Police Arrest Man With Headless Duck

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – An 18-year-old man was charged with animal cruelty and resisting an officer after witnesses reported the suspect had a headless duck in one hand and a knife in the other.

 

A resident of the Addison Landing Apartments, off Normandy Boulevard on the Westside, flagged down an officer Sunday night to say a man was killing ducks. According to an arrest report, when the officer approached Alexander Main, there was a headless duck on the patio and blood and feathers on Main’s hands and clothing.

 

The report says that when the officer asked Main to put his hands behind his back, he took off running into an apartment, where he was apprehended.

 

According to the report, witnesses said Main was attempting to show off when he captured and killed a duck, saying he planned on cooking it.

 

Officers said there was a barbeque grill with a fresh fire blazing on the patio when they arrived. They also said a half-empty bottle of spiced rum was on the patio, and “it was apparent from the suspect’s breath and demeanor that he had been consuming alcohol.”

 

On the way to jail, Main told officers he was already on probation on a conviction for domestic battery. He was booked into the Duval County Jail and held with bail set at $50,000.

Girl Punished With Fire & A Dog A city man accused of holding a girl’s hands over an open flame, and allowing a dog to attack her.

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A Rochester man has been indicted in connection with the abuse of a seven year old girl.

Authorities say 30 year old Pedro Cordero is accused of punishing the girl inside his Electric Avenue home in late September by holding her hands over an open flame on the stove and then putting her in a room with a dog where the animal bit her, causing bruising and bite marks on her body. The girl also had second degree burns.

Cordero also is accused of not seeking medical attention for the girl. She was brought to the hospital several days later by her grandmother for treatment.

Cordero is described only as a relative of the girl. There is now an order of protection against him.

He is being held on the initial charges of assault and endangering the welfare of a child. There is no word yet what charges the grand jury has indicted him on.

City repeals ordinance banning domestic battery

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Topeka’s governing body voted 7-3 Tuesday evening to repeal the city ordinance banning domestic battery.

Interim city manager Dan Stanley said the move would force Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor to resume reviewing and evaluating domestic batteries committed in Topeka for possible prosecution.

Mayor Bill Bunten and council members Karen Hiller, John Alcala, Sylvia Ortiz, Chad Manspeaker, Bob Archer and Andrew Gray voted in favor of the repeal, while council members Denise Everhart, Larry Wolgast and Richard Harmon voted against it.

The vote came after Stanley recommended the governing body approve the repeal to make it clear that only the district attorney’s office is legally empowered to prosecute domestic batteries committed in Topeka and can’t “dump” that responsibility on the city.

Stanley said the repeal would “remove all ambiguity from this question” while giving the city leverage as it negotiates with the county commission and district attorney’s office to seek to ensure misdemeanor domestic batteries committed in Topeka are prosecuted in district court.

Assistant city attorney Catherine Walter said Tuesday’s repeal wouldn’t “decriminalize” domestic violence in Topeka, because it is banned by state law and would remain a crime here.

The council later voted 9-0 to approve a resolution sponsored by Archer authorizing Stanley to negotiate with county officials to seek a resolution concerning the prosecution of domestic violence cases.

The proposal initially wasn’t on the agenda for the meeting, where council members voted to suspend the rules to add it.

Stanley said that while he has already been discussing resolution of the situation with Taylor and county commissioners, the passage of the resolution gave him the stature to continue doing that. He said those talks would now get “real serious real fast.”

The resolution in its initial form would have authorized Stanley to obligate the city of Topeka to offer the maximum sum of a one-time payment of $125,000.

Council members voted 6-3, with Alcala, Manspeaker and Archer dissenting, to approve Harmon’s motion to amend the measure by removing any mention of the dollar figure.

Hiller and Alcala took part in the meeting despite dealing with medical problems.

Tuesday’s repeal of the domestic battery ordinance came as the governing body approved several changes to Topeka’s version of the Uniform Public Offense Code, a codification of Kansas statutes developed by the League of Kansas Municipalities.

Domestic battery is banned under UPOC and under the state law Taylor’s office has used to prosecute that crime. The governing body previously had adopted UPOC, thereby banning the commission of any crimes it lists.

Taylor said Sept. 8 he would no longer prosecute misdemeanors committed in Topeka, including domestic battery, because his office could no longer do so after county commissioners cut his budget by 10 percent. Taylor said the move would require the city attorney’s office to prosecute those cases, an obligation Stanley said the city was unprepared to execute.

Stanley provided governing body members at a work session preceding the regular meeting with a list of 25 cities in Kansas with a population of more than 15,000, including Topeka. The list showed which of those municipal governments prosecute domestic battery. Aside from Topeka, it indicated 14 of the city governments prosecuted domestic battery, while the county prosecuted that crime instead in the other 10.

Stanley said none of the 14 cities received responsibility for prosecution of domestic battery in the manner Taylor used to try to abruptly force that obligation on the city of Topeka.

The meeting was preceded by a rally organized by the National Organization for Women that began at 4 p.m. on the lawn in front of the Shawnee County Courthouse. Rally participants then went to council chambers for the work session and regular meeting.

Most of the 122 public chairs in the council chambers were filled for the meeting. Seven people spoke on the proposed repeal, with most saying they opposed it.

Domestic violence survivor Matthew Agnew asked governing body members to not “send a signal to the nation and the rest of the state that allowing domestic violence to go off the books is the right thing to do.”

Archer responded that “the nexus of this problem” was the district attorney’s refusal to prosecute domestic battery cases.

Joe Cheray, another domestic violence survivor, spoke in support of the repeal, saying it would “put the issue back in Chad Taylor’s ball court.”

Topeka had received national attention as a result of the proposed repeal, and a New York Times reporter was among those covering Tuesday’s council meeting. Gray had been scheduled to be interviewed Tuesday afternoon on CNN but his appearance was pre-empted by coverage of a breaking news story involving a terrorist plot.

Stanley expressed concern Tuesday that some media outlets on the national level inaccurately reported the circumstances behind the proposed repeal, and he said the city had contacted them to bring attention to that.

Deer kills N.B. farmer with repeated antler blows

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A deer farmer in New Brunswick has apparently been killed by an animal in his herd, police say.

The 55-year-old man was found with multiple antler wounds Sunday evening inside his enclosed field in Saint-Léonard, near the Quebec border.

The victim’s wife phoned police Sunday afternoon after he went out to feed the deer and never returned, RCMP Sgt. Marc Violette said.

Officers discovered the man’s body in the field at about 8 p.m. Sunday. His body had numerous piercings that appear to have been caused by deer antlers, Violette said.

Deer have the capacity to inflict severe damage, he said.

“They would do this to small prey in the wild. They would do it, maybe, to small foxes or to small coyotes that were attacking them,” Violette said.

“They put all their weight on the antlers and, for lack of a better term, they try to suffocate the prey with their antlers. They push hard on the antlers and the antlers will pierce flesh, and pierce body tissue.”

Violette said the deer might have attacked the man because this is the time of year when they normally compete against other bucks to mate with does.

“This being the rutting season, male deer are competing for female deer at this time of the year and they will fight against each other in the wild,” he said. “So what I can surmise in this case is the male deer detected the owner as being a threat.”

An autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday.

Where child sacrifice is a business

The villages and farming communities that surround Uganda‘s capital, Kampala, are gripped by fear.

Schoolchildren are closely watched by teachers and parents as they make their way home from school. In playgrounds and on the roadside are posters warning of the danger of abduction by witch doctors for the purpose of child sacrifice.

The ritual, which some believe brings wealth and good health, was almost unheard of in the country until about three years ago, but it has re-emerged, seemingly alongside a boom in the country’s economy.

Stephen’s decapitated body was found in a field

The mutilated bodies of children have been discovered at roadsides, the victims of an apparently growing belief in the power of human sacrifice.

‘Sacrifice business’

Many believe that members of the country’s new elite are paying witch doctors vast sums of money for the sacrifices in a bid to increase their wealth.

At the Kyampisi Childcare Ministries church, Pastor Peter Sewakiryanga is teaching local children a song called Heal Our Land, End Child Sacrifice.

To hear dozens of young voices singing such shocking words epitomises how ritual murder has become part of everyday life here.

“Child sacrifice has risen because people have become lovers of money. They want to get richer,” the pastor says.

“They have a belief that when you sacrifice a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a commercial business.”

The pastor and his parishioners are lobbying the government to regulate witch doctors and improve police resources to investigate these crimes.

According to official police figures, there was one case of child sacrifice in 2006; in 2008 the police say they investigated 25 alleged ritual murders, and in 2009, another 29.

The Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, launched in response to the growing numbers, says the ritual murder rate has slowed, citing a figure of 38 cases since 2006.

Pastor Sewakiryanga disputes the police numbers, and says there are more victims from his parish than official statistics for the entire country.

The work of the police task force has been strongly criticised by the UK-based charity, Jubilee Campaign.

It says in a report that the true number of cases is in the hundreds, and claims more than 900 cases have yet to be investigated by the police because of corruption and a lack of resources.

‘Quiet money’

Allan was left for dead after a vicious attack

Tepenensi led me to a field near her home where she found the body of her six-year-old grandson Stephen, dumped in the reeds. She trembled as she pointed out the spot where she found his decapitated body; he had been missing for 24 hours.

Clutching the only photo she has of her grandson, Tepenensi sobbed as she explained that although the local witch doctor had admitted to sacrificing Stephen, the police were reluctant to pursue the case.

“They offered me money to keep quiet,” she says. “I refused the offer.”

No-one from the Ugandan government agreed to do an interview. The police deny inaction and corruption.

The head of the Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, Commissioner Bignoa Moses, says the police are doing all they can to tackle the problem.

“Sometimes, they accuse us of these things because we make no arrests, but we are limited. If we get information that someone is involved in criminal activities like human sacrifice, we shall go and investigate, and if it can be proven we will take him to court, but sometimes the cases are not proven.”

Boy castrated

At Kampala main hospital, consultant neurosurgeon Michael Muhumuza shows me the X-rays of the horrific injuries suffered by nine-year-old Allan.

They reveal missing bone from his skull and damage to a part of his brain after a machete sliced through Allan’s head and neck in an attempt to behead him; he was castrated by the witch doctor. It was a month before Allan woke from a coma after being dumped near his village home.

Allan was able to identify his attackers, including a man called Awali. But the police say Allan’s eyewitness account is unreliable.

Some children are cut to collect blood for rituals

Local people told us that Awali continues to be involved with child sacrifice.

For our own inquiries, we posed as local businessmen and asked around for a witch doctor that could bring prosperity to our local construction company. We were soon introduced to Awali. He led us into a courtyard behind his home, and as if to welcome us he and his helpers wrestled a goat to the ground and slit its throat.

“This animal has been sacrificed to bring luck to us all,” Awali explained. He then demanded a fee of $390 (£250) for the ritual and asked us to return in a few days.

At our next meeting, Awali invited us into his shrine, which is traditionally built from mud bricks with a straw roof. Inside, the floor is littered with herbs, face masks, rattles and a machete.

The witch doctor explained that this meeting was to discuss the most powerful spell – the sacrifice of a child.

“There are two ways of doing this,” he said. “We can bury the child alive on your construction site, or we cut them in different places and put their blood in a bottle of spiritual medicine.”

Awali grabbed his throat. “If it’s a male, the whole head is cut off and his genitals. We will dig a hole at your construction site, and also bury the feet and the hands and put them all together in the hole.”

The attacks have created a climate of fear

Awali boasted he had sacrificed children many times before and knew what he was doing. After this meeting, we withdrew from the negotiations.

We handed our notes to the police. Awali is still a free man.

‘No voice’

Allan’s father, Semwanga, has sold his home to pay for Allan’s medical treatment, and moved to the slums near the capital.

Sitting on the steps of their makeshift house, built from corrugated sheets of metal, I showed the footage of our meeting with the witch doctor to Allan on my laptop. He pointed to the screen and shouted “Awali!” confirming he is the man who attacked him.

Pastor Sewakiryanga says without the full force of the law, there is little that can be done to protect Uganda’s children from the belief in the power of human sacrifice.

“The children do not have voices, their voices have been silenced by the law and the police not acting, and the people who read the newspapers do nothing, so we have to make a stand and do whatever it takes to stamp out this evil, we can only pray that the government will listen.”