Murders, Attempted Murders and Homicides

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      80-Year-Old Seattle Dog Walker Is Killed in a Carjacking, Police Say

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      The great-grandmother struggled with a man inside her car before being forced out and then struck by the vehicle, the police said. Her dog was later found dead in a recycling bin.An 80-year-old Seattle woman who worked as a neighborhood dog walker was killed on Tuesday morning when a man got into her car, forced her out, struck her with the vehicle and drove off with her dog, which he later killed with a knife, the police said.The woman killed in what the authorities said was a random attack was Ruth Dalton, a great-grandmother who the police said was “well-loved.”She was in her Subaru in the Madison Valley neighborhood with at least two dogs inside just before 10 a.m. Tuesday when a man got in from the passenger side, officials with the Seattle Police Department said at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon. The two struggled, and the moving car went off the road onto a grassy area.Nearby drivers stopped their cars and ran to help Ms. Dalton, the police said.One bystander backed away when the man pulled out a knife, but he returned with a stick or bat to help Ms. Dalton, the police said. By the time the bystander had run back to Ms. Dalton’s car, the man had already forced her out. The carjacker put the Subaru into reverse, crashed into two vehicles, struck Ms. Dalton and drove off, the police said.Others who were nearby rendered first aid to Ms. Dalton, and emergency workers with the Seattle Fire Department provided medical treatment, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.A memorial was created for Ruth Dalton, a dog walker who was killed during a carjacking in Seattle.Ivy Ceballo/The Seattle Times, via Associated PressWe 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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      3 More Victims of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Found With Gunshot Wounds

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      Officials are exhuming bodies to learn more about the victims of one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.Three victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, whose remains were exhumed along with those of eight others, were found to have gunshot wounds, investigators announced on Friday, in the latest findings from research about one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.G.T. Bynum, the mayor of Tulsa, Okla., announced in 2018 that the city would begin searching for and analyzing the bodies of victims of the massacre to learn more about their identities and causes of death.Between 36 and 300 people are thought to have died during the massacre, officials have said, however only 26 death certificates were issued in connection to it.“The people that we are searching for, our fellow Tulsans, they’re not just names in history,” Mr. Bynum said at a news conference on Friday. “These are our neighbors who were murdered in horrible ways.”Investigators are looking for “simple wooden caskets” that fit a variety of parameters that could indicate a possible victim of the massacre, according to Kary Stackelbeck, a state archaeologist.“Two of those gunshot victims display evidence of munitions from two different weapons, meaning that those two individuals were shot with at least two different kinds of arms,” Dr. Stackelbeck said. “The third individual who is a gunshot victim also displays evidence of burning.”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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      Inmate Captured in North Carolina After Escape

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      Law enforcement officers captured Ramone Alston, who had been serving a life sentence for murder, at a hotel. He was moved to a high-security prison unit and will face new charges.Authorities in North Carolina on Friday captured a man convicted of murder, whose escape from custody three days earlier had prompted an extensive search, according to the state’s Department of Adult Correction.The man, Ramone Alston, fled from a prison vehicle on Tuesday morning while being transported to a medical appointment at the U.N.C. Hospitals Hillsborough Campus.He was caught at a hotel in the city of Kannapolis just before 2 a.m. local time, in an operation that included local law enforcement officers and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Adult Correction said in a statement on Friday. Nobody was injured during the operation, it added.Mr. Alston, 30, who is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, will face charges of felony escape from prison, the statement said, and will be taken to a high-security unit in the state prison system to serve out that sentence while waiting to face the new charges in court. A woman, Jacobia Crisp, whom the release described as an acquaintance of Mr. Alston, was charged with felony aiding and abetting a fugitive.Authorities will investigate Mr. Alston’s movements while on the run, including whether he committed other crimes and if he had any other accomplices, the department said. Mr. Alston escaped early Tuesday when officers opened the door of the vehicle at the medical facility. Mr. Alston, who had managed to free himself from his leg restraints, ran out of the vehicle while wearing handcuffs and fled into the woods, state officials said.More than 300 law enforcement personnel from 19 agencies joined a search for him, scouring 1,335 acres.The police who had accompanied Mr. Alston were carrying weapons but did not fire at him because “it all happened so quickly,” a spokesman for the department said.Mr. Alston was convicted of first-degree murder in 2018 for his involvement in a shooting that led to the death of a 1-year-old girl on Christmas Day in 2015, according to court documents. Lawyers for Mr. Alston said he was not the person who had fired the shot that resulted in the girl’s death.Mr. Alston had been serving his sentence at Bertie Correctional Institution in Windsor, N.C., which is more than 100 miles east of the Hillsborough medical campus. More

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      Four Arrested in Killing of ‘General Hospital’ Actor

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      The police said they arrested three men on murder charges in the fatal May 25 shooting of Johnny Wactor, 37, in Los Angeles. A fourth person was also charged.The authorities have arrested four men in the killing of “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor, who was shot dead in May as three men attempted to steal the catalytic converter from his vehicle in downtown Los Angeles.The Los Angeles Police Department on Thursday announced the arrests of Robert Barceleau, Leonel Gutierrez and Sergio Estrada. All three men are 18 and from Los Angeles County. They will face murder charges.They were arrested Thursday and were being held on $2 million bond, jail records show. A fourth man, Frank Olano, 22, was arrested on an accessory charge for helping at least one of the suspects evade the authorities.Mr. Wactor was gunned down at around 3:25 a.m. on May 25 when he returned to his parked vehicle after finishing a shift at a downtown Los Angeles bar where he worked. The 37-year-old came across three men who were in the middle of stealing his car’s catalytic converter.“When Wactor arrived at his vehicle, he was confronted by three individuals who had Wactor’s vehicle raised up with a floor jack and were in the process of stealing the catalytic converter,” the police said. “Without provocation, the victim was shot by one of the individuals.”The actor was walking with a co-worker and initially thought that his car was being towed, his mother, Scarlett Wactor, told ABC7 news.She added that one of the persons “looked up, he was wearing a mask, and opened fire.”Mr. Wactor was transported to the hospital by emergency workers where he was pronounced dead.The three men were able to get away in a stolen sedan, the police said in August.Mr. Wactor was known for appearing in more than 160 episodes of the soap opera “General Hospital” as the character Brando Corbin. He also appeared in other shows, including “Westworld” and in one episode of “Criminal Minds,” according to IMDb.Catalytic converter thefts have become more common across America in recent years.The emissions-control devices contain rare and expensive metals like palladium and rhodium, making them a hot target for thieves.In a Thursday evening phone call, Ms. Wactor said she was glad to hear that the arrests had been made and said she hoped the men are convicted.“It’s a great early birthday present for Johnny,” Ms. Wactor said.Her son, she said, would have been 38 on Aug. 31. More

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      Jewish Man Charged With Attempted Murder in Attacks on Muslim Neighbor

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      Izak Kadosh faces more than 40 charges, many of them hate crimes, including attempted murder and aggravated assault. Prosecutors said the attacks, in Brooklyn, went on for months.A Jewish man in Brooklyn was arrested and charged with attempted murder and hate crimes after repeatedly attacking his Muslim neighbor over several months, ultimately breaking into the neighbor’s apartment and striking him so hard with a mallet that he had internal bleeding, according to a criminal complaint.The man, Izak Kadosh, was arrested on Saturday, two days after he broke into the apartment, according to police officials. Mr. Kadosh faces more than 40 charges, including attempted murder, aggravated harassment, hate-crime assault and intent to damage property.Mr. Kadosh pleaded not guilty to all of the charges in Kings County Criminal Court on Monday. Bail was set at $25,000 cash or a $125,000 partially secured bond. He is being held on Rikers Island and is due to appear in court again on Friday.A lawyer for Mr. Kadosh declined to comment on the case.The neighbor who was attacked, Ahmed Faycal Chebira, said the harassment started soon after he moved into the building, in the Crown Heights neighborhood, in October. Mr. Chebira, who is from Algeria, said Mr. Kadosh would call him “dirty Arab” or “dirty Muslim” and spit on him.“I told him, leave me alone,” Mr. Chebira, 50, said in Arabic on Wednesday. “Everyone has their own religion in America; I don’t have a problem with anyone.”“I feel relieved now that they caught him,” Mr. Chebira continued, adding that he was in the hospital when he learned about the arrest. “I was afraid that I would leave the hospital and he would be outside.”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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      Lake Elsinore Serial Killer Confesses to 1986 Murder of 19-Year-Old Woman

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      William Lester Suff, 70, was already on death row for a dozen murders in Southern California. Now, he has confessed to killing a 19-year-old woman, shutting a 1986 cold case, officials said.A convicted serial killer on California death row for murdering a dozen people in the 1980s and ’90s confessed to the 1986 murder of a 19-year-old woman in Los Angeles County, the police announced on Tuesday.William Lester Suff, 70, confessed in May 2022 to stabbing Cathy Small to death and dumping her body on a South Pasadena, Calif., cul-de-sac, where her body was discovered by police on Feb. 22, 1986, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced at a news conference on Tuesday. Why the announcement came more than two years after the confession was not clear.Ms. Small’s body was found in the morning wearing a nightgown, and she died from multiple stab wounds and strangulation, Lt. Patricia Thomas said.Ms. Small’s body was identified three days later by a man who had read about the killing in the news and had called detectives to say he was concerned that the victim could be his roommate.He told detectives that she had worked as a prostitute in the Lake Elsinore area and had lived at his house for a few months, Lieutenant Thomas said.The man said that Ms. Small left their house on the night of Feb. 21, 1986 wearing a nightgown. Ms. Small, he added, told him that a man named Bill was paying her $50 to join him on a drive to Los Angeles.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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      Trucking Company Owner Pleads Guilty in Wreck That Killed 7 Bikers

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      Dunyadar Gasanov admitted he had lied to investigators about how long he had known the driver of the truck and altered drivers’ logs to evade federal regulations.The owner of a trucking company pleaded guilty to federal charges Tuesday for making false statements after one of the company’s trucks killed seven motorcyclists on a rural road in Randolph, N.H. in 2019, federal prosecutors said.Dunyadar Gasanov, the owner of Westfield Transport in West Springfield, Mass., falsified driving logs, conspired to make false statements to federal inspectors and admitted to lying to inspectors about how long he had known the driver involved in the fatal crash, the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts said in a statement.Mr. Gasanov, 39, who lives in West Springfield, Mass., and is known as Damien, will face up to 15 years in prison and a $30,000 fine for the three charges to which he pleaded guilty when he is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 21, 2024. As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed to recommend “incarceration at the low end” of the sentencing guidelines, according to court documents.In a statement, Joshua S. Levy, the acting U.S. attorney, said that Mr. Gasanov had “flouted those laws that are critical to public safety.”“We will not forget the lives lost in June 2019 that relate to this conviction,” he said.The crash, on June 21, 2019, killed seven members of a motorcycle club of ex-Marines: Albert (Woody) Mazza Jr., 59; Daniel Pereira, 58; Aaron Perry, 45; Desma Oakes, 42; Michael Ferazzi, 62; and Jo-Ann and Edward Corr, who were 58.The driver of the truck that killed the bikers, Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, of West Springfield, Mass., was acquitted by a jury in 2022 of all charges he faced: seven counts of manslaughter, seven counts of negligent homicide and one count of reckless conduct.Mr. Gasanov lied to investigators about how many times he had interacted with Mr. Zhukovskyy, prosecutors said. He had claimed that he had first met the driver shortly before the crash, when, in fact, he had known him for years and was aware that Mr. Zhukovskyy, in 2013, had been charged with operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, according to court records.Mr. Gasanov also underreported the number of hours driven by employees to evade federal regulations designed to ensure the safety of roadways, instructed at least one employee to falsify records, and lied about manipulation of driving logs, according to prosecutors.Westfield Transport ceased operation shortly after the accident, according to court records.Lawyers for Mr. Gasanov did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Dartanayan Gasanov, who, according to The Boston Globe is a brother of Dunyadar Gasanov, worked at Westfield Transport with Dunyadar, has also been accused of falsifying driving logs. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, the prosecutors’ statement said.Kirsten Noyes More

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      2 People Stabbed in London’s Leicester Square

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      A girl, 11, and a woman, 34, were attacked on Monday in the often-crowded area of the city center, the police said. Neither suffered life-threatening injuries.Two people were stabbed in London’s Leicester Square, a tourist hot spot, on Monday, the police said.The victims, an 11-year-old girl and a 34-year-old woman, were taken to a hospital, Westminster police said in a post on social media. In a later update, the police said that the girl would require hospital treatment but that her injuries were not life threatening and that the woman suffered more minor injuries.The police added that “there is no suggestion that the incident is terror-related.”A man was arrested and was in custody, and the police said they did not believe there were any additional suspects.The episode came exactly two weeks after a deadly knife attack in Southport, near Liverpool, that led to the death of three young girls and injured eight other children and two adults. In the days after the stabbings in Southport, false information about the identity of the attacker, including that he was an undocumented migrant, spread rapidly online and ignited a series of violent riots around Britain.In Leicester Square, an area in front of a shop called TWG Tea was cordoned off by blue and white police tape at 1:30 p.m., with a handful of police officers positioned at the scene. There were visible blood stains and a discarded baseball cap in the cordoned-off zone.A man working as security in the tea shop said he had witnessed the attack and intervened after a young girl and a woman he believed to be her mother were injured. Police officers then whisked the witness away for further questioning.The BBC identified the employee as a 29-year-old named Abdullah. He told the BBC and the Press Association news agency that he had tackled the attacker, kicking the knife away before he and a few others held the man down until the police arrived.Two hours after the attack, hundreds of tourists continued to mill about the square. Shoppers at the Lego and M&M’s stores, which both frequently have long lines of people waiting to enter, craned their necks to see what was happening as a helicopter circled overhead. More