Monmouth County Prosecutor spokesman Charles Webster says that a 35-year-old woman was shot once in the parking lot of a local restaurant in the town of Brielle, New Jersey called the Sand Bar.

Local authorities say that no formal arrests have been made and the woman’s identity has yet to be released.

Witnesses told News 12 in New Jersey that the victim is in fact an employee of the restaurant. According to residents of the Bay Point Harbor Condominiums, police have been knocking on doors looking for a man who they believe shot the unknown woman. According to reports, the police are looking for the owner of the Sand Bar.

Other local news sources indicate that a suspect has been “contained” in a home:

SAND BAR SHOOTING UPDATE: http://t.co/4uFX2tOoQb Victim is 35, female, in critical but stable condition. Suspect is "contained" in a home

— New Jersey 101.5 (@nj1015) June 18, 2013

NJ 101.5 also says that residents were evacuated from the area and the SWAT team was called in as part of the search.

Two women and two men – one of whom was the gunman – were killed. Based on surveillance footage from the scene, it appears to have resulted from an argument that took place inside the business – A K Home Health Care. All four of the dead are in their 40s and 50s, according to police.

Police say that the shooter appears to have been the owner of the business, and the three victims were members of the staff. The motives behind the shooting remain unclear at this time. Authorities were unsure as to whether the situation developed from an ongoing argument between the owner and his staff.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the owner of record for the business is Khadra Muse of O’Fallon, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Police have not yet confirmed that Muse is, in fact, the shooter.

Police response to the incident appears to have been almost immediate. According to witnesses there were officers who happened to be in the area at the time of the shooting. A woman reportedly ran out of the building screaming for help and encountered the officers. It is unclear whether the shooter had already taken his own life by the time officers responded.

The names of the dead have not yet been released, and police have been reluctant to offer more than a few scant details about the situation, due to the fact that the investigation is ongoing.

Another question to remand to the future historians – what’s the deal with the NSA’s recently revealed phone data collection program? Massive invasion of privacy? A necessary, albeit heavy-handed tactic in the ongoing fight against terrorists?

I don’t know. I have opinions, but I don’t know. One thing I do know is that June 12th, 2013 will always be remembered as the day one defense attorney first turned the tables on the NSA’s no-longer-secret surveillance program.

This is beautiful, really. Marshall Dore Louis, attorney for Florida’s Terrance Brown, has decided to use recent revelations to his avantage. “Oh, NSA, I hear you’re spying on all of our phone calls. Well, how bout you let me see what you found so I can prove my client’s innocence”* – or something like that.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, Brown is one of five men accused of robbing a series of armored trucks making cash deliveries to banks a few years ago. The prosecution has been using phone records to prove that the men were all nearby when the robberies occurred.

Well, the only problem is that prosecutors have been unable to obtain records for Brown during the period before September, 2010 (when at least one of the robberies took place). You see, Brown’s carrier, MetroPCS, simply doesn’t keep records that far back.

But wait a minute. Louis says he wants those records to exonerate his client by proving he was nowhere near the area of the robbery at Lighthouse Point in July, 2010.

“Who has extensive phone records on American citizens? Aha! The NSA of course! I just heard about that on the news.”**

“The president of the United States has recognized this program has been ongoing since 2006…to gather the phone numbers [and related information] of everybody including my client in 2010,” Louis said.***

He has a point. Imagine if this ploy actually worked. Seriously. Imagine it. Imagine lawyers all over the country asking the NSA to help prove their clients’ innocence.

Imagine the NSA laughing and saying no. That’s a lot easier to imagine, I guess.

————

* I don’t know what Mr. Louis was thinking. This is what I would have been thinking.
** Once again, I assume he must’ve had this train of thought. Just go with it, please.
*** He really said that – in court on Wednesday.

[Image via gadgetdan, Flickr]

A female snapping turtle found severely beaten in a sand bunker of a Delavan, Wisconsin golf course has died from her injuries.

Authorities believe that the turtle was probably attempting to lay her eggs in the bunker when she was beaten with what appears to be a golf club. Investigators are currently searching for the eggs, but have so far been unsuccessful.

“It happened at the Delbrook Golf Course in Delavan on June 10 between 7:30 and 9:30 a.m. The female turtle, looking for a place to lay her eggs, was found lying in the sand in a bunker with holes in its shell. It was also struck in the right eye, a wound which appeared to have been from a golf club,” said the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in a Facebook update.

The turtle was supposed to undergo surgery, which was to give her a 40%-60% chance of survival. Sadly, the turtle died before that was possible.

The Global Conservation Group, Wisconsin’s largest animal rights organization, has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person(s) responsible. And PETA has reportedly pledged an additional $5,000.

The photos of the turtle, post-attack, are pretty brutal. According to the people at the Pineview Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, the turtle (aged 10-13) was just too banged up to survive. Not only did the turtle sustain multiple gouges to its shell, but also sustained a severe blow to the head.

What the hell, people?

Bulger is accused of using force–sometimes deadly–to get what he wanted from some of Boston’s undesirables. The Irish mob made their ill-gotten funds disappear by buying up property in their neighborhood, but in 1994, Bulger was tipped off by an FBI informant that he was on the verge of being busted on federal racketeering charges. He went into hiding, and that’s where he stayed for 16 years. Two years ago, he was captured in Santa Monica with his girlfriend, who received eight years for aiding and abetting a known criminal.

Now, the stories of Bulger’s misdeeds are about to come to light, in grisly and fascinating detail.

“The guy is a sociopathic killer,” Tom Foley, an organized crime investigator who spent most of his career with the Massachusetts State Police trying to bust Bulger, told CNN. “He loved that type of life. He’s one of the hardest and cruelest individuals that operated in the Boston area. He’s a bad, bad, bad guy.”

Bulger’s tactics for avoiding detection reportedly included cutting off the fingers and pulling the teeth of the people he killed so they couldn’t be identified. It also helped that he had a friend working within the FBI who tipped him off to anything he wanted to know; disgraced agent John Connolly is now serving 50 years for second-degree murder in the death of a businessman who was about to testify against Bulger and other Mob members in 1982.

The trial is just getting started, but it’s sure to be a doozy. And as more details of Bulger’s deeds come to light, it’s doubtful any more jurors will decide to take a nap. It may also make Johnny Depp rethink his position on salary.

Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo, an oncologist specializing in breast cancer, allegedly dosed Dr. George Blumenschein’s coffee with the chemical and told him the reason it tasted so sweet was because she’d put Splenda in it. He says she gave him a second cup, and within hours he was in the emergency room with slurred speech, loss of fine motor skills, central nervous system depression, cardiopulmonary complications and renal failure.

Rather than Splenda, it was ethylene glycol, which is also used for medical purposes and is reportedly found quite easily at the hospital the two worked at, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. But Gonzalez-Angulo maintains her innocence.

“She is a distinguished citizen and scientist, and these allegations are totally inconsistent with her personal and professional life,” attorney Derek Hollingsworth said in a statement.

Gonzalez-Angulo has been charged with aggravated assault, but it’s not clear just yet what her motive may have been. She’s free on $50,000 bail; Dr. Blumenschein, meanwhile, has had to undergo dialysis for kidney failure.

Shermain Miles has been booked for public drunkenness, armed robbery, trespassing, and an alleged attack on Alderman James Cappleman, among other things. She has become well-known among community law enforcement members for her erratic behavior, such as shrieking from her holding cell. But after years of being passed through the system only to be released on the streets again, a judge decided to break the cycle and offer her help.

“All of us are reaching out to you and offering you, maybe for the first time in your life, a hand, OK?” Judge Peggy Chiampas said. “But you’ve got to reach out and grab all of our hands as well.”

Miles has taken the plea deal after serving time for committing her most recent crimes while on parole. As of now, she’s at Logan Correctional Center, and her case is being reviewed pending completion of the plea bargain agreement.

According to police, the kids took the wheelchair from a house that’s undergoing some renovations near midnight on Saturday. They allegedly took the wheelchair on a joyride until the battery died, upon which the kids abandoned it.

The chair, a custom-made motorized scooter, is valued at around $17,000. It belongs to a 27-year-old man with cerebral palsy.

“My son had nine surgeries and that chair was specially made for him,” said the man’s mother, Carmela Pinello. “They left my son stranded. They should be ashamed of themselves and realize that you don’t play with somebody’s life and think it’s a joke, because it’s not a joke.”

Of course, this story has a Facebook connection. Police were able to make arrests when they found pictures of the kids on the stolen wheelchair on the social network. The chair has yet to be recovered.

When I was 14, kids were just dicks. Now, with the ubiquity of Facebook, kids are just dumber dicks who make it easy for police to spot their dumb dickdom. Our dumb teens will find themselves in family court next week.

[via CBS New York]

Rumors about the incident quickly spread, and Twitter lit up with reports that the rapper had been shot. 2 Chainz (born Tauheed Epps), took to Twitter to assure fans (and detractors) that he was, in fact, alive and well.

After the incident, 2 Chainz continued on to the Oakland Summer Jam festival, where he performed as planned.

18-year-old Cameron D’Ambrosio was arrested on May 1st after officials were notified of Facebook posts containing “with disturbing verbiage,” according to police.

What did he post exactly?

fuck a boston bombinb wait til u see the shit I do, I’ma be famous for rapping, and beat every murder charge that comes across me.

“He’s telling people to shut up and in order to get some props he’ll have to go kill somebody. He says he’ll go insane and make the news,” said Police Chief Joseph Solomon at the time of the arrest. “And he said people shouldn’t cry when they see what he does because they have it coming.”

D’Ambrosio has been held without bail for over a month. The charges leveled against him could have resulted in up to 20 years in prison.

The case drew national attention, as many free speech activists argued that the arrest and subsequent incarceration amounted to a First Amendment violation.

Noted First Amendment advocates Fight for the Future launched a petition to free D’Ambrosio. That petition received over 90,000 signatures.

“The post contained no specific threat of violence against any person or group of people, and in the context of the rest of the lyrics and Cams’ rap persona, it was clearly nothing more than a metaphor and rap braggadocio – Cam wasn’t saying he would ‘outdo’ the Marathon bombing, as the media has frequently reported, he’s saying he’s going to be famous rapping, more famous than the marathon bombing. A la Biggie Smalls ‘blowing up like the World Trade.’ It may be a distasteful line, but it’s free speech and it’s protected by the Constitution,” said FFTF.

“At an initial bail hearing, the prosecution was clearly grasping at straws and brought up incidents from Cam’s past – like the fact that he allegedly bit another student during a fight when he was 11 years old, and the fact that the police were called after a fight he had with his sister several years ago.”

“There will be a bail hearing this afternoon, after which point he will probably be released, is my educated guess,” said Essex County DA spokesperson Carrie Kimball Monahan.