Video of a police officer in London having a heated discussion with a woman about the offensiveness of swastikas has circulated across social media.
The video was taken on Saturday during a massive pro-Palestinian rally that the Metropolitan Police were monitoring. In the video, a visibly upset woman confronted the officer about an anti-Israeli participant who allegedly showed off a swastika.
The officer did not seem to agree that swastikas are offensive symbols that threaten public order. He cited the Public Order Act 2023, which he said outlines and limits what police handle at protests.
“Under what context is a swastika not disrupting public order?” the woman argued. She repeated her question multiple times.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION SILENT OVER HAMAS’ USE OF GAZA HOSPITAL AS TERROR HQ
Lines of police keep the Ceasefire Now protest and the pro-Israel counter demonstration apart on March 30, 2024, in London, England.
“I haven’t said anything about it, that it is or it isn’t,” he replied. “Everything needs to be taken into context, doesn’t it?”
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“Yeah, but it’s a context of a hateful march,” another woman chimed in, while the first woman shot back, “Why does a swastika need context?”
“Why is a swastika not immediately antisemitism?” the woman added. “Why does it need context? This is what I’m confused about. This isn’t even about Israel. In what context is a swastika not antisemitic and disruptive to public order?”
“I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of signs and symbols,” the officer said. “I know the swastika was used by the Nazi Party during their inception and their period of being in power in Germany.”
PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS DISRUPT BERKELEY CITY COUNCIL MEETING, HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE VOTE: ‘END ISRAEL’
Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters wave flags as they gather for a protest in Trafalgar Square in central London on March 30, 2024, calling for a ceasefire in the Israel/Hamas conflict.
The two continued arguing before the officer acknowledged that some symbols produce “mass alarm.”
“Now, if you came up to me and you felt mass alarm and distressed about a symbol that someone was…,” he said before being interrupted.
“I’m extremely distressed. I’m very alarmed,” the woman responded.
On X, the Metropolitan Police posted a statement about the incident that implied the video had been taken out of context.
“The video is a short excerpt of what was a 10-minute conversation with an officer,” the response read. “During the full conversation, the officer establishes that the person the woman was concerned about had already been arrested for a public order offence in relation to a placard.”
Protestors on the Ceasefire now protest react to a pro-Israel counter demonstration on March 30, 2024 in London, England.
“The officer then offered to arrange for other officers to attend and accompany the woman to identify any other persons she was concerned about amongst the protestors, but after turning to speak to his supervisor, she then unfortunately left.”
After the video was posted, social media users criticized the police officer’s responses to the woman’s arguments.
“That officer is qualified to be an Ivy League university president,” one X user joked.
“Our police force have reached a new low,” a British commentator wrote.
“And his grandfather probably risked his life fighting the Nazis in World War II. What a shame,” another speculated.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Metropolitan Police for additional comment.
Original article source: London police officer sparks outrage after suggesting swastikas should be ‘taken into context’ to Jewish woman
California woman accused of husband’s murder freed 20 years later after new look at evidence – CBS News
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After nearly two decades behind bars for her husband’s murder, a California woman’s relentless quest for a reexamination of the evidence reveals flaws. “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty unravels her journey to freedom.
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“I thought truth and justice was at the front of everything. And it certainly has not been in my case,” Jane Dorotik told “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty in “The Troubled Case Against Jane Dorotik,” airing Saturday at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Dorotik reported her husband Bob missing the evening of Sunday, Feb. 13, 2000. She told the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department she had last seen him that afternoon, when he said he was going out for a jog. Bob Dorotik’s body was found early the next morning on the side of the road several miles from their Valley Center, California, home. He had been bludgeoned in the head and strangled.
“It was obvious to me that it was a homicide,” sheriff’s detective Rick Empson told Moriarty.
Bob and Jane Dorotik’s bedroom.
Investigators quickly determined Bob Dorotik wasn’t killed where his body was found, because there wasn’t enough blood there. When they searched the Dorotiks’ home, they found spots of blood all over the bedroom. Jane Dorotik explained that Bob had had a nosebleed recently, and they had dogs who had bled. But authorities dismissed her explanations.
“There was no question in our mind that this assault occurred in the master bedroom,” Empson said.
Three days after Bob Dorotik’s body was found, Jane Dorotik, 53, was arrested for his murder. She later posted bail, and though she was under a cloud of suspicion, she invited “48 Hours” into her home in 2000.
“It felt like a nightmare, and I kept saying ‘when am I gonna wake up?'” she told Moriarty.
When the case went to trial in May 2001, prosecutor Bonnie Howard-Regan described the 20 locations where investigators found blood.
“There was blood on the comforter. There was blood on the pillow sham …on the wall behind the bed … on the ceiling above the bed,” she said.
Howard-Regan also told jurors there was a large blood stain on the underside of the mattress. The prosecution theorized that Jane Dorotik hit her husband with an object in the bedroom and strangled him. She then dressed him in his jogging suit, put him in their truck and dumped him along the side of the road where his body was found.
“The evidence will show that all this blood that has been described to you, the observations made in this bedroom, that it was all sent out for DNA analysis, and it all came back Bob Dorotik’s blood,” Howard-Regan told the jury.
The jury deliberated for four days before finding Jane Dorotik guilty. She was sentenced to 25 years to life.
Jane Dorotik speaks to Erin Moriarty in jail.
CBS News
“I just, I can’t see my way clear to a life in prison. I just can’t see it,” she told Moriarty in an interview in jail.
Dorotik spent years behind bars asking for a new examination of the evidence. She argued authorities focused on her from the beginning of the investigation and failed to follow other leads. But motion after motion was denied.
By 2016, she began working with a team from Loyola Project for the Innocent. They reviewed the bedroom blood evidence the prosecutor told the jury was fully tested and was Bob Dorotik’s. According to the appeal, not every single spot in the bedroom believed to be blood, was tested. Instead, representative samples were tested.
The appellate team says that several blood-like stains on items including a pillow sham, the nightstand and a lampshade turned out not to be blood. And some stains on the bedspread, which were described at trial as Bob Dorotik’s blood, were never tested at all.
“If you just look at all of the pieces of evidence that Loyola was able to absolutely take apart … and yet we know what was told to the jury in the original conviction… How can that happen?” Jane Dorotik told Moriarty when they spoke again two decades after her conviction.
The state stood by its original investigation, maintaining the bedroom was the murder scene and that the evidence still pointed to Jane Dorotik as the killer. It also claimed the defense arguments were “largely derived from speculation and misstatements of fact.”
In April 2020, Jane Dorotik was temporarily released from prison due to COVID health concerns. The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office recommended her conviction be overturned due to new evidence in the case, but in October 2020, it made the decision to retry her.
The judge ruled that the new trial could go ahead, but that some key evidence presented in her original trial would not be admissible. In May 2022, just as jury selection was about to begin, the prosecutors dropped the charges.
“We no longer feel that the evidence is sufficient to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt and convince 12 members of the jury,” said Deputy District Attorney Christopher Campbell.
At a news conference outside the courthouse, Jane Dorotik expressed her relief.
“It just is overwhelming to realize that now I can determine my own future. It’s something I’ve prayed for and hoped for,” she said.
A mob in the Mexican tourist city of Taxco brutally beat a woman to death Thursday because she was suspected of kidnapping and killing a young girl, rampaging just hours before the city’s famous Holy Week procession.
The mob formed after an 8-year-old girl disappeared Wednesday. Her body was found on a road on the outskirts of the city early Thursday. Security camera footage appeared to show a woman and a man loading a bundle, which may have been the girl’s body, into a taxi.
The mob surrounded the woman’s house Thursday, threatening to drag her out. Police took the woman into the bed of a police pickup truck, but then stood by – apparently intimidated by the crowd – as members of the mob dragged her out of the truck and down onto the street where they stomped, kicked and pummeled her until she lay, partly stripped and motionless.
A woman chants the Spanish word for “justice” during a demonstration protesting the kidnapping and killing of an 8-year-old girl, in the main square of Taxco, Mexico, Thursday, March 28, 2024. Hours earlier a mob beat a woman to death because she was suspected of kidnapping and killing the young girl.
Fernando Llano / AP
Police then picked her up and took her away, leaving the pavement stained with blood. The Guerrero state prosecutors’ office later confirmed the woman died of her injuries.
“This is the result of the bad government we have,” said a member of the mob, who gave her name as Andrea but refused to give her last name. “This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened,” she said, referring to the murder of the girl, “but this is the first time the people have done something.”
“We are fed up,” she said. “This time it was an 8-year-old girl.”
The mayor of Taxco, Mario Figueroa, said he shared residents’ outrage over the killing. Figueroa said a total of three people beaten by the mob – the woman and two men – had been taken away by police. Video from the scene suggested they had also been beaten, though The Associated Press witnessed only the beating of the woman.
The state prosecutors’ office said the two men were hospitalized. There was no immediate information on their condition.
In a statement issued soon after the event, Figueroa complained he did not get any help from the state government for his small, outnumbered municipal police force.
“Unfortunately, up to now we have not received any help or answers,” Figueroa said.
The Good Friday eve religious procession, which dates back centuries in the old silver-mining town, went off as planned Thursday night.
People crowded Taxco’s colonial streets to watch hooded men walking while whipping themselves or carrying heavy bundles of thorns across their bare shoulders in penitence to emulate the suffering of Jesus Christ carrying the cross.
But the earlier flash of violence cast a pall over the already solemn procession, which draws thousands to the small town.
Many participants wore small white ribbons of mourning.
“I never thought that in a touristic place like Taxco we would experience a lynching,” said Felipa Lagunas, a local elementary school teacher. “I saw it as something distant, in places far from civilization … I never imagined that my community would experience this on such a special day.”
Mob attacks in rural Mexico are common. In 2018, two men were torched by an angry crowd in the central state of Puebla, and the next day a man and woman were dragged from their vehicle, beaten and set afire in the neighboring state of Hidalgo.
But Taxco and other cities in Guerrero state have been particularly prone to violence.
In late January, Taxco endured a days-long strike by private taxi and van drivers who suffered threats from one of several drug gangs fighting for control of the area. The situation was so bad that police had to give people rides in the back of their patrol vehicles.
Around the same time, the bullet-ridden bodies of two detectives were found on the outskirts of Taxco. Local media said their bodies showed signs of torture.
In February, Figueroa’s own bulletproof car was shot up by gunmen on motorcycles.
In Taxco and throughout Guerrero state, drug cartels and gangs routinely prey on the local population, demanding protection payments from store owners, taxi and bus drivers. They kill those who refuse to pay.
Cartel violence in Guerrero has continued unabated this year.
In February, investigators in Guerrero said they confirmed the contents of a grisly drug cartel video showing gunmen shooting, kicking and burning the corpses of their enemies. Prosecutors said they had reached the remote scene of the crime in the mountain township of Totolapan and found five charred bodies.
In January, an alleged cartel attack in Guerrero killed at least six people and injured 13 others.
The U.S. State Department urges Americans not to travel to Guerrero, citing widespread crime and violence. “Armed groups operate independently of the government in many areas of Guerrero,” the U.S. advisory says. “Members of these groups frequently maintain roadblocks and may use violence towards travelers.”
Residents said they have had enough, even though the violence may further affect tourism.
“We know the town lives off of Holy Week (tourism) and that this is going to mess it up. There will be a lot of people who won’t want to come anymore,” said Andrea, the woman who was in the mob. “We make our living off tourism, but we cannot continue to allow them to do these things to us.”
A Peruvian woman was eating pork rinds when she suddenly felt an object stuck in her throat. After vomiting blood, she went to the emergency room thinking she had swallowed a bone – but it was something far more dangerous.
Celia Tello, 68, had to undergo surgery to remove the object, which doctors told Reuters turned out to be a nail that was piercing one of her carotid arteries, blood vessels that the Cleveland Clinic says are “a vital part of your circulatory system.” There is a carotid artery on each side of your neck, each splitting into two branches to help supply blood to your head and neck.
“It never crossed my mind I had this nail or piece of wire,” Tello told Reuters in Spanish.
An x-ray image shows the nail accidentally swallowed by a 68-year-old woman who was eating pork rinds in February.
EsSalud via Reuters
Surgeon Diego Cuipal told Reuters that doctors had to conduct a “careful dissection” to remove the nail and that there was a risk of “detaching a clot that could reach the brain.” X-ray images showed the long nail lodged in her throat.
“We were able to isolate the affected artery and we repaired it by sectioning it and we joined a healthy artery with another healthy artery,” Cuipal said in Spanish.
The incident occurred last month, and Tello has since healed. Now, all that remains is a large scar on her neck from the procedure.
This is not the first time random and dangerous objects have turned up in someone’s food. Last year, stainless steel was found in peanut butter and bone fragments were found in smoked sausage, leading to massive food recalls. The FDA has cautioned that some food contamination is expected, saying that it’s “economically impractical” to avoid some “non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”
Li Cohen
Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — A state parole board member resigned Monday after recommending the release of a man who a day later attacked a pregnant Chicago woman with a knife and fatally stabbed her 11-year-old son while he tried to protect her, according to authorities.
The Illinois Prisoner Review Board’s handling of the case prompted Gov. J.B. Pritzker to order that procedures for dealing with situations involving domestic violence be revamped.
Pritzker announced that LeAnn Miller, 63, of Junction submitted her resignation. Miller had prepared a report recommending Crosetti Brand’s release from prison.
The 37-year-old felon had repeatedly violated orders of protection and threatened Laterria Smith of Chicago, police said. On March 13, investigators said that Brand went to Smith’s apartment armed with a knife and assaulted her. When her son, Jayden Perkins, intervened, Brand stabbed him to death, police said.
Smith, 33, remains hospitalized in critical condition but doctors expect her and her unborn child to live. Her 6-year-old son was present during the attack but was uninjured.
A message seeking comment was left at a number associated with Miller’s home and with the Prisoner Review Board. Pritzker said in a news release that she made “the correct decision in stepping down.” The Democratic governor’s spokesperson, Alex Gough, said he was unaware of Pritzker requesting her resignation.
“It is clear that evidence in this case was not given the careful consideration that victims of domestic violence deserve and I am committed to ensuring additional safeguards and training are in place to prevent tragedies like this from happening again,” Pritzker said in a statement.
Following board procedure, two other board members, Ken Tupy and Krystal Tison, concurred with Miller’s draft order, according to a copy of the order provided by the Prisoner Review Board in response to a public records request from The Associated Press. A phone message was left for Tupy. A number for Tison could not immediately be located.
Pritzker ordered the Prisoner Review Board to “engage experts and advocates to design and implement expanded training” in domestic violence cases for the 15-member board. The board and the Department of Corrections will also review procedures for sharing information on cases involving domestic violence. Pritzker said the case might also raise issues which require legislation to broaden officials’ legal authority in such instances.
Brand, who police say had a relationship with Smith 15 years ago, is charged in Cook County with first-degree murder and a half-dozen other violent felonies related to the attack. He had served half of a 16-year sentence for attacking another ex-partner in 2015 when he was paroled in October.
Brand was shipped back to prison in February after being accused of repeatedly contacting Smith, who has an order of protection against him. He turned himself in after Smith reported he was at the door to her apartment on Feb. 1, repeatedly ringing the bell and pulling on the handle.
But when Brand appeared before the Prisoner Review Board on Feb. 26, he denied going to her apartment and his lawyer provided evidence that his electronic monitoring bracelet did not indicate violations of his movement restrictions, according to a copy of the board’s order. He answered other reported parole violations by saying he sometimes worked late hours at a Red Lobster restaurant.
The board determined there wasn’t enough evidence to verify Smith’s claims, although she was not called to testify.
After Shehbaz Sharif was sworn in prime minister of Muslim-majority Pakistan, posts surfaced in its Hindu-majority neighbour India which falsely claimed a performer sang a Hindu hymn during the event. But the video in the posts previously appeared in news reports about a festival celebration in Pakistan’s largest city Karachi in March 2017. The singer shown in the clip told AFP she did not attend Sharif’s oath-taking ceremony in March 2024.
The video was shared by an India-based user on social media platform X on March 13, 2024, days after Sharif’s swearing in ceremony.
The post falsely claimed a singer named Narodha Malni performed the “Gayatri mantra” Hindu hymn during the event. It said: “Pakistan prime minister’s swearing in ceremony starting with ‘Gayatri maha mantra’ by smt. Naroda Malini Sahiba. Now Pakistan has officially recognised the importance & its recited in all functions.”
Sharif took his oath on March 4, following an election marred by vote rigging claims. His army-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz allied with historic rivals and several smaller factions to shut out candidates loyal to jailed ex-prime minister Imran Khan.
Khan’s candidates secured more seats in parliament than any other party but fell far short of the majority needed to form a government.
Text overlaid to the video, written in Telugu language widely spoken in southern India, similarly said it showed a Pakistani woman singing “Gayatri mantra” in front of the prime minister.
The video, however, showed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the older brother of the current leader.
Screenshot of the false post taken on March 13, 2024
Similar posts featuring the video were also shared elsewhere on X here and here, as well as on Facebook here, here and here.
A review of Sharif’s swearing-in ceremony streamed live on YouTube by local media Dunya News, however, found no Hindu hymn performance (archived link).
Holi celebration
Moreover, reverse image and keyword searches on Google found the clip is old.
A report from BBC News Hindi on March 21, 2017 featured portions of the video. It said the clip showed singer Narodha Malni performing the Gayatri mantra in front of Nawaz Sharif — the prime minister at the time (archived link).
The report added the event was a celebration in Pakistan’s Karachi city of Holi, an Indian festival that signifies the start of spring (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip falsely shared online (left) and the news report from BBC News Hindi (right):
Video in one of the false posts (left) and from the 2017 BBC News Hindi report (right)
Several Indian news sites such as here and here also reported on Malni’s performance and featured similar clips of the event (archived links here and here).
Responding to the posts, the singer told AFP: “I did not attend the recent oath-taking ceremony of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Islamabad.”
In 2016, as the stress of wedding planning bore down on Joseph Sinclair, he got into an argument with his parents and told them something that sent his family into a tailspin: As a child, he said, he was sexually abused by a neighbor they had hired to babysit him.
The revelation wreaked havoc on the family, which sought years of therapy to heal. But now they say they are being forced to relive the trauma.
Maureen Sartain, the babysitter Sinclair has accused of abusing him, has filed a lawsuit against Sinclair’s mother, saying in court documents that Marie Sinclair intentionally caused her emotional distress by telling others about the alleged abuse. The case is scheduled to go to trial next month in New York.
“It keeps me up at night,” Marie Sinclair said of the thought of her son being called to testify in the trial. “Because of this ridiculous lawsuit, he’s being forced to confront some painful memories. It is so unfair.”
Sartain declined a request for an interview through her attorney, Scott Mishkin, who referred NBC News to her deposition from last year. In it, Sartain denied abusing Joseph Sinclair. She is not suing for defamation and some legal experts have expressed surprise that the case is scheduled to go to trial.
“What she’s trying to do is get around the truth test by reframing the case,” said Richard Epstein, a professor at New York University School of Law. “It’s an effort to repackage a defamation case as an emotional distress case to avoid the truth test.”
Unlike in a suit for emotional distress, the plaintiff in a defamation case has to prove that the statement in question was false.
Sartain’s attorney did not return a request for comment about the nature of the suit.
The Sinclair family avoided Sartain for years after they learned of the alleged abuse, Marie Sinclair said.
“Me and my husband, Jimmy, wanted to kill her,” she said of the babysitter, who lived on the same Smithtown street as the couple until they moved last year. But a therapist told them it wouldn’t be good for Joseph Sinclair’s therapy if they confronted her. “He needed to heal. He needed to get over the guilt and the shame of it, and confronting her would only harm him,” Marie Sinclair said the therapist told them.
She followed that advice for three years. Then, on Nov. 2, 2020, she changed course.
“I see you are friends with Maureen Grennan Sartain on Facebook,” she wrote in direct messages sent to at least a dozen people on the social network, according to the lawsuit, a transcript of her deposition and screenshots of messages Sinclair provided to NBC News. “I want you to know she is a pedophile and raped my child when he was 8 years old. She has never been prosecuted for this crime. If anything I can warn you, your family and your children.”
Marie Sinclair
She also sent the message to Sartain, adding: “I sent this to your friends. I hope someday you pay for your sick crimes.”
The messages, which were sent to Sartain’s friends and family and to the parents of children she may have cared for, are at the center of a lawsuit Sartain filed against Sinclair alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Sartain’s attorney says in the lawsuit that she was “devastated to see that she was being accused of such conduct and was even more mortified over the fact that this false allegation was being sent to her friends and family.”
The suit accuses Sinclair of having launched a “deliberate and malicious campaign of harassment” that was “intentional, reckless, extreme and outrageous.”
But for the Sinclairs, who believe Sartain to be an abuser, the pending jury trial has landed like a punch, adding insult to injuries they had worked to heal.
Joseph Sinclair, 28, was between the ages of 8 and about 13 when the alleged abuse occurred, he said in an interview with NBC News.
“It has affected every relationship I’ve had, in terms of trust, interpersonal communication,” he said. “I was manipulated, and it makes me feel terrible about myself. That I allowed it, or that I didn’t say anything.”
Not long after they learned about the alleged abuse, the Sinclairs also sought advice from the Suffolk County district attorney’s office in July 2017. In a copy of an email sent to the office that was shared with NBC News, they asked whether Sartain could be prosecuted and what the process would involve.
“How can we prevent her from abusing other children in her care,” the email concluded.
The Sinclairs said they never received a response. Marie Sinclair said she had also called the district attorney’s office with the same inquiry and was told that Joseph Sinclair could press charges but that it would be very difficult to win a criminal case against Sartain because the Sinclairs did not have footage or any other physical evidence of the alleged abuse.
A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said in a statement: “We cannot comment on matters from the prior administration as those in leadership from that time period are no longer employed here.” The spokesperson said the office is willing to speak with the Sinclairs and provided a name and phone number for an investigator. The spokesperson declined to comment further, saying, “sexual assault victims cannot be outed without their consent.”
Joseph Sinclair said he never pursued criminal or civil action against Sartain because his focus has been on trying to heal.
“During my years of therapy, eventually, one of our goals was to come to that decision — whether or not I wanted to,” he said.
But now he plans to testify on his mother’s behalf, he said. Jury selection is scheduled to begin April 22 on Long Island.
“I want her to be held accountable,” he said of Sartain. “And I want her to be seen as the terrible person she is.”
In a deposition taken last year, Sartain testified that she babysat for a handful of other families from approximately 1990 to 2002. After Marie Sinclair told people about the alleged abuse, Sartain testified that she started having panic attacks every couple of days, would sometimes have trouble sleeping, had worsening jaw pain, and felt stressed.
“I don’t like going out,” she said, according to a transcript of the deposition. “I feel like neighbors have shunned me. People on Facebook have unfriended me.”
At Marie Sinclair’s deposition, Sartain’s attorney repeatedly asked Sinclair what her intention was in sending the messages and whether she cared at all about how they would affect Sartain. Sinclair responded that she wanted to warn people about who she believed Sartain to be and was concerned for any other potential victims.
“If she was upset by it, that’s on her,” Sinclair responded, according to a transcript of the deposition. “I was worried about the families that I was sending it to.”
About two weeks after she sent the messages, Sinclair received a cease-and-desist letter from Sartain’s attorney demanding, among other things, that she “immediately publish an apology for her false statements.” The lawsuit was filed three months later, in February 2021.
It is not uncommon, especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement, for people who come forward to allege sexual assault and harassment to be sued for defamation by their alleged perpetrators. But Sartain’s case differs from many of those in that, while she denies the allegations, she is not suing for defamation nor is she suing the person whom she is alleged to have abused.
Benjamin Zipursky, a professor at Fordham Law School in New York, described this approach as a “backdoor maneuver.”
“Sometimes, people try to take a kind of alternative lawsuit for a variety of reasons,” Zipursky said. “One of the most common reasons is they believe defamation law has been crafted by the courts, including the Supreme Court over the last many decades, to be very protective of speakers and to make it very hard for plaintiffs who have been defamed to prevail.”
Some attorneys who believe there may be too many defenses available to defendants for their client to win may shift to another category, Zipursky said, adding that one of the most common would be intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Zipursky, who specializes in tort law and defamation law, said the jury will have to decide whether Marie Sinclair’s conduct was extreme and outrageous.
“If this is what her boy told her had happened to him, then I don’t think that they’re going to think it was outrageous for her to say so,” he said.
Human remains found in a barrel in the Missouri River were identified last week as belonging to a woman considered a potential witness in the case against a Missouri man accused of holding a Black woman hostage in his basement.
During a Monday hearing seeking a bond increase for Timothy Haslett Jr., prosecutors said the woman found in the barrel, Jaynie Crosdale, “was inside” Haslett’s Excelsior Springs home before his arrest in October.
The Clay County Prosecutor’s Office did not provide further details but said it presented the evidence to the court.
Excelsior Springs police had identified Crosdale as a potential witness in Haslett’s case in January and asked the public’s help in locating her. Authorities said at the time that they believed Crosdale had “information about the investigation.”
She was later found dead after kayakers located her body in a blue barrel in the Missouri River, according to NBC affiliate KSNT of Topeka, Kansas. Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Immediately after police identified her remains last week, prosecutors filed a motion seeking a higher bond for Haslett, writing in a court filing that they had “concern for the safety of the community.” Prosecutors said Haslett’s bond of $3 million was “insufficient to insure the safety of the community and the victim.”
The court, however, ruled against increasing Haslett’s bond. His attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
The home where neighbors raised the alarm in Excelsior Springs, Mo.Sarah Plake / KSHB
Haslett was taken into custody in October after the 22-year-old unidentified victim escaped from his basement wearing a metal dog collar and ran to neighbors for help. The woman said she had been held captive and assaulted.
Lisa Johnson, a neighbor who helped the woman, said she was getting ready for work when she heard a faint “help me” from outside her front door.
“She looked straight at me and said ‘help,'” Johnson previously said.
Johnson said the woman feared that if the police were called Haslett would kill them both, but Johnson called authorities anyway.
“I understood where she was coming from at that point. But I did it anyway,” she said.
Police said they found the woman wearing a metal collar with a padlock, latex lingerie and she had duct tape around her mouth, according to a probable cause statement filed in October.
The woman said Haslett had picked her up in early September and kept her in a small room in his basement, restraining her wrists and ankles with handcuffs, the document stated. She said she had been repeatedly raped and whipped and escaped when Haslett left to take his child to school, according to the probable cause.
Haslett was indicted in February on one count of first-degree rape, four counts of first-degree sodomy, one count of first-degree kidnapping, two counts of second-degree assault and one count of endangering a child. He faces more than five life sentences in prison if convicted.
Woman bitten by shark at New York City’s Rockaway Beach – CBS News
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New York City’s Rockaway Beach was closed to swimmers and surfers Tuesday after a woman was bitten in the leg by a shark Monday while swimming close to shore. She remains in serious condition. CBS News New York reporter John Dias has more.
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