Tulsa Shooting 2012: Alvin Watts, Jake England Charged With Murdering 3

“If anybody is trying to say this is a racial situation, they’ve got things confused,” said Sevenstar, who described England as Cherokee Indian. “He didn’t care what your color was. It wasn’t a racist thing.”

The Tulsa World reported that England’s father, Carl, was shot in the chest during a scuffle with a man who had tried to break into his daughter’s apartment. England later died. The man charged in the shooting is serving a six-year sentence on a weapons charge, according to Department of Corrections records.

Acting on an anonymous tip and backed by a helicopter, police followed England and Watts from the home they shared in Turley and arrested them Sunday without incident, police said.

Task force commander Maj. Walter Evans said investigators recovered a weapon but that it was not clear who fired the shots. They also found a truck that had been burned.

The Rev. Warren Blakney Sr., president of the Tulsa NAACP, said the arrests came as a relief. Black community leaders met Friday night as fears mounted over the shootings – and the possibility of retaliatory attacks.

“The community once again can go about its business without fear of there being a shooter on the streets,” Blakney said.

Police Chief Chuck Jordan said the gunmen appeared to have chosen their victims at random. Police identified those killed as Dannaer Fields, 49, Bobby Clark, 54, and William Allen, 31. Two men were wounded but were released from the hospital, Jordan said. Police identified them Monday as David Hall, 46, and Deon Tucker, 44.

The shootings come at a fraught moment for black Americans. In late February, an unarmed black teen, Trayvon Martin, was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., raising questions about racial profiling and touching off protests across the nation.

While Tulsa police were reluctant to describe the shootings there as racially motivated, City Councilman Jack Henderson was not.

“Being an NAACP president for seven years, I think that somebody that committed these crimes (was) very upset with black people,” Henderson said. “That person happened to be a white person, the people they happened to kill and shoot are black people. That fits the bill for me.”

 

Trayvon Martin Case Spotlights Florida Town’s History Of ‘Sloppy’ Police Work

SANFORD, Fla. — In the summer of 2010, a masked man gunned down Ikeem Ruffin, 17, in an apartment complex on this city’s north side. When police arrived, they found Ruffin dead and another teenager beside the body calling for an ambulance. The next day, police charged the teen with robbery and murder.

Prosecutors dropped the murder charge last August and said another man, still unidentified, pulled the trigger. Teresa Ruffin, the victim’s mother, said the police overlooked important evidence — including a witness who pointed to another suspect — and allowed her son’s killer to go free.

“They didn’t do their job,” Ruffin said of the police.

Ruffin, who is black, said she sees parallels between how Sanford police officers handled her son’s murder and how they investigated the killing of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager shot to death Feb. 26 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who told police he acted in self-defense.

Police said they couldn’t refute Zimmerman’s claim and haven’t arrested him, unleashing withering criticism over perceived missteps and favoritism.

“All this with Trayvon is just bringing the light on the Sanford Police Department,” Ruffin said. “This happened for a reason.”

Martin’s killing has sparked national outrage. But it is not the first criminal investigation to upset Sanford’s black community, whose leaders say police have repeatedly failed to properly investigate crimes involving black victims.
A string of recent scandals involving department personnel has added to community anger. In the past three years, officers have been caught demanding bribes from motorists, fabricating evidence and drawing weapons unlawfully.

“They’re notorious for mishandling investigations, not doing any follow-ups on various leads, or saying that they can’t get any leads,” said Turner Clayton, president of the local branch of the NAACP. “When a victim’s loved one asks for an update, the only thing they can say is, ‘We don’t have anything now,'” he said. “Seems like they never get anything at all.”

Sgt. David Morgenstern, a Sanford police spokesman, declined to respond to questions about the Trayvon Martin shooting or allegations of sloppy work in other cases. “We’re not going to be able to comment on any of that,” Morgenstern told The Huffington Post.

Critics of the local police are now seeing their complaints echo on a national stage, with a chorus of prominent civil rights leaders, pundits and politicians joining to denounce the initial Martin investigation as rushed and careless — and biased in favor of Zimmerman. A special state prosecutor and federal authorities are leading the probe of the Martin shooting, and local police face intense outside scrutiny over their interpretation of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law as well as what experts call a failure to follow basic police procedure.

Among other things, George Zimmerman, 28, was not subject to a criminal background check until after he was released from custody. A possible racial slur muttered by Zimmerman on a 911 call was overlooked. Nearly a week passed before important witnesses were interviewed by the police. Perhaps most crucially, investigators failed to access Martin’s cell phone records for weeks.

Those records revealed that just before he was shot, the teen was on the phone with his girlfriend, who said she overheard crucial moments of the encounter between Zimmerman and Martin.

“Those mistakes should not have been made,” said Andrew Scott, former chief of the Boca Raton police department and a national policing consultant. “They were such rudimentary aspects of an investigation.”

Martin family members and their attorneys relentlessly cited these errors, which echoed through the national media and the blogosphere.

“It has fueled the fires,” Scott said. “The credibility of the agency is now in question.”

‘THEY SHOULD HAVE HAD THIS’

Around 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 26, Trayvon Martin left his father’s girlfriend’s house at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated community where he’d been staying for about a week, and headed to a 7-Eleven store to pick up some snacks before the NBA All-Star game. The store was a walk of about a three-quarters of mile.

Martin spent much of his trip to and from the store on the phone with his 16-year-old girlfriend back in Miami. The entire day had been much the same, with the two talking in calls of a few minutes at a time. According to cell phone records obtained by The Huffington Post, Martin was on the phone with the girl from 6:30 p.m. to 6:49 p.m.

Martin made it back to the gated complex just after 7 p.m.

At that point, Zimmerman, patrolling the neighborhood in his vehicle, noticed Martin walking slowly. Zimmerman called 911 to report Martin as a “suspicious person.” The call began at about 7:09 p.m.

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something,” Zimmerman tells the 911 dispatcher. “He’s just staring, looking at all the houses … Something’s wrong with him.”

The 911 call lasts just over four minutes. Toward the end, Zimmerman says Martin is running and the sounds of Zimmerman breathing hard can be heard as he describes the location to the dispatcher. Some hear what sounds like Zimmerman muttering a racial slur. “These assholes always get away,” he then says.

The dispatcher asks Zimmerman if he’s chasing the individual. Zimmerman says yes. “We don’t need you to do that,” the dispatcher responds.

At roughly 7:14 p.m., Zimmerman ends the call. Less than three minutes later, Trayvon Martin was dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest from Zimmerman’s Kal-Tec 9 mm pistol, which he carried in a holster on his belt. Police arrived almost immediately and found Martin face-down and motionless in a patch of grass about 70 yards from the back porch of his father’s girlfriend’s house.

Zimmerman told police that he was the victim of an unprovoked attack by Martin and said he shot the teen in self-defense, according to Bill Lee, the Sanford police chief who has since taken a leave from his job.

After pursuing the teen, Zimmerman said he lost sight of him and began walking back to his vehicle. According to an account Zimmerman’s father gave to several media outlets, Zimmerman said Martin approached from behind and angrily confronted him. In Zimmerman’s version, Martin punched the watchman in the nose, dropping him to the ground, and violently banged his head into the sidewalk.

Police have not revealed what evidence they have collected. In an interview with theOrlando Sentinel, police said they found no one who saw the start of the altercation. Police now direct inquiries about the Martin investigation to the state prosecutor”s office, which declined to comment.

One witness, identified only by his first name, told a local television news reporter he saw Martin “beating up” Zimmerman, who was on his back on the ground. But the man did not see the beginning of the clash, according to a close friend who spoke to him about what he witnessed that night. The friend requested anonymity due to high tensions over the shooting.

Martin’s family said police told them the investigation was thorough, but turned up no evidence contradicting Zimmerman’s version of events and failed to establish probable cause that he broke the law.

It is now clear that police overlooked Martin’s cell phone records.

Attorneys for Martin’s family said it wasn’t until weeks later, when Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father, was looking through the teen’s cell phone bill that he noticed the timing of the last call. The family and their attorneys then contacted Trayvon’s girlfriend and heard her account of the night. Lawyer Benjamin Crump, who represents the family, recorded an interview with the girl and provided it with Martin’s cell phone records to federal authorities, who by then had joined the investigation.

The logs, obtained by The Huffington Post, show that as Zimmerman was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher reporting Martin as “suspicious,” Martin answered a final call from his girlfriend.

The call began at 7:12 p.m. Martin told her that “some strange dude” was following him, said Crump. She told Crump that Martin slowed to see who was behind him. The girl urged him to run, and he picked up his pace. Martin said he thought the man was gone, according to Crump. Instead, Zimmerman was likely closing in.

“He’s right behind me, he’s right behind me again,” Martin told his girlfriend, according to Crump.

“Next thing she hears is Martin saying, ‘Why are you following me?'” Crump said. “And she hears a voice that says, “What are you doing around here?’ Then she hears what she believes is a push against Martin and the phone crashes to the ground. She can hear them arguing in the background. Moments later, the phone line goes dead.”

Phone records show the call ended at 7:16 p.m. Police arrived roughly a minute later.

Martin’s girlfriend’s contention that Zimmerman shoved Martin at the beginning of the altercation is missing from Zimmerman’s story, lawyers for Martin’s family said. The girl is a minor whose identity is being kept secret by the family attorneys.

The failure of Sanford police to locate and interview the girl was a crucial investigative oversight, according to Gerald S. Reamey, a former police department legal advisor in Texas and law professor and legal scholar specializing in criminal procedure at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.

“It really casts doubt on the soundness of the entire investigation when you see something like this,” Reamey said. “They should have had this piece of evidence.”

Federal agents and the special state prosecution team that took over the investigation have now interviewed the girl, the Martin family’s attorneys said. The police gave the results of their investigation to state attorney Norman Wolfinger, who withdrew from the case last month. The governor appointed another state attorney to take over.

‘AN ELEMENTARY INVESTIGATION’

Reamey said it was possible the Sanford police investigation might have reached different conclusions if detectives had interviewed the girl earlier. “It could be quite useful in the interrogation” of Zimmerman, Reamey said. “It also could be quite useful for the investigator to understand at that point that there is some contradictory evidence.”

With the state prosecutor’s investigation still underway, it remains unclear whether the failure to interview the girl seriously harmed the ability to prosecute Zimmerman. But the lapse makes the prosecutor’s job more difficult, Reamey said. “It’s a burden,” he said. “It can make a difference.”

Investigators made another fundamental error by waiting more than a week to interview a young teen who said he witnessed part of the struggle between Zimmerman and Martin, experts said. Eyewitnesses should be interviewed immediately after a crime, before memories fade, said Scott, the former Boca Raton police chief.

“It’s part of an elementary investigation of a very significant crime,” Scott said.

Eight days after the shooting, investigators sat down in Sheryl Brown’s living room to speak with her 13-year-old son, Austin McLendon. Austin, the youngest among those who told police they saw or heard the fight, was standing behind his family’s home the night of the killing, about 20 yards from where it occurred. He recalled seeing a man on the ground, hearing screams and pleas for help, then a gunshot followed by silence.

A 911 recording captured the teen’s impressions that night.

“I saw a man laying on the ground that needed help, that was screaming and then I was going to go over there to try and help him, but my dog got off the leash, so I went and got my dog, and then I heard a loud sound and then the screaming stopped.”

The dispatcher asks: “Did you see the person get shot? Did you know the person that was shot, or did you see the person that had the gun?”

“No, I just heard a loud sound and then the screaming stopped,” Austin replied.

Investigators pushed Austin to identify the man on the ground as Zimmerman, who was wearing a red jacket, he and his mother said. But he said it was just too dark and he was too far away to be sure.

“It was just too much in detail and I couldn’t give them the answers that they were looking for,” Austin told The Huffington Post.

Scott said an investigator who failed to interview a witness or check cell phone records in a homicide would face serious repercussions. “It’s disappointing,” he said. “There would be consequences with regard to the investigator that would have done that.”

Citing these and other potential errors, including the failure of Sanford investigators to notice what sounds like a racial epithet on Zimmerman’s 911 call, Martin’s family called for an independent investigation.

Sanford city officials responded with a no-confidence vote in the police chief, who stepped aside temporarily. Wolfinger, the state attorney, quit the case the same day.

In an interview last month, Velma Williams, the lone black Sanford city commissioner, told The Huffington Post that growing outrage over the police handling of Martin’s killing was not an isolated incident, and that the town had a “long way to go” toward repairing relations with the black community.

“You have to understand that race plays a role here,” Williams said. “No one is conjuring up any of this.”

“I think that we can begin the healing process and that can only happen if the city government understands that we must face the reality that there are some serious problems in this city,” she said.

RUSH TO JUDGEMENT

For Teresa Ruffin, the Trayvon Martin investigation resurrects painful memories of her son’s 2010 murder.

On the night of June 15, 2010, Ikeem Ruffin, 17, was shot and killed by a masked man during a robbery in an apartment complex in north Sanford. Ruffin had just left work and died wearing his McDonald’s uniform.

Police found 18-year-old Tarance Terrell Moore standing by the victim and calling for an ambulance, but the teen was already dead. The gun used in the killing was never recovered.

The next day, police charged Moore with robbery and murder in Ruffin’s death. He was denied bail and locked in Seminole County Jail awaiting trial.

More than a year later, Seminole County prosecutors dropped the murder charge, which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, in exchange for a guilty plea to a charge of robbery with a firearm. Moore was sentenced to nine years in prison.

The plea was no comfort to Teresa Ruffin, who believes the police rushed to judgment in the case, in part due to Moore’s history of run-ins with the law. A year before the murder, police charged Moore with shooting at a patrol car, but the charges were later dropped due to lack of evidence.

“He was there, but he wasn’t my son’s killer,” Ruffin said of Moore. “They just wanted to pin it on him and forget about the killer.”

Tim Caudill, Moore’s public defender, declined to comment because the case is still eligible for appeal. At Moore’s plea hearing in August 2011, prosecutors said they no longer believed Moore fired the fatal shot, but maintained he was still involved in the robbery.

Teresa Ruffin said she’s not fully convinced Moore had anything to do with her son’s death. She said she wonders why Moore remained at the scene, crying for help, if he was an accomplice.

“Why wouldn’t he run too?” she said. “It was very strange.”

Ruffin, a pastor, said she feels shortchanged by the police investigation. “They handled it very sloppy,” she said. “They don’t care because it was another black person shooting another black person.”

Such criticisms are hardly unusual. Community leaders and civil rights activists cite a string of homicides involving young black men that they say are unsolved due to lackluster police work.

One crime that rankled black residents is a November 2011 shooting that killed one young man and severely injured two others. Tremaine Patrick, 31, the main suspect, surrendered the next day, reportedly out of fear of street justice. Patrick, who is black, was arrested on suspicion of murder and jailed.

The Rev. Calvin Donaldson, father of one of the men killed in the attack, said police told him several witnesses saw an armed Patrick at the scene. Another witness was prepared to testify that Patrick tried to recruit him as a getaway driver, Donaldson said. Still other witnesses had heard Patrick threaten to kill everyone in the house where the shooting occurred several days before, Donaldson said.

The lead detective, Chris Serino, wanted to press charges against Patrick, Donaldson said, but he was overruled by prosecutors in the office of State Attorney Wolfinger. Serino and state prosecutors would clash again in the Martin case, according to news accounts.

“The investigating officer wanted to levy charges on this young man, but the state attorney’s office stepped in and said no,” Donaldson said. “Just like in Trayvon.”

Patrick was held on unrelated charges for nearly a month, then freed without charges, court records show. Months passed with no action. Numerous calls to police and prosecutors went unanswered, Donaldson said.

“They had a cavalier attitude as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I think it got stuck on the back burner.”

OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS

Donaldson convened religious leaders and local activists disturbed by the lack of police and prosecutorial action on crime in Sanford’s black community. “We were very aggressive about going after the city manager, the police chief and the state’s attorney’s office because of the apathy,” Donaldson said.

Despite the pressure, there were no results — until the Trayvon Martin case exploded, he said. Police and prosecutors suddenly showed new interest in the shooting case. Last week, prosecutors filed murder and assault charges against Patrick.

“I think the heat got to them,” Donaldson said. “I think they decided that they might as well do something in one of these other cases.”

“Nothing happened on my case until Trayvon,” he said. “That’s when my phone started ringing.”

Lynn Bumpus-Hooper, a spokeswoman for the state attorney’s office, disputed that the timing of the charges was related to the Martin slaying. Prosecutors had simply been taking their time to build a strong case, she said.

“It’s not unusual, especially on a murder case, to go as far as you can go before you make the final filing,” Bumpus-Hooper said. “That is what drove the case, nothing else, according to the attorneys who are handling it.”

A string of cases involving police misconduct has also strained relations with the black community. The city fell into the national spotlight in December 2011 after video surfaced of a young white man, the son of a Sanford police supervisor, sucker-punching a homeless black man trying to break up a fight outside a bar. The victim, Sherman Ware, fell, striking his head on a metal pole, and the video shows him lying unconscious while his attacker struts and shouts in full view of dozens of onlookers. He can be heard shouting, “Nigger what? Nigger what?”

Police arrived within minutes and obtained video of the assault and sworn statements from witnesses identifying the assailant as Justin Collison, the son of a Sanford police lieutenant. Collison was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car, but was quickly freed without charges.

Tonetta Foster, Ware’s sister, said the incident reignited racial tensions.

“It’s like a railroad track runs through this place and we’re always on one side and they’re on the other,” Foster said of the town’s racial divide. “And the police, no way we can trust them after all they’ve done to us.”

An investigative report shows that Sgt. Anthony Raimondo, the ranking officer at the scene, placed two phone calls to Collison’s father within minutes of arriving, then overruled a junior officer’s decision to place Collison under arrest.

Instead of charging Collison, the officers released him and filed a request for an investigation into the incident with the state attorney’s office.

The next day, Raimondo — the first ranking officer to arrive at the Trayvon Martin shooting — defended his decision to other officers at police headquarters.

“If anybody has any issues with what happened last night, talk to me,” Raimondo said, according to the report. “But here’s my standpoint on it. I’m not in the business of putting cops’ kids in jail unless I absolutely have to.”

Collison was charged with felony assault only after the video of the attack was broadcast on local television nearly a month later. Raimondo and other officers were later cleared of misconduct, although one senior officer told investigators he believed Collison was afforded preferential treatment because of his father.

Wolfinger, the prosecutor, defended the investigation on Good Morning America.

“So I don’t think, at least from what I can tell, there’s no preferential treatment and certainly not at this office,” Wolfinger said. “I don’t see it.”

BRINGING THE LIGHT

At a town hall meeting organized by the NAACP at Sanford’s Allen Chapel AME Church in late March, men and women with signs calling for “Justice for Trayvon” filled nearly every pew. Children held up bags of Skittles and iced-tea — items Martin carried from the store the night he was killed.

About 1,000 others rallied outside the church in the city’s historic Goldsboro neighborhood, which until Sanford stripped it of its charter a century earlier, was the second all-black incorporated town in Florida.

Hundreds of others, mostly youth, broke off from the rally and marched up 13th Street to the police station to demand the chief’s resignation.

Inside the church, residents came forward one by one with tales of pain they say they suffered at the hands of Sanford police. Their complaints filled page after page of a notebook kept by Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, who’d flown in to take part in the rallies and protests scheduled for the coming days.

People talked of sons and nephews who’d been beaten by police officers. One man said he was shot with a Taser for no good reason. A woman nearly came to tears as she talked of a son who she said was beaten by guards at the city jail last year, suffered a seizure and died in his cell. Others said that their loved ones had been killed and police investigations went nowhere.

Jealous said he’d turn his notebook over to the U.S. Justice Department, hoping the agency will review other cases that may have been given little scrutiny.

“I’ll never forget. One man stood up and said, ‘If you killed a dog in this town they will put you in jail tomorrow,'” Jealous recalled. “Trayvon Martin has been dead for more than four weeks and his killer is still walking around. I think that about says it all.”

Jealous called Sanford a “deeply distressed” town with a police department that has shown “a pattern and practice of abuse and discrimination.”

But he said the spotlight offers a moment of healing and hope.

“Right now, this moment means that parents who may not have gotten justice are more likely to get justice,” Jealous said. “This moment means that a city called Sanford that was in deep crisis long before Trayvon Martin visited it, may finally get something approaching a real resolution to that crisis.”

 

Syrian Uprising: Assad’s Forces Shoot At Refugees In Turkey

KILIS, Turkey (AP) – Syrian forces fired across the border Monday into a refugee camp in Turkey, wounding at least five people as a U.N.-brokered plan to end more than a year of violence this week all but collapsed, authorities said.

Syrian activists said two people were killed, but the reports could not be immediately confirmed.

The Syrian soldiers were believed to be firing at rebels who tried to escape to the refugee camp after ambushing a military checkpoint, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing a network of sources on the ground.

SCROLL DOWN FOR LIVE UPDATES

Turkey shelters thousands of refugees who have fled Syria as the government tries to crush a revolt against President Bashar Assad. The U.N. estimates some 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since March 2011, when the uprising began.

Monday’s shooting bolstered fears that the uprising could spark a broad conflagration by sucking in neighboring countries. There have been similar cross-border attacks into Lebanon, although Monday’s shooting was believed to be the first inside Turkey.

The incident began at about before dawn on Monday when rebel fighters attacked Syrian soldiers manning a checkpoint near the Turkish border, killing six soldiers, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, a spokesman for the Observatory.

The troops then kept firing as eight wounded rebels escaped to the camp that is just across the border in Turkey, sending bullets whizzing across the frontier into the camp, he said.

According to the Observatory, the shooting wounded five people in the camp, which is next to the Oncupinar border post near the town of Kilis in Gaziantep province. The Observatory reported that two people later died of their injuries, but that could not be immediately confirmed.

The province’s governor, Yusuf Odabas, said five people were wounded: three Syrians, one Turkish translator and one Turkish policeman. The translator had entered the camp to try to help calm an anti-Assad protest, he said. The governor said Turkish military forces did not return fire.

The shooting prompted Ankara, which has been among Assad’s harshest critics, to summon the Syrian charge d’affaires and call for an immediate halt to the gunfire.

Turkey hosts some 24,000 Syrian refugees, including hundreds of army defectors, and has floated the idea of setting up a buffer zone inside Syria if the flow of displaced people across its border becomes overwhelming.

The two countries share a 911-kilometer (566-mile) border, and parts of southern Turkey near Syria are informal logistics bases for rebels, who collect food and other supplies in Turkey and deliver them to comrades inside Syria via smuggling routes.

The Syrian uprising began last year with mostly peaceful protests against the Assad regime, a family dynasty that has ruled the country for four decades. But in the face of a relentless military assault on protests, the opposition has become increasingly militarized.

Now, the uprising resembles an armed insurgency, and there are fears the country is spiraling toward civil war. International envoy Kofi Annan brokered a cease-fire that was supposed to begin Tuesday, but the plan is in tatters.

Syrian troops were meant to pull out of population centers by Tuesday morning, but the government on Sunday introduced a new demand – saying it cannot withdraw without written guarantees from opposition fighters that they will lay down their arms. Syria’s main rebel group rejected the government’s demands.

Naci Koru, Turkey’s deputy foreign minister, said the deadline for the withdrawal has become “void at this stage,” state-run TRT television reported.

Annan is scheduled to visit to one of the refugee camps in Hatay province, bordering Syria, on Tuesday afternoon, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said. Annan’s office confirmed the trip to Turkey.

“Annan’s one-hour visit to Hatay tomorrow is critical, he will see the situation himself,” the TRT quoted Koru as saying on Monday.

Annan has been on a serious diplomatic push to rally support for his cease-fire deal. The international community, which so far is unwilling to contemplate military intervention, has had little leverage over Syria.

But Iran, Russia and China have been Assad’s strongest supporters. Annan already has traveled to Russia and China, and he was expected in Tehran on Tuesday.

On Monday, Russia was hosting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem.

It is not clear whether Moscow will try to pressure Syria to comply with the cease-fire plan, though Russia said Monday it may send its observers to Syria as part of a potential U.N. monitoring mission.

Also Monday, Human Rights Watch said it has documented the killings by Syrian forces of 85 civilians, including women and children, and the summary executions of at least 16 wounded or captured opposition fighters.

“In a desperate attempt to crush the uprising, Syrian forces have executed people in cold blood, civilians and opposition fighters alike,” said Ole Solvang, a researcher for the group. “They are doing it in broad daylight and in front of witnesses, evidently not concerned about any accountability for their crimes.”

The New York-based group said it only included cases corroborated by witnesses, but has received many more reports of similar incidents.

The group said it documented several cases of mass executions in March in the cities of Homs and Idlib, two centers of the uprising. This includes the killing of 13 people in an Idlib mosque, the executions of 25 men in a raid of the Sultaniya neighborhood of Homs, and the killing of 47 people, mainly women and children, in three other areas of Homs, the group said.

Two witnesses describing the March 11 killings in Idlib said the city’s Bilal mosque had been used as an initial collection point for those killed and wounded in an army raid. When relatives came to identify the dead, several were led by soldiers out of the mosque, blindfolded and lined up against a wall. More than a dozen soldiers opened fire, killing at least 13 people, the witnesses said.

The Syrian government typically does not comment on such reports.

The allegations came as opposition activists reported that Syrian forces pressed ahead with raids and shelling attacks on the towns of Tel Rifaat in the northwest and Muhassan in the east of the country Monday.

 

Doctor pleads not guilty to bogus prescriptions

NEWPORT BEACH – A physician pleaded not guilty Monday to 20 felony charges of writing amphetamine prescriptions for a girlfriend and a former girlfriend so he could use the drugs himself.

Dr. Brian Michael Swan, 42, is scheduled for a May 7 pretrial before Judge Karen L. Robinson at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach on charges that could yield a maximum prison sentence of 11 years and 8 months if he is convicted, Orange County Deputy District Attorney Nicole Varner said.

Swan’s Irvine-based attorney, Dyke Huish, was not immediately available for comment. Huish previously told City News Service that Swan has a “personal Adderall problem” and that he voluntarily put his medical license on temporary suspension as he seeks treatment for his addiction.

Adderall, an amphetamine salt-based medication used for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and narcolepsy, is rated as having a high potential for abuse by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration.

“He has an exceptional reputation with his clients and has never put any of his patients into a dangerous situation,” Huish told City News Service, adding that Swan has a legitimate prescription for Adderall from his doctor.

Swan, who lives in Irvine and whose main practice is in Anaheim, is board certified in internal medicine and family practice.

He first was charged in January with five felony counts of second-degree commercial burglary and unauthorized use of personal information involving his former girlfriend — charges that were folded into the new case that was refiled Monday, Vardner said.

According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and Irvine police, Swan began fraudulently writing the prescriptions around April 2011, when he and his then-live-in girlfriend broke up and she moved out.

On five occasions through Oct. 13, 2001, Swan allegedly wrote 22 Adderall prescriptions in the woman’s name without her knowledge at Sav-On and Target pharmacies, authorities say.

On Oct. 13, a Target store pharmacist confronted Swan after the prescription was denied by the woman’s insurance. The pharmacist contacted the woman, who said she did not know about or consent to the prescription.

When confronted, Swan allegedly presented his ex-girlfriend’s driver’s license to the pharmacist and fled, according to a news release issued by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

The Irvine Police Department investigated and learned of a second woman Swan began dating in September 2011 who later moved in with him.

Between October and January 2012, authorities say Swan wrote nine prescriptions in that woman’s name for drugs including Adderall, amphetamine salts and Vyvanse. The woman used some of the medications, but Swan allegedly prescribed extra for himself.

In the case involving his ex-girlfriend, Swan was charged Jan. 18 with five felonies. Fifteen more felony charges involving the second woman — his current girlfriend — were added to the case Monday.

Swan graduated from the University of Arizona College of Medicine in 2000, and his California medical license was issued in July 2004, according to public records.

He is chief medical officer of Prospice Physical Medical Centers, an Anaheim practice that specializes in the treatment of work-related and other injuries.

Swan remains free on $25,000 bail.

Register News Intern Sean Greene and City News Service contributed to this story.

 

Fullerton police seek help in attempted kidnapping

FULLERTON – Police are asking for the public’s help to find two men who tried to force a 19-year-old woman into a car Friday afternoon.

The incident occurred Friday at about noon, police said, along an alley of 100 W. Valencia Drive.

According to a statement released by police, the woman told officers she saw a small black car drive into the alley and park behind her.

The told police she was then grabbed from behind and dragged toward the car by one man, while another stayed in the driver’s seat.

The victim was able to free herself with the help of two people who were in the area, the statement read.

The man who grabbed the woman was described as being in his 20s.

Anyone with information on the incident is asked to contact Detective Magliano at 714-738-6753.

 

Driver faces charges in I-10 death of cycle racing champ’s son

A man accused of killing the son of a prominent Orange County racing family while driving drunk is scheduled to enter a plea Monday to charges that include manslaughter.

Tatsuhiko Sakamoto, 37, of Arcadia, drove through traffic cones and slammed into a roadwork crew on the I-10 freeway in Baldwin Park last week, according to the California Highway Patrol. The crash killed 21-year-old Connor Penhall of Corona, who was operating a concrete saw as a member of the crew.

Penhall’s father, Bruce, was a champion motorcycle rider who later joined the cast of “CHiPs” on television, portraying Officer Bruce Nelson. The Penhall family came to Orange County in the 1800s and founded Anaheim-based Penhall Co., which now claims to be the nation’s largest concrete-demolition company. The company was later sold.

Connor Penhall raced motocross and competed with his older brother Ryan in the Baja desert races. He won the motorcycle championship in 2007, according to Score International, the organization that sanctions the Baja 1000.

Sakamoto has been charged with gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in connection with Connor Penhall’s death. He has also been charged with driving with a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level causing injury and a special allegation of causing great bodily injury.

He was being held in lieu of $200,000 bail. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in state prison, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

 

Most Wanted: Robber said he had pipe bomb

SEAL BEACH – FBI and local police are looking for a bank robber who used what he claimed was a pipe bomb during a robbery Friday afternoon, authorities said.

The robber showed bank employees a handgun inside the U.S. Bank, officials said, then placed what appeared to be a pipe bomb on a desk as he demanded cash, according to a statement released by the Seal Beach Police Department.

The robbery occurred at about 3:40 p.m. at 13900 Seal Beach Blvd. in the Leisure World Shopping Center.

The man was described as 25 to 35 years old, having a thin build and wearing a beige baseball cap and a plaid jacket.

The man took an undisclosed amount of cash, grabbed the alleged pipe bomb from the table and was seen running in the parking lot of the bank, according to the statement.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Gary Krogman at 562-799-4100, ext. 1108, or gkrogman@sealbeachca.gov.

The bank robber is the latest to be added to The Orange County Register’s list of wanted suspects.

Updastes on the suspects will be reported. Rewards, if any, are mentioned.

Click on the first picture to scroll through the lineup. We will report on any updates.

Anyone with information on the suspects can also submit tips by calling 855-TIP-OCCS or 855-847-6277. Tips can also be submitted online at occrimestoppers.org.

 

Woman seeking 12-ounce beer beats store clerk

A woman is being held on suspicion of attempted murder after she allegedly beat a store clerk for not selling her a single 12-ounce beer, according to police.

About 1:15 p.m. Sunday, 46-year-old Teresa Aguayo tried to buy a single 12-ounce beer at the California Stop convenience store at 600 W. 19th Street in Costa Mesa, an item the store doesn’t sell individually, Costa Mesa police Sergeant Bryan Wadkins said.

“[Aguayo] became enraged by this,” Wadkins said.

Police said Aguayo beat the clerk over the head with the bottle multiple times, took a blanket the clerk had behind the counter and tried to strangle her with it. She grabbed items within arms reach of the counter – rubbing alcohol, acetone and Raid bug spray – and began rubbing them in the clerk’s face, according to the police.

Police, responding to a 911 call from the store, found the two at the scene and arrested Aguayo on suspicion of attempted murder.

Police had no detail on the condition of the clerk who is being treated at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach and is being kept for evaluation.

 

Charles Manson photo at 77 released

A new photo of convicted killer Charles Manson was released Thursday as the 77-year-old man has a parole hearing this month.

At the request of CNN, the California Department of Corrections released a new photo of Manson showing gray hair, beard and mustache along with his swastika-tattooed forehead.

“He looks a lot different,” department of corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton told CNN.

MORE PHOTOS »

April 11, Manson will be up for his 12th attempt at parole. An appearance is not expected, as the last time Manson appeared at a parole hearing was 15 years ago.

On Jan. 25, 1971, Charles Manson and three female members of his notorious “Manson Family” were convicted of the grisly slaying of seven people at random across two nights in the summer of 1969. The passage of more than four decades hasn’t dampened fascination with the murders, which prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi called the most bizarre in American history.

 

Pendleton Marine to argue free speech case

CAMP PENDLETON – A Marine facing dismissal for running a Facebook page criticizing the Obama administration is now backed by a team of lawyers and federal congressmen as he fights to stay in the military and test its age-old policy of limiting the free speech of service members.

Sgt. Gary Stein will appear before a military board at Camp Pendleton on Thursday to argue his case.

MORE PHOTOS »

The 26-year-old Marine has been rallying for support since he was notified last month that the military was moving to discharge him after determining he was in violation of the Pentagon policy barring service members from engaging in political activities.

Stein’s lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union say his views are protected by the First Amendment.

“The military may be different from the civilian world, but it’s not exempt from the First Amendment,” said David Loy, legal director for the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties. “Sgt. Stein didn’t say anything for which the Marine Corps has any right to punish him. He did not threaten order or discipline or take positions that anyone would attribute to the Corps. Indeed, the Corps is threatening loyalty and morale by persecuting a good Marine for exercising his free speech rights.”

The nine-year member of the Marine Corps says he started a Facebook page called Armed Forces Tea Party to encourage fellow service members to exercise their free speech rights.

The Marine Corps has said that it decided to take administrative action after Stein declared on Facebook that he would not follow unlawful orders from Obama.

California federal Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, a former Marine, wrote a letter to Stein’s commanding officer stating the sergeant should not face dismissal for an opinion shared by “a majority of Marines.” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, also has expressed support for Stein.

Stein said his statement about Obama was part of an online debate about NATO allowing U.S. troops to be tried for the Quran burnings in Afghanistan. In that context, he said, he was stating that he would not follow orders from the president if those orders included detaining U.S. citizens, disarming them or doing anything else that he believes would violate their constitutional rights.

The military has had a policy since the Civil War limiting the free speech of service members, including criticizing the commander in chief. Military law experts have said he may have crossed the line.

According to Pentagon directives, military personnel in uniform cannot sponsor a political club; participate in any TV or radio program or group discussion that advocates for or against a political party, candidate or cause; or speak at any event promoting a political movement. Commissioned officers also may not use contemptuous words against senior officials, including the defense secretary or the president.

Stein said in addition to being discharged, he would have his rank reduced to lance corporal if he is proven to be in violation. He said he was removed from his job at the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot in San Diego on Wednesday and given a desk job with no access to computers.

Stein’s lawyers asked a federal judge Wednesday to impose an injunction to block the military’s discharge hearing so they could have more time to prepare their case.

The judge denied the request.