Alec Baldwin to face involuntary manslaughter charge over 'Rust' shooting

LOS ANGELES — Alec Baldwin is to be charged with involuntary manslaughter over the accidental shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the low-budget western "Rust," a prosecutor said Thursday.

The film's armorer, who was responsible for the weapon that fired the shot that killed Halyna Hutchins, will also be charged, New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies announced.

If convicted, they both face up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

"After a thorough review of the evidence and the laws of the state of New Mexico, I have determined that there is sufficient evidence to file criminal charges against Alec Baldwin and other members of the ‘Rust’ film crew," Carmack-Altwies said.

"On my watch, no one is above the law, and everyone deserves justice."

Baldwin was holding the Colt. 45 during rehearsals for the film when it discharged, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza in October 2021.

The former "30 Rock" star has insisted he was told by crew that the gun was not loaded.

He has also previously said he did not pull the trigger, though experts have cast doubt on this claim.

A lengthy investigation has looked at how the live round -- and five others -- got onto the New Mexico film set, with attention focused on the armorer and ammunition supplier.

Investigators found the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, had put the fatal round in Baldwin's gun, instead of using a similar-looking dummy round.

In August, Baldwin said he did not believe he would be charged, telling CNN he had hired a private investigator to assess possible culpability.

A raft of civil suits have been lodged in the months since Hutchins' death, with various crew suing and counter-suing.

In October, Baldwin reached an undisclosed settlement with the family of 42-year-old Hutchins.

Agence France-Presse

Police: Driver charged over deaths of 39 people in UK lorry

British police investigating the deaths of 39 people in a refrigerated truck said Saturday they had charged a driver arrested at the scene with manslaughter and people trafficking.

Maurice Robinson, 25, from Northern Ireland, faces "39 counts of manslaughter, conspiracy to traffic people, conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering", police said.

Robinson was arrested shortly after the bodies were discovered in the truck at Purfleet on the River Thames estuary, after arriving on a ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge early on Wednesday.

He will appear in court on Monday, Essex police said.

Three other people have been arrested in Britain in connection with the investigation, on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic people and manslaughter. They remain in custody.

They include a 38-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman from Warrington in northwest England, reportedly a couple. She is said to be the legal owner of the truck.

A 48-year-old man from Northern Ireland is also being held.

On Saturday, Irish police announced another arrest at Dublin port, of a man in his early 20s from Northern Ireland.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

White US ex-cop guilty of murder for shooting black neighbor

WASHINGTON - A former Texas policewoman was convicted of murder Tuesday for shooting dead a neighbor in his own home in what her lawyer said was a "tragic mistake."

The case sparked outrage as it became a flashpoint over police violence and racial bias because Amber Guyger is white, while her victim was black.

Guyger, who worked in Dallas, claimed that she believed she had returned to her own apartment on September 6, 2018 and that she thought Botham Jean, 26, was an intruder.

In fact, the 31-year-old had entered Jean's unlocked apartment, located in the same building but one floor above hers.

"We the jury unanimously find the defendant, Amber Guyger, guilty of murder as charged in the indictment," the jury foreman announced.

After the verdict was read, Jean's mother, Allison Jean, stood and looked upward as she celebrated the decision, raising her arms high and wide.

"I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, it's just been the most terrible time for me," she later told the jury that will decide on Guyger's sentence.

"I try to busy myself to try to get this out of my head. It is very difficult."

The jury, which retired on Monday, deliberated for five hours before delivering its guilty verdict. 

Guyger, who was off duty after a nearly 14-hour shift, lived in apartment 1378 on the third floor, while Jean lived in apartment 1478 directly above her. 

"She knows she's made a tragic mistake, but it's not out of evil," Guyger's lawyer, Robert Rogers, told the court when the trial opened, describing it as human error and an act of self-defense.

Guyger -- a police officer for four years until her sacking following the shooting -- sobbed when she took the stand last week.

APPEALS FOR JUSTICE 

"I ask God for forgiveness, and I hate myself every single day," she said, voice trembling.

"I wish he was the one with the gun who had killed me. I never wanted to take an innocent person's life."

After hearing the verdict, Guyger stood as the jury filed out of the courtroom and then sank into her chair.

Prosecutor Jason Hermus said Jean, a native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia who worked for an accounting firm, "paid the ultimate price" for Guyger's errors.

"She walks past 16 different apartments and fails to register the number four on any one of them," Hermus said during the testimony phase of the trial last week.

Prosecutors played Guyger's frantic 911 call, in which she repeatedly tells a dispatcher she is in the wrong apartment.

Bodycam footage from responding officers showed them trying to save his life as he lay bleeding, US media reported.

The shooting and its aftermath sparked demonstrations and appeals for justice in a nation where white police officers who shoot people of color often go free.

Demonstrators rallied outside the Dallas police headquarters and city hall.

Jurors were given the option of finding Guyger guilty of the lesser offense of manslaughter, but a grand jury indicted her on the more serious charge of murder following the protests.

She faces up to life in prison when she is expected to be sentenced later Tuesday. 

str-bgs/wd

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Ex-cop missed clues before shooting man eating ice cream in own home-prosecutor

DALLAS - A Dallas police officer missed clues including the smell of marijuana when she entered an apartment she believed was her own and shot dead a man eating a bowl of ice cream, a prosecutor said on Monday at the start of the former officer's murder trial.

Amber Guyger, who is white, has told investigators in Texas that she mistook 26-year-old Botham Jean, who is black, for a burglar after she mistakenly entered his central Dallas apartment one floor above hers.

Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus told the jury of four men and 12 women that Guyger had a 16-minute phone conversation with her former partner, with whom she had a romantic relationship, on the way home from work that night after a 13-1/2 hour shift.

"Whatever is on her mind after that conversation has consumed her attention entirely," Hermus said in his opening statement.

The shooting, one of a series of high-profile killings of unarmed black men and teens by white U.S. police, sparked street protests, particularly because prosecutors initially moved to charge Guyger, 31, with manslaughter, a charge for killing without malice that carries a lesser sentence than murder.

In contrast to cases like the killings of Michael Brown in Missouri and Philando Castile in Minnesota, Guyger shot Jean, a PwC accountant who was a native of the Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia, while she was off duty, rather than while responding to a reported crime.

Hermus told the jury that when Guyger got to her apartment complex, she parked on the fourth floor instead of the third floor, where she had lived for two months.

When she arrived at what she thought was her unit, she failed to notice the bright red semi-circle welcome mat in front of Jean's apartment, he said.

Jean's apartment was also unlocked, messy and smelled of marijuana, three more signs that should have tipped Guyger off that it was not her apartment, Hermus said.

Despite the clues, she still burst through the door and opened fire, striking Jean once in the chest as he watched television and ate a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

"He was in the sanctuary of his home doing no harm to anyone," Hermus said. "There he lie on his back in his home bleeding to death alone with his killer."

Guyger then called 911.

"I shot a guy thinking it was my apartment," Hermus said, recounting what Guyger told the dispatcher, noting that she never said that Jean posed a threat to her.

Guyger's lawyers are due to make their opening statement later on Monday.

Before opening statements began, state District Judge Tammy Kemp sequestered the jurors, shielding them from possible outside influence and local news coverage of the case.

Kemp also denied a motion to exclude evidence from Guyger's texts and phone calls and a motion for a mistrial from Guyger's attorneys who claimed Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot defied a gag order by giving an interview about the case to a local television station over the weekend.

The district attorney's office reexamined the case after the public protests, and a grand jury in late November indicted Guyger on murder charges, with the maximum punishment of life in prison. 

After the incident, she was initially placed on administrative leave but was fired days later.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Rap mogul Marion 'Suge' Knight pleads no contest to manslaughter

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight pleaded no contest in Los Angeles on Thursday to a single count of manslaughter stemming from a fatal 2015 hit-and-run, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors that calls for him to serve 28 years in prison.

Knight, co-founder of influential hip-hop label Death Row Records, entered the plea ahead of his scheduled trial on murder charges stemming from accusations that he ran down two men with his pickup truck near a burger stand in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton on Jan. 29, 2015.

Under California law a no contest plea is the legal equivalent to a guilty plea.

The 53-year-old former rap producer appeared in court to enter the no contest plea wearing an orange jail jumpsuit. He spoke only to answer a series of questions from Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen.

Knight is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 4, and will be given a 28-year sentence under the terms of his plea deal with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

As part of the agreement the murder charges against Knight will be dismissed by prosecutors, along with separate criminal cases charging him with robbery and making criminal threats.

Had Knight been found guilty of murder as originally charged, he would have faced life in prison, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors have said Knight ran down two men in the parking lot of Tam’s Burgers, an incident captured on videotape by the restaurant’s surveillance cameras.

Terry Carter, 55, was struck and killed by the truck. Cle “Bone” Sloan survived his injuries.

Reporting by Steve Gorman; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Bill Berkrot

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Teen accidentally shoots twin dead at family dinner

NANCY, France - A 14-year-old French boy accidentally shot his twin brother dead during a family meal Sunday while playing with guns that he did not know were loaded, police said.

"One of the family members had got out several guns, without knowing or giving a warning that some of them were loaded," a local police commander in charge of the inquiry told AFP.

A source close to the inquiry in the town of Hennezel, northeastern France, said the boys' uncle had been charged with manslaughter on Monday. The man, who is in his fifties, was released on conditional bail.

The boy had picked up an automatic pistol on Sunday evening and accidentally fired it, shooting his brother in the chest.

Police said firefighters had tried to tend to the injured boy but were unable to save him.

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