Nation/World Briefly: Man who tried to get on Florida base was AWOL
Published 10:21 pm Tuesday, June 15, 2010
TAMPA, Fla. — A man arrested as he tried to enter MacDill Air Force Base with weapons and ammunition in his car is a serviceman listed as being absent without leave, base officials said Tuesday.
Air Force Col. Dave Cohen released few new details about Monday night’s arrest at the base that houses the U.S. command center for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But Cohen said it doesn’t appear to have been a terrorism attempt. He did not release the serviceman’s name, his military branch or the name of the woman who was with him. Both are in their mid-20s, Cohen said. The woman is not connected to the military.
The couple’s Honda CRV contained three handguns, three rifles and some ammunition, Cohen said. He described them as “military style” but commercially available.
Arizona: Mother told police she didn’t want her children
Arizona police officers arrested a mother after she reportedly told police she didn’t want her children any longer. Police in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise said they received a 911 call Friday from an 11-year-old boy who said his mother was packing and moving to California and wasn’t taking him or his 6-year-old brother with her. A police spokesman said the boy’s mother, Christina Muniz, 29, came out and told officers that she was “sick of her children” and wanted the police to take them so she can “have fun and play.”
North Carolina: Congressman apologizes for video behavior
A state Democratic congressman apologized Monday after video posted online showed him swatting at the camera, demanding that two students taping him identify themselves and grabbing one of them by the wrist and neck. “The truth is I had a long day,” Rep. Bob Etheridge said. “I’ve had bad days many times. It’s not a good crutch to lean on and I won’t use that.” The video was posted on websites owned by Andrew Breitbart, who also released video of workers for the community organizing group ACORN counseling actors posing as a pimp and prostitute.
Utah: Man facing firing squad refused federal stay
A federal judge has denied a request from a Utah death row inmate seeking to postpone his Friday firing-squad execution while he pursues a civil rights lawsuit. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Tena Campbell rejected Ronnie Lee Gardner’s petition for a stay of execution Tuesday evening. Gardner was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1985 for the fatal courthouse shooting of an attorney during an escape attempt.
Montana: Man convicted for his 10th DUI was on parole
A 52-year-old Billings man has been found guilty of his 10th drunken-driving charge after a two-day trial in Polson. Lake County officials said Wesley Jean Couture was on parole from a 2003 DUI when a Flathead tribal officer observed his vehicle cross the center line in Pablo in 2009. Couture is scheduled to be sentenced July 14.
Britain: Woman received lungs of 30-year smoker
The family of a 28-year-old British woman who received a lung transplant from a longtime smoker has lodged a complaint although a health official defended the transplant. Cystic fibrosis sufferer Lyndsey Scott in February 2009 received a double lung transplant from, without her knowledge, a donor who had smoked for three decades. She died in July of pneumonia. Britain’s top transplant official Chris Rudge defended the decision and said patients should be told they are not getting a “brand new” organ. He said on the BBC that “lungs from a smoker can be working perfectly normally.”
Mexico: Soldiers kill 15 gunmen
Soldiers battled gunmen for 40 minutes Tuesday on the outskirts of Taxco, killing 15 suspects as escalating bloodshed puts June in line to become the deadliest month yet in Mexico’s drug war. Two weeks ago, authorities discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned Taxco silver mine that was being used as a dumping ground for apparent victims of drug violence, but it was not clear if the shootout was related to the discovery.
From Herald news services
