and organs shut down as a result of burns from being placed in scalding bath water.
"Our best estimate is that the temperature of the water was 134 degrees," Fornshell said. "Just to be in that tub for a period of a minute or two would have to be the most excruciating pain that you could go through."
Fornshell said Ritchie held the child in the water inside their Franklin apartment for 20 to 25 minutes.
"After taking him out of the bathtub, his skin was falling off of his legs. He was bleeding significantly. She placed him in pajamas and socks and put him in bed," Fornshell said.
Fornshell said 17 hours passed before Austin's father, Robert Ritchie, who had been at work when the incident occurred, checked on his son.
By that time, it was too late.
"Had this child been administered treatment within the fist few hours after this injury occurred, the child would've had somewhere above a 95 percent chance of surviving," Fornshell said.
Fornshell said Robert and Anna Ritchie recently became Austin's custodial parents and Anna Ritchie resented becoming primary caregiver.
The hot bath, Fornshell said, was Ritchie's way of punishing a child who hated baths.
"We're going to do our best to bring justice to a child that obviously his stepmother didn't care about," said Fornshell. "It's going to be a difficult case for any jury to sit through."
Fornshell said people they interviewed said Anna Ritchie was rough with the child, but nothing rose to the level of a crime.
Ritchie is currently being held on $350,000 bond on a child endangering charge. She is scheduled to be arraigned on the new charges Wednesday morning.

Everybody loves actress dies

Doris Roberts died on Sunday in Los Angeles, Gossip Cop confirms. The “Everybody Loves Raymond” star was 90.

Roberts tended to play no-nonsense and blunt women, including her most memorable part of Marie Barone, the mother of the titular character in “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Roberts’ career began in the early 1950s and continued right up until her death. She recently completed filming a film called The Red Maple Leaf, alongside Margot Kidder, James Caan, and Eric Roberts. Roberts was also set to begin production on a movie titled Old Soldiers.
During her long and respected career, Roberts won five Emmy Awards, four of them for her role on “Everybody Loves Raymond.” She also won a SAG Awards. Among the husky-voiced actress’s other notable credits included playing Mildred Krebs on the hit TV series “Remington Steele” and her starring roles in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Heartbreak Kid, and Grandma’s Boy. Younger audiences know her for her Glade commercials.
Roberts is survived by her Michael Cannata Jr. from her first marriage. Her second husband, William Goyen, died in 1983. Roberts also leaves behind several grandchildren. Gossip Cop expresses its deepest sympathies to Roberts’ family and friends. She will be tremendously missed.

Ben & Jerry... arrested

The co-founders of Ben & Jerry's have been arrested at the U.S. Capitol as part of ongoing protests in Washington about the role of money in politics.
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were among approximately 300 people who were arrested Monday as part of protests by a group called Democracy Awakening.
The Vermont-based ice cream company's website says the purpose of the protests is to make sure everyone's voice is heard "and that power in this country is returned to the people."
U.S. Capitol Police say those arrested were charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, which is unlawful demonstration activity. They were processed on the scene and released.
Police say they've arrested more than 1,200 people since the protests began April 11.

Johnny Football loses 2nd agent in as many months

It's the second agent in two months to fire Manziel, who's behavior has become a growing concern in recent months.
The former Browns quarterback is currently under investigation for an alleged domestic violence incident with his ex-girlfriend, Colleen Crowley. The case is scheduled to be presented to a grand jury on Thursday.
Rosenhaus, who signed on to represent the former Heisman Trophy winner in March, recently gave Manziel an ultimatum to get treatment, or find a new agent.
"I have terminated the standard representation with Johnny Manziel in the hopes of helping him get the treatment I believe he needs," Rosenhaus told ESPN's Adam Schefter last week. "I have informed him that if he takes the immediate steps I have outlined for him that I will rescind the termination and continue to represent him. Otherwise the termination will become permanent. There is a five-day window for me to rescind the termination. I'm hoping he takes the necessary steps to get his life back on track."
Rosenhaus' five-day window expired on Monday, just one day after Manziel was spotted partying at Coachella music festival with his former teammate, Josh Gordon.
Rosenhaus is one of the many people concerned about Manziel, not just as a football player, but as a person.
"This is a life-or-death situation. I'm not talking about football anymore," Rosenhaus recently told SiriusXM Radio. "I'm talking about a young man who is in trouble. And at the end of the day, I have a responsibility. I'm not going to see him go down in flames with me as his agent."
Manziel is the first player Rosenhaus has ever fired in his 27 years as an NFL agent, ESPN reports. Manziel's first agent, Erik Burkhardt, fired him back in February after Manziel refused to get help.

Man freed after being wrongly convicted over childs murder

Jack McCullough awoke a few months into his life sentence for the 1957 slaying of an Illinois schoolgirl as his cellmate plunged a shank fashioned from a toothbrush into his face, eventually dislodging his eye.
Multiple inmates had vowed to kill him to avenge Maria Ridulph, he said in phone interviews Sunday and Monday, and his bunkmate was seeking to make good on that pledge. Court records show his cellmate was convicted in the attack, in which McCullough said surgeons at a Chicago hospital were able to save his eye.
McCullough, a former police officer and security guard in Washington state, was released from prison on Friday after a judge vacated his 2012 conviction the same day based on a chief prosecutor's finding that he was 40 miles away when the 7-year-old was abducted, so he couldn't be the killer. The 76-year-old spoke to The Associated Press about his four years behind bars and what comes next: a lawsuit against the state of Illinois.
McCullough said one thing he did not suffer in prison was a guilty conscience.
"I knew damned well I was innocent," said McCullough, speaking by phone from an acquaintance's home near the northern Illinois town of Sycamore, where Maria went missing.
Maria and a friend were playing in the snow outside of her Sycamore home on Dec. 3, 1957, when a young man approached and offered them piggyback rides. The friend dashed home to grab mittens, returning to find Maria and the man gone. The search for Maria made headlines at the time, and her decomposed body was found months later in a forest.
McCullough was born in Belfast, Ireland, and came to the U.S. with his mother in 1946 and settled in Sycamore, where he lived until he was 18. The Ridulphs were neighbors. He then spent 14 years in the military, including a stint in Vietnam. Later, he worked as a police officer in Washington state, and worked as a security guard at a housing complex when he was arrested in 2011.
Among the reasons investigators decided to look anew at McCullough, whom police had cleared as a suspect in the 1950s, was that one of his half-sisters told authorities that their mother said on her deathbed she believed her son may have killed Maria.
A scathing report from Dekalb County State's Attorney Richard Schmack in March described the investigation and trial of McCullough as deeply flawed, zeroing in on what he described as investigators' erroneous statements to a grand jury that altered the known timeline of events to render McCullough's alibi moot.
Most inmates viewed McCullough as the lowest of the low — a child killer — which he says put him in constant peril inside the maximum-security Pontiac Correctional Center until he eventually moved to protective custody.
McCullough said he often spent 23 hours a day locked in an 11-foot-by-5-foot cell, maintaining his emotional balance, he said, by delving into the study of Chinese.
"It gave me my mental escape," he said. "Chinese saved my life."
He also wrote letters to the Illinois attorney general, the governor and president pleading for their intervention. All went unanswered. "I didn't have anger. I had determination," he said.
A turning point in his bid for freedom came Jan. 1, when a new rule took effect that required Illinois state's attorneys to be proactive about reviewing plausible claims someone had been wrongly convicted. McCullough had filed a court document pointing out that obligation to Schmack, whose predecessor prosecuted McCullough.
Now that he is out, McCullough says one of his missions is to highlight what he alleges is a prosecutorial culture of winning at all costs, even in cases like his where evidence doesn't point to guilt.
And a lawsuit would help ensure the state will pay a monetary price for what he and his family went through, especially his wife, who was left on her own in Washington state when he was arrested, he said. He also has stepchildren and grandchildren.
"They didn't just punish me, they punished ... my whole family. I want the state to be (held) responsible."
Schmack said last week that his office would use its discretion and not retry McCullough, who the judge said must stay in Illinois until such a decision is official. There's another hearing Friday, at which a judge will consider a Ridulph family request for a special prosecutor to look at the case.
McCullough's first days of freedom included shopping, taking walks and getting a proper haircut, but in the future, he'd like to write a Chinese-language textbook, as well as travel to both China and Japan.