New York City homicides dip, near 40-year low
New York
New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides in 2007, the least in a 12-month period in more than 40 years, according to a published report Thursday.
There were 428 homicides recorded as of Sunday: 412 killings and 16 crime victims who died from injuries suffered years ago, The New York Times reported on its Web site. That makes the city’s average slightly more than one a day. The majority died in disputes with acquaintances, relatives or rival drug-crew members.
Last year, the city reported 579 homicides through Dec. 24, a nearly 10 percent increase from the year before. The city’s homicide rate reached a record high of 2,245 in 1990.
Austin, Texas
Court: Abortion not part of fetal law
Texas laws allow the killing of a fetus to be prosecuted as murder, regardless of the fetus’ stage of development, but they do not apply to abortions, the state’s highest criminal court has ruled.
Wednesday’s ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal by Terence Lawrence, who said his right to due process was violated because he was prosecuted for two murders for killing a woman and her 4- to 6-week-old fetus.
The court ruled unanimously that state laws declaring a fetus an individual with protections do not conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that protects a woman’s right to an abortion.
Lawrence was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life for the 2004 shooting death of his girlfriend, Antwonyia Smith, and the couple’s unborn child. Lawrence shot Smith after learning she was pregnant with his child, according to court documents.
Greenwich, Conn.
Serial-theft suspect is returned to U.S.
After nine years on the run, the man accused of breaking into more than a dozen houses is back in the United States, police said.
Alan Golder, 52, was extradited from Belgium and taken to Greenwich, where he was arrested on a warrant in connection with a string of residential burglaries in the 1990s.
The suspect was dubbed the “dinnertime bandit” because the burglar would strike affluent homes in the early evening, sometimes while residents were home eating dinner.
Police obtained a warrant in 1998 charging Golder in 16 burglaries that netted nearly $1 million in items from September 1996 to October 1997.
Also
Five people were found dead in a Laytonsville, Md., park Thursday night in an apparent domestic-related murder-suicide, police said. A woman and three children were found together. Officers found the body of man and a firearm nearby.
Seattle Times news services