Crime

SALT LAKE CITY — A man who was believed to be part of a peacekeeping team for the “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City shot at a person who was brandishing a rifle at demonstrators, striking both the rifleman and a bystander who later died at the hospital, authorities said Sunday.

Police took the alleged rifleman, Arturo Gamboa, 24, into custody Saturday evening on a murder charge, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said at a Sunday news conference. The bystander was Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, a fashion designer from Samoa.

Detectives don't yet know why Gamboa pulled out a rifle or ran from the peacekeepers, but they accused him of creating the dangerous situation that led to Ah Loo's death. The Associated Press did not immediately find an attorney listed for Gamboa or contact information for his family in public records.

Redd said the man believed to be part of the peacekeeping team, dressed in a neon green vest, fired three shots from a handgun at Gamboa, inflicting a relatively minor injury but fatally shooting Ah Loo. Redd did not share the man's name.

Volunteer peacekeeping teams are common for protests, said Sarah Parker, a national coordinator for 50501 Movement, which was a partner in the “No Kings” protest. But the organizers ask attendees, including the peacekeepers, not to bring weapons, she said. Still, Parker said they stopped what could've been a larger mass casualty event.

“Our safety team did as best as they could in a situation that is extremely sad and extremely scary," said Parker.

Ah Loo, known as Afa, was a husband and father to two children and a fashion designer who leaned into his Samoan heritage, according to a GoFundMe page organized to support his family. Ah Loo founded Creative Pacific, an event celebrating the diversity of the Pacific Islands, with workshops, artists and a fashion runway. He was on Season 17 of the fashion design reality TV show “Project Runway.”

cross-posted from: https://hilariouschaos.com/post/3427038

Author: Al Jazeera
Published on: 16/06/2025 | 00:00:00

AI Summary:
Vance Boelter, 57, was arrested on Sunday following a two-day manhunt in the Midwestern state. He is alleged to have shot dead Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state representative, and her husband, Mark, and wounded Democratic state Senator John A Hoffman and his wife.

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Atlanta-based artist Silentó has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the 2021 killing of his cousin.

The 27-year-old "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)" star, whose real name is Ricky Lamar Hawk, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to voluntary manslaughter, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston said in a statement Wednesday, June 11.

He also pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and concealing the death of another in connection with the death of his cousin, 34-year-old Frederick Rooks III.

According to the DeKalb County Police Department, officers arrived at the scene around 3:37 a.m. on Jan. 21, 2021, and found Rooks suffering from multiple gunshot wounds at the intersection of Deep Shoals Circle and Corners Crossing in the Panthersville area.

By the time EMS arrived, Rooks was pronounced dead. Investigators recovered 10 bullet casings near his body.

A relative told officers that Hawk and Rooks were last seen together after the rapper picked Rooks up from a friend’s home in a white BMW SUV.

The same vehicle was captured on a neighbor’s home security footage, fleeing the area at a high rate of speed minutes after the other residents heard the gunfire.

Hawk admitted to shooting his cousin on Feb. 1, 2021, after he was taken into custody.

After the arrest, his PR manager, Chanel Hudson, released a statement asking for prayers for her client.

"Please send my client Silentó some positive vibrations," she said, per Fox 5 Atlanta. "Over the past several years, Ricky has been suffering immensely from a series of mental health illnesses. We will continue in his efforts of treatment, but we ask in the meantime the public uplift him and his family in immediate prayer and positive energy!”

"Ricky is a beautiful soul, and we hope that the same people who came up whipping’ & nay nay-in with him, continue to support him and lifted in prayer!! God bless," Hudson continued.

Prior to Rooks’ fatal January 2021 shooting, Hawk was arrested and charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon after he was accused of attacking two people with a hatchet.

The August 2020 incident happened when prosecutors alleged that Silentó entered a Los Angeles-area home of individuals he did not know as the rapper looked for his girlfriend.

He made his initial court appearance Friday evening in the Middle District of Tennessee, answering "Yes, I understand" in Spanish when U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes asked him if he understood the charges against him.

Judge Homes set a hearing for June 13, where Abrego Garcia will be arraigned on charges and the judge will take up the government's motion to hold him in pre-trial detention on the grounds that he "poses a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight" He will remain in federal custody in Tennessee pending next week's hearing.

"If convicted at trial, the defendant faces a maximum punishment of 10 years' imprisonment for 'each alien' he transported," said the government's motion for detention, which also contained an allegation -- not included in the indictment -- that one of Abrego Garcia's co-conspirators told authorities that Abrego Garcia participated in the murder of a rival gang member's mother in El Salvador.

British prosecutors have approved multiple charges against social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, including rape and human trafficking. The brothers, who face similar charges in Romania, have denied any wrongdoing.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said on Wednesday that it had authorized 21 charges related to offences allegedly committed between 2012 and 2015, according to multiple media outlets. British authorities issued a warrant in 2024, but full details were released only on Wednesday.

Andrew Tate, 38, is accused of ten offences involving three alleged victims, including rape, actual bodily harm, human trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain. His brother Tristan, 36, faces 11 charges, including rape and human trafficking, related to one alleged victim.

“It is extremely important that there be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings,” the CPS was quoted as saying.

The Tate brothers, dual US-UK citizens, were first arrested in Romania in 2022 on charges including human trafficking, sexual misconduct, and forming an organized crime group. They spent three months in custody and have since been under house arrest with restricted movement.

That case stalled in December 2024 when a Bucharest appeals court returned the indictment to prosecutors, citing procedural issues.

Last month, Metcalf was stabbed to death at a high school track meet after reportedly telling Karmelo Anthony, 17, that he was sitting in the wrong seat. Anthony has been charged with first-degree murder and, according to an arrest warrant, told police of the fatal stabbing, “I did it.”

Anthony will be tried as an adult, since Texas is a concurrent jurisdiction state, according to Capital B. The laws allow prosecutors to charge minors, typically 16 or 17 years old, as adults with certain crimes.

The Collin County District Attorney’s Office, which is north of Dallas, is prosecuting the case of Metcalf’s apparent murder. Anthony was charged with first-degree murder in April, but a grand jury will review the evidence and decide whether to formally indict on that charge, or on a lesser charge like manslaughter, Capital B reported.

If Anthony is convicted of first-degree murder, he could face life in prison with a chance at parole after 40 years. He will not face the death penalty.

Due to France’s drug trafficking crisis, a large majority of French are in favor of the army being deployed into disadvantaged neighborhoods in problematic neighborhoods in France, including 80 percent of women.

According to a CSA poll conducted for CNews, Europe 1 and JDD, 76 percent of French people overall want the army called in to battle drug trafficking in “disadvantaged neighborhoods.”

In fact, women are more supportive of troops being deployed than men, with 80 percent of women saying yes to the question: “Should the army be called in to combat drug trafficking in troubled neighborhoods?” In turn, only 72 percent of men supported such an action.

A French youth has lost his life after three youths attacked him with in an axe in a Lidl parking lot yesterday in Nogent-sur-Oise, with video of the incident quickly spreading across social media.

The 17-year-old victim was reportedly hit in the neck with the axe, and despite the efforts of emergency medics, was declared dead at the scene at 8:00 p.m.

“Wounded by a knife, the type of which remains to be determined, the minor quickly lost a lot of blood,” Senlis public prosecutor Loïc Abrial said in a statement. “Treated on the scene by emergency services, he underwent numerous resuscitation procedures. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead that evening.”

In the video of the attack, a woman can be heard screaming, with reports claiming that the woman is the murder victim’s mother.

NEW YORK (AP) — A cryptocurrency investor has been arrested and charged with kidnapping a man and keeping him locked up for weeks in an upscale Manhattan apartment, where authorities say he was beaten, shocked and led to believe that his family was in danger if he didn’t give up his Bitcoin password.

John Woeltz, 37, was arrested Friday night after the victim escaped from the eight-bedroom town house and flagged down a traffic officer on the street for help, according to prosecutors.

Woeltz was arraigned Saturday on charges of kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a firearm, court records show. He was ordered held without bail, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed Saturday.

His lawyer, Wayne Gosnell, said Saturday in an email that he had no comment.

The 28-year-old victim arrived in New York City from Italy in early May, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation and did so on condition of anonymity.

It’s not clear how or if the two knew each other, but the district attorney’s office said in an email that prosecutor Michael Mattson told a judge Saturday that the victim, whose name has not been released, was abducted on May 6.

Mattson said others were involved in the scheme to empty the victim’s Bitcoin wallet. That includes a person referred to in court records as an “unapprehended male.”

The victim said he was bound by the wrists and tortured for weeks inside the apartment. His captors, according to prosecutors, drugged him, used electric wires to shock him, hit him in the head with a firearm and, at one point, carried him to the top of a flight of stairs where they dangled him over a ledge and threatened to kill him if he didn’t share his Bitcoin password.

Believing that he was about to be shot, the victim was able to escape Friday after agreeing to give up his password, which was stored on his laptop in another room. When the suspect turned his back, Mattson said, the victim ran out of the apartment.

Seven Mexican youths have been shot dead at a festivity organised by the Catholic Church in the central state of Guanajuato.

Gunmen opened fire on a group of people who had stayed behind in the central square of the village of San Bartolo de Berrios after an event organised by the local parish.

Eyewitnesses said the assailants had driven straight to the village square in the early hours of Monday and fired dozens of shots seemingly at random.

The authorities have not yet said what the motive behind the shooting may have been but messages scrawled on signs left at several nearby locations appear to indicate it was carried out by the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel.

While attacks on nightclubs, bars and cockfighting venues are not unusual in Mexican states hit by cartel violence, an attack on an event organised by the Catholic Church is rare.

The Episcopal Conference of Mexico, which represents the country's bishops, condemned the fatal shooting saying it "cannot remain indifferent in the face of the spiral of violence that is wounding so many communities".

The local archbishop, Jaime Calderón, also released a statement blaming the attack on a fight for territory between rival cartels.

Guanajuato, where San Bartolo de Berrios is located, had the highest number of murders of any state in Mexico in 2024 with a total of 2,597 homicides.

A gunman has shot dead two top aides of the mayor of Mexico City, Clara Brugada.

The mayor's private secretary, Ximena Guzmán, and Brugada's adviser, José Muñoz, were killed on their way to work on Tuesday morning local time.

Witnesses said an armed man first opened fire on Guzmán, who had stopped her car by the side of a busy avenue to pick up her colleague, and then on Muñoz, who was about to get into Guzmán's car for their morning commute.

The gunman is believed to have escaped on a motorbike and have had at least one accomplice. The possible motive for the killing is still unknown but the attack is the latest in a series of murders of local politicians across the country.

Mayor Brugada was visibly upset during a news conference when she recalled how she had "shared dreams and struggles" with her two aides over the years they had worked for her.

She said she would ensure the murders would not go unpunished.

President Claudia Sheinbaum was informed of the shooting during her daily morning news conference by the security minister, Omar García Harfuch, who has himself been a target of an armed ambush in the past.

President Sheinbaum described it as "a deplorable incident" and offered Mayor Brugada, who is from the same party as the president, all the support she may need.

Police seized a motorbike and another vehicle they think was used in the attack, while forensic experts examined Guzmán's bullet-pierced car.

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While local politicians, especially the mayors of small towns, are often targeted in Mexico, attacks on politicians in the capital are more unusual.

One high-profile exception is the ambush in 2020 of García Harfuch, who was Mexico City's chief of police at the time.

More than two dozen gunmen opened fire on his car and killed two of his bodyguards and a passer-by in one of the most brazen attacks to have occurred in the city.

García Harfuch was hit three times, but survived and went on to become Mexico's security minister in October of last year.

He said the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico's most powerful criminal groups, was behind that incident.

Sean “Diddy” Combs would urinate on Cassie Ventura himself during his “freak-offs” — and once had an entire blow-up pool filled with bottles of baby oil for the sick sex sessions, she testified Tuesday.

“Sometimes Sean, he himself or the escort, would urinate on me,’’ Ventura told the jury at Combs’ sex-trafficking trial in Manhattan federal court. “Sean urinated at the same time.”

She said that once when a male prostitute peed into her mouth during the “humiliating’’ encounters, “It was overwhelming.

“I choked,’’ the witness said.

BELTON, S.C. (WHNS/Gray News) – Parents in South Carolina are facing charges after police said their twin babies were found with rat bite marks on their bodies.

According to the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, Akayla and Justin Bearden, both 24, were charged with two counts of unlawful conduct towards a child.

Deputies responded to the home in Belton when the mother called 911 on Friday morning to report that her 6-month-old child was covered in blood.

The sheriff’s office said a “large rat started eating the child.”

When they arrived, deputies said they found blood covering the baby girl and her bassinet. They said there were bite marks on the baby’s arms, back of the head, ears and face.

The baby was immediately taken to Greenville Memorial Hospital.

Investigators found that the baby girl has a twin brother, who also had bite marks on his feet.

Deputies said the parents admitted that field rats have been an ongoing issue inside their home for the last several months, but they still allowed their children to live there.

Minneapolis, MINN. (Valley News Live) - While he doesn’t see it as a likely possibility, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz says that officials and the community should be prepared in case President Donald Trump decides to pardon former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.

Some have called for President Trump to pardon Chauvin, who is currently serving prison time for the murder of George Floyd. While Walz says it hasn’t heard any talk from the administration about that possibility, he still thinks it’s worth preparing for.

“I will be candid, I’ve talked to people in the community just to prepare the for that.” Governor Walz said in an interview with WCCO.

He also added that, since Chauvin was found guilty of state and federal charges, a pardon from the President wouldn’t necessarily get Chauvin out of serving time in Minnesota.

The mother of a NSW woman murdered by her ex-boyfriend has welcomed prosecutors' decision to appeal his sentence, describing it as a "small step in a long journey".

Tyrone Thompson, 25, stabbed 21-year-old Mackenzie Anderson 78 times with two kitchen knives over two minutes at her Newcastle apartment in March 2022.

His punishment for the brutal murder, committed 16 days after his release on parole for intimidating the Mayfield woman and destroying her property, was 22 years and six months, with a non-parole period of 15 years and six months.

The sentence appalled Anderson's mother, Tabitha Acret, who last night told 9News Premier Chris Minns' office had been in touch to let her know the Director of Public Prosecutions would launch an appeal this week.

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"I was just so overwhelmed with that information. That anyone could think that that sentence was appropriate for what we'd seen."

In sentencing Thompson, Justice Richard Weinstein described a frenzied attack of such ferocity that one of the two kitchen knives he used had snapped.

Veteran human rights activist Judith Todd has revealed she was raped on the orders of Robert Mugabe's government.

Todd, the daughter of former Rhodesian prime minister Sir Garfield Todd, was one of the most active protesters against Rhodesia's independence and subsequent apartheid-style rule.

She became a target of Mugabe's regime after speaking out against a brutal attack on an insurrection in Matabeleland which left thousands dead.

In her new biography, Through the Darkness: A life in Zimbabwe, Todd says she was arrested by an army officer one morning and driven to a civilian complex inside the Chikurubi prison outside Harare.

"A servant let us in, not looking at us," she writes, as quoted in The Australian.

"The (senior officer) led me into a bedroom, opened a bottle of beer for each of us, unstrapped his firearm in its holster, laid it on the bedside table next to my head and proceeded. I did not resist."

She writes that her attacker appeared "unhappy", and that it appeared he was under orders to rape her from the Mugabe Government.

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested the former chairman and founder of real estate investment company Raysum Co., Ltd. and a female companion over the alleged possession of illegal drugs in a hotel in Chiyoda Ward last year, reports NHK (May 12).

On June 24, Tsuyoshi Tanaka, 60, is suspected of possessing approximately 0.859 grams of cocaine and approximately 0.208 grams of kakuseizai (methamphetamine) together with 32-year-old Miho Okumoto in a room of the hotel in Otemachi.

On Monday, police accused Tanaka and Okumoto of violating the Narcotics Control Act and the Stimulants Control Act. Police did not reveal whether the suspects admit to the allegations.

On the day of the incident, police officers were called to the hotel after Tanaka and Okumoto got into a dispute. When officers searched the room, they found three bags of cocaine and stimulants near the bed.

Afterward, Tanaka was hospitalized at an unspecified location in the Kanto region.

Police are currently investigating the circumstances that led to the incident and where the suspects obtained the illegal drugs.