Teen feigns death to escape Taliban massacre
October 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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A 17-year-old boy has survived a Taliban massacre of bus passengers by pretending to dead while he lay among the corpses of shot men.
In a hospital in the southern town of Gereshk in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, the Afghan teenager described how he had hidden wounded among the corpses of five men shot dead by Taliban after they were accused of being police recruits.
The youngster, known as Shukrullah, said he was among about 40 men pulled off a bus travelling through southern Afghanistan last week and split into smaller groups.
“Taliban made us kneel in a ditch and fired at us. Five other people who were with me died and I survived,” he said.
Police confirmed they had found five bodies after six others were discovered Sunday in Helmand. They believe around 30 men were killed.
The Taliban has claimed to have killed 27.
The US condemned the reported Taliban attack on the bus.
“This is a heinous act. It just goes to show that the Taliban are ruthless killers who would do anything they can to stop progress in Afghanistan,” State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said.
Yesterday was a day of bloodshed in the toubled country with a British aid worker, two German soldiers and five Afghan children were killed.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the killing of aid worker Gayle Williams, who was shot dead in Kabul, as well as the deaths of the German troops and children in a suicide attack in the north.
He said the murder of Ms Williams, 34, who also had South African nationality, was cowardly and unforgivable.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon also condemned the killing of Ms Williams, and aid workers in Somalia, urging respect for the neutral and impartial status of humanitarian personnel.
Ms Williams was gunned down as she walked to work at SERVE Afghanistan, a British-based Christian charity that helps disabled people.
“Two armed men sitting on a motorbike shot her dead. Some bullets hit her body and some hit her leg and when police got there she was dead,” interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
The attackers had fled and their motive was unknown, he said.
The Taliban, which has carried out similar assassinations in the southern city of Kandahar, said it was responsible.
“We killed her because she was working for an organisation which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan,” spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said by telephone.
SERVE Afghanistan rejected the charge of preaching. “We have a specific policy against proselytising,” said the London-based chairman of the board, Mike Lyth.
Mr Karzai also expressed condolences for the deaths of five Afghan children and two German soldiers killed in a suicide attack in the northern province of Kunduz for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.
German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung confirmed the deaths of two German soldiers, saying it was a “cowardly ambush” that showed the “Taliban contempt for human life.”
Germany has about 3300 soldiers in a 40-nation NATO-led force helping Afghan forces tackle the Taliban insurgency.
This year 232 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, more than in the whole of 2007, most of them in insurgent bomb attacks.
Attacks in the post-Taliban era are agreed to be at an all-time high this year with the UN special envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide saying last week that July and August recorded the most incidents since 2002.
A security watchdog, Afghanistan NGO Safety Group, said last week that insurgent attacks on aid workers were at the highest level in six years. In other incidents, 10 Taliban were reported killed in clashes, one near the town of Lashkar Gah which has come under repeated attack in the past week.
The Helmand government claimed 34 had been killed but the defence ministry said only six bodies were found.
Mutant fish killing people in river
October 10, 2008 | 4 Comments
A MUTANT fish has started killing people after feeding on human corpses dumped in a river, scientists believe.
The catfish, called a goonch, may have developed a taste for human flesh in an Indian river where bodies are dumped after funerals, The Sun reported.
Locals believe the fish has moved on from scavenging to snatching bathers who swim in the Great Kali, located along the India-Nepal border.
Biologist Jeremy Wade is investigating the creature.
“The locals have told me of a theory that this monster has grown extra large on a diet of partially burnt corpses. It has perhaps got this taste for flesh by feasting on remains of funeral pyres,” he said.
“There will be a few freak individuals that grow bigger than the other ones and if you throw in extra food, they will grow even bigger.”
Mr Wade said he caught one which tipped the scales at 73kg and was nearly 6ft long.
“If that got hold of you, there’d be no getting away,” he said.
An 18-year-old Nepali disappeared in the river last year, dragged down by something described as like an “elongated pig”.
But the first victim of a goonch attack was thought to have been a 17-year-old Nepalese boy.
He was killed in April 1988 as he cooled himself in the river.
Witnesses said he was suddenly pulled below the surface.
Three months later a young boy was dragged underwater as his father watched helplessly.
Cop involved in NY Taser death kills himself
October 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A NEW York police officer who ordered a Taser be fired at a distraught naked man who then fell to his death has been found dead, reports say.
A New York police official, who did not want to be named, told the Associated Press the lieutenant was found at a park in Brooklyn early yesterday, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
His family had not yet been told, the AP said.
The lieutenant had ordered another officer to shock Iman Morales, who fell nearly 3m to his death in Brooklyn last week.
Mr Morales, who was naked and poking police with a fluorescent light tube, was Tasered when he wouldn’t come down from an awning.
The lieutenant was stripped of his gun and badge after the incident last week, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered refresher training on how to deal with emotionally disturbed people.
Crowd Cheered as Teen Jumps to his Death
October 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
A jeering crowd taunted a suicidal teenager as he threatened to jump from the top of a city-centre car park.
In a shocking indictment of modern Britain, youths who gathered in the street below yelled at 17-year-old Shaun Dykes to kill himself over the course of three hours.
One allegedly shouted: ‘How far can you bounce?’
The A-level student eventually plunged 60ft to his death after police negotiators tried in vain to talk him down.
In a final sickening act, some of those responsible for the abuse outside the Westfield shopping centre in Derby rushed from behind the police cordon to take pictures of the teenager’s body on their mobile phones.
Yesterday police branded the mob’s behaviour at the scene of Saturday’s tragedy a ’shocking reflection on society’.
Horrifying end: Friends describe Shaun as funny and popular
Superintendent Andy Hough, of Derbyshire police, said he was ‘disturbed’ by some of the comments aimed at the teenager, who is believed to have suffered from depression and also to have been upset at the breakdown of a relationship.
People were at the police cordon shouting for the man to jump,’ Superintendent Hough said.
‘I find it a disturbing and shocking reflection on society when people feel inclined to do that.
‘Negotiators were working with the man threatening to jump and it was their job to talk to him in the hope of changing his mind.
‘We really need the public to work with us, not against us. It was a very disappointing situation.’
Shaun, from Kilburn, near Derby, had climbed over a railing on the top floor of the car park, which is above the busy shopping mall.
Police cordoned off the pavement on the car park side, but pedestrians were still able to walk down the opposite pavement, and crowds formed.
A shopkeeper who witnessed the incident said groups of youths were responsible for shouting at Shaun as he was sitting on the edge of the roof.
‘Quite a few people were hanging around watching what was happening and the police were telling them to move on,’ he said.
‘Most just stopped for a few minutes and then left.
‘But there were some people shouting things like “Jump” and “Get on with it!” They were teenagers with nothing better to do who seemed to think it was funny.
Death plunge: The Westfield shopping centre multi-storey car park in Derby from which Shaun fell
‘When he fell, lots of people were screaming and crying but there were several groups of youths who ran from behind the cordon and looked like they were taking pictures with their mobile phones.
‘I found that sickening - why would anyone want to take pictures of something like that?’
The Mayor of Derby, Councillor Barbara Jackson, called on the those responsible for goading Shaun to ‘learn some respect’, while the Bishop of Derby, the Rt Rev Dr Alastair Redfern, said he was ‘horrified’.
Mike Shewan, chief executive of Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust, said: ‘We can’t condemn this sort of behaviour strongly enough.
‘No one knows what was going on in his head, but encouraging him to jump is so wrong. It is hindering the police and the people who care from doing their job.’
Yesterday Shaun’s parents, who are separated, were too distraught to talk about their only child.
His mother, Joy, lives with partner Kevin Lacey in Kilburn. He said Shaun would be ’so sadly missed’.
Flowers and tributes were left at the spot where he died.
Tribute: Friends and family have left flowers and cards at the tragic scene
Lindsey Reid, 17, Shaun’s best friend, said: ‘He was the joker and smiled all the time. He was so funny and everyone knew him because he was so popular.’
On his MySpace web page, the teenager said he hoped to work in accounting, and that he wanted to die ‘quietly’ when the time came.
The former John Flamsteed School pupil was studying at the Heanor Gate Science College, in Heanor, Derbyshire.
Heanor Gate head teacher Rob Howard said some students who had witnessed the tragedy were being offered counselling.
He added: ‘At least one of our students also witnessed the shocking encouragement of Shaun to jump and was both horrified and angry.
‘I sometimes wonder what value some people put on human life.’
Mr Howard said Shaun had ‘ personal issues’ out of school.
Derbyshire police referred Shaun’s death to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which has decided not to investigate.
Officers will carry out their own inquiry and an inquest will be held later.
A force spokesman said: ‘A small minority of onlookers - mainly other youths - were the ones shouting the abuse. It is a very sad state of affairs.’
He had no knowledge of anybody taking pictures of Shaun after he fell and said the cordon was designed to restrict access to the street, whilst ‘minimising disruption for shoppers’.
Nobody was likely to be arrested as a result of the abuse directed at Shaun, he added
Tasered Brooklyn Man Falls to his Death
September 26, 2008 | 1 Comment
Police fired a Taser at a naked Brooklyn man armed with only a fluorescent light tube yesterday, sending him falling to his death from a second-floor ledge after he went on a 40-minute rant.
Iman Morales’ mom begged cops not to hurt her son, telling them he’s sick - then watched in horror as he plunged from the top of the roll-down gate on which he’d been perched.
An Emergency Services officer, acting on the orders of his boss, fired at the 35-year-old man at around 2 p.m., as he waved the 8-foot fluorescent light tube, police sources said.
“His body froze up and he fell face-first,” said Sean Johnson, who witnessed the drama at 489 Tompkins Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Morales, who crashed 10 feet to the pavement, died a few hours later at Kings County Hospital.
Asked if police followed the proper protocol for using a Taser, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said, “That’s being reviewed.”
A New York Police Department lieutenant was stripped of his gun and badge, and the officer who used the stun gun on the man was placed on administrative duty Thursday, officials said.
Amid his mostly unintelligible rant, Morales was heard yelling, “You’re going to kill me. I’m going to take everyone with me.”
He also screamed, “I’m going to die. You’re all going to die with me.”
Morales first emerged hanging out a third-floor window after a blowup with his mother at around 1 p.m., witnesses said.
Twenty minutes later, he climbed the fire escape to the fourth floor, where he tried to force his way into a neighbor’s apartment.
“He tried to come into my window and I ran out,” said 40-year-old Tonya Wright.
“He said, ‘Let me in.’ I told him, ‘I’m not letting you in.’ ”
Morales then headed to the second floor and screamed to the crowd, which included his frantic mom.
“She was saying, ‘No! No! Don’t hurt him. He is sick,’ ” Wright said.
With police shouting for him to get down, Morales made his way to a ledge above a the gate.
“Walk down now! Move down!” the police can be heard shouting to him on video.
He then picked up the light tube and waved it in the air before jabbing cops who had climbed out of the windows above.
“When he was poking the cop, people were laughing,” Johnson said.
He refused orders from the officers and continued his incoherent tirade.
Finally, one of the ESU cops on the street shot him with the Taser.
“He just fell face first,” said witness Sean Brown. “People were screaming and yelling. It was wrong.”
It was unclear what set off the episode, but, said Johnson, “once he started hitting the cop with that pole, that’s when it turned serious.”
Morales had one prior arrest, for a Manhattan petit larceny.
“This is very out of character,” said the building’s superintendent, Charlene Gayle, 31.
“Nice guy, clean cut, well kept, never irrational. Didn’t have irrational behavior.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona
