Mexico investigating US teen’s death as homicide
MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — The body of a Texas high school student reported missing by her mother has been found in Mexico and police are investigating her death as a homicide, authorities said Wednesday.Elisabeth Mandala, 18, and two Mexican men were found dead Saturday in a crashed pickup truck near Mina, a town in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon.Autopsies revealed that all three died from severe blows to the head and body, according to a spokeswoman from the Nuevo Leon state Attorney General’s Office.Investigators believe the accident was staged, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with agency policy.The motive for the killing was unknown. The relationship between Mandala and the two Mexican men was also unclear.Mandala, a senior at Kempner High School in Sugar Land, Texas, was last seen April 27 leaving her mother’s home.
Russian court jails two men for eating teenage girl
ST. PETERSBURG (AP) — A Russian court has convicted two men of murdering and eating a 16-year-old schoolgirl in January.The St. Petersburg City Court says it sentenced a 21-year-old Goth-rock musician to 19 years in a maximum-security prison.It says his 20-year-old accomplice was sentenced to 18 years in a maximum-security prison.The court says in a statement released Wednesday that the musician lured his victim to his apartment building, where he and his friend drowned her in a bathtub and cooked parts of her body in an oven.The men pleaded not guilty, and in earlier testimony they said they had killed the woman because they “were hungry.”
California mother stabs toddler son as many as 20 times
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A California toddler who was stabbed up to 20 times by his mother and was found face down on a stairway landing by paramedics was in critical condition on Wednesday, authorities said.Fresno police officers were called to the woman’s apartment at around 4 p.m. on Tuesday after a neighbor said he saw the 3-year-old boy outside the apartment with stab wounds, police said.The woman screamed at paramedics who arrived at the scene, telling them to stay away from the boy. She had to be held back by officers, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said.The boy had stab wounds all over his body, according to Dyer. He was taken to Community Regional Medical Center.Police said the woman acknowledged stabbing her son, but would not say why.
Klan leader pleads guilty to killing Oklahoma woman
COVINGTON (AP) — The leader of a Ku Klux Klan group in Louisiana pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing an Oklahoma woman — an erratic recruit who a witness said yelled “I want out” the day after her initiation.Raymond Foster, 49, of Bogalusa, was immediately sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder by state District Judge Peter Garcia.Cynthia Lynch, 43, a Klan recruit from Tulsa, Okla., was shot and killed in November 2008, the day after initiation rites in rural St. Tammany Parish, about 50 miles north of New Orleans.Frankie Stafford, a former member of the Klan group, testified Monday that Lynch cried tears of joy the night of her initiation but the next day angrily cursed Foster and yelled “I want out” before Foster shot her to death.
Oil may be wreaking havoc deep beneath the Gulf
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The oil you can’t see could be as bad as the oil you can.While people anxiously wait for the slick in the Gulf of Mexico to wash up along the coast, globules of oil are already falling to the bottom of the sea, where they threaten virtually every link in the ocean food chain, from plankton to fish that are on dinner tables everywhere.”The threat to the deep-sea habitat is already a done deal — it is happening now,” said Paul Montagna, a marine scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.Hail-size gobs of oil the consistency of tar or asphalt will roll around the bottom, while other bits will get trapped hundreds of feet below the surface and move with the current, said Robert S. Carney, a LSU oceanographer.