Baraboo, Wis. – A 16-year-old boy charged with murdering his school principal testified Wednesday that he brought a shotgun and revolver to school not to kill the man but to make him stop kids from teasing him.
Eric Hainstock is charged with first-degree murder and could face life in prison if convicted. Hainstock shot Weston Schools principal John Klang on Sept. 29 as Klang struggled to wrestle the gun from the boy.
Prosecutors must prove that Hainstock intended to kill Klang the moment he pulled the trigger. Hainstock’s attorneys asked the boy repeatedly if he meant to kill the principal.
“No, I didn’t,” Hainstock said. “I didn’t plan to hurt nobody.”
Sauk County District Attorney Pat Barrett claims Hainstock was a bully himself and angry at Klang because the principal twice suspended him in the days leading up to the shooting on the morning of homecoming.
Additional nation/world news briefs:
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia
Ex-Khmer Rouge chief may talk of atrocities
The former chief of a Khmer Rouge prison is willing to testify about the communist regime’s atrocities that led to an estimated 1.7 million deaths in the 1970s, Cambodia’s genocide tribunal announced Wednesday.
Duch, 64, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, on Tuesday became the first top Khmer Rouge figure to be indicted for offenses committed when the Khmer Rouge held power from 1975 to 1979. He was charged and detained by order of the U.N.-backed international tribunal’s foreign and Cambodian judges.
Duch headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where about 16,000 suspected enemies of the regime were tortured before being taken out and executed on what later became known as the “killing fields” near the city. Only about a dozen prisoners are thought to have survived.
The judges’ detention order, posted Wednesday on the tribunal’s website (www.eccc.gov.kh), said Duch had acknowledged that he headed S-21 and was “ready to reveal the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge.”
NAIROBI, Kenya
Court says priest’s death was homicide
The death of an American priest who openly criticized the Kenyan government was homicide, not suicide as a previous investigation found, a Kenyan court ruled Wednesday. The court also ordered the government to launch a new probe.
The FBI investigated the Rev. John Kaiser’s death in 2000 at the Kenyan government’s invitation and concluded the Roman Catholic shot himself.
Senior Principal Magistrate Maureen Odero, who presided over the inquest in the death, described the FBI’s work as “seriously flawed.” But she said that based on the evidence she could not clearly identify who killed Kaiser.
HELENA, Mont.
Crews fighting West’s top-priority wildfires
Firefighting crews in Montana battled the four top priority wildfires in the West on Wednesday, blazes that have led to the evacuation of hundreds of people.
In a normal year, Wednesday would have been the beginning of the summer fire season in Montana, but drought has put most of the state two to three weeks ahead of schedule, and more hot, dry weather is forecast.
“It’s going to be a long season,” said Warren Bielenberg, fire information officer for the Lewis and Clark National Forest in northwestern Montana.
