Television footage shows flattened buildings and fires after a mile-wide tornado moved through the Oklahoma City area.
Video showed homes and buildings in Moore, Okla., were reduced to rubble, and vehicles littered roadways south and southwest of Oklahoma City.
...
The suburb of Moore, where Monday's damage was concentrated, was hit hard by a tornado in 1999 that included the highest winds ever recorded near the earth's surface.
The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, a community of 41,000 people about 10 miles south of the city. Block after block lay in ruins. Homes were crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.
Plaza Towers Elementary School was flattened by the storm and Briarwood Elementary School was also reportedly severely hit. It is unclear at this time how many people were at the schools when the damage occurred, but search and rescue efforts are underway.
"Apparently some kids were being sheltered there [at Plaza Towers]," local TV station KFOR reported during its live coverage of the tornado. The local news outlet laterconfirmed that children were being pulled from debris at the Plaza Towers site.
At least one tornado touched down near Oklahoma City Monday, leaving behind a wake of destruction. The twister hit only one day after a similar tornado killed two in Shawnee.
MOORE, Okla., May 20 (Reuters) - A 2-mile-wide (3-km-wide) tornado tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday, killing at least 51 people while destroying entire tracts of homes, piling cars atop one another, and trapping two dozen school children beneath rubble.
Twenty of the 51 confirmed deaths were children, the Oklahoma medical examiner said, and at least 45 of the 230 people injured were children, according to area hospitals. It was the deadliest U.S. tornado since one killed 161 people in Joplin, Missouri, two years ago.
President Barack Obama declared a major disaster area in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local efforts.
Rescue teams raced against the setting sun and worked into the darkness in search of survivors throughout the wide swath of devastation, while the dangerous storm system threatened several southern Plains states with more twisters. Severe weather was expected through the night from the Great Lakes south to Texas.
Emergency crews searched the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary School for two dozen missing children, Oklahoma Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb said. The school took a direct hit from the tornado, Lamb told CNN.
The town of Moore, population about 50,000, was devastated with debris everywhere, street signs gone, lights out and houses completely obliterated.
Another elementary school and a hospital were among the buildings leveled.
"We thought we died because we were inside the cellar door...It ripped open the door and just glass and debris started slamming on us and we thought we were dead to be honest," survivor Ricky Stover said while surveying the devastated remains of his home.
Cyndi Christopher was at work and went to pick up her son from daycare when she heard the storm warning. After taking her son home, she was forced to flee when she noticed the storm was coming their way.
"I drove as fast as I could and I outran the storm," Christopher said.
The National Weather Service assigned the twister a preliminary ranking of EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, meaning the second most powerful category of tornado with winds up to 200 miles per hour (320 km per hour).
Witnesses said Monday's tornado appeared more fierce than the giant twister that was among the dozens that tore up the area on May 3, 1999, killing more than 40 people and destroying thousands of homes. That tornado ranked as an EF5, meaning it had winds over 200 mph.
The 1999 event in Oklahoma ranks as the third-costliest tornado in U.S. history, having caused more than $1 billion in damage at the time, or more than $1.3 billion in today's dollars. Only the devastating Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes in 2011 were more costly.
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center provided the town with a warning 16 minutes before the tornado touched down at 3:01 p.m. local time (2001 GMT), which is greater than the average eight to 10 minutes of warning, said Keli Pirtle, a spokeswoman for the center in Norman, Oklahoma.
The notice was upgraded to emergency warning with "heightened language" at 2:56 p.m., or five minutes before the tornado touched down, Pirtle said.
Television media measured the tornado at more than 2 miles wide, with images showing entire neighborhoods flattened.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed a temporary flight restriction that allowed only relief aircraft in the area, saying it was at the request of local police who wanted quiet to search for buried survivors.
Oklahoma activated the National Guard, and the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency activated teams to supp
ort recovery operations and coordinate responses for multiple agencies.
SCHOOL IN TWISTER'S PATH
Briarwood Elementary School, which also stood in the storm's path, was all but destroyed. On the first floor, sections of walls had been peeled away, affording clear views into the building, while in other areas, cars hurled by the storm winds were lodged in the walls.
Across the street, people picked through the remains of their homes.
The number of injured as reported by several hospitals rose rapidly throughout the afternoon.
Oklahoma University Medical Center alone was treating 65 patients, 45 of them children, though it was no longer expecting a further mass influx of casualties, spokesman Scott Coppenbarger said.
Moore Medical Center sustained significant damage.
"The whole city looks like a debris field," Glenn Lewis, the mayor of Moore, told NBC.
"It looks like we have lost our hospital. I drove by there a while ago and it's pretty much destroyed," Lewis said.
The massive twister struck at the height of tornado season, and more were forecast. On Sunday, tornadoes killed two people and injured 39 in Oklahoma. (Additional reporting by Lindsay Morris, Carey Gillam, Nick Carey, Brendan O'Brien and Greg McCune; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Jim Loney and Lisa Shumaker)
BELIZE CITY -- A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.
The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.
"It's a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity ... they were using this for road fill," Awe said. "It's like being punched in the stomach, it's just so horrendous."
Nohmul sat in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field, and lacked the even stone sides frequently seen in reconstructed or better-preserved pyramids. But Awe said the builders could not possibly have mistaken the pyramid mound, which is about 100 feet tall, for a natural hill because the ruins were well-known and the landscape there is naturally flat.
"These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It's just bloody laziness", Awe said.
Photos from the scene showed backhoes clawing away at the pyramid's sloping sides, leaving an isolated core of limestone cobbles at the center, with what appears to be a narrow Mayan chamber dangling above one clawed-out section.
Belizean police said they are conducting an investigation and criminal charges are possible. The Nohmul complex sits on private land, but Belizean law says that any pre-Hispanic ruins are under government protection."Just to realize that the ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these buildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the stone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump lines," said Awe. "To think that today we have modern equipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but that this company would completely disregard that and completely destroyed this building. Why can't these people just go and quarry somewhere that has no cultural significance? It's mind-boggling."
The Belize community-action group Citizens Organized for Liberty Through Action called the destruction of the archaeological site "an obscene example of disrespect for the environment and history."
It is not the first time it's happened in Belize, a country of about 350,000 people that is largely covered in jungle and dotted with hundreds of Mayan ruin sites, though few as large as Nohmul.
Norman Hammond, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Boston University who worked in Belizean research projects in the 1980s, wrote in an email that "bulldozing Maya mounds for road fill is an endemic problem in Belize (the whole of the San Estevan center has gone, both of the major pyramids at Louisville, other structures at Nohmul, many smaller sites), but this sounds like the biggest yet."
Arlen Chase, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida, said, "Archaeologists are disturbed when such things occur, but there is only a very limited infrastructure in Belize that can be applied to cultural heritage management."
"Unfortunately, they (destruction of sites) are all too common, but not usually in the center of a large Maya site," Chase wrote.
He said there had probably still been much to learn from the site. "A great deal of archaeology was undertaken at Nohmul in the `70s and `80s, but this only sampled a small part of this large center."
Belize isn't the only place where the handiwork of the far-flung and enormously prolific Maya builders is being destroyed. The ancient Mayas spread across southeastern Mexico and through Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.
"I don't think I am exaggerating if I say that every day a Maya mound is being destroyed for construction in one of the countries where the Maya lived," wrote Francisco Estrada-Belli, a professor at Tulane University's Anthropology Department.
"Unfortunately, this destruction of our heritage is irreversible but many don't take it seriously," he added. "The only way to stop it is by showing that it is a major crime and people can and will go to jail for it."
Robert Rosenswig, an archaeologist at the State University of New York at Albany, described the difficult and heartbreaking work of trying to salvage information at the nearby site of San Estevan following similar destruction around 2005.
"Bulldozing damage at San Estevan is extensive and the site is littered with Classic period potsherds," he wrote in an academic paper describing the scene. "We spent a number of days at the beginning of the 2005 season trying to figure out the extent of the damage .... after scratching our heads for many days, a bulldozer showed up and we realized that what appear to be mounds, when overgrown with chest-high vegetation, are actually recently bulldozed garbage piles."
However small the compensation, bulldozing pyramids is one very brutal way of revealing the inner cores of the structures, which were often built up in periodic stages of construction.
"The one advantage of this massive destruction, to the core site, is that the remains of early domestic activity are now visible on the surface," Rosenswig wrote.
NEW ORLEANS — Police late Monday identified a 19-year-old man as a suspect in the shooting of about 20 people during a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans, saying several people had identified him as the gunman captured by surveillance camera videos.
Superintendent Ronal Serpas said officers were looking for Akein Scott of New Orleans. He said it was too early to say whether he was the only shooter.
"We would like to remind the community and Akein Scott that the time has come for him to turn himself in," Serpas said at a news conference outside of police headquarters.
A photo of Scott hung from a podium in front of the police chief. "We know more about you than you think we know," he said.
The mass shooting showed again how far the city has to go to shake a persistent culture of violence that belies the city's festive image. Earlier, police announced a $10,000 reward and released blurry surveillance camera images, which led to several tips from the community.
"The people today chose to be on the side of the young innocent children who were shot and not on the side of a coward who shot into the crowd," Serpas said.
The superintendent said SWAT team members and U.S. marshals served a searched warrant at one location looking for Scott, and also visited two other blocks of interest.
He vowed that police would be "looking for Akein Scott for the rest of the night and tomorrow... and I would strongly recommend that Akeim turn himself in."
Angry residents said gun violence – which has flared at two other city celebrations this year – goes hand-in-hand with the city's other deeply rooted problems such as poverty and urban blight. The investigators tasked with solving Sunday's shooting work within an agency that's had its own troubles rebounding from years of corruption while trying to halt violent crime.
"The youngsters are doing all this," said Jones, who was away from home when the latest shooting broke out."The old people are scared to walk the streets. The children can't even play outside," Ronald Lewis, 61, said Monday as he sat on the front stoop of his house, about a half block from the shooting site. His window sill has a hole from a bullet that hit it last year. Across the street sits a house marked by bullets that he said were fired two weeks ago.
Video released early Monday shows a crowd gathered for a boisterous second-line parade suddenly scattering in all directions, with some falling to the ground. They appear to be running from a man in a white T-shirt and dark pants who turns and runs out of the picture.
Police were working to determine whether there was more than one gunman, though they initially said three people were spotted fleeing from the scene. Whoever was responsible escaped despite the presence of officers who were interspersed through the crowd as part of routine precautions for such an event.
Serpas said Scott has previously been arrested for resisting arrest, possession of a firearm and narcotics charges, with a recent arrest in March. It was not immediately clear whether he had been convicted on any of those charges.
"Akeim is no stranger to the criminal justice system," Serpas said.
Serpas said that ballistic evidence gathered at the scene was giving them "very good leads to work on."
Witness Jarrat Pytell said he was walking with friends near the parade route when the crowd suddenly began to break up.
"I saw the guy on the corner, his arm extended, firing into the crowd," said Pytell, a medical student.
"He was obviously pointing in a specific direction; he wasn't swinging the gun wildly," Pytell said.
Pytell said he tended to one woman with a severe arm fracture – he wasn't sure if it was from a bullet or a fall – and to others including an apparent shooting victim who was bleeding badly.
Three gunshot victims remained in critical condition Monday, though their wounds didn't appear to be life-threatening. Most of the wounded had been released from the hospital.
It's not the first time gunfire has shattered a festive mood in the city this year. Five people were wounded in a drive-by shooting in January after a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, and four were wounded in a shooting after an argument in the French Quarter in the days leading up to Mardi Gras. Two teens were arrested in connection with the MLK Day shootings; three men were arrested and charged in the Mardi Gras shootings.
The shootings are bloody reminders of the persistence of violence in the city, despite some recent progress.
Last week, law enforcement officials touted the indictment of 15 people in gang-related crimes, including the death of a 5-year-old girl killed by stray gunfire at a birthday party a year ago.
The city's 193 homicides in 2012 are seven fewer than the previous year, while the first three months of 2013 represented an even slower pace of killing.
On Monday night, 100 to 150 people gathered for a unity rally and peace vigil in the wake of Sunday's shootings. Some residents stood in their doorways or on their steps. At one point, trumpeter Kenneth Terry played, "O For a Closer Walk With Thee."
Robin Bevins, president of the ladies group of the Original Four Social Aid and Pleasure Club, said she and members of her organization came to the rally to show solidarity.
"This code of silence has to end," said Bevins, who's also a member of the city's Social Aid Task Force. "If we stand up and speak out, maybe this kind of thing will stop."
Amy Storper, who lives in a neighborhood near where the shooting happened, brought her 7-year-old son William to the rally.
"I felt the need to come out and show my support, to let people in this neighborhood know that people care," she said. "Perhaps if the whole city showed up, all 300,000, then maybe we can make a difference."
Mayor Mitch Landrieu walked into the area, greeting people, shaking hands and stopping to talk with some residents before addressing the crowd.
"We came back out here as a community to stand on what we call sacred ground," Landrieu said. "We came here to reclaim this spot. This shooting doesn't reflect who we are as a community or what we're about."
Leading efforts to lower the homicide rate is a police force that's faced its own internal problems and staffing issues. At about 1,200 members, the department is 300 short of its peak level.
Serpas, the chief since 2010, has been working to overcome the effects of decades of scandal and community mistrust arising from what the U.S. Justice Department says has been questionable use of force and biased policing. Landrieu and Serpas have instituted numerous reforms, but the city is at odds with the Justice Department over the cost and scope of more extensive changes.
Landrieu's administration initially agreed to a reform plan expected to cost tens of millions over the next several years. But Landrieu says he wants out now because Justice lawyers entered a separate agreement with Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman over the violent and unsanitary New Orleans jail – funded by the city but operated by Gusman.
The site of the Sunday shooting – about 1.5 miles from the heart of the French Quarter – showcases other problems facing the city. Stubborn poverty and blight are evident in the area of middle-class and low-income homes. Like other areas hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the area has been slower to repopulate than wealthier areas. And Landrieu's stepped up efforts to demolish or renovate blighted properties – a pre-Katrina problem made worse by the storm – remain too slow for some.
Frank Jones, 71, whose house is a few doors down from the shooting site, said the house across from him has been abandoned since Katrina. Squatters and drug dealers sometimes take shelter there, he said.
A city code inspector, who declined to be interviewed, was there Monday
"It's too late," Jones said. "Should have fixed it from the very beginning. A lot of people are getting fed up with the system."
CLEVELAND -- A man charged with holding three women captive for about a decade had been accused of threatening his neighbors, attacking his common-law wife and committing violations during his career as a school bus driver, according to records released Monday.
The Cleveland police reports correspond with accounts provided by relatives of suspect Ariel Castro last week that portrayed a man prone to violent outbursts, especially when it came to the mother of his children and incursions onto his property.
Castro, 52, is charged with kidnapping and rape, but prosecutors expect to file more charges. The three women whom he is accused of holding captive disappeared between August 2002 and April 2004. They were rescued last week when one of them escaped the home.
The records released Monday were produced by police officers investigating complaints against Castro. They do not track what happened to the complaints after they were taken.
Several of Castro's relatives and acquaintances have said allegations of violence are at odds with the man they knew, whom they described as polite, a "cool" bass player and a "sweet, happy person."
A veteran defense attorney now representing Castro, Craig Weintraub, did not respond to phone and email messages Monday seeking comment on the current and prior allegations. A public defender had represented Castro at his initial court appearance but said she couldn't speak to his guilt or innocence.
SEPT. 30, 1989:
Grimilda Figueroa called police and reported that Castro, her "common-law husband of nine years," attacked her after she asked him where he was going with one of his brothers. After slapping Figueroa several times, "he then grabbed her and slammed her several times against the wall and several times against the washing machine," according to the report.
Figueroa, who died of cancer last year, was treated at a hospital for a bruised right shoulder, the report said. She told police she had been assaulted by Castro several other times but didn't report it.
___Figueroa was referred to the prosecutor's office, according to the report. There is no court record of any charge having been filed.
MARCH 10, 1993:
Two parents tried to board Castro's school bus because their son had been getting assaulted, records show.
The parents told police they had begun accompanying him to the bus stop in the morning. On that day, "another such incident occurred in their presence," the report said.
"At which time, they got on the bus to stop it. However were shoved by the driver," the report said. Castro claimed that the parent shoved him back into his seat.
There were no injuries reported, according to the report, which said the case was turned over to the Cleveland city schools. There's no court record of any charges.
___
DEC. 26, 1993:
Figueroa again reported Castro, telling police he threw her to the ground, hit her about the head and face and kicked her body. Her son then fled out the front door and Castro chased him, according to the report, which said Figueroa locked the door and Castro couldn't get back in. He ran away when police arrived, and was chased by officers through a neighboring yard and arrested, the report said.
Figueroa told police that she had brain surgery a month before the attack and was prone to seizures, but then refused medical attention.
Although Figueroa told police the next day she didn't want to pursue charges, a city prosecutor filed charges of domestic violence and disorderly conduct. Records show Castro pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on Dec. 28; a grand jury declined to charge him with domestic violence, county records show.
___
NOV. 29, 1994:
A man was checking on rental property near Castro's house and noticed his chain-link fence was missing, according to the records. He went to Castro's home to inquire about it, and Castro became upset, the report said. Castro picked up a shovel and attempted to hit the man with it, then told him that "he was going to take care of him," according to the report.
The incident was referred to prosecutors, the report said, but there is no record of charges being filed.
___
MAY 16, 1996
A man who relatives have described as Figueroa's boyfriend after she left Castro was dropping her children off at school when, the man said, Castro pulled up behind him and threatened him.
Castro drove off after the man tried to get out of his car and talk to him, the man told police, adding: "He believes that named suspect would have ran him over if he did not get out of his way."
The situation, described as "an ongoing problem," was referred to prosecutors. There is no record of any charges.
___
AUG. 17, 1996
In a 1996 report, a woman who described Castro as her ex-neighbor told police he pulled in front of her driveway and screamed a threat before driving away.
Police referred the woman to prosecutors; there is no record of charges.
___
JAN. 26, 2004
Castro was arrested for abduction and child endangerment after he drove around town with a child on the bus, according to a police report.
The report says Castro told the boy, "Lay down b----," then went inside a fast-food restaurant and ate lunch, leaving the child alone on the bus. Afterward, he drove around for a while and parked the vehicle at a bus parking lot. It wasn't until about 2 p.m. that he returned the child to his home, the report said.
The child was examined at MetroHealth Hospital and released.
Castro told police he noticed the boy in his seat and took the child home after consulting with the teacher by phone, the report said.
The Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services investigated the complaint of child abuse and neglect and found it to be "unsubstantiated."
The police investigation showed there was no criminal intent in the abandoned child case, city Safety Director Martin Flask has said. Police went to Castro's home to question him, but no one came to the door, Flask said. They later interviewed Castro elsewhere, authorities have said.
In a letter dated Oct. 9, 2012, the school district's transportation director, Ann Carlson, recommended that Castro be terminated because he left his bus unattended for four hours the month before.
"Mr. Castro's explanation was that his preschool route was cancelled that day and since he only lives two blocks away, he went home," the letter said.
Actress Angelina Jolie has undergone a preventive double mastectomy, she revealed Tuesday in The New York Times.
She wrote an opinion piece, titled "My Medical Choice," explaining that she underwent the breast removal procedure because she has a mutated BRCA1 gene known to raise a woman's risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes work in the body to keep DNA stable and to make sure cells don't grow out of control, according to the National Cancer Institute. But certainmutations of these genes can dramatically raise cancer risk.
My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.
Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.
Jolie began the process on Feb. 2, when she underwent a "nipple delay" procedure to make sure there is no breast cancer behind the nipple. She completed all the mastectomy procedures on April 27, including breast reconstruction with an implant, she wrote.
"I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy," she wrote. "But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer."
CNN recently reported on a study showing that preventive mastectomy, also known as prophylactic mastectomy, is more common in the United States than in other countries.The type of mastectomy a person undergoes depends on each individual case. Nipple-sparing mastectomy only involves surgical removal of breast tissue -- not the nipple or areola -- while skin-sparing mastectomy involves removal of all the breast except for the breast skin, according to the Mayo Clinic. A simple mastectomy involves surgical removal of the whole breast, while a modified radical mastectomy involves surgical removal of the whole breast in addition to the chest muscle lining, underarm lymph nodes and sometimes a part of the chest wall.
However, the same study showed that many American women get the procedure toprevent cancer recurrence, even though it may not be necessary because of their breast cancer types, AnnArbor.com reported. The procedure is recommended for people like Jolie -- those with a known genetic risk because they possess the BRCA1 or BRCA2, or have a strong family history of the disease, NPR reported.
Earlier this year, 24-year-old Miss America contestantAllyn Rose, announced she was undergoing a preventive mastectomy because she has a strong family history of breast cancer (her mother has the disease).
LAKE MILLE LACS, Minn. (AP) — Strong winds have pushed huge ice sheets ashore at a northern Minnesota lake and right up to people's doorsteps.
WCCO-TV reports that the ice from Lake Mille Lacs (MILL LAX) reached the doors and windows at the Izatys (eye-ZEHT'-ees) Resort on Saturday morning.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Shawn Devinny says 30 to 40 mile an hour winds pushed the water into the ice, driving it ashore. He says the winds were lighter Sunday and the shoreline got a reprieve.
The Department of Natural Resources says about 10 miles of shoreline are covered, with some reaching up to 30 feet high.
VALLEY SPRINGS, Calif. — Investigators searching for evidence in the stabbing death of an 8-year-old girl were looking Friday at several knives taken from her home to determine if one could have inflicted the fatal wounds.
Sgt. Chris Hewitt of the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office said investigators had taken "several knives from the home," but he would say little else about them.
"We don't want to put too many details out there that could taint our interviews," Hewitt said.
Victim Leila Fowler shared the home with her father, stepmother, 12-year-old brother and two older siblings. Family members are being questioned at this point only as witnesses, he said.
The 12-year-old discovered Fowler's body a week ago while the parents were at a Little League game. He said he saw the assailant and described him as being tall with long gray hair.
A witness who said she also saw the man flee has since recanted and is no longer credible, Hewitt said.
"It's a mystery. She never gave any indication she recanted because she was in fear of her safety," he said.
Hewitt said that while meeting with a sketch artist and detectives Wednesday, the unidentified witness, who was reported to be a neighbor, refused to provide a description so a composite sketch could be made of the man.
Her account had been considered significant to identifying Leila's killer because her earlier descriptions had matched the one provided by the brother. The witness, however, reported seeing the suspect headed in the opposite direction than the brother had reported.
FBI agents are now assisting with the investigation. They said they hope the brother's description of the assailant will provide more leads."Though this may seem like a setback in the investigation, it is actually a positive result in that it allows the investigators to narrow the scope of their investigation," Hewitt said of the witness' statements turning out to be unreliable.
"This investigation is hour by hour, day by day. We could get a huge break. We just don't know," Hewitt said.
Investigators have found no link between the attempted kidnapping of a 15-month-old girl in Placerville on Tuesday and Leila's slaying Saturday in her home in Valley Springs, about 50 miles away.
Although authorities still plan to do a DNA test on the 44-year-old kidnapping suspect, "detectives have determined it unlikely that there is a connection between the two crimes," Hewitt said.
MEXICO CITY — Two waiters at a Mexico City bar will face homicide and robbery charges in the beating death of Malcolm X's grandson Malcolm Shabazz, authorities said Monday.
Prosecutors said police were seeking at least two other people believed to have participated in the attack on Shabazz, who was beaten early Thursday in a dispute over a $1,200 bar bill.
Prosecutor Rodolfo Fernando Rios said bar employees David Hernandez Cruz and Manuel Alejandro Perez de Jesus would be charged with aggravated robbery and homicide.
Rios said there was no indication of a racial motivation in the attack on Shabazz, 28, who was assaulted after he drank with a friend at the Palace bar on Garibaldi Plaza, a downtown square famous for open-air performances by strolling mariachi musicians.
Miguel Suarez, a friend of Shabazz, told The Associated Press last week that the fight broke out after the owner of the bar demanded that the two men pay 15,000 pesos for the time they spent drinking at the bar. He said he found Shabazz outside the bar and took him to a hospital where he died.
Many of the bars around Garibaldi Plaza are notorious for exorbitant overcharging of customers, particularly foreigners, often on the pretext that customers must pay for time spent talking with female employees.
Rios said the initial investigation indicated Shabazz and Suarez were lured to the bar by two women.
An autopsy found that Shabazz died of blows to the head, face and torso.
Rios said Shabazz's body had not been claimed by relatives or the U.S. Embassy. He said Mexican authorities were dealing with transporting it back to the U.S.
Much like his grandfather, Shabazz spent his youth in and out of trouble. At 12, he set a fire in his grandmother's apartment, a blaze that resulted in the death of Malcolm X's widow. After four years in juvenile detention, Shabazz was later sent back to prison on attempted robbery and assault charges.
In recent years, Shabazz seemed to be seeking redemption, saying he was writing a memoir and traveling the world speaking out against youth violence. Before his trip to Mexico, he reached out to a group of Mexican construction workers in the U.S. and then visited in Mexico with a leader who had been deported.
Legendary poet, writer and performer Dr. Maya Angelou has shared details of her extraordinary life in her many best-selling autobiographies, includingI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In her latest book,Mom & Me & Mom, she shares the story of the most influential and complicated relationship of her life - with her indomitable mother Vivian Baxter. The book is an inspiring and touching story of growth and healing, of life lessons learned, and the profound power of love and connection.
I recently had the privilege of talking to the 85-year-old literary icon about her mother, her book and her incredible life journey. Dr. Angelou was warm, thoughtful, and open-hearted -- exuding such a beautiful spirit -- and offering me her own personal motherly advice.
Marianne Schnall:Iinterviewedyou a few years ago about your last book,Letter to My Daughter- each book of yours is such a wonderful gift to the people who read it. And your latest book is so inspiring and so moving - what an incredible life that you've had. What were some of the most important lessons that you learned from your mother that served you in your life that you think would be helpful or relevant to other people today? Maya Angelou:Well, I learned - and I just figured it out yesterday[laugh]- I learned that my mother was always on my side. And that really liberated me. Because when teachers or people in authority put me down or in one way or another tried to make me feel less than equal to what they thought I should be - my mother was on my side. It was amazing. And I really figured it out yesterday - long after I finished writing the book and living the life of Vivian Baxter's daughter. But I realized that that's what allowed me to become the parent I did become. I have been on my son's side. So when those in authority told me he had not done something, or he had something non-approvable - and I would ask him, "Will you tell me what you did?" And usually the professor, the teacher, the principal would say, "Oh, no, no - we'll tell you." And I'd say, "No, no - he must tell me - this concerns him." And I realized that my mother gave me that - which meant that I had the greatest support system in the world.
MS: I was very aware of how pivotal those moments were for you when she would tell you, "You are the greatest woman I ever met." What a wonderful thing for a mother to say - and then I remember at the end of that chapter, you said it made pause and say to yourself, "Well, maybe I could be somebody."
MA: Yes, yes. She actually said, "Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt and my mother," - she said, "You're in that category." I was 22 years old! She said she was too mean to lie.[laughs]And she was very intelligent. So I thought, suppose she's right? Suppose I do have something? Suppose Iamgoing to be somebody? MS:Being able to hold that vision of yourself through her eyes seems to be very important throughout your life - we should all be so lucky to have someone like that. The other thing that struck me in your book, everybody has different challenges and obstacles they face in their life, and we tend to think of them in a negative, dreading way - and yet, especially in terms of your life, it seems like they are the factors that shape you and help you to evolve into the person you are going to be. How do you think you think your life experience molded you into the person that you are today?
MA:Well, in many ways I became unafraid because of Vivian Baxter. I realized that she really was an incredible supporter, an incredible love and support, and I don't think that you could have anybody stronger - anybody - I mean, if you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England - you couldn't have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things. And I could even dare to be somebody. She told me when I was pregnant at 16, and she asked me, "Do you know who the father was?" I said, 'Yes." I had only had sex once. And she asked, 'Do you love him?' I said, "No." She asked, "Does he love you?" I said, "No." She said, "In that case, we're not going to ruin three lives. We're going to have a wonderful baby.' And she never once made me feel I had brought shame on the family or I had done a terrible thing. And she loved my son. Which of course liberated me a lot too.
MS:The other thing that comes through in the book was incredible capacity to forgive - whether it was your mother, or the man who had raped you as a child, or the injustices of the human race. Why to you is forgiveness important, and what advice do you have on forgiving? Because I feel like that can be hard for many people.
MA:I know it can be - but I think that it's one of the most important of the gifts you can give to the human race - is to forgive people. And mind you, what you do, of course, is you liberate your own self - you liberate yourself from carrying that weight around. So that when you say, "I forgive you," it's a giant gift. A gift that's first to yourself - because it means you're not toting that burden around and saying, "I have this. I will never forgive you." And then of course that means you will never be free, you will never be at ease - you will be continually burdened. So I think to learn how to forgive, it's a great lesson to learn. And I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody's ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the 'n' word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren't pretty or they weren't rich or they weren't clever. I never had that feeling that I had to carry that around - that was somebody else's problem not mine. And a part of that, of course, I learned from Vivian Baxter.
MS:You always seemed to be in touch with and to follow your instincts, to know who you were, which these days can be difficult - there's so much pressure on young people - especially on girls and young women - to conform, to be liked. Where do you think your strength in your sense of self, your self knowledge came from, and what advice can you offer on developing into your authentic self so that you fulfill your potential and live the life you were meant to? MA:Well, I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey, was just all of that. He loved me. And when other people laughed at me and called me dummy, he said, 'Don't worry about them calling you a dummy - they're stupid - you're smarter than anyone here, except me of course!"[laughs]And he was absolutely right! He told me that I was very intelligent and that I had to depend upon myself - and he knew more than most people. And if he said I was very intelligent, I believed him! So that was a big gift.
MS:You're so fortunate to have had such supportive people around you your whole life. And it just shows you that no matter what your circumstances are, the importance of people, and of connection and of love. MA:Exactly. Also, it was important for me, to not only to have them, but I also became a kind of supportive person around other people. I became the kind of parent, my mother was to me. I was on my son's side.
MS: I know I try to do the same for my daughters as well.
MA:How old is your daughter?
MS:Well, one turns 12 today, her name is Lotus - and another one is Jazmin, who is 15.
MA:Do you know a poet, Phyllis McGinley? She wrote a poem called "Portrait of a Girl with a Comic Book". And please, you can get it off the Internet. When we hang up you will love it. It says, 'Thirteen is no age at all.' Please look at it. You will see your daughters. You will see the 15 -year-old and the 12-year-old. You will see them both. When I read it - I fortunately read it when my son was young, and it meant a lot to me in raising my son.
MS:I will definitely get it - it will be first thing I do when we get off the phone.
MA:Thank you, thank you.
MS:I know you recently founded theMaya Angelou Women's Health and Wellness Centerwhich was a beautiful thing to do. Women have so much that they're juggling these days and are often taking care of so many people, frequently at the expense of themselves. Do you have advice or thoughts on creating health and wellness? And why it was important to you to found that center?
MA:Encouragement to all women is - let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let's see if we can't prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness. You see what I mean? So that we don't have to wait to get sick and then try to find a way to heal ourselves. Let's do the right thing - that is, really, be on our own side. Get the mammograms. Have all the chances with our doctors and our health officials. Go there and see how we're doing physically. How we're doing on our own health. How we are doing vis-a-vis our hearts. How are we doing. I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.
MS:What do you hope people take away from your book and from the example of your life?
MA:Well, I hope that they would take away the idea that the parents can be on the side of their children. Please - be their supporters, be their protectors and let them know that. That doesn't mean that you indulge and condone mismanagement and bad action - but you can say, "I'm on your side. Now, this is not acceptable. And the reason it's not acceptable is that you might get hurt in the management of the interaction. But I'm on your side - I want you to do well. I love you. That doesn't mean I indulge you - I have sentimentality and it means I really love you and I want you to live a good life."
MS:Both of my daughters were so excited that I was going to be talking to you - which really says a lot - young girls are growing up having learned about your beautiful writing and gleaning wisdom from your inspiring life. What would be your wish for young girls today?
MA:I wish they all had a mother like you. Or me. I wish they did. So that they know they have protection and they have support. And even when they're wrong, it will be explained to them why they are wrong. Not just put down. MS:What to you is the meaning of life? Often people don't just stop to think about it - we often just plow through our lives in almost autopilot ways - what to you gives it meaning?
MA: Well, I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve. And I find that I make friends with women who are very much like me. They may be black or white or Asian or Spanish speaking, they may be young or old or pretty or plain, but if they also have a sense of good humor and pizzazz, and dare to think that this is their life, and they can take some chances with it - then it's very likely that we'll make friends. And over time we'll talk about matters of pith and moment.
Photo of Maya Angelou and her mother courtesy of the Angelou Personal Collection.
Marianne Schnallis a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets includingO, The Oprah Magazine,In Style, CNN.com, EW.com, the Women's Media Center, and many others. Marianne is a featured blogger at The Huffington Post and a contributor to the nationally syndicated NPR radio show,51 percent The Women's Perspective. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's web site and non-profit organizationFeminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental siteEcoMall.com. She is the author ofDaring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voicebased on her interviews with a variety of well-known women. Marianne's forthcoming book, "What Will it Take to Make a Woman President? Conversations About Women, Leadership, and Power" will be published by Seal Press in Fall 2013. You can visit her website atwww.marianneschnall.com.
.jpg)
