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29 March 2024

Man commits suicide on TV

Published
By Staff

AFP

A man who stole a car at gunpoint, shot at Phoenix police officers and then led them on a chase that ended with his suicide broadcast on national television was identified Saturday as a wanted felon with a long criminal history.

Fox News broadcast live a fleeing carjacking suspect committing suicide in the Arizona desert, prompting many people on social media to react to the real-time broadcasting blunder.
 
“We really messed up and we’re all very sorry,” said Shepard Smith, a senior Fox News anchorman.
 
He said a five-second delay in the live feed ought to have enabled the graphic scene to be stopped before going on air.
 
“That didn’t belong on TV,” AFP quoted him as saying. “We took every precaution we knew how to take to keep that from being on TV. And I personally apologise to you that that happened… That won’t happen again on my watch.”
 
But despite the Fox apology Twitter users proclaimed that Fox News, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, had telecast a “suicide” as it happened.
 
“He’s looking kind of erratic, isn’t he?… It’s always possible the guy could be on something,” said Smith in a running commentary, unaware of what was about to happen.
 
Turning into some bushes, the suspect then pulled out a handgun, put it to his right temple and collapsed.
 
On air, Smith shouted “get off it! get off it!” in a plea to his studio colleagues to halt the live feed.
 
In the hours that followed, YouTube scrambled to delete the video almost as quickly as its users were posting it, saying it violated its terms of service.
 
“There is simply no excuse for this. It is sensationalism to carry it in the first place,” said Al Tompkins of the Florida-based Poynter Institute.
 
“Whatever local reasons there might be to carry it do not apply to a national audience,” Tompkins said on the school’s website.
 
“And yet this happens time and again and has for more than a decade and a half,” he said. “Each time, TV stations apologise while enjoying a temporary ratings bump.”
 
Baltimore Sun television critic David Zurawik commented: “I am not sure there is an explanation for this kind of gatekeeping ineptitude.”

 

Teacher molests minor girl on birthday

Police in Mumbai have arrested a schoolteacher on charges of molesting a minor girl on her birthday.

The minor has been sheltered by NGO Vedant Welfare Foundation (VWF) run by the accused himself. He had eight other girls under his care in the shelter home.

The accused fled to Mumbai and joined a school after allegedly trying to sexually abuse the victim at his NGO office in other district, reports MidDay

S Ravindranath operates his NGO for underprivileged children. On the day of the incident NGO members organised a birthday bash for the girl.

After the cake was cut Ravindranath, asked the girl to stay behind on the pretext of greeting her.

The accused allegedly molested the victim; the girl resisted and shouted for help. Ravindranath then fled to Mumbai.

Other members of the NGO approached the police and registered a case.

The twelve other children who were living at the NGO’s accommodation have been shifted to another shelter home.

 

HIV+ couple 'rape' teenage boy

The gay couple - Andreu Paul W, 38, and Warren H, 34, - are accused of making the 17-year-old victim drink 'large quantities of vodka' at their flat in Calpe, eastern Spain, reported Daily Mail.

They allegedly made him sniff an unknown substance and when he passed out, they stripped him and took turns in raping him, the report quoted El Mundo newspaper as saying.

The teenager regained consciousness only the next day.

The boy was, luckily, not infected with HIV virus. However, he is still battling post-traumatic stress disorder from the crime.

 

6 teens arrested in taped beating of woman

AP

Six teenagers were in custody Friday on charges they brutally beat a neighbor on her stoop "just for fun" and then posted cellphone video of the attack on Facebook, authorities said.
 
Four 16- and 17-year-old girls were charged as adults in the attack on the 48-year-old woman, a crime that has shaken this struggling city of about 30,000 residents just outside Philadelphia. The girls were charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, burglary and harassment. Another teen girl and a 19-year-old woman were also arrested later Friday afternoon.
 
The woman, whom police described as "mentally challenged," was punched, kicked and hit with a shoe and chair, and suffered cuts and bruises but no broken bones, authorities said. Her name was not released.
 
The attack occurred Tuesday at a two-story stucco house, where the woman lived, down the block from a small grocery. No one answered the door at the building Friday.
 
"It appears just for fun," Chester police Detective James Nolan said. "There hasn't been a discernible explanation as to why."
 
Police Commissioner Joseph M. Bail Jr. said the victim was doing better Friday and being treated for lacerations and abrasions at a crisis unit.
 
The Delaware County Daily Times first obtained video footage from police on Thursday.
 
It showed a group of girls walking down a sidewalk then suddenly attacking a woman sitting on her stoop. The teens follow the woman into her home as she tries to escape, taking turns punching and beating her. They quickly flee.
 
In the neighborhood where the woman lives, cashier Crystal Pate said she knows two of the girls — one babysits her daughter — and said they were not bad kids.
 
"I can't comprehend it. I trust her with my daughter's life," the 29-year-old Pate said. "Obviously, they were showing off. That's not something you do for fun."
 
Pate said the woman regularly sits on her front stoop and sometimes curses people or asks for cigarettes.
 
Chester has long battled high rates of crime and poverty. Mayor John Linder said youth should understand that attacking people will not be tolerated.
 
"This is an egregious attack," Linder said. "It's unbearable."
 
Janet Purnell, 55, whose elderly mother lives down the street from the attack, said it is hard for her to understand why a group of girls would want to attack a woman like that.
 
"It really doesn't make any sense," Purnell said. "It's ignorant."

Image from shutterstock.com