Teen was turning his life around
CHARDON, Ohio (AP) — The teenager suspected in an Ohio school shooting struggled with a broken family and did poorly in school, then appeared to turn himself around once he was taken in by grandparents and began to attend an alternative school, longtime neighbors and friends said Wednesday.
To a person, they expressed disbelief at how the quiet but friendly boy could now be a suspect in a shooting that left three people dead and appears to have involved a gun that disappeared from his grandfather’s barn.
“T.J. was a very fine person,” Carl Henderson, a longtime neighbor of the suspect’s grandparents, Thomas and Michelle Lane, said Wednesday. “Nice-looking man, very friendly, spoke to you, carried a conversation with you.”
The gun, a .22 caliber revolver, was noticed as missing after Monday’s shootings and fits the description of the pistol that reportedly was used to kill three students and wound two others at Chardon High School, said Henderson, a retired police officer and former Geauga County sheriff. He said he has spoken to the grandfather, Thomas Lane, about the gun.
Ex-mine security chief gets 3 years
BECKLEY, W.Va. (AP) — A former security chief convicted of lying to investigators about the April 2010 explosion that killed 29 men at a southern West Virginia coal mine was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday.
Hughie Elbert Stover was convicted of lying to investigators and ordering a subordinate to destroy thousands of security-related documents at the Upper Big Branch mine following the worst U.S. coal mine disaster in four decades.
U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin had sought a 25-year sentence, hoping to send a resounding message about Stover’s crimes following the April 2010 explosion.
Federal sentencing guidelines called for a total sentence of about three years for both crimes. Judges do not have to follow the guidelines.
Holder reviewing spying by NYPD
WASHINGTON (AP) — Months after receiving complaints about the New York Police Department’s surveillance of entire American Muslim neighborhoods, the Justice Department is just beginning a review to decide whether to investigate civil rights violations.
Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress the status of the review Tuesday. The announcement bothered some Democrats, who said they were under the impression the Justice Department had been reviewing the matter since last late last year.
Documents obtained by AP show that the NYPD has built databases pinpointing where Muslims live, where they buy groceries, what Internet cafes they use and where they watch sports.
Dozens of mosques and student groups have been infiltrated, and police have built detailed profiles of Moroccans, Egyptians, Albanians and other local ethnic groups.
Monkees singer dies in Fla. at 66
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Davy Jones, the diminutive heartthrob who rocketed to the top of the 1960s music charts by beckoning millions of adoring fans singing the catchy refrains of The Monkees, died Wednesday. He was 66.
Jones died of a heart attack near his home in Indiantown. Jones complained of breathing troubles early in the morning and was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, said Rhonda Irons, spokeswoman of the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.
Jones’ moppish long hair, boyish good looks and his British accent endeared him to legions of screaming young fans after “The Monkees” premiered on NBC in 1966 as a made-for-TV band.
