Monday, February 28, 2011
** Illinois boy arrested after menacing ambulance staff with gun
** North Carolina soldier charged with homicide in death of combat medic in Iraq
UNITED STATES NEWS
** Police in Decatur, Illinois arrested a 15-year-old boy last Tuesday, after the teen aimed a gun at the windshield of an ambulance. The Herald-Review (Huey Freeman/February 25) said the incident, which played out around 5 p.m., ended with the youth being preliminarily charged with aggravated assault and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. According to the newspaper, four teens forcibly stopped the EMS unit by walking into the middle of the street, refusing to give way when told to. After the driver of the EMS unit used the public address system to warn them off, the boy in question brandished a semiautomatic handgun, aiming it at the ambulance’s driver cab. Detained while in the middle of a lights and sirens call, the ambulance eventually proceeded along its way. The teen, meanwhile, was later apprehended, minus the gun, by police.
** US military authorities in Fort Bragg, North Carolina have charged a soldier with murder in the July 2, 2010 Iraqi death of combat medic Spc. Morganne McBeth, 19. WRAL (February 25) said Spc. Nicholas Bailey was tagged last Wednesday with negligent homicide and obstructing justice. The charges were upgraded from the original ones which included making a false statement, conspiring to obstruct justice, and involuntary manslaughter. According to the news site, Bailey’s charges come only three months after the army’s Criminal Investigative Command reopened the case that was initially dismissed as an accident. Fellow soldier Spc. Tyler Cain, 21, who has also been charged with obstruction of justice and making a false statement, helped to muddy matters. In his first account of what happened to McBeth, Cain said Bailey inadvertently stabbed her when he forcibly removed a knife from a wall poster;McBeth, standing behind Bailey, was cut as the blade jumped from the gyprock. In his forth telling of the fatal events, Cain said Bailey had been waving the knife about, accidentally stabbing McBeth when he turned around. Along with criminal proceedings, Bailey faces a court martial in late May or early June.
