Rapist Hides in Strippers Car Boot
September 25, 2008 | 1 Comment
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A Sydney teenager raped a topless waitress after hiding in the boot of her car and forcing her to pull over, a judge has heard.
While she was driving from a bucks’ party, James Nigel Stephens moved from the boot compartment by pushing the rear seat forward and entering the rear passenger seat.
Stephens, 18 at the time, from Fairfield in Sydney’s southwest, has pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated detaining a person for advantage.
The offences occurred in the early hours of January 14 last year in inner-city Waterloo.
Stephens faced a sentencing hearing in the NSW District Court on Thursday, where an agreed statement of facts was tendered to Judge Michael Finnane.
The facts said that when Stephens attacked the woman he was wearing a distinctive orange and black Balmain Tigers T-shirt, which police found in a search of his home.
The woman had been hired as a topless waitress from midnight to 3am at the bucks party, which Stephens attended.
After later being repeatedly sexually assaulted by Stephens in her car, she escaped and a taxi driver took her straight to police.
“Upon attending Redfern police station, the complainant entered the police station screaming hysterically and shaking uncontrollably,” the facts said.
The sentencing hearing continues.
School Shooter Matti Juhani Saari kills 10, then himself
September 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
“YOU will die next”.
That was the chilling warning posted on YouTube by a young Finnish man who went on a shooting rampage through a school, killing 10 people, before setting it on fire and shooting himself in the head.
Student Matti Juhani Saari, 22, was taken taken to hospital after the carnage in the town of Kauhajoki, southwest Finland, yesterday but died, authorities said.
A female victim who was shot in the head was one of two people wounded but alive.
Her condition was not immediately clear.
Saari had been questioned by police just one day earlier after he posted a YouTube video of himself at a shooting range, Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said.
Police had decided against taking his gun and cancelling his gun licence, deeming him not enough of a threat.
“Police action will be examined in more detail later. The gunman had a temporary permit for a .22 calibre pistol, and he had received it in August 2008. It was his first gun,” she said.
“Police were aware of (the YouTube videos) and spoke to him on Monday, September 22,” a police spokeswoman said.
“However, the police officer on duty decided there was no need to terminate his gun licence.”
Saari left a note saying he had been planning such an attack since 2002, and that he hated the human race, police said.
YouTube profile
Saari’s YouTube profile said he loved weapons and horror movies. One clip showed him pointing a gun at the camera and saying “You will die next”.
The videos also showed Saari, dressed all in black, firing a handgun at a shooting range.
The weapon is described on the site as a Walther P22.
Saari said his interests and hobbies included “computers, weapons, sex and beer”.
Among his favourite films were “horror movies like The Shining”, Stanley Kubrick’s famed 1980 film featuring Jack Nicholson as a crazed father.
He listed his favourite heavy metal groups, such as German band Rammstein and US group Metallica, as well as German electronic band Wumpscut, whose name he used in his YouTube pseudonym, Wumpscut86.
Wumpscut is known for its violent lyrics, with song titles such Black Death, Bleed in Silence, and Hate is Mine.
His profile included the words: “And suddenly there was war and the mothers they screamed. For revenge and reprisals for another war.”
In another video, entitled Goodbye, Saari emptied his gun into an off-screen target, walks to the camera and said “goodbye”.
The videos were taken offline soon after the shooting.
Victims trapped
The shooting at the school in Kauhajoki, 360km from Helsinki, in southwest Finland, began yesterday morning (local time) and lasted for about 90 minutes, local official Ari Paananen said.
Saari, a second-year culinary arts student, stalked the school corridors in a ski mask and black outfit before letting off round after round at helpless students trapped inside a classroom.
He then set several fires around the building before shooting himself in the head. He later died of his injuries at a local hospital.
Nine of the victims had been found in one classroom, while another had been discovered in a corridor and Saari had been found in another hallway at the other end of the building.
Police spokesman Jari Neulaniemi said Saari walked into the school armed with a the .22-calibre Walther pistol and carrying explosives.
Mr Neulaniemi said Saari left two handwritten messages at huis flat saying he had planned the attack since 2002 and that he hated the human race.
The note went on to say “the solution is Walther 22″, Mr Neulaniemi said.
He said Saari started fires around the school with “petrol bombs or Molotov cocktails.”
Some of the victims could not be identified immediately because they were burnt beyond recognition.
The school’s headmaster, Tapio Varmola said he did not know what had spurred the deadly shooting spree.
“I have no knowledge about a possible motive,” said.
“Because the shooter has died we might never know why he did this.”
According to a former classmate, the gunman bore no resemblance to the loner profile of many mass murderers.
“He was happy, a social guy - there was nothing exceptional - and he got along with people well and he was not lonely. He had friends,” Susanna Keronen said.
Scenes of horror
Witnesses described a scene of panic and terror as Saari stalked his victims.
“I heard the sound of shooting and hysterical girls’ voices. Then two girls came towards my room and said a weird man was shooting,” school caretaker Jukka Forsberg said.
“I went to see and saw a guy leaving a big black bag in the corridor and going into classroom No.3 and closing the door.
“I looked through window and he immediately shot at me. Then I called the emergency number.
“Thank God I was not hit. He fired at me but I was running zigzag. I ran for my life.”
Mr Varmola also described horrifying scenes.
“People were running out of the building in two directions. When I went out I didn’t hear any shots, only screams,” he told the STT news agency.
Questions over gun laws
The shooting raised the spectre of the killings at Finland’s Jokela high school last November, when student Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse and the principal after broadcasting his intent with a video on YouTube.
Auvinen shot himself and died later of his injuries.
Finland has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, ranking third after the United States and Yemen, according to a study last year by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.
After the last shooting, the Government took some steps to toughen gun regulations.
After the latest shooting, it held an emergency meeting of governing coalition party leaders.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said Finland should consider banning private handguns altogether, saying a new stricter European-wide gun law was not enough.
“It is not enough to talk about age limits or interviews … after two such tragic incidents, we have to discuss whether private people can be allowed to have handguns,” Mr Vanhanen said on Finnish broadcaster MTV3.
Finnish President Tarja Halonen said the “shocking” news would start a national dialogue on gun ownership.
“This news we received today was shocking, sad news about the shooting incident at a vocational school in Kauhajoki,” she said on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
- AFP, Reuters
86 Lawyers for 86 Wives
September 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A coalition of 27 human rights groups has mobilised the lawyers to defend Bello Masaba against the charges and the threat of banishment, said human rights activist and playwright Shehu Sani.
Mr Masaba, 84, came to the limelight two months ago when he admitted in the media to having 86 wives and 170 children, insisting that his marriages did not contravene Islam which allows a man to get married to up to four wives.
“It is our determination to protect his fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution and international law,” Sani said.
Sani, the director of Civil Rights Congress, a rights group based in the northern city of Kaduna and a member of the coalition, said the identities of the defence lawyers would not be disclosed for fear of blackmail and intimidation.
He said that the coalition “will go to any length to defend Masaba whom we believe is a political prisoner and prisoner of conscience”.
Mr Masaba was whisked away from his home town Bidda by police and arraigned before an Upper Sharia court in the state capital Minna “for incendiary contempt of religious laws and contracting unlawful marriage to 86 wives”, a court clerk said.
The news attracted sharp criticism and indignation from all over the country’s north, particularly from Islamic clerics, with the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), the Nigerian Muslim umbrella body slamming a fatwa or death sentence on Masaba.
Two weeks ago, Mr Masama agreed to divorce 82 of the wives and keep four, the maximum Islam allows, following a two-day ultimatum issued to him by the influential traditional chief of his home town to either choose four among the 86 wives or leave the town.
“The choice of 86 lawyers is deliberate. For each wife, Masaba will have a lawyer,” Sani said.
Hurricane Ike survivors shared church refuge with Lion
September 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
MANY years from now, a small group of Hurricane Ike survivors will probably still be telling the story of how, on the night the storm flattened their homes, they took refuge in a church - with a lion.
The full-grown lion was from a local zoo. The owner was trying to drive to safety with the animal when he saw cars and trucks stranded in the rising floodwaters. He knew he and the lion were in trouble.
He headed for the First Baptist Church at Crystal Beach, on Bolivar Peninsula, adjacent to Galveston, and was met by a group of residents who helped the lion wade inside. They locked it in a sanctuary as the storm raged.
The water crept up to their waists, and wooden planks came floating through broken windows. But the lion was as calm as a kitten.
When daylight came, everyone was still alive.
“They worked pretty well together, actually,” said the lion’s owner, Michael Ray Kujawa.
“When you have to swim, the lion doesn’t care about eating nobody.”
Amid the destruction in places like Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston, where rows houses were scoured from the landscape, seemingly impossible tales of survival have begun to emerge.
Whether through faith or fate, luck or resourcefulness, dozens of people who stayed behind made it out alive, and have harrowing stories to prove it.
As of Tuesday, the official death toll from Ike stood at 48. Only 17 were in Texas - and many of those were people killed by fires or generator fumes after the storm had passed. However, authorities held out the possibility that some victims were washed out to sea.
Electricuted Teen Plunges 100ft to death
September 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A 15-year-old schoolboy electrocuted after clambering 100ft up an electricity pylon was terrified of heights, his family revealed yesterday.
Michael Lee O’Nion was climbing the tower and accidentally touched the 66,000-volt power lines.
He was thrown off by the shock and friends saw him fall to his death on barbed wire 20ft above the ground that had been put up round the pylon to deter people from climbing it.
Michael’s father Lee, a 39-year-old lorry driver fought back the tears at the family home in Flanderwell, Rotherham yesterday
He said: “He is the last person in the world I would expect to climb up like this.
“He was a daredevil , he loved a laugh and a joke but he was frightened of heights and wasn’t embarrassed to admit it.
‘We recently went on holiday to the seaside and it took us three days to persuade to go on one of the white knuckle rides.
‘So whether he had overcome his fear or whether it was because all his mates were there I don’t know.
‘He was a loveable rogue but I don’t why he did this. I have been to the pylon to see and I can’t understand why he went up there.
‘I miss him so much . I loved him so much . I can’t believe this has happened.’
Paramedics and fire officers arrived within minutes but he was pronounced dead at the scene near Rotherham.
The boy, named locally as Michael O’Nion, is believed to have lived with his family nearby.
They have been informed but he has yet to be formally identified.
A specialist rescue team had to use high rise access equipment to free the body. Police sealed off the surrounding woodland.
Maltby, Wickersley and Thrybergh areas of South Yorkshire had electricity cut for up to 30 minutes as the recovery operation was carried out.
Friends left flowers at the scene with messages. One read: ‘Can’t believe you’re gone Mickey.’
Supt Keith Lumley of South Yorkshire Police said : ‘The woods in this area are popular as a play area for local youngsters and the dead boy was with a group of friends when this happened.
‘The pylon is about 30m high and carrying about 66,000 volts.
‘There are barbed wire barriers to stop anyone climbing up the pylon but it seems this boy climbed over these to the power lines.
‘At some point he made contact and the power arced and he was thrown part of the way down the pylon.
‘This is a terrible tragedy and underlines how dangerous it is for anyone to climb these pylons. It may seem like fun and adventurous but is obviously extremely dangerous.’
Station manager Stephen Copp of South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said it was a complicated and difficult operation to free the boy’s body.
Thousands of homes in the Maltby, Wickersley and Thrybergh areas of South Yorkshire had electricity cut for up to 30 minutes during the recovery operation.
