Threats preceded Colo. rampage
Threats preceded Colo. rampage
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — The former graduate student accused in a deadly mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater had been banned from his college after making threats and failing a key exam six weeks before the rampage, prosecutors said Thursday.
The new claims against James Holmes emerged as part of efforts to convince a judge to allow the prosecution access to 100 pages of education records subpoenaed from the University of Colorado, Denver, where he had been a neuroscience doctoral candidate.
The prosecutors’ account presents a sharply different picture of Holmes’ exit from the one provided by university officials in the days after the shooting.
And a school spokeswoman said after the hearing that Holmes had not been banned.
Holmes is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58 others in the July 20 shooting during a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie.
He has not issued a plea in the case and remains held without bail.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Karen Pearson did not elaborate on the nature of the threats during the hearing, nor did she disclose where the information came from.
Applications for jobless aid go up
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking first-time unemployment benefits rose a slight 4,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 372,000, evidence that the job market’s recovery remains modest and uneven.
The Labor Department said Thursday that the four-week average, a less volatile measure, increased 3,750 to 368,000.
Applications are a measure of the pace of layoffs. When they fall consistently below 375,000, it generally suggests hiring is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate.
Applications have risen for two straight weeks. Some economists said that indicates that hiring in August may slow from July’s solid gain of 163,000 jobs.
The increases “suggest … that job growth continued in August, but at a slower rate than July’s pop,” said Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets. “So job growth there shall be, but not strong enough.”
Lawmakers want plant reopened
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Three Central California congressmen cited the region’s high unemployment Thursday while asking the federal government to reopen a slaughterhouse at the center of a cruelty and food safety investigation.
Republican lawmakers Devin Nunes, Kevin McCarthy and Jeff Denham signed a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack saying that shutting the plant will do nothing to further the goal of responding to the alleged animal abuse.
The trio also asked Vilsack to intervene against “attacks that are occurring at the behest of radical groups.”
The USDA says the company cannot reopen until it resolves its humane handling issues.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended operations at Central Valley Meat Co. of Hanford after an undercover video shot by the animal welfare group Compassion Over Killing showed cows that appeared to be sick or lame being beaten, kicked, shot and shocked in an attempt to get them to walk to slaughter.
Man shot in car called girlfriend
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Police in Jonesboro say the girlfriend of a man shot to death in the back of a squad car told an investigator he had called her from the car and said he had a gun.
In a four-page statement police offered several new details about the investigation into the July 28 death of Chavis Carter, 21. Earlier this week, an autopsy report ruled that Carter’s death was a suicide.
Carter’s girlfriend, who was not identified in the report, also told the investigator that Carter said he loved her and that he was scared, according to the police statement.
Phone records showed Carter made two calls, at least one of which was from the back of the patrol car, police said.
Benjamin Irwin, a Memphis, Tenn., lawyer representing Carter’s family, said in an emailed response early Thursday that “in previous reports and information we had about (the girlfriend) was that no mention of a gun during the call was included. …
“After watching the other witness interviews, I can only speculate that the interview involved a lot of leading questions by the investigator.”
Police have been facing criticism since they said officers searched Carter twice but didn’t find a gun before he was fatally shot in a patrol car. Race is also an issue in the case because Carter was black and police have said the two officers who stopped the truck he was in are white.
The police statement said there appears to be no doubt that an officer missed the gun when he initially patted Carter down.
“It is presumed that Carter secreted the gun in the rear of the car after the pat-down but before the cuffing and second search,” the statement said.
The statement said it was meant to be “a brief preliminary investigative summary” and noted that the investigation into Carter’s death isn’t complete. However, the statement said evidence and witness statements support the medical examiner’s conclusion that Carter killed himself.
“I think the critical points still remain that this young man was in police custody,” Irwin said Wednesday. “He lost his life at a time when they had a responsibility and duty to protect him.”
Spokesman Sgt. Lyle Waterworth didn’t respond to an email or phone message seeking further comment.
Police also said they tracked down a man from a video on Carter’s phone who said he sent Carter a text message asking him to bring him a gun shortly before his run-in with the officers. That man also said Carter was involved with a drug deal involving 4 ounces of marijuana, police said.
Police have said officers found marijuana on Carter when they searched him. The autopsy report also said he tested positive for meth and other drugs.
The police statement also said blood spatter on Carter’s right hand showed his hand was close to the contact wound on his right temple. Blood was also on a rear passenger door of the patrol car, police said.
Officers and bystanders said the patrol car doors and windows were closed and that the officers weren’t near the car until Carter was found, police said.
“This virtually eliminates any possibility that the fatal wound was caused by any weapon other than the one recovered in the rear of the vehicle and that its discharge was caused by Carter,” police said in the statement.
The Arkansas state crime lab confirmed Wednesday that it did not perform gunshot residue testing on Carter, saying it doesn’t do that kind of analysis on victims of homicides or suicides.
The confirmation came after Jonesboro Police Chief Michael Yates told The Associated Press that the department had requested the testing but that it wasn’t done because of the agency’s policy.
The lab’s chief criminalist, Lisa Channell, said the testing can indicate whether a person was in an environment with gunshot residue, but “it cannot tell you whether the person pulled the trigger or not.”
The crime lab’s policy is not new. A 2001 memo sent to law enforcement officers said being in close proximity to a gun when it’s fired can lead to positive gunshot residue test results and that negative gunshot residue results don’t mean someone didn’t fire a gun.
Still, Irwin questioned why the test wasn’t conducted.
“To me, that’s horrible,” he said.
Police previously released video recorded from dashboard cameras the night of the shooting, but the footage didn’t appear to show when officers found Carter slumped over and bleeding in the backseat of a patrol car as described in a police report.
Police said there were problems with the audio and video that explain the absence of a gunshot or noise on the recordings.
Irwin, Carter’s family’s lawyer, didn’t buy that explanation.
“These things are crystal clear from a reception standpoint and from a functioning standpoint,” he said. “And then they just malfunction for three minutes when this young man lost his life? I am just not ready to accept that as the answer.”
The police statement came less than an hour before Carter’s mom marched with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other supporters in Jonesboro.
“We hope that people concerned about justice, white and black, would find some common ground as we pursue this case of justice,” Jackson told reporters in Memphis, Tenn., hours before the Jonesboro march. “We simply want justice and fairness in the land. … We are convinced the explanations given so far are not credible ones.”