Tag Archives: Murder

German police say arrested man may not be Christmas market attacker

A woman prays near the area where a truck which ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital last night in Berlin.

By Michelle Martin and Sabine Siebold

BERLIN, Dec 20 (Reuters) – A Pakistani asylum-seeker arrested on suspicion of killing 12 people by mowing through a Berlin Christmas market in a truck may not be the attacker and the real perpetrator could still be on the run, German police and prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The truck smashed into wooden huts serving mulled wine and sausages at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, one of west Berlin’s most famous landmarks, around 8 p.m. on Monday. Forty-five people were injured, 30 severely.

News of the arrest of the 23-year-old Pakistani led politicians in Germany and beyond to demand a crackdown on
immigration, but others warned against jumping to conclusions.

Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters: “There is much we still do not know with sufficient certainty but we must, as things stand now, assume it was a terrorist attack.”

“I know it would be especially hard for us all to bear if it were confirmed that the person who committed this act was someone who sought protection and asylum,” she added.

In a dramatic twist, police later said the suspect had denied the offence and might not be the right man.

“According to my information it’s uncertain whether he was really the driver,” Berlin police chief Klaus Kandt told a news conference.

Berlin police tweeted that they were “particularly alert” because of the suspect’s denial.

Die Welt newspaper quoted an unnamed police chief as saying: “We have the wrong man. And therefore a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, at large and can cause fresh damage.”

The truck belonged to a Polish freight company and its rightful driver was found shot dead in the vehicle. The Polish truck driver had arrived hours earlier in the German capital and spoken to his wife about 3 p.m., according to his cousin.

When she called again an hour later, there was no answer.

“At 3.45 p.m. you can see the movement on the GPS (Global Positioning System). The car moved forward and back. As if someone was learning to drive it,” said the cousin, Ariel Zurawski, who was also the boss of the trucking company.

“I knew something was wrong.”

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said a pistol believed to have been used to kill the Pole had not yet been found.

German media said the arrested man had jumped out of the driver’s cab and run down the street towards the Tiergarten, a vast park in central Berlin. Several witnesses called police, including one who chased the suspect while on the phone, constantly updating officials on his whereabouts.

“STATE OF WAR”

Security officials in Germany and Europe have warned for years that Christmas markets could present an easy target for militant attacks. In 2000, an al-Qaeda plan to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market on New Year’s Eve was foiled.

There were no concrete barricades at the Berlin Christmas market, as have been installed at a similar venue in Britain.

The attack fuelled immediate demands for a change to Merkel’s immigration policies, under which more than a million people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have arrived in Germany this year and last.

“We must say that we are in a state of war, although some people, who always only want to see good, do not want to see this,” said Klaus Bouillon, interior minister of the state of Saarland and a member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

Horst Seehofer, leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, said: “We owe it to the victims, to those affected and to the whole population to rethink our immigration and security policy and to change it.”

The record influx has hit Merkel’s ratings as she prepares to run for a fourth term next year and has boosted support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD). On Twitter senior AfD member Marcus Pretzell blamed Merkel for the attack.

AfD leader Frauke Petry said Germany was no longer safe and “radical Islamic terrorism has struck in the heart of Germany”.

The incident evoked memories of an attack in Nice, France in July when a Tunisian-born man drove a 19-tonne truck along the beach front, mowing down people who had gathered to watch the fireworks on Bastille Day, killing 86 people. That was claimed by Islamic State.

The influx of migrants to the European Union has deeply divided its 28 members and fuelled the rise of populist
anti-immigration movements that hope to capitalise on public concerns next year in elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said the latest attack would change perceptions of migration. “I think that the cup of patience is beginning to spill over and Europe’s public will rightly expect rather stronger measures,” he said.

“KEEP ON LIVING, BERLINERS!”

On Tuesday morning, investigators removed the black truck  from the site for forensic examination. People left flowers at the scene and notes, one of which read: “Keep on living, Berliners!” One woman was crying as she stopped by the flowers.

Bild newspaper cited security sources as saying the arrested man was Naved B. and had arrived in Germany a year ago. In legal cases German officials routinely withhold the full name of
suspects, using only an initial.

A security source told Reuters the suspect had been staying at a refugee centre in the now defunct Tempelhof airport. Police special forces stormed a hangar there early on Tuesday.

Merkel said Germans must not be cowed by the attack.

“We do not want to live paralysed by the fear of evil,” said Merkel, who discussed the attack by phone with U.S. President Barack Obama and convened a meeting of her security cabinet.

“Even if it is difficult in these hours, we will find the strength for the life we want to live in Germany – free, together and open.”

Several hundred mourners joined a church service near the site of the attack on Tuesday evening to remember the victims.

Other European countries said they were reviewing security.

Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka called for biometric and fingerprint checks to be introduced along the Balkan route used by many migrants arriving in Europe in order to better control foreign jihadist fighters’ movements.

London police said they were reviewing their plans for protecting public events over the festive period.

Manfred Weber, head of the centre-right European People’s Party, said: “It’s not an attack on a country; it’s an attack on our way of life, on the free society in which we are allowed to live.”

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Caroline Copley, Joseph Nasr, Emma Thomasson, Paul Carrel, Michael Nienaber, Madeline Chambers in Berlin; additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in Vienna; Writing by Michelle Martin; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Gareth Jones)

UK lawmaker killed for ‘ideological cause’ on EU membership

Tributes in memory of murdered Labour Party MP Jo Cox, who was shot dead in Birstall, are left at Parliament Square in London, Britain June 18, 2016.

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – British lawmaker Jo Cox, who was killed in the street shortly before the June 23 referendum on EU membership, died in a pre-meditated murder carried out for a political or ideological cause, jurors were told on Monday.

As the prosecution opened its case against Thomas Mair, 53, who is charged with Cox’s murder, the jury at London’s Old Bailey court were told witnesses had heard Mair repeatedly say “Britain First” during the attack.

Cox, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, was shot and repeatedly stabbed as she arrived for an advice session with constituents in the town of Birstall, part of her electoral district in northern England.

The murder of Cox, a former aid worker who had been an ardent supporter of staying in the EU, shocked Britain and led to the suspension for several days of referendum campaigning which had been growing increasingly bitter.

Mair is also charged with causing grievous bodily harm to 77-year-old Bernard Carter-Kenny, who tried to help Cox during the attack, and possession of a firearm and a dagger.

Prosecutor Richard Whittam told the jury Cox was shot three times and suffered multiple stab wounds.

“During the course of the murder, Thomas Mair was heard by a number of witnesses to say repeatedly: ‘Britain First’,” Whittam said.

“Thomas Mair’s intention was to kill her in what was a planned and pre-meditated murder for a political and/or ideological cause.”

“DEATH TO TRAITORS”

Carter-Kenny risked his own life and was stabbed with the same knife Mair used on Cox, Whittam added.

Earlier on Monday, with Cox’s mother, father and sister in court watching, eight men and four women were sworn in as jurors to hear the case which the judge Alan Wilkie said had attracted and would continue to attract considerable attention.

Mair, balding with a gray goatee beard and wearing a dark blue suit and black tie, sat silently in the dock flanked by three security guards.

At a hearing in October, he declined to respond when asked if he was guilty so the judge recorded not guilty pleas.

At the first court hearing following his arrest, Mair had said his name was “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” and the case, due to last two weeks, is being treated as a terrorism matter.

His lawyer has also previously told London’s Old Bailey central criminal court where the trial is being held that medical issues would not feature in the defense argument.

Cox’s murder briefly united politicians divided over the EU question and also led to questions about the security of lawmakers in their constituencies.

“As the trial starts I’d encourage everyone to remember Jo’s life and what she stood for, not the manner of her death,” her husband Brendan wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

The last British Member of Parliament to have been killed before Cox was Ian Gow, who died after an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb exploded under his car at his home in 1990.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison and Estelle Shirbon)

Islamic State executes scores, stockpiles chemicals in Mosul

Recently displaced people rush a food distribution point in Khazer refugee camp,

GENEVA, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters have executed scores more people around Mosul this week and are reportedly stockpiling ammonia and sulphur in civilian areas, possibly for use as chemical weapons, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday.

A mass grave with over 100 bodies found in the town of Hammam al-Alil was one of several Islamic State killing grounds, Shamdasani said, citing information gleaned from sources on the ground including a man who played dead during a mass execution.

Public executions were being carried out for “treason and collaboration” with Iraqi forces trying to recapture the city,
or for the use of banned mobile phones or desertion.

People with explosive belts, possibly teenagers or young boys, were being deployed in the alleys of Old Mosul, while
abducted women were being “distributed” to fighters or told they would be used to accompany Islamic State convoys, she said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay)

Chicago’s detective force dwindles as murder rates soar

Cynthia Lewis, who is looking to get the case involving the murder of her brother Tyjuan Lewis solved, poses for a portrait in Homewood

By Fiona Ortiz and Justin Madden

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Every two weeks, Cynthia Lewis contacts the detectives investigating the homicide of her brother on Chicago’s south side almost a year ago.

They have had no success finding who shot Tyjuan Lewis, a 43-year-old father of 15, near his home in the quiet Roseland neighborhood of single-family houses.

The death of Lewis, who delivered the U.S. mail for 20 years, is one of hundreds of slayings in 2015 that have gone unsolved as the number of homicides soared in Chicago, piling pressure on a shrinking detective force.

In a city with as many as 90 shootings a week, homicides this year are on track to hit their highest level since 1997.

Chicago’s murder clearance rate, a measurement of solved and closed cases, is one of the country’s lowest, another sign of problems besetting police in the third biggest city in the United States.

Over the past 10 years Chicago has consistently had one of the lowest clearance rates of any of the country’s 10 biggest cities, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Chicago Police Department.

Last year, Chicago police had 480 murder cases and solved 223 murders that had been committed in 2015 or before, for a clearance rate of 46 percent, according to Chicago police figures.

That is well below the average national rate of 63 percent, and the average rate of 68 percent for cities with populations of more than 1 million in the past decade, according to FBI figures.

Chicago, with a population of 2.7 million, has more shootings and homicides than any other U.S. city, according to FBI and Chicago police data, and more shootings by law enforcement than other major cities, according to police department figures on officer-involved shootings compiled by Reuters. Its police department is under federal investigation for the use of lethal force by its officers.

Detectives and policing experts interviewed this week said Chicago struggles to solve murders because of declining numbers of detectives, the high number of cases per detective and because witnesses mistrust the police and fear retaliation from gangs.

DETECTIVES OVERWHELMED

The number of detectives on the Chicago police force has dropped to 922 from 1,252 in 2008. One detective who retired two months ago said investigators are overwhelmed. Not all of the detectives are assigned exclusively to homicide cases.

“You get so many cases you could not do an honest investigation on three-quarters of them,” he said in an interview. “The guys … are trying to investigate one homicide and they are sent out the next day on a brand new homicide or a double.”

A tight budget and focus on putting more police on street patrol has contributed to the shrinking detective force. Because police departments are not all structured the same, it can be difficult to compare numbers. But Chicago has proportionally fewer detectives than other U.S. cities, according to data on some of the country’s biggest police forces.

About 8 percent of Chicago’s roughly 12,000 police are detectives. In New York City, which has a police department of 34,450, 15 percent are detectives. In Los Angeles, which has a police department of 9,800 sworn officers, 15 percent are detectives.

John DeCarlo, professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, said better salaries also attract police talent from around the country and may be one of the factors that has helped drive higher clearance rates in cities like Los Angeles and San Diego.

FRAYED RELATIONS

Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy, who is due to retire soon, said to solve more murders the department was working with other law enforcement agencies, better using technology such as portable gunshot residue testing kits and increasing training for detectives on the use of surveillance video.

“The Chicago Police Department is taking the steps necessary to increase the number of detectives while also making available greater resources for existing detectives to do their jobs more effectively,” Roy said in an emailed response to questions from Reuters.

Roy said the department was also working to restore public trust in the police. A task force set up by Mayor Rahm Emanuel found earlier this year that the police department was not doing enough to combat racial bias among officers or to protect the rights of residents.

Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said frayed relations between police and minority communities were not unique to Chicago. “But it’s of a different grade here,” Futterman said. “It’s incredibly difficult to solve violent crime if people won’t talk to you.”

Another detective who retired this year said an even bigger problem was the fear of gangs.

“People see homicides but they are afraid to get involved,” he said. “Detectives are out on an island. No one wants to help them.”

According to Chicago police data, 61 percent of homicides last year were gang related, the highest proportion for at least 10 years. Intelligence-gathering can be difficult because the city’s gangs tend to be fragmented.

Lewis, the mailman, was not in a gang and lived in a neighborhood where residents complain more about abandoned houses than gangs. “I hate to try and make his (case) sound different, but it is,” said Cynthia Lewis, 41.

His family is convinced he was killed by someone he knew and frustrated that police have not found even a suspect.

(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Trott)

Knife attacker in Japan kills 19 in their sleep at disabled center

Police seen in front of disability center where mass stabbing took place

By Elaine Lies and Kwiyeon Ha

SAGAMIHARA, Japan (Reuters) – A knife-wielding man broke into a facility for the disabled in a small town near Tokyo early on Tuesday and killed 19 patients as they slept, authorities said, Japan’s worst mass killing since World War Two.

At least 25 other residents were wounded in the attack at the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility for mentally and physically disabled in Sagamihara town, about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Tokyo.

“This is a very heart-wrenching and shocking incident in which many innocent people became victims,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference in Tokyo.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later told a gathering in Tokyo: “The lives of many innocent people were taken away and I am greatly shocked. We will make every effort to discover the facts and prevent a reoccurance.”

The suspect was a 26-year-old former employee of the facility who gave himself up to police. The man, Satoshi Uematsu, said in letters he wrote in February that he could “obliterate 470 disabled people”, Kyodo news agency reported.

He said he would kill 260 severely disabled people at two areas in the facility during a night shift, and would not hurt employees.

“My goal is a world in which the severely disabled can be euthanized, with their guardians’ consent, if they are unable to live at home and be active in society,” Uematsu wrote in the two letters given to the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Kyodo reported.

Uematsu was committed to hospital after he expressed a “willingness to kill severely disabled people”, an official in Sagamihara told Reuters. He was freed on March 2 after a doctor deemed he had improved, the official said.

Uematsu lived near the facility, and a neighbor described him as a polite, young man who always greeted him with a smile.

“It would be easier to understand if there had been a warning but there were no signs,” said Akihiro Hasegawa, 73. “We didn’t know the darkness of his heart.”

The suspect apparently began changing about five months ago, said Yuji Kuroiwa, the governor of Kanagawa prefecture, where the facility is located.

“You could say there were warning signs, but it’s difficult to say if this could have been prevented,” he told reporters.

“This was not an impulsive crime … He went in the dark of the night, opened one door at a time, and stabbed sleeping people one by one,” Kuroiwa said. “I just can’t believe the cruelty of this crime. We need to prevent this from ever happening again.”

Staff at the facility called police at 2.30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT Monday) with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds, media reports said. The man wore a black T-shirt and trousers, the reports said.

The 3-hectare (7.6 acre) facility was established by the local government. Surrounded by tree-covered mountains and on the banks of the Sagami River, it cares for people with a wide range of disabilities.

The facility’s website said the center had a maximum capacity of 160 people, including staff.

“IT MAKES YOU WEEP”

Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and residents of Sagamihara said they were in shock. The last murder in the area was 10 years ago.

“This is a peaceful, quiet town so I never thought such an incident would happen here,” said Oshikazu Shimo, one of many residents of the town who gathered near the facility.

Taxi driver Susumu Fujimura said of the attacker: “He said ‘we should get rid of disabled people’ but he’s the worthless one.”

“That kind of person can’t defend themselves,” Fujimura said, referring to the victims. “That’s why so many died. It makes you weep to think of somebody just murdering them.”

The dead ranged in age from 19 to 70 and included nine males and 10 females, Kyodo said.

Police had recovered a bag with several knives, at least one stained with blood, a Kanagawa prefecture official said.

At least 29 emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported, with those wounded taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area.

Such mass killings are extremely rare in Japan and typically involve stabbings. Japan has strict gun laws and possession of firearms by the public is rare.

Eight children were stabbed to death at their school in Osaka by a former janitor in 2001. Seven people died in 2008 when a man drove a truck into a crowd and began stabbing people in Tokyo’s popular electronics and “anime” district of Akihabara.

A revision to Japan’s Swords and Firearms Control Law was introduced in 2009 in the wake of that attack, banning the possession of double-edged knives and further tightening gun-ownership rules.

Members of a doomsday cult killed 12 people and made thousands ill in 1995 in simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo rush-hour subway trains.

(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Minami Funakoshi, Linda Sieg, Chang-Ran Kim, Olivier Fabre and William Mallard in TOKYO, Eric Beech in WASHINGTON and Jon Herskovitz in AUSTIN; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Sandra Maler, Grant McCool and Paul Tait)

Islamist knifemen slit priest’s throat in church in France

Police outside of French Catholic Church where hostages have been taken

By Noemie Olive

SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, France (Reuters) – Knife-wielding attackers interrupted a church service in France, forced the priest to his knees and slit his throat on Tuesday, an attack that President Francois Hollande said showed the threat from Islamist militancy was greater than ever.

Police shot and killed the attackers as they emerged from the church, freeing three hostages, one of whom was seriously wounded.

The knifemen arrived during morning mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, northwest of Paris, where the 85-year-old parish priest Father Jacques Hamel was leading prayers.

“They forced him to his knees and he tried to defend himself and that’s when the drama began,” Sister Danielle, who escaped as the attackers slayed the priest, told RMC radio.

“They filmed themselves. It was like a sermon in Arabic around the altar,” the nun said.

Speaking at the scene, Hollande called it a “dreadful terrorist attack,” adding that the attackers had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, the militant group that he said had declared war on France.

News agency Amaq, which is affiliated with Islamic State, said two of its “soldiers” had carried out the attack. Police said one person had been arrested.

Tuesday’s attack came less than two weeks after a Tunisian plowed a truck into a crowd in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people. Islamic State claimed that attack.

France is a major partner in the U.S.-led military coalition bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria. The White House condemned Tuesday’s attack and commended the French police’s “quick and decisive response.”

Several French media reported that one of the assailants was a local who had spent a year in jail on his return from Turkey after being intercepted trying to travel to Syria, but had been freed on bail with an electronic tag pending trial for terrorism offences.

The prosecutor’s office said the identification of the two suspects was still under way.

MERCILESS

A horrified local resident, Cecile Lefebre, said: “I have no words. How do you arrive at this point, killing people in cold blood like this? It’s pure barbarity.”

Since the Bastille Day mass murder in Nice, there has been a spate of attacks in Germany, some of which appear to be Islamist-inspired.

“In the face of this threat that has never been greater in France and Europe, the government is absolutely determined (to defeat) terrorism,” Hollande said in a televised address.

But former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to enter a conservative primary for next year’s presidential election, accused the Socialist government of being soft.

“We must be merciless,” Sarkozy said in a statement to reporters. “The legal quibbling, precautions and pretexts for insufficient action are not acceptable. I demand that the government implement without delay the proposals we presented months ago. There is no more time to be wasted.”

The center-right opposition wants all Islamist suspects to be either held in detention or electronically tagged to avert potential attacks.

Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who is also expected to run for the presidency, said both Sarkozy’s and Hollande’s parties had failed on security.

“All those who have governed us for 30 years bear an immense responsibility. It’s revolting to watch them bickering!” she tweeted.

Hollande said France should “use all its means” within the law to fight Islamic State.

Pope Francis condemned what he called a “barbarous killing”.

“The fact that this episode took place in a church, killing a priest, a minister of the Lord and involving the faithful, is something that affects us profoundly,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said.

In a telephone call with the pope, Hollande expressed “the sorrow of all French people after the heinous murder of Father Jacques Hamel by two terrorists,” and said everything would be done to protect places of worship, the presidential palace said.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a former conservative prime minister who now heads the Senate’s foreign affairs committee tweeted: “Everything is being done to trigger a war of religions.”

(Additional reporting by Chine Labbe, Marine Pennetier, Michel Rose and Richard Lough in Paris and Jess Mason in Washington; Writing by Richard Lough and Paul Taylor; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Robin Pomeroy)

Man charged with deadly attacks on homeless in San Diego

Hand cuffed man accused of killing homeless people

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – A man with a history of mental illness was charged on Tuesday with attacking five homeless men in San Diego, killing three of his victims, in a violent crime spree this month that terrorized the city’s poorest residents.

Jon David Guerrero, 39, described by the city police chief as “disturbed” and a “predator,” appeared briefly in San Diego County Superior Court and was ordered held without bond on three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder.

If convicted Guerrero faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, unless prosecutors decide to seek the death penalty.

No plea was entered in the case as yet. Arraignment proceedings were postponed until Aug. 2 at the request of Guerrero’s lawyer, public defender Dan Tandon, who sought additional time to prepare.

Neither police nor prosecutors have furnished details about the nature and circumstances of the attacks, except that all five victims suffered “trauma to the upper torso,” including two slain men who were set on fire.

Guerrero was arrested on Friday. He was stopped on his bicycle 30 minutes after the latest surviving victim was found bleeding from a chest wound and screaming for help at the edge of downtown, police said.

The string of attacks, beginning on July 3, sent fear through a sprawling homeless community estimated at about 9,000 people in and around California’s second-largest city.

According to police, evidence linking Guerrero to the slayings was uncovered at his residence.

He lived in a “supportive-housing” project downtown called Alpha Square, consisting of about 200 studio apartments for former homeless men and women and other individuals with special needs.

A check of the Superior Court case index showed five mental health matters filed under his name since 2008, all of them sealed.

Dameon Ditto, a friend of Guerrero who taught him art at Alpha Square, told Reuters he had not seen the defendant since June 12.

“He had expressed to me that he was taking psychiatric medications he didn’t like,” Ditto recalled of their last encounter.

Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom after Tuesday’s hearing, Tandon appealed to the media and public for patience.

“San Diego deserves to know the truth and the whole story,” he said, adding, “The story begins many years ago.” He did not elaborate.

(Reporting by Marty Graham in San Diego; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Police seeking man in killing of two homeless men in San Diego

Person of interest in three attacks

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – Police in San Diego on Tuesday were seeking a man possibly connected to the slaying of two homeless men and the wounding of a third over the holiday weekend, officials said.

Police were calling the man a “person of interest” and not a suspect and they provided few details on what connects him to the attacks on the three men.

Witnesses saw the “person of interest” near where the first attack occurred on Saturday, and he was captured on surveillance video inside a local store wearing a backpack, San Diego police Captain David Nisleit said in a phone interview.

In that first attack, the body of a homeless man was discovered on fire between a highway and train tracks in the Mission Bay area of San Diego, police said.

The victim, a 53-year-old man, was pronounced dead at the scene.

On Monday before dawn, a 61-year-old man was discovered bleeding with trauma to his upper body, less than 4 miles (6 km) south of the first attack, police said.

He was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, and was still listed in critical condition on Tuesday, Nisleit said.

On Monday morning, just over an hour after the discovery of the badly wounded man, a third victim was discovered near some tennis courts in the Ocean Beach neighborhood about 3 miles (5 km) to the west of the second attack, police said.

He had trauma to his upper torso and was already dead when police arrived, said Nisleit, who declined to provide further details on the victim’s injuries. Investigators have not been able to identify the man or establish his exact age, he said.

The names of the other two men have not been released.

All three homeless men appeared to have been sleeping when they were attacked, Nisleit said. A single person is believed to have carried out the two slayings and the wounding of the third victim, he said.

“Obviously this is somebody we want to locate and get out of the community,” Nisleit said.

San Diego police have been warning homeless people about the attacks and are seeking potential tips from them, he said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Louisiana officer shot and killed during pedestrian stop

(Reuters) – A Louisiana sheriff’s deputy died of gunshot wounds on Wednesday after being shot three times in the back by a pedestrian he had stopped in a high-crime suburb of New Orleans, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

Sheriff Newell Normand told reporters at a late night news conference that deputy David F. Michel, Jr., 50, got into a struggle with the suspect around noon local time, believing the man was following another individual.

Normand said the suspect, identified as 19-year-old Jerman Neveaux, pulled a revolver and fired a total of three shots into Michel’s back during the confrontation.

Michel, a detective who was assigned to a street crimes unit, died at a local hospital.

“David, I wish I had 1,000 of him,” an emotional Normand said, adding that the shooting was “a cold-blooded murder.”

Neveaux fled into the surrounding neighborhood and was later apprehended.

Bystander video published online by local broadcaster FOX8 showed two of several officers striking a prone Neveaux more than a dozen times as he is arrested, footage which Normand said his office would investigate.

Neveaux was treated for minor injuries at a hospital. Normand said Neveaux admitted to the shooting, saying he was on probation and did not want to go to jail for possessing a firearm.

Michel worked as a reserve deputy for the department starting in 2007 and became a full-time deputy in February of 2013, the office said.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Richard Chang and Sandra Maler)

Philippine General urges martial law to rein in southern militants

Hostages Canadian national Robert Hall and Norwegian national Kjartan Sekkingstad are seen in this undated picture released to local media, in Jolo

MANILA (Reuters) – A senior Philippine army general on Wednesday resumed a push for martial law to be imposed on a troubled southern island where Islamist militants beheaded a Canadian captive, despite a recent decision by President Benigno Aquino not to adopt such curbs.

On Monday, militants of Abu Sayyaf, a small but brutal group linked to al Qaeda, executed Robert Hall on the remote island of Jolo, the second Canadian captive to be killed following John Ridsdel, after their ransom demand went unheeded.

“Declare martial law, that is a right move,” said a senior Philippine army general, who declined to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

“If you want to immediately solve the problem, there should be a total control by the military in the area.”

Emergency powers were needed because the Abu Sayyaf was using its ransom proceeds to buy the loyalties of the surrounding community, he added.

Aquino said he considered declaring martial law on Jolo three weeks ago but decided against it because there was no guarantee it would work.

“You would need a large force to implement martial law and there is no guarantee it will produce positive results,” he told reporters on a visit to Jolo to inspect troops pursuing Abu Sayyaf militants.

“It might generate more sympathy for the Abu Sayyaf.”

Aquino said he spoke with the prime ministers of Canada and Norway by telephone, thanking them for their understanding and support of his government’s no-ransom policy.

He said he apologized to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the death of Robert Hall and John Ridsdel, who was executed in April.

Trudeau has condemned Hall’s execution, but said Canada cannot, and will not, pay ransom in such cases because it could encourage additional kidnappings.

Abu Sayyaf had initially demanded one billion pesos ($21.7 million) for each of the detainees, but cut that to 300 million early this year.

Hall’s family backed the Canadian government’s policy.

“Our family, even in our darkest hour, agrees wholeheartedly with Canada’s policy of not paying ransom,” it said in a statement.

Abu Sayyaf, based in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, is known for kidnapping, beheadings and extortion.

Security is precarious in the southern Philippines despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict.

In 2009, the Philippines imposed martial law on the southern Muslim-dominated province of Maguindanao after 58 people were murdered in political violence there.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by clarence Fernandez)