Florida Sentinel Bulletin

Los Angeles’ most prominent black church, First AME Church is suing its former minister and his wife, along with seven trustees and employees of the church’s non-profit arm, accusing them of financial mismanagement.

Denise Hunter publicly denied the allegations against her and her husband, Rev. John Hunter, who was forced out after serving eight years with the congregation amid questions over his use of church credit cards and a settlement in a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Denise Hunter called the allegations a “witch hunt.”

“We believe the lawsuit is totally frivolous,” Hunter, president of F.A.M.E. Corporations. “This was all orchestrated with the intent to damage my reputation and my husband’s reputation.

“But, I think for the people who have known me and my husband, the work we do in the community will speak for itself,” she said.

D. C. Police Officer Richmond Phillips shot his baby’s mother to death and left their infant daughter to die in a hot car because he didn’t want to pay child support, prosecutors said during opening statements in Phillips’ trial on Monday.

Authorities arrested Phillips in June 2011 after finding 20-year-old Wynetta Wright’s body at a nearby park, the one where they met to discuss caring for their daughter.

Phillips lured Wright to a wooded area in Hillcrest Heights in May 2011 and shot her to death. He then left their daughter, Jaylin, in a car on a day that was 100-plus degrees. Her body was found a short distance away. She was a few days from her first birthday.

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.