BOSTON BOMBINGS; Dzhokhar Found Pen & Wrote Confession Letter ‘Martyr Note’ On Wall Of Boat, Solves Miranda Problem
‘Miller explained that while Dzhokar admitted many of the same details to authorities, those admissions came “during the time he was interrogated but before he was given his Miranda warning.” The note gives prosecutors supporting, clearly admissible evidence even if there is an fight over whether things he said before he was given his Miranda rights are admissible as evidence.’ – CBS
(AE) - This story just keeps getting worse… so after 32 days we’re finally told that Dzhokhar wrote a confession letter, or “martyr note”, on the wall of the boat he was hiding in???
Now the problems of the FBI breaking the law by not giving Dzhokhar his “Miranda Warning” has been solved. For more discussion about the misconception of so called “Miranda Rights”, see my previous article here.
Besides all the other problems with this story, just how did Dzhokhar know his brother Tamerlan was a martyr??? He had no way of knowing Tamerlan was dead… especially since the story of Dzhokhar driving over Tamerlan while fleeing has been contradicted by witnesses.
2013.5.16 Boston Bombings Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Left Note In Boat He Hid In, Sources Say (cbsnews.com):
(CBS News) Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left claiming responsibility for the April 13 attack
on the Boston Marathon, reports CBS News senior correspondent John Miller.Sources tell Miller that Tsarnaev wrote the note in the boat he was hiding in as police pursued him, and as he bled from gunshot wounds sustained in an earlier shootout between police and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
The note, scrawled with a pen on the interior wall of the cabin, said the bombings were retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims collateral damage in the same way Muslims have been in the American-led wars. “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” the note added.
Dzhokar said he didn’t mourn older brother Tamerlan, the other suspect in the bombings, writing that by that point, Tamerlan was a martyr in paradise — and that he expected to join him there.
Miller’s sources say the wall the note was written on was riddled with bullet holes from shots fired into the boat. The shots were fired after Dzhokhar came up through the tarp covering the boat amid police fears that he had another bomb.
According to Miller, the note will be a significant piece of evidence in any Dzhokar trial — it is “certainly admissible,” and paints a clear picture of the brothers’ motive, “consistent with what he told investigators while he was in custody,” Miller said Thursday on “CBS This Morning.”
Miller explained that while Dzhokar admitted many of the same details to authorities, those admissions came “during the time he was interrogated but before he was given his Miranda warning.” The note gives prosecutors supporting, clearly admissible evidence even if there is an fight over whether things he said before he was given his Miranda rights are admissible as evidence.
It took days to learn the identity of the bombers [NOT TRUE, THE FBI KNEW THEIR IDENTITY WHEN THEY RELEASED THE PHOTOS - JOEL], and there was no official claim of responsibility, which is unusual in these cases. As investigators move forward with the investigation, “the last big question remaining is going to be who else knew anything? Is it going to be the wife? Is it someone overseas?” Miller said.
The suspects didn’t plan to stop after the Boston bombings, authorities say. They intended to go to New York City and set off a device or devices in Times Square.
The brothers didn’t have well-developed plans for New York, but they still had intent, Miller said. So as
Dzhokhar lay in the boat, he wanted to leave a message behind clearly supporting what the note says he and his brother had just done.For a plot as organized as the one was for Boston, it seems odd that — with a choice of leaving behind a
martyrdom video on a computer or a more formal claim of responsibility — the brothers had nothing
prepared, Miller said. A larger terror organization ensures that such videos are made out of the country and are ready to launch after the attack.So in the end, Miller concludes, the boat note was a way for Dzhokhar to get on the record as publicly claiming responsibility for the bombings.
2013.5.16 Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Blamed US Wars In Iraq, Afghanistan In ‘Martyr’ Note On Boat’s Wall, Report (nypost.com):
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/tsarnaev_blamed_boat_wars_wall_iraq_8L0M6tDfkhzoMj3cDY9VyH
IRS Agents Stole 60 Million Medical Records, Legal Complaint Alleges
The Internal Revenue Service stole and improperly accessed 60 million medical records after raiding a California company, according to a legal complaint filed in March with the California superior court for San Diego. Fifteen IRS agents are now facing a class-action lawsuit in the matter.
“In a case involving solely a tax matter involving a former employee of the company, these agents stole more than 60,000,000 medical records of more than 10,000,000 Americans” the complaint, filed by attorney Robert Barnes, alleges. “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search.”
The complaint goes on to describe how IRS agents ignored the warnings of IT personnel and executives at the company in question, the John Doe Company, and accuses the IRS of violating the plantiff’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
BOSTON BOMBINGS; Interview With Police Involved In Watertown Shootout, Few Details, Many Unanswered Questions
“… He was about 6 or 8 feet away from me, firing his pistol at me, I was firing at him… I’d run out of ammunition, I had to do a reload in the middle of that, and he had a problem with his firearm, I don’t know if it jammed on him or what, he kind of looked at his gun, then threw it at me and hit me in the left bicep here… turned, ran back down the driveway to the street, took a left, running towards the other officers that were on scene… and uh… I holstered up and I chased after him and tackled him…” – Sgt. Jeff Pugliese
(AE) – This story has more holes than Swiss cheese, but I’m still asking… where’s the police dash cam video???
This interview is reminiscent of my previous article where the SWAT Team described in detail how they exchanged gunfire with the boat in which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding… but it turns out Dzhokhar was unarmed.
The story gets interesting at 5:43 into the video with the interview of Sgt. Jeff Pugliese:
“… He was about 6 or 8 feet away from me, firing his pistol at me, I was firing at him… I’d run out of ammunition, I had to do a reload in the middle of that, and he had a problem with his firearm, I don’t know if it jammed on him or what, he kind of looked at his gun, then threw it at me and hit me in the left bicep here… turned, ran back down the driveway to the street, took a left, running towards the other officers that were on scene… and uh… I holstered up and I chased after him and tackled him…”
Sorry, but a 6 to 8 foot shootout where one, if not both, of shooters is not permanently on the ground is very hard to believe. Then the suspect supposedly took the time to throw his gun at the officer rather than retreat for more ammo? So rather than return to his car trunk full of ammo the suspect then decided to run down the street, unarmed, directly into police fire, while Pugliese, knowing he’d be running into a barrage of bullets from his fellow officers, decided to chase and tackle the suspect (!) rather than shoot his freshly loaded gun into the suspect at a safe distance?? Really????
It’s interesting how the interview focuses on police “brotherhood”, how they are a “team”, and how they saved the life of Transit Police officer Richard Donahue, however, it’s now believed that Donahue was shot by friendly fire while Dzhokhar was fleeing, there was no exchange of gunfire… see my previous article here.
2013.5.15 Interview With Cops That Had Shootout With Boston Bombings Suspects In Watertown (MSNBC, MOXNEWS, youtube.com):
May 14, 2013 MSNBC News
White House Admits That It Knew About IRS Scandal ‘Several Weeks Ago,’…And Did Nothing (Obama admin Also used DHS on Occupy!)
May 15, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Americas
Full Story – http://b4in.info/t4vw While successfully dodging questions about the 3 scandals the White House is caught up with spokesman Jay Carney admits the Obama administration knew about the IRS targeting activists but did nothing about it.
Also:
Was this all just political / “anti Republican”, Or was it a continuation of what the Obama admin has done to other groups like Occupy?
I Spy An Occupy: Obama’s DHS Surveils Legit Protesters
By Spencer Mandel on May 21, 2012
Remember the Occupy Movement? Since last November, when the NYPD closed the Zuccotti Park encampment in downtown Manhattan –the Movement’s birthplace and symbolic nexus—Occupy’s relevance has seriously dwindled, at least as measured by coverage in the mainstream media. We’re told that this erosion is due to Occupy’s own shortcomings—an inevitable outcome of its disjointed message and decentralized leadership.
While that may be the media’s take, the U.S. Government seems to have a different view.
If recent documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) are any indication, the Occupy Movement continues to be monitored and curtailed in a nationwide, federally-orchestrated campaign, spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In response to repeated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the Fund, made on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild, the DHS released a revealing set of documents in April. But the latest batch, made public on May 3rd, exposes the scale of the government’s “attention” to Occupy as never before.
The documents, many of which are partially blacked-out emails, demonstrate a surprising degree of coordination between the DHS’s National Operations Center (NOC) and local authorities in the monitoring of the Occupy movement. Cities implicated in this wide-scale snooping operation include New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Denver, Boston, Portland, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
Interest in the Occupy protesters was not limited to DHS and local law enforcement authorities. The most recently released correspondence contains Occupy-related missives between the DHS and agencies at all levels of government, including the Mayor of Portland, regional NOC “fusion centers,” the General Services Administration (GSA), the Pentagon’s USNORTHCOM (Northern Command), and the White House. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF, contends that the variety and reach of the organizations involved point to the existence of a larger, more pervasive domestic surveillance network than previously suspected.
These documents show not only intense government monitoring and coordination in response to the Occupy Movement, but reveal a glimpse into the interior of a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people. These heavily redacted documents don’t tell the full story. They are likely only a subset of responsive materials and the PCJF continues to fight for a complete release. They scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.
(justiceonline.org)
As alarmist as Verheyden-Hilliard’s charge may sound, especially given the limited, bowdlerized nature of the source material, the texts made available contain disturbing evidence of insistent federal surveillance. In particular, the role of the “Fusion Centers,” a series of 72 federally-funded information hubs run by the NOC, raises questions about the government’s expansive definition of “Homeland Security.”
Created in the wake of 9/11, the Fusion Centers were founded to expedite the sharing of information among state and local law enforcement and the federal government, to monitor localized terrorist threats, and to sidestep the regulations and legislation preventing the CIA and the military from carrying out domestic surveillance (namely, the CIA ban on domestic spying and the Posse Comitatus Act).
Is nonviolent, albeit obstructive, citizen dissent truly an issue of national security? The DHS, for its part, is aware of the contentiousness of civilian monitoring. That’s why, in a White House-approved statement to CBS News included in the dossier, DHS Press Secretary Matthew Chandler asserts that
Any decisions on how to handle specifics (sic) situations are dealt with by local authorities in that location. . . DHS is not actively coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and/or city governments concerning the evictions of Occupy encampments writ large.
However, as a reading of the documents unmistakably demonstrates, this expedient PR nugget is far from the truth. In example after example, from its seeking of “public health and safety” grounds from the City of Portland for Occupy’s ejection from Terry Schrunk Plaza, to its facilitation of information sharing between the police departments of Chicago and Boston (following a 1500-person Occupy protest in Chicago), the DHS’s active ”coordinating” with local authorities is readily apparent. Other communiqués are even more explicit in revealing a national focus, such as the DHS’s preemptive coordination with the Pentagon about a port closure in Oakland, and its collection of identity and contact information of Occupy protesters arrested at a Bank of America in Dallas.
Those Pesky Amendments
The right to public assembly is a central component of the First Amendment. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect Americans from warrantless searches—with the definition of “search” expanded in 1967 to include electronic surveillance, following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Katz v. United States. Assuming the Occupy protesters refrain from violence—and the vast majority do, in accord with a stated tenet of the Occupy movement—the movement’s existence is constitutionally protected, or should be.
The DHS’s monitoring, documenting, and undermining of protesters may in fact violate the First Amendment. In a recent piece for Dissent Magazine, sociologist James B. Rule explains the fundamental importance of a movement like Occupy in the American political landscape.
This surveillance campaign against Occupy is bad news for American democracy. Occupy represents an authentic, utterly home-grown, grassroots movement. Taken as a whole, it is neither terrorist nor conspiratorial. Indeed, it is hard to think of another movement so cumbersomely public in its deliberations and processes. Occupy is noisy, disorderly, insubordinate, and often inconvenient for all concerned—statements that could equally well apply to democracy in general. But it should never be targeted as a threat to the well-being of the country—quite the contrary.
Accordingly, Rule calls for the White House to rein in the ever-expanding surveillance activity of the DHS—which he contends is motivated by its own funding interests, and which prioritizes security at the expense of civil liberties.
The resource-rich Department of Homeland Security and its allies no doubt see in the rise of the movement another opportunity to justify their own claims for public legitimacy. We can be sure that many in these agencies view any noisy dissent as tantamount to a threat to national security.
[snip]
Nobody who cares about democracy wants to live in a world where simply engaging in vociferous protest qualifies any citizen to have his or her identity and life details archived by state security agencies. Specific, overt threats of civil disobedience or other law-breaking should be dealt with on a piecemeal basis—not by attempting to monitor everyone who might be moved to such actions, all the time. Meanwhile, the White House should issue clear directives that identification and tracking of lawful protesters will play no further role in any government response to this populist moment.
Optimistic as it may be, Rule’s appeal to the White House is a problematic one, given the ubiquitous influence of the DHS revealed by these documents. If the White House-approved press release is any indication, the Oval Office, while not directly authorizing the DHS’s initiatives, is certainly turning a blind eye to the Department’s focus on the Occupy movement as a potential terrorist threat. Federal surveillance of citizens in the Bush years, most visible in the NSA warrantless wiretapping controversy, has apparently not ceased with Obama’s inauguration.
Which raises the question: Does Obama, as he claims, “stand with the 99 percent,” or with those who cannot stand them?
Report warned Boston Marathon was vulnerable to terrorism + Updates…
May 13, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Americas
Rand Paul: UN has secret plot to ‘CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL’ of America’s guns
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Saturday warned President Barack Obama was working on behalf of “anti-American globalists” in the United Nations who were plotting against the U.S. Constitution.
In a fundraising email sent on behalf of the National Association on Gun Rights, Paul alleged the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty was a secret plot to completely disarm American civilians.
“Ultimately, UN bureaucrats will stop at nothing to register, ban and CONFISCATE firearms owned by private citizens like YOU,” Paul wrote. “So far, the gun-grabbers have successfully kept many of their schemes under wraps. But looking at previous attempts by the UN to pass global gun control, you and I can get a good idea of what’s likely in the works.”
19 injured in New Orleans parade shooting
(CNN) — Abdul Aziz believes he was standing right next to a shooter Sunday when gunmen opened fire at a parade in New Orleans, injuring 19 people.
“Everyone around me, except me, was shot,” he said. “I was pretty fortunate to get away.”
Aziz, 33, a photojournalist, was at the second-line parade when gunfire broke out at the corner of Frenchman Street and North Villere Street.
Second-line parades, which involve dancing and brass bands, are a New Orleans tradition.
“We turned off of a main thoroughfare to a smaller residential street, and that’s when the shots rang out. I was standing, I believe, right next to the shooter. I saw muzzle flash, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to see who the shooter was,” he said.
John McCain Refuses To Back Impeaching Obama Over Benghazi
WASHINGTON — As Republicans are increasingly calling the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attacks a cover-up worse than Watergate and even floating impeachment, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) urged a note of caution on Sunday, saying he wasn’t yet willing to go that far.
“With all due respect, I think this is a serious issue,” said McCain on ABC’s “This Week.” “I will even give the president the benefit of the doubt on some of these things. We need a select committee.”
On Thursday, Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) accused President Barack Obama of overseeing “the most egregious cover-up in American history.” He added that “people may be starting to use the ‘I word’” before long.
Former Arksansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) also said on his radio show this week, “I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term. As bad as Watergate was because it broke the trust between the president and the people, no one died. This is more serious because four Americans did in fact die. And President Obama has yet to explain why did they die.”
McCain also defended Obama against impeachment during a late February town hall, saying, “I do not believe that the president has committed impeachable offenses — that’s high crimes.”
OHIO KIDNAPPINGS; Ariel Castro’s Childhood Friend, ‘He Said He Was In The CIA’
“And – you’re going to laugh – he said he was in the CIA. And I don’t know if he was joking or not, but it’s the way he said it, how serious he said it. I didn’t know what he was capable of. That just put me on defense, and I just started stepping away.” – Joe Popow
(AE) – I’ve barely looked at this case, but many things instantly do not add up… the fact that a childhood friend claims Ariel Castro “said he was in the CIA”, that Castro somehow managed to severely abuse his wife, many times, with plenty of physical evidence, and the charges were mysteriously dropped, indicates this man was connected and protected. But to top it off, you have this…
Ariel Castro’s daughter, Arlene Castro, when asked by ABC News if she witnessed violence in the home said, “Oh no… never, never”. Here’s the video…
2013.5.9 Cleveland Kidnap Suspect’s Daughter Says She’s ‘Disappointed, Embarrassed’ In ‘GMA’ Interview (ABCNews, youtube.com):
Arlene Castro talks to George Stephanopoulos about her father’s alleged abduction of three women.
This surely does not add up to the detailed descriptions of domestic violence filed by her now dead mother, dead at the ripe old age of 48 years old, Grimilda Figueroa:
- Broken nose (twice)
- Rib injuries
- Lacerations
- Blood clot on the brain
- Knocked out tooth
- Dislocated shoulder (twice, one on each side)
- Death threats (to wife & daughters, 3 to 4 times in one year)
There’s also the police claiming they have no records of 911 calls reporting suspicious activity, see my article here, yet there are descriptions in the text below describing police being called to the home.
It just doesn’t add up… and then there’s the other Castro daughter, Emily Castro, who likes to slash baby throats…
2013.5.8 Hints Of A Dark Side In Cleveland Abduction Suspect’s Life (reuters.com):
By Daniel Trotta
CLEVELAND | Wed May 8, 2013 1:12pm EDT(Reuters) – In hindsight, there were signs of a darker side to Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man suspected of
abducting three girls and holding them captive for around a decade.Divorced years ago and never seen in the company of women, Castro suddenly started showing up in the largely Latino, working-class neighborhood with a 6-year-old girl. It was his girlfriend’s child, he told neighbors.
Castro, 52, was believed to have lived alone, yet on his lunch break would bring home enough bags of fast food and beverages for several people.
He was a school bus driver given mostly “excellent” marks on his performance appraisals, but was repeatedly disciplined, including for one incident when he was accused of calling a young student a “bitch” and leaving the child alone on a bus. He was fired last November.
Castro was arrested in 1993 after a domestic violence complaint, though a grand jury decided not to indict him. Another complaint in 2005 filed by his ex-wife, who died last year at age 48, accused him of twice breaking her nose and attempting to abduct their daughters and keep them from her mother. That case was dismissed.
Family, friends and neighbors were shocked when police rescued three women locked inside Castro’s house on Monday and found a 6-year-old girl who police believe was born in captivity. The three women, today aged 32, 27 and 23, went missing from 2002 to 2004.
Castro and two of his brothers, Onil, 50, and Pedro, 54, were taken into custody on Monday and were expected to be charged within 48 hours of their arrest.
“It could be he was hiding a personality, because if it did happen you would have to have two personalities,” said Julio Cesar Castro, 77, the arrested brothers’ uncle and owner of the Caribe Grocery half a block from Ariel’s home.
LATIN MUSICIAN
For years, Castro’s neighbors on Seymour Avenue saw him as a friendly but private person, an accomplished musician who played bass in Latin bands such as Borin Plena and Grupo Fuego. He liked motor-bikes and showed up at neighborhood barbecues in a vacant lot on Seymour Avenue. He was a self-taught mechanic who loved to talk about cars.
He owned an unremarkable, two-story house in a somewhat dilapidated part of Cleveland. Built in 1890, the home was valued at a mere $13,200 in 2011, according to property records. Its windows were covered to block views from the outside.
One childhood friend said a music session with Castro, who was born in Puerto Rico, suddenly turned bizarre.
“Ariel was in my garage probably five or six years ago. We were recording a song, an idea we had – a little hard rock with some Latin,” said Joe Popow, 45, a father of six who said he has known the Castro brothers since childhood.
“And – you’re going to laugh – he said he was in the CIA. And I don’t know if he was joking or not, but it’s the way he said it, how serious he said it. I didn’t know what he was capable of. That just put me on defense, and I just started stepping away,” Popow said.
Intensely private for years, Ariel Castro recently had been seen taking a young girl to the park and to the playground at the local McDonald’s restaurant, neighbors said.
One of those neighbors, Israel Lugo, 39, said it was the same little girl who was in the arms of one of the abducted women, Amanda Berry, when she and the others were freed. He was there to witness them leave the house, he said.
“I’ve seen him with the little girl once or twice. He said it was his girlfriend’s daughter,” said Lugo, a self-employed roofing contractor.
When family and friends of missing Cleveland woman Gina DeJesus held a vigil last month to mark nine years since her disappearance, one of those attending was Castro, a longtime neighbor said.
“He came to a vigil and acted as if nothing was wrong,” said Anthony Quiros, 24, who lived next door to Castro’s house growing up.
‘LAY DOWN, BITCH’
Lugo said his sister once noticed Castro park his school bus in front of his home and enter with a large bag of food and tray of drinks. His mother called the police, who simply advised Castro not to park his bus there, Lugo said.
Castro was a bus driver for the Cleveland school district for years, driving children as young as preschool to various schools in the city.
He was fired from that job effective November 6, 2012, after a fourth incident that resulted in disciplinary action, documents released by the school district said.
In the most serious incident, a witness told investigators that on January 27, 2004, Castro left Wade Park Elementary School with a child still on the bus and drove to a Wendy’s restaurant, the documents said. The gender and age of the child were not given.
“Lay down, bitch,” Castro is quoted by the witness as saying to the child. He then left the student alone on the bus and went into the Wendy’s for lunch.
The Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, which serves Cleveland, investigated the allegation and concluded the complaint was “unsubstantiated.” Even so, Castro was temporarily suspended by the school district over the complaint.
At the same time, his record includes performance appraisals with dozens of check marks in the “excellent” boxes on the form.
“I do want to say that I have known Mr. Castro to be an effective bus driver,” Joshua Gunvalsen, a school principal, wrote in a letter in one of the disciplinary cases. ”I have witnessed him trying to work with students, families and myself to handle student issues.”
Castro was arrested on December 27, 1993, in connection with a domestic violence complaint and released on $10,000 bail, but case was dropped when a grand jury declined to indict him, court records show. They did not say who brought the complaint.
According to neighbors who have lived there since before the Castros moved in, that complaint would have come near the end of Castro’s marriage to the late Grimilda Figueroa.
Cuyahoga County Court files show no record of the marriage or divorce of Castro and Figueroa, but the 2005 petition filed in the domestic relations section of the court also sought protection for two daughters, Emily and Arlene, plus a son that Figueroa had by another man. Castro also has a son named Ariel Anthony Castro.
Emily Castro, 25, is serving 25 years in an Indiana prison on attempted murder for slashing the throat of her 11-month-old daughter in April 2007, Allen County, Indiana, Superior Court records show.
In the 2005 petition for domestic violence protection order, Grimilda Figueroa, who died last year, said Castro broke her nose twice and listed other acts of violence she said resulted in rib injuries, lacerations and a blood clot on the brain. A temporary protection order was granted.
“Knocked out tooth. Dislocated shoulder (twice – one each side); threatened to kill petitioner and daughters 3/4 times just this year,” the petition, signed by Figueroa and her lawyer, said.
Figueroa said Castro “frequently abducts daughters and keeps them from mother,” according to the petition, which was dismissed after Figueroa appeared for a court hearing without her lawyer for a second time.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said authorities responded to calls at the house where the women were held twice, once in 2000 and a second time in 2004. The second time was after the complaint about Castro leaving the child on a school bus.
“Now after all this has happened, I think, ‘Oh my God. What did I miss?’” said Popow, the childhood friend of the Castros. “This person came to my house. He was in my garage. I have a daughter the same age.”
(Additional reporting by Kim Palmer, Chris Francescani, Robin Respaut, Kevin Gray, Brendan
O’Brien and Greg McCune; Editing by Greg McCune, Philip Barbara and Claudia Parsons)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/08/us-usa-missing-ohio-suspect-idUSBRE9470UG20130508
Bryce Reed, a West EMT Whose Best Friend Died in Blast, Arrested for Having “Destructive Device”
May 10, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Americas
 |
| Image via KRGV.com |
| Bryce Reed |
Updated below.
Original story, 10:05 a.m.: An EMT and incident commander with West Emergency Medical Services was arrested early this morning on charges of possessing a “destructive device,” multiple media outlets are reporting.
Bryce Reed, 31, is in federal custody. There are two different interpretations of the arrest being presented: Fox 4 reports that he’s been arrested “in connection to the investigation of the explosion in West, Texas, that killed 15 people.” They say the source of that information is unnamed agents with the federal Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms bureau. But The Dallas Morning News reports that officials haven’t yet said whether Reed’s arrest was related to the explosion. Under state and federal law, a “destructive device” can mean almost anything: a grenade, a bomb, a missile, poison gas or certain types of firearms.
See also: As West, Texas Counts Its Dead, Some See a Chance to Make a Profit
Reed was interviewed frequently in the aftermath of the April 17 explosion at the West fertilizer plant. He told the L.A. Times a heartbreaking story about heading to a close friend’s house to tell them that their son Cyrus Reed, a fellow EMT (and evidently no relation), had died in the explosion. A slideshow at USA Today appears to show Reed weeping at his friend’s funeral. In an interview with ABC affiliate KRGV TV, Reed said, “This is a community that makes sure we take care of our own.”
According to the News, Reed was arrested around 2 a.m. and was booked into McLennan County Jail before being taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals. He’s due to be arraigned at 10:15 in Waco.
WFAA reports that Reed was a volunteer EMS worker, and was placed on leave immediately after the explosion. Every other news outlet refers to him as a current EMT. We’ll have updates on this story as they become available.
Update, 10:17: That beeping you hear? That’s Fox 4 back-tracking.
Update, 10:32: The Texas Rangers are launching a criminal investigation into the explosion, WFAA’s David Schechter reports.
Update, 1:08 p.m.: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that “unnamed federal sources” told TV station KPRC that the “destructive device” was a pipe bomb:
Houston TV station KPRC quoted unnamed federal sources as saying Reed had asked an acquaintance to store a box for him sometime after the April 17 explosion. The sources said that person decided to look in the box and discovered what appeared to be a pipe bomb. They then called the McLennan County Sheriff’s office who contacted federal investigators.
Reed’s recent posts on Facebook have been deeply distraught. He repeatedly denies having received any money for his media interviews after the West bombing, and speaks about his grief over Cyrus Reed’s death, as well as the death soon after of another friend in an unrelated incident. He also mentions in a May 7 post that his wife recently left him. Part of the post reads:
Have your brother die, your town explode, your crew be emotionally wrecked, and in the midst of it have your wife leave you because you are lost in your own emotions: ALL IN THE SAME WEEK, and see how you fare. People I am doing my BEST to hold myself together, but please for the love of God quit picking me apart. I have to bury yet ANOTHER friend tomorrow. God Bless
On Wednesday, Reed wrote that he was taking a break from posting on the site: “I’m going to take a break from Facebook to reflect. I assure you that I’m ok. God bless you all, and please if you heed nothing else I have said, love one another. God bless. Bryce.”
Update, 2:20 p.m.: Jason Trahan over at WFAA has posted a copy of the federal complaint against Reed. The attached affidavit, written by an ATF agent, says that Reed possessed the “components of a pipe bomb,” including a metal pipe, end caps, a hobby fuse, a lighter, a plastic spoon, coiled metal ribbons and “several pounds of chemical powders in individual bags.”
The affidavit states that a person at a house in Abbott had “unwittingly taken possession” of the pipe bomb components from Reed.
READ MORE HERE
