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WORLD
TURKS & CAICOS SUN
JUNE 19TH, 2015 – JUNE 26TH, 2015
LOCAL NEWS WORLD NEWS
NEWS
White gunman kills nine at historic black South Carolina church
CHARLESTON, South Carolina - A 21-year-old white gunman with a criminal record killed nine people at a Bible-study meeting in a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, in an attack U.S. officials are investigating as a hate crime. Law enforcement officials on Thursday caught alleged gunman Dylann Roof, local television reported. The rampage came in a year that has seen months of racially charged protests across the United States over killings of black men. A man who identified himself as Roof ’s uncle said he had recently been give a .45-caliber handgun as a birthday present by his father and that the 21-year-old had seemed adrift. “The more I look at him, the more I’m convinced, that’s him,” Carson Cowles, 56, told Reuters in
The victims, six females and three males, included Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was the church’s pastor and a Democratic member of the state Senate, according to colleagues. The U.S. Department of Justice opened a hate crime investigation into the shooting. Roof sat with churchgoers inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for about an hour on Wednesday before opening fire, Police Chief Gregory Mullen said. He reloaded five times even as victims pleaded with him to stop, Dylann Roof is pictured in this undated booking a relative of Pinckney’s said. Sylvia photo provided by the Lexington County Sheriff’ Johnson, a cousin, told MSNBC that a Department survivor told her the gunman reloaded a phone interview, adding that law five times during the attack. Pinckney enforcement agents were present at tried to talk him out of it, she said. Roof ’s home. “If it is him, and when “He just said, ‘I have to do it. they catch him, he’s got to pay for this.” You rape our women and you’re taking
Deadly balcony collapse tied to rotted wooden beams
over our country,” Johnson said. Demonstrations have rocked New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, Missouri and other cities following police killings of unarmed black men including Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and Michael Brown. A white police officer was charged with murder after he shot an unarmed black man in April in neighboring North Charleston. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which researches U.S. hate groups, said the attack illustrates the dangers that home-grown extremists pose. “Since 9/11, our country has been fixated on the threat of Jihadi terrorism. But the horrific tragedy at the Emmanuel AME reminds us that the threat of homegrown domestic terrorism is very real,” the group said in a statement.
Runaway tiger kills man
The remaining wood from the Library Gardens apartment building balcony that collapsed is shown in Berkeley, Calif., Wednesday, June 17, 2015. The balcony broke loose from the building during a 21st birthday party early Tuesday, killing several people and seriously injuring others BERKELEY, Calif. — The apartments, which were completed in balcony collapse that killed six college 2007 and are popular among visiting students appears to have been caused students and those at the nearby by rotted wooden beams, Berkeley’s University of California, Berkeley. mayor said Wednesday as the victims’ Segue Construction, the heartbroken loved ones began arriving Library Gardens general contractor, in the U.S. from Ireland. was involved in two San Francisco Bay Mayor Tom Bates said Area lawsuits in recent years involving investigators believe the wood was allegations of dry rot and substandard not caulked and sealed properly at the balconies at condo and apartment time of construction and was damaged projects in Millbrae and San Jose. by moisture as a result. Among other things, Segue was accused The crowded fifth-floor balcony of improperly waterproofing balconies. broke off an apartment building during Both cases were settled in a 21st-birthday party early Tuesday 2013 with Segue, developers and other held by visiting Irish college students, parties agreeing to pay millions of dumping 13 people 50 feet onto the dollars. pavement. In addition to the six killed, Segue spokesman Sam Singer said seven were seriously hurt. such litigation is common on large “More than likely it was caused projects and “has no bearing on the by rain and caused by water damage tragedy” in Berkeley. that was done to the support beams,” “They are completely different Bates said. He said it was “obviously a projects. They are completely different bad idea” for 13 people to crowd onto types of balconies,” he said. Singer such a small balcony — it was about 40 said of the balcony collapse: “Segue square feet — but added that he is not Construction has never had an incident blaming the victims. like this in its history.” Later in the day, however, the Cassandra Bujarski, a mayor said the water-damage theory spokeswoman for the apartments’ was speculation on his part and not property management firm, Greystar, an official conclusion, and that the had no comment. investigation is still underway. Across the Atlantic, flags flew Building inspectors also at half-staff around Ireland and the determined another balcony at the country’s parliament suspended normal Library Gardens apartment complex business as the nation mourned the was “structurally unsafe and presented dead: Ashley Donohoe, 22, of Rohnert a collapse hazard.” They ordered it Park, California, and Olivia Burke, demolished. Eoghan Culligan, Niccolai Schuster, Two other balconies were red- Lorcan Miller and Eimear Walsh, all tagged, or declared off-limits, at the 21-year-olds from Ireland.
Emergency Ministry official covers the killed tiger near a Zoo in Tbilisi, Georgia TBILISI, Georgia — A tiger that broke loose after severe flooding at the Tbilisi Zoo mauled a man to death in the Georgian capital before being shot by police Wednesday, a day after officials said all the zoo’s tigers had died. Zoo Director Zurab Gurielidze acknowledged he was to blame for releasing faulty information and said new counts indicated a tiger cub and a hyena could still be on the loose. The city has remained on edge, with runaway predators reportedly seen by some residents. The Interior Ministry in the former Soviet republic said the tiger was hiding at an abandoned factory that had been turned into a construction market when he attacked the man Wednesday. The victim, who worked at the market, later died of his wounds at a hospital. “We entered the depot and,
suddenly, a white tiger rushed out of an adjacent room and attacked one of the workers, jumping at his throat and mauling him,” colleague Alexander Shavbulashvili told The Associated Press. “We broke the window of another room to flee, and the sound of breaking glass must have scared it and it ran away.” Police commandos rushed to the site and killed the tiger. “It was a white tiger,” Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri told the AP. “We wanted to sedate it, but it was very aggressive and we had to liquidate it.” Zoo spokeswoman Khatia Basilashvili couldn’t immediately offer any details about the dead tiger. The zoo administration had said Tuesday that eight lions, all its seven tigers and at least two of its three jaguars and 12 of its 14 bears were killed in the flooding.