Murders, Attempted Murders and Homicides

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      Mistrial Declared in Case of Arizona Rancher Accused of Murdering Migrant

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      George Alan Kelly is accused of fatally shooting Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, an unarmed migrant from Mexico, on his 170-acre ranch in Kino Springs, Ariz., last year.A judge on Monday declared a mistrial in the case of an Arizona rancher who was accused of murdering an unarmed migrant on his property after he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border last year, in a case that inflamed people on both sides of the national debate over immigration.The mistrial was declared after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict during deliberations that began on Thursday. The judge scheduled a hearing for April 29, according to the Arizona Superior Court in Santa Cruz County.Calls on Monday evening to prosecutors and to Brenna Larkin, a lawyer for Mr. Kelly, were not immediately returned.Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea was among a group of undocumented migrants who were crossing the high desert in Kino Springs, Ariz., near the border with Mexico on Jan. 30, 2023, when they spotted a Border Patrol vehicle and scattered, according to the authorities.When two of the men, Mr. Cuen-Buitimea and Daniel Ramirez, ran onto George Alan Kelly’s 170-acre ranch, Mr. Kelly fired his AK-47-style rifle at them, the authorities said. Mr. Cuen-Buitimea 48, who had crossed into the United States from his native Mexico in search of work, was hit in the back, law enforcement officials said.Hardened immigration critics and conservative ranchers seized on the case, casting Mr. Kelly as the real victim in posts on social media and saying that the episode was evidence of a growing threat to their security and livelihoods. But many in Santa Cruz County were horrified by the killing and viewed the surge in migrants crossing the border as a humanitarian crisis.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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      Ex-Philadelphia Officer Pleads Guilty in Fatal Shooting of Boy, 12

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      Edsaul Mendoza, a former Philadelphia police officer, could face up to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to third-degree murder.A former Philadelphia police officer pleaded guilty on Friday to third-degree murder in the shooting of a fleeing 12-year-old boy in 2022, according to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.The former officer, Edsaul Mendoza, 28, also pleaded guilty to possession of an instrument of crime in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County before Judge Diana Anhalt, court records show.Mr. Mendoza, who is scheduled to be sentenced on July 22, could face up to 40 years in prison.Mr. Mendoza fatally shot the boy, Thomas Siderio, during a foot chase on the night of March 1, 2022, after Thomas shot at an unmarked police vehicle that Mr. Mendoza and three other Philadelphia police officers were in, according to prosecutors.Mr. Mendoza had initially been charged with first-degree murder, third-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and possession of an instrument of crime, according to prosecutors.A jury trial had been scheduled for May 13, court records show.Charles Gibbs, a lawyer for Mr. Mendoza, declined to comment on Friday.A lawyer for the Siderio family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.“Justice must be evenhanded,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement on Friday. “Everyone must be accountable under the law.”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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      Woman Admits Killing Pregnant Teenager for Her Baby

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      Clarisa Figueroa, 51, of Chicago, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Prosecutors say she strangled the young mother and tried to pass the baby off as her own. A Chicago woman who killed a pregnant teenager and aimed to pass the baby off as her own pleaded guilty to murder Tuesday and was sentenced to 50 years in prison, prosecutors said.In April 2019, Clarisa Figueroa, 51, who had been pretending to be pregnant, fatally strangled Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, 19, who was eight months pregnant, according to a legal document known as a bond proffer obtained by The Associated Press.Ms. Figueroa cut Ms. Ochoa-Lopez’s baby from her body in hopes of passing him off as her own, the court record said. The boy later died.Now, Ms. Figueroa is set to serve her sentence at an Illinois state prison, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, ending a grim five-year case that stunned a community and left a husband widowed and without a son.“The memory of my infant son’s last breath in my arms is complete agony,” the baby’s father, Yovanny Lopez, said in a statement in the courtroom Tuesday, according to The A.P.Ms. Figueroa and her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, were arrested in May 2019 after investigators found Ms. Ochoa-Lopez’s car near Ms. Figueroa’s home and then discovered Ms. Ochoa-Lopez’s remains stuffed in a garbage bag in Ms. Figueroa’s garage, according to the proffer.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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      Kristi Noem, South Dakota Governor and Trump VP Contender, Is Barred by Tribes

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      Four of South Dakota’s federally recognized Native American tribes have barred the state’s governor, Kristi Noem — a Republican whose name has been floated as a potential running mate for former President Donald J. Trump — from their reservations. The latest blocked Ms. Noem on Thursday.Three of the tribes barred Ms. Noem this month, joining another tribe that had sanctioned the governor after she told state lawmakers in February that Mexican drug cartels had a foothold on their reservations and were committing murders there.Ms. Noem further angered the tribes with remarks she made at a town hall event last month in Winner, S.D., appearing to suggest that the tribes were complicit in the cartels’ presence on their reservations.“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Ms. Noem said.The tribes are the Cheyenne River Sioux, the Rosebud Sioux and the Standing Rock Sioux and the Oglala Sioux, which in February became the first group to bar Ms. Noem from its reservation. Their reservations have a combined population of nearly 50,000 people and encompass more than eight million acres, according to state and federal government counts. Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the third tribal area to have restricted Ms. Noem’s access, extends into North Dakota.The tribes have accused Ms. Noem of stoking fears and denigrating their heritage when she referred to a gang known as the Ghost Dancers while addressing state lawmakers and said that it had recruited tribal members to join its criminal activities.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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      Witnesses to Sydney Mall Stabbing Describe Harrowing Scenes

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      Witnesses to the stabbings at a mall in a Sydney, Australia, on Saturday described a scene of terror as shoppers fled from the knife-wielding man or huddled in stores as panic spread through the shopping center.Some shoppers hid inside as alarms blared. Others ran out, screaming as they passed by bodies on the floor.When Gavin Lockhart, 37, saw people running as he sat inside a coffee shop at the mall, there was a moment of confusion. “Is it a celebrity?” he first thought. “Is it because of a gunman?”Then he fled when he heard, “He’s got a knife! He’s got a knife!”He followed the coffee shop’s owner, Michael Dunkley, 57, who also brought his wife, who was cooking, and two baristas into a staffroom where they could lock the door. Mr. Dunkley said afterward that just one thought was in his mind when the screaming began: “I have to get my wife and staff to safety.”Mr. Dunkley left the room to try to chase down the attacker, whom he described as a thin man with a beard and short hair, wearing dark green pants and a green jersey.Then, Mr. Dunkley recounted, he saw a police officer attempt to stop the assailant. When the officer told the man to put his knife down, he lunged toward her with his weapon, the cafe owner said.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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      Mall Attack Was Australia’s Worst Mass Violence in Years

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      The stabbing attack in a Sydney shopping center that left at least six people dead on Saturday was Australia’s worst act of mass violence since 2017, when a driver killed six people by deliberately plowing his car into pedestrians in Melbourne.In a country where mass stabbings and shootings are rare — in part because of strict gun laws — the latest attack has horrified Australians.Here is how it compares to other acts of mass violence in the country in recent years:June 2019: A gunman killed four people in a shooting spree across the main business district of Darwin, in the Northern Territory.January 2017: A man with drug-induced psychosis drove his car into a busy shopping street in Melbourne’s central business district, killing six people and injuring more than 20 others.December 2014: A gunman held 18 people hostage in a cafe in Sydney’s central business district. The standoff with the police, which lasted 16 hours, ended with the deaths of two hostages and the gunman. The authorities later labeled it a terrorist attack.November 2011: Fourteen people died when a nurse set fire to a nursing home in Quakers Hill, near Sydney.April 1996: Australia’s worst mass shooting occurred at Port Arthur, Tasmania, when a gunman killed 35 people. Just weeks later, the country’s leaders brought in strict gun laws. More

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      Frank Olson, Executive Who Linked O.J. Simpson With Hertz, Dies at 91

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      He negotiated Mr. Simpson’s star turn in commercials, tapping into his football fame, and formed a social bond with him — until there were murder charges. They died on the same day.Frank A. Olson, who as a top executive of Hertz cast the running back O.J. Simpson as the star of the company’s commercials — a corporate marriage that shined up both parties and that lasted two decades, until Mr. Simpson was charged in a double homicide in 1994 — died at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday, the same day Mr. Simpson died. Mr. Olson was 91.The cause was complications of Covid, his sons, Christopher and Blake, said.The coincidental timing of the deaths of Mr. Olson, who had steered Hertz through years of corporate turbulence, and Mr. Simpson, the athlete turned pitchman turned infamous criminal defendant, linked the two men in a way that Mr. Olson had once embraced but that he later distanced himself from.More than business partners, Mr. Olson and Mr. Simpson, both San Francisco natives, forged an alliance, beginning in the 1970s, that spoke of that mutually beneficial zone where corporate and social life intertwine. Mr. Olson, an avid golfer, sponsored Mr. Simpson for membership in the private Arcola Country Club in Paramus, N.J., where in 1992 Mr. Simpson, a former Heisman Trophy winner and Pro Football Hall of Famer, became the first Black member.In a letter that Mr. Simpson left at his Los Angeles home before his arrest in the stabbing murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman, he listed friends he was sending “love and thanks to.” Mr. Olson was one of them.“I took him places where I think very few Black men had ever been,” Mr. Olson said in the acclaimed 2016 documentary “O.J.: Made in America.”Mr. Simpson was 76 when he died of cancer at his home in Las Vegas.The idea of featuring him in Hertz commercials to symbolize speedy service, beginning in 1974, originated with the company’s ad agency. But because Mr. Simpson was Black and most Hertz customers where white businessmen, the choice made the agency nervous, according to a 1994 article in The Washington Post. So the decision was kicked up to Mr. Olson, who at the time was executive vice president and general manager of the rental-car division. (The company also rented trucks.)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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      What Was O.J. Simpson’s Connection to the Kardashians?

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      Long before the Kardashians became a star attraction on reality television, the family name first came to prominence when Simpson, the former N.F.L. star, was on trial.There was no mention of O.J. Simpson on Kim Kardashian’s Instagram page on Thursday.Early that morning, she posted a video promoting a hoodie and bike shorts from Skims, the clothing company she co-founded. Later in the day, after the Simpson family announced that Mr. Simpson had died of cancer at age 76, Ms. Kardashian was silent on social media.Over the decades, her family had distanced itself from the man who played a significant role in propping up the Kardashian name.Kim’s father, Robert Kardashian, met Mr. Simpson through their ties to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Mr. Kardashian earned a business degree there in 1966, and Mr. Simpson was a star running back for the school in 1967 and 1968.The two became close in the 1970s, when Mr. Simpson was a standout in the National Football League and Mr. Kardashian was a rising lawyer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles. His businesses included entertainment properties and a frozen yogurt company.When Mr. Kardashian married the former Kris Houghton (now Kris Jenner) in 1978, Mr. Simpson served as his best man. The couple had four children — Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Robert Jr. The marriage ended in divorce in 1991. That same year, Ms. Jenner married the former Olympian who now goes by Caitlyn Jenner.Mr. Simpson met Nicole Brown in 1977, when he was still married to his first wife. During a separation from his wife, he lived for a time with Mr. Kardashian at his home, Mr. Simpson wrote in his 2007 book, “If I Did It.”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