Florida Sentinel Bulletin

NEW JERSEY – A New Jersey cop faces second-degree murder and manslaughter for allegedly shooting another man in a fit of road rage. The shooting happened on a Maryland highway Saturday  evening, as the suspect drove with his children and wife in the car.

Joseph Walker is being held on $1,000,000 bond. He is an officer with New Jersey’s Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office.

Victim Joseph Harvey Jr. (pictured) was driving in a green Honda when he cut Walker  (and his Kia minivan) off. Walker brandished his weapon while each tried to swerve into the other’s car. They decided to take the intra-lane spat to the side of the road, where Walker told an “aggressive” Harvey and an unidentified male passenger, that he was a police officer. At some point during the exchange, he pulled out a .45 caliber block and shot at the men, hitting Harvey. He was taken to Baltimore’s Washington Medical Center where he died. Walker also went to the hospital, over chest pains.

Walker’s lawyer attests that her client shot Harvey to protect his family. “The family was victimized,” Patrick McAndrew said during a hearing Monday (June 10). “Mr. Harvey threatened to kill his family.”

The family is working with the New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Asociation to come up with the bond amount.

UTAH – A Utah man who used his “long john” to try and save a woman’s life has been charged with sexual assault.  The suspect stands accused of physically assaulting a neighbor, but believes it was a “life or death” situation because she was passed out cold and needed to be warmed up.

Police have arrested and charged Roger William Kelly, 50, for the alleged sexual assault that took place in St. George on May 19.

Kelly reported seeing his neighbor, a 29-year-old woman, lying unconscious on the front porch of her apartment. In his best effort to “save her life,” he took her inside his apartment, placed her on his bed, and proceeded to take her clothes off.

When the police arrived Kelly was giving the woman CPR but during the attempted “rescue,” Kelly believed that having sex with the woman would keep her warm. He told the authorities he was trying to save her life since she had been lying outside. Police wrote a probable cause statement saying the suspect “attempted intercourse to keep her temperature up.”

TRENTON, NJ  — Newark Mayor Cory Booker on Saturday formally announced he’s in the race to finish the U.S. Senate term of the late Frank Lautenberg.

The 44-year-old Democrat made his candidacy official at a news conference Saturday in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city. He was joined by former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, a former pro basketball player who for 18 years held the seat Booker is seeking.

Bradley, who endorsed Booker, called him “the right person for the right office at the right time.”

Booker began raising money for a Senate run even before Lautenberg, who died Monday, announced retirement plans in February. He had raised $1.9 million by the end of the last reporting period in March.

Reps. Frank Pallone and Rush Holt are also planning to enter the Democratic primary. Booker is considered the early front-runner.

JOHANNESBURG  — South Africans on Saturday said their thoughts were with former President Nelson Mandela, who was in “serious but stable” condition after being taken to a hospital to be treated for a recurring lung infection.

Mandela, who is 94 years old, was treated in a hospital several times in recent months, with the last discharge coming on April 6 after doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia and drained fluid from his lung area. He has been particularly vulnerable to respiratory problems since contracting tuberculosis during his 27-year imprisonment under apartheid.

CHICAGO – A 9-year-old boy remained in critical condition Thursday after he was shot in the chest while riding in a car with his mother on Chicago’s South Side, officials said.

The boy was wounded in a shooting the prior evening in the 6700 block of South Evans Avenue, family said.

He was taken to University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital where he was immediately taken into surgery. Family members embraced outside, and there was word from one relative the boy’s condition was improving by the 9 p.m. hour.

Detectives said they believe the boy’s mother drove him to the hospital. Police looked for bullet holes in the family vehicle and found none.

A Texas woman has been arrested in connection with the mailing of three letters containing a form of the poison ricin to President Obama, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, federal authorities said.

Shannon Rogers Guess Richardson of New Boston, Texas, originally called the Federal Bureau of Investigation claiming that her husband had sent the letters, officials said. The investigators found that she had sent the letters herself, they said.

Richardson is an actress with minor roles on television shows like The Walking Dead and the Vampire Diaries, and was arrested in Arkansas on charges that will be filed Friday afternoon, the authorities said. She has five sons, according to the New York Times.

Her husband, Nathaniel Richardson, is an Army veteran

WESTWEGO, LA — When Linda Henry of Westwego, La., was viciously attacked by three of her four pitbulls last March, the attack left her without an eye, ear and armless.

Bitten throughout her torso, the dogs’ bites were so deep that parts of the 54-year-old woman’s bones from her arms and legs were exposed.

Henry recounted to WGNO the horrific incident by the dogs, whom she and her common-law husband, Clarence Allen, loved and treated like their children. “They grab my left leg and rip all that up. Then they tried to get my eye ball out,” Henry said. “They ripped my eye lids off, they bit my lip, then they grabbed my head. In the hospital, they had to take skin off my leg to put on my head.”

The brutality of the incident motivated one Westwego City Councilman to propose a pitbull ordinance that would place strict restrictions on the owners of these dogs. When news of the proposed ordinance leaked, a firestorm followed and pitbull owners across the country are up in arms, according to WGNO. Many are even trying to make moves to block the legislation by petitioning it online.

WASHINGTON – In a major victory for law enforcement agencies, a divided Supreme Court on Monday ruled that police can take a DNA sample from someone who has been arrested and charged, but not convicted of a serious crime.

In a narrow 5-4 vote, the court handed a victory to the state of Maryland by saying that taking DNA samples from arrestees was similar to taking fingerprints. Of the 50 states, 29 have laws that allow DNA samples prior to conviction in certain instances, as does the federal government. All 49 other states backed Maryland in the case.

The Supreme Court reversed a decision made last April by Maryland’s highest court that overturned the 2010 conviction and life sentence of Alonzo Jay King for a rape committed seven years earlier.

In a majority opinion, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said DNA samples can be taken if police have probable cause to detain a suspect facing charges relating to a “serious offense.”

HOUSTON, TX  — Houston’s police chief told jurors on Tuesday that the 2010 videotaped beating of a black teen burglary suspect made him “sick to my stomach” and gave the police department a “black eye.”

Police Chief Charles McClelland Jr. testified that fired officer Drew Ryser — one of four officers who were indicted in the case — mistreated the teen during his arrest and failed to follow proper procedures.

Ryser, 32, is on trial this week on a misdemeanor charge of official oppression. He faces up to a year in jail if convicted.

“It made me sick to my stomach because it was an egregious use of force and the men and women of the Houston police department are better than that … they did not deserve that type of black eye,” McClelland told special prosecutor Jonathan Munier.