Tag: murder

  • Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for George Floyd murder

    Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for George Floyd murder

    A judge sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to 22 years and six months in prison on Friday for the murder of George Floyd during an arrest in May 2020. Floyd’s murder galvanised a national protest movement against racism, reports Reuters.

    A jury found Chauvin guilty on April 20 of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Floyd. The verdict was widely seen as a landmark rebuke of the disproportionate use of police force against Black Americans.

    Chauvin’s sentence was one of the longest ones to be given to a former police officer for using unlawful deadly force in the United States, said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office prosecuted the case. Successful prosecutions of police officers in such cases have been rare.

    “Today’s sentencing is not justice but it is another moment of real accountability on the road to justice,” Ellison said outside the courtroom, calling on law enforcement leaders around the US to see it as a moment for reform.

    Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill said it was important to recognise the pain of the Floyd family.

    “I’m not basing my sentence on public opinion,” Cahill said. “I’m not basing it on the attempt to send any messages. The job of a trial court judge is to apply the law to specific facts and to deal with individual cases.”

    In a 22-page sentencing memorandum, Cahill gave weight to prosecution arguments that Chauvin acted with cruelty and abused his position of authority, aggravating factors that allowed him to give a harsher sentence than would be indicated by state sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders.

    Prosecutors had asked for a 30-year prison sentence, double the upper limit indicated in sentencing guidelines.

    Video of Chauvin kneeling on the neck of the handcuffed Floyd for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020, caused outrage around the world and led to one of the largest protest movements seen in the US in decades.

  • British-Pakistani Mayra Zulfiqar’s murderer gets arrested

    British-Pakistani Mayra Zulfiqar’s murderer gets arrested

    Zahir Jadoon, a resident of Lahore, had confessed to murdering a British-Pakistani woman Mayra Zulfiqar on May 3.

    Police in Lahore has formally arrested Zahir Jadoon in relation to the murder of Mayra, a law graduate from London.

    Zahir Jadoon and Saad Butt were two of the four accused named in the murder in the first information report (FIR) filed by Mohammad Nazeer, a relative of Zulfiqar.

    Muhammad Zulfiqar, Mayra’s father, had appealed to the prime ministers of both Pakistan and Britain to help him get justice for his daughter.

    24-year-old Mayra Zulfiqar was found dead in Lahore. She had been threatened by two men who both wanted to marry her.

  • Suspect says ‘was sleeping’ when Mayra was shot dead

    Suspect says ‘was sleeping’ when Mayra was shot dead

    The main suspect in the murder of a Pakistan-origin British woman in the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) neighbourhood earlier this month, appeared before the police on Monday to record his statement.

    In his statement, Saad Ameer Butt, one of the two suspects, said he was sleeping at his house the night Mayra Zulfiqar was shot dead.

    He said he did not kill Mayra and that the deceased was a friend. “I never attempted to kidnap her”, he told the investigation team.

    He further informed the team that he had even discussed the matter with an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) when Mayra was alive. She had accused him of trying to kidnap her.

    24-year-old girl, Mayra Zulfiqar, was found dead in Lahore on May 3. She had been threatened by two men who both wanted to marry her.

    Zahir Jadoon and Saad Butt were two of the four accused of being behind the murder in the first information report (FIR) filed by Mohammad Nazeer, a relative of Zulfiqar.

  • ‘You won’t be able to escape, I will kill you’ says Mayra’s alleged killer

    ‘You won’t be able to escape, I will kill you’ says Mayra’s alleged killer

    A 24-year-old girl, Mayra Zulfiqar, was found dead in Lahore on Monday. She had recently been threatened by two men who both wanted to marry her.

    Prior to her brutal murder, she had asked police for protection after accusing a man of abducting her at gunpoint.

    In Pakistan, the chief investigating officer in the murder inquiry told the BBC that police teams were targeting addresses in Islamabad and Lahore. So far no arrest had been made.

    In a police report filed before her murder, Ms Zulfiqar named and accused a man of abducting her at gunpoint and attempting to sexually assault her.

    She said she managed to run away by alerting people around but the man threatened her, saying “You won’t be able to escape, I will kill you.”

    Mayra’s uncle Mohammad Nazeer found her body after receiving a phone call from her father, who lives in London, to say she had been killed.

    The initial postmortem report said that Mayra had received two bullets, one to her neck and another to her arm.

    Mayra Zulfiqar’s funeral took place in Lahore, while a special memorial service has been held at a mosque in Hounslow, west London. Her brother Faizan Muhammad said his father had left for Pakistan

    The deceased woman had arrived from the UK, where her family is settled, some two months back and shared the upper portion of the rented house with a friend. Police have taken her housemate into custody as part of the probe.

    Late on Monday, Defence-B police registered a First Information Report (FIR) against two purported friends of Mayra on murder charges on the complaint of the deceased woman’s uncle.

    In a statement, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said, “our thoughts are with the family at this difficult time. We are urgently seeking more information from the local authorities.”

  • Is Netflix’s trending ‘Things Heard & Seen’ based on a true story?

    Is Netflix’s trending ‘Things Heard & Seen’ based on a true story?

    Netflix’s latest horror film Things Heard and Seen, featuring Amanda Seyfried and James Norton, is reportedly based on a true story of a murder that took place in 1982.

    According to a report in NY Post, the film based on Elizabeth Brundage’s novel All Things Cease To Appear was partly inspired by the gruesome death of Cathleen Krauseneck in 1982 in Brighton, New York. Cathleen’s murder is better know as “the Brighton Ax Murder.”

    On February 19, 1982, James Krauseneck Jr. returned to his new house on Del Rio Drive near Rochester from his job as an economist at Eastman Kodak Co., when he spotted broken glass inside from a window and called the police. He had found his 29-year-old wife, Cathleen, dead in bed with an ax lodged in her head and their 3-year-old daughter seated calmly in her own bedroom, dressed to go out.

    In a statement to the police, James had said: “She [his daughter] had a red sweater over a pink sweater with blue ABC corduroy pants and two pairs of socks. She looked dazed to me. I picked her up from her bed and ran downstairs and out the front door with her.”

    James, who was considered to be one of the key suspects, said he had been at work all day. The next day he reportedly took his daughter Sara and fled to Michigan, where he grew up. Brighton Police Chief Eugene Shaw opted not to question the daughter a month later because “too much time has gone by.”

    James Krauseneck Jr.

    Meanwhile, Cathleen’s murder case, which had gone unresolved for almost 39 years, finally made a breakthrough in November 2019 when James was indicted by a grand jury on a second-degree murder charge. He pleaded not guilty.

    The Brighton Police Chief attributed the delayed charges to improved forensic technology that’s clarified the timeline of the murder — calling James’ alibi into question — and has shed more light on the crime scene.

    “I understand people want a singular piece of evidence that can directly point to James Krauseneck Jr.,” the current Brighton Police Chief David Catholdi had told a local media out. “This is not one of those cases.”

    It is pertinent to add that at the scene of the crime no other DNA was found other than the family’s. It was also reported that shortly before her death, Cathleen found that James had not completed his doctorate and lied to his employers.

    After Michigan, James moved to Gig Harbor in Washington, where he worked as a vice president of sales for a timberland company called Weyerhaeuser. When he was charged, James was living in Peoria, Arizona, with his fourth wife.

    To add another twist, serial rapist Ed Laraby, right before he died in 2014 claimed that he killed Cathleen and committed at least a dozen more crimes.

    “Ed Laraby is a notorious self-described sociopathic killer of women,” Krauseneck’s defense attorney said. “The issue is he lived really within basically a half mile, or less than a half mile, and has confessed to this murder as he lay dying in prison.”

    Unlike the ending of the movie, which had a comprehensive end, Cathleen Krauseneck’s murder remains unsolved. James, now 69, was freed on $100,000 bail and is awaiting a trial that was delayed by the pandemic — the next pretrial hearing is set for June.

    Things Heard and Seen follows an unhappy young mother (Seyfried), who is brutally murdered with an ax while her child is found eerily seated on the couch downstairs. Her studious husband (Norton) leaves shortly after the crime. The film gives the real-life characters different names, changes up their circumstances (they have a son and live in the Hudson Valley) and adds some ghosts for some more horror.

    The film is currently trending in the top ten on Netflix Pakistan.

  • Inspired by ‘Crime Patrol’, 17 -year-old kills father

    Inspired by ‘Crime Patrol’, 17 -year-old kills father

    A 17- year-old boy from India’s Uttar Pradesh reportedly murdered his father and then watched Indian TV series Crime Patrol to destroy the evidence of his crime.

    According to Indian media reports, the incident took place on May 2 when the boy got upset at his father who yelled at him. He reportedly killed his 42-year old father, Manoj Mishra, by hitting him on the head with an iron rod and then strangling him to death as he lay unconscious.

    Later, the same night, the boy with the help of his mother, carried the body on his scooty to a forest area about five kilometers away and burnt it with petrol and a toilet cleaner to destroy the identity.

    On May 3, police found the partially burnt body that remained unidentified for almost three weeks as no missing person report was filed in any police station.

    The family, finally, lodged a missing person complaint on May 27 under pressure from ISKCON officials since Manoj Mishra worked there as a donation collector.

    Some of his colleagues identified that the body was of Manoj from his spectacles. The victim’s colleagues at ISKCON said that they did not doubt his prolonged absence since Manoj often used to travel to preach Bhagavad Gita.

    Mathura Superintendent of Police Udai Shanker Singh said that whenever police called Manoj’s son for questioning, he would evade coming and would instead ask the police under what provisions of the law they were trying to interrogate him.

    However, when police checked his mobile phone, they found a history of the boy watching Crime Patrol episodes at least 100 times. Police said after several rounds of questioning, the boy finally broke down and admitted to his crime.

    The police arrested the boy and his mother Sangeeta Mishra, 39. They have been booked for murder and destroying evidence.

    The 11-year-old sister of the accused has been handed over to the grandparents.

  • 16-year-old girl surrenders after killing father for abusing mother

    16-year-old girl surrenders after killing father for abusing mother

    A 16-year-old girl in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh allegedly beat her father to death because he used to get drunk and abuse her mother. 

    According to reports, a police official said: “The man was unemployed and lived off the earnings of his eldest son, who works as a mason (a bricklayer). The family was dealing with a difficult situation as the man was an alcoholic and would abuse his family. He was especially violent towards his wife.”

    The family was sitting together to discuss the eldest son’s marriage when the father started fighting with the mother again.

    Furious and tired of the daily abuse, the 16-year-old picked up a washing bat and beat her 45-year-old father. He began bleeding but the girl picked up a lohangi (a traditional stick with iron rings) and kept hitting him.

    After killing him on the spot, she called the police and confessed to the crime. She also told them that she was waiting to be arrested.

    Bhopal Police have registered a case and sent the teenage girl to a juvenile shelter, which helps to enforce protection, rehabilitation, and restoration of juveniles (below the age of 18 years) convicted for a crime.

  • Shaheena Shaheen’s murder

    Shaheena Shaheen’s murder

    Yesterday, a female journalist in Balochistan was shot dead. A social activist, an anchorperson at PTV and editor of a Balochi language magazine Dazgohar, Shaheena Shaheen was shot three times in Turbat on Saturday. She succumbed to her bullet injuries at the hospital. According to media reports, Kech Superintendent of Police Najeebullah Pandrani said the killing was the result of domestic violence. Shaheena’s family has nominated her husband in the First Information Report (FIR), whom she married just five months ago.

    Spokesperson of the Government of Balochistan Liaquat Shahwani tweeted that the murder seems to be due to a domestic issue and promised that justice would be served. Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz also condemned Shaheena’s murder. He said the government would fulfil its responsibility and bring the culprits to justice.

    Shaheena achieved a lot during her short but meaningful life. She was a talented artist, a brave social activist, and a talented journalist. Shaheena’s murder brings forth multiple issues plaguing our society, especially domestic abuse.

    Domestic violence is a serious issue in Pakistani context. According to a report released by SSDO in August and titled ‘Tracking Numbers: State of Violence Against Women and Children in Pakistan’, violence against women increased 10 times in just three months in Pakistan. A large number of women are victims of domestic abuse at the hands of their husbands but suffer silently due to multiple reasons, which include family ‘honour’, children’s future, lack of financial independence and the taboo attached to divorce. It is because of their silent suffering and lack of repercussions that these men continue to commit this crime. Some, like Shaheena’s husband, are emboldened enough to even commit murder. Apart from domestic violence, ‘honour killing’ by family members is not an uncommon practice in Pakistan. On Friday, the Supreme Court observed that the killing of women in the name of honour had never been an honourable practice and that such murders should not be categorised as honour killings. “It will help deter such killings if the term ‘Ghairat’ is not used to describe them,” observed Justice Qazi Faez Isa.

    Why is it that ‘honour’ is always attached to a woman’s actions and not that of any man in our society? Why is a woman expected to suffer at the hands of her abuser just to save family’s honour? Our lexicon is filled with phrases like, ‘Log kya kaheinge?’ [what will people say?], which make women think twice before leaving an abusive relationship. We wonder what these ‘people’ will say when a woman is murdered by her husband?

    The Ministry of Human Rights launched an awareness campaign about domestic abuse and violence in March this year, asking the victims to call their helpline. We have laws against domestic violence and honour killing in place but the major issue is under-reporting of these cases by the victims themselves who choose to stay silent due to societal pressures. It is time to raise awareness across the country and let these women know that they are not alone. The state as well as society stands with them. Shaheena, we hope your murderers are brought to justice. Rest in power, Shaheena!

  • Elderly blasphemy accused shot dead in court

    Elderly blasphemy accused shot dead in court

    An elderly man was killed during the hearing of a blasphemy case against him at the Peshawar Judicial Complex on Wednesday.

    A case had been registered against the deceased under blasphemy laws. The accused was brought to court from Peshawar Central Jail.

    Tahir Ahmed Naseem, 47, a resident of Pishtakhara, appeared before the court of Judge Shaukatullah when a man barged in and opened fire on him.

    He was a US citizen and the US State Department’s Twitter account for South Asia tweeted about the incident.

    “During the hearing of the case, the complainant said that the accused was an Ahmadi and asked him to recite the Kalima-e-Tayyaba,” according to a lawyer who was present in the courtroom at the time of the incident. He added that the complainant then fired at the elderly man and killed him.

    The 24-year-old shooter, Khalid, was arrested by the police on the spot. He is said to be a resident of Board Bazaar.

    The judicial complex is situated in a high-security zone on the main Khyber Road in the cantonment area where the provincial assembly building, the Peshawar High Court, chief minister’s secretariat and Governor House are also situated. Security at the main gate and inside the judicial complex is also high.

    Peshawar Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Mohammad Ali Gandapur and SSP (Operations) Mansoor Aman visited the courtroom where the man was killed.

    “At the moment we have little information but we have started investigation into the killing,” the CCPO said. Aman added that the weapon has also been recovered.

    Police shifted the body of the deceased to the Khyber Medical University for post-mortem.

    They said a first information report (FIR) had been registered against the deceased in 2018.

    According to the FIR, the complainant alleged that the deceased belong to the Ahmadi community and “befriended him on Facebook” and in subsequent conversations, claimed that he was the “fourteenth Mujaddid”.

    “He then invited me to have a discussion with him at a mall in the city where he started talking about his belief,” the complainant said in the FIR, going on to make more allegations.

    The deceased was charged under Section 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups), Section 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), Section 295-B (defiling etc. of the Holy Quran), Section 295-C (use of derogatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad PBUH) and Section 298 (uttering words etc., with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

  • Afghan girl shoots down two Taliban militants who killed her parents

    Afghan girl shoots down two Taliban militants who killed her parents

    An Afghan girl has shot down two Taliban militants who killed her parents and wounded several others with the AK-47 rifle

    The militants had captured the family home in the village of Griwa because the girl’s father supported the government.

    They had dragged the father and mother from the home before murdering them, local officials in Ghor province said.

    The girl, Qamar Gul, aged between 14 and 16, had taken the family’s AK-47 rifle and killed the two of the killers. The group denies any of its fighters died.

    Later, more militants came to attack the house but villagers and government troops fought them off.

    The girl and her younger brother were shifted to a safe place by security forces, Mohamed Aref Aber, spokesman for the provincial governor, told AFP.

    Photos of Gul went viral on social media where people praised her for her bravery.

    https://twitter.com/Indian46899293/status/1285511798594998272?s=20