Rapper friend of Eminem shot to death at Detroit bar
Detroit – One of rapper Eminem’s closest friends was killed early Tuesday in a seedy nightclub along the road made famous by the star.
Proof, a member of the rap group D12, was hit by gunfire at the CCC club on Eight Mile, the dividing line between Detroit and its northern suburbs. Police said he and another man were shot in the head. The other man was critically injured.
Proof, whose real name was Deshaun Holton, was dead on arrival at an outpatient treatment facility.
Detectives don’t know what Proof was doing at the bar, which was operating outside of its licensed hours.
Proof, 32, played a bit part in Eminem’s 2002 film that carried the title “8 Mile.” He and Eminem seldom were seen in public without each other. Proof was the best man at Eminem’s wedding in January, and they had been close friends since before Eminem became a superstar.
It was Proof’s idea to form D12 in the mid-1990s, when the members met at Detroit’s Hip-Hop Shop. The six-member Detroit-based rap group counts Eminem among its members.
Officers said an argument at the club escalated into gunshots. Patrol officers said the bar is a frequent source of problems.
Another member of Eminem’s inner circle – rapper Obie Trice – was shot and wounded while driving on a Detroit-area highway in December.
CHICAGO
City audit to inspect job-hiring parameters
The city will audit the personnel records of more employees to ensure they were hired for their job qualifications instead of their political clout, a Chicago official said Tuesday.
An aide for Mayor Richard M. Daley said that, effective immediately, the mayor’s office won’t permit any non-routine deletion of records from the city’s mainframe or any city database.
Investigators said that Daley’s former patronage chief, Robert Sorich, ordered files shredded and computer data deleted to keep the government from finding them.
Sorich, 43, and three others are charged with rigging job interviews and faking scores to camouflage the use of political clout, rather than job qualifications, as the basis for city hiring.
BLOOMINGTON, Ill.
Man guilty of killing ex-girlfriend’s 3 kids
An Illinois jury convicted a man Tuesday of killing his former girlfriend’s three children, who drowned when their car rolled into a lake.
Prosecutors said Maurice LaGrone Jr. and the children’s mother planned the deaths and intentionally let the car roll into Clinton Lake on Sept. 2, 2003, with the children inside.
The children’s mother, Amanda Hamm, faces identical charges at a later trial.
BOSTON
Woman, 23, gets life for killing pal’s baby
A woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder and was sentenced to life in prison for slitting the throat of her friend’s baby in retaliation for being kicked out of her apartment.
Natalie Rodriguez, 23, blamed her “dysfunctional ways of living” for the drunken rage that led her to snatch 9-month-old Xavier Antonio Miranda and kill him in a snowbank.
Rodriguez is an alcoholic with a history of mental illness and attempted suicide, her lawyers said.
DARMSTADT, Germany
European spacecraft slips into Venus’ orbit
A European spacecraft moved into orbit around Venus on Tuesday, successfully completing a critical stage of a mission to explore the hostile climate and atmosphere of Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor.
Officials at the European Space Agency’s control center in Darmstadt cheered, clapped and embraced as the Venus Express signaled it was in orbit.
Scientists will gather information on how Venus, while similar to Earth in size and geological makeup, wound up with such a hot, dense atmosphere swathed in clouds of sulfuric acid.
MEXICO CITY
Soldiers seize 5 1/2 tons of cocaine from plane
Mexican soldiers seized 5 1/2 tons of cocaine with a value of more than $100 million from a commercial plane that arrived in Mexico from Caracas, Venezuela, the Defense Department announced Tuesday.
The Mexican army seized the plane Monday in Ciudad de Carmen after receiving information from Venezuelan and U.S. authorities, said General Carlos Gaytan in a news conference.
