Florida Sentinel Bulletin

KINGSTON, Jamaica — A British schoolgirl visiting relatives in a rural village in northern Jamaica was fatally shot when a lone gunman opened fire on a group of family members as they gathered at a roadside shop, officials said Sunday.

Imani Green, 8, of Balham in South London, was standing inside a clapboard grocery store and bar with Jamaican relatives Friday evening when a gunman wearing a hoodie shot the child in the head and shoulder before also shooting and wounding three adult members of her family.

The high command of Jamaica’s police force said Sunday that Imani was “mercilessly slaughtered in front of family members in a hail of bullets as gangsters sought to exact revenge on their rivals” in the normally quiet Red Dirt district of Duncans in Trelawny parish.

CHICAGO  — The wife of former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. announced Friday that she was resigning from the Chicago City Council, saying she could not adequately represent her district while dealing with “very painful health matters.”

Alderman Sandi Jackson, whose husband recently resigned from Congress while being treated for bipolar disorder and other medical issues, said in a letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel that her resignation would be effective Tuesday.

“I am unapologetically a wife and a mother and I cannot deny my commitment to those most important personal responsibilities,” she wrote. Aside from citing health matters, she did not elaborate.

Her husband announced his resignation in November shortly after winning re-election, citing his health concerns, but also acknowledging that he was under federal investigation. The Chicago Democrat and son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson stepped down amid a months-long medical leave that included two stays at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

During a Friday press conference, Florida authorities announced that the remains of the body of Dontrell Melvin, who was 5-months-old when he disappeared in July of 2011, have been discovered at an address provided by his parents.

For the entire time that baby Dontrell was missing no one was looking for him.

Father, Calvin Melvin Jr., 27, and mother, Brittney Sierra, have both been arrested in their son’s disappearance.

Calvin Melvin Jr., 27, of Hallandale Beach, told police he dropped off his then-5-month-old son with his own parents in July 2011 because of financial trouble. The grandparents, who live in Pompano Beach, told officers they hadn’t seen their grandbaby in over a year.

In the year and a half since Melvin reportedly left the house with the baby and returned without him, Dontrell’s mother said she believed her son was with his grandparents.

The mother contacted authorities in October 2012, claiming Melvin had not allowed her to see Dontrell for over a year.

Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy told reporters that the Florida Department of Children and Families conducted an investigation at that point, but the findings were unknown.

The search for baby Dontrell began after Child Protective Services responding to a child neglect case at the mother’s home discovered that there were only 2 children when there should have been three.

Those two children are now in the custody of the state.

WASHINGTON – The nation’s capital was swarming with women wearing crimson and cream, as one of the country’s largest African-American sororities gathered to celebrate 100 years of sisterhood.

More than 12,000 members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. convened to mark the organization’s centennial this weekend with activities including community service, a rededication and an awards ceremony.

Members from across the country participated in 22 projects throughout the District of Columbia on Friday in honor of their 22 founders.

The sorority was also using the weekend to thank those who have collaborated with them in service. They held a rededication luncheon and gala on Saturday that was emceed by actors Tim Reid and Daphne Maxwell Reid.

The gala honored members, organizations and individuals who represent the sorority’s mantra.

The festivities culminated on Sunday, the sorority’s actual centennial, with a black-tie dinner with guest honoree General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt.

The weekend celebration is a part of series of centennial year events for the sorority. In March, the Deltas will re-enact the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913, in which their founders participated. The sorority will gather in Washington again in July for its national convention.

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. was founded on Jan. 13, 1913, on the campus of Howard University. The sorority has more than 250,000 members and more than 900 chapters.

Members have included activists Mary McLeod Bethune and Dorothy Height and congresswomen Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan. Other notable members include: poet Nikki Giovanni, journalists Gwen Ifill and Soledad O’ Brien, singers Aretha Franklin, Lena Horne, Leontyne Price and Roberta Flack, and actresses Cicely Tyson and Ruby Dee.

WASHINGTON — John Brennan joined the CIA as a young man after responding to a newspaper want ad. Now, at 57, he could become its next director.

President Barack Obama on Monday nominated Brennan, his chief counterterrorism adviser, to lead the CIA, praising his pick as someone already closely connected to the agency and willing to fight on its behalf.

“John knows what our national security demands: intelligence that provides policymakers with the facts, strong, analytic insights and a keen understanding of a dynamic world,” Pres. Obama said at the White House.

Brennan worked for the CIA for more than two decades and has been Pres. Obama’s assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security since 2009. In that role, Pres. Obama said, Brennan worked closely with many government agencies.

The body of a young, African-American woman that was found on a beach in Brooklyn over the weekend has been identified. New York City police have confirmed that remains discovered on Sunday next to the remnants of a bofire in Gerritsen Beach are those of Shaniesha Forbes, 14.

Forbes’ naked body was found face-up near the shoreline at 7:15 a.m. on Sunday. Her arms, hands and legs were burned. Medical examiners have ruled out exposure to fire as the cause of the teen’s death, because no smoke was found in her lungs. The cause of her death has not been released, and is still under investigation. At this time, her death has not been ruled a homicide.

“I want someone to please speak up,” Shanah Forbes, the sister of the deceased, said. “She didn’t deserve this.”

ALABAMA — A 17-year-old Alabama high school student, Derek Shrout, who was arrested last week for allegedly plotting to kill 6 Black students by blowing them up with homemade grenades, has been released on $75,000 bond.

Shrout, known at Russell County High School as a self-proclaimed, White supremacist, was arrested last week after a teacher turned a misplaced notebook over to authorities where he had written that the bombs were “a step or two away from being ready to explode,” said Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor.

“The first thing I wanted to know was if you did exactly what he wrote, would it blow up,” said Taylor. “And everybody that I’ve consulted with has said that it would absolutely blow up exactly the way he wrote it.”

Taylor also revealed that from all indications the explosion would have been serious.

“He has a lot of pent-up anger toward Blacks,” he said.

Bomb-making material, including tobacco cans and shrapnel, were discovered when police searched his home last Friday. Two large cans were labeled ‘Fat Boy’ and ‘Little Man,’ referencing the two atomic bombs that the United States used to decimate Hiroshima and Nagasaki during War World II.

After Shrout and his military family moved to the area, he joined the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), but soon became involved with a White power group.

“In the hallway, at breakfast, at the lunch tables, after school where we have our bus parking lot, he’d have his big old group of friends and they’d go around doing the whole white power crazy stuff,” JROTC 1st Sgt. David White said.

Classmate Jessica Watkins, who described Shrout as “quiet and sweet,” said that she was horrified when she sat in his desk Monday:

“It said, ‘white power’ with the F-word, and it was covered in Nazi symbols,” Watkins said. The teacher tried to scrub it off, she said, but couldn’t because it was in permanent marker.

GEORGIA — When a mother heard knocks at the door of her Loganville, Ga., home Friday afternoon, she initially thought it was a solicitor.

Though the persistent knocks evoked suspicion from the 37-year-old mother of two and lead her to hide herself and her children in her home office on the third floor of her home. At that point, the man forced himself into the three-story residence and allegedly began rummaging through the home and eventually made his way up to the office where the mother was hiding with her 9-year-old twins.

“He opens the closet door and finds himself staring down the barrel of a .38 revolver,” said Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman, who relayed the.

Chapman asked that the woman’s name not be published.

The woman fired six shots at Paul Ali Slater, five of which hit him in the face and neck. Incredibly, he survived but was badly injured. “The guy’s face down, crying,” the sheriff said. The woman told him to stay down or she’d shoot again.

TEXAS — Jerry Hartfield was still a young man when an uncle visited him in prison to tell him that his murder conviction had been overturned and he would get a new trial.

Not long afterward, he was moved off of death row.

“A sergeant told me to pack my stuff and I wouldn’t return. I’ve been waiting ever since for that new trial,” Hartfield, now 56, said during a recent interview at the prison near Gatesville where he’s serving life for the 1976 robbery and killing of a Bay City bus station worker. He says he’s innocent.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Hartfield’s murder conviction in 1980 because it found a potential juror improperly was dismissed for expressing reservations about the death penalty. The state tried twice but failed to get the court to re-examine that ruling, and on March 15, 1983 — 11 days after the court’s second rejection — then-Gov. Mark White commuted Hartfield’s sentence to life in prison.