17-year-old girl allegedly killed by police on Southern California freeway; family demands answers -
The family of a 17-year-old girl shot and killed by a Southern California police officer is demanding answers about the deadly Friday night shooting.
The incident occurred in Anaheim. The Anaheim Police Department said in a news release that a Fullerton Police K-9 officer radioed around 7 p.m. that he had been involved in a shooting on the freeway.
“A female suspect was struck by gunfire and was transported to a local hospital where she later died,” Anaheim police said.
No officers were injured during the shooting, police tweeted.
Police did not name the girl who died, but family members identified her as Hannah Williams.
According to police, an “item appearing to be a handgun was recovered at the scene.”
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a press release Tuesday that the Fullerton officer was taking his K-9 to a veterinarian for a procedure when he encountered the teenager. The prosecutor’s office also said that the item appearing to be a gun was a fake.
“The officer-involved shooting occurred and what appeared to be a Beretta 92 FS handgun was recovered at the scene next to the female,” the press release said. “The gun was later identified as a replica handgun designed to look like a handgun.”
But Rev. Jarrett Maupin, a spokesman for the family, told NBC News on Tuesday that Hannah did not have a gun on her when she was shot.
“We maintain that she was unarmed, a fake gun is a fake gun,” Maupin said during a press conference Tuesday.
Maupin said they still did not know details on how Hannah died, such as how many times she was shot or even where she was shot. The family is now asking for the officer to be suspended without pay and for California Gov. Gavin Newsom to open a state investigation into her death.
“An independent umbrella investigation by the [attorney general] would go a long way to making sure we’re keeping local authorities honest,” Maupin said.
There will be an independent autopsy, as requested by the family, once Hannah’s body is released by the county, Maupin said.
Lynette Campbell, Hannah’s godmother, read a statement to reporters on behalf of the family Tuesday.
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Trump can't block people on Twitter, court rules -
The president cannot infringe the first amendment rights of citizens by banning them from being able to see his tweets or post messages to him, the court decided.
The constitution does not allow Mr Trump “to exclude persons from an otherwise open online dialogue because they expressed views with which” he disagreed, the judges said.
The president and a number of his staff members had been sued by a host of social media users who had been blocked by him on Twitter, meaning they could no longer see his profile or send tweets to him.
They argued that his Twitter account was a public forum and that they therefore could not be banned from taking part in it by the president.
Judges in the US Court of Appeals agreed, and banned Mr Trump from blocking them on the site.
The ruling was clear that the court had not considered whether it would be permissible for public officials to ban people on their private accounts. It also gave no consideration to whether or not the first amendment applies to technology and social media companies in the way they police their platforms.
But it did conclude that it was not allowed for a public official who uses a social media account for official purposes to ban people they disagree with.
The judges decided that despite the fact Mr Trump established the account before he ran for president, and that it will presumably return to being a personal account after he leaves office, for now it retains “all the trappings of an official, state‐run account”.
They pointed to the fact it is registered to Mr Trump as the president, and that the images on the account show him fulfilling presidential duties, as well as the fact that the president and his administration have referred to the account as official.
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Massachusetts teen sentenced to life in prison in classmate's beheading -
Judge Helene Kazanjian handed down two life sentences for Matthew Borges, 18, of Lawrence.
It comes less than two months after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder for the 2016 killing of then-16-year-old Lee Manuel Villoria-Paulino.
“There is no sentence I can impose that will bring back Lee Paulino, or that will answer the questions that we all have about how this happened, and how a 15-year-old boy could kill a friend in this manner,” Kazanjian said Tuesday, calling the sentence “appropriate.”
Borges, who was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs, maintained a stoic expression throughout the court proceeding, showing no apparent emotion when his sentence was being handed down.
Fifteen-years-old at the time of the murder, Borges will serve two life sentences concurrently. He will be eligible for parole after 30 years.
A grieving mother addresses the judge
Kazanjian delivered Borges’ sentence after hearing tearful remarks from the mother of Paulino, saying that Borges “should never have the opportunity to kill again, to rob another person of their life.”
“Every day we struggle with the fact that his life was cut too short,” Paulino’s mother said through tears. “We drove ourselves crazy trying to make sense of what had been done.”
Several of Paulino’s friends and family were present at court Tuesday, all wearing black T-shirts bearing an image of Paulino’s face.
Edward Hayden, Borges’ attorney, said that Borges should receive the possibility of parole after 25 years, arguing that Borges was a child at the time of the murder and has potential for rehabilitation.
“He is not irredeemably depraved. There is hope for his redemption. He can change his life,” Hayden said.
Hayden did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for further comment after the sentencing.
Paulino’s body was discovered on the bank of the Merrimack River in December 2016, decapitated and missing his hands.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that Borges was jealous because Paulino had spent time with his girlfriend. Prosecutors said Borges distracted Paulino to get him out of his house while other teens robbed it, and then killed him.
CNN affiliate WCVB reported that medical examiners found 76 wounds on Paulino’s body – and that they were unable to determine whether particular wounds, including his beheading, took place before or after his death.
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Since the presidential vote of 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, there has been much talk about polarisation in American society. Tensions have escalated, and on the fringes, they have even led to violence and death. Increasingly, many are wondering if Americans will ever be able to get along again.
This issue came to the fore most recently when presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden came under fire from his black rivals Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and others for touting his ability to work with Southern segregationists decades ago as an example of bipartisan cooperation.
Biden defended his past relationships and civility with white supremacists, such as Senator James O Eastland of Mississippi and Herman E Talmadge of Georgia, who both opposed civil rights for black people. He also said he can cooperate with Republicans if he is elected president in 2020, because they “know better” and will change once Trump leaves office. As he has done throughout his career, Biden is now fashioning himself in his electoral campaign as a moderate who seeks the middle ground and is able to build bridges between both sides of the political spectrum.
But Biden is wrong. The country will not move forward by appeasing extremists and ignoring the damage they have done. Justice for all people is non-negotiable, and any attempt to find a middle ground means denying the urgency of the current political climate. There can be no national unity unless basic principles of human rights and the rule of law are acknowledged and respected nationwide.
Historically, such attempts to appease those holding extreme regressive views and to look for middle ground have always been detrimental to progress towards a more equal and just society.
In the 1960s, civil rights movement leader Dr Martin Luther King described the white moderate - not the white supremacist - as the “great stumbling block” for black progress “who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice”, who “paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom,” who “lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises” black people to wait for a “more convenient season”.
Biden, like the white moderates of Dr King’s time, is standing in the way of progress with his politics of conciliation of a political force which is wreaking havoc on our democratic system, dismantling mercilessly civil rights and liberties, and trampling over justice and basic human decency.
Today, the Trumpian Republican Party is a purveyor of white supremacist policies aimed at erasing ethnic, racial and religious minorities from civic life and from society and considers those who engage in racialised terroristic violence “very fine people”. Any attempt to compromise with it will only encourage white nationalism further.
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Popped up online
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This is amazing
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