2 officers slain, suspect a likely suicide
A man wanted for killing two Georgia police officers was found dead Thursday, apparently fatally shooting himself before a SWAT team stormed a home where the suspect was hiding, authorities said Thursday.
The manhunt for 32-year-old Minquell Lembrick ended a day after a gunman on Wednesday killed Americus police officer Nicholas Smarr and wounded officer Jody Smith of Georgia Southwestern State University. Both officers were shot as they responded to a domestic-disturbance call at an apartment complex near campus.
Police identified Lembrick as a suspect in the shootings and offered a $70,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
Americus Police Chief Mark Scott said the first officers to arrive at the house heard a gunshot inside before the SWAT team arrived. Lembrick’s body was found inside.
After the shootings Wednesday, Smith was airlifted with critical injuries to a Macon hospital, where he underwent surgery. He died Thursday, officials said. Fellow officers said the two men had been friends since boyhood.
Within an hour of Wednesday’s shootings, posts on Lembrick’s Facebook page appeared to indicate he didn’t want to be taken alive. A four-second Facebook Live video showed a young man partly concealed by shadows saying, “I’m gonna miss y’all folk, man.”
Pizza-shop-gunfire suspect: Went too far
SALISBURY, N.C. — The man accused of firing an assault rifle inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant said he regrets how he handled the situation but refused to completely dismiss the false online claims involving a child-sex ring that took him there.
“I just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way,” Edgar Maddison Welch, who’s been jailed since his Sunday arrest, told The New York Times on Wednesday.
Welch, 28, said he drove to Washington from his Salisbury, N.C., home intending only to give the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant a “closer look.” But while on the way, he said, he felt his “heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering.”
Asked what he thought when he found there were no children in the restaurant, Welch said, “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.” But he would not completely dismiss the online claims, conceding only that there were no children “inside that dwelling.”
Mistrial’s jury chief sizes up S.C. killing
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The foreman of the jury that couldn’t reach a verdict in the murder trial of a former South Carolina police officer said he initially wanted to convict Michael Slager of murder.
But after reviewing evidence, including cellphone video of the shooting, Dorsey Montgomery said Thursday on NBC’s Today show that he thought the 35-year-old Slager was guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the death of Walter Scott.
Jurors deliberated more than 22 hours over four days before a mistrial was declared Monday. The white former officer was charged with shooting Scott, who was black, five times in the back as Scott fled a traffic stop in April 2015, a killing captured by a bystander on cellphone video that was posted online.
Montgomery also said that the jury split 10-2 for guilty of voluntary manslaughter in its final vote.
2nd abortion-ban bill advances in Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Abortions would be banned after 20 weeks in Ohio under a bill that Republican lawmakers passed Thursday, adding to legislation already on its way to GOP Gov. John Kasich that would prohibit abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected.
The House voted 64-29 to pass the bill already approved by the Senate.
During early debate the House rejected a Democratic proposal to add rape and incest to exceptions in the bill.
The House Community and Family Advancement Committee voted Wednesday in favor of the 20-week ban. That followed House approval Tuesday of the so-called heartbeat bill, clearing the way for what would be one of the nation’s most stringent abortion restrictions.
That legislation would prohibit most abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy after the first detectable fetal heartbeat.
Kasich, who opposes abortion rights, has previously voiced concerns about whether such a move would be constitutional. He has not said whether he plans to sign either measure.
Similar 20-week bans are on the books in 17 states, including Arkansas.
A Section on 12/09/2016