MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee man who suspected his 13-year-old neighbor of breaking into his home and stealing weapons was convicted Wednesday of fatally shooting the boy as the teen’s mother looked on. Now, jurors will decide whether the 76-year-old defendant was mentally ill at the time.
A jury deliberated for about an hour before finding John Henry Spooner guilty of first-degree intentional homicide. Surveillance video from his own security cameras showed him confronting Darius Simmons in May 2012, pointing a gun at him from about 6 feet away and shooting him in the chest.
George Zimmerman became a hero to many after it was revealed that he shot and killed an innocent teenager, whose only crime was walking home one evening. So now that a woman has come forward accusing Zimmerman of molesting her when she was a child, you can bet that more sickos will call Zimmerman their hero too.
It’s becoming painfully clear that the jurors in George Zimmerman’s murder trial acquitted a killer who had a history of violence, disruption and child sexual molestation.
According to reports by Huffington Post, a female cousin of Zimmerman came forward to report the sexually abuse she experienced as a child. During an interview with investigators in March, the woman said, “It started when I was six,” she said. “We’d all lay in front of the TV and we had pillows and blankets and he would reach under the blankets and try to do things and I would try to push him off but he was bigger and stronger and older. It was in front of everybody and I don’t know how I didn’t say anything, I just didn’t know any better.”
The woman said Zimmerman would fondle her and penetrated her vagina with his fingers. She also revealed that Zimmerman molested other young girls. She spoke with a woman who was molested by Zimmerman as youth, but the woman wanted to maintain her privacy. When she was 12-years-old, Zimmerman made her rub his penis. Other times, he would take the girl to rooms and kiss and fondle her.
(CNN) — Martha Chumo, a 19-year-old self-taught programmer, was supposed to be in New York right now, honing her coding skills and mastering cutting-edge technologies in the company of fellow software enthusiasts.
Instead, she’s thousands of miles away, in her hometown of Nairobi, Kenya.
A few months ago, Chumo was accepted into the summer intake of Hacker School, a U.S.-based “retreat for hackers,” where budding programmers come together for three months to write code, learn new languages and share industry insights.
Whereas the programming boot camp was free to attend, Chumo still needed to find a way to cover her trip costs and buy a new laptop. Excited and determined, the young developer turned to online crowdsourcing platform Indiegogo for funds. She set a target of $4,200 and managed to raise nearly $5,800. All she needed then was a visa to travel to the United States.
A video entered as evidence in the murder trial of John Henry Spooner on Tuesday appears to show the 76-year-old shooting his 13-year-old neighbor Darius Simmons dead.
The Milwaukee senior is charged with first-degree homicide after the alleged incident in May last year. Jurors saw the video (below), taken from Spooner’s own surveillance camera, that shows the suspect walk out of his house, brandishing a gun. After a short argument, the man in the video waves the gun around before he shoots Simmons in the chest. Simmons manages to flee outside the scope of the camera before dying.
The verdict is still on my mind….I find it really troubling that in this day and age I will have to have “The Talk” with my son one day.
The Talk that explains how he needs to act when he gets pulled over by the police, The Talk that explains to him that he does not “fit the description”. The Talk that explains to him that he does not deserve to be stalked, he does not deserve to be profiled, and he does not deserve to get shot.
Through raising my son, he will know his life is not worthless, not meaningless. I am going to make sure that he grows into a God-fearing, God-loving, Handsome, Talented, Educated MAN with a beautiful family in which he is a wonderful Husband and Father. It is so sad that he has to grow up in this world in its current state.
Response email from another father of a son:
I understand that racism is not a trait you are born with but it is learned, which makes it that much more evil. I can’t begin to tell you all the times I saw this growing up. As a white man you are constantly bombarded with racist comments, like an advertisement on TV about others and their appearance. The hatred is handed to you on a silver platter while the server smiles at you. As a kid you associate this nonchalant lesson with a positive one and you start (unknowingly) actualizing it. My parents taught me one great thing though, question EVERYTHING; so I did, I left no rock unturned. I questioned Christianity, God, my parents, and all authority. Racism was something that I truly believed I didn’t have a problem with. I didn’t feel like I was racist because I had friends of different colors. I didn’t realize until college that racism was a self-evident proposition and the true evil of it was that it didn’t need proof in order to exist. I didn’t have to believe in it to be influenced by it. This angered me because I let it in. My eyes opened up for the first time and I realized that racism will always be a constant internal struggle for me as much as it is an external struggle in our communities.This leads me back to my son. I haven’t taught my son about racism yet because I still see that innocence in his eyes, but after seeing your post I realize that I better start handing him love on a silver platter while smiling at him. I have to casually, and nonchalantly communicate equality. I HAVE to make it a daily thing in order to make it a self-evident proposition before he can question it and know that it is actually a self-evident truth that all men are equal. I decided to message you this because I didn’t know how others would view this. You taught me something today Evan. I owe my kids this and I have to work hard at it in order to make it reality.
The letter below was written by Alex Fraser, after recieving the news of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the fatal 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin:
Mr. Alex Fraser is a recent graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia. His degree is in theatre. He is an actor living in the Los Angeles area.
“…the Feds would be interested if it could be proven that George profiled Trayvon because of his race and not simply because of his suspicion of him being a criminal.”
“George’s defense lawyers did him no favors during the State trial when it comes to enhancing a Federal case of civil rights violation. In a Federal case it must be alleged that the defendant violated the civil rights of another individual because of race, gender, age, or other protected class. In other words …the Feds would be interested if it could be proven that George profiled Trayvon because of his race and not simply because of his suspicion of him being a criminal. Sounds easy but it is not, they probably couldn’t have done it until O’Mara helped them out by marching witness after witness to the stand and stressing that all of the alleged criminal incidents in the neighborhood were committed by African Americans. Therefore it was reasonable for George to profile Trayvon because he was African American. Remember, he even told the jury that it was OK that George was profiling because that had nothing to do with his need to defend himself. Self defense is not an available defense for violating someones civil rights. It is the profiling itself that is the crime. It is Trayvons right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” that was violated. It was Trayvons right to privacy and his right be where he was… George… you just might have another problem here. “
Countless New Yorkers were roused from a sound slumber at 3:51 a.m. Wednesday by an emergency message transmitted via their cellphones: a missing child.
The alert set off cellphones across the city after the New York Police Department reported that a 7-month-old boy was kidnapped by his biological mother the previous afternoon from a social service facility at Seventh Avenue and 125th Street in Harlem during a supervised visit. The authorities say the woman is bipolar and has had recent outbreaks of violence. She does not have legal custody of her child, according to a police report.
A spokesman for the Police Department said that the so-called Amber Alert was requested after officers determined that the child could be in imminent danger, but that it was the state police that approved and sent out the alert. The missing boy had not been located as of this morning, the officer said.
But the early morning alert sparked a backlash on Twitter and social media sites as people recounted their panic, confusion and irritation at hearing their cellphones beep and vibrate in the wee hours. “Is such a disruptive alarm necessary in the middle of the night?” one woman wondered blearily on Twitter.
All smartphones made after a certain point in 2011 automatically receive Wireless Emergency Alerts. Usually in New York City, they are used for high-level warnings like evacuation orders. In January, the federal government added Amber Alerts to the system.
The police have identified the mother as Marina Lopez, 25, of Queens, and described her as 5 feet 7 inches, 130 pounds and wearing a pink T-shirt and floral print shorts. The boy was last seen wearing a gray T-shirt and black shorts. Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-577-TIPS.
Juror B37’s tell-all book about the acquittal of George Zimmerman is off the table.
The anonymous juror had announced Monday through a literary agent that she hoped to write the book that would give a behind-the-scenes look at the jury of six women who found Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin.
But after the juror gave an interview to Anderson Cooper on CNN in which she defended the verdict and seemed to sympathize with Zimmerman, she quickly rescinded the book proposal.
“Now that I am returned to my family and to society in general, I have realized that the best direction for me to go is away from writing any sort of book and return instead to my life as it was before I was called to sit on this jury,” the juror said in a statement released early Tuesday
While performing in Canada, Stevie Wonder stated his displeasure in Florida and their Stand Your Ground laws that, although it wasn’t mentioned in the case, was most likely one of the underlining hand that helped George Zimmerman to walk free.
“I decided today that until the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law is abolished in Florida, I will never perform there again As a matter of fact, wherever I find that law exists, I will not perform in that state or in that part of the world.
“For those that we have lost in the battle for justice, wherever that fits in any part of the world — we can’t bring them back,” he said. “(What) we can do is we can let our voices be heard. And we can vote in our various countries throughout the world for change and equality for everybody. That’s what I know we can do.”
A member of the jury in George Zimmerman’s second-degree murder trial spoke publicly for the first time Monday night, saying that only three of six jurors thought Zimmerman should be acquitted when deliberations began.
Two members of the all-female jury believed Zimmerman was guilty of manslaughter, while one felt he was guilty of second-degree murder, the woman said on CNN.
The jury ultimately found Zimmerman not guilty.
Juror B37, whose image was obscured during the interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, said she believes the neighborhood watch volunteer was well intentioned but became overzealous because of a string of break-ins in his Sanford, Fla. neighborhood.
The woman said Zimmerman “shouldn’t have gotten out of that car” during his phone call with a police dispatcher when he initially reported that Trayvon Martin was in his neighborhood.
She also said that none of the five fellow jurors believed race played a factor in the Feb. 26, 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Martin, who was African-American.
The juror — who less than 48 hours after the verdict was read had signed with a literary agent in preparation to write a book about her experience — said she had “no doubt” that Zimmerman feared for his life and was acting in self-defense when he shot the 17-year-old.
The woman said Zimmerman had a right to carry a gun, and did not take issue that he may be eligible to have it returned to him.
HMMM …Maybe these Kids should have been on the Zimmerman Jury….
It appears a bunch of kids are more mature than some YouTube commentators. When a Cheerios commercial featuring a biracial couple launched two months ago, it was met with so much racist backlash that YouTube had to pull the comments section. But ask a group of 7 to 13-year-olds what they think of the ad, and you’ll find no hints of racism or surprise at seeing an interracial family on screen. Instead, their responses range from “it’s just a Cheerios commercial” to laughter.
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