Murders, Attempted Murders and Homicides

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    Fraternity Member Charged With Manslaughter in Hazing Death of University Student

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    Investigators say that Caleb Wilson, 20, a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., collapsed after being hit with boxing gloves as part of a pledging ritual for Omega Psi Phi.The police in Baton Rouge, La., on Friday announced the first of a series of expected arrests in the fraternity hazing death of Caleb Wilson, a 20-year-old Southern University student who they said was repeatedly punched with boxing gloves at a warehouse last week and was unresponsive when he was dropped off at an emergency room.Caleb McCray, 23, a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, was charged with manslaughter and felony criminal hazing, according to court records. The authorities said at a news conference on Friday that two other suspects could soon be arrested.Mr. McCray was identified by witnesses as the person who punched Mr. Wilson, the arrest warrant affidavit said. He turned himself in to the authorities on Thursday and was booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, the police said.The people who brought Mr. Wilson to Baton Rouge General Medical Center told employees on the night of his death that he had collapsed after being struck in the chest while playing basketball before they fled the hospital, the authorities said.But investigators said that they had learned that was not true.As part of a hazing ritual for the Beta Sigma chapter of Omega Psi Phi, Mr. Wilson and several other pledges were lined up and hit four times each with boxing gloves in their chests, the authorities said.The repeated blows caused him to collapse to the floor and suffer what had appeared to be a seizure, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘I’m Freaking Out’: New Texts Detail Key Minutes of Idaho Murders

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      Newly released messages reveal that two roommates in the home where four college students were murdered were alarmed by a masked person in the house that night.On the night that four University of Idaho students were fatally stabbed in a house near the campus, two roommates began urgently texting each other after one of them saw a masked man moving through the house.“What’s going on,” one of the residents, Dylan Mortensen, texted to one of her friends upstairs, according to new court documents released on Thursday. The friend did not answer, but she was able to make contact with a downstairs roommate, Bethany Funke. “I’m freaking out,” she texted.Ms. Mortensen and Ms. Funke — who ultimately were the only survivors of the stabbing spree — began texting back and forth shortly before 4:30 a.m., soon after Ms. Mortensen had seen a masked man walking in the hallway outside her bedroom door.The texts on the night of Nov. 13, 2022, give new insight into the confusion and fright of the two surviving roommates, who appear to have hunkered down in Ms. Funke’s room until later that morning. Ms. Mortensen called or texted each of the stabbing victims around 4:30 a.m., but received no response. No one called 911 until more than seven hours later.Ms. Mortensen, who had seen the masked figure in the house, told Ms. Funke by text that “no one is answering” the other roommates’ phones, and she described seeing someone wearing something like a “ski mask almost.” Ms. Funke told her to “run” downstairs to her bedroom so they could be together.“It’s better than being alone,” she texted.Ethan Chapin, left, and Xana Kernodle. Kaylee Goncalves, left, and Madison Mogen. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Possible Remains of Indigenous Women Slain in Canada Found in Landfill

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      The search in Manitoba uncovered possible human remains from two victims of a serial killer, a devastating case that spotlighted an epidemic of violence against Indigenous women in Canada.The authorities in the western Canadian province of Manitoba said on Wednesday that they had found what could be the remains of two Indigenous women murdered by a serial killer, a possible breakthrough in a case that has devastated local communities and brought to the fore the issue of violence against Indigenous women in Canada.During a search of the Prairie Green Landfill near Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, experts “identified potential human remains in the search material,” the provincial government said in a statement.The families of the two victims, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, had been notified and visited the site, it said, adding that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other agencies would take over the investigations.Between March and May 2022, Jeremy Anthony Michael Skibicki, then 35, killed four Indigenous women, all from the Winnipeg area. He was arrested in December the same year. He had expressed support for the far right on social media, filling his Facebook page with white supremacist, misogynistic and antisemitic comments.Last year he was sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole for the first-degree murders of Ms. Myran, who was 26 when she was killed; Ms. Harris, who was 39; Rebecca Contois, 24; and an unidentified woman whom First Nations elders called Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, which means Buffalo Woman.Donna Bartlett, grandmother of Marcedes Myran, with her great-granddaughter in Winnipeg last year.Sebastien St-Jean/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome of Ms. Contois’s remains were recovered in a separate landfill in 2022, but the remains of the unidentified woman, Ms. Harris and Ms. Myran were never found.The latter two women were killed within days of each other in early May 2022, the authorities said at the time. Both were from Long Plain First Nation, a reserve about 55 miles west of Winnipeg, and had been reported to the police as missing.Ms. Harris’s and Ms. Myran’s families, friends and communities had mounted a relentless fight to persuade the authorities, both local and federal, to permit and to fund a thorough search for their remains in Prairie Green Landfill, where GPS evidence suggested they had likely been dumped.The Canadian government had resisted the landfill search, citing costs and technical difficulties.In 2022 the homicide rate of Indigenous women and girls in Canada was more than six times higher than that of their non-Indigenous counterparts.Cambria Harris, the daughter of Ms. Harris, who has led the fight for the recovery of her mother’s and Ms. Myran’s remains, asked for privacy. “I would like this time to grieve in peace,” she said on a social media posting.Jorden Myran, a sister of Ms. Myran, did not respond to a written request for comment. More

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      Baltimore State’s Attorney to Withdraw Motion to Vacate Adnan Syed’s Conviction

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      The case of Mr. Syed, who has spent decades in prison for the murder of his high school girlfriend, was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial.”The Baltimore City state’s attorney announced on Tuesday that his office would withdraw a motion to vacate the conviction against Adnan Syed, who has spent decades in prison while fighting charges that he had killed his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.Mr. Syed’s case was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial,” which presented new evidence and led to a swell of interest in the case. The previous Baltimore prosecutor had asked a judge to overturn the conviction in 2022, citing issues with initial evidence and other possible suspects.Though the charges against Mr. Syed were dropped that year, his conviction was later reinstated and Maryland’s highest court ordered a redo of the hearing that freed him.In a statement, the Baltimore City state’s attorney, Ivan J. Bates, said that his office had determined that the motion to vacate the conviction by his predecessor contained “falsehoods and misleading statements.”“I did not make this decision lightly, but it is necessary to preserve the credibility of our office and maintain public trust in the justice system,” Mr. Bates said.The release of “Serial” in 2014 raised doubts about the facts around the case. The podcast was downloaded more than 100 million times in its first year and brought national public attention to Mr. Syed’s case. (In 2020, The New York Times Company bought Serial Productions, the company behind the podcast.)This is a developing story. More

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      ‘Religious Motivation’ Possible in Berlin Stabbing, Police Say

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      The suspect, a Syrian refugee, told the police that a plan had come into his mind to kill Jews. The attack raises tensions just before an election in which immigration is a big issue.The man detained in connection with the stabbing of a Spanish tourist at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial on Friday may have been planning for weeks to kill Jewish people, according to German authorities.The suspect, a 19-year-old Syrian refugee, was carrying a copy of the Quran, a prayer rug and a piece of paper with the attack’s date and Quran verses when he was apprehended, suggesting a “religious motivation,” the Berlin police said on Saturday. In a joint statement with the public prosecutor’s office, they added that things the suspect had said to the police suggested that over several weeks “a plan to kill Jews came together in his mind,” and that the location of the attack also reflected this idea.The police said they had not ruled out connections to the Middle East conflict but had found no evidence linking the suspect to other groups or individuals. He came to Germany in 2023 as an underage refugee, was a legal resident and had no criminal record, the authorities said, adding that were also investigating if mental illness had played a role in the attack.The 30-year-old victim, whose name was not made public, sustained neck injuries that required him to have emergency surgery and be placed in a medically induced coma, officials said, but his life was no longer at risk.The attack took place at Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, an expansive memorial across the street from the U.S. Embassy. It came as Germans prepared to vote in a divisive national election on Sunday, and amid a rise in antisemitism across Europe.Germany’s economic problems, coupled with frustration over immigration, are central issues to voters in a parliamentary election where the far-right party, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has risen in the polls.The AfD party, which has been linked to neo-Nazis, has promised to crack down on immigration and deport some immigrants, a message that has gained traction in a country that has suffered a series of attacks perpetrated by people from Afghanistan and the Middle East.An asylum seeker from Afghanistan rammed his car into a union demonstration in Munich on Feb. 13, injuring dozens, and in December, a Saudi citizen killed six people and injured hundreds more when he drove his car through a Christmas market in central Germany.Lars Dolder More

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      Zakia Jafri, Who Sought Justice for Victims of Indian Riots, Dies at 86

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      For two decades, she waged a legal battle against government officials in India after her husband was brutally killed in Gujarati in 2002.Zakia Jafri, who turned her personal loss into an uphill campaign for justice after her husband, Ehsan Jafri, was brutally murdered during sectarian riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002, died on Feb. 2 at her daughter’s home in Ahmedabad, India. She was 86.Her death was confirmed by her son Tanveer Jafri.More than 1,000 people, a majority of them Muslim, died in the riots that gripped Gujarat, on the western coast of India, in 2002. They began on Feb. 27, when a fire killed nearly 60 people on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims to Godhra, a town in Gujarat. The cause of the fire was disputed. However, as rumors spread that Muslims were responsible, mobs erupted across large parts of Gujarat, attacking Muslim homes and businesses, and killing people by hacking and burning them to death. Among those killed was Ms. Jafri’s husband, who was a union leader, a lawyer and a former member of Parliament.In a legal battle that dragged on for nearly two decades, Ms. Jafri accused Narendra Modi, India’s current prime minister, who at the time was the leader of Gujarat, of “conspiracy and abetment” in the riots.In all that time, “she remained stoic, despairing, yet hopeful,” Teesta Setalvad, a human-rights activist, said in an interview. “For me, for us, she was the mother of all the survivors of 2002, carrying the burden of her pain and loss with dignity and fortitude and always giving us strength.”A scene from the riots in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, in 2002.Arko Datta/ReutersZakia Naseem Fidahusain Bandookwala was born on Jan. 15, 1939, in Rustampur, a village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. She was one of six children of Fidahusain Fakhrali Bandukwala and Amtubai Fidahusain Bandukwala, wealthy farmers. She moved to Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, after marrying Mr. Jafri in 1962.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Charged With Killing Roommate, Whose Torso Was Found in a Suitcase

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      The remains of Edwin Echevarria, 65, were found floating in the East River on Feb. 5. His roommate, Christian Millet, 23, has been charged with second-degree murder.A human torso that was found inside a suitcase drifting down the East River earlier this month was identified as the remains of a 65-year-old man, Edwin Echevarria, and his roommate was charged with his murder, the police said Thursday morning.Christian Millet, 23, was charged with second-degree murder for the killing of Mr. Echevarria, who had lived with him on Columbia Street on the Lower East Side, the police said.Mr. Millet told the police that he had knocked Mr. Echevarria to the ground, then stamped on his head, killing him, according to a law enforcement official. He then used a tool to cut his body in pieces and put his remains in a suitcase, the official said. It was not immediately clear what happened to the rest of Mr. Echevarria’s body.The police did not say how they learned the identity of Mr. Echevarria or provide a motive for the killing.A New York City ferry captain discovered the suitcase drifting in the East River on Feb. 5, according to an internal police report.Unable to fish it out of the river, the captain called the Police Department’s Harbor Unit for help, the report said.Officers from the unit pulled the suitcase from the water at around 5:30 p.m. and, after seeing what was inside, brought it to Pier 16 on the East Side of Manhattan, about a quarter-mile south of the Brooklyn Bridge, the police said. More

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      Human Torso Found in Suitcase in the East River Near Manhattan

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      A New York City ferry captain saw the luggage and called the Police Department’s Harbor Unit. The authorities have not identified the remains.A New York City ferry captain on Wednesday discovered a suitcase drifting in the East River that turned out to have a human torso inside, according to an internal police report.The captain, who was aboard the vessel Susan B. Anthony, saw the luggage floating in the water late Wednesday afternoon near Governors Island, a largely recreational area just off the southern tip of Manhattan, according to the report.Unable to fish it out of the river, the captain called the Police Department’s Harbor Unit for help, the report said. Officers from the unit pulled the suitcase from the water at around 5:30 p.m. and, after seeing what was inside, brought it to Pier 16 on the East Side of Manhattan, about a quarter-mile south of the Brooklyn Bridge, the police said.The authorities have not been able to identify the remains. A spokeswoman for the city medical examiner said the office would perform an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of the person’s death.Reached on Thursday, the ferry captain declined to comment.The discovery of body parts in New York City’s waters is uncommon, but not unheard-of. A human head was found in Jamaica Bay in Queens last May. Then, in August, other human remains began to wash up on the shore of Brooklyn Bridge Park, just steps from its early-20th-century carousel. Over the course of several weeks, officers found a human skull, leg fragments, vertebrae and two feet inside a pair of construction boots, according to another internal police report.News reports of such discoveries date back more than a century. In 1900, the body of a longshoreman was found floating in the East River just below East Ninth Street in Manhattan, according to an Oct. 1 article published that year in The Evening World, a turn-of-the-century newspaper.In another case, authorities in 1967 pulled a man’s body from the Hudson River, according to a New York Daily News article from Aug. 19 of that year. The police later identified the man as 62-year-old Joseph Robert Juliano, who had Mafia ties. More

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      Man Gets 100 Years in Prison for His Role in 2020 Shooting Spree

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      The rampage on Thanksgiving Day killed one person and injured several others in Nevada and Arizona.A Texas man has been sentenced to at least 100 years in prison for his part in a two-state shooting spree on Thanksgiving Day in 2020 that killed one person and wounded several others across Nevada and Arizona.The rampage began in the early hours of Nov. 26, 2020, when the man, Christopher McDonnell, 32, and two others started opening fire from their moving car at motorists outside Las Vegas in what prosecutors called a “mobile mass shooting.” Roughly 10 hours after it began, the spree ended when the car crashed along a highway near Bouse, Ariz., after a shootout with the police.On Friday, Mr. McDonnell, of Tyler, Texas, listened in a courtroom in Clark County, Nev., before his sentencing as victims and their relatives described how the eruption of random shootings that day had upended their lives.“I struggle every day,” said Kevin Mendiola, whose 22-year-old son, Kevin Mendiola Jr., was shot and killed during the spree outside a 7-Eleven in Henderson, Nev., about 15 miles southeast of Las Vegas.Mr. McDonnell pleaded guilty but mentally ill to nearly two dozen felony charges in October, including first-degree murder and multiple counts of firing a weapon at an occupied vehicle. All of the charges were filed in Nevada, and he does not face any in Arizona.At the hearing on Friday, Mr. McDonnell, his face tattooed to resemble a skull, read from a brief statement: “I take full responsibility for my own wrongdoings, and I appreciate the courts for administering justice.” Mr. McDonnell’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More