Two Texas women have launched a fundraising campaign so that a homeless man might get a proper funeral

When Duc Van Tran disappeared from his usual spot beneath an overpass in Houston, Adriana Castro Garcia and Rosa Quintero took notice, Huffpost reports. 

Tran always minded his own business, they said, and never asked for help or begged for change. “He would just give a look of ‘thank you’ with a smile and go back to his cart, back to minding his own business,” they wrote on a GoFundMe page for the man, launched this week.

Tran’s disappearance worried them, so they began asking around for his whereabouts. The women soon learned that he had been killed in May after being struck by a drunk driver.

According to police, Tran had likely been sleeping under the overpass when a 33-year-old woman lost control of her vehicle and ran him over. When Quintero called the medical examiner’s office, she learned that Tran’s body was still there -- unclaimed.

"I was actually really, really sad," she told KTRK-TV after learning about Tran’s fate. She and Garcia became determined to give Tran a proper send-off. 

Boston bomber formally sentenced to death by execution

BOSTON (AP/WPRI) — A judge formally sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to die Wednesday, but not before he apologized for bombing the 2013 Boston Marathon.

After Tsarnaev said his piece, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. quoted Shakespeare’s line about “The evil that men do lives after them” and told Tsarnaev that no one will remember that his teachers were fond of him, that his friends found him fun to be with or that he showed compassion to disabled people. “What will be remembered is that you murdered and maimed innocent people, and that you did it willfully and intentionally. You did it on purpose,” O’Toole said. “I sentence you to the penalty of death by execution,” he said.

Tsarnaev looked down and rubbed his hands together as the judge pronounced his fate.

Tsarnaev was convicted of 30 federal charges for planning and carrying out the terror attack with his older brother, Tamerlan. Days after the bombings, in the midst of a massive manhunt, the brothers killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer and engaged in a wild gun battle with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown. Tamerlan died after being shot by police and run over by Dzhokhar as the younger brother escaped in a stolen car.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers admitted he participated in the bombings, but argued that Tamerlan was the driving force behind the attack.

In a note he scrawled in a boat he was found hiding in, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said the attack was meant to retaliate against the U.S. for its actions in Muslim countries.

The City of New York to pay $6.25 Million to Innocent Man who spent 25 years in prison for 1989 murder

A man who spent 25 years of his life in prison before being exonerated for a Brooklyn, N.Y. murder he didn't commit has made a settlement with New York City, the Associated Press reports. 

According to The Root, the city has agreed to pay Jonathan Fleming $6.25 million, with Comptroller Scott Stringer saying that it was "in the best interest of all parties" to settle. “We cannot give back the time that he served, but the city of New York can offer Jonathan Fleming this compensation for the injustice that was committed against him,” Stringer said.

Flleming's case was rather curious, having been convicted and imprisoned even after having an airtight alibi, an alibi that the Brooklyn district attorney's office agreed was valid at his exoneration last year. However, Fleming was upfront about his whereabouts from the very beginning. Jonathan Fleming had proof that he was vacationing at Disney World in Florida when his friend was shot to death in Brooklyn.

A friend of Fleming's was shot to death in Brooklyn in August 1989, however, at that time, Fleming was more than 1,000 miles away in Orlando, Fla., vacationing in Disney World. Fleming had plane tickets, videos, a hotel receipt and other material to prove his innocence.

Obama to deliver eulogy for the Charleston victims

WASHINGTON — President Obama will travel to Charleston, S.C., on Friday to deliver the eulogy for the pastor who was gunned down along with eight other worshipers at his church last week, the White House said.

First lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Biden are also scheduled to attend the funeral for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney of the Emanuel AME Church, the historic sanctuary where last week's killings took place. "Further details about the President's travel to South Carolina will be made available in the coming days," the White House said in a statement.

Authorities have charged a white supremacist with nine counts of murder in connection with the Wednesday shootings of nine people at a Bible study session.

In remarks shortly after the shooting, Obama said the nation needs to keep looking for ways to prevent an epidemic of mass shootings, including new measures designed to keep guns away from dangerous people. "This stuff happens way too often," Obama said during a weekend fundraiser in California. "We've got to change that. It's not enough for us to express sympathy. We have to take action."

Woman Claims She Was Attacked by Black Men, Actually Attacked by Makeup

This weekend, in the wake of last week’s racially-motivated mass shooting in Charleston, a Texas woman claimed on Facebook that she’d been brutally beaten by three black men outside a Texarkana Walmart store. It now appears as though she made the whole thing up.

In her now-deleted Facebook post, Ashley Casey Martin wrote, “Just got jumped by 3 African Americans ourside of the as Walmart they are in a white ford 150 extended cab. Arkansas tags. They hit me inside Walmart and were cussing. I was very polite and asked them to lower their voices and the cuss words in front of my 3 year old daughter and this is the outcome. What has the world come to...” The accompanying photo showed Martin with two exaggerated black eyes and a bloody nose that appeared drawn on with makeup. After people started calling Martin out for her apparently made-up injuries, the Texarkana (Tex.) Police Department posted, and then deleted, a Facebook statement saying they “believe the post to be fake” and “the injuries... are highly questionable,” according to the Daily Dot.

Walmart wasn’t aware of any violent incidents taking place at the store during the time frame in question, and that Texarkana Police have no record of the attack.

When asked why the Facebook post accusing Martin of faking had been removed, police told the Daily Dot, “We were informed that she is emotionally disturbed and that they are attempting to get her the assistance that she needs. We have removed the post to avoid contributing to her difficult struggle.” Martin maintained that the beating was real, and posted a second unconvincing photo as proof, writing: “Here is your police report. Sorry I got jumped by three African American young men. I have 2 black eyes and nose still is bleeding, and somehow I am in the wrong. Enough for people to say it was makeup, how embarassing and very rude quite frankly. I don’t want you pitty (sic) attention anything. I’m just warning there are dangerous people in Texarkana be careful. They did this to me for no reason in front of my 3 year old. At Texas side Walmart.” She has since deleted all of her social media. 

Charles Barkley's Mother Passes

Via USAToday-- LEEDS, Ala. (AP) — The mother of NBA great Charles Barkley, Charcey Glenn, has died at her home in Alabama.

The Jefferson County Medical Examiner's Office says Glenn died Friday in her hometown of Leeds, east of Birmingham. She was 73.

Deputy medical examiner Derrick Perryman says a report lists the cause of death as kidney failure and Barkley as the next of kin.

A pastor at First Baptist Church of Leeds says Glenn's funeral is scheduled there on June 27

A Texas mom who was desperate over being denied food stamps shot her two children and then committed suicide after a seven-hour standoff with SWAT teams at a state welfare office, authorities said.

Ramie Grimmer, 12, and her brother Timothy, 10, were clinging to #life at a San Antonio hospital after Monday night's l horrific ordeal, during which Ramie apparently updated her #Facebook page to say "may die 2day." The chilling incident began about 5 p.m. #Monday when Rachelle Grimmer, 38, visited a state welfare office in Laredo to discuss a food stamp application she had submitted in July #police said.

Caseworkers took Grimmer to a private room, where the distraught mom pulled a gun and threatened employees, authorities said.

Police negotiators spent the next several hours trying to persuade Grimmer to bring her children out safely, but she refused, instead haranguing them about the red tape she grappled with while trying to feed her family, The Associated Press reported.

At one point, Ramie Grimmer posted an update on Facebook that said "tear gas " — an apparent reference to tear gas being fired at the building.

Finally, just before midnight, cops heard three shots and stormed the building, where they discovered Grimmer lying dead in a pool of blood.

Her children were nearby, unconscious and bleeding from gunshot wounds.

Both #kids were reported in critical condition on Wednesday.

Authorities told the AP that Grimmer was denied food stamps because she had left some key information out of her initial application.

She and her children had recently moved to Texas from Ohio and appeared to be struggling to say on their feet. “She was dealing with a lot of issues," Health and Human Services spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman told the AP.

Grimmer had last contacted the agency in mid-November, but had fallen out of touch since then, Goodman said".

Jeralean Talley, World's Oldest Person On Record, Dies At Age 116 In Her Michigan Home

 

Jeralean Talley, previously listed as the world's oldest living person, has died at the age of 116, according to friends and family.

Longtime friend Michael Kinloch told The Huffington Post that Talley died Wednesday at her home in Inkster, Michigan. Talley had been in the hospital for about a week due to heart problems, but came home over the weekend and spent her last days with her loved ones.

Talley's 77-year-old daughter, Thelma Holloway, told the Detroit News that her mother was "ready to go home and rest." “When she left here, she didn’t suffer. She asked the Lord to take her peacefully and he did," Holloway told the paper. “Now she’s at peace.” Talley celebrated her 116th birthday on May 23. Multiple parties were held, including one with a large crowd at her church in Inkster. Deeply religious, Talley credited God for her long, healthy life. "She was a believer in Jesus Christ and she gave him all of the credit for her health, for her longevity and even for just bringing people into her life," said Kinloch, who met Talley through church about 25 years ago. "She lived her life according to what she thought God wanted her to do, and her motto was 'treat people like you want to be treated.'" Mother Talley, as she was often called, was born in 1899 in Montrose, Georgia, where she lived on a farm and picked cotton and peanuts, before she moved to Michigan in 1935.

The following year, she married Alfred Talley. They were together 52 years before he passed away.

Talley stayed active up until her death, enjoying playing with her great-great grandson. She had a fishing trip planned for this summer with Kinloch and his son Tyler, her godson. She initiated their annual fishing tradition in 1999, when Tyler was six years old.

9 dead after Charleston church shooting

 Nine dead in Charleston church massacre

CHARLESTON – A gunman shot to death nine church members who had gathered for Bible study and prayer Wednesday night at one of the nation’s oldest black churches.

Among the dead was beloved pastor Clementa Pinckney, a longtime state senator who spent the earlier part of the day campaigning in the city with Hillary Clinton. South Carolina Police Chief Gregory Mullen called the shooting “a hate crime” in a press conference after midnight. ‘Intense scene’ in Charleston, South Carolina after shooting

The gunman, who the police chief described as “a white male, 21 years old with sandy blond hair,” remained at large early Thursday. Mullen said the suspect is “extremely dangerous.”

The police chief said there were wounded victims in addition to the dead, but he did not say how many.

The violence erupted at Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, the oldest such congregation in the South, known as much for the role it played at significant moments of racial distress as for its grand Gothic architecture.

3-year old Ohio boy kills himself with mother's gun

Three-year-old Marques Green killed himself while playing with his mother’s handgun, Ohio police say. The boy fatally shot himself in the chest after finding the gun in his mother’s purse.

The boy’s mother made a 911 call reporting the incident on Thursday. The child was wounded in the chest and pronounced dead at hospital shortly afterwards.Police released the audiotape on Friday, according to the Associated Press.

"My son just shot himself and I'm not getting a pulse," Elizabeth Green is heard screaming in the 911 call. “Oh, my God, Oh, my God, I’m not getting a pulse… I don’t think he’s alive.”“His eyes are open, but he’s out,” she added.The mother told operators she kept the gun in her purse and had set it down before the tragedy happened.“The gun is mine. It is in the house, I carry it in my purse, I laid it down. We just got home,” the mother said.No information has been released yet on the type of gun involved. The accidental shooting happened in town north of Cincinnati. The Butler County prosecutor’s office has not said yet whether anyone should be charged in the case. 

Family Forced to pay $500 fine for cheering teen at Mississippi high school graduation

A Mississippi family was kicked out of a high school graduation ceremony and charged with disturbing the peace after they cheered for a graduating senior.

Superintendent Jay Foster asked audience members to hold their cheers and applause until all the graduates’ names were called, but one family said they were unable to contain their excitement, reported WREG-TV.

Ursula Miller said she called out the first name of her niece, Lanarcia Walker, as she crossed the stage to receive her diploma from Senatobia High School.

The teen’s father, Henry Walker, shouted, “You did it, baby,” and waved a towel, drawing laughs from the crowd.

That’s when school officials asked the girl’s parents and two other relatives to leave the ceremony.

About a week later, they were served with court papers after the superintendent filed disturbing the peace charges against them. “It’s crazy,” Henry Walker said. “The fact that I might have to bond out of jail, pay court costs or a $500 fine for expressing my love – it’s ridiculous man. It’s ridiculous.”

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