N.Y. bar bouncer charged with grad student’s murder
New York – A bar bouncer with a long rap sheet has been charged with murder in the slaying of a graduate student who was raped, strangled and dumped in a desolate section of Brooklyn.
An announcement of a murder indictment against Darryl Littlejohn, 41, is expected today, a police official said.
Police have said that blood found on the plastic ties used to bind Imette St. Guillen’s hands behind her back matched Littlejohn’s.
Littlejohn has maintained his innocence.
St. Guillen’s body was found Feb. 25 with a sock stuffed in her mouth and her head wrapped with packing tape. The 24-year-old student at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan was last seen alive early that morning at The Falls, a SoHo bar where Littlejohn worked.
A manager at the bar told police that Littlejohn escorted her out after she stayed past the 4 a.m. closing time.
COMPTON, Calif.
Plea offered in killing of tennis stars’ sibling
A gang member pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter Wednesday in the 2003 shooting death of the half-sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.
Robert Edward Maxfield, 25, entered his plea on the day his third trial in the killing was scheduled to start. Two previous juries deadlocked.
Maxfield was accused of shooting Yetunde Price in the back of the head while she sat in a sport utility vehicle driven by her boyfriend, who was not injured. The couple had gotten into a dispute with a group in front of a home in a neighborhood known for gangs and drugs.
Sentencing was set for April 6.
Price, 31, owned a beauty shop and was a personal assistant to her sisters, who began their tennis careers in Compton.
PITTSBURGH
Purported sniper just man shooting pigeons
Police cordoned off downtown streets for nearly two hours and SWAT teams searched buildings Wednesday for a possible sniper with a rifle, but it turned out to be a man with a pellet gun that he used to shoot pigeons.
Police Chief Dom Costa said charges were being considered because it is illegal to shoot a pellet gun in the city.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.
Prisons hire ex-player to win softball games
The state Corrections Department put a former minor-league baseball player on the payroll in a no-show job so he could help prison guards win a softball tournament, investigators say.
The ringer, Mark Guerra, 34, agreed to repay $1,400 and complete 50 hours of community service, the state attorney general said Wednesday.
Guerra was charged with accepting paychecks for work never done at a prison library. Investigators said he accepted the money to play on the winning team in a tournament held last May by Corrections Secretary Jim Crosby.
Crosby was fired by Gov. Jeb Bush last month.
WASHINGTON
Larger vehicles to get
new gas-mileage rules
Focusing on better gas mileage, the Bush administration is expected to complete its overhaul of fuel-economy rules for pickup trucks, minivans and most sport utility vehicles next week.
Under the current system, automakers must maintain an average of 21.6 miles per gallon for 2006 model-year light trucks, a number that grows to 22.2 mpg for 2007 vehicles. Passenger cars, which would not be covered by the new rules, need a 27.5-mpg average.
MINSK, Belarus
Opposition leader calls for solidarity
The leader of the Belarusian opposition urged solidarity Wednesday in the face of a growing crackdown on government critics protesting the disputed re-election of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
While police have not moved to disperse protesters, they have sought to lower the numbers with a campaign of arrests and harassment similar to the conduct Western nations say made the election wildly unfair.
“We must defend one another,” Alexander Milinkevich told demonstrators gathered on a freezing downtown square to push for a new vote without Lukashenko, whose 12-year rule has been denounced in the West as Europe’s last dictatorship.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
Asian workers riot, demand better wages
Asian workers angered by low salaries and mistreatment smashed cars and offices in a riot that interrupted construction Wednesday of what is meant to be the world’s tallest skyscraper – including a luxury hotel run by Giorgio Armani.
The violence, which caused an estimated $1 million in damage, illustrated the growing unrest among foreign workers who are the linchpin of Dubai’s breathtaking building boom.
The laborers, who work for the Dubai-based firm Al Naboodah Laing O’Rourke, demanded better pay and employment conditions and refused to return to work.
Skilled carpenters on the site earn $7.60 per day, with laborers getting $4 per day.
MOGADISHU, Somalia
Militiamen, rivals kill 20 in gun battle
Islamic militiamen battled rival forces who have been challenging their growing power Wednesday, killing at least 20 people in some of the heaviest recent fighting in the chaotic Somali capital.
More than 60 people, including a 3-month-old boy, were wounded as the two sides fought using rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft guns and machine guns, according to witnesses and doctors at the Medina and Keysaney hospitals. Civilians were among the casualties.
