The Jim Bakker Show

Suspect charged with second murder in Ohio nightclub shooting

FILE PHOTO -- The parking lot of Cameo Nightlife club remains empty after police removed barrier tape from the scene of a mass shooting in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Caleb Hughes/File Photo

By Timothy Mclaughlin

(Reuters) – A grand jury in Ohio indicted a man suspected of opening fire in a crowded Cincinnati nightclub on a second murder charge Thursday after another suspect died this week.

The charge was one of 38 brought against Cornell Beckley, 27, who faces 230 years in prison if convicted on all charges in the shooting, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters told a news conference in Cincinnati.

“We identified him (Beckley) through multiple sources as the initial shooter,” Deters said.

A second suspect, Deondre Davis, 29, who was charged with murder while critically injured, died Tuesday morning at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, according to police.

Bryan Spikes, 27, died shortly after the March 26 shooting at the Cameo Nightlife club in which 16 other people were injured.

Beckley pleaded not guilty at an arraignment hearing in Cincinnati Municipal Court last week on the initial charge and is being held on a $1.7 million bond.

Davis and Beckley would have faced identical indictments had Davis lived, Deters said. A third gun was found in the club and police are searching for a third shooter.

The gunfire, which sent hundreds of patrons fleeing and ducking for cover, erupted from a dispute inside the club between two groups from different neighborhoods, Deters said.

Beckley climbed onto the club’s stage and began shooting at around 1:30 a.m., prosecutors said. Davis started shooting after Beckley opened fire.

The club had persistent problems with violence, according to police. The club’s owner surrendered his liquor license and the club was closed, police said on Thursday.

Unlike last year’s Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people died, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, there were no indications the Cincinnati shooting was “terrorism-related,” according to authorities.

“People say this was a mass shooting. It was a shoot-out,” Deters said.

Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley called the incident the worst mass shooting in the city’s history.

One victim remains in critical condition, Deters said.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Two suspects charged in deadly Ohio nightclub shooting

The parking lot of Cameo Nightlife club remains empty after police removed barrier tape from the scene of a mass shooting in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Caleb Hughes

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Ohio police have identified two suspects in a shooting at a Cincinnati night club over the weekend in which one person was killed and 16 injured, authorities said on Thursday.

One of the suspects, Cornell Beckley, 27, was arrested on Thursday and charged with murder, Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac said at a press conference.

A second suspect, 29-year-old Deondre Davis, who is in critical condition at University of Cincinnati Medical Center after being shot in the early Sunday incident, has also been charged with murder, said Isaac.

Isaac said he expects more arrests. Officials previously said a lack of security video footage at Cameo Nightlife, despite its history of violence, hampered the probe.

Officials have said a fight that spun out of control led to the shooting and that there was no evidence of a “terrorist attack” such as last year’s Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Isaac said there could be a third shooter from the Ohio nightclub, citing a belief by police that three guns were brought into the nightclub. Investigators have found at least 16 shell casings at the scene, he added.

Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley called the incident the worst mass shooting in the city’s history and hailed the arrests.

Four police officers were providing security in the club’s parking lot when the shots were fired.

Cameo Nightlife’s Facebook page says it features “College Friday’s” for students 18 and older and “Saturday’s 21+ grown and sexy night.”

Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black previously said the club had surrendered its liquor licence and would be closed until the investigation is complete. The club, a large single-story structure, is a 7-mile (11 km) drive from downtown Cincinnati.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer, Editing by Ben Klayman and Grant McCool)

Lack of security footage hampers Ohio nightclub shooting probe

By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) – Ohio police have made no arrests yet in a fatal weekend shooting in a Cincinnati nightclub, in part because there was no security video footage available to investigators despite a history of violence at the venue, authorities said on Monday.

The shooting at the packed Cameo Nightlife early on Sunday left a 27-year-old man dead and 16 others wounded; the number of wounded had initially been put at 15 people.

The gunfire, which sent hundreds of patrons fleeing and ducking for cover, grew out of a dispute inside the club, where two shootings took place in 2015, authorities said.

Unlike last year’s massacre at a Florida nightclub, there was no indication that the Cincinnati shooting was “terrorism-related,” authorities said on Sunday. The rampage in Orlando last June was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, leaving 49 people dead.

Even though Cincinnati police lacked a video recording of the chaos, Chief Eliot Isaac said on Monday the department was confident of finding those responsible.

The best witnesses to the shooting were those who had been shot and were still recovering, Isaac said at a televised hearing of the public safety panel. In addition, some witnesses were reluctant to cooperate immediately after the incident, police have said.

Isaac said the number of wounded rose to 16 after another person came forward late on Sunday claiming to have been hit by gunfire. Two people remained in critical condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

Patrons managed to bring guns into Cameo Nightlife even though four off-duty police officers were providing security in the parking lot. Employees also used handheld metal detectors to check patrons for firearms before they could enter the club.

Even so, one customer told the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper that clubgoers in a “no-wait” line were not being screened.

Club owner Julian Rodgers issued a statement late on Sunday expressing condolences to the victims. “We will do everything in our power to cooperate and make sure the monsters that did this are caught and brought to justice,” he said.

A telephone call to the club was not answered and its Facebook page was unavailable. However, late Monday Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black said on Twitter that the club had voluntarily surrendered its liquor license and that the facility would be closed until the investigation is complete.

The shooting was the worst this year in the United States in terms of the total number of dead and wounded, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which tracks U.S. shootings.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California; Editing by Frank McGurty and Leslie Adler)

Weekend weather, freezing, dangerous Conditions in Ohio cause deadly pileups

weather map from Noaa weather service 12-9-16

By Kami K

Cold weather is in store for almost the entire nation this weekend as frigid temperatures dive in from Canada. Highs will be reaching in the low 40’s for Texas and frigid low temps of -22 degrees in the Dakotas. According to the National Weather Service, a system moving into the Pacific Northwest will spread heavy rain and snow over the region today. Snow levels will start off very low with snow accumulations likely even in Portland and Seattle with the probability of at least 4” of snow through Saturday evening.

Twelve to fourteen inches of accumulation will be seen in some areas in the north from lake effect snowfall along areas close to the Great Lakes. These lake effect snows have caused dangerous conditions on roads and highways. In a report from The Weather Channel, heavy lake-effect snowfall made travel dangerous along Interstate 90 near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border Thursday, causing a pair of pileups 50 miles apart that left more than a dozen injured.

Shortly before 3 p.m. EST, the Lake County, Ohio Sheriff’s Office said that a pileup involving more than 50 vehicles occurred along I-90 southeast of Painesville. As a result, authorities closed both directions of the interstate. The road was closed for more than 14 hours and about 20 people were injured, according to the Associated Press.

Another pile-up occurred earlier Thursday along the same interstate, but this one was on the other side of the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. The Weather Channel reported that at least 15 people were injured in a pileup that involved at least a dozen vehicles between Exits 9 and 16 near Girard Township, Pennsylvania.

A more deadly chain reaction crash in Michigan resulted in the deaths of 3 people when slick road conditions caused a 30 to 40 car pileup on Interstate 96 Thursday morning.

“Bands of lake-effect snow are streaming through the Great Lakes region as arctic air flows over the relatively warmer lake waters,” said weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce. “Those snow squalls can lead to visibility that deteriorates quickly, along with slick roads.”

Police and weather specialists are cautioning all drivers about respecting the weather conditions and being cautious.

Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw told CBS Detroit, “We’re just trying to tell people I know it’s the first snowstorm, I know it’s the first time we’ve seen snow in a long time, but you gotta slow down and you gotta take a look at those closing distances between the cars in front of you.”

Former U.S. astronaut, Senator John Glenn dies in Ohio at 95

Senator John Glenn speaks with reporters, with his Daughter Lyn Glenn, during the christening ceremony for the USNS John Glenn at the General Dynamics NASSCO Shipyard in San Diego, California

By Will Dunham

(Reuters) – John Glenn, who became one of the 20th century’s greatest heroes as the first American to orbit Earth and later as the world’s oldest astronaut, in addition to a long career as a U.S. senator, died on Thursday at age of 95, Ohio’s governor said.

Glenn was the last surviving member of the original seven “Right Stuff” Mercury astronauts.

“John Glenn is, and always will be, Ohio’s ultimate hometown hero, and his passing today is an occasion for all of us to grieve,” Ohio Governor John Kasich said in a statement.

Glenn was credited with reviving U.S. pride after the Soviet Union’s early domination of manned space exploration. His three laps around the world in the Friendship 7 capsule on Feb. 20, 1962, forged a powerful link between the former fighter pilot and the Kennedy-era quest to explore outer space as a “New Frontier.”

As the third of seven astronauts in NASA’s solo-flight Mercury program to venture into space, Glenn became more of a media fixture than any of the others and was known for his composure and willingness to promote the program.

Glenn’s astronaut career, as well as his record as a fighter pilot in World War Two and the Korean War, helped propel him to the U.S. Senate in 1974, where he represented his home state of Ohio for 24 years as a moderate Democrat.

But his star was dimmed somewhat by a Senate investigation of several senators on whether special favors were done for a major campaign contributor. He was cleared of wrongdoing.

Glenn’s entry into history came in early 1961 when fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter bade him “Godspeed, John Glenn” just before the Ohio native was rocketed into space for a record-breaking trip that would last just under five hours.

“Zero-G (gravity) and I feel fine,” was Glenn’s succinct assessment of weightlessness several minutes into his mission. “… Oh, and that view is tremendous.”

After splashdown and recovery in the Atlantic, Glenn was treated as a hero, addressing a joint session of Congress and being feted in a New York ticker-tape parade.

His experiences as a pioneer astronaut were chronicled in the book and movie “The Right Stuff,” along with the other Mercury pilots. The book’s author, Tom Wolfe, called Glenn “the last true national hero America has ever had.”

“I don’t think of myself that way,” Glenn told the New York Times in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of his flight. “I get up each day and have the same problems others have at my age. As far as trying to analyze all the attention I received, I will leave that to others.”

Glenn’s historic flight made him a favorite of President John Kennedy and his brother Robert, who encouraged him to launch a political career that finally took off after a period as a businessman made him a millionaire.

(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington; Editing by Bill Trott)

Ohio lawmakers pass ‘heartbeat’ abortion legislation

Protesters demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on the morning that the court took up a major abortion case focusing on whether a Texas law that imposes strict regulations on abortion doctors and clinic buildings interferes with the constitutional right of a woman to end her pregnancy in Washington

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Ohio lawmakers approved a bill that bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks after conception, clearing the way for one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the United States if it becomes law.

The Republican-led state House of Representatives and Senate passed the so-called “heartbeat” measure late on Tuesday, sending it to be signed into law by Republican Governor John Kasich.

Kasich, an abortion opponent, has in the past questioned whether such legislation would be constitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide more than four decades ago, but states were allowed to permit restrictions once a fetus was viable. Some states, particularly those governed by Republicans such as Ohio, have sought to chip away at a woman’s right to end a pregnancy.

Lower courts have struck down similar “heartbeat” laws in North Dakota and Arkansas and the Supreme Court refused to hear appeals on those rulings in January.

But now, with Republican President-elect Donald Trump having the opportunity to fill at least one Supreme Court vacancy, conservatives in Ohio hope that the legislation can withstand a challenge in court.

“A new president, new Supreme Court appointees change the dynamic, and there was consensus in our caucus to move forward,” Senate President Keith Faber told the Columbus Dispatch.

“It has a better chance than it did before,” Faber said of the bill’s chances of surviving a constitutional challenge,
according to the Dispatch.

The heartbeat legislation has been approved twice before by the state’s lower house only to fail in the Senate.

The abortion legislation was part of a wider bill on reporting child abuse. It does not make exceptions for rape and incest, though it does allow for abortions that would save the mother’s life, according to text of the legislation.

Some women’s rights groups were swift to condemn the approval of the bill. The Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that supports abortion rights and tracks abortion legislation, said it would be one of the most restrictive abortion laws if enacted.

“Banning women from getting a medical procedure is out of touch with Ohio values and is completely unacceptable,” abortion-rights advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; editing
by Richard Lough)

Ohio State assault by immigrant raises fears in Somali community

A car which police say was used by an attacker to plow into a group of students is seen outside Watts Hall on Ohio State University's campus

y Kim Palmer

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov 30 (Reuters) – Immigrants in Columbus, Ohio’s Somali community fear a backlash after a young immigrant injured 11 people in an attack at Ohio State University, the second attack by an African immigrant in the area this year.

With the second-largest Somali population in the United States, the area’s 38,000 immigrants fear the college town and state capital may be less welcoming of foreigners.

The attack also comes at a time when President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to suspend immigration from countries where Islamist militants are active and new arrivals cannot be safely vetted.

“We are at the mercy of the community that allows us to be here,” said Abdilahi Hassan, a 28-year-old restaurant owner who has lived in Columbus since he was 14.

Hassan said the assailant was not representative of immigrants from war-torn Somalia. “There are always some bad apples,” he said.

The assailant, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 20, was shot dead by a police officer on Monday moments after he plowed his car into a crowd of pedestrians and then leapt out and began stabbing people with a butcher knife.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, and U.S. officials said that Artan may have followed the same path to self-radicalization as militants in a number of “lone wolf” attacks.

In February an immigrant from Guinea wounded several people when he attacked with a machete inside a Columbus restaurant.

Last year, a Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen was arrested after authorities said he trained with the Syria-based Nusra Front and then returned to the United States to kill Americans.

If Monday’s attacker, Artan, was radicalized, then it was by outside sources and could not have come from the Columbus community, said Burhan Ahmed, head of the Center for Somali American Engagement in Columbus.

“America saved Somalis. America is where every religion is respected,” he said.

He added that the Somali and Muslim communities were trying to educate young people to counter propaganda on the internet from sources like the Islamic State. Most Somalis are Muslim but there are also Christians in the country.

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther met on Tuesday with a group of Somali immigrants, including religious and business leaders, to reassure them they were part of the city’s fabric, city officials said.

The city government has a New American Initiative designed to help Somali refugees and other recent immigrants get settled. The program explains city services to immigrants and helps them navigate bureaucracy.

Tensions between immigrants and city residents are not unique and Columbus is prepared to deal with them, said Zach Klein, the president of the city council. He visited the Masjid Ibn Taymia Mosque on Tuesday in a show of support.

“We are the 15th largest city in the United States and we are going to have the same problems that other large cities have. We are not immune to them,” he said.

(Additional reporting and writing by David Ingram in New York;
Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Supreme Court leaves Ohio voting restrictions in place

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to reinstate for the Nov. 8 general election Ohio’s “Golden Week”, which had allowed voters to register and cast ballots within the same seven-day period before it was repealed by a Republican-backed law two years ago.

Ohio Democrats had challenged the repeal on grounds that it discriminated against black voters, and had taken their case to the nation’s highest court after the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against them in August.

The law was one of numerous measures enacted in recent years in Republican-governed states that Democrats and civil rights activists have said were intended to hamper voters, including African-Americans and Hispanics, who tend to favor Democratic candidates.

“Ohio Republicans can keep trying to make it harder for people to vote, but we will continue to fight them at every turn,” Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, countered that state election laws had made Ohio less vulnerable to voter fraud and “one of the easiest states in the nation in which to register and cast your ballot.”

The appeals court had reversed a May ruling by a U.S. district judge who blocked repeal of Golden Week, finding that the 2014 law violated voters’ rights.

The Supreme Court’s brief order did not note any dissenting votes on the short-handed eight-member court, evenly divided between liberal and conservative justices.

Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature abolished Golden Week while also shortening the state’s early-voting period, during which ballots could be cast before an election, to four weeks from five weeks. Ohio often is a pivotal state in U.S. presidential elections.

In a separate Ohio voting-rights case decided on Tuesday by the 6th Circuit, a three-judge panel issued a split ruling.

Siding with a lower court, the appeals panel struck down a 2014 requirement that local election officials toss out absentee and provisional ballots if they contain an address or birth date that fails to perfectly match voting records.

But the panel reversed the lower court in upholding provisions restricting the assistance that poll workers can offer voters and reducing the number of days absentee voters have to remedy identification-envelope errors.

Golden Week was created to make it easier to vote in Ohio after lengthy lines at polling locations marred the 2004 election. In 2008, 60,000 people voted during Golden Week, and 80,000 did so in 2012.

The law erasing Golden Week was initially challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 2014, in an earlier round of litigation, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the repeal to take effect for that year’s election.

The case is one of several voting disputes being litigated ahead of the November election and is the third application for emergency action to reach the Supreme Court in recent weeks from three different states. The justices have rejected all three.

On Aug. 31, the court rejected a bid by North Carolina to reinstate several voting restrictions, including a requirement that people show identification at the polls.

Last Friday, the court rejected an effort by Michigan to reinstate a ban on “straight ticket” voting, the practice of using one mark to vote for all candidates from one party.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland; Editing by Will Dunham)

Curbs on excessive force proposed for Cleveland police

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Cleveland police would face new limits on the use of force under proposals issued on Thursday by a group charged with monitoring the city’s police department, after a U.S. Justice Department report highlighted abuses by some of its officers.

The report came just weeks after Tamir Rice, aged 12, was shot and killed by a rookie Cleveland police officer in November 2014, triggering national outrage over another case involving a young African-American who died at the hands of police.

Rice was shot after a 911 caller reported someone waving a gun outside a city recreation center. Investigators later determined he had been in possession of a replica-type gun that shot pellets, not bullets.

Changes proposed by the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team – a group of 17 national experts and community activists – include a requirement that officers use de-escalation tactics before resorting to force, such as creating distance from the threat involved.

Officers would also be required to provide medical aid, rather than just request aid, for anyone injured after the use of force. Cleveland officers were roundly criticized for waiting eight minutes before providing first aid to the wounded Rice, who died a day after he was shot.

Cleveland police did not carry first-aid kits at the time of Rice’s death, a policy that has changed since then.

Officers would also be barred from using chokeholds or force against suspects already handcuffed under the monitoring team’s proposals, and prohibited from putting themselves in harm’s way in a manner that might then require the use of deadly force.

A Cleveland police officer who was in the path of an oncoming vehicle, after a high-speed car chase in 2013, shot the first in a barrage of 137 rounds fired by 13 officers that killed the man and woman in the car.

The proposals from the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team are still subject to public comment this month. If approved by a judge and federal officials, they would take effect sometime early next year, according to Matthew Barge, the oversight consent decree monitor.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Ben Klayman and Tom Brown)

New Black Panther Party says to carry arms in Cleveland if legal

Demonstrator and member of New Black Panthers Party

By Ned Parker

(Reuters) – The New Black Panther Party, a “black power” movement, will carry firearms for self-defense during demonstrations in Cleveland ahead of next week’s Republican convention if allowed under Ohio law, the group’s chairman said.

The plan by the group could add to security headaches for the Ohio city after last week’s killing of five police officers in Dallas by a U.S. army veteran who had been drawn to black separatist ideology, including on Facebook, before hatching his plan to target white police officers.

Several other groups, including some supporters of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have said they will carry weapons in Cleveland, leading to concerns about rival groups being armed in close proximity.

“If it is an open state to carry, we will exercise our second amendment rights because there are other groups threatening to be there that are threatening to do harm to us,” Hashim Nzinga, chairman of the New Black Panther Party, told Reuters in an interview.

“If that state allows us to bear arms, the Panthers and the others who can legally bear arms will bear arms.”

Nzinga condemned the Dallas shootings as a “massacre” and said his group played no role in the attack.

Police in Dallas, where Texas’s “open carry” law allows civilians to carry guns in public, said seeing multiple people carrying rifles led them initially to believe they were under attack by multiple shooters.

Officials in Ohio have said it will be legal for protesters to carry weapons at demonstrations outside the convention under that state’s gun laws.

Eric Pucillo, vice president of Ohio Carry Inc., a non-partisan firearms rights, education and advocacy group, said he supports the rights of others to carry firearms close to the convention site.

“As long as they’re abiding by the law, I see no issue with it,” he said.

“VIRULENTLY RACIST”

Nzinga said he expected “a couple hundred” members of the New Black Panther Party to join a black unity rally that is scheduled to begin on Thursday. Nzinga said he and the Panthers plan to leave Cleveland on Sunday, the day before the convention officially opens.

His group plans to join a “black unity” convention in Cleveland that will hold a series of protest events in the city from this Thursday through at least Sunday.

“We are there to protect… (the black unity) event. We are not trying to do anything else,” he said. “We are going to carry out some of these great legal rights we have — to assemble, to protest and (to exercise) freedom of speech.”

“Black Power” groups promote defense against racial oppression, with some advocating for the establishment of black social institutions and a self-sufficient economy.

The New Black Panther Party became active in 1990 and has long espoused black separatist ideology. Founding members of the 1960s Black Panther Party have denounced the New Black Panther Party as racist, but Nzinga says his movement does include original Black Panther members.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate group watchdog, describes the New Black Panther Party as “a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers.”

But the center said the group has not been found to have actually carried out any violent attacks.

Nzinga complained that his group is regularly demonized. “When we use our rights, the police want to take it away from us and they can’t,” he said. “We protect our community and they make us the villain.”

Law enforcement officials say the New Black Panther Party and other black militant groups have not been implicated in any attacks against police since the 2014 police killing of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. They also say the groups played no roles in last week’s attack in Dallas.

Nzinga says his group has grown amid racial tensions in the wake of a series of police killings of black men in the past two years. The Southern Poverty Law Center says the number of black militant chapters around the country grew from 113 to 180 in 2015.

The center says there are 892 hate groups total nationwide and at least 998, anti-government “patriot groups.” It says white hate groups, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, have a much longer track record of carrying out violent attacks than black extremist groups.

(Reporting By Ned Parker; additional reporting by Daniel Trotta.; Editing by David Rohde and Stuart Grudgings)

Sign up for Jim Bakker Show