Month: June 2023

The Mississippi Department of Public Safety said that two Mississippi police officers were shot and one died Thursday during a standoff that started as a hostage situation in a home.

According to The Associated Press, an unnamed person was holding a second unidentified person hostage inside a home in Brandon, a suburb of Jackson, Mississippi’s capital city. The hostage situation reportedly began as a domestic dispute between a woman and man, and Police Chief Wayne Dearman said they first received a call of the situation at around 1:45 a.m. local time.

Several law enforcement agencies responded during the eight-hour standoff, and after talking for more than an hour with the suspect, the department’s SWAT team got into the house and rescued the hostage. The officer killed was from the police department in Madison. The injured officer is from the Brandon Police Department. State police spokesperson Bailey Martin said in a statement that the suspect also was shot and killed at the home. It was not immediately clear whether police shot and killed the suspect, or the person killed himself.

The Department of Public Safety did not immediately release the names of the officers or the suspect. .

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Davenport Police Chief Jeff Bladel said during a media briefing on Thursday that three residents of an Iowa apartment building that partially collapsed on Sunday are still unaccounted for. Authorities had said five people were missing earlier this week, but Chief Bladel said that two of them have since been contacted and are safe. One moved out a month ago and was found in Texas, and the other was found locally.

Shortly before 5 p.m. on Sunday, the six-story building partially collapsed. The city of Davenport has since released documents that show the building’s owner was warned that the parts of the structural engineering of the building was unsafe.  An engineer’s report dated May 24 read that patches in the west side of the building’s brick façade “appear ready to fall imminently” and could be a safety hazard to cars or passersby. The engineer’s report also detailed that window openings were insecure, with openings “bulging outward” and “poised to fall.”  The report states that inside the first floor, unsupported window openings help “explain why the façade is currently about to topple outward … The brick façade is unlikely to be preserved in place, but it can be brought down in a safe, controlled manner.”

The city of Davenport received a host of complaints over the years about conditions in the century-old building. The building’s owner, Andrew Wold, released a statemen saying “our thoughts and prayers are with our tenants” and that his company, Davenport Hotel LLC, is working with agencies to help them.  The city filed a new enforcement action against Wold on Tuesday, saying he failed to maintain the property “in a safe, sanitary, and structurally sound condition” before the collapse. The city is seeking a $300 fine.

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On Wednesday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that two state laws banning abortion are unconstitutional. However, abortion remains illegal in the state in nearly all cases, except life-threatening situations. The laws struck down on Wednesday both included a civil-enforcement mechanism that allowed citizens to sue someone who either performed or helped someone perform an abortion. The high court said in a 6-3 ruling that the two bans are unconstitutional because they require a “medical emergency” before a doctor can perform an abortion. The court said this language conflicts with a previous ruling it issued in March that determined the Oklahoma Constitution provides an “inherent right of a pregnant woman to terminate a pregnancy when necessary to preserve her life.”

Doctors specializing in obstetriccs and gynecology had said uncertainty about the state’s abortion laws often forced them to make women facing severe medical complications and nonviable pregnancies to wait for their condition to worsen before they could perform an abortion. Dana Stone, an Oklahoma City obstetrician and gynecologist, said: “In our practice we had cases where we would just have to tell women who we would normally offer a (pregnancy) termination to protect her health … ‘We have to let you go home and monitor your condition and if you start showing signs of infection or worsening blood pressure, then come back and we have the ability to legally treat you.’  Otherwise, we’re at risk with these laws of going to jail for 10 years, having hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and losing our medical licenses.”

Oklahoma’s 1910 law makes it a felony crime punishable by up to five years in prison for anyone to perform an abortion or help a woman obtain an abortion unless it is “necessary to preserve her life.”  Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement: “Despite the court’s decisions today on SB 1603 and HB 4327, Oklahoma’s 1910 law prohibiting abortion remains in place. Except for certain circumstances outlined in that statute, abortion is still unlawful in the state of Oklahoma.”

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Actor Danny Masterson was convicted on Wednesday on two counts of rape during his retrial in Los Angeles. The Associated Press reported that the seven-woman, five-man jury deadlocked on the third count after deliberating for over a week. The actor has been free on bail since his June 2020 arrest by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division.

Wednesday’s verdict was delivered nearly six months after Masterson’s first trial ended with a mistrial, with jurors leaning towards acquitting the now 47-year-old star of “That ’70s Show”. Masterson was accused of raping three women he met through the Church of Scientology (to which Masterson still belongs) – identified at trial as Jane Doe #1, Jane Doe #2 and Jane Doe #3 — at his Hollywood Hills home from 2001 to 2003. He faced up to 45 years in prison if he was convicted on all three counts.

Masterson has denied all the allegations leveled against him by the women. Masterson never took the stand in either the first trial or retrial, and his defense attorneys declined to call any witnesses. The actor also denies assaulting a fourth woman, identified as Jane Doe #4, who told the court during his first trial he had raped her; Masterson has not been criminally charged with raping her. Both of Masterson’s trials have focused on the Church of Scientology, which Masterson’s accusers all said tried to cover up the allegations against the actor. The judge again allowed witnesses to testify how they were pressured by church officials not to talk to police about the rape allegations. Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw has denied the allegations, saying that church doctrine requires members to “abide by all the laws of the land.”

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