Florida Sentinel Bulletin

CLEVELAND  — A wanted man kidnapped his estranged girlfriend at gunpoint along with her 1-year-old she was pushing in a stroller, Cleveland police said Sunday, and all three were found shot to death hours later.

Police said the couple had dated for about two months and that the woman, Latasha Jackson, 19, was trying to end the relationship.

Jackson and daughter Chaniya Wynn were walking with Jackson’s 14-year-old brother around noon Saturday when they encountered the man, Thomas Lorde. The teen said Lorde pulled out a gun and ordered him to walk away, according to police. The girl’s father told police Lorde said he was going to kill Jackson and take the child.

Their bodies were found early Sunday in a closed garage of an unoccupied building, said police Sgt. Sammy Morris, and it appeared that Lorde shot himself in the head.

WASHINGTON — Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Barack Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.

Though the Pentagon and a number of Cabinet agencies would get squeezed, Obama would leave the spiraling growth of health care programs for the elderly and the poor largely unchecked. The plan claims $4 trillion in deficit savings over the coming decade, but most of it would be through tax increases Republicans oppose, lower war costs already in motion and budget cuts enacted last year in a debt pact with GOP lawmakers.

Many of the ideas in the White House plan for the 2013 budget year will be thrashed out during this year’s election campaigns as the Republicans try to oust Obama from the White House and add Senate control to their command of the House.

“We can’t just cut our way into growth,” Obama said at a campaign-style rally at a community college in the vote-rich Northern Virginia suburbs. “We can cut back on the things that we don’t need, but we also have to make sure that everyone is paying their fair share for the things that we do need.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Backers of affirmative action asked a federal appeals court Monday to overturn California’s 15-year-old ban on considering race in public college admissions, citing a steep drop in black, Latino and Native American students at the state’s elite campuses.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal heard arguments in the latest legal challenge to Proposition 209, the landmark voter initiative that barred racial, ethnic and gender preferences in public education, employment and contracting.

The affirmative action ban has withstood multiple challenges since voters approved it in 1996, but advocates say their campaign to overturn it has been bolstered by recent court decisions, as well as support from Gov. Jerry Brown.

Dozens of minority students backing the plaintiffs filled the courtroom for the hour-long hearing, when the justices questioned whether they should tamper with a 1997 ruling in which the same appellate court upheld Proposition 209.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said affirmative action is needed to increase racial diversity at the University of California’s most prestigious campuses and professional schools. Data shows that UC’s efforts to enroll diverse student populations without considering race have failed, they argued.

GEORGIA — Seven-year-old Jorelys Rivera was sexually assaulted then beaten to death by maintenance man Ryan Brunn before being dumped in a trash compactor. Her mother, Joselinne Rivera is now suing the River Ridge at Canton apartment complex where her family lived because tenants were not aware of Brunn’s history of crimes against children.

Rivera filed a lawsuit Thursday in Fulton County State Court in Georgia, alleging that the complex failed to do a thorough background check on Brunn before he was hired. According to the lawsuit, even when other residents complained about Brunn lingering at the playground watching children, the complex still did not fire him.

MANHATTAN — Joy White and Carl Tyson, parents of Carlina White, the infant stolen from Harlem Hospital when she was 19-days-old in 1987, sat in stunned disbelief as a Manhattan federal judge allowed kidnapper Ann Pettway (pictured), 51, to escape the mandatory 20-year minimum sentence after copping a 10-year plea deal, reports the New York Post.

After snatching Carlina from the hospital, Pettway convinced her family in Bridgeport, Connecticut that she gave birth to the baby before moving to Atlanta and raising the girl as her own for 23 years.

Carlina’s parents said that the sentence was a miscarriage of justice and that Pettway knew that she got off easy: “She can’t even look me in the f—king eye,” a furious Tyson said as the baby-snatcher left the courtroom.

White said that Pettway should serve at least as much time as their daughter had been missing before she tracked them down last year:
“I think she should serve at least 23 years, just like my daughter was missing 23 years,” she said.

The distraught mother said that she’ll “never forget” Pettway comforting her in the hospital when she bought baby Carlina in with a raging fever: “She came up to me and said, ‘Don’t cry. Your baby is going to be OK,’ ” White said outside the Manhattan federal court. “And she patted me on my shoulder . . . and she preyed on me. She is so mean. She is so cruel.”

Tyson described himself as so “pissed right about now” as he angrily left the courtroom: “It wasn’t what I expected,” he said. “Give her 23 years and you’ll make me happy.”

Pettway will be sentenced May 17.

President Barack Obama on Friday abandoned his stand that religious organizations must pay for free birth control for workers, scrambling to end a furor raging from the Catholic Church to Congress to his re-election foes. He demanded that insurance companies step in to provide the coverage instead.

Pres. Obama’s compromise means ultimately that women would still get birth control without having to pay for it, no matter where they work. The president insisted he had stuck by that driving principle even in switching his approach, and the White House vehemently rejected any characterization that Pres. Obama had retreated under pressure.

Yet there was no doubt that Pres. Obama had found himself in an untenable position. He needed to walk back fast and find another route to his goal.

For about a decade, residents of southwest Detroit near Woodmere Cemetery existed in an uneasy peace with the man called Mr. Pill.

Aram Alkazoff — known as one of the most prolific prescription drug dealers in Detroit — was slowly destroying the neighborhood.

Residents say that people associated with Dr. Pill started taking over abandoned houses in 2008, stripping them, squatting and threatening the neighbors who saw them do it.

Complaints mounted, first to police, then to elected officials and community and business organizations that support southwest Detroit.

In 2009, state Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who represents the Woodmere-Lawndale-Springwells area, started the block club. That same year, the Southwest Detroit Business Association adapted its nuisance-abatement program for residents of the neighborhood.

Dennis Nordmoe, executive director of Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, based in southwest Detroit, urged residents to get involved.

Several residents, some afraid, started compiling log sheets in a process that lasted about two years. From the reports came a clear picture of the players in Dr. Pill’s empire — runners, buyers, even people who would provide transportation to the neighborhood.

Dr. Pill going to prison and being off the streets is a victory. And the teamwork that made it possible is what sets southwest Detroit apart.

“There’s strong community groups. Strong business groups. Close contact with law enforcement, and folks that are willing to speak up,” he said. Esteban Castro agrees, but also sees a community with no choice. Folks had to speak up, he said, to save homes they can’t always leave, and to preserve their way of life.

Samuel L. Jackson made a surprising confession in the March issue of Ebony.

“I voted for Pres. Barack Obama because he was Black. Cause that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them.” He contended that Pres. Obama’s message wasn’t important, since he believes most politicians will say anything to get elected.

Naketa Leiba, 17, the college-bound teen who vanished almost two weeks ago, has been found by detectives at a friend’s apartment in Miramar, Florida.

Leiba, who usually takes the bus home from her South Broward High School or makes the 25 minute walk by herself, called her mother, Sharon Leiba, for a ride on Wednesday, February 1.  When her mother told her that she could not leave work immediately, Naketa decided to walk home — she never made it.

Volunteers and police searched far and wide for the teen, with her family insisting that she was not the type of girl to run away.

There’s no evidence, where are the phone records to show that she was corresponding with that friend. There’s no evidence to show that she was with that friend. She was found in a home with no lights.

Neketa gave a sworn statement that she ran away, and had not been coerced or held against her will.