Bobbi Kristina Brown,
daughter of the late singer Whitney Houston, was in a medically induced
coma Saturday night after being found unresponsive in a bathtub at her
home outside reportedly.
Police in Roswell, Georgia, said Brown's husband, Nick Gordon, and a friend found her face-down in the tub and started CPR.
When police officers arrived on the scene in response to a 911
call at 10:25 a.m., they started life-saving measures until emergency
medical services personnel arrived and transported Brown to North Fulton
Hospital in Roswell.
"She's still breathing; she is alive,"
Officer Lisa Holland, a police spokeswoman. Holland
had no other information on Brown's condition.
Police executed a search warrant for Brown's home but would not
elaborate on the reason. So far, they had found nothing to indicate
whether drugs or alcohol were a factor, the station said. It was unclear
whether Gordon or anyone else was home when Brown became unresponsive.
"We
are interviewing all the family members and friends that were at the
house at the time," Holland says. "...We don't know that
if it was an accident or what this could be."
Brown, 21, is the daughter of Houston and R&B singer Bobby Brown. A
representative for the family did not immediately return messages
seeking comment.
A confidential source who had been at the
hospital with the family most of the day says Brown was being
treated in the intensive care unit where doctors have stabilized her
breathing. The source said Brown's father was making his way to the
hospital and that while Brown was unconscious, the mood was positive.
Just after midnight Saturday morning, Brown posted two photos of herself to Instagram.
Houston was found dead in a hotel bathtub on Feb. 11, 2012,
in Beverly Hills, California. The 48-year-old singer had struggled for
years with cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her behavior had become
erratic.
Authorities examining Houston's death found a dozen
prescription drug bottles in the hotel suite. They concluded that
Houston accidentally drowned. Heart disease and cocaine use were listed
as contributing factors in Houston's death.
Houston sold more than 50 million records in the United States alone.
Her voice, an ideal blend of power, grace and beauty, made classics out
of songs like "Saving All My Love For You," ''I Will Always Love You,"
''The Greatest Love of All" and "I'm Every Woman." Her six Grammys were
only a fraction of her many awards.
Houston had her first No. 1 hit by the time she was 22, followed by a flurry of No. 1 songs and multiplatinum records.
Houston left her entire estate to her daughter.
Rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight has been arrested on a murder charge in a fatal hit-and-run in Los Angeles.
Sgt. Diane Hecht of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's information office said Knight was arrested at about 3 a.m. and is being held on $2 million bail.
Hecht says Knight is being held at the West Hollywood sheriff's station.
Knight turned himself in to authorities early Friday after his attorney said the rap mogul ran over and killed a friend and injured another man as he fled attackers.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Knight and his attorney James Blatt arrived at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department West Hollywood station early Friday.
"We are confident that once the investigation is completed, he will be totally exonerated," Blatt told the Associated Press by phone late Thursday.
MyFoxLA first reported that Knight was driving a red pickup truck that struck two men shortly before 3 p.m. local time in Compton, Calif., outside Los Angeles. The injured man was taken to a hospital and his condition was not immediately known. No identifying information about either man was available.
The Times reported that the tragedy stemmed from an altercation that occurred on the set of a forthcoming film titled "Straight Outta Compton," a biopic about the rap group NWA.
A rep for the Sheriff's Department confirmed the trouble began on a film set.
"There was an initial altercation at a film set but the incident did not occur at the film set," the rep explained.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Capt. John Corina said that the two men Knight argued with went to a nearby restaurant about 20 minutes after the confrontation.
Corina alleged Knight followed the men there in a red truck and ran them over in the parking lot. Witnesses told the paper the truck hit the men, then backed over them before fleeing the scene. The incident is being investigated as a homicide.
"The people we talked to say it looked like it was an intentional act," Corina told reporters.
However, attorney Blatt claimed it was an accident.
"He was in the process of being physically assaulted by two men and in an effort to escape he unfortunately hit two (other) individuals," the lawyer said. "He was in his car trying to escape."
The empty truck was found late Thursday night in a West Los Angeles parking lot, Corina said.
Knight co-founded Death Row Records with Dr. Dre in 1991 and built it into the first successful mainstream rap label behind acts like NWA, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur. Knight was at the wheel of the BMW Shakur was riding in when he was shot and killed following a boxing match in Las Vegas in 1996. Tupac's death resulted in an exodus of artists from the label, and Knight was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy and auctioned off the company.
Knight has had repeated confrontations with the law. In 1997, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for violating the terms of his probation in an earlier assault case. He was released in 2001. In 2008, he was arrested in Las Vegas on suspicion of drug possession and aggravated assault and pleaded guilty to a charge of misdemeanor battery the following year. He is currently awaiting trial alongside comedian Katt Williams on charges of second degree robbery in connection with the theft of a photographer's camera.
A Louisiana mom faces homicide charges after her two young children
died in a house fire while she left them alone to go get her hair done,
fire officials said.
Ciarria Johnson, 21, didn’t even leave her hair appointment Monday
afternoon until someone called her about the blaze at her house in
Bastrop, near the border with Arkansas, the Louisiana state fire marshal
said.
Clifton Thompson, 3, and his 4-year-old sister, Ta’shae Thompson
Johnson, perished in the flames when the Pruett St. blaze broke out in
the single-family, wood-framed home, authorities said.
Ciarria Johnson told authorities she’d asked her neighbor to watch the
children when she left for her hair appointment about 1 p.m. Monday —
but authorities said that wasn’t true.
Instead, she left the youngsters home alone with two gas heaters in the
living room left on, which flammable items nearby, fire officials said.
The blaze broke out about 4 p.m., and Johnson’s neighbor escaped an adjacent trailer along with her own two children.
But little Ta’shae and Clifton could not get out and Johnson rushed home after hearing about the fire.
The devastated mom refused to leave her car when she arrived on scene Monday and threatened to hurt herself.
She was later taken to the Brentwood Psychiatric Hospital in Shreveport
for evaluation, but is expected to be booked into the Morehouse Parish
jail and charged with two counts of negligent homicide.
‘If you snitch, your career is
done’: Former Baltimore cop says he was harassed, labeled a 'rat' after
attempt to root out police brutality
Det.
Joseph Crystal witnessed a handcuffed drug suspect beaten and his ankle
broken by a fellow Baltimore police officer. When he was compelled to
report it to his superiors, the nightmare started. Crystal, now a police
officer in Florida, is suing the department over the backlash.
Before he became public enemy No. 1 inside the Baltimore Police
Department, Det. Joseph Crystal was considered one of its rising stars.
The son of two NYPD cops, Crystal was put in charge of his police academy cadet class on day one.
He was promoted to detective before he reached his second year on the force.
And he went on to lead his violent crime unit in gun arrests, racking up high-profile collars that made the evening news.
For Crystal, rooting out crime in one of the most violent cities in the nation didn’t even feel like work.
“Being a cop was all I ever wanted to do,” he says. “A dream come true.”
But that dream turned into a nightmare four years ago when his brothers
in blue turned on him – bombarding him with taunts and threats,
refusing to come to his aid during drug busts and even leaving a dead
rat on his windshield.
His crime? He reported a case of police brutality.
Crystal drew the ire of his department after coming forward to report
the 2011 beating of a drug suspect by a fellow officer. Crystal’s
subsequent trial testimony helped secure convictions against the cop who
carried out the beating and the sergeant who helped facilitate it.
Crystal says the pattern of abuse that followed led him to resign from the job he loved.
“I never imagined that doing the right thing as a cop could cost me so
much,” Crystal, 31, told the Daily News this week in his most extensive
interview to date.
Crystal filed a federal lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department
three weeks ago, claiming it failed to protect him from retaliation
after he blew the whistle on his fellow officers.
A department spokesman declined to address any aspect of Crystal’s
case. “We don’t comment on pending litigation,” said Det. Ruganzu
Howard.
Crystal felt like he was on top of the world when he started working for the department in 2008.
The New Jersey native had spent the last six years working for the
Coast Guard. He graduated boot camp three days before the 9/11 attacks
and then spent more than a week guarding the smoldering site.
The Coast Guard job fulfilled his sense of duty. But it wasn’t until he
started working as a cop that Crystal felt like he had found his
calling.
He stood out from the start. Crystal was honored with the prestigious
Police Commissioner’s Award upon graduating from the academy and was the
first member of his class to make detective.
“I was just so motivated,” Crystal said. “All I could think about was this was my shot. I’m going to do it right.”
That conviction would be tested on the night of Oct. 27, 2011.
It was about 8 p.m. when Crystal, along with other members of his
Violent Crime Impact Section, witnessed a suspected drug transaction on
Baltimore’s east side.
Upon seeing the cops, one of the men, identified as Antoine Green,
threw his drugs to the ground and sprinted away. The officers gave chase
but Green got away.
Minutes later, a 911 call came in from a woman who reported a man kicked in the back door of her house.
Cops swooped in on the home and arrested Green. After arriving at the
scene, Crystal learned that the home belonged to the girlfriend of a
city cop named Anthony Williams, who he had never met.
The off-duty Williams showed up after the suspect had already been cuffed and driven away in a police van.
Crystal says he saw Williams have a quick conversation with Sgt.
Marinos Gialamas. “I’ll take care of it,” Gialamas told Williams,
according to Green.
Moments later, the police van returned and Green was led back into the home.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘What the hell?’” Crystal said. “I was baffled.”
Crystal testified that Williams dragged Green into the back of the house where he began beating the handcuffed suspect.
“I can hear the assault,” Crystal said. “I hear the banging. I hear the guy hit the floor.
“A couple minutes later, they bring the guy out,” Crystal added. “His
shirt’s ripped. He’s having trouble standing. Later on, I found out his
ankle was broken. It was obvious not just to any cop but to any person
that saw it what had just transpired.”
The battered Green was led back into the police van and driven away.
“It was wrong what happened,” Crystal said. “I felt sick about it.”
That night, Crystal called his parents and told them what happened. The
two former cops didn’t mince words. “You know what you’re going to have
to do,” his mother, Madeline, told him.
“Once you lose your integrity,” said his father, Robert, “it’s gone.”
Crystal didn’t hesitate. He called his sergeant and explained what happened.
Crystal said his superior took the opposite stance from his parents.
“If you snitch, your career is done,” Crystal recalled him saying.
“Nobody’s going to work with you.”
The young detective couldn’t believe what he was hearing. But it didn’t stop him from reporting the beatdown to prosecutors.
I was shooting through this place with a rocket strapped to my back. Now, because of doing the right thing, doors are slamming.
Somehow, word got out immediately. Days after his meeting with
prosecutors, Crystal said, a sergeant called him “a snitch” and left a
hand-drawn picture of a rat and cheese on his desk.
“I’m not a sensitive guy,” Crystal said. “It didn’t necessarily bother
me right away. I said to myself, ‘If this is the worst that happens, I
can live with it.’ But from there, it snowballed.”
The guys in his unit refused to ride with him. To his face and behind his back, officers called him a rat and a snitch.
“People don’t like you, and you need to watch your back,” one officer told Crystal, according to his lawsuit.
The harassment escalated after Gialamas and Williams were criminally
charged in the assault in Oct. 2012, according to Crystal’s lawsuit.
Out of the blue, a sergeant called him and said: “You better pray to God that you’re not the star witness,” Crystal recalled.
Now officers were no longer backing him up on the streets. On two
separate occasions, Crystal said, he called for backup while pursuing
drug suspects but nobody showed up.
The second time it happened, Crystal was in the process of arresting a
suspected drug dealer and buyer. Suddenly, his supervisor called his
cell phone and “gave him a direct order to return to the district and
that he would not be given backup," the lawsuit says.
Crystal had no choice but to let the suspects go.
"Nobody wants to ride with you," a detective later told him, according to the suit.
Around the same time, Crystal was told he was being demoted back to patrol.
And his security clearance was inexplicably revoked, forcing him to stop working on an assignment with the FBI.
Instead of going after drug kingpins and gun traffickers, he was put on a midnight-shift burglary detail.
“It was like being kicked in the gut,” Crystal said. “I was shooting
through this place with a rocket strapped to my back. Now, because of
doing the right thing, doors are slamming.”
Still, nothing could have prepared Crystal for what happened the day after Thanksgiving 2012.
He and his wife returned home to find a dead rat on the windshield of
his car. As sickening a sight as it was, Crystal was more bothered by
the message behind it: We know where you live.
“I was trying to be strong for my wife because she was hysterical,” Crystal said.
Crystal said he sought help from his union, but an official told him
his best option was to find a different department. By that time,
Crystal and his wife had moved in with her parents out of fear of
retaliation. “It was like I was a cop going into the witness protection
program,” Crystal said.
The trial over Green’s assault got underway in Feb. 2014. Crystal
testified against both Williams and Gialamas. By that point, he had
nothing to lose.
A Baltimore jury found Williams guilty of assault and obstruction of justice and Gialamas guilty of misconduct.
Williams was sentenced to 45 days behind bars. Gialamas received
probation. Both men are no longer working for the department, a
spokesman said.
"This case was very troubling to this court," a Baltimore judge M.
Brooke Murdock said before handing down the sentence to Williams. "The
community has a right to expect the police will respect the law."
Crystal had hoped the end of the trial would mark the end of the abuse. He was wrong.
Somebody made a fake Twitter account in his name and started tweeting
reporters that he was cheating on his wife. He was bounced around to
different patrols and made to feel like a “leper.” And an internal
investigation that Baltimore Police Chief Anthony Batts promised would
"get to the bottom of what happened to him" went nowhere, Crystal said.
Crystal was a rising star at the Baltimore Police Department, making detective after only two years on the force.
Beaten down by the abuse, he resigned from the force in August.
The suit Crystal filed on Dec. 22 seeks at least $2.5 million and names
the department, Chief Batts and his former supervisor Sgt. Robert
Amador.
“It seems to me that the Baltimore Police Department and any police
department across the country needs individuals like Joe Crystal,” said
his lawyer, Don Discepolo. “He did stand up for what he thought was
right and he was persecuted for it.”
Crystal and his wife now live in Florida where he’s working as an officer with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office.
Crystal understands that some might draw parallels between his case and
the coordinated displays of disrespect shown to Mayor de Blasio by NYPD
officers at the funerals of slain cops Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
But Crystal doesn’t see a connection.
“I see people here as they’re hurting and upset right now at the loss
of two of their own,” Crystal said. “I saw what happened to me as
somewhere along the line we lost our way.
“What I saw was criminal. What I see here is an emotion,” Crystal added. “And those are two very different things.”
He tried for months to get a law enforcement job near Maryland but found no takers.
“Looking back, I still can’t fathom what happened,” Crystal said. “How
do you honestly expect people to have faith, to trust the cops, when
they let this happen?”
Authorities in Gloversville, New York, are investigating the death of
a 94-year-old woman whose body may have been decomposing for nearly 14
months as her daughter lived upstairs.
Hope Ruller's body was discovered Dec. 29 after police received a request from a relative to check on her welfare.
It appeared Ruller died as much as 14 months ago,
but her death had never been reported, even though she shared the home
with her daughter, Mary Kirsteen, and Kirsteen's adult son.
An autopsy failed to determine a cause of death because Ruller's body was severely decomposed.
Investigators for the Gloversville Police Department are looking at the family's financial records for a possible connection to Ruller's death.
"Often
times, when people fail to report the death of an elderly person,
perhaps there is a financial motive," District Attorney Louise Sira said.
Richard Ruller, a son of the deceased woman who lived in Colorado, believes there is reason to be suspicious.
“I sent them Christmas cards. One to [my sister], one to my mom and I sent my mom money and the check was cashed,” he told News10.com.
He told the station that his sister told him back in May that his mother was doing well.
Police are treating the death as suspicious but have yet not labeled Kirsteen or her unnamed son a suspect in any crime
Anthony
Gulledge Cheesecake - Police in Memphis, Tenn. have arrested a
30-year-old man for mercilessly beating a 3-year-old boy because he ate
his last slice of cheesecake. Anthony Gulledge
has been charged with aggravated child abuse, neglect and domestic
assault for brutally beating his girlfriend's son because the child ate
the last slice of his favorite cheesecake. According to reports, the incident happened on Saturday when Gulledge
came back home and discovered that his last slice of cheesecake had
allegedly been eaten by the toddler. For this alleged crime, Anthony Gulledge beat the child so bad that
he broke his thighbone, bruised his lungs and dislocated his vertebrae. Authorities say the child's mother Katrina Johnson
was present during the brutal incident but did not report the abuse or
take her son to the hospital. She waited till the next day before taking
the boy to the hospital. Anthony Gulledge was arrested after preliminary investigations when
hospital officials found that the toddler had many injuries. Katrina
Johnson was also arrested on Monday and charged with aggravated child
abuse because she did nothing to stop the Gulledge from brutally beating
her son. "Priority for her should have been to protect this child and to stop
the abuse from happening," said Barbara King, director of the Exchange
Club Family Center."These children are the least able to protect
themselves, and these are children that are attacked. If you did that to
an adult, it'd be assault and you'd be put in jail." Reports indicate that the child is being hospitalized and is in critical condition. The news of Anthony Gulledge cheesecake incident has since gone
viral. Many commentators have questioned the sanity of Anthony Gullege
and Katrina Johnson.
It's still unclear who ate the last piece of cheesecake and more
importantly why Gulledge placed so much value on food that he could harm
a child for eating it!?
Eminem isn't always the hip hop monster his unapologetic lyrics often paint him to be.
The 42-year-old Detroit rapper recently showed a softer side when he granted the wish of a terminally ill fan.
Gage Garmo, 17, has been battling a rare form of bone cancer called, Osteosarcoma, and has been told he has one week to live.
The Eminem superfan's friends and loved ones created the hashtag
#GetGageGarmoToMeetEminem in order for the teen to meet his favorite
emcee.
Their effort worked when the "Monster" rapper arranged to visit Garmo
at his Michigan home, reportedly about 20 minutes from where Em lives.
Eminem's only personal request was that he didn't want his visit with
Garmo to be a publicity stunt. He instead opted to quietly arrive at the
young man's home around 5 p.m. on Sunday and reportedly spent two hours
talking and hanging out with him. #dope
