NYPD acquittals in groom shooting spark anger, outrage

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer

Three detectives were acquitted Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.

Scores of police officers surrounded the courthouse to guard against potential chaos, and as news of the verdict spread, many in the crowd began weeping. Others were enraged, swearing and screaming "Murderers! Murderers!" or "KKK!"

Inside the courtroom, spectators gasped. Sean Bell's fiancee immediately walked out of the room; his mother cried.

Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends. The case ignited the emotions of people across the city and led to widespread protests among those who felt the officers used unnecessary force.

Officers Michael Oliver, 36, and Gescard Isnora, 29, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper, 40, was charged with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren't charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times.

The case brought back painful memories of other NYPD shootings, such as the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo — an African immigrant who was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case created a storm of protest, with hundreds arrested after taking to the streets in demonstration.

Though emotions ran high, there were no immediate problems outside the courthouse Friday, where many wore buttons with Bell's picture or held signs saying "Justice for Sean Bell." Some people approached police after the verdict was read, but they were held back and the jostling died down quickly.

William Hardgraves, 48, an electrician from Harlem, brought his 12-year-old son and 23-year-old daughter to hear the verdict. "I hoped it would be different this time. They shot him 50 times," Hardgraves said. "But of course, it wasn't."

The officers, complaining that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers, opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury.

The judge, Justice Arthur Cooperman, indicated when he delivered the verdict that the officers' version of events was more credible than the victims' version. "The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant was not justified" in firing, he said.

Hours later, the officers appeared at a news conference.

"I'd like to say sorry to the Bell family for the tragedy," Cooper said, thanking God, his lawyers and the police officers who supported him.

The U.S. attorney's office said after the verdict that it had been monitoring the state's prosecution and would conduct an independent review of the case. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who represents Bell's family, called for a federal investigation.

"This verdict is one round down, but the fight is far from over," Sharpton said on his radio show. "What we saw in court today was not a miscarriage of justice. Justice didn't miscarry. This was an abortion of justice."

Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, responded angrily to Sharpton's suggestion that the verdicts were unfair.

"That's despicable for him to say that because we have the greatest criminal justice system on earth," he said.

The nearly two-month trial was marked by deeply divergent accounts of the night.

The defense painted the victims as drunken thugs who the officers believed were armed and dangerous. Prosecutors sought to convince the judge that the victims had been minding their own business, and that the officers were inept, trigger-happy aggressors.

Both sides were consistent on one point: The utter chaos surrounding the last moments of Bell's life.

"It happened so quick," Isnora said in grand jury testimony. "It was like the last thing I ever wanted to do."

Bell's companions — Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman — offered dramatic testimony. Both were wounded in the shooting; Guzman still has four bullets lodged in his body.

Referring to Isnora, Guzman said, "This dude is shooting like he's crazy, like he's out of his mind."

The victims and shooters were set on a fateful collision course by a pair of innocuous decisions: Bell's to have a last-minute bachelor party at Kalua Cabaret, and the undercover detectives' to investigate reports of prostitution at the club.

As the club closed around 4 a.m., Sanchez and Isnora claimed they overheard Bell and his friends first flirt with women, then taunt a stranger who responded by putting his right hand in his pocket as if he had a gun. Guzman, they testified, said, "Yo, go get my gun" — something Bell's friends denied.

Isnora said he decided to arm himself, call for backup — "It's getting hot," he told his supervisor — and tail Bell, Guzman and Benefield as they went around the corner and got into Bell's car. He claimed that after warning the men to halt, Bell pulled away, bumped him and rammed an unmarked police van that converged on the scene with Oliver at the wheel. The detective also alleged that Guzman made a sudden move as if he were reaching for a gun.

Guzman said Isnora "appeared out of nowhere" with a gun drawn and shot him in the shoulder — the first of 16 shots to enter his body.

"That's all there was — gunfire," he said. "There wasn't nothing else."

With tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying, the officers claimed that they believed they were the ones under fire. Oliver responded by emptying his semiautomatic pistol, reloading, and emptying it again, as the supervisor sought cover.

The truth emerged when the smoke cleared: There was no weapon inside Bell's blood-splattered car.

Curious details discovered on J.F. Kennedy's assasination

Associated Press

A curious transcript purportedly about President John F. Kennedy's assassination has been discovered among boxes of memorabilia that were long forgotten in an old safe at the Dallas County district attorney's office.

While the transcript reads like a conspiracy theorist's dream — Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby plotting to kill Kennedy — the DA's top assistant said it's likely material for a proposed movie.

Other items found in an old safe on the 10th floor of the county courthouse include letters to and from former DA Henry Wade, the now-dead prosecutor in the Ruby trial, The Dallas Morning News reported in Sunday's editions. Ruby shot and killed Kennedy assassin Oswald two days after the president's death.

There are also letters to Ruby, records from his trial, a gun holster and clothing that probably belonged to Ruby and Oswald, said District Attorney Craig Watkins, who planned to discuss the find at a news conference Monday.

Much of the attention is bound to focus on the transcript purporting that Ruby and Oswald met at Ruby's nightclub on Oct. 4, 1963, less than two months before the Nov. 22 assassination. In it, they talked of killing the president because the Mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

Says Oswald in the transcript, "I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning."

Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum near where the president was shot, hasn't seen the transcript but doubts it's real. It is well-documented that Oswald was in Irving the evening of Oct. 4, at a home where his wife was staying, Mack said.

"The fact that it's sitting in Henry Wade's file, and he didn't do anything, indicates he thought it wasn't worth anything," Mack said. "He probably kept it because it was funny. It's hilarious. It's like a bad B movie."

Terri Moore, Watkins' top assistant, said she believes the latest transcript is part of a movie Wade was working on with producers. The former prosecutor wrote about the proposed movie, "Countdown in Dallas," in letters found in the safe.

"It's not real. Crooks don't talk like that," Moore said. "If that transcript is true, then history is changed because Oswald and Ruby were talking about assassinating the president."

The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman. The FBI determined that conversation between Oswald and Ruby about killing the governor was definitely fake.

The account in the commission report was "re-created" for authorities by a now-deceased Dallas attorney who claimed he recognized Oswald in a newspaper photo as the man he saw talking to Ruby.

It's unknown whether the boxes Watkins and others found in the courthouse about a year ago have information previously undisclosed to the public or the Warren Commission.

The search began after Watkins was told the gun used to kill Oswald was somewhere in the courthouse. They didn't find the gun, which Mack said is privately owned. The boxes probably sat in the safe since being moved when the courthouse opened in 1989.

The items are still being processed and eventually will be donated to an entity that can authenticate them, preserve them and make them available to the public, Watkins said.

"It's interesting, and it's not ours," Watkins said. "It's the public's."

Details on NIU gunman emerge

By CARYN ROUSSEAU and DEANNA BELLANDI, Associated Press Writers

The man who gunned down five people at Northern Illinois University in a suicidal rampage became erratic after halting his medication and carried a shotgun to campus inside a guitar case, police said Friday.

The man, 27-year-old former student Stephen Kazmierczak, was also wielding three handguns during Thursday's ambush inside a lecture hall.

Two of the weapons — the pump-action Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun — were purchased legally less than a week ago, on Feb. 9, authorities said. They were purchased in Champaign, where Kazmierczak was enrolled at the University of Illinois.

A spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said the other two guns were also legally purchased and traced to the Champaign gun shop, but the ATF was still determining when Kazmierczak picked them up.

Kazmierczak had a valid Firearm Owner's Identification Card, which is required for all Illinois residents who buy or possess firearms, authorities said.

The gunman's father, Robert Kazmierczak, briefly came out of his single-story house in Lakeland, Fla., to talk to reporters.

"Please leave me alone. I have no statement to make and no comment. OK? I'd appreciate that. This is a very hard time. I'm a diabetic and I don't want to go into a relapse," he said before breaking down crying.

He then went back inside his house, which has a sign on the front door that says "Illini fans live here."

President Bush talked by telephone with NIU President John Peters and said people will be praying for the families of the victims and for the Northern Illinois University community.

Campus Police Chief Donald Grady said investigators recovered 48 shell casings and six shotgun shells following the attack in Cole Hall. The gunman paused to reload his shotgun after opening fire on a crowd of terrified students in a geology class, sending them running and crawling toward the exits. He shot himself to death on the stage of the hall.

Kazmierczak, whose first name was earlier listed as Steven, was taking some kind of medication, Grady said.

"He had stopped taking medication and become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks," Grady said, declining to name the drug or provide other details.

Correcting information his office released earlier Friday, DeKalb County Coroner Dennis J. Miller said five students, not six, were killed in the rampage, in addition to the gunman. Miller said the higher victim total was the result of confusion over the fate of a patient taken to another county for treatment.

"There was a miscommunication," Miller said.

The motive of the killer, who graduated from NIU in 2006 but was a student there as recently as last year, was still not known. Grady said Kazmierczak was an "outstanding" student while at NIU and authorities were still trying to determine why he would kill. There was no known suicide note.

"We were dealing with a disturbed individual who intended to do harm on this campus," Peters said.

Witnesses said the gunman, dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, emerged from behind a screen on the stage of 200-seat Cole Hall and opened fire just as the class was about to end around 3 p.m. Officials said 162 students were registered for the class but it was unknown how many were there Thursday.

John Giovanni, 20, of Des Plaines said the gunman calmly fired at the greatest concentration of students.

"He was shooting from the hip. He was just shooting," said Giovanni, who turned and ran so fast that he lost a shoe. "I was running but I was hurtling over people in the fetal position."

Peters said four people died at the scene, including three students and the gunman. The other died at a hospital. The teacher, a graduate student, was wounded but was expected to recover.

Miller released the identities of four victims: Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Julianna Gehant, 32, of Meridan.

Another victim, Gayle Dubowski, a 20-year-old sophomore from Carol Stream, died at a Rockford hospital, Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said.

The killer had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007, Peters said. He also said the suspect had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending Northern Illinois, a campus with 25,000 students about 65 miles west of Chicago.

The gunman was a student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Chancellor Richard Herman said. The university is about 140 miles south of Chicago.

Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.

"I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle," said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. "I said I could get up and run or I could die here."

She said a student in front of her was bleeding, "but he just kept running."

"I heard this girl scream, 'Run, he's reloading the gun!'"

More than a hundred students cried and hugged as they gathered outside the Phi Kappa Alpha house early Friday to remember Parmenter. Flowers, candles and small notes were left in the snow near Cole Hall. Flags were flying at half-staff. At a house across the street, a hand-drawn banner made out of a sheet said: 'NIU We Pray 4 U'

The campus was closed on Friday. Students were urged to call their parents and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.

The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack.

Kenya violence grows after opposition leader slain

By TOM MALITI, Associated Press Writer

Gunmen killed an opposition lawmaker in Nairobi and government helicopters fired on crowds in the Rift Valley on Tuesday, the latest flare-up of the ethnic fighting that has gripped Kenya since its disputed presidential election.

Under increasing pressure to share power, President Mwai Kibaki and the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, formally opened negotiations but the two remained far apart on the vote outcome — an issue each indicates is not negotiable.

Odinga insisted what needed "the most urgent attention" was the resolution of the flawed election results. Kibaki deplored the fact that some Kenyans "have been incited to hate one another and view each other as enemies."

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is helping mediate the dispute and Tuesday's meeting.

"The people need you," he told them. "They want you to take charge of the situation and do whatever possible to prevent the downward slide into chaos that is threatening this country."

Mugabe Were, who was shot to death as he drove home, was among a slew of opposition members who won seats in the legislative vote held at the same time as the presidential election. The opposition, which won the most seats in parliament, accuses Kibaki of stealing the presidential vote.

After Were's death, groups of armed youths began gathering in two Nairobi slums. Sabat Abdullah, a slum resident, said a gang hefting machetes dragged a doctor from the president's Kikuyu tribe from his clinic "and then cut and cut until his head was off."

Similar scenes have convulsed western Kenya, where police in helicopters fired on crowds on Tuesday. Since the Dec. 27 election, the death toll across a country once among the most stable in Africa has soared to over 800. Much of the violence has pitted other tribes against Kikuyu, long resented for their dominance of Kenyan politics and business.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful whose father was Kenyan, appealed for peace on Nairobi's Capital FM radio station.

"Now is the time for all parties to renounce violence. Now is the time for Kenyan leaders to rise above party affiliations and past ambitions for the sake of peace," Obama said. "Most troubling are new indications that the violence is being organized, planned and coordinated."

In Washington, the State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the ongoing violence underscored the importance of negotiations.

"This is a political dispute and it requires a political solution. The two leaders have to come to some agreement on how that is done," Casey said.

Police said Were's death was being treated "as a murder but we are not ruling out anything, including political motives."

"We suspect the foul hands of our adversaries," Odinga said as he made his way Tuesday to Were's home, where dozens of protesters manned burning barricades of tires and uprooted telephone posts.

Kibaki condemned the killing, appealed for calm and promised police would act swiftly to ensure the perpetrators were dealt with severely.

In the Mathare slum, armed Luo men at a roadblock dragged a Kikuyu man from his car and attacked him with machetes, volunteer aid worker Fospeter Ouma said. "They slashed him so much. I think he must have died," he said.

Angry supporters of Were in the slum area of Dandora, the murdered politician's constituency, set fire to homes and shops owned by Kikuyus and brandished axes and machetes.

Police fired tear gas, and later live bullets, to disperse them, and beat them with clubs. An AP Television cameraman saw a policeman pursue protesters down a mud road, shooting at them with a pistol.

In Western Kenya's Rift Valley, about 5,000 people set fire to homes and smashed shop windows in Naivasha, dragging away goods. Five police officers fired into the air but were unable to control the turmoil. Naivasha's police chief tried to calm the crowd but was pelted with stones and fled in his car.

A police helicopter and two military helicopters then flew over the crowd and officers began shooting, sending people running in panic. A reporter saw two bodies with bullet wounds, but it was unclear whether they were shot by officers in the air or on the ground.

Reporters also watched the helicopters swoop down, with officers firing on a mob of armed Kikuyus pinning down hundreds of Luos outside the Naivasha Country Club. Kikuyus, armed with machetes and clubs inset with nails, had prevented the Luos from escaping for two days.

On Tuesday, police began evacuating them, and police chief Grace Kakai said the helicopters helped.

"There were very big crowds gathering and we had to disperse them so we used helicopter patrols. They were not firing at the crowd. We were trying to scare them, not hurt them," she said. Some 300 Luos were evacuated, she said.

The Rift Valley has seen some of the worst of the postelection violence. At least 90 people were killed there over the weekend.

Kibaki and Odinga blame each other for the violence, which has driven 255,000 people from their homes. The two men have traded accusations of "ethnic cleansing." Human rights groups and officials charge the violence has become organized.

Prosecutor seeks appropriate charges against trader

By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer

A Paris prosecutor on Monday asked for preliminary charges of forgery, breach of trust and fraud against a low-level trader accused by Societe Generale bank of orchestrating the largest securities fraud ever by single person.

Prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said Jerome Kerviel, 31, did not attempt to steal money from the bank or its customers, but was motivated by a desire to be "an exceptional trader" and that he sought performance bonuses.

Kerviel appears to have acted alone, Marin said.

"It's always a bit for money, I'm not sure that was his prime motive," said the prosecutor. "It functions a bit like a drug, it's an addiction ... there's a sort of spiral you can't get out of."

Kerviel told investigators, who just wrapped up 48 hours of questioning, that he expected a bonus of 300,000 euros ($441,150) for 2007.

Societe Generale said it lost 4.82 billion euros ($7.09 billion) after unwinding Kerviel's trades.

Kerviel was set to appear before a judge who will decide whether to proceed with preliminary charges.

Under French law, filing preliminary charges means the judge has determined there is strong evidence to suggest involvement in a crime and gives investigators time to ask for a trial.

The bank's offices were searched Friday and "masses of documents" including computer records were seized, Marin said.

CEO Daniel Bouton said Societe Generale, thought by some experts to be vulnerable to a takeover, has not been approached.

Bank shares fell nearly 4 percent to 70.94 euros ($104.32) Monday.

Meanwhile, questions about how the bank handled the fraud are mounting. A lawyer for a group of Societe Generale shareholders, Frederik Canoy, said a legal complaint had been filed Monday asking investigators to look into possible insider trading.

The complaint was filed after France's market watchdog said in a routine disclosure that a member of Societe Generale's board, Robert A. Day, sold 85.75 million euros ($126.1 million) worth of shares in the bank on Jan. 9 — two weeks before the fraud announcement and well before bank management says it knew about the problem. Day is an investment manager with U.S.-based Trust Company of the West, or TCW, who Forbes magazine says has a net worth is $1.6 billion.

Two foundations linked to Day, the Robert A. Day Foundation and the Kelly Day Foundation, also sold a total of 9.59 million euros ($14.1 million) worth of shares a day later, on Jan. 10, the market watchdog reported. Regulators have made no allegations of wrongdoing.

Telephone calls to both Day foundations and TCW were not immediately returned Monday.

Bouton rejected suggestions from Kerviel's lawyers that Societe Generale was using their client to hide big losses linked to the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.

"How could you want to imagine that we would have been able to hide a hole by another hole? It's completely stupid," Bouton told Europe-1 radio. He called Kerviel a "remarkable concealer" who had managed to outwit the bank's risk control systems by toggling between real and fictitious positions.

"That's what created this gigantic fraud," he said.

Elisabeth Meyer, one of Kerviel's defense lawyers, said he was "bearing up to the shock."

She disputed Societe Generale claims that Kerviel had committed fraud, saying he was in the black with his trades as of Dec. 31.

"In my view, he was thrown to the lions before being able to explain himself," said Meyer. "It's a lynching."

Another lawyer, Christian Charriere-Bournazel, said on Europe-1 radio that Kerviel made a profit of 1.5 billion euros ($2.2 billion) before his bets went sour.

The prosecutor, however, said the trader only "virtually" made a profit for the bank.

Kerviel could face a maximum seven years imprisonment if convicted under the current charges, the prosecutor said.

A day after the bank sent out a five-page explanation of how the fraud unfolded, analysts still had many questions.

Societe Generale alleges that Kerviel used other people's computer access codes, falsified documents and used other methods to cover his tracks — helped by his previous experience in other offices at the bank that monitor traders. It says he bet some 50 billion euros ($73.53 billion) — more that the bank's market worth — on European markets.

Dry cleaner wins missing pants case

"Pants not worth $54 million" - Judge

By LUBNA TAKRURI, Associated Press Writer

A judge ruled Monday in favor of a dry cleaner that was sued for $54 million over a missing pair of pants.

The owners of Custom Cleaners did not violate the city's consumer protection law by failing to live up to Roy L. Pearson's expectations of the "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign once displayed in the store window, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled.

"A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands" or to agree to demands that the merchant would have reasonable grounds for disputing, the judge wrote.

Bartnoff ordered Pearson to pay the court costs of defendants Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung.

Pearson, an administrative law judge, originally sought $67 million from the Chungs, claiming they lost a pair of trousers from a blue and maroon suit, then tried to give him a pair a pair of charcoal gray pants that he said were not his. He arrived at the amount by adding up years of alleged law violations and almost $2 million in common law fraud claims.

Bartnoff wrote, however, that Pearson failed to prove that the pants the dry cleaner tried to return were not the pants he taken in for alterations.

Pearson later dropped demands for damages related to the pants and focused his claims on signs in the shop, which have since been removed.

The court costs amount to just over $1,000 for photocopying, filing and similar expenses, according to the Chungs' attorney. A motion to recover the Chungs' tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees will be considered later.

Chris Manning, the Chungs' attorney, praised the ruling, which followed a two-day trial earlier this month.

"Judge Bartnoff has spoken loudly in suggesting that, while consumers should be protected, abusive lawsuits like this will not be tolerated," Manning said in a statement. "Judge Bartnoff has chosen common sense and reasonableness over irrationality and unbridled venom."

Pearson did not immediately respond to a call and an e-mail seeking comment.

Babysitter set to die for 1994 death of 3-month-old

Associated Press

A neighbor in a suburban Austin neighborhood appeared to be the perfect babysitter for Eryn Baugh’s infant son and his 2-year-old sister.

“She’s the most sweet, endearing person in the world and put forward this good Christian front,” Baugh said of Cathy Lynn Henderson, who lived two blocks away. “She could sell snow to an Eskimo.”

But just weeks after Henderson started working for the Baughs, 3-month-old Brandon was dead and Henderson had fled the state. The infant’s body was found buried 60 miles away with his skull crushed, wrapped in his yellow-trimmed white blanket and stuffed into a box that previously held Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

Henderson, 50, is set to die in less than three weeks for the 1994 slaying that made her one of the most hated women in Texas. She would be just the 12th woman among the nearly 1,100 convicted killers executed since capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1977.

Henderson insists Brandon died in an accidental fall and that her decision to bury him and flee was made in panic, not in cold blood.

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly’
“It’s apparent I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Henderson told The Associated Press recently from the state’s female death row outside Gatesville.

“I think I was in shock, disbelief. I just didn’t know what I was doing. That baby was dead. I didn’t want to deal with that. There was too much sorrow. It hurt, it hurt,” she said, tearing up. “When I look back at it, it does kind of look like I was guilty, doesn’t it?”

Henderson’s case has been championed by Sister Helen Prejean of “Dead Man Walking” fame.

Supporters say new engineering data interpreting Brandon’s skull fracture could better support Henderson’s contention the child’s death was an accident and her life should be spared.

“What I would like to happen is to either get a new trial or charge me with what I’m really guilty of, and murder is not one of them, even injury to a child is not one of them,” Henderson said.

“I think involuntary manslaughter, negligence, something in those areas, because I did not wake up to intentionally harm Brandon,” she said.

Henderson is scheduled to be executed on June 13. It was postponed from last month after her lawyers won a delay.

“We’re getting experts, a new kind of expert for head injuries,” said Prejean, based in New Orleans. “They look into the physics of it.”

Suspect recalls incident
Recalling that morning 13 years ago, Henderson said Brandon was cranky, so she was swinging him around to try to calm him.

“I fell. I stepped on a toy. He flew out of my hands. He hit the bottom of the garage, which had been converted to a playroom,” she said.

After hitting the concrete floor, he stopped breathing, she said. Henderson said she tried CPR for an hour.

Why not call 911?

“I knew that was a dead end,” she replied. “I had tried for too long myself. What good would it have been?”

She fled, driving Brandon’s sister and her own preschool daughter to the home of a relative, paying an 11-year-old there $10 to watch them.

“Even though I reacted abnormally, that doesn’t make me a bad person,” she said, crying. “I just didn’t want to face what happened. I felt responsible. I took a life. That is very hard to deal with, especially a child.”

Prosecutors disagree
Travis County prosecutors and Brandon’s parents aren’t buying it.

“If a child sustains an accidental fall, we’re going to freak out and get help,” prosecutor Dayna Blazey said. “We’re going to run to a neighbor, call 911. That’s human nature — not to put the baby in a wine cooler box, throw it in the trunk of a car and bury it in a shallow grave. Then she flees to Missouri and changes appearance.”

A medical examiner testified Brandon’s injuries were inconsistent with an accidental fall of about 4 feet but were the equivalent of a fall from a two-story building.

“We’re not talking about linear skull fractures,” Blazey said. “The entire back of his head was shattered.”

A change of mind
But in a new appeal filed late last week, Henderson’s lawyers included an affidavit from the medical examiner who had previously testified against her.

Dr. Roberto Bayardo, who retired last year as Travis County’s chief medical examiner, said based on new scientific evidence presented to him by the experts hired by Henderson’s legal team, he “cannot determine with a reasonable degree of medical certainty whether Brandon Baugh’s injuries resulted from an intentional act or an accidental fall.”

Eryn Baugh said Henderson had him completely fooled.

“Just tell me what happened that day. Tell me exactly what she did and why she did it. Then she can ask me for forgiveness. I’ll probably give it — once she drops the lies and tells the truth. There’s been too many years of lying. We just want her to come clean,” he said.

Henderson insisted she did her job well.

“I took good care of Brandon,” Henderson insisted. “In my mind, I thought I was doing the Baughs a favor by not having to tell them their son was dead.”

Ex-Coke worker gets eight years for trade-secret theft

By HARRY R. WEBER, AP Business Writer

A federal judge ignored a former Coca-Cola secretary's plea for mercy Wednesday and sentenced her to eight years in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from the world's largest beverage maker.

U.S. District Judge J. Owen Forrester told Joya Williams, 42, that he was giving her a longer sentence than recommended by federal prosecutors and sentencing guidelines because, "This is the kind of offense that cannot be tolerated in our society."

Williams had faced up to 10 years in prison on the single conspiracy charge in a failed scheme to sell Coke's trade secrets to rival Pepsi for at least $1.5 million.

But sentencing guidelines, which federal judges are not bound by, called for a sentence of 63 months to 78 months. Williams was convicted Feb. 2 following a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, where The Coca-Cola Co. is based.

"I can't think of another case in 25 years that there's been so much obstruction of justice," the judge said.

As for the sentencing guidelines, Forrester said, "The guidelines as they are written don't begin to approach the seriousness of this case."

A co-defendant, Ibrahim Dimson, was sentenced to five years in prison.

Forrester ignored a tearful apology by Williams, which marked the first time she acknowledged what she did. Williams had testified during the trial that she did not commit a crime.

"Your honor, I have expanded my consciousness through this devastating experience," Williams said before she was sentenced. "This has been a very defining moment in my life. I have become infamous when I never wanted to become famous."

She added, "I am sorry to Coke and I'm sorry to my boss and to you and to my family as well."

The government said Williams stole confidential documents and samples of products that hadn't been launched by Coca-Cola and gave them to Dimson and a third defendant, Edmund Duhaney, as part of a conspiracy to sell the items to Pepsi. Duhaney, like Dimson, pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Duhaney will be sentenced later.

The conspiracy was foiled after Pepsi warned Coca-Cola that it had received a letter in May 2006 offering Coca-Cola trade secrets to the "highest bidder." The FBI launched an undercover investigation and identified the letter writer as Dimson.

Williams was fired as a secretary to Coca-Cola's global brand director after the allegations came to light.

Williams' apology Wednesday lasted for several minutes and she asked the judge to show mercy, though Forrester had told her before she spoke that he planned to depart from sentencing guidelines.

"Punishment is the memories and the moments that I'm going to miss," she said. "Punishment is never having a family of my own."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak told the judge that Williams didn't deserve leniency.

"Choices have consequences and she made those choices," Pak said. "She chose to go to trial and she lied on the stand."

At the hearing, prosecutors disclosed that Williams has two prior convictions, one involving making false statements related to unemployment insurance.

Williams' lawyers had repeatedly asserted in court and out of court that Williams had no criminal past, and the government until Wednesday did not challenge that assertion.

Girl, 12, dies after being shot in head

Reuters

A 12-year-old girl who was shot in the head in Manchester died on Tuesday, police said. Her 16-year-old brother has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

The girl, who has not been named, was taken to Manchester Royal Infirmary on Monday night, suffering from critical injuries following the incident in the Gorton area of the city.

She was later transferred to Pendlebury Children's hospital but died on Tuesday morning.

Greater Manchester Police Superintendent John O'Hare said officers were called to a house in Gorton after reports of a shooting, but declined to say what type of gun had been fired.

"It is a powerful weapon, and it's a weapon that has killed a 12-year-old girl," he told reporters.

"It's a weapon that you shouldn't have and it's a weapon that shouldn't have been with the individual last night."

He said the shooting brought home "the tragic and really evil consequences of firearms within our community."

Timeline of Virginia Tech shooting rampage

Gunman opened fire in dorm, then unleashed barrage in second building before dying

SOURCE: msnbc.com; all times are approximate

7:15 a.m.: Gunfire reported

A gunman, apparently carrying two handguns, enters West Ambler Johnston Hall, a coed dormitory that houses 895 people, and opens fire. At least one person is reported killed at the scene. Aimee Kanode, a freshman from Martinsville, Va., tells MSNBC TV that the shooting started on the fourth floor of the dorm. She says a resident assistant knocked on her door about 8 a.m. to notify students to stay put.

9:15 a.m.: Second onslaught

As police are investigating the first shooting, reports of a second shooting at Norris Hall, an engineering building about a half-mile away, are received.

Two law enforcement sources tell NBC News that the a gunman entered the classroom building and chained the doors shut, making it harder for students to get out -- or police outside to get in.

Campus Police Chief Wendell Flinchum later says that the gunman concluded the attack by taking his own life.

9:26 a.m.: E-mail warning

Campus police send out an e-mail warning to faculty and students stating there has been a shooting at West Amber Johnston.

"Police are on the scene and are investigating," it says. "The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case."

9:50 a.m.: 'A gunman is loose'

Campus authorities issue a second e-mail alert, warning, "A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows."

10:15 a.m.: Banging heard

Tech student Steve Hanson tells the Associated Press that he was working in a lab in Norris Hall when he heard what he thought was loud banging from construction.

10:16 a.m.: Another alert

Campus authorites issue a third e-mail alert, saying that all classes have been canceled and restating that anyone on campus should "remain where there are, lock their doors and stay away from windows. Persons off campus are asked not to come to campus."

10:52 a.m.:'Multiple victims'

Authorities send out a fourth e-mail alert stating "There has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall." It erroneously states that police are seeking a "second shooter" and warns that "all people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice. All entrances to campus are closed."

Noon: Partial evacuation

Faculty and staff on two sides of the campus are evacuated and told to go home immediately, the Roanoke Times reports.

12:15 p.m.: 'Monumental' tragedy

Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger reads a statement at a news conference saying, "The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions." Police Chief Flinchum draws gasps when he announces that at least 21 people are dead.

At least 33 dead in rampage at Virginia college

15 others wounded in one of worst mass shootings in U.S. history

NBC, MSNBC and news services

A gunman killed 32 people in two shooting incidents Monday at a college in Virginia in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. The gunman also was killed, and at least 15 other people were injured.

The shootings, which rang out just four days before the eighth anniversary of the Columbine High School bloodbath near Littleton, Colo., spread panic and confusion at the college, where students and employees angrily asked why the first e-mail warning of the shootings did not go out to them until after the rampage was over.

More than 50 victims
Federal law enforcement officials told NBC News that the gunman was dead after he shot more than 50 people at two locations on campus. Thirty-two, including the gunman, were confirmed dead.

Hospitals reported that five of the 15 injured were in stable condition; the conditions of the others were not immediately reported.

Investigators told NBC News that they had so far been unable to positively identify the gunman, whose face was disfigured when he was killed. He carried no ID or cell phone, and an initial check on his fingerprints came up empty.

Witnesses described him as a man in his 20s, wearing a maroon cap and a black leather jacket. A spokesman for the FBI in Washington said there was no immediate evidence to suggest that the incident was a terrorist attack, “but all avenues will be explored.”

“Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions,” said Charles Steger, president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, in southwest Virginia. “The university is shocked and indeed horrified.”

President Bush said in a brief televised statement: “Schools should be places of sanctuary and safety and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community. Today, our nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones at Virginia Tech.”

Warnings came too late
Steger and law enforcement authorities gave this account of the day’s events:

The rampage began about 7:15 a.m. ET at West Ambler Johnston, a coeducational residence hall that houses 895 people The gunman, armed with a 9-mm pistol and a .22-caliber handgun, killed two people there before making his way two hours later to Norris Hall, an engineering classroom building on the opposite end of the 2,600-acre campus.

About 9:15, the gunman chained the doors of the classroom building so his potential victims could not escape and police could not enter. Once inside There, he shot more than 50 people in multiple classrooms.

Not until 9:26 a.m. did the first warning to students and employees go out by e-mail, according to the time stamps on copies obtained by NBC News. By then, the shooting was over.

The first e-mail had few details. It said: “A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating.” The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.

Maurice Hiller, a student, told The Associated Press that he went to a 9 a.m. class just two buildings away from the engineering building and that no warnings were coming over the outdoor public address system on campus at the time.

Inside the engineering building, an “unreal” and bloody scene was unfolding.

“None of us thought it could have been gunshots,” a student who identified himself as Trey Perkins told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing in a telephone interview. “... I’m not sure how long it lasted. It seemed like a really long time.”

Perkins said the gunman never said a word. “He didn’t say, ‘Get down.’ He didn’t say anything.” He just started shooting.”

The gunman left that classroom and then tried to return, but students kept him out by bracing the door closed with their feet. “He started to try to come in again and started shooting through the door,” Perkins said, but hit no one.

“I got on the ground and I was just thinking, like, there’s no way I’m going to survive this,” Perkins said. “All I could keep thinking of was my mom.”

Until Monday, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard drove his pickup into a Luby’s Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.

The deadliest previous campus shooting in U.S. history took place in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire. He killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police.After Monday’s shootings at Virginia Tech, all entrances to the campus were closed. The university set up a meeting place for families to reunite with their children at the Inn at Virginia Tech. It also made counselors available and planned a convocation for Tuesday at the Cassell Coliseum basketball arena.

Campus, community left stunned
Jamal Albarghouti, a graduate student, said that instead of fleeing, he began shooting video footage on his cell phone.

“I’m from the Middle East, so I’m not used to this sort of thing, but I’ve been in similar situations,” Albarghouti told MSNBC-TV.

“I heard many gunshots,” perhaps 10 to 15 in just 30 seconds, he said. “I don’t know who made the shots, whether it was the cops or the shooter.”

Albarghouti and other students described a stunned campus and surrounding community after the shootings.

Derek O’Dell, a sophomore biology major, told MSNBC-TV that it was “very surreal.”

“At first, I thought it was joke,” O’Dell said. “You don’t really think of a gunman coming on campus and shooting people.”

Albarghouti said: “Everybody here is sad, and you can see that all over. ... We are really looking forward to the end of this, when Blacksburg becomes a really nice town once again.”

Bomb threats last two weeks
Police said there had been bomb threats on campus over the past two weeks but that they had not determined a link to the shootings.

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia.

“The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed,” Perino said.

It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of a shooting.

In August, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus was closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff’s deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus.

The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.

22 dead in Va. Tech shooting rampage

Associated Press

A gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 21 people in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history. The gunman also was killed.

“Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions,” said Virginia Tech president Charles Steger. “The university is shocked and indeed horrified.”

The university reported shootings at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a co-ed residence hall that houses 895 people, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building.

Some but not all the dead were students. One student was killed in a dorm and the others were killed in the classroom, said Virginia Tech Police Chief W.R. Flinchum.

The name of the gunman was not released. It was not known if he was a student.

NBC's Pete Williams said two law enforcement officials told him the gunman killed himself. They also said the gunman used two 9-mm handguns during the rampage, Williams reported. He said the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was trying to track the weapons.

Up until Monday, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history took place in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire. He killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police. In the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

After Monday’s shootings at Virginia Tech, all entrances to the campus were closed.

The university set up a meeting place for families to reunite with their children at the Inn at Virginia Tech. It also made counselors available and planned a convocation for Tuesday at the Cassell Coliseum basketball arena.

After the shootings, students were told to stay inside away from the windows.

“There’s just a lot of commotion. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on,” said Jason Anthony Smith, 19, who lives in the dorm where shooting took place.

Aimee Kanode, a freshman from Martinsville, said the shooting happened on the 4th floor of West Ambler Johnston dormitory, one floor above her room. Kanode’s resident assistant knocked on her door about 8 a.m. to notify students to stay put.

“They had us under lockdown,” Kanode said. “They temporarily lifted the lockdown, the gunman shot again.”

“We’re all locked in our dorms surfing the Internet trying to figure out what’s going on,” Kanode said.

Madison Van Duyne, a student who was interviewed by telephone on CNN, said, “We are all in lockdown. Most of the students are sitting on the floors away from the windows just trying to be as safe as possible.”

Police said there had been bomb threats on campus over the past two weeks but they had not determined a link to the shootings.

It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of a shooting.

In August 2006, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff’s deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus.

The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.