Sunday, April 12, 2020

TODAY IN CRIME: April 6, Part two


1970: Two heavily armed criminals shot and killed two CHP officers in Newhall, California during a traffic stop. Two more officers arrived and were gunned down, also. Gunman Bobby Davis fled the scene and was soon arrested. Jack Twinning broke into a house and held an occupant hostage; when deputies surrounded the building, he released the hostage and killed himself.

1975: Denise Oliverson, 24, disappeared from Grand Junction, Colorado. Railroad employees found her bike and shoes under a viaduct the next day but she was never seen again. According to witnesses, just minutes before his execution in 1989 Ted Bundy confessed to murdering her and throwing her body in the Colorado River.

1979: Police in Kathmandu beat and arrested a group of several hundred students gathered to file a protest against the April 4th execution of former Pakistani Prime Minister ZA Bhutto. Student unrest over the next month turned into a countrywide rebellion that led to a national referendum on the party system in Nepal.

1987: Wall Street investment banker Dennis Levine began a two-year jail term for insider trading. His offense warranted a sentence of 5-10 years, but, as the district court judge said, "Through the information he provided, a nest of vipers on Wall Street has been exposed," including Ivan Boesky and Martin Siegel.

1991: Police arrested former child actor Adam Rich (Eight is Enough) for breaking into a Los Angeles pharmacy to steal morphine.

1992: In a rare vote against prosecutors, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that postal agents entrapped Nebraska farmer Keith Jacobson into buying mail-order child pornography.

1994: Surface-to-air missiles shot down a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, abruptly ending peace negotiations and sparking the Rwandan Genocide. Those responsible for the attack have never been identified.

1994: A Manhattan court sentenced Chuck Jones, former public relations aide to Marla Maples Trump, to 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 years in prison for burglarizing the beauty queen's apartment and stealing 70 pairs of her high heels, cowboy boots, slippers, and high-top sneakers in 1992. Police found the footwear stashed under a radiator cover in his office, soiled and ruined. The two had a falling-out over her relationship with real estate mogul Donald Trump, who was married at the time to Ivana.

1998: 24 country music artists filed a trademark infringement and right-of-publicity lawsuit against California businessman Jim Salmon for registering the domain names of the plaintiffs, who included Alan Jackson, Trace Adkins, Bryan White, and Vince Gill. Users were directed to a pornographic website. The artists won the suit in 2003.

2008: Textile workers in Egypt led a general strike protesting low wages and rising food costs. Strikes are illegal in Egypt. Police used tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition against the striking workers and other protesters and killed two. The April 6 Youth Movement formed in the wake of the uprisings eventually sparked the 2011 revolution which brought down the Mubarak regime.

2010: Insurgents from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) attacked officers of the Central Reserve Police Force on an exercise in Dantewada district, a remote part of Central India, killing 76.

2011: Mexican authorities exhumed 59 corpses, victims of the Los Zetas drug cartel, from eight clandestine mass graves in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico. By June 7 they had exhumed 193. Most were migrant workers.

2013: In an early morning raid, radical Islamic extremists attacked the village of Midlu, Nigeria, including the home of the deputy governor, killing 11 with guns and machetes. The raiders went house to house, calling out people by name and then shooting them or slashing their throats. Boko Haram, the primary extremist network, has been launching attacks since 2009.

2016: In an attempt to slow down sex trafficking, France passed legislation creating fines for people who pay for sex, moving the punishment from the sex worker to the client. A first offense warrants a 1,500-euro fine and subsequent offenses up to 3,750 euros. Offenders may also have to attend a prostitution awareness course.

2018: A bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos, a junior ice hockey team from Humboldt, Canada, collided with a semi-truck in Saskatchewan, killing 16 people and injuring 13 others after the driver of the semi-trailer failed to yield at a flashing stop sign. Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, 29, an inexperienced truck driver, pled guilty to 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm, receiving eight years in prison. The owner of the trucking company also faced eight counts of failing to comply with various safety and log-keeping regulations. A GoFundMe campaign for the young victims and their families raised C$15million, a record amount for Canada.

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