Los Angeles man charged with setting homeless woman on fire

LOS ANGELES | Mon Dec 31, 2012 3:04pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 24-year-old Los Angeles area man accused of setting a homeless woman on fire as she slept on a bus stop bench was charged on Monday with attempted murder and aggravated mayhem.

Prosecutors say Dennis Petillo doused the 67-year-old woman with a flammable liquid as she slept on a bench in the Los Angeles section of Van Nuys in the early morning hours of December 27 and then set her on fire.

The woman, who has not been identified by authorities, survived the attack but remains hospitalized in critical condition.

Petillo, who was scheduled to make an initial court appearance on Monday afternoon, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if he is convicted at a trial.

Prosecutors said they would ask that he be held on $1.03 million bail.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Woman charged with "murder as a hate crime" in fatal subway pushing

NEW YORK | Sun Dec 30, 2012 3:00am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A woman suspected of shoving a man to his death in front of an oncoming New York subway train was arrested on Saturday and charged with "second-degree murder as a hate crime" in the second such fatality this month for one of the world's busiest transit systems.

The district attorney for the New York City borough of Queens said Erika Menendez, 31, who was seen pacing the subway platform and muttering to herself before the attack, had told investigators that she pushed the victim, Sunando Sen, 46, on Thursday because "I hate Hindus and Muslims."

Menendez was taken into custody in Brooklyn by authorities acting on a tip from someone who recognized the suspect from video of the incident that was aired on television, a spokeswoman for the district attorney told Reuters.

"The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter's worst nightmare - being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train," District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement.

"Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant's actions can never be tolerated in a civilized society," he said.

The prosecutor's statement quoted Menendez as telling investigators: "I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I've been beating them up."

Her alleged admission was an apparent reference to the September 11, 2001, attack on Manhattan's World Trade Center by Muslim extremists who flew two hijacked jetliners into the twin towers.

Brown's statement gave no indication of the victim's ethnicity or religion or Menendez might have taken Sen to be a Muslim.

The spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office, Meris Campbell, said she did not believe the victim was wearing any clothing that would have led someone to identify him as being a Muslim.

Menendez is awaiting arraignment in Queens Criminal Court on a criminal complaint charging her with second-degree murder as a hate crime, an offense that carries a minimum sentence of 20 years to life in prison. The minimum penalty for second-degree murder alone is 15 years to life, Campbell said.

If convicted, Menendez could face a maximum penalty of 25 years to life.

Witnesses told police a woman appeared to be mumbling and pacing Thursday evening before she approached an unsuspecting man from behind on the platform of an elevated station in the borough of Queens.

She then shoved him onto the subway track as the train pulled into the station, witnesses said. Brown said Sen died of multiple blunt-force trauma.

After shoving Sen on Thursday, the suspect ran from the station to the street in a scene caught on surveillance video footage that police released on Friday as they searched for her.

Sen's death was the second this month of a New York subway rider pushed onto the tracks of the city's more than 100-year-old subway system.

On December 3, Ki-Suck Han was killed after being shoved onto subway tracks in Manhattan as a train entered a station near Times Square. A suspect, Naeem Davis, has been charged with second-degree murder. Authorities have disclosed a possible motive.

Including Thursday's incident, 139 people have been struck by New York City subway trains so far in 2012, and 54 of them died, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman said on Friday. He said the tally was preliminary and subject to change.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins, Brendan O'Brien and Dan Burns; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Peter Cooney and Bill Trott)

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Utah boy charged with bringing gun to school, cites fears of Newtown attack

SALT LAKE CITY | Wed Dec 19, 2012 2:26am EST

SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - An 11-year-old Utah boy who said he brought a gun to school to protect himself from a Newtown-style attack, then brandished the pistol at three classmates during recess, has been detained on assault and weapons charges, a school spokesman said on Tuesday.

The boy, a Utah sixth-grader, took the unloaded .22-caliber handgun to his school south of Salt Lake City in his backpack on Monday, a spokesman for the Granite School District said.

Some ammunition was also found in the backpack, but it did not appear to go with the gun, said the spokesman, Ben Horsley.

No one was injured in the incident, which occurred as jittery parents, teachers and students around the country faced their first day back at school since 20 children and six adult staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, were shot to death by a lone gunman last Friday.

The 11-year-old student at Utah's West Kearns Elementary, who was not publicly identified, has insisted he brought the gun to school to "protect himself and his friends from a Connecticut-style incident," Horsley said.

However, the boy is accused of waving the gun at three classmates on a soccer field during recess. Later on Monday, one of those students and a second classmate alerted their teacher, who "immediately took the student into custody and took him down to the principal's office," Horsley said.

After being briefly questioned, the boy admitted bringing the gun to school, and the weapon was recovered minutes later.

Some parents questioned the decision not to initiate a security "lockdown," but school administrators reasoned that it made no sense to risk alarming students when the threat was so quickly averted, Horsley said.

The boy was booked into a local juvenile detention center on Monday night on one count of possession of a deadly weapon on school property and three counts of aggravated assault. He was also suspended from school indefinitely.

Horsley described the boy's parents as shocked by the incident and cooperating with investigators, who found the gun belonged to a relative who has been living temporarily with the boy's family.

He said the community was "rightfully" shaken by the incident. "Because of the tragic occurrence in Connecticut, people's emotions with respect to children's safety is right at the surface, and we're just as concerned as the parents."

Because the incident unfolded less than an hour before classes were dismissed, parents could not be notified until well after the school day had ended, and only then by telephone, he said.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Lisa Shumaker)

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