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The Crime Ledger: October 21, 2026

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Wednesday’s board runs from a governor’s desk in Montgomery to an appeal court in Kharkiv. In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey took Toforest Johnson off death row on Tuesday, citing doubts that have trailed the 1995 killing of Deputy William Hardy for three decades, and that same evening Florida executed William Reaves at Starke, the state’s 18th execution of the year. The North American docket runs on from there: a Cincinnati jury deliberating, a first-degree murder charge in the fentanyl death of a Valley Center attorney, indictments in the Bronx and an independent review ordered in Charlottetown. Latin America and Africa bring a 37-year term in Bogotá, femicide sentences in Taxco and Guarujá, a femicide detention in La Plata, arrests in Ocaña and a pub shooting in Pretoria. Europe’s courts handed down life in Milan, Schrozberg and Mistelbach, made a life sentence final in Girasole, where the convicted man then cut his ankle tag and vanished, and in Kharkiv upheld life for the Russian soldier known as “Altai.” Asia and Oceania close it out with death sentences in Liaocheng and Meishan, a no-body conviction in Osaka, the Abby Choi trial in Hong Kong and Scott Watson’s final appeal in Wellington.

Today’s Ledger covers 71 cases from 32 countries, from verdicts, sentences and an execution to charges and arrests. Anyone charged but not convicted is presumed innocent.

Times are Eastern (ET) unless stated. Allegations come from prosecutors, police and court records as reported and are unproven unless a court has ruled.

United States and Canada

Montgomery, Alabama: Gov. Kay Ivey Commutes Death Sentence of Toforest Johnson, Citing Doubts Over Evidence in 1995 Killing of Deputy William Hardy

Location: Montgomery, Alabama, USA (case from Birmingham, Jefferson County)

Legal status: Convicted; sentence commuted. Toforest Johnson was convicted of capital murder in the 1995 killing of Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William Hardy and sentenced to death. On Oct. 20, 2026, Gov. Kay Ivey commuted the sentence to life imprisonment without parole. The conviction stands. Johnson maintains he is innocent, and his lawyers are seeking a new trial.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has signed off on 27 executions. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, she commuted the death sentence of Toforest Johnson to life in prison without parole, after the district attorney who now holds his case, and a line of former judges and prosecutors, said the evidence against him had come apart.

“When presented with Mr. Johnson’s case, I had concerns there was not enough direct evidence to carry out the most serious punishment, death,” Ivey said in a statement. “My decision is not a determination of innocence, but a recognition that the circumstances of this case justify commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment, without possibility of parole.” It is her third commutation of a death sentence, CBS News and The Associated Press reported.

Johnson was convicted of the 1995 capital murder of Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William Hardy, who was shot twice in the head while working off-duty security at a Birmingham hotel. Johnson has long said he was on the other side of town at the time.

The case against him rested heavily on one witness. At the 1998 trial, a woman testified that while eavesdropping on a three-way phone call she heard a man she believed was Johnson admit to the killing. She was paid $5,000 in 2001 for her testimony, and Johnson’s lawyers argue the state withheld evidence of that financial motive. Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr, elected in 2018, has backed Johnson’s bid for a new trial. In a 2024 court filing, Carr wrote that the “evidence in this case has unraveled over 20 years” and said credible alibi witnesses put Johnson elsewhere. Former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, former Chief Justices Sonny Hornsby and Drayton Nabers, and several former judges and prosecutors have filed briefs or written editorials supporting a retrial. The case drew national attention and was the subject of a podcast.

The sitting attorney general was on the other side. Steve Marshall, in an Oct. 16 letter, urged Ivey to reject the clemency request and “respect the jury’s decision” and those of the reviewing courts, the AP reported. Ivey said she notified Marshall and a designated member of Hardy’s family, Beverly Hardy, before acting, and in a letter dated Oct. 20 told Corrections Commissioner Greg Lovelace of the change, according to the governor’s office. She thanked the attorney general’s Capital Litigation Division for its years defending the conviction.

Ivey framed the decision as narrow. “Mr. Johnson will serve the remainder of his life behind bars for the senseless murder of Deputy Sheriff William Hardy. No doubt, he is paying the price,” she said. “Capital punishment is too important of a tool for Alabama to not approach it carefully and seriously.” She added: “Deputy Sheriff Hardy died a hero, working hard to protect his fellow citizens.”

Johnson’s lawyers took the reprieve and kept going. Ty Alper thanked Ivey for “taking action to spare an innocent man from execution.” He added: “Toforest Johnson is innocent. Now it is up to the courts to overturn his conviction and grant him a new trial. We will keep fighting until he is home with his family.”

Laura Porter of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty said governors “of both parties” are using clemency, Alabama Public Radio reported.

Sources

Starke, Florida: William Reaves, 77, Executed for 1986 Killing of Indian River County Deputy, Florida’s 18th Execution of the Year

Location: Florida State Prison, near Starke, Bradford County, Florida, USA (crime in Vero Beach area, Indian River County)

Legal status: Executed. William Reaves, convicted of first-degree murder in the September 1986 shooting of an Indian River County sheriff’s deputy, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET on Oct. 20, 2026, after a three-drug lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal that afternoon without comment.

The curtain went up at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, with William Reaves already strapped to the gurney. Asked for last words, he said, “No, I do not.” He was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke, the state’s 18th execution of the year, The Associated Press reported.

Reaves, 77, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1986 shooting of Indian River County sheriff’s deputy Richard Raczkoski. Outlets differ on the spelling: the AP and CBS12 use Raczkoski, while WPBF and CBS News use Raczkowski. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Reaves’ last-minute appeal Tuesday afternoon without comment. The Florida Supreme Court had turned down his final state appeals on Oct. 14, CBS12 reported. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant on Sept. 18.

According to court records, the deputy was called to a convenience store near Vero Beach around 3 a.m. on Sept. 23, 1986, to help Reaves get a cab; Reaves later acknowledged making the 911 call from a payphone outside. While they talked, a gun fell out of Reaves’ shorts. The two struggled over it, Reaves regained control, and, investigators said, shot the deputy four times as he tried to get away. Records cited by CBS12 say the shots struck him in the back. The deputy was 29 and died later that day. His son was born after his death.

Reaves was arrested two days later in Albany, Georgia. In a taped interview with detectives, he admitted the shooting and said he had been using cocaine. “I’ve never met a finer officer in my life,” he told them, according to a transcript filed by the state. He was convicted in 1987, but the Florida Supreme Court threw out the verdict because one of the prosecutors had previously represented him. A second jury convicted him in 1992 and voted 10-2 for death.

His lawyers’ last arguments challenged Florida’s three-drug protocol, a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, and argued that jurors were never told the Department of Veterans Affairs rated the Army veteran 100% disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder from Vietnam. More than 100 veterans wrote to DeSantis on Monday asking him to halt the execution.

The AP described the death: about 30 seconds after the injection began, Reaves took several big breaths and stopped moving. A warden shook his shoulders and shouted his name. A medic checked for signs of life, and he was pronounced dead about a minute later. His last meal was crackers and juice, the Department of Corrections said.

Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers, who had pushed for the warrant, sat in the front row, in uniform, so Reaves could see it, he told WPBF. It was the first execution he had witnessed. “It’s closure but not justice,” Flowers told WPBF. At a post-execution briefing he said, according to the AP: “Would we all be so lucky to be 77 years old and to die so peacefully.” The deputy’s brother, Marc, told reporters his brother finally got justice.

Reaves was the eighth Florida prisoner over 70 executed this year. Jesse Guardado is scheduled to be executed Nov. 5.

Sources

Cincinnati, Ohio: Hinton Jury Gets Case in Killing of Deputy Larry Henderson After Dueling Closings on Intent and Insanity

Location: Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, USA

Legal status: On trial. Rodney Hinton Jr. is charged with aggravated murder, murder and felonious assault and has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He is presumed innocent. Closing arguments ended Oct. 20, 2026, and jurors deliberated all day Oct. 21 before going home around 4 p.m. without a verdict, WLWT reported.

Rodney Hinton Jr. does not deny that his car killed Larry Henderson. The jury in Hamilton County now has to decide what was in his head when it did. Closing arguments ended Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, after two weeks of testimony, and jurors chose a foreperson before going home. Deliberations were set to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

Henderson was a husband, father, foster father and veteran with more than 30 years in law enforcement, Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Kate Burroughs told jurors. Five months into retirement, he was working as a special deputy on May 2, 2025, directing traffic near Burnet Woods for the University of Cincinnati’s graduation ceremonies. He was standing on a traffic island in a safety vest and a Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office hat when Hinton’s Ford Focus hit him at nearly 44 mph, WLWT reported.

The day before, Cincinnati police had fatally shot Hinton’s son, Ryan, during a stolen vehicle investigation. That shooting was later ruled justified. Hours before the crash, Hinton watched the body camera video of his son’s death.

Prosecutors argued it was deliberate. They leaned on crash reconstruction testimony that Hinton waited for traffic to clear, crossed multiple lanes and turned at the last moment to hit Henderson. “As Deputy Henderson moved to the defendant’s left, the vehicle moved to the left. The timing is impeccable,” a prosecutor said, according to FOX19. Burroughs argued the uniform made Henderson a target: “Without knowing it, he had become a beacon leading the defendant straight to him.”

Defense attorney Clyde Bennett offered two answers. First, he told jurors that “not one witness” said Hinton drove at Henderson intending to kill him, and pointed to witnesses who said the car was aimed at a utility pole. “He recklessly killed Deputy Henderson while attempting to kill himself,” Bennett said. Judge Jody Luebbers agreed last week to put that theory in the jury instructions. Second, Hinton pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and Bennett argued he was “acutely ill with psychosis” at the time.

The trial turned largely on dueling experts. Defense psychiatrist Dr. Maria Espinola testified that watching the video of Ryan’s shooting sent Hinton into a severe psychological break, and that he told her he heard his pastor’s voice while driving, which she called an auditory hallucination. A court-appointed psychiatrist testified that Hinton did not have a psychotic episode. FOX19 reported that two psychiatrists testified he understood the wrongness of his actions that day and one said he did not. A state rebuttal witness testified that when she asked Hinton whether he knew the officer, he said no, then said, “I had to turn a little bit to hit him.”

In rebuttal, Assistant Prosecutor Kip Guinan attacked what he called shifting defense theories and asked why the suicide theory was not raised in opening statements. Prosecutors also argued that the defense psychiatrist’s account changed over time “only in one direction: toward insanity.” Bennett countered that the state’s own expert leaned heavily on the fact that Hinton drove for 20 minutes before the crash, and told jurors they could not decide on sympathy.

Hinton did not testify, which was his right. A local trial lawyer not involved in the case noted to WLWT that jurors never heard Hinton’s recorded police interrogation, only psychologists recounting what he told them.

Under the instructions, jurors first decide aggravated murder, which carries up to life in prison. If they find him guilty, they must then weigh the insanity plea. They may consider the lesser offense of reckless homicide if they acquit on aggravated murder or cannot agree on it. Outlets have reported different maximum penalties for reckless homicide in this case, so that figure is not given here.

Sources

Valley Center, California: Foster Son Charged With First-Degree Murder in Fentanyl Death of Attorney Nadine Jett, Found Buried on Her Ranch

Location: Valley Center, San Diego County, California, USA

Legal status: Charged. Cedric “Charles” Von Ferdinand, 34, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Nadine Jett, with special-circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and murder by poison, District Attorney Summer Stephan announced Oct. 21, 2026. He was arrested Oct. 20 in Los Angeles County and is due to be arraigned Oct. 22. He is presumed innocent. He was separately ordered to stand trial in 2025 on nearly three dozen fraud-related felony counts tied to Jett’s identity and property, which he has contested.

For more than a year after Nadine Jett vanished, the story her foster daughters were given was that she had died in Mexico and been cremated there. Her remains were instead found buried on her own 20-acre ranch in Valley Center. On Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan announced that the foster son who told that story, Cedric Von Ferdinand, 34, has been charged with first-degree murder, City News Service reported. Prosecutors allege he gave Jett a lethal dose of fentanyl, buried her on the property and then used her identity to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars from her accounts.

The murder count carries special-circumstance allegations of killing for financial gain and administering poison. If convicted, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole, or death if prosecutors decide to seek it. Von Ferdinand had remained out of custody on the earlier fraud case. After the murder count was filed he was arrested Tuesday, Oct. 20, in Los Angeles County, and he is due to be arraigned Thursday. “His deadly greed led to this horrific homicide. He preyed on her in her time of need when she was suffering from cancer,” Stephan said. “It is quite despicable.”

Jett, 65, was a retired San Diego County attorney and a foster mother to four identical quadruplet sisters. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer shortly before she disappeared, and Von Ferdinand, another of her foster children, was acting as her caregiver. The sisters said he began isolating her, refusing visits and denying requests for photographs. Stephan said the last time Jett was seen alive was Jan. 14, 2024, at a chemotherapy session. The criminal complaint alleges she was killed sometime between Jan. 14 and Jan. 17. On Jan. 16, Stephan said, investigators found that Von Ferdinand solicited someone to dig a hole six feet by six feet on the ranch. Jett’s remains were found in a hole of comparable size about 30 yards from her home.

The accounts of her death did not line up. According to testimony at a 2025 preliminary hearing reported by NBC 7 and Times of San Diego, Von Ferdinand told one of the sisters, Tiffany Lucci, that Jett died in Mexico around Easter 2024. A district attorney’s investigator testified that a woman who cared for animals on the ranch was told by Von Ferdinand in January 2024 that her services were no longer needed because Jett had died about a week earlier. No death certificate turned up in Mexico or the United States. The sisters reported her missing in June 2024, Stephan said. “I looked him in the eyes, and I said, ‘Can I have the death certificate?’ He said ‘No,'” Paris Lucci told CBS 8. She also said a real estate agent described an odd request Von Ferdinand made while showing the ranch: that the buyer plant roses in a specific area. “This is the same area where someone else I interviewed said Charles was digging from midnight to like 3 a.m.,” she said.

Sheriff’s deputies served a search warrant at the Oak Creek Road ranch on July 16, 2025, and found the buried remains. Stephan said toxicology samples taken at autopsy showed a massive amount of acetylfentanyl, which she said is found in illicit fentanyl rather than pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl. The medical examiner gave the cause of death as acute fentanyl toxicity and the manner as homicide.

The money case came first. A judge ordered Von Ferdinand to stand trial on the fraud counts, which include forgery and identity theft, in September 2025. Prosecutors allege that documents bearing Jett’s apparent signature and initials gave him power of attorney after January 2024, that her ranch and two Los Angeles County properties were transferred to him, that he bought another Los Angeles County home with money wired from her account, and that he drained her accounts regularly until about mid-2024. A thumbprint next to Jett’s purported signature in a notary’s journal was later determined to be his, according to hearing testimony. The Escondido notary, Raymond Joseph Alto, 46, is also charged. On Wednesday prosecutors added charges of forgery and identity theft against Kimberley Pifer, who they allege impersonated Jett and married Von Ferdinand under Jett’s name; Stephan said the marriage license, signed and notarized May 18, 2024, was found in his home. Pifer is out of custody and due to be arraigned next week.

Von Ferdinand’s lawyers argued at the 2025 hearing that Jett willingly transferred her money and property to him, and attorney Kerry Steigerwalt said the case had been “pushed onto the D.A.’s Office” by the sisters. “She was the mom we needed. She gave us a fair chance at life,” Bianca Lucci, one of the four, said Wednesday. Every allegation, the fraud counts and the murder charge alike, remains unproven.

Sources

Auglaize County, Ohio: Three Already Serving Federal Time Get State Sentences in Timothy Hovanec Killing

Location: Wapakoneta, Auglaize County, Ohio, USA

Legal status: Sentenced. Amanda Hovanec, 39, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and was sentenced Oct. 20, 2026, to life with parole eligibility after 20 years. Anthony Theodorou, 38, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and was sentenced Oct. 20 to 11 years. Anita Green, 66, was sentenced the previous week to 14 years. All state terms run concurrently with existing federal sentences.

Timothy Hovanec dropped his children off on April 24, 2022, at the end of a court-ordered visit. He did not leave the driveway. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, an Auglaize County Common Pleas courtroom in Wapakoneta closed the state side of his killing, sentencing his estranged wife and her former lover on top of the federal prison terms both are already serving.

Amanda Hovanec, 39, received life in prison with eligibility to seek parole after 20 years on one count of aggravated murder, The Lima News reported. Judge Stephen Wolaver, sitting by assignment of the Ohio Supreme Court, imposed the term as part of a joint recommendation from prosecutors and the defense. She must register as a violent offender under Ohio law. WLIO reported that the life term runs concurrently with the 40-year federal sentence she received in 2024, and that parole could only come after the federal sentence is complete.

Anthony Theodorou, 38, a South African man who was in a romantic relationship with Hovanec at the time, was sentenced the same day to 11 years after pleading guilty in March to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder, a second-degree felony. That term runs concurrently with his 18-year federal sentence. Anita Green, 66, Hovanec’s mother, was sentenced the week before to 14 years, concurrent with a 10-year federal term. The two local outlets describe her plea differently: The Lima News reported she pleaded guilty on Oct. 13 to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and tampering with evidence, while WLIO described the pleas as complicity to commit aggravated murder and complicity to tampering with evidence.

The underlying facts were laid out in the federal case. The Hovanecs were divorcing after Amanda filed in December 2020, and records described the custody fight as contentious. According to federal prosecutors, as reported by NBC News, she had begun denying her husband visitation despite a court order. In April 2022 a judge ordered that the children be allowed to see their father and that he become their residential parent for two months that summer. Theodorou later told investigators she had talked about killing her husband for about a year because she believed it was the only way to stop the children from spending that summer with him, according to the federal affidavit.

On April 24, 2022, after he returned the children, Amanda Hovanec injected him in the shoulder with etorphine, also called M-99, a veterinary tranquilizer prosecutors described as about 1,000 times stronger than morphine. The dash camera in his Volkswagen Tiguan recorded audio of the attack. The affidavit quotes him saying, “What the heck are you doing? Did you just assault me?” and “Get off of me.” It says she pulled at his hands and shirt as he reached for a phone, then moved him to the ground and held his neck until his body went limp on the driveway. Green had taken the children inside after her daughter told them a surprise was waiting.

Investigators said the drug was imported from South Africa by Theodorou. After the killing, Timothy Hovanec’s car was abandoned in Dayton. Green then drove her daughter and Theodorou to rural Auglaize County, where they buried his body in woods not far from the family home. “I knew at the time we were driving and we stopped … I’m in this now,” Green told investigators, according to the affidavit.

The disappearance surfaced when the hotel where Hovanec was staying reported that he had failed to check out. He was reported missing to Wapakoneta police on April 26. WHIO reported that Amanda Hovanec told police he worked for the State Department in the Foreign Service, which brought FBI agents to Wapakoneta to collect his laptop and phone. On April 27 she admitted to investigators that she had killed him, saying she knew the drug would kill him “within minutes.” Detectives found his body on April 28.

In federal court, Amanda Hovanec and Theodorou were convicted of distributing a controlled substance resulting in death. Green was convicted as an accessory after the fact. Then-U.S. Attorney Rebecca Lutzko called the killing “cold-blooded, calculated and cruel.” An Auglaize County grand jury indicted all three in late 2025, and each pleaded guilty to reduced state charges. The couple had three children.

Sources

Bogalusa, Louisiana: Two Men Get Life Without Parole for 2021 Killing of Michael Brock in Rap Feud

Location: Bogalusa, Washington Parish, Louisiana, USA

Legal status: Sentenced. Tauj Taplin, 24, and Quardaviaon White, 24, convicted by a jury of second-degree murder on Oct. 2, 2026, were each sentenced Oct. 20, 2026, to mandatory life imprisonment without parole, probation or suspension of sentence.

Michael Brock had left home to get away from the threats. The 19-year-old from Kentwood was staying with a relative of his girlfriend in Bogalusa in June 2021 because, police said, he had been receiving death threats on social media from a rival group in Tangipahoa Parish. On the morning of June 7, 2021, someone knocked on the apartment door. Brock opened it, and the shooter fired an AR-15 style .223 caliber rifle at point blank range, the Bogalusa Police Department said at the time.

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, the two men convicted of that killing were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. District Attorney J. Collin Sims of Louisiana’s 22nd Judicial District announced that Tauj Taplin, 24, of Amite, Louisiana, and Quardaviaon White, 24, of McComb, Mississippi, each received life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, probation or suspension of sentence. A jury had convicted both of second-degree murder on Oct. 2 after a five-day trial before Judge Alan A. Zaunbrecher. In Louisiana, life is the mandatory sentence for that offense. Police records from 2021 spell White’s first name Quardavion; this card uses the spelling in the district attorney’s release.

Investigators identified Taplin as the shooter and White as the driver of the getaway car. Bogalusa Det. Capt. David Miller said in 2021 that Brock was affiliated with a rap group faction called “Three-13” and that Taplin and White were known to be affiliated with a rival faction called “The Fours.” Police also said at the time that White was suspected of ties to the Gangster Disciples. The district attorney’s office said the shooting “arose from ongoing threats by local rap music figures,” and Sims called it “a senseless act of violence driven by a mindless online rivalry.”

The apartment was in the Sunset Acres, or Union Pointe, housing complex, according to police. The district attorney’s release describes it as an apartment on Union Square. Other people were inside when the shots were fired, including a 7-year-old child who was in the same room as Brock. The child was not hit. Brock suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was taken to Our Lady of Angels Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. After firing, the shooter left as a passenger in a light-colored sedan.

Detectives knew Brock was from Tangipahoa Parish and suspected the gunman was too, so they reached out to agencies in that area. Using intelligence from the ROCIC Intelligence Unit and other agencies, along with surveillance video from the housing complex, Bogalusa detectives identified Taplin and White within 24 hours, Miller said. Arrest warrants followed.

On the evening of June 10, 2021, the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office in Texas, east of Houston, stopped a silver and purple Nissan Maxima believed to be the suspect vehicle. A struggle broke out with deputies. White was taken into custody, but Taplin drove off and led officers on a high-speed chase east toward Beaumont. That pursuit was called off because he was endangering other people, police said, and Louisiana State Police later found and arrested him near Lake Charles. Later search warrants recovered two handguns, including one reported stolen out of Baton Rouge, according to the district attorney.

At trial, prosecutors Tiffany Dover and Iain Dover presented evidence including digital and cell phone records that, according to the district attorney’s office, placed both defendants at the scene. Brock’s family was in the courtroom for Tuesday’s sentencing.

“While no sentence can undo the tragic loss of a loved one, today’s finality ensures that these two individuals will spend the rest of their natural lives behind bars,” Sims said. His office thanked the Bogalusa Police Department, the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, Louisiana State Police, the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office, the Vidor Police Department and the ATF.

Sources

Boone County, West Virginia: Jury Convicts Grandmother Donna Stone in Starvation Death of Kyneddi Miller, 14, Then Recommends Mercy

Location: Madison, Boone County, West Virginia, USA (Boone County Circuit Court)

Legal status: Convicted. Donna Stone, 79, found guilty Oct. 19, 2026, of murder by a parent, guardian or custodian by failure or refusal to supply necessities, and child neglect resulting in death. Jury recommended mercy Oct. 20, making her parole-eligible after 15 years. Sentencing Dec. 8, 2026.

The prosecutor asked for mercy, the defense asked for mercy, and on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, a Boone County jury gave it to the grandmother it had convicted a day earlier in the death of a 14-year-old girl who weighed 58 pounds when she died.

Donna Stone, 79, was found guilty Monday, Oct. 19, of murder by a parent, guardian or custodian by failure or refusal to supply necessities and child neglect resulting in death, in the death of her granddaughter, Kyneddi Miller, the Charleston Gazette-Mail and WSAZ reported. The murder conviction carries life. The jury reconvened Tuesday morning on the single question of mercy. Its recommendation means Stone becomes eligible for parole after 15 years. She would be 94. Sentencing is set for 2 p.m. Dec. 8.

Kyneddi’s body was found on the bathroom floor of the Stone home in Morrisvale on April 17, 2024. Responders described it as “emaciated to a skeletal state,” according to the Gazette-Mail. The criminal complaint said she had been suffering from an eating disorder. Trial testimony showed her mother, Julie Miller, pulled her out of public school to homeschool her during the COVID pandemic; relatives and neighbors testified they did not see her after 2020, and the complaint said she had not been taken for medical care in four years. WCHS reported testimony that the family, particularly Kyneddi, had a consuming fear of COVID. The 58-pound figure came from Prosecutor Dan Holstein at Julie Miller’s sentencing, WCHS reported.

Kyneddi’s father, Terry Miller, testified that the family shut him out and that Donna Stone in particular reassured him the girl was “fine,” according to WCHS.

Stone testified at the mercy hearing. Asked by Holstein whether she accepted responsibility, she said, as quoted by WSAZ: “I thought we was taking her to the emergency room a couple of times.” She said she did not think she had any right to get information if she took the girl herself. Asked whether she saw Kyneddi’s body the day the girl could not get off the toilet, she said, “That’s the first time I knew. She looked bad. And her bones were skin and bones.” Asked whether she should have called 911, she said, “Yeah.”

Holstein explained his position to the Gazette-Mail by her age and her stage 4 cancer: “The likelihood of her making it, with stage 4 cancer, 15 more years is highly unlikely.” To WSAZ he said, “Justice sometimes includes mercy.”

Public defender Tim Gibson argued that Julie Miller, not Stone, made the medical and schooling decisions, and put Miller on the stand to make the point. “I know a lot of people thought that … this child was locked in a room and starved. That’s not what happened,” he told jurors, according to the Gazette-Mail. “The biggest thing we were working against was the physical evidence,” he told MetroNews, as reported by WCHS.

Julie Miller pleaded guilty and is serving 15 years to life; the outlets disagree on when she pleaded and was sentenced. Kyneddi’s grandfather, Jerry Stone, faced the same charges but was found incompetent to stand trial in September 2025, according to the Gazette-Mail and WOWK.

Sources

Brattleboro, Vermont: Shelter Resident Zaaina Mahvish-Jammeh Pleads Guilty to Second-Degree Murder in Ax Killing of Coordinator Leah Rosin-Pritchard

Location: Brattleboro, Windham County, Vermont, USA (Windham Superior Court, Criminal Division)

Legal status: Pleaded guilty. Zaaina Mahvish-Jammeh, 42, pleaded guilty Oct. 20, 2026, to second-degree murder. Proposed sentence: 20 years to life, 10 to serve, lifetime probation. Pre-sentence investigation ordered; sentencing date not yet set.

Three and a half years after Leah Rosin-Pritchard was killed at the Brattleboro shelter where she worked, the resident accused of killing her has admitted it.

Zaaina Mahvish-Jammeh, 42, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Tuesday morning, Oct. 20, 2026, in Windham Superior Court’s Criminal Division, the Brattleboro Reformer reported in a story republished by VTDigger. Judge Heather Gray said the attorneys are proposing a sentence of 20 years to life, split so that Mahvish-Jammeh serves 10 years with probation for life. Gray ordered a pre-sentence investigation. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled later, with victim impact statements expected. The case had been set for trial in January.

The facts come from the plea agreement. Mahvish-Jammeh was living at Morningside House, a shelter run by Groundworks Collaborative on Royal Road. On April 3, 2023, she asked to meet with Rosin-Pritchard, 37, the shelter coordinator, then struck her with an ax she had hidden under a sheet. The agreement says she hit Rosin-Pritchard “all over her face and body, causing life-threatening injuries.”

Her mental health has played a major role in the proceedings, Magic 102 reported. A judge previously described Mahvish-Jammeh as suffering from mania and psychosis. She was ordered hospitalized in 2023 and found unfit to proceed to trial; the following year she was found competent, according to the Reformer and to Magic 102.

James Valente of Costello Valente Group, who is not part of the criminal case but represents Rosin-Pritchard’s parents, called the sentence “complicated.” Mahvish-Jammeh could be released on the criminal sentence, he told the Reformer, but held as an involuntary inpatient if she is judged an immediate risk to the public because of her mental health.

The parents, Paula Rosin and David Pritchard, are suing Groundworks for wrongful death and intentional negligence in Windham Superior Court’s Civil Division, acting as administrators of their daughter’s estate. Groundworks moved to dismiss, arguing the matter belonged in workers compensation. The motion was denied. “The court declined to rule on that motion to dismiss before discovery could be conducted to get a better sense of what facts everybody agrees on and what facts everybody disagrees about,” Valente said. “That’s the process that is currently ongoing.” Magic 102 reported that discovery is under way.

Groundworks earlier paid a Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration fine of about $10,000, cut by half after it put certain safety recommendations in place, both outlets reported.

The site has already changed. Hope’s House, a new shelter built where Morningside House stood, opened earlier this month. Groundworks Executive Director Libby Bennett and board chair Peter Elwell said in a statement before the opening: “What happened at our former shelter was a tragedy, and we don’t diminish its impact. We cannot change the past, but we have a responsibility to learn from it.” The new building, they said, reflects those lessons in its design, its programming and its approach to the safety of guests and staff.

Mahvish-Jammeh now stands convicted on her plea. The judge has not yet imposed a sentence, and the proposed terms are not binding until she does.

Sources

Bronx, New York: Parents Calvin Harris and Ymonzherae Gill Indicted for Murder in Malnutrition Death of 3-Year-Old Essence Gill Harris

Location: Williamsbridge, Bronx, New York, USA (Bronx Supreme Court)

Legal status: Charged. Calvin Harris, 37, and Ymonzherae Gill, 35, indicted on second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, assault and related charges. Harris remanded; Gill’s bail set at $500,000 cash. Both due back Dec. 9, 2026. Presumed innocent.

On March 3, 2026, two parents in the Bronx called 911 to say their 3-year-old daughter was having trouble breathing. Seven and a half months later, both of them are indicted for her murder.

Calvin Harris, 37, and Ymonzherae Gill, 35, are charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, assault and related charges in the death of Essence Gill Harris and the condition of her brother, the Bronx District Attorney’s Office announced in a release posted to its newsroom on Oct. 20, 2026. Both are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. An indictment is an accusation.

According to the investigation as described by District Attorney Darcel D. Clark, paramedics responded to the family’s apartment and took Essence to Montefiore Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead not long after arriving. The city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled her death a homicide, the result of acute and chronic neglect including malnutrition and dehydration. Her brother was severely malnourished and was hospitalized for a month. Hoodline, citing the New York Daily News, reported that the boy was Essence’s twin, and that a law enforcement source told the paper both children were kept in a crib at all times and left to fend for themselves.

“These precious children were found in deplorable conditions,” Clark said. “Sadly, the little girl could not be saved. These defendants allegedly failed to adequately feed and care for their children. They will be held accountable for their actions.”

Both were arraigned before Bronx Supreme Court Justice Audrey Stone. Harris was remanded without bail. Gill’s bail was set at $500,000 cash, $750,000 bond or a $750,000 partially secured bond at 10 percent. The dates are muddled in the record: the DA’s release, dated Oct. 19 at the top, says Gill was arraigned Oct. 19 and Harris “today,” while its newsroom index lists the release on Oct. 20, and Hoodline reported Gill was arraigned Monday, Oct. 19, and Harris the next day. Both are due back in court Dec. 9.

Essence was born Sept. 16, 2022, according to an obituary from Eternity Funeral Services cited by Hoodline, which put her age at death at three years and five months. Her memorial was held in Mount Vernon and she was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, the outlet reported.

The second-degree murder count, under the depraved-indifference provision for victims under 11 that Hoodline cited, is a class A-I felony punishable by 15 years to life, the outlet reported. Hoodline noted it remains unknown whether the family had any prior contact with the city’s child welfare authorities before Essence died; neither source said.

The case is being prosecuted by Major Case Assistant District Attorney Tiffany Wichman of the Child Abuse/Sex Crimes Bureau, with Assistant District Attorney Allison Corley, under bureau trial counsel Astrid Borgstedt and chief Mimi Mairs, and Special Victims Division leaders Adrienne Giunta and Joe Muroff. Clark credited NYPD Detective Kyle Keiser of the Bronx South Homicide Squad and Detective Robert Regnier of the 47th Precinct Detective Squad.

The surviving boy is not named by either source and is not named here. Clark also thanked a trial preparation assistant, the office’s video unit director and two grand jury coordinators.

Sources

Cambria County, Pennsylvania: Judge Convicts Self-Represented Defendant of First-Degree Murder in Haws Pike Burning of Barry Senior Jr.

Location: Ebensburg and Lower Yoder Township, Cambria County, Pennsylvania, USA

Legal status: Convicted. Dashane White-Ferguson, 27, of Philadelphia, was found guilty Oct. 20, 2026, in a non-jury trial of first-degree murder, aggravated assault, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. He was acquitted of robbery. Sentencing is set for Nov. 23. Prosecutors say he faces life without parole.

The car broke down on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Lancaster County, across the state from where Barry Senior Jr.’s body was left burning. That breakdown, in the account a Cambria County judge accepted on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, is how the case against Dashane White-Ferguson began.

Judge Tamara Bernstein found White-Ferguson, 27, of Philadelphia, guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated assault, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse at the end of a two-day non-jury trial in Ebensburg, The Tribune-Democrat reported. She found him not guilty of robbery. He represented himself. Bernstein spent about half an hour reviewing exhibits in chambers before ruling. Sentencing is set for Nov. 23, and prosecutors told FOX8 he faces life without parole.

Senior, an Adams Township resident, was killed in November 2024. According to trial testimony, White-Ferguson likely stabbed him, possibly with a screwdriver, strangled him, wrapped his body in a vehicle cover, dumped it along state Route 56 in Lower Yoder Township, the road locally known as Haws Pike, and set it on fire. Dr. W. Ashton Ennis of ForensicDx, who performed the autopsy, testified that Senior had 13 stab wounds to the head and neck and 12 more elsewhere on his body, including defensive wounds on his left hand, as well as bruising to the face and fractured thyroid cartilage.

State Trooper Troy Faulk, a cellphone data specialist, testified that both men’s phones were in the area of Grandview Cemetery late on Nov. 5, 2024, and that White-Ferguson’s phone was where Senior’s body was found at about 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 6. The phone then traveled across the state. That day, Trooper Matthew Deck found White-Ferguson trying to abandon Senior’s broken-down 2022 BMW M3 on the Turnpike in Lancaster County. He was detained on a Philadelphia warrant and arrested for drug possession. On him, troopers found a lighter, the BMW’s registration and insurance card, a credit card in Senior’s name, and a screwdriver whose shaft carried a DNA mixture that included his and Senior’s.

DNA testing found Senior’s blood in the trunk and a mixture of both men’s blood smeared in the back seat. Audio recorded on White-Ferguson’s phone on Nov. 6 captured him saying that if police looked in the car he would go to jail, and that he got himself into a mess for being greedy. Searches on the phone showed him trying to learn how to change the car’s color and disable its GPS tracker.

His explanations kept changing, according to Trooper Noah Robinson, who first interviewed him. He told police Senior was a family member who loaned him the BMW. Robinson testified he gave four versions of how he got the car and four of why there was blood in it, including that it came from a dog. Senior’s mother testified that the two were not related and that her son would never lend his car to anyone, “not even his father.”

A person formerly held at Cambria County Prison testified that White-Ferguson said the two men had been romantically involved and that he was using Senior for drug money, and that when the money ran out he attacked him. “He put him in the back seat, beat him, cut his throat and set him on fire,” the witness said, adding that White-Ferguson was taking the car to a Philadelphia chop shop when it broke down.

White-Ferguson objected repeatedly through District Attorney Jessica Aurandt’s closing and argued the evidence did not connect him to the crime. “To find me guilty with the lack of evidence of cold truth, your honor, would be unbearable,” he said. Aurandt called it “horrific violence” and said afterward that Senior’s family “has waited almost two years for some closure.”

Sources

Chicago, Illinois: Man Charged With Murdering Girlfriend Hours After She Reported Him for Domestic Battery Is Ordered Detained

Location: East Garfield Park, West Side, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA

Legal status: Charged. Connor G. Williams, 34, is charged with first-degree murder and murder in the commission of another forcible felony in the death of Keri Chappell. Judge D’Anthony Thedford ordered him detained pending trial at a hearing on Oct. 19, 2026, reported Oct. 20. Next court date Nov. 4. He is presumed innocent until convicted.

At about noon on Friday, Oct. 16, Keri Chappell walked into the Harrison (11th) District police station on Chicago’s West Side and reported that her boyfriend had attacked her. Shortly after midnight, she was dead. Connor G. Williams, 34, is now charged with her murder, and a Cook County judge has ordered him held until trial.

Williams faces one count of first-degree murder and one count of murder in the commission of another forcible felony, according to a Chicago Police Department release dated Oct. 19. He appeared that day for a detention hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, where Judge D’Anthony Thedford ordered him detained, CWB Chicago reported on Oct. 20. His next court date is Nov. 4, Chronicle Media reported. Williams is presumed innocent until convicted. The account below comes from police reports and prosecutors’ detention filing.

Sources differ on Chappell’s age. Police and the Chicago Sun-Times gave it as 62; CBS Chicago and CWB Chicago, citing an arrest report and prosecutors, gave 59. The pair had been together about four years and had lived together in the same West Flournoy Street building for six weeks, prosecutors said.

In Friday’s report, according to the Sun-Times, Chappell said Williams “grabbed her by the hair, causing chunks of her hair to be pulled from her scalp” and headbutted her, cutting her lip. Prosecutors said she also told officers he had smashed her phone and punched her, and that she wanted to press charges, though she had not followed through the last time he was arrested. Officers escorted her home, cleared the apartment and offered to relocate her, according to the state’s petition. She chose to stay. Officers told her to barricade the door and said they would search the area for Williams.

Around the time she was filing the report, prosecutors said, Williams called a former co-worker for a ride, saying he had fought with his girlfriend. The man later told investigators Williams was drinking from a bottle of rum and making threats. He dropped Williams near the back door of the home about 7:30 p.m.

Williams then called Chappell’s daughter, who had been unable to reach her mother on the broken phone, prosecutors said. She began recording. In the calls, prosecutors said, Williams repeatedly threatened to kill Chappell, saying he had come home to find his Xbox destroyed and his mother’s ashes in the sink. “Why do I feel like I have to put your mother in the ground to feel like I took justice for myself and my mother?” he allegedly asked.

Shortly after midnight Saturday, prosecutors said, Williams himself called 911 to report Chappell unresponsive. She was found on the floor between the bed and a wall with injuries to her face and was pronounced dead at the scene. The Cook County medical examiner found she died of multiple injuries from an assault and ruled it a homicide. Police said Williams was arrested at 3:12 a.m. CBS Chicago reported he admitted to a recent argument with her.

Williams was arrested in February on a domestic battery charge involving Chappell, in which he allegedly threw their cat and punched her in the mouth, prosecutors said; the case was dropped when she did not appear in court. His record includes a 2021 attempted escape, a 2017 felony domestic battery and a 2015 aggravated domestic battery involving strangulation, according to prosecutors.

Sources

Des Moines, Washington: Nephew and Uncle Charged With First-Degree Murder in Killing of Youth Football Coach Abraham Logan, Shot After Trying to Stop a Fight

Location: Des Moines, King County, Washington, USA

Legal status: Charged. Derrick Laquan Stell Jr., 29, and his uncle Keenan Deshawn Stell, 42, were charged Oct. 19, 2026, by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office with first-degree murder with firearm enhancements, plus unlawful gun possession, in the Sept. 20 killing of Abraham Logan, 31. Arraignments are set for Oct. 22. Both are presumed innocent until convicted.

Abraham Logan, 31, a father and youth football coach, had spent Sept. 20 celebrating birthdays with family on Marine View Drive South in Des Moines. Near closing time, as they walked back to the car, he saw a man being beaten outside the All-Star Bar and, his family believes, called out to stop it. Soon after, he was dead in the street. On Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, King County prosecutors charged two relatives with his murder.

Derrick Laquan Stell Jr., 29, and his uncle, Keenan Deshawn Stell, 42, each face one count of first-degree murder with a firearm enhancement, The Seattle Times and KVI reported. Derrick Stell is also charged with first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, and Keenan Stell with second-degree unlawful possession; prosecutors say prior convictions barred both from having guns. Both were arrested and booked Oct. 15, MyNorthwest reported. They are in the King County Jail and are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday, Oct. 22, said Casey McNerthney, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office. Both are presumed innocent until convicted. The account below is from the probable cause affidavit.

The family had been at Waterland Arcade and then dinner at Jamar’s Bar, according to the affidavit as reported by KVI’s Ari Hoffman. Surveillance video outside the All-Star Bar shows three men confronting another man, who was pushed, punched, knocked down and shoved into a bush. Police identified the two Stells as two of the three. Logan’s wife then heard him say, “He’s got a gun!” Family members saw him run north toward his car with two men chasing and shooting.

A detective reviewing footage described Logan running up the center turn lane with Keenan Stell behind him. Logan turned and raised his hands while Keenan extended an arm holding what appeared to be a gun. Logan turned forward and fell near the sidewalk. Derrick Stell ran along the sidewalk with his left arm out, and the detective reported flashes consistent with gunfire from his hand. As Logan tried to get up, both men kept coming toward him, arms extended, before moving out of frame.

Officers arrived around 1:54 a.m. to find family members and others giving CPR outside a closed auto repair shop. Logan died at the scene. No weapon was found on him or nearby. Outlets differ on the casings: KVI reported 17 fired 9mm casings from two locations, The Seattle Times reported 11. Prosecutors said there was no evidence Logan knew either man or had threatened them.

Investigators built the case from surveillance video, identifications by corrections officers who knew the defendants, vehicle records and Flock license plate cameras that tracked a Chrysler 300 believed to have carried the suspects away.

Derrick Stell has convictions for a 2017 drive-by shooting, first-degree robbery and a 2013 second-degree assault, all in King County. Prosecutors asked that he be held without bail, saying a conviction here would be a third strike carrying a mandatory life sentence. Keenan Stell has a 2018 conviction for a felony violation of a domestic violence court order; prosecutors asked for $3 million bail.

“We recognize the loss Abraham’s family and friends continue to face,” Des Moines police wrote.

Sources

Fort Worth, Texas: Mother Charged With Capital Murder After Newborn Found in Motel Dumpster

Location: Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas, USA

Legal status: Charged. Avia Lynette Cantrell, 23, is charged with capital murder of a person under 10 years old. Her boyfriend, Camron Kyjuan Baker, 26, is charged with abuse of a corpse. Both were arrested Oct. 19, 2026, and the affidavits were reported Oct. 19 and 20. Both are presumed innocent.

The bag had been in a dumpster outside the Drummers Inn on Camp Bowie West Boulevard in west Fort Worth for only a few hours when a homeless woman going through the trash opened it on Sunday evening, Oct. 18, 2026. Inside was a newborn girl. She and a friend checked the bag again, told someone at the motel and borrowed a phone to call 911, according to an arrest affidavit described by CBS News Texas. Police were called at about 8:40 p.m. CPR was attempted and the infant was taken to Cook Children’s Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. Police told FOX 4 the baby had been dead for an extended time.

By Monday night, the baby’s mother was charged with capital murder. Avia Lynette Cantrell, 23, is accused of killing the infant on Oct. 14 in the room where she lived at the motel, according to her arrest warrant affidavit. Her boyfriend, Camron Kyjuan Baker, 26, was arrested Monday and charged with abuse of a corpse. The account below comes from police affidavits and has not been tested in court.

On Monday, detectives returned to the motel to review surveillance video. At about the same time, Cantrell’s sister-in-law asked police for a welfare check, saying Cantrell was pregnant and due soon. An officer who spoke with Cantrell wrote that she “seemed nervous” and denied being pregnant, CBS News Texas reported. Surveillance footage from June 2026 showed her with a larger stomach, police said. Video from Sunday afternoon showed a woman carrying a box with items including an infant car seat to the dumpster where the baby was found. The motel manager identified the woman as Cantrell.

Cantrell had lived at the motel for about two years with Baker and her children, according to the affidavit. She initially denied being pregnant or having anything to do with the baby’s death. Then, police said, she acknowledged that she gave birth to a girl at about 7 a.m. on Oct. 14 in the room’s bathtub, which was filled with water. According to the affidavit, she told detectives the baby was moving after birth but that she left her “face down in the water approximately 30 minutes before moving the child.” She said she assumed the baby was dead after noticing that her feet had turned white, then covered her and put her in a bag.

Cantrell called Baker at work to tell him the baby had died. Baker told detectives they did not seek medical help because they “didn’t want to catch a case,” according to his affidavit. Police said the couple kept the baby’s body in a bag near the toilet for about four days. On Sunday, Cantrell asked Baker to get rid of the body because she “couldn’t do it,” and he put it in a brown luggage bag and threw it in the dumpster with another trash bag, the affidavits say.

The affidavit also records Cantrell telling police that Baker had previously thrown away what she called a miscarriage. Police wrote in the affidavit that “this was not a miscarriage and the baby was born at full term,” as CBS News Texas summarized it. Her sister-in-law told police Cantrell had a history of having a baby that nobody knew about.

The Tarrant County medical examiner has not released a cause or manner of death. Police have described the death as a drowning, but that finding has not been confirmed by the medical examiner. Cantrell’s other children are with a relative, and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services told FOX 4 it is investigating and has a history with the family. Cantrell remains in the Tarrant County Jail without bond set, FOX 4 reported.

Fort Worth police spokesperson Cynthia Wood used the case to point to Texas’s safe haven law. “They can surrender that baby to any hospitals and fire stations,” she told FOX 4, “without any questions.”

Sources

Grayson County, Kentucky: Man Who Killed Girlfriend’s Mother With a Samurai Sword and Wounded Two Others Gets 35 Years

Location: Falls of Rough, Grayson County, Kentucky, USA (Grayson Circuit Court, Leitchfield)

Legal status: Sentenced. George T. Greer, 50, who pleaded guilty to murder, two counts of attempted murder and theft, was sentenced Oct. 20, 2026, to a total of 35 years in the custody of the Kentucky Department of Corrections.

On the morning of Feb. 5, 2024, in the Grayson County community of Falls of Rough, George Greer attacked three members of his girlfriend’s family with a samurai sword, then spent six hours running from police across several counties. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, a Grayson Circuit judge sentenced him to 35 years.

Greer, 50, was sentenced to 20 years for murder, 15 years on each count of attempted murder and five years for theft, structured to produce a total of 35 years, Kentucky State Police Post 4 spokesman Trooper Bryan Washer said, according to WLKY and K105. The outlets differ on when he pleaded: WBKO reported the plea was entered July 7, and WLKY said he pleaded “this past summer,” while K105 described him as pleading guilty Tuesday. As part of the deal, charges of first-degree burglary, two counts of first-degree fleeing or evading police and second-degree persistent felony offender were dismissed without prejudice, WBKO reported. He had initially pleaded not guilty to all of it.

Teresa Boles, 59, the mother of Greer’s girlfriend, was found dead in the yard when troopers arrived, WLKY reported. Joseph Boles, 60, the girlfriend’s father, suffered life-threatening injuries. Greer’s girlfriend was also hurt; outlets spell her first name Laura (K105) and Lauren (WBKO).

According to his arrest citation, quoted by K105, Greer “admitted being under the influence of drugs and admitted to killing one female and assaulting another female and a male with a samurai sword.” The attack happened about 7:15 a.m., at Greer’s home, according to WLKY’s account of the state police findings.

The citation traces the next six hours. Greer took a 2008 Chrysler Town & Country minivan from the home and fled. He broke into a residence and stole clothing. He drove onto farm property and crashed. He ran from officers and troopers on foot, then stole a Chevrolet Impala from another residence in Short Creek. Grayson County Jailer Jason Woosley spotted him on Owensboro Road, Highway 54, and gave chase, K105 reported. Greer got the Impala stuck in the mud on a farm, fled on foot again and was finally arrested at 1:28 p.m. and lodged in the Grayson County Detention Center. Added together, the individual terms come to 55 years; the court ran them so that the total is 35. WBKO reported the pursuit crossed into Edmonson County.

The manhunt drew the Grayson County Sheriff’s Office; Constable Mark Stanton, the first officer on scene; the Leitchfield and Clarkson police departments; Kentucky State Police and its Aircraft Support Branch; Kentucky Fish and Wildlife; and the sheriff’s offices of Breckinridge, Ohio and Edmonson counties, according to K105. Washer was the chief investigator.

“While today’s sentence cannot change what happened or bring Teresa Boles back, it holds Greer accountable for his actions and provides a measure of closure for the victims and their families,” Washer wrote on Facebook after the hearing.

KSP released a photograph of Greer in the courtroom Tuesday. The theft count covered property valued at more than $1,000 and less than $10,000, according to WBKO.

Sources

Honolulu, Hawaii: Man Charged in Young Street Stabbing Texted Ex-Girlfriend He “Took Care of Some Old Business,” Court Papers Say

Location: Makiki, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, USA

Legal status: Charged. Orion Satori, 47, was charged Oct. 19, 2026, with second-degree murder in the Oct. 16 stabbing death of a 42-year-old man on Young Street. He made his initial court appearance Oct. 20, is held on $1 million bail, and is due back for a preliminary hearing Oct. 22. He is presumed innocent until convicted.

The day after a 42-year-old man was stabbed to death in a Makiki carport, the man now charged with killing him sent his ex-girlfriend a text, according to court documents: he had “took care of some old business,” as a birthday gift to her. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, Orion Satori, 47, made his first court appearance on a charge of second-degree murder, Hawaii News Now reported.

Satori sat beside counsel, mostly blocked from news cameras. Bail stands at $1 million, and a preliminary hearing is set for Thursday, Oct. 22. He is presumed innocent until convicted, and what follows is the police and court-document account, not yet tested.

Honolulu EMS was called about 8:20 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 16, to the 1100 block of Young Street, near the Ward area, KITV reported. Officers found the man in the carport of a home with multiple stab wounds to his neck and chest. He was taken in critical condition to the Queen’s Medical Center and died there. The Honolulu medical examiner found the cause of death was “multiple sharp force injuries” and ruled it a homicide. Hawaii News Now reported that court records identify him as Kiril Stoimenov; police said the medical examiner would release his identity.

According to Lt. Deena Thoemmes of HPD’s Criminal Investigation Division, surveillance footage shows Satori arriving in the area around 6:30 p.m. and staying nearby until about 8:17 p.m., when he confronted the man and stabbed him several times. He fled ewa on Young Street, then mauka on Pensacola Street. Detectives from the Homicide and Strategic Enforcement Detail and the Forensic Video Unit went through hours of footage and interviewed witnesses. District 1 officers arrested Satori on South King Street at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17. He was charged Monday, Oct. 19, the Star-Advertiser reported.

One of those witnesses was his ex-girlfriend. “She reported that Satori made statements indicating his involvement in the stabbing, and connected his actions to an allegation that the victim had previously committed against her,” Thoemmes said. Police have not said what that allegation is; Thoemmes told the Star-Advertiser it is part of the investigation and will not be disclosed for now. She confirmed that Satori and the man knew each other and that the confrontation had to do with the woman.

Court documents cited by Hawaii News Now say the two met in person after the stabbing. Satori showed her a news post about it on his phone. She noticed a bandage on one of his fingers and asked whether it was related. He said it was “chaotic,” according to the documents. Her statement also said Satori knew she had previously been the victim of a crime committed by the dead man.

Satori has no prior criminal record beyond a traffic infraction, according to court records. Hawaii News Now reported that he worked as a wedding photographer in Hawaii and Alaska.

“I wanna recognize the members of the community who provided surveillance videos which assisted greatly in our investigation,” Thoemmes said.

Sources

Kansas City, Kansas: Shawn Harris Pleads Guilty to Capital Murder in Killing of Wyandotte County Deputy Elijah Ming

Location: Kansas City, Kansas, Wyandotte County, Kansas, USA

Legal status: Convicted by guilty plea. Shawn Harris, 39, pleaded guilty Oct. 20, 2026, to capital murder. A charge of criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon was dismissed. Capital murder carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole, according to the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office. Sentencing is set for Dec. 18, 2026.

Deputy Elijah Ming went to the house in Kansas City, Kansas, on July 26, 2025, to keep a woman safe while she moved out. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, the man who shot him from inside that house pleaded guilty to capital murder.

Shawn Harris, 39, entered the plea in Wyandotte County District Court, the district attorney’s office announced, according to KCTV, KSHB and KMBC. He had initially pleaded not guilty. Under the deal, prosecutors dismissed a count of criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and will seek life imprisonment without parole, KCUR reported. That is the mandatory sentence for capital murder in this case, according to the district attorney’s office. Authorities had said last year they would seek the death penalty if Harris were convicted of capital murder. Sentencing is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Dec. 18 in Division 13. The district attorney’s office offered no further comment, KMBC reported.

The account of the shooting comes from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and police statements at the time. A woman called Kansas City, Kansas, police saying she was afraid for her safety while moving out of a home, and that a man had threatened her with a gun. Some outlets reported that the threat was made against friends who had come to help her. Ming, 34, and a KCK police officer went to the home in the Argentine neighborhood. As they reached the front door, according to the KBI, a man inside opened fire. The KCK officer was not hurt. Ming was hit and died at a hospital.

The KBI identified the shooter as Harris. Officers from both the KCK Police Department and the sheriff’s office fired their weapons, KCUR reported. Harris barricaded himself inside for about an hour before surrendering, KCTV reported, and KMBC reported he was shot by law enforcement. He was taken to a hospital and arrested on his release. He was charged with murder, later capital murder, and criminal possession of a weapon.

Harris had a criminal record in Wyandotte County, including convictions for theft in 2011, attempted aggravated battery in 2012 and aggravated battery in 2013, according to state records cited by KCTV. He spent much of the following 12 years in the Kansas Department of Corrections before his sentence expired in December 2024, about seven months before the shooting.

Ming had served with the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office for eight to nine years; outlets differ on the exact length. He left a wife and a young son. “We lost an amazing deputy, an amazing person,” Sheriff Daniel Soptic said after his death. “This community was robbed, this family was robbed of their time with Deputy Ming.” Police Chief Karl Oakman said the case showed the “far-reaching impacts” of domestic violence, adding: “Deputy Ming was in the middle of that, which law enforcement officers are on a daily basis.”

Hundreds attended his funeral. “A mighty man. A mighty husband. A mighty son. A mighty brother,” the Rev. Dr. Barry Settle said from the pulpit. The Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission later delivered a check to his family through its Surviving Spouse and Family Endowment Fund.

Sources

Lakeville, Minnesota: Judge Rejects Mental Illness Defense, Finds Jack Ball Guilty of Murdering Pregnant Sister Bethany Israel

Location: Lakeville and Rosemount, Dakota County, Minnesota, USA

Legal status: Convicted. Jack Joseph Ball, 25, pleaded guilty Jan. 21, 2026, to first-degree premeditated murder and first-degree murder of an unborn child. In a verdict filed Oct. 20, 2026, Dakota County Judge Bryce A.D. Ehrman rejected his mental illness defense and found him guilty. Sentencing is set for Oct. 22 in Hastings. Premeditated first-degree murder carries mandatory life without parole in Minnesota, according to the county attorney’s office.

Bethany Ann Israel went to her younger brother’s house in Lakeville for dinner at about 6 p.m. on May 23, 2024. She was 30 and between 17 and 18 weeks pregnant. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, a Dakota County judge ruled that Jack Joseph Ball, now 25, knew exactly what he was doing when he killed her.

Ball had already admitted the killings. On Jan. 21, 2026, he pleaded guilty to first-degree premeditated murder of his sister and first-degree murder of her unborn child, in exchange for dismissal of two second-degree murder counts, FOX 9 reported. The second phase of the court trial, held May 26 to 28 and June 3, dealt only with whether he qualified for Minnesota’s mental illness defense. There was no jury; both phases were heard by the judge alone in a court trial. In a verdict filed Tuesday, Judge Bryce A.D. Ehrman found he did not, KARE 11 reported. The judge acknowledged extensive evidence of mental illness and autism spectrum disorder but concluded Ball failed to meet the legal standard. “The evidence overwhelmingly establishes that [Ball] understood the wrongfulness of the act when he killed Ms. Israel and her unborn child,” Ehrman wrote.

According to the court’s findings, Ball admitted he began planning the killing in February 2024 and recorded those plans in journals. He arranged for his sister to visit when they would be alone and hid weapons in the house before she arrived, court documents filed Tuesday say. Prosecutors alleged, and Ball admitted, that he struck her in the head with a hammer. He also admitted he knew she was pregnant and intended to kill the unborn child. Charging documents said his journals expressed anger over the pregnancy and described Israel as “no longer innocent.” The judge wrote that the journals contained “detailed plans for murder” and that Ball “acted in accordance with those plans.”

When family members did not hear from Israel for several hours, their mother drove to the house at about 11 p.m. She saw Ball leave at high speed, went inside, found a large amount of blood and called 911. Lakeville police found a large pool of blood in the kitchen, what the complaint described as a “bloody saw, hatchet, and large, bloody, knives,” another bloody knife in the living room, and dismembered remains.

Shortly afterward, a Rosemount resident called 911 after a doorbell camera showed a man placing what appeared to be a body part on their front step. Officers found Ball in the backyard of a neighboring home, covered in blood, with a self-inflicted knife wound to his throat. He was taken to a hospital. More remains were recovered in the area, according to court records. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that Israel died of “complex homicidal violence.”

A Dakota County grand jury indicted Ball in January 2025 on two counts of premeditated first-degree murder and two counts of intentional second-degree murder. He remains in the Dakota County Jail. With the defense rejected, Thursday’s sentencing hearing in Hastings is expected to impose the mandatory term.

Sources

Lansing, Michigan: Second Hayes Brother Gets Life for Strangling and Dismembering Zacarri Taylor

Location: Lansing, Ingham County, Michigan, USA

Legal status: Sentenced. Marcus Lee Hayes, 37, convicted by a jury in September 2026 of first-degree murder and mutilation of a dead body, was sentenced Oct. 20, 2026, to life in prison, the mandatory term for first-degree murder in Michigan.

The killing of Zacarri Marquise Taylor was partly on camera, and the effort to make his body disappear was not enough to keep his killers out of court. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, an Ingham County judge sentenced Marcus Lee Hayes, 37, to life in prison for the May 2024 murder and dismemberment of the 25-year-old in Lansing, according to court records cited by WILX News 10. Hayes is the second of two brothers to receive a life sentence in the case. Outlets have spelled the victim’s first name both Zacarri and Zaccari; this card uses the spelling in the original court-document coverage.

A jury convicted Marcus Hayes in September of first-degree murder and mutilation of a dead body, the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office announced at the time. WILX reported then that the first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory life sentence, which is what the court imposed Tuesday. His older brother, Leonard Felton Hayes, was convicted earlier this year and also sentenced to life. A third man, Terrance James Jones, pleaded guilty to lesser charges of being an accessory after the fact to open murder and dead body disinterment. Some reports spell his first name Terrence.

The sequence began around 7 a.m. on Sunday, May 12, 2024, when Lansing police responded to a fight between Taylor and several other people near the 2100 block of Georgetown Boulevard. Officers learned that Taylor had been taken from the home to an unknown location by multiple people and might be seriously injured. He was later found dismembered.

Court documents obtained by WILX laid out what investigators said happened inside the apartment. A witness saw the Hayes brothers fighting with Taylor. A video of the altercation showed Leonard Hayes fighting Taylor after being hit by him, then strangling him on the living room floor. According to the documents, Taylor signaled that he was giving up and then became unresponsive, and Leonard Hayes kept strangling him.

Marcus Hayes told investigators that he then strangled Taylor himself and helped move him out of view of the apartment’s known camera and into the kitchen, according to the documents. Leonard Hayes wrapped Taylor in a bed sheet and carried him to his car. Marcus Hayes said he rode in the rear passenger seat with Taylor lying across the back seat. The brothers picked up Jones, who sat in the front and directed them to the home of an associate of his on Malcolm X Street.

In the basement of that house, Marcus Hayes said, the men discussed whether to burn the body. Leonard Hayes said it would be dismembered, and the men agreed, the documents state. According to the documents, Marcus Hayes did the dismembering. Police obtained a search warrant for the Malcolm X Street home and found Taylor’s remains there.

All three men were arrested quickly and charged with open murder and disinterment and mutilation of a body. Then-Lansing Police Chief Ellery Sosebee said at a May 2024 briefing that the altercation was not gang related and that all three were on parole for earlier crimes, including weapons charges and murder. Court documents listed prior convictions for each man: drug, concealed weapon and firearm discharge convictions for Leonard Hayes, fraud and controlled substance convictions for Marcus Hayes, and armed robbery and homicide in 2006 plus two counts of assault with intent to do great bodily harm in 2020 for Jones. Lansing Mayor Andy Schor described the case at the time as a domestic violence situation.

Ingham County Prosecutor John Dewane said in 2024 that the case was “very graphic” and “disturbing to hear.” He told WILX that people who commit serious violence “will be held accountable by my office.” With both brothers now serving life, the prosecution that began with a video on an apartment floor appears to be complete.

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Manhattan, New York: Jose Rodriguez Pleads Guilty to Murdering Ex-Girlfriend’s 19-Year-Old Nephew Ramon Alvarez in East Harlem

Location: East Harlem, Manhattan, New York, USA (New York State Supreme Court, New York County)

Legal status: Pleaded guilty. Jose Rodriguez, 56, pleaded guilty Oct. 20, 2026, to second-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, first-degree burglary and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Promised sentence: 18 years to life, set for Dec. 15, 2026.

Ramon Alvarez was 19 and he stepped in. That is the whole of the prosecution’s account of why he died, and on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, the man who shot him admitted it in a Manhattan courtroom.

Jose Rodriguez, 56, pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to murder in the second degree, attempted murder in the second degree, burglary in the first degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced. Under the plea he is promised a term of 18 years to life in state prison. Sentencing is set for Dec. 15, 2026. The murder count is a class A-I felony; the attempted murder and burglary counts are class B felonies; the weapon count is a class C felony.

The facts below are as Rodriguez admitted them in his plea, according to the DA’s office. At about 3 a.m. on April 10, 2024, he went to his 38-year-old ex-girlfriend’s apartment in the New York City Housing Authority’s Jefferson Houses, near East 112th Street and Third Avenue. Inside, the two argued. She told him to leave.

Alvarez, her nephew, heard the commotion and tried to intervene. At about 3:20 a.m., Rodriguez pulled a gun and shot him in the abdomen. He then aimed at his ex-girlfriend and fired, the bullet grazing her shoulder. Alvarez was taken to Harlem Hospital, underwent emergency surgery and was pronounced dead later that day. The aunt survived.

Rodriguez fled. He was arrested the next day in the Bronx.

amNewYork, reporting the plea, added a detail from the arraignment: prosecutors said then that Rodriguez had texted the grieving aunt after the shooting, blaming her. “You know it’s all your fault,” he wrote, according to the outlet. The same report described Rodriguez as having burst into the home and begun arguing at once, and characterized the court documents as showing he arrived “with ill intent.”

District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. framed the case around the victim’s choice. “Ramon Alvarez was brutally murdered while trying to protect his aunt from her ex-boyfriend,” Bragg said. “Jose Rodriguez fatally shot Mr. Alvarez, then shot at his ex-girlfriend, who thankfully survived but had to witness the murder of her courageous nephew. With this plea, Rodriguez has been held accountable for his actions, which devastated this family.”

The case sits with the office’s Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Bureau, within the Special Victims Division. Assistant District Attorneys Austin Minogue, the bureau’s deputy chief, and Kaitlyn Laurie are handling the prosecution under bureau chief Vanessa Puzio and Executive Assistant District Attorney Justin McNabney, chief of the Special Victims Division. The office credited the NYPD’s 23rd Precinct Detective Squad, including Detective William Dunn and Sergeant Tyesha McCloud, now of the 25th Precinct, and Detective Joseph Rivera of the Regional Fugitive Task Force, which made the Bronx arrest.

Two and a half years passed between the shooting and the plea. The ex-girlfriend, whom neither the DA nor amNewYork named, was not reported to have spoken at the hearing. Rodriguez has pleaded guilty and stands convicted; the sentence is not final until imposed in December.

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Phoenix, Arizona: Man Charged With First-Degree Murder After Woman Found Beaten Under Pickup Truck in Backyard Dies

Location: North Phoenix, Maricopa County, Arizona, USA

Legal status: Charged. Anthony Keith Errigo Jr., 54, was booked on charges of first-degree murder, aggravated assault and tampering with evidence in the death of Kiersten Fabiani, 61. He made his first court appearance Oct. 20, 2026, and is held on a $1 million cash-only bond. His next court date is Oct. 26. He is presumed innocent until convicted.

Kiersten Fabiani was found on Oct. 8 in the backyard of a north Phoenix home, under a pickup truck, unable to tell anyone what had happened. She died ten days later. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, the man police say put her there made his first court appearance on a first-degree murder charge.

Anthony Keith Errigo Jr., 54, was booked on charges of first-degree murder, aggravated assault and tampering with evidence, Phoenix police said. He is held on a $1 million cash-only bond and is next due in court Oct. 26, FOX 10 Phoenix reported, citing police and Maricopa County Superior Court. KTAR put the bond at $1,000,300. AZFamily described Fabiani as his girlfriend. Errigo is presumed innocent until convicted, and what follows is the police and prosecution account, filed at the start of the case and not yet tested in court.

Police were called at about 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 8 to a report of an injured person near 40th Street and Greenway Road. A 911 caller had found Fabiani naked, bleeding from the head and unresponsive under a vehicle in the backyard, according to court documents cited by AZFamily. She had deep cuts to her head and face. Officers found blood on several vehicles and on the ground across the property. She was placed on life support and died Oct. 18. Investigators determined her injuries were consistent with an assault, and her death was ruled a homicide.

Five people were at the property at the time, court documents say, and none saw what happened. Neither Fabiani nor Errigo lived there; the homeowner had hired Errigo to work at the house and let police review surveillance footage. According to the documents, the video shows the two walking into the backyard and Errigo later returning to rinse his hands and shoes with a water hose. About four hours later, police said, he went to a nearby storage facility in the same clothes, carrying an “unknown cylindrical object,” waited outside several minutes and was picked up by someone in a red Cadillac. Cellphone records placed him at the home at the time of the assault, though his phone appeared to have been switched on and off several times.

ABC15 reported that detectives said Monday they were still working to identify a suspect; about 24 hours later police announced the arrest. Detectives used phone data to track Errigo to a motel and followed his vehicle after he left. The outlets differ on where he was stopped: AZFamily reported the area of 29th Avenue and Bell Road, while FOX 10 and KTAR reported 27th Avenue and McDowell Road.

In custody, according to court paperwork, Errigo told police he got into a fight with Fabiani and hit her in the head several times with a vehicle jack stand, then punched her repeatedly. He said he washed his hands and shoes to “get rid of the blood that was spattered on him,” threw away his pants and shirt, and turned off his phone and left it at a friend’s house “so investigators could not track him.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutor Ashley Stetson said the autopsy found Fabiani died of blunt force trauma. “They also noted that she had multiple lacerations to her head, brain bleeding, rib fractures, and neck injury consistent with strangulation,” Stetson said, according to AZFamily. Police have not released a motive.

Sources

Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma: Remains Buried at Home Identified as Missing Man Troy Tolton; Fiancée and Her Sister Jailed

Location: Pink and Tecumseh, Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, USA

Legal status: Arrested. Agnes Crenshaw, 51, Troy Tolton’s fiancée, and her sister Monica Pacheco, 53, were arrested on complaints of unlawful removal of the dead and desecration of a human corpse and are held on $500,000 bond each. KOCO reported they had not yet been formally charged. Neither is charged with homicide. Both are presumed innocent. The remains were identified and details released Oct. 20, 2026.

Troy Tolton left the house south of Tecumseh around noon on July 31, 2026. He was supposed to pick up a trailer in Del City and then help a family member move in the Oklahoma City area. He never arrived at either place. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office said the Oklahoma State Medical Examiner had identified remains buried on that same property as Tolton, 47.

“He left that residence on July 31st, around noon,” Lt. Dakota Black, the lead investigator, said at a news conference, KOKH FOX 25 reported. “Unfortunately, he never arrived at either of those locations.” Tolton lived on the property, near the town of Pink, with his fiancée, Agnes Crenshaw, 51, and her sister, Monica Pacheco, 53. Both women are now in jail.

The people he lived with did not report him missing. “That was concerning in of itself, that the individuals living with him did not report him missing,” Black told KOCO. “It was one of Troy’s family members, and again, that was two weeks after he went missing.” His family reported him missing on Aug. 13 after weeks without hearing from him. On Aug. 15, Oklahoma City police found his vehicle abandoned and unoccupied near Southeast 104th Street and Peebly Road. A search of it three days later turned up nothing on where he was.

Investigators built the case through interviews, search warrants and electronic records, and eventually obtained a warrant for the property where Tolton had lived, working with the 23rd Judicial District Drug and Violent Crime Task Force. Capt. Jared Strand told News 9 that investigators found an area where “the ground had been disturbed,” began to dig and “located a deceased individual that had been buried.” They also recovered what the sheriff’s office called “numerous items of potential evidentiary value.”

An excavator is central to the case. According to the probable cause affidavit described by KOKH, Pacheco rented one on July 31, the day Tolton was last seen, and returned it Aug. 3. KOCO, citing the sheriff’s office, reported that the fiancée rented it. Black said investigators followed tracks on the property to the burial site.

The affidavit, as described by KOKH, cites “several inconsistencies” between Crenshaw’s account and the evidence, as well as limited inquiries about Tolton by both women. It also describes two earlier incidents: Crenshaw told investigators she and Tolton had argued days before he vanished, and a friend of Tolton’s told police he saw an argument between Tolton and Pacheco in which, he alleged, she fired a gun. None of those allegations has been tested in court.

Investigators said preliminary findings show injuries they believe are consistent with homicide, but the medical examiner has not issued a final report. “We have preliminary findings from the medical examiner’s office, but we don’t have definitives yet,” Black said. More charges could follow.

His daughter, Carmen Tolton, told News 9 that every call to her father went straight to voicemail. “My dad, he was in that woman’s yard the whole time, the whole time,” she said. She said Crenshaw had given away her father’s belongings, which the family has not recovered. The family has set up a fundraiser for funeral costs.

Sources

Carolina, Puerto Rico: First of Five Defendants Who Admitted Role in Killing of Police Sgt. Eliezer Ramos Vélez Gets 45 Years

Location: San Juan (Hato Rey federal court) and Carolina, Puerto Rico, USA

Legal status: Sentenced. Víctor J. Pérez-Fernández pleaded guilty June 10, 2026, to drug trafficking conspiracy and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking, and was sentenced Oct. 20, 2026, to 540 months (45 years) in federal prison. Four co-defendants who also pleaded guilty are set for sentencing Oct. 23.

Sgt. Eliezer Ramos Vélez was off duty when he saw people shooting along Avenida Román Baldorioty de Castro in Carolina. He followed them and called it in to fellow officers. While he waited for backup, the gunmen killed him in front of the Sabana Abajo public housing complex, according to federal authorities as reported by Primera Hora. He was 35. Primera Hora and Telemundo Puerto Rico dated the killing to March 2024. El Nuevo Día reported it as April, so the exact date is not given here.

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, the first of the five men who admitted taking part in that killing was sentenced. U.S. District Judge María Antongiorgi-Jordán in Hato Rey ordered Víctor J. Pérez-Fernández, known as “La Cone,” “Vitu,” “Vitikin” and “Enano,” to serve 540 months, or 45 years, in federal prison, Acting U.S. Attorney Héctor Ramírez-Carbó announced. Primera Hora reported he must also serve 10 years of supervised release and will begin his sentence at a prison in Atlanta, where the judge ordered him into education and substance abuse programs. Primera Hora described him as the leader of the drug gang “La Familia.”

Pérez-Fernández did not plead guilty to murder. Under his June 10 plea agreement, he admitted a drug trafficking conspiracy and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking. Primera Hora reported that six other counts were dropped, including the murder count that had exposed him to a possible death sentence. But according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, all five defendants admitted their participation in Ramos Vélez’s murder, and every plea agreement provides that the federal sentencing guideline for murder applies to them. Primera Hora reported that the agreed range was 29 to 34 years, meaning the judge went 11 years above its top. The judge acknowledged on the record that the court imposed a sentence above the guidelines and noted that he has the right to appeal, the outlet reported.

The other four are scheduled to be sentenced Friday, Oct. 23: Luis N. Isaac-Sánchez, the urban music artist known as CDobleta; Olvin O’Neill Concepción-Tapia; Daniel J. López-Vega; and Andiel González-Sáez. When they were indicted, then-U.S. Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow said the five faced possible life in prison and, if authorized, the death penalty. Puerto Rico’s own constitution bans capital punishment, but federal prosecutors can seek it in federal court.

The killing cracked open a much larger case. The murder charges were part of an indictment against 56 people that federal and local agents served in a predawn sweep across public housing complexes in San Juan, Carolina and nearby towns. Prosecutors described an alliance of drug organizations, called “La Alianza,” that agreed to a truce they called “La Paz” so they could sell heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, crack, marijuana, tramadol and clonazepam without fighting each other. Muldrow said the groups held meetings in the housing projects and appeared in music videos brandishing real guns “to project the power of the alliance,” and that they shipped kilos of cocaine to the U.S. mainland. Authorities said the network earned about $31 million.

Prosecutors also said “corrupt police” helped the gangs by watching rival gang members and using police databases. One officer, Fernando Luis Torres Galarza, was charged; his case is not resolved in these reports, and he is presumed innocent. Police Commissioner Antonio López Figueroa said at the time that Torres Galarza “wore the uniform but was never a police officer.”

Natalie Ramos, the sergeant’s sister, publicly asked last summer for the maximum penalty during plea negotiations. “We believe justice must reflect the gravity of this crime and the irreversible impact it has had on his children, his parents, his sister, his friends and the whole community he protected,” she wrote, in remarks quoted in Spanish by Primera Hora and translated here. The FBI investigated the case.

Sources

Santa Ana, California: Judge Cuts Gun Enhancement, Sentences Adrian Ayala to 27 Years to Life for Killing Gonzalo Carlos After a Fight

Location: Santa Ana, Orange County, California, USA (Central Justice Center)

Legal status: Sentenced. Adrian Ayala, 25, convicted by a jury Aug. 13, 2026, of second-degree murder with a firearm-discharge enhancement, was sentenced Oct. 20, 2026, by Orange County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Guerrero Macias to 27 years to life.

The law gave Judge Elizabeth Guerrero Macias a range that topped out at 42 years to life. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, she gave Adrian Ayala 27, citing chiefly his age when he shot Gonzalo Carlos in the head on a Santa Ana street three years ago.

Ayala, 25, was convicted Aug. 13 of second-degree murder, with jurors finding true that he personally and intentionally discharged a firearm causing death, City News Service reported via MyNewsLA. At sentencing he stipulated to a second enhancement, that he was out on bail at the time. The Davis Vanguard, which covered the hearing, reported that Macias laid out the options: 15 years to life for the murder, 25 years to life for the gun enhancement, and two years for the bail enhancement. She imposed 15 to life on the murder, struck the gun enhancement down to 10 years, and added the two, for 27 to life. She also imposed a $10,000 restitution fine.

The prosecution’s account, given by Deputy District Attorney Gerard Gully at trial, runs like this. A few minutes before midnight on Oct. 8, 2023, Carlos, 26, who worked in construction, was parked near El Salvador Park chatting with a friend when Ayala and another man rode up on bicycles. A dispute led to a beating. A woman skateboarding past, who knew Ayala as a former classmate, broke it up. Carlos drove off. The two crossed paths again at Fifth and Sullivan streets. Surveillance video shown to jurors showed Ayala, in a blue sweatshirt, pursuing Carlos’s car; Carlos appeared to swerve to avoid bullets. Gully said at sentencing that the recording showed three shots. One struck Carlos in the head and the car crashed into a wall. Ayala rode away. Carlos was unarmed. “An innocent man died because the defendant felt disrespected,” Gully told jurors.

Defense attorney Frederick Fascenelli told jurors his client fired in self-defense. He said the trouble started when Ayala and his friend asked Carlos for a cigarette, and that Carlos then drove around with his headlights off “just like a shark looking for a second bite.” Ayala, he said, opened fire “in fear,” thinking he would be run over. Gully’s answer at sentencing: “He believes he felt threatened, that’s because he assaulted this man for no reason.” Questioned by police, Ayala first said he was elsewhere, then admitted being there but denied shooting.

Ayala had bailed out on Sept. 5, 2023, about a month before the shooting, on felony gun and drug charges.

At sentencing, the judge rejected a defense argument that childhood abuse was a factor in the crime, but all sides agreed he was under 26 at the time; he was 22. The court received 14 letters about his ties and willingness to change. He left high school after becoming a parent young and has three children.

Carlos’s grandmother told the court, “I know it’s been three years, but for me, it happened yesterday.” His father said Ayala “has the opportunity to see his family again,” and his own family does not.

Macias told Ayala directly: “You were given an opportunity because of your youth for a shorter sentence.” His remaining felony cases go to another department on Oct. 23.

Sources

Seattle, Washington: Man Charged in Gas Station Clerk’s Killing Arrested in Chicago, Also Named in Kenosha Deaths of His Mother and Her Husband

Location: Seattle, Washington; Kenosha, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois, USA

Legal status: Charged in Seattle; person of interest in Wisconsin. Michael Anthony O’Neal Fleming, 33, is charged in King County Superior Court with first-degree murder with a firearm in the Oct. 13, 2026, killing of Graeme Dobbeck. He was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Chicago on Oct. 20. Kenosha police have named him a person of interest in the deaths of Rena O’Neal and Rodney Brushwood; no Wisconsin charges had been filed as of the latest reports. He is presumed innocent.

The security camera at the 76 station on Broad Street in Seattle recorded the clerk saying “good morning” twice. According to charging documents described by The Seattle Times, the man at the counter did not answer. He fired a handgun four times from 1 to 2 feet away, then walked out toward Broad Street, “not in any apparent hurry.”

A week later, on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, U.S. Marshals arrested Michael Anthony O’Neal Fleming, 33, in Chicago “without incident,” at about 7 p.m., according to Seattle police and WISN. By then he had been charged in Seattle with first-degree murder with a firearm in the death of the clerk, Graeme Dobbeck, 36, and named by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as a person of interest in the shooting deaths of his mother and her husband. His surname is spelled several ways in official statements and coverage; this card uses the spelling in the King County charges as reported by The Seattle Times.

The account of the Seattle killing comes from court documents. Video shows O’Neal Fleming circling the 76 station near Belltown at about 4:30 a.m. on Oct. 13, trying the locked entrance, then moving back and forth between the station and a 7-Eleven on Denny Way before walking into the 76 after 5 a.m. Police were called at 5:52 a.m. and found Dobbeck behind the counter with gunshot wounds to the head, neck and torso. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The register was open with a large stack of $20 bills still inside, and cracks in a nearby window suggested “fresh bullet impacts,” the documents say.

The station’s owner reviewed the footage with detectives and recognized the shooter as a former employee, in part by his “knock-kneed” gait, WISN reported. O’Neal Fleming had worked at 76 stations for four years, gave two weeks’ notice and worked his last late-night shift on Oct. 2. The owner said he left with “no unusual dynamics” and no known disputes, including with Dobbeck. Their last text exchange concerned a fuel supply receipt. Detectives traced him to the Ontario Hotel on Airport Way South, where the owner said he had lived since 2021 and planned to move out on Oct. 13 and fly somewhere. In his unit, detectives found a fired .38-caliber cartridge casing and a round. Records show he was the registered owner of four handguns. He has no known criminal convictions.

On Monday afternoon, Oct. 19, Kenosha police did a welfare check at an apartment after a caller said his employer had not been seen for days. Inside they found Rena O’Neal, 59, and her husband, Rodney Brushwood, 57, shot dead. Court documents said they appeared to have been dead for several days. Brushwood was not O’Neal Fleming’s father. One local outlet spelled his surname Bushwood.

O’Neal Fleming’s twin brother told police that recent texts suggested his brother was “erratic, delusional and in some sort of mental health crisis.” Before the Seattle shooting, the brother said, O’Neal Fleming had asked for their parents’ address, and he refused to give it. A recent text from their mother placed O’Neal Fleming in Chicago, which led investigators there, according to the documents and CBS Chicago.

King County prosecutors asked for bail of $5 million, and his arraignment is set for Nov. 2. Kenosha police said they will work with the Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office on extradition and to pursue charges in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin allegations have not been charged or tested in court.

Sources

Charlottetown, P.E.I.: Province Orders Independent Review After Lost Evidence Collapsed the Byron Carr Murder Case

Location: Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada

Legal status: Review ordered Oct. 20, 2026, by P.E.I. Justice and Public Safety Minister Bloyce Thompson. Charges of first-degree murder and interfering with human remains against Todd Joseph Irving, formerly Gallant, were withdrawn by the Crown the previous week. The allegations were never tested in court.

Byron Carr’s killer wrote “I will kill again” on his bedroom wall in November 1988. Thirty-eight years later the case has no accused, a knife and a towel are missing from police storage, and the province wants to know how.

P.E.I. Justice and Public Safety Minister Bloyce Thompson on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, ordered an independent review of the Carr murder investigation, CBC News and Global News reported. He directed the Office of the Police Commissioner to appoint a third party to conduct it. “This is a troubling situation for all those involved, particularly the friends and family of the late Mr. Carr,” Thompson said in a release. “The community deserves answers, and we need to ensure public confidence in our justice system. The resulting report and recommendations from this independent third-party review will be made public.” No timeline or formal scope had been released, CBC reported.

Thompson told CBC the review will focus primarily on Charlottetown Police Services but could widen to other Island police agencies and how they handle evidence. “Justice for Byron is important, and it’s something that isn’t going to happen, unfortunately, with this [case],” he said.

The order came a week after the collapse. On Oct. 13, the P.E.I. Crown Attorneys’ Office announced it was withdrawing all charges against Todd Joseph Irving, 59, who used to use the surname Gallant, saying it could no longer secure a conviction after Charlottetown police lost “extensive crucial evidence,” according to CBC. Irving had been charged in January 2024 with first-degree murder and interfering with human remains after police cited “significant forensic evidence,” and had pleaded not guilty. His trial was set for November. He is presumed innocent; the case against him was never heard.

The loss surfaced at a bail hearing in July, previously under a publication ban, when an officer acknowledged under questioning by Irving’s lawyer that the knife left at the scene and the towel used to strangle Carr were gone, CBC reported. Interim Chief Darren MacDougall has said police knew about the missing items as far back as 2007, when the cold case was reopened, and blamed a lack of consistent “property management systems,” Global reported. Police said the DNA material taken from those items was processed and stored properly, and that they believed it was strong enough on its own. MacDougall said last week he would welcome a review.

Carr was a 36-year-old teacher, popular, found strangled and stabbed in his Charlottetown home. The case sat unsolved until 2024, when police announced a break through advances in DNA technology.

Members of Charlottetown’s 2SLGBTQ+ community had pressed for the review. Dave Stewart, who lived in the city in the 1980s, told CBC the period after the killing was “a time of immense fear” and that a review should examine the role of homophobia in the investigation. Josie Baker of PEERS Alliance called it “a really extreme case.” MacDougall, asked last week whether homophobia existed in the force in 1988, said, “I would expect that it likely was.”

Sources

Edmonton, Alberta: Autopsy Confirms Justin Hunt Died of Multiple Gunshot Wounds Outside Trades College; Three Charged With First-Degree Murder

Location: Edmonton and Parkland County, Alberta, Canada

Legal status: Charged. Wol Akuei, 21, John Morris, 20, and John Ocwalla, 19, are charged with first-degree murder in the death of Justin Hunt, 28. Ocwalla is also charged with accessory after the fact to murder. All three are in custody and presumed innocent. Police released the autopsy result on Oct. 20, 2026.

The shooting at the Alberta Pipe Trades College lasted seconds. The chase that followed covered about 37 kilometres. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, Edmonton police said an autopsy had confirmed that Justin Hunt, 28, died of multiple gunshot wounds, and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. Three young men arrested on a highway west of the city the morning of the killing are charged with first-degree murder.

Police were called to the college, near 161 Street and 118 Avenue in northwest Edmonton, at about 8:30 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 16. Officers found Hunt with life-threatening injuries, and he was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after. Witnesses told Global News that a person in a grey sedan with tinted windows pulled into the parking lot, got out and opened fire. A student who was getting coffee from his vehicle said he heard “five to six gunshots” and at first thought something was exploding, until another student ran past and told him someone was shooting. Others told Global they saw a car leave the lot at high speed. Classrooms were locked down, and the college’s operator, the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 488, kept its buildings closed until further notice.

At about 8:45 a.m., Edmonton police asked Parkland RCMP for help with what was then a weapons complaint, the RCMP said. Officers spotted a vehicle matching the description, a dark grey BMW 325i sedan, eastbound on Highway 16. The RCMP Emergency Response Team intercepted and disabled it near Range Road 20, where the Yellowhead and Highway 16A converge west of Stony Plain. The suspects were taken into custody, treated at the scene for non-life-threatening injuries and handed over to Edmonton police. The eastbound highway was briefly closed.

Because the suspects were hurt during the arrest, Alberta’s police watchdog, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, was deployed to investigate independently. The RCMP said its own internal review will examine “training, policy, police response, and the officer’s duty status.” The force has not said how the injuries happened.

On Saturday, Oct. 17, Edmonton police announced that Akuei, Morris and Ocwalla had been charged with first-degree murder and remanded. Ocwalla faces the additional accessory charge. Police said they believe the killing was “a targeted incident” and that they are not seeking other suspects. The allegations have not been tested in court. Police have not described a motive or any connection between Hunt and the accused.

Homicide detectives are still trying to fill in the car’s route. Police are asking for dashcam or CCTV video of the BMW recorded between 8:15 a.m. and 8:45 a.m. on Oct. 16 at 118 Avenue and 160 Street, along Yellowhead Trail between 170 Street and Highway 60, and on Highway 60 from Yellowhead Trail to Garden Valley Road and Highway 267. When police seized the car, it had notable damage to the rear driver-side fender and taillight, and its licence plate was hanging at an angle by a single screw. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Edmonton Police Service at 780-423-4567 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

Sources

Elsipogtog First Nation, New Brunswick: Airport Arrestee and Third Accused Appear in Moncton Court in Killing of Hayven Francis

Location: Elsipogtog First Nation and Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

Legal status: Charged. Abdel Alcheikh Houri, 27, of Ottawa, and Brian Christmas, 38, of Elsipogtog, are each charged with first-degree murder. Kelsey Clair, 35, of Elsipogtog, is charged with being an accessory after the fact to murder. All three are remanded in custody and are presumed innocent. None has entered a plea.

The man New Brunswick RCMP stopped at a departure gate in Montreal stood in a Moncton prisoner’s dock on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, a week after Hayven Francis was shot dead outside a home in Elsipogtog First Nation. The day before, police had charged a third person.

Abdel Alcheikh Houri, 27, of Ottawa, made his first New Brunswick appearance in Moncton provincial court on a charge of first-degree murder, the Telegraph-Journal reported. He had been arrested on Oct. 16 at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport as he was preparing to board a flight to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, according to the RCMP. He appeared in Montreal by tele-remand the next day and was held there for six days so RCMP officers could bring him back to New Brunswick.

His lawyer, Ewan Lyttle, appeared by phone from Ottawa and told the judge he had met with the accused’s father, who asked him to take the case. Lyttle said he needed time to discuss it with his client, and the case was adjourned to Nov. 10.

On Monday, Oct. 19, RCMP arrested Brian Christmas, 38, of Elsipogtog. He appeared in Moncton provincial court the same day, was charged with first-degree murder and was remanded into custody, police said. He returns to court Oct. 26, a date set to give him time to apply for legal aid, the Telegraph-Journal reported.

The third accused, Kelsey Clair, 35, of Elsipogtog, was arrested Oct. 17 and charged the next day with being an accessory after the fact to murder. The Telegraph-Journal reported that the charge alleges she helped Alcheikh Houri escape knowing he had murdered Francis. That allegation has not been tested in court. She appeared by phone on Tuesday from the women’s jail in Miramichi and said she has a lawyer. Her case was put over to Oct. 28.

Because of the murder charges, none of the three is eligible for a bail hearing in provincial court. Each would have to apply to the Court of King’s Bench to seek release. At the Crown’s request, all three have been ordered to have no contact with each other or with eight other people connected to the case.

The RCMP’s account of the killing is brief. At 1:50 a.m. on Oct. 13, members of the Elsipogtog detachment responded to a report of a man shot outside a residence on Ball Park Street. Officers found him dead, and the Major Crime Unit ruled the death a homicide. At about 2:35 a.m., police sent an Alert Ready emergency message telling residents of Elsipogtog and nearby areas to stay inside with their doors locked while officers searched for a man believed to be armed and dangerous. No description was released. The alert was lifted at 6:15 a.m. On Oct. 15, police named the victim as 21-year-old Hayven Francis and called the shooting a targeted incident. An earlier police statement gave the wrong age, and the RCMP issued a correction. Police have not publicly described a motive.

Elsipogtog is about 90 kilometres north of Moncton. Bo Augustine, the First Nation’s administrator, said the community was relieved by the arrests after becoming “increasingly concerned about community safety,” CBC News reported. He called for mental health support, outreach to people’s homes and stronger cooperation with the RCMP, and said he hoped the charges could bring “some measure of closure” to the family. A voluntary overnight curfew had been in place in the community.

Francis’s obituary described a young man who played basketball, soccer and hockey, liked fishing and video games, and “above all” loved his family. “He will be forever loved, fondly remembered, and deeply missed by all who knew him,” it read. The RCMP said the investigation is ongoing.

Sources

Regina, Saskatchewan: Murder Trial Ends Before It Starts as Gunman Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter in Warren Crane Shooting at YWCA

Location: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Legal status: Convicted and sentenced. Skylar Ochuschayoo, 31, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Oct. 19, 2026, in Regina Court of King’s Bench and was sentenced the same day to 18 years, with about 15 years remaining after credit for time on remand. He had been set to stand trial for second-degree murder.

Warren Crane and his girlfriend had moved into the Regina YWCA to hide. A “Facebook beef” with Skylar Ochuschayoo had escalated in the days before, according to an agreed statement of facts read in court, and the shelter on McIntyre Street was where they went to stay out of his way. At about 10 p.m. on June 29, 2024, Crane was standing outside it with several people, including his mother and his girlfriend, when a silver Nissan pulled up.

On Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, the day his three-week trial for second-degree murder was supposed to begin, Ochuschayoo, 31, instead pleaded guilty in Regina Court of King’s Bench to manslaughter. Justice Michael Tochor accepted a joint submission from the Crown and defence and sentenced him to 18 years, or 6,570 days. With credit for time on remand, he has 5,508 days, about 15 years, left to serve, CBC News and SaskToday reported. Outlets spell his first name Skylar and Skyler; this card follows CBC.

The agreed facts, as described by CBC, came largely from the YWCA’s own surveillance cameras. Several people, including Ochuschayoo, got out of the Nissan. He was carrying a short long gun or rifle and walked toward Crane. Crane bear-sprayed him, and Ochuschayoo fired and missed. Crane sprayed him a second time. Ochuschayoo fired again, hitting Crane, 25, once in the head and once in the torso, and killed him.

The group left on foot to the Canadian Tire on Albert Street north, called a cab, and rode to the Four Seasons sports bar on Arcola Avenue. Cameras at the cab company and two businesses recorded the route. Regina police said officers were dispatched to the shooting shortly after 10:15 p.m. Police issued a Canada-wide warrant and released Ochuschayoo’s photo in July 2024, when he was charged with first-degree murder and possessing a firearm contrary to a court order. He was later arrested and held on remand. Before trial, the charge was reduced to second-degree murder.

Crown prosecutor Chris White told reporters the evidence did not support planning and deliberation. “There was certainly a hint of it in the investigation, but nothing we could say could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. He acknowledged that Crane’s mother was unhappy that the charge came down to manslaughter. Crane’s family attended but declined to speak publicly. Victim impact letters were read in court, including one from his niece, Abby Crowe: “I want him to be remembered for who he was to the people that loved him.”

Defence lawyer Zachary Carter said the severity of the killing justified a sentence well above the four to 12 years he said is usual for manslaughter. He told the court his client, who is from Big Island Lake Cree Nation northwest of Saskatoon, had a hard childhood and schizophrenia that went untreated until he was jailed, and that his mental illness and substance use were now being addressed. “Mr. Ochuschayoo is remorseful. He wishes to take responsibility,” Carter said.

Ochuschayoo, who stared at the floor through much of the hearing, spoke once. “I’m sorry for what happened. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that,” he said. At the defence’s request, Tochor recommended he serve part or all of the sentence at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon. “I conclude the sentence proposed is a fit sentence,” the judge said. To both families he said, “I hope you find peace.”

Sources

Latin America and Africa

Bogotá: Two men get 37 and a half years for the Halloween beating death of student Jaime Esteban Moreno

Location: Bogotá, Colombia

Legal status: Juan Carlos Suárez Ortiz and Ricardo Rafael González Castro convicted at first instance of aggravated homicide and sentenced to 450 months (37 years, 6 months) on Oct 19, 2026. Both have said they will appeal. Kaleidymar Paola Fernández Sulbarán, accused by prosecutors of instigating the attack, is a fugitive under an Interpol red notice and is presumed innocent.

A Bogotá judge has convicted the two men who chased down and beat Universidad de los Andes engineering student Jaime Esteban Moreno Jaramillo in the early hours of Halloween 2025, and sentenced each of them to 450 months in prison, or 37 years and six months. Judge 801 of the Bogotá Criminal Circuit read the guilty verdict on the evening of Monday, Oct 19, days short of the first anniversary of the killing, and found Juan Carlos Suárez Ortiz and Ricardo Rafael González Castro guilty as co-authors of aggravated homicide. Caracol Radio reported the written ruling runs to 114 pages.

Moreno was 20. On the night of Oct 30, 2025, he went with a friend to a university costume party at a bar in Chapinero, in the centre-north of the capital. According to the judge’s reconstruction, reported by El Espectador, he and his friend Juan David Cárdenas Ortiz left at about 3:25 AM on Oct 31 and walked through the area looking for a ride home.

The prosecution’s case, built by prosecutor Elsa Reyes of the Bogotá life-crimes unit, rested on a minute-by-minute reconstruction from security cameras, witness testimony and the autopsy report from Colombia’s National Institute of Legal Medicine. Prosecutors said Suárez intercepted Moreno outside the venue and struck him on the back of the neck. Moreno did not hit back. He and his friend walked west to avoid the confrontation. The two men followed them.

“The security camera records showed that the two men chased the student until they caught him at a corner,” the Fiscalía said, as quoted by Caracol Radio. “There, González Castro gave him a kick in the back that made him fall. Suárez Ortiz kept hitting him while he remained on the ground, defenceless.” El País reported that the cameras show Suárez with his face painted red and black and González wearing black rabbit ears.

The attack took place on Calle 64 at Carrera 15. Moreno was left unconscious. His friend went for help and a local security guard alerted police, who found him with severe trauma and constant bleeding. He was taken first to the CAMI Chapinero clinic and then to Hospital Simón Bolívar, where, El País reported, he died of cardiorespiratory arrest caused by severe injuries to his skull. Caracol Radio dates the death to Nov 1.

The judge rejected the idea that this was a fight between equals. In the ruling as reported by El Espectador, Moreno tried to leave, was caught again, and was struck repeatedly after he fell and could not get up. That sequence supported the aggravating factor of exploiting a victim’s defencelessness under Article 104 of Colombia’s Penal Code. The court also found the attack was made worse by its timing in the early morning, by two men acting together, and by an abject motive. In one video, people can be heard calling for the attackers to stop. Cárdenas stepped in physically several times to shield his friend.

The motive went back inside the bar. A witness testified that a woman dressed in black pointed Moreno out as an alleged harasser. Prosecutors have said that woman was Fernández, who allegedly told the men, “That’s the one from the club.” The judge said it was not the court’s job to decide whether any harassment happened. What the court found proven was that the defendants treated a third party’s accusation as permission to punish a man who posed no immediate threat. The judge cited a remark attributed to Suárez that he would hit Moreno again if the people around him egged him on.

The defence tried to split the blows, arguing the fatal ones were González’s. The judge held that both men took part knowingly in one continuous assault and shared responsibility for the result.

Suárez and two women were detained the same day. The women gave statements and were released. González fled to Cartagena and later surrendered there, according to El País. Neither man accepted the charges. Prosecutors have since named Fernández, 25, as the alleged instigator of the aggravated homicide. She remains at large under an Interpol red notice. Moreno’s family has said she may be in Venezuela, El País reported. The family’s lawyer, Camilo Rincón, called the sentence “a balm of justice” but is seeking 45 years.

El Espectador reported that the prosecution, the victims’ lawyers and both defence teams have all said they will appeal, with only the Procuraduría satisfied. Arguments were set for Wednesday, Oct 21, at 4:30 PM, after which the case goes to the criminal chamber of the Superior Tribunal of Bogotá.

Sources

Guarujá: Man sentenced to 40 years for stabbing his wife Milena Oliveira dos Santos at least 19 times

Location: Guarujá, São Paulo state, Brazil

Legal status: Convicted. A jury at the Guarujá courthouse convicted Liozélio Alves da Costa of qualified feminicide on Tuesday, Oct 20, 2026, and Judge Isadora Monteiro Moreira sentenced him that night to 40 years and 10 days in a closed regime. The verdict can be appealed; no appeal has been reported.

A jury in Guarujá, on the São Paulo coast, has convicted Liozélio Alves da Costa of the feminicide of his wife, Milena Oliveira dos Santos, who was 26 when she was stabbed to death in the home they shared in October 2024. The trial ran on Tuesday, Oct 20, at the Guarujá courthouse and lasted about 12 hours, g1 reported. Judge Isadora Monteiro Moreira of the 3rd Criminal Court of Guarujá handed down the sentence during the night: 40 years and 10 days in prison, to be served from the start in a closed regime.

The judge ordered the sentence to be carried out immediately and denied him the right to appeal in freedom, according to Santa Portal. She also set a minimum compensation of R$50,000 for Milena’s family, with interest and monetary correction. The seven jurors on the sentencing council accepted the prosecution’s case of feminicide qualified by cruel means and by a method that made it harder for the victim to defend herself; Santa Portal, citing the sentence, said the jurors also recognised a futile motive.

The killing happened in the early hours of Monday, Oct 28, 2024, at the couple’s home on Rua Soldado André Fernandes Júnior in the Jardim Mar e Céu neighbourhood. A preliminary forensic examination found at least 19 knife wounds, g1 and TV Guarujá reported: 11 in the back, four in the chest, two on the right hand, one on the left shoulder and one on the face. TV Guarujá said the investigating officer described the wounds to the hands as consistent with defensive injuries.

He did not call for help or give first aid. Accounts of what he did next differ in detail. g1 and TV Guarujá said he went to his sister’s house and then turned himself in; Santa Portal said he tried to reach his sister, could not, went back to the house and later walked into a Military Police base on Avenida Dom Pedro I at about 6 a.m. to say he had killed his partner. All outlets agree he confessed and took officers to the house, where they found her dead. His arrest in the act was converted into pretrial detention, and he has been held since.

In his statement to the Civil Police, as reported by g1, he said he had lunched with Milena at his mother’s house the day before, then went home and drank “until I got drunk.” He said he went out to buy and use cocaine, which led Milena to complain. She went to the bedroom and told him he was “drugged” and “had no control,” and that they were not together because he was a drug addict. He said he then took a knife and went to her, that she did not back away and came at him, and that he did not remember how many times he stabbed her. Those are his own words to police and were not accepted by the jury as a defence.

The couple had been together about four years and had resumed living together a few days before the killing after a separation, Santa Portal reported, citing police information; relatives told police the relationship was marked by frequent arguments.

At trial, seven witnesses were scheduled to be heard: four for the defence, two for the prosecution and one shared. Before the trial, defence lawyer Herbert Alencar told TV Tribuna that his client was not conscious of what he was doing because of heavy drug use. “He does not remember anything,” Alencar said. Nathalia Farias de Souza, the lawyer assisting the prosecution for the family, argued that he had full awareness, pointing to the fact that he led police to the scene himself.

After the verdict she said the family had celebrated. “Milena was a beautiful girl, full of dreams, full of goals, and she was taken from her family in a brutal, extremely violent way,” she told g1. “Finally we can breathe deeply and know the family will sleep with a sense that justice has been done.” Neither g1 nor Santa Portal reached the defence after the verdict.

Sources

Taxco: Two men sentenced to 67 and a half years for the 2024 feminicide of 8-year-old Camila

Location: Taxco de Alarcón, Guerrero, Mexico

Legal status: José Ricardo “N” and Axel Alejandro “N” sentenced on Oct 20, 2026, to 67 years and 6 months each for feminicide after conviction by a Guerrero trial court. A third defendant, a minor at the time, was convicted in August 2024 in the juvenile system and is not named here.

A Guerrero trial court has sentenced José Ricardo “N” and Axel Alejandro “N” to 67 years and six months in prison each for the feminicide of Camila, the 8-year-old girl whose killing in Taxco during Holy Week 2024 ended with a mob beating a neighbour to death in the street. The Guerrero State Prosecutor’s Office (FGE) announced the sentences on Tuesday, Oct 20, after the court’s hearing on sentencing and reparations.

Each man must also pay a fine of 81,422.50 pesos and 5,075,686.70 pesos in reparations to the girl’s family, the FGE said, as reported by El Universal and Excélsior. AFP, in a report carried by El Economista, put the reparations at about 271,000 US dollars per defendant.

The court went further than prison terms. It ordered Taxco’s municipal authorities to apologise publicly to Camila’s mother, who was blamed after the killing for supposedly failing to watch her daughter. The court found those accusations reproduced gender stereotypes.

The facts as the FGE has set them out begin on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, in the La Florida neighbourhood of Taxco de Alarcón, a town known for its colonial buildings and silver jewellery. Camila went to play at a neighbour’s house, where she had been invited to swim. When her mother came looking for her, the neighbour, identified by authorities as Ana Rosa, said the girl had never arrived. Security camera footage showed that she had.

That afternoon the mother reported Camila missing and began receiving anonymous demands for ransom money, AFP reported. Hours later, the girl’s body was found in a black plastic bag beside a highway outside the town. Excélsior reported at the time that authorities alleged José Ricardo “N”, then described as Ana Rosa’s partner, had carried the body out of the house in the bag and left it by the road. The autopsy at the forensic medical service in Iguala found that Camila died of asphyxia by strangulation. She was buried on March 29, 2024, at the Minas Viejas cemetery in Taxco after a procession of at least 500 people with white balloons.

The footage spread through the town before the case reached a courtroom. On March 28, dozens of residents blocked one of Taxco’s main avenues, went to the family’s house, and dragged out Ana Rosa and the men inside, beating them with sticks while local police did not intervene, AFP reported. Ana Rosa died of her injuries. Two men were hospitalised. Guerrero prosecutors opened a separate investigation into her killing.

By March 29, 2024, Excélsior reported, prosecutors had José Ricardo “N” in custody. A third defendant, a teenager at the time, was convicted in August 2024 in the juvenile justice system as a co-author of the feminicide and received five years of internment, an admonition and an order to make full reparation. With the two adult sentences announced Tuesday, the FGE now counts three convictions for the killing: two in the adult system and one in the juvenile system.

The case became a national flashpoint, both over violence against girls and over lynching in Mexico. AFP noted that experts tie the frequency of mob killings to a perception of impunity, and that Taxco, like other towns in southern Mexico, is hit hard by organised crime. Excélsior reported that the FGE identified Camila’s mother in its statement only by a pseudonym.

The FGE said the result reflected its commitment to investigating crimes against girls, adolescents and women. Neither defendant’s response to the sentence was reported.

Sources

La Plata: Neighbour detained in femicide of Lucy Rueda Batallanos as autopsy finds fatal brain bleed

Location: Lisandro Olmos, La Plata, Buenos Aires province, Argentina

Legal status: A 33-year-old man is detained and under investigation for femicide (homicide aggravated by gender violence). A guarantees judge granted the prosecutor’s detention request; questioning before the prosecutor was set for Oct 21. He has not been charged at trial and is presumed innocent.

A guarantees court in La Plata has ordered a 33-year-old man held in the femicide of Lucy Rueda Batallanos, 32, whose body was found on the morning of Monday, Oct 19, in a roadside ditch in Lisandro Olmos, on the semi-rural edge of the city. A preliminary autopsy found she died of severe head trauma with subarachnoid brain haemorrhage, El Día reported. Prosecutor Martín Almirón, head of Unidad Funcional de Instrucción No. 8 of the La Plata judicial department, was due to question the suspect formally on Wednesday, Oct 21.

The body lay in a ditch beside Avenida 66, between Calles 197 and 198. A passer-by spotted her and raised the alarm. Police and paramedics found no signs of life. Tiempo Real reported a visible blow to her forehead. Both Rueda Batallanos and the suspect are Bolivian nationals, according to Tiempo Real and 0221. Local outlets have published his initials, but not consistently, and the Ledger does not repeat them.

Investigators began by rebuilding her last night. On Sunday, Oct 18, she went to a festival called “Alta Fiesta” near Calles 208 and 52, which Tiempo Real described as a Bolivian community celebration. She was there with friends and relatives. One witness told investigators that at about 3 AM on Monday she left with another friend while Rueda Batallanos stayed behind, talking with a man, El Día reported. Two young people at the party said they saw her leave with a man and gave a physical description that shaped the search.

That description led officers of the tactical unit of the Fifteenth precinct to a man who lives about 300 metres from where the body was found. When police reached his home, according to the prosecutor’s filing as reported by El Día, he told them he was the man they were looking for, said he had been out dancing and drinking, and, in front of a witness, said: “It was me, I screwed up, and I don’t remember, I was too drunk.” Tiempo Real reported a cruder version of the same remark. 0221 stressed that this was a statement to police officers, not a judicial statement, and it does not stand in for his formal questioning.

A search of the house turned up clothing with bloodstains. El Día’s sources said the garments match the clothes described by witnesses who were with Rueda Batallanos in the hours before her death. They have been sent for forensic analysis. Tiempo Real reported that the weapon or object that caused her injuries had not been found, and that prosecutors ordered public and private security cameras along Avenida 66 pulled to trace both of their movements. Investigators have not ruled out a sexual motive, Tiempo Real said, but no evidence of one has been made public. 0221 reported that no motive has been officially stated.

The autopsy finding gives a cause of death but not the mechanism. Investigators still have to establish exactly how the injury was inflicted and under what circumstances she was attacked, El Día said.

Almirón asked the guarantees court to convert the man’s arrest into formal detention, arguing there was enough evidence to keep him in custody while the case proceeds. 0221 reported the court granted the request. The case is classified as homicide aggravated by gender violence, the legal definition of femicide in Argentina.

On Tuesday, her relatives marched in La Plata to demand justice. 0221 noted that the killing came days after the death of Gabriela Martínez, 39, in La Plata’s Hipódromo neighbourhood, a case in which the woman’s partner went to a police station and admitted killing her.

Sources

Ocaña: Two alleged ELN support-network members captured in the shooting death of patrolman Jainer Mena Mosquera

Location: Ocaña, Norte de Santander, Colombia

Legal status: Two men known by the aliases “Yhan” and “Morrocoy” were captured on arrest warrants for aggravated homicide and illegal possession of firearms, announced Oct 20, 2026. They have not been convicted and are presumed innocent. Police say both are also under investigation in the Oct 9 killing of social leader Oliver Sánchez; no charge in that case has been reported.

Colombian police have captured two men they accuse of being the gunmen who shot patrolman Jainer Mena Mosquera in Ocaña last month while he was guarding a vulnerable person. The National Police announced on Tuesday, Oct 20, that the men, identified only by the aliases “Yhan” and “Morrocoy,” were arrested on outstanding warrants for aggravated homicide and illegal carrying of firearms. Police have not released their full names.

The arrests came out of a joint operation by the criminal investigation section (Sijín) and police intelligence (Sipol) of the Norte de Santander police department, the Fiscalía General de la Nación and the Cesar traffic and transport section, according to La Opinión and Infobae. A third man, alias “Yefri,” was caught in the act during the same operation and is accused of manufacturing, trafficking or carrying firearms and ammunition. Police have not said where in Ocaña the arrests took place or whether weapons were seized from the two men.

The attack happened on Sept 21 in Ocaña’s Galán neighbourhood. Infobae, citing the police account, reported that Mena Mosquera was on a protection detail for a person deemed at risk, standing with a fellow officer near a private vehicle by a mechanic’s workshop between the Galán and Dos de Octubre neighbourhoods, when two men on a motorcycle opened fire on the premises. His colleague took cover inside the workshop and was not hurt. He was hit several times.

He was rushed to Hospital Emiro Quintero Cañizares in Ocaña and then transferred, because of the severity of his wounds, to a high-complexity hospital in Bucaramanga. He died there on Sept 26, five days after the shooting, La Opinión and Infobae reported. Infobae said he was four days short of his 34th birthday and came from Bojayá, in Chocó. (Vanguardia spells his first name “Janer”; La Opinión and Infobae use “Jainer.”)

The police case ties the two men to the National Liberation Army. According to the official account carried by all three outlets, “Yhan” has a criminal record stretching back about three years and allegedly belongs to a “terrorism support network” of the ELN’s Camilo Torres Restrepo Front, working under a commander known as “Zorrito” or “Mauricio,” with operations in Ocaña and Ábrego. Investigators allege that both men did surveillance on the security forces, watching Army and Police patrols and checkpoints and reporting their movements.

“These two individuals have a three-year criminal history belonging to the ELN’s terrorism support networks, collecting information to attack our officers,” Colonel Gonzalo Esteban Blanco, commander of the Norte de Santander police department, said, as quoted by Infobae. He said the detainees would answer for aggravated homicide and illegal possession of weapons. Those allegations are the police’s and have not been tested before a judge.

The investigation reaches past the patrolman. Police say both men are also being investigated for possible involvement in the killing of social leader Oliver Sánchez on Oct 9 in Ocaña. Police gave no details of that killing or of the role they suspect the two men played.

Police have not said whether the two men have appeared before a guarantees judge or whether prosecutors have requested pretrial detention.

Sources

Pretoria: Bail bid delayed for Crusaders biker charged with murder in Little Britain pub shooting

Location: Waterkloof Ridge, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

Legal status: Brian Wesley Smith, 45, is charged with murder and attempted murder. He appeared in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Oct 20, 2026; his Schedule 5 bail application was postponed to Thursday, Oct 22. He remains in custody and is presumed innocent.

The man charged with killing a Mac’s Motorcycle Club member outside a Pretoria pub with what police believe was a single bullet will have to wait until Thursday to ask for bail. Brian Wesley Smith, 45, a member of the Crusaders Motorcycle Club, appeared briefly in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, Oct 20, his second appearance on charges of murder and attempted murder.

He is accused of shooting Baden Watson dead and wounding Ruan van der Merwe, a fellow Mac’s member, outside the Little Britain pub in Waterkloof Ridge on the evening of Saturday, Oct 10. Maroela Media reported the shooting happened at about 8 PM at the pub in the Waterkloof Lifestyle Centre on Cliff Avenue. Police found Van der Merwe wounded at the entrance. Watson was declared dead at the scene. Outlets give his age differently, so the Ledger leaves it out.

The postponement came at the state’s request. Prosecutor JP Liebenberg told the court it would be “in the interest of justice” to hear the application later in the week, citing “certain reasons and discussions” with the defence “that the state is not prepared to share in open court,” Maroela Media reported. He confirmed the application will be heard under Schedule 5 of the Criminal Procedure Act. That puts the burden on Smith to convince the court that his release would be in the interest of justice. At the first appearance, Liebenberg said Smith had a lengthy list of previous convictions that had to be checked, and the state signalled it would oppose bail, The Citizen and Maroela Media reported.

The police version of the shooting is narrow and physical. Captain Johan van Dyk, a SAPS regional spokesperson, said the day after the shooting that preliminary information indicated only one shot was fired and one cartridge was recovered, and that the bullet was suspected to have passed through the wounded man before hitting Watson, The Citizen reported. The pub has said its CCTV covers the scene from three angles. In a statement summarised by NovaNews, the pub said the footage showed the shot was fired from about 1.5 metres while the men stood on either side of a phone booth. The footage has not been released because of the investigation.

Accounts of how Smith left the scene differ. The Citizen reported he allegedly fled on his motorcycle. NovaNews reported he handed himself over shortly after the incident. His first appearance was on Tuesday, Oct 13, when his attorney, Andries Nkome, asked that no photographs be taken of him or his legal team. A family friend told The Citizen that week that Van der Merwe was stable, sedated and in intensive care.

The shooting landed on top of a feud. NovaNews reported that the two clubs have been in dispute for about 18 months. A statement attributed to the Crusaders’ national legal representative said the conflict began when the Mac’s placed two former members in “bad standing” months after they resigned and joined the Crusaders, and claimed Crusaders members had been confronted by larger groups of Mac’s members. The Mac’s board, in a statement signed by Mannetjies Geyser, mourned Watson as “a father to two sons” and said, citing the pub and authorities, that “no altercation took place before the unlawful shooting.” Maroela Media noted this contradicted what police had said earlier. Those competing accounts are untested in court.

The pub has since banned all motorcycle club insignia from its premises. The bail hearing is set for Thursday, Oct 22.

Sources

Europe

Kharkiv, Ukraine: Appeal court upholds life sentence for Russian soldier “Altai” over executions of three Ukrainian prisoners

Location: Kharkiv, Ukraine (Kharkiv Regional Court of Appeal); crimes at the Vovchansk Aggregate Plant, Kharkiv region

Legal status: Convicted. Junior Sergeant Serhiy Tuzhilov, 36, a Russian serviceman with the call sign “Altai,” lost his appeal on 21 October 2026 against the life sentence imposed on 13 January 2026 for cruel treatment of prisoners of war combined with premeditated murder.

The Kharkiv Regional Court of Appeal on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, upheld the life sentence of Serhiy Tuzhilov, a Russian junior sergeant known by the call sign “Altai,” for his part in executing three captured Ukrainian soldiers at the Vovchansk Aggregate Plant in the summer of 2024.

Tuzhilov, 36, joined the hearing by video link with his lawyer, Roman Umanskyi. The defence did not contest the conviction, only the sentence, and asked the court to replace life with 15 years. The court rejected that. According to Suspilne Kharkiv’s correspondent in court, the judges allowed the prosecution’s appeal to add aggravating circumstances to the judgment. They partly allowed the appeal from the victims’ representative, Tamila Bespala, accepting the aggravating circumstances but refusing to raise the compensation.

“Behind every episode of this case are the lives of Ukrainian defenders who were taken prisoner and had the right to protection under international humanitarian law,” said prosecutor Mykyta Dalyoka, quoted by the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office. “Instead they became victims of brutal killings.” He called defending the maximum sentence “a matter of honour.”

The plant. Russia seized the Vovchansk Aggregate Plant during its renewed offensive into Kharkiv region in May 2024, and Suspilne reports that troops used it to hold and torture civilians. Tuzhilov served in the 82nd Motor Rifle Regiment of Russia’s 69th Motor Rifle Division. Interfax-Ukraine describes him as commander of a grenade-launcher section. Suspilne, citing the regional prosecutor’s office, says he was a rifleman in an assault platoon acting as deputy commander of the group based at the plant.

First killing. On 16 June 2024, according to the prosecution’s case as reported by Interfax-Ukraine, an unarmed Ukrainian grenadier lost his bearings in the combat zone and walked into Russian positions at the plant. He surrendered. Tuzhilov and others interrogated him and passed the information to their command, which ordered him killed. Prosecutors said Tuzhilov chose a soldier with the call sign “Kot” to carry out the killing, briefed him in detail and picked the place, a checkpoint inside the plant. The prisoner was shot in the head with an assault rifle while Tuzhilov kept watch outside.

Second and third. On 2 July 2024, two Ukrainian soldiers were captured in Vovchansk, brought to the plant and tied to posts. After Tuzhilov interrogated them, the commander gave the order to “send them to Bandera.” On 3 July, prosecutors said, Tuzhilov and “Kot” each shot one prisoner in the back of the head.

Capture and trial. Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) units took the plant on 24 September 2024 and captured Russian soldiers there, including Tuzhilov. He was notified of suspicion in June 2025, and the indictment went to court that August. On 13 January 2026 the Kholodnohirskyi District Court of Kharkiv convicted him under Article 438 of the Criminal Code, the war-crimes article, and imposed life.

Tuzhilov admitted the killings but would not say how many prisoners he had killed. “What’s the point of remembering how many people you killed? They come at night anyway,” he told a Suspilne reporter in September 2025. He said he acted on orders and that the prisoners would have died anyway for lack of food and water. He first went to war in 2023 after a robbery conviction, wanting to clear his record. He has asked to be included in a prisoner exchange and says he will not serve again.

Sources

Pristina, Kosovo: Serb former reservist gets 10 years for 1999 war crime against Albanian civilians in Ozdrim

Location: Pristina, Kosovo (Basic Court of Pristina, Special Department); crimes in Ozdrim and surrounding villages, Peja/Peć region

Legal status: Milorad Đoković (Millorad Gjokoviq) of Vitomirica/Vitomiricë was convicted at first instance on 21 October 2026 of a war crime against the civilian population and sentenced to 10 years in prison. His time in detention since June 2022 counts toward the sentence. He remains in custody until the verdict is final. The defence has announced an appeal.

The Basic Court of Pristina on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, convicted Milorad Đoković, a Serb from Vitomirica near Peja (Peć), of a war crime against the civilian population during the 1999 conflict in Kosovo and sentenced him to 10 years. The panel was presided over by Judge Donikë Shala-Abdyli, with Kushtrim Shyti and Vesel Ismaili, according to the court-monitoring outlet Betimi për Drejtësi as reported by Lajmi.net. The time Đoković has spent in detention since his arrest will be deducted, and he stays in custody until the judgment is final.

What the court found. Reading the verdict, Shala-Abdyli said Đoković, acting as a reserve police officer together with other Serbian police, took part in searching, beating and arresting dozens of Albanian civilians in the village of Ozdrim, RTS reported. “After three days of torture, the group was released, and others were sent to prison in central Serbia,” she said.

What he was charged with. The indictment, filed on 23 June 2023, was much broader. According to Lajmi.net, it accused Đoković of taking part in 1998 and 1999, as a member of Serbian police and military forces in Ozdrim and nearby villages, in killings, searches, beatings, mistreatment, arrests, torture, cruel and inhuman treatment, holding civilians in conditions of slavery, and expelling and deporting dozens of Albanian civilians, as well as looting and burning houses. It described regular army troops entering Ozdrim from the north along the Peja to Mitrovica road while mixed paramilitary groups and special units entered from the west, from the direction of Vitomirica, and opened fire on civilians. The indictment lists six Albanian civilians killed in the shooting, three wounded who were taken to hospital in Peja and later executed and buried in Lutogllava, and five more killed whose bodies were never found and who are still listed as missing. It charged him as a co-perpetrator under Article 142 of the former Yugoslav criminal code, the law in force at the time. Serbian outlets summarised the prosecution case as participation in the killing of eight civilians and the expulsion of dozens of Albanians.

The defence. His lawyers, Vasilije Arsić and Dejan Vasić, said they would appeal to the Court of Appeals, which they have 30 days to do. Arsić told RTS the defence had shown Đoković “did not take part in a single killing,” and Vasić said the court convicted him on only one count, the part concerning the unlawful detention of civilians, and acquitted him on “the two most important and serious” ones. The written judgment has not been published, and Lajmi.net’s report does not set out which counts led to the conviction. In July the court postponed the verdict at the defence’s request over inconsistencies in a prosecution witness’s statements, Blic reported.

Background. Đoković was arrested on 27 June 2022 and has pleaded not guilty. RTS describes him as a former registrar in the village of Goraždevac and the only Serb living in Vitomirica. Before his arrest he was in a legal dispute over the return of his property there, and a witness at trial said he had occupied land that had belonged to the witness’s great-grandfather. RTS said it was the seventh first-instance verdict handed down by the Pristina court this year for war crimes against Albanians during the conflict.

Serbian media, including RTS and Blic, describe the offence as an “alleged” war crime; Kosovo outlets report it as a conviction for war crimes.

Sources

Filton, England: UWE student jailed for life for murdering housemate Jamie Collins in garden ambush

Location: Filton, South Gloucestershire, England (Bristol Crown Court)

Legal status: Convicted. Zack Coughlan, 23, pleaded guilty to murder during his trial and was sentenced on 21 October 2026 to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 28 years.

Zack Coughlan, 23, was jailed for life at Bristol Crown Court on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, and ordered to serve a minimum of 28 years for murdering his university housemate, Jamie Collins, 21. Avon and Somerset Police said time spent on remand will be deducted from the minimum term; the court results listing published by The Law Pages gives a parole eligibility date of 15 January 2054.

Both men were final-year students at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) and shared a three-bedroom house in Cleve Road, Filton, on the northern edge of Bristol. Coughlan owned the house and charged Collins rent. Collins, a robotics student from Swansea, had two pieces of coursework left before he planned to go home at the end of April, where an engineering job was waiting for him.

Coughlan had denied murder. His trial was under way when he changed his plea to guilty, after the trial judge ruled that the partial defence of loss of control was not available to him. Mr Justice Linden told him the plea came “at a point in the trial when your conviction was inevitable.”

The planning. The court heard Coughlan prepared for weeks. On 27 March he bought black clothing and shoes. His phone held internet searches including “what corpse looks like.” On 8 April he went into a nearby alleyway and changed into black clothes, a ski mask and gloves.

The attack. He waited for more than 20 minutes for Collins to return from university. Shortly before 6 pm, as Collins opened the garden gate, Coughlan attacked him. The attack was captured on a CCTV camera that Coughlan himself had installed at the property, and jurors heard he later rewatched the footage five times. A post-mortem examination found more than 30 stab wounds to Collins’s front, back and neck. The judge said the injuries were “unsurvivable” and that, “perhaps mercifully, it would not have taken long” for him to die.

The cleanup. Coughlan left Collins dying in the alleyway behind the house and rode away on Collins’s own bike. He left it at a nearby retail park, walked to a duck pond and threw his bloodstained clothing into the water in carrier bags weighed down with bricks. The knife was disposed of on the same trip. At about 9 pm he returned to the house, put a pizza in the oven and played online games with friends. He later said he “had to disconnect.”

The 999 call. Just after 2 am he called emergency services and claimed he had just found Collins’s body in the rear garden. He told police masked attackers were responsible. The judge said he then “lied to the police in a calculating, cynical and manipulating way.”

The defence account. In evidence Coughlan said Collins had expressed anti-capitalist and anti-landlord views, resented paying him rent and had threatened to kill him, leaving him “no choice.” The judge rejected that account. “I do not accept your evidence that he did or said anything that made you believe he would be violent towards you in any way,” Mr Justice Linden said, adding that other evidence showed Collins was “a gentle soul who was averse to conflict and confrontation.” He said the court “will never know precisely why” Coughlan killed him, but that it was clear Coughlan had become “deeply upset by the realisation that Mr Collins disliked you.” He agreed with prosecutor Adam Vaitilingam KC that the killing was “a carefully planned and cold-blooded execution.”

Detective Chief Inspector Lucy Edgeworth of Avon and Somerset Police’s major crime investigation team said there had been a dispute over rent and differing politics, “but none of those things make any sense to why somebody would carry out such a horrific crime.”

Mitigation. Dan Pawson-Pounds KC, for Coughlan, said his client had no previous convictions and that friends were “utterly shocked.” Coughlan, who is half Danish and grew up in Cork, Ireland, told the court his childhood included physical violence from his father.

The family. In a victim personal statement, Collins’s stepmother, Lisa Collins, called Coughlan’s evidence “excruciating” and “full of lies,” an attempt to “discredit and defame Jamie’s excellent character.” She said police came to the family home early on the morning after the killing, and they had to wake his siblings to tell them. His father’s business later failed. “From now on, we will always be the couple whose boy got murdered,” she said. Collins was awarded a 2:1 degree posthumously, and his family attended the graduation ceremony in his place.

Sources

Girasole, Italy: Farmer’s life sentence becomes final, and he cuts his ankle tag and vanishes

Location: Girasole, Ogliastra, Sardinia, Italy (Corte di Cassazione, Rome)

Legal status: Fabio Fois, 62, was definitively convicted on 20 October 2026, when the Court of Cassation upheld his life sentence for the 2017 murder of Fabio Longoni and the attempted murder of Daniele Conigiu. He is a fugitive (latitante). He has consistently maintained his innocence.

Italy’s Court of Cassation on the late afternoon of Tuesday, 20 October 2026, made Fabio Fois’s life sentence final. By the time carabinieri knocked on his door in Girasole minutes later to take him to prison, he was gone.

Fois, 62, a livestock farmer born in Loceri and living in Girasole, had spent six years under house arrest with an electronic tag (on work-release terms, L’Unione Sarda said) while his case went through the appeal courts. According to La Nuova Sardegna, officers from the Lanusei carabinieri company had been posted outside the house, and they moved in as soon as the verdict came from Rome. The house was empty. Fois had cut off his electronic tag and disappeared. L’Unione Sarda said the carabinieri had been watching him for days. The search began at once and had found nothing by Wednesday morning.

The ambush. On the morning of 22 November 2017, Fabio Longoni, a 39-year-old farmer from Villagrande Strisaili, and his friend and business partner Daniele Conigiu were driving Conigiu’s white Audi near their sheepfold at Niu Abila, close to the Santa Lucia dam in the plain below Villagrande. A gunman lying in wait by the road opened fire with a shotgun. Longoni was hit in the aorta, ran, and died of internal bleeding. A pellet hit Conigiu in the leg. The attacker, masked and in baggy clothes, escaped in the Audi.

The motive. Prosecutors in Lanusei, led by Biagio Mazzeo, argued that the motive was revenge for the theft of two donkeys the previous year, a theft ANSA reported Conigiu admitted. Every court that has ruled on the case has accepted that motive. Testifying at the Cagliari Assize Court in November 2021, Conigiu said he was sure the masked man was Fois, whom he had known for years, from his build and the way he walked. “If my friend had not died, I would not have spoken,” he told the court, according to La Nuova Sardegna. Investigators had also bugged Fois’s car and recorded a confrontation between the two men near a bar in Tortolì in January 2018. Fois, who has a previous conviction for a short-term kidnapping in Loceri, was arrested in November 2020.

The appeals. The Cagliari Assize Court sentenced him to life in 2022 and awarded the families 240,000 euros as an interim payment. He declared his innocence in court, and his lawyer, Marcello Caddori, appealed. The Assize Court of Appeal upheld the life sentence, with six months of daytime isolation, in July 2023. The Cassation then overturned that ruling and sent the case back to another appeal section for some of the evidence to be heard again. On Tuesday, after the case came back to it, the Cassation confirmed the life sentence, making it final.

A second fugitive. Fois is the second man in Ogliastra to slip a tag this month. Roberto Arzu, 59, under house arrest in Arzana and under investigation for the July 2024 murder of Vincenzo Beniamino “Mino” Marongiu, vanished shortly before his own Cassation hearing and has been a fugitive since 6 October. La Nuova Sardegna wrote that the two escapes have reopened the debate over how well electronic tags work.

Sources

Mistelbach district, Austria: Man gets life for strangling his partner with a rope and hiding her in a root cellar

Location: Mistelbach district, Lower Austria (Korneuburg Regional Court)

Legal status: Convicted of murder by unanimous jury verdict on 20 October 2026; sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict is not final: the defence has lodged a plea of nullity and an appeal.

A jury at the Korneuburg Regional Court in Lower Austria on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, found a 48-year-old man guilty of murdering his 36-year-old partner, and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. Austrian coverage does not name the defendant or the victim, a German national. The verdict is not yet final.

The jurors answered the main question, whether the killing was murder, unanimously. The presiding judge said there had also been “completely unanimous opinion” on the sentence and that the harshest possible penalty was called for, particularly as a deterrent to others. He cited the defendant’s relevant previous convictions and the brutality of the killing as aggravating factors, and said the confession counted for little as mitigation: “You had no chance of denying the crime.” The prosecutor waived her right to appeal; the defence announced a plea of nullity and an appeal against sentence. The defendant, an Austrian citizen with several previous convictions for similar offences, had confessed fully at trial and pleaded guilty to the murder charge. His lawyer, Sascha Flatz, argued for a conviction for manslaughter (Totschlag) instead, calling it “a textbook example” of that offence and saying his client “saw red.”

The relationship. The pair met in 2022 and from 2025 lived together in a house in the Mistelbach district. The prosecutor told the jury in her opening that the relationship was marked by violence and arguments, and that both regularly used alcohol and drugs. Over several years there were incidents of violence in both directions, and police repeatedly issued barring and exclusion orders. Every one of those cases was dropped or ended in acquittal, she said, because neither would testify against the other. They “could not get away from each other despite the fights.” The defendant described it the same way: “Sent away, then we were back together. We couldn’t stand being without each other.” Prosecutors characterised it as a “persistently toxic relationship.”

The killing. The defendant told the court the days before 5 January were tense and included verbal and physical violence, and that his partner was restless and in a state of psychological crisis. Late on the evening of 5 January, he said, he took the dog for a walk to get away from the situation. When he came back, he said, she attacked him with a kitchen knife during an argument. He was still wearing his coat and was not injured. He admitted he disarmed her and brought her to the ground. “I was in absolute rage,” he said. He then strangled her with a rope. “From one moment to the next, the fuse blew,” he told the court.

The concealment. Afterwards he dragged her body into an earth cellar on his property, he said, “because I couldn’t bear the sight anymore.” He said calling an ambulance or the police “didn’t occur to me at all in that moment.” The body lay there for several days. Only some days after the killing did he tell an acquaintance, who went to the police on 13 January. The defendant then led officers to the body.

Asked how he now views what he did, he told the court: “It is terrible, I am disgusted with myself.” He said the precise legal classification of the killing was not for him to decide.

Sources

Sanski Most, Bosnia and Herzegovina: School caretaker gets 45 years at retrial for killing three staff at the Gimnazija

Location: Sanski Most, Una-Sana Canton, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Cantonal Court in Bihać)

Legal status: Mehemed Vukalić was convicted at a first-instance retrial on 20 October 2026 of three murders and illegal possession of a weapon, and sentenced to 45 years of long-term imprisonment. The verdict is not final and can be appealed.

The Cantonal Court in Bihać on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, sentenced Mehemed Vukalić to 45 years of long-term imprisonment for shooting dead the principal, the secretary and an English teacher at the Gimnazija secondary school in Sanski Most in August 2024. It is the second first-instance verdict in the case, after the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina threw out the first.

Klix.ba reported that the court imposed 16 years for each of the three murders and one year for illegally possessing the rifle. The combined sentence is three years longer than the 42 years Vukalić received in November 2025. The new verdict can be appealed.

The killings. Vukalić, then 61, worked at the school as a caretaker. On the morning of 21 August 2024 he walked into the Gimnazija carrying a Kalashnikov-pattern automatic rifle, an Egyptian-made Maadi “Misri” from 1988, with two magazines. The cantonal prosecutor’s indictment, published by BosnaInfo, gives the sequence. He went first to the first floor, where the principal and secretary had their offices, entered the office of the principal, Nijaz Halilović, and fired five rounds, hitting him in the chest, neck, abdomen and left hand. He then fired four rounds into the office of the secretary, Nisveta Kljunić, wounding her in the chest, upper arm and abdomen. Both died. He then went down to the ground floor, found the English teacher Gordana Midžan in a colleague’s office and fired five rounds, hitting her in the head, chest and abdomen. She died instantly. The indictment counts 15 rounds fired in all, the last when Vukalić shot himself in the chest. He survived after emergency treatment at the University Clinical Centre in Banja Luka.

The background. Investigators did not give a motive at the time. On the day of the shooting, Nezavisne novine, quoted by Blic, reported that Vukalić had been looking for specific people in their offices, and that a disciplinary case was under way against him over allegedly failing to carry out his duties. N1 reported that he had spoken to the principal about that case just before the shooting. People who knew him described him as quiet and withdrawn and said he had served in the war. He had complained to local journalists more than once that he was being bullied at work.

The first verdict and the appeal. Vukalić was charged with three murders and illegal weapon possession, and the Bihać court confirmed the indictment in November 2024. He expressed remorse during the trial, RTV USK reported. He was sentenced to 42 years in November 2025. In June 2026 the Federation Supreme Court annulled that verdict for procedural defects. According to RTV USK, the Supreme Court found that a defence expert opinion diagnosing Vukalić with an F22 disorder had no bearing on the case, because the evidence showed his actions were conscious, controlled and targeted, carried out with direct intent. It extended his detention and sent the case back to Bihać.

At an August 2026 hearing in the retrial the prosecution and defence set out their positions, and the court scheduled the next hearing for 8 September to hear Sutka Vukalić as a witness.

Sources

Schrozberg, Germany: Snack-bar owner gets life for shooting his wife on their son’s 18th birthday

Location: Schrozberg, Schwäbisch Hall district, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (Ellwangen Regional Court)

Legal status: Convicted of murder (Heimtücke, or treachery) and illegal weapons possession on 21 October 2026; sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict is not final; an appeal on points of law (Revision) can be lodged within one week.

The Ellwangen Regional Court on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, sentenced a 38-year-old man from Schrozberg to life in prison for murdering his wife, who was shot in the forehead behind the snack bar the couple ran together. The court identified him only by his surname initial, Ö., in line with German practice. His wife, also 38 and the mother of their three children, has not been named in coverage of the case.

The killing happened on 10 February 2026, the 18th birthday of the couple’s eldest son. According to the court’s findings, Ö. either lay in wait for his wife on a fire escape behind their doner kebab shop or encountered her there by chance. As she left the shop to walk to the family flat, he fired a pistol at her forehead from 20 to 40 centimetres away. She died at the scene. The court convicted him of murder on the ground of Heimtücke, meaning he knowingly exploited the fact that she was unsuspecting and defenceless.

The trial. The First Jury Chamber, presided over by Judge Bernhard Fritsch, heard the case from 11 August. The Ellwangen prosecutor’s office had charged that the killing was both treacherous and driven by base motives. Prosecutor Heth argued the shooting was planned for the son’s birthday and driven by jealousy and wounded honour, and called it a femicide. The defence argued for manslaughter, saying months of disputes over money had boiled over that evening.

The court took a middle line. It ruled out an argument immediately before the shooting, but it also ruled out a premeditated murder for base motives, describing the decision to shoot as made at short notice. The presiding judge said no single motive could be established and called the motivation complex. The marriage, the court found, had been broken down and marked by conflict for years.

The defendant’s account. Ö. stayed silent for the first four trial days. On the fifth, in late September, his lawyer Andrea Combé read a statement. He said his father sent him from a Kurdish village in Turkey to an uncle in Germany in 2004, at 16, and that the uncle arranged for him to marry a woman from the same village before he turned 18 in 2007. A first doner business failed in 2010. The couple moved to Schrozberg in 2012, opened a snack bar and later a bar, and ran gaming machines in the area. After the 2010 insolvency, he said, all businesses were put in his wife’s name.

He said the couple had agreed the businesses would pass to their son on his 18th birthday. After an argument that morning, he said, he took his gun “for self-protection” because he planned to empty cash from gaming machines to pay for a car for his son. He said his wife met him on the stairs, insulted him and said she would not sign over the businesses, and that he then drew and fired. He said he fetched his brothers, called police and let himself be arrested. A second defence lawyer, Michael Becker, pointed to a call Ö. made that morning to arrange collection of the car, recovered from his phone, as evidence the shooting was not planned.

Forensics and expert evidence. A psychiatric expert found no diminished responsibility, no delusions and no psychotic disorder, and the court held Ö. fully criminally responsible. The expert said debts, the insolvency and his wife’s reproaches had left him feeling inadequate. The trial was nearly derailed twice: a prosecution translation of phone conversations was found to be faulty, and a lay judge fell asleep while a firearms report was being read. A defence bias motion was rejected and the report was read again.

The trial was held under police protection after reports, which the court spokesman did not confirm in detail, that shots had been fired between the two families in Turkey.

Sources

Arezzo, Italy: Bricklayer gets 15 years and 4 months for shooting friend Gjergj Pergegaj outside a pizzeria

Location: Olmo, on the edge of Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy (Corte d’Assise di Arezzo)

Legal status: Convicted at first instance on 20 October 2026 of the killing of Gjergj Pergegaj; sentenced to 15 years and 4 months under the fast-track abbreviated procedure. Premeditation was excluded. The ruling can be appealed.

The Arezzo Assize Court on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, sentenced Edison Beluli, 35, to 15 years and 4 months in prison for shooting dead his friend Gjergj Pergegaj, 29, outside a pizzeria in the Olmo area just outside the city on the night of 20 March. Prosecutors had asked for 16 years. The court, presided over by Judge Anna Maria Loprete with Judge Elena Pisto and six lay judges, reached its decision after a long session in chambers.

Why not life. When Beluli was arrested in March he faced a premeditated-murder allegation that carried a possible life sentence. At the first hearing the court established that the prosecution did not intend to pursue premeditation; it had been included in the indictment request by mistake. That allowed the case to be heard under the abbreviated procedure, which cuts any sentence by a third. The hearing was held behind closed doors.

The two men. Both were Albanian nationals living in the Arezzo area: Pergegaj in Frassineto, Beluli in the Rigutino hills. They had known each other for years, had worked together in construction, had no criminal records, and their families moved in the same circles. Investigators say the friendship broke down over a woman. RaiNews reported that, according to investigators, Beluli fired after seeing his former girlfriend talking to the victim. Earlier reporting by Arezzo24 described her as Pergegaj’s former girlfriend and Beluli’s current partner. Sources differ, and the court has not published its reasoning.

The shooting. At about 11:30 pm on 20 March, Pergegaj stopped after his shift to talk to the woman near the restaurant where she worked, by the Olmo junction on Via Romana. Beluli arrived by car. A 112 call reporting gunshots came in at about 11:40 pm. According to La Nazione he fired four shots; two, to the neck and chest, were fatal, and another hit the pizzeria’s window. Arezzonotizie reported that the restaurant’s surveillance video, shown to the court, shows Beluli firing from behind Pergegaj and hitting him between the neck and shoulder. Red Cross volunteers who happened to be passing with a patient stopped to help, followed by a Misericordia crew and a doctor’s car. Pergegaj died at the scene. He would have turned 30 on 19 April.

The surrender. Witnesses saw the gunman flee in a white Audi, and police set up checkpoints on the main roads out of the city. About two hours later Beluli called 112 himself, said he wanted to surrender and gave his location. Officers found him waiting in his car near his home in the hills above Rigutino, still on the line to the emergency operator and admitting responsibility, Arezzo flying squad chief Davide Comito said at the time. He still had the pistol, which was held illegally. The woman was among the witnesses questioned that night.

His account. In his first night-time interview Beluli confessed to the shooting but denied jealousy. He said he fired four shots and had felt persecuted by Pergegaj for some time without reason. At trial his lawyers, Alessandro Serafini and Luca Turchetti, argued he acted on impulse because he felt threatened after earlier tensions. Lawyers for Pergegaj’s family, Mauro Messeri and Alessandro Mori, who joined the case as civil parties, argued it was an ambush. The court saw the surveillance footage of Beluli arriving and firing. Relatives were visibly moved in the courtroom.

Sources

Milan, Italy: Life sentence for the man who put babysitter Jhoanna Nataly Quintanilla Valle’s body in the Adda

Location: Milan, Lombardy, Italy (Corte d’Assise di Milano)

Legal status: Pablo Heriberto Gonzalez Rivas, 49, was convicted at first instance on 21 October 2026 of the aggravated voluntary homicide of his partner, Jhoanna Nataly Quintanilla Valle, and sentenced to life imprisonment (ergastolo). He was not in court. The ruling can be appealed.

The Milan Assize Court on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, sentenced Pablo Gonzalez Rivas to life in prison for killing his partner, Jhoanna Nataly Quintanilla Valle, a 40-year-old babysitter from El Salvador, and dumping her body in the River Adda in a suitcase. The investigation was run by prosecutor Alessia Menegazzo and deputy chief prosecutor Letizia Mannella. He was charged with aggravated voluntary homicide and concealment of a corpse.

Gonzalez Rivas did not attend. Quintanilla’s friends filled the courtroom with “Stop femminicidio” signs and her photograph, and met the verdict with tears and applause. “He thought she had no friends; instead we are a whole community fighting together,” said one of them, Marlene Gonzalez. “It is a pity he was not here to hear what he deserved. We fought for her, but not only for Jhoanna, for all women.”

The disappearance. The couple, together for about six years according to MilanoToday, shared a ground-floor studio flat near the Bicocca university. Quintanilla came home late on the afternoon of 24 January 2025 and, building cameras later showed, never walked out again. She was killed that night. On 28 January the cardiologist who employed her to care for her children called the carabinieri because she had not come to work. Officers who went to the flat found Gonzalez Rivas, who told them she was only a flatmate and had moved somewhere he did not know. He filed a missing-person report on 31 January. Investigators found the delay suspicious.

The footage. Building cameras showed him dragging a very heavy bag and loading it onto the back seat of his Fiat Punto. A licence-plate camera placed his car that night near a roundabout on the road from Inzago to Cassano d’Adda, about 30 kilometres away in the countryside near the Bergamo border. Prosecutors say the body was inside the bag.

The confession. He was jailed on 7 February 2025 and confessed. He said she died during an erotic game (“I squeezed her and broke her neck”) and that he panicked and left her in a shallow ditch near that roundabout. Searches there found nothing.

The body. On Sunday, 2 March 2025, two brothers fishing with their families saw a foot near the surface of the Adda by the Bisnate bridge, between Zelo Buon Persico and Spino d’Adda, and the shape of a woman’s body emerging from a suitcase. Divers from Turin freed the body from vegetation and recovered the case from the riverbed. No clothes, phone or documents were found.

The autopsy. At the Pavia Institute of Legal Medicine on 6 March 2025, pathologists found numerous bruises and clear signs of assault, no knife or gunshot wounds, and a probable cause of death of suffocation. The body had been folded into the bag, not cut up. Il Giorno reported the findings pointed to a bare-handed attack ending in suffocation, contradicting the account of an accident.

The motive alleged. Prosecutors said Gonzalez Rivas was in a relationship with another woman in El Salvador whom he had invited to move into the flat. “Today the dignity of Nataly has been recognised,” said Maria Furfaro, lawyer for the civil parties, who credited Quintanilla’s friends and employer for refusing to accept that she had simply left.

Sources

Ostuni, Italy: Judge keeps 28-year-old in jail over the shooting of Antonio Nisi in the old town

Location: Ostuni, province of Brindisi, Apulia, Italy

Legal status: Gabriele Leonardo Sorada, 28, is under investigation for voluntary homicide and illegal possession of a firearm. On 20 October 2026 a preliminary-investigations judge declined to validate his emergency detention but ordered him held in prison as a precautionary measure. He has not been indicted and is presumed innocent.

A judge in Brindisi on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, ordered Gabriele Leonardo Sorada, 28, to remain in prison while prosecutors investigate the death of Antonio Nisi, 34, who was shot in the narrow lanes of Ostuni’s historic centre before dawn on Friday, 16 October.

Judge Vilma Gilli, the giudice per le indagini preliminari, refused to validate the emergency detention order (fermo) issued on Saturday, finding no real risk that Sorada would flee. In the same ruling she issued a precautionary custody order in prison for voluntary homicide and illegal possession of a firearm in a public place. Sorada, represented by lawyer Vito Cellie, declined to answer the judge’s questions but made a spontaneous statement repeating that “it was not his intention to kill Nisi.”

How the death was found. Nisi was found lifeless in a lane near Piazza della Libertà on Friday morning by his girlfriend and others. Paramedics from the 118 emergency service tried to revive him. At first a medical emergency was suspected, because there was no obvious bleeding or visible wound. The external examination by forensic pathologist Domenico Urso changed that: he found a small entry hole near the right armpit. According to RaiNews and local reports, the bullet travelled through almost the entire chest and reached the abdomen on the left side, above the pelvis, damaging internal organs. The prosecutor’s office was due to commission a full autopsy on 21 October.

The night, as investigators reconstruct it. BrindisiReport, citing the investigation, reported that Nisi’s girlfriend told carabinieri that hours earlier he had received a disappearing voice message on her phone. Nisi recorded it on his own smartphone before it vanished. Investigators say the voice is Sorada’s and that it contains explicit threats, including death threats. Nisi then left home saying he was going to buy cigarettes. When he did not return, she video-called him; the screen showed Nisi and another person outside Sorada’s home. Worried, she went out and found his body.

According to that reconstruction, the shots were fired at around 2:30 to 3 am. A resident told investigators of hearing a shot in the middle of the night. Carabinieri from the Ostuni station and the Fasano operations unit, coordinated by prosecutor Laura De Stradis, found a small-calibre cartridge case and traces of cocaine at Sorada’s home, and seized a Fiat Punto later found abandoned in the countryside along with its contents. The pistol itself has not been recovered. Reports describe it as small calibre; most give 6.35 mm, while la Repubblica reported 7.65 mm.

The suspect’s account. Sorada could not be found for several hours, then went to the carabinieri with his lawyer. He admitted firing. He said Nisi had contacted him looking for cocaine or hashish, which he did not have, then arrived angry outside his house, threatened him and tried to get in. He said he fired to frighten Nisi away, that Nisi ran off and that he went back inside. That would explain, in his account, why the body lay some tens of metres from the house.

Prosecutors call that version minimalist. They say Nisi, although physically strong, was unarmed, and that Sorada allegedly fired toward his own front door from inside, at least aware that he could hit Nisi. That is the basis for the voluntary homicide allegation. Other people were present that night and have been questioned as witnesses. BrindisiReport reported that one of Sorada’s friends gave an account investigators considered unreliable. Investigators say drug dealing is in the background, though the motive remains unconfirmed.

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Voorschoten, Netherlands: Mother gets seven years for the violent death of her 10-month-old son

Location: Voorschoten and Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands (District Court of The Hague)

Legal status: Convicted of manslaughter (doodslag) on 20 October 2026 and sentenced to seven years in prison, less time on remand. She denies using violence. The ruling can be appealed.

The District Court of The Hague on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, convicted a 34-year-old woman, identified by NU.nl as Faristha S., of the manslaughter of her 10-month-old son and sentenced her to seven years in prison. The court found she used “severe violence” on the baby at the family home in Voorschoten on 14 April 2023, causing brain damage that killed him. Prosecutors had sought nine years. She denies harming him and says he fell. The child is not named in the published judgment.

The emergency call. At about 6 pm on 14 April 2023, the mother and her husband called emergency services because the baby had become unwell. The 112 call recorded that he had fallen about half a metre, screamed, gone limp, turned blue at the lips and lost consciousness. With the dispatcher’s help, his father started resuscitation, and paramedics restored a heartbeat. At a hospital in Leiden doctors found serious brain injury. Treatment was withdrawn because of a very poor neurological prognosis, and he died on 9 May 2023.

The injuries. Doctors found bleeding beneath the dura, the tough membrane around the brain; extensive brain damage from oxygen deprivation; bleeding in the spinal canal; and extensive retinal haemorrhages in both eyes. Netherlands Forensic Institute pathologist I.H.R. Hundscheid carried out the post-mortem on 10 May 2023. The pathology report found that short falls and ordinary household accidents are in principle not enough to cause such injuries, and that there was no other explanation for the eye bleeding than violent dynamic or impact force to the head.

Her account. The mother told the court she was on the sofa reading the Quran when the baby pulled himself up on the sofa and fell. She also described an earlier fall in the kitchen days before, when his nearly two-year-old brother jumped on his baby walker, and pointed to two congenital heart conditions. NFI paediatrician H.C. Terlingen ruled out birth defects and known disease as explanations, found the heart arrest more likely to be caused by a breathing problem than by the heart, and said a fall from standing could not produce the force needed. An independent German expert hired by the defence, S. Banaschak of University Hospital Cologne, reached the same conclusion: the bleeding required torn blood vessels caused by external force, possibly violent shaking, applied immediately before the collapse.

Why the court blamed her. Because such injuries cause symptoms within seconds to minutes, the court found the violence happened just before the collapse, when by both parents’ accounts only the mother was with the baby. The father was asleep in another room. The judges said they could not establish exactly what she did, whether hard shaking, a forceful blow or throwing, and found no full intent to kill. But they ruled she knowingly accepted the considerable chance that such force on a baby would be fatal. Intercepted conversations in which her husband appeared to coach her on what to say, and spoke of “keeping it secret,” did not point to anyone else, the court said.

The sentence. S. was arrested on 6 March 2024 and has been held since. She had no criminal record, and a psychiatric report found no disorder. The court weighed her long pre-trial detention, and that she gave birth to a third child in custody who was taken from her shortly afterwards. But it held against her that she “gave no openness,” leaving the family still not knowing what happened to the boy. Judge V.J. de Haan presided.

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Talitsa, Russia: Man gets 16 years for strangling a 9-year-old witness in 1999

Location: Kuznetsovsky settlement, Talitsa district, Sverdlovsk region, Russia (Talitsa District Court)

Legal status: Convicted on 20 October 2026 of murdering a minor in connection with her performance of a public duty and combined with abduction (Criminal Code Art. 105, part 2, points “b” and “v”). Sentenced to 16 years in a strict-regime penal colony and a 50,000 rouble fine.

A court in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, sentenced Igor Rukhlov, born in 1976, to 16 years in a strict-regime penal colony for murdering a 9-year-old girl in August 1999. Prosecutors say she was killed because she had testified in a murder case. The Talitsa District Court also fined him 50,000 roubles and ordered him to pay 3 million roubles in compensation for moral harm to the girl’s relatives.

Russian official releases do not name the child. The regional news site Ekaterinburg.com identifies her as Lena.

The earlier case. According to the Sverdlovsk regional prosecutor’s office and the regional Investigative Committee, in 1999 the girl gave evidence in court in a case over the killing of a local man in the settlement of Kuznetsovsky. Reports say she had seen men forcing the victim into a car and driving him away. Ekaterinburg.com reports the murdered man was her older sister’s boyfriend. Two of Rukhlov’s acquaintances were tried, and the girl vanished shortly after they were sentenced.

The motive the court found. The prosecutor’s release says that in July 1999 acquaintances told Rukhlov the girl had testified about his involvement in that killing. In fact, the prosecutors and Kommersant note, her testimony concerned a man who shared his surname. Fearing prosecution as an accomplice, the court found, Rukhlov decided to kill her.

The killing. On 7 August 1999, the court established, Rukhlov found the girl in a courtyard among the houses on Stroiteley Street in Kuznetsovsky. He grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder and carried her to a deserted patch of ground between two of the buildings, holding her with one hand and covering her mouth with the other. There, according to the prosecutor’s office, he used his physical superiority over a child who was helpless because of her age, squeezed her neck with force and kept her mouth covered, cutting off her air. The joint press service of the region’s courts said he held her until he was sure she showed no signs of life. He then carried her body to a vegetable pit in the settlement, put it in a sack and buried it, and left.

The missing-child case. A criminal case over the disappearance was opened on the mother’s complaint, RIA Novosti reported, but the girl was not found and no suspect was identified. For 26 years the case went nowhere.

The arrest. Detectives from the regional Investigative Committee and Interior Ministry reopened it as part of their work on unsolved crimes from past years. Rukhlov was arrested on 22 August 2025. According to the Investigative Committee, he confessed under questioning, described the killing in detail, said he repented and showed investigators where he had hidden the body. The authorities have not publicly described what led detectives to him.

By then he lived in the city of Pervouralsk, worked as a folding-machine operator at a private company and had a family with children. Valery Gorelykh, head of the regional police press service, said Rukhlov “surely did not even imagine that 26 years after the murder of a child he would be detained and brought to criminal responsibility.” Ekaterinburg.com reported that he had served several earlier prison terms for other crimes.

The court imposed the sentence in line with the position of the state prosecutor. The verdict can be appealed.

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Manzanares, Spain: Jury convicts Antonio Caba of murdering two businessmen and hiding them in wells

Location: Manzanares and Valdepeñas, Ciudad Real province, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain (Audiencia Provincial de Ciudad Real)

Legal status: Jury verdict of guilty on 20 October 2026 for two murders (asesinato). Sentence not yet imposed; prosecutors seek 46 years. A co-defendant was found guilty as an accomplice in one killing and of concealment in the other; two others were found not guilty.

A nine-member popular jury at the Ciudad Real Provincial Court on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, unanimously found Antonio Caba Vázquez guilty of murdering two businessmen from Manzanares who disappeared three years apart, Jesús María González Borrajo in 2019 and Juan Miguel Isla in 2022. The jurors, who began deliberating behind closed doors at midday Monday, returned their verdict shortly after 7 pm on Tuesday after a trial of about two weeks. They found he killed both men for money and hid their remains in wells on different rural properties.

The presiding judge will now set the sentence. Prosecutors are asking for 46 years in prison for Caba as the direct perpetrator of both murders.

The first killing, June 2019. González Borrajo, 54, worked in the gaming-machine business. According to the facts the jury found proven, he travelled from Vitoria to collect 14,000 euros in cash from the sale of a Mercedes in which Caba had acted as middleman. Caba already owed him more than 24,000 euros in personal loans. Caba arranged to meet him at a rented warehouse and killed him to keep the money from the sale. The jury cited as evidence the victim’s phone geolocation, calls and meetings between Caba and the co-defendant, unpaid promissory notes, tools recovered by investigators and the discovery of the remains in a well on a property in Manzanares that Caba used. The disappearance went unsolved for three years.

The second killing, July 2022. Isla, 58, vanished in July 2022. Caba had brokered a property deal for which Isla received a part-payment of 50,000 euros in cash from businessmen in La Solana. The jury found that after the money was handed over the two men drove to a property in Valdepeñas, where Caba killed Isla to keep the cash. Isla’s body was found in March 2023 in a well on a Valdepeñas estate.

How the cases were connected. The Guardia Civil’s Central Operational Unit (UCO) linked the two disappearances and took apart Caba’s alibi. Investigators used phone taps, geolocation and hidden microphones in Caba’s car. That surveillance led them to Isla’s vehicle in Albacete and picked up trips Caba made to watch the property where the body lay. On 13 October, the fifth day of trial, a UCO officer told the jury Caba was a “textbook psychopath” who showed “a lack of empathy” and “absolute contempt for people’s lives,” and said Caba planned Isla’s death and then tried to make it look like a voluntary disappearance. Investigators pointed to Caba’s debts and money problems as a possible motive. The jury also relied on forensic reports.

The co-defendant. The 2019 case broke open when the second defendant, Gaspar Rivera Escuderos, confessed, which led investigators to González Borrajo’s remains. By seven votes to two the jury found Rivera an accomplice to that murder, concluding he knew Caba’s intentions and was paid to help dismember and hide the body. In Isla’s case the jury unanimously found him guilty only of concealment: he helped move and hide the car and then the body, but did not know beforehand that a killing was planned. Prosecutors seek 19 years for Rivera, with a mitigating factor for his confession.

The defence. Caba denied both killings and blamed two unidentified third parties. Rivera said he helped only afterwards, out of fear and under threats. Two other defendants charged with concealment were found not guilty because prosecutors did not pursue a case against them.

Sources

Akşehir, Turkey: Man who confessed on live TV gets aggravated life for killing local “Nasreddin Hodja”

Location: Akşehir, Konya province, Turkey (Akşehir High Criminal Court)

Legal status: Convicted on 20 October 2026 of premeditated intentional killing, aggravated robbery and firearms offences; sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment plus 15 years. He had asked to be acquitted. The ruling can be appealed.

A court in the central Anatolian town of Akşehir on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, sentenced Kenan Yılmaz to aggravated life imprisonment for the premeditated killing of Mehmet Tural, 62. Tural was known locally as the “representative Nasreddin Hodja,” the costumed stand-in for the folk sage whose tomb is in Akşehir. Yılmaz, now identified in court coverage as Kenan Y., had confessed during a live television broadcast in June 2025.

The Akşehir High Criminal Court also gave him 12 years for aggravated robbery and 3 years for violating firearms law no. 6136, according to the state news agency Anadolu (AA). The local paper Pervasız reported a further judicial fine of 30,000 lira and said the verdict came at the sixth hearing. Yılmaz, held in custody, denied the charges at the hearing and asked to be acquitted and released.

His father, Dursun Y., tried without being held in custody, received 3 years for a firearms offence. AA reported that the sentence was suspended. Pervasız reported that the court deferred announcement of the verdict for him, a Turkish procedure that means it will not take effect if he commits no further offence.

The disappearance. Tural, who lived in Akşehir’s Doğrugöz neighbourhood, went missing on 1 April 2025, according to the Demirören News Agency (DHA). Gendarmes found no trace. Prosecutors assigned the Konya police homicide bureau, and his mother, Melahat Tural, went on a television programme to ask for help finding her son. He was missing for 77 days.

The money. Investigators found that Tural had sent about 200,000 lira in cash and gold worth about 160,000 lira to a woman he met on social media who promised to marry him. He then turned for help to Yılmaz, who lived in Istanbul and presented himself as an intelligence operative, DHA and NTV reported. Yılmaz had been in his home village near Akşehir on the day Tural vanished and was the last person known to have spoken to him.

The confession. For days Yılmaz appeared on the live programme and denied killing Tural. On 17 June 2025 he confessed on air. He first said that they had struggled, that he grabbed Tural by the throat and that the gun went off as he tried to turn the barrel away.

Detained during the broadcast and taken to the scene, he gave prosecutors and police a different account. He said they stopped at the edge of a cliff and argued because Tural asked why he had not brought the woman. He said Tural swore about his wife, so he took a pistol from his waistband. He described it as a blank-firing gun converted to fire live rounds, bought in 2015 or 2016. He said Tural saw it, turned to run, and he fired once. “I did not push him, he fell,” he said. He said he climbed down, found Tural dead, covered him with his black jacket and four or five stones, and left. AA’s verdict report states that Tural was shot in a vehicle; the location of the shooting is described differently in different accounts.

The robbery. Yılmaz said he knew Tural’s bag held about 200,000 lira. He took the bag, threw Tural’s phone into water on the road, broke the gun’s plastic grip behind a cold-storage depot, buried it and spent the money. He said he had given the pistol to his father to hide, and Dursun Y. was detained.

The remains. At the spot Yılmaz showed them, police recovered a skull with a bullet lodged in it and bones scattered by wild animals, and sent them to the criminal laboratory. Father and son were arrested by a duty judge after being taken to court on 18 June 2025. The father was released during the investigation.

Sources

Seferihisar, Turkey: Brothers get aggravated life for the shooting that killed police officer Mehmet Tozun

Location: Seferihisar, İzmir province, Turkey (İzmir 22nd High Criminal Court)

Legal status: Mehmet Salih Çelik and his brother Sedat Çelik were convicted at first instance on 20 October 2026 of killing a person because of the public duty they performed, and each was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment plus 30 years for wounding two other officers. Two co-defendants, identified only as B.Ç. and S.K., received 3 years and 9 months each. The verdict can be appealed.

The İzmir 22nd High Criminal Court on the evening of Tuesday, 20 October 2026, sentenced two brothers to aggravated life imprisonment for the November 2024 shooting in Seferihisar that killed police officer Mehmet Tozun, 38, and wounded two of his colleagues.

Mehmet Salih Çelik and Sedat Çelik, who were in custody throughout the case, each received aggravated life for killing Tozun “because of the public duty he performed,” and a further 30 years each for wounding the other two officers. Mehmet Salih Çelik was given an additional 1 year and 6 months for buying, carrying or possessing unlicensed firearms and ammunition. Two co-defendants who were free under judicial supervision, named in reports only by the initials B.Ç. and S.K., were each sentenced to 3 years and 9 months for “causing death by failing to fulfil the duty to report.”

The shooting. Around 8 PM on 20 November 2024, a plainclothes police team from the Seferihisar district police directorate went to a neighbourhood of the coastal town after a report of an armed fight. Anadolu Agency and Demirören News Agency (DHA) name the neighbourhood differently, as Çolak İbrahim Bey and Turabiye. According to the agencies, Mehmet Salih Çelik opened fire on the officers. Security camera footage, broadcast at the time, showed a car pulling up outside a grocery store on Turabi Street and the officers falling to the ground as they were shot.

Three officers were hit: Commissioner Furkan Hakan Aşkın, wounded in the arm, and officers İbrahim Gümüştekin and Mehmet Tozun, who were seriously wounded and taken to Dokuz Eylül University Hospital. Aşkın and Gümüştekin were later discharged. Tozun, a married father of two, died in hospital on the morning of 6 December 2024, 16 days after the shooting.

The funeral. Tozun’s flag-draped coffin was carried from his home in Seferihisar to the Fatma Tevfik Uyar Mosque, where the İzmir governor, the regional army commander and the provincial police chief attended the funeral prayers. He was buried in the Seferihisar garrison martyrs’ cemetery. Gümüştekin, still under treatment, was brought by ambulance and wheeled to the coffin. Holding his colleague’s photograph, he said Tozun had been so kind-hearted he would slip pocket money to a prisoner. Tozun’s mother, Asiye, told the coffin: “You were going to hold on, you were going to get back up.”

The charges. The İzmir Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office sought aggravated life plus up to 42 years each for the brothers, for killing and attempting to kill people because of their public duty, and up to 5 years each for B.Ç. and S.K. In their testimony the brothers claimed they had mistaken the officers for people they were feuding with, DHA reported. At the final hearing the prosecutor repeated his opinion on the merits and asked for convictions. The defendants asked to be acquitted.

The court convicted the brothers of wounding the two surviving officers. It did not convict them of attempted murder of those officers, the higher charge prosecutors sought. Neither agency report says whether the defence will appeal. The reasoned judgment has not yet been published.

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Langdon Hills, England: Uber driver cleared of murder, jailed five years for running over passenger Michael Ashton

Location: Langdon Hills, Essex, England (Basildon Crown Court)

Legal status: Hayadulla Turkmani, 53, was found not guilty of murder and manslaughter by unanimous jury verdicts and guilty of causing death by dangerous driving on 20 October 2026. Sentenced on 21 October 2026 to five years in prison and a seven-and-a-half-year driving ban.

An Uber driver who ran over a passenger minutes after the man vomited in his car was jailed for five years at Basildon Crown Court on Wednesday, 21 October 2026. A jury had cleared Hayadulla Turkmani, 53, of Langdale Gardens, Hornchurch, east London, of murdering Michael Ashton, 28, and of manslaughter, but convicted him of causing death by dangerous driving. The verdicts on murder and manslaughter were unanimous, the Echo reported.

The night out. Ashton, a plumber for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham Council, had been out for dinner and drinks in Hornchurch with his partner, Sophie Carroll, and his sister on 26 September 2025. CCTV showed Ashton and Carroll getting into Turkmani’s Toyota Prius at about 11:30 pm outside Frankie’s Wine Bar in Hornchurch. On the drive home Ashton was sick down himself. Carroll told the court she fetched baby wipes to clean the car after they arrived, and heard the two men arguing and saying “leave it.”

The collision. Shortly before midnight the couple walked towards their home in Rosecroft Close, Langdon Hills. Ashton turned around, and on CCTV played to the jury he can be heard shouting “whoa, whoa, whoa.” A neighbour, Ray Green, told the court he saw two people shouting at each other before the car accelerated towards Ashton, who was standing “four or five metres” away, at “incredible speed.” He said the car dragged Ashton underneath, then reversed and struck him again. “I closed my curtains, and I said to myself ‘What have I just witnessed?'” he said, before running to help. Carroll said she realised her partner was under the car. “I was hysterical, screaming. I called the ambulance straight away.”

The injuries. Prosecutor Andrew Jackson KC said the impact snapped Ashton’s leg and caused a brain injury when his head struck the ground. Ashton never regained consciousness and died eight days later, on 4 October 2025.

The two accounts. The prosecution alleged Turkmani ran Ashton over in anger after he was sick in the car. Turkmani admitted swearing at Ashton, which he said made Ashton turn and start “running towards me.” He said he was “panicking and frightened,” was trying to “escape” after a heated exchange, and did not see Ashton near the car as he drove off. The jury rejected murder and manslaughter.

The sentence. Judge Samantha Cohen said she was sentencing “on the basis that you did not know he was in front of you, as per the jury’s verdict.” But she told Turkmani he had “failed to pay adequate regard” to where Ashton was. “As you drove forward, you knew Michael was still in the close; you had no reason to think he’d returned home,” she said. “You should have seen him, and you should have stopped before you hit him.” She said he had shown a “complete disregard for the danger you posed.” He will serve half the term in custody, less time on remand, before release on licence, and is banned from driving for seven and a half years.

The family. Ashton’s mother, Jayne, described an “unimaginable loss” and said the family was “serving a life sentence.” Carroll said, “Living with the pain of missing Michael is unbearable.” Detective Inspector Stewart Eastbrook of Essex Police said Turkmani’s job had been to deliver the couple home safely. “Instead, he reacted angrily after Michael became unwell and this escalated into violence and Michael was fatally injured,” he said.

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Asia and Oceania

Hong Kong: Abby Choi murder trial hears of meat mincer purchase and chainsaw sounds from the village house

Location: Hong Kong (High Court)

Legal status: Alex Kwong, 31, Kwong Kau, 68, and Anthony Kwong, 35, are charged with murdering Abby Choi on February 21, 2023, and with preventing the lawful burial of her body. The jury trial in the High Court is continuing. All three are presumed innocent.

The High Court trial over the killing of Hong Kong model and socialite Abby Choi heard on Tuesday, October 20, its 19th day, that her former father-in-law bought a meat mincer, a large soup pot and a chopping board less than two weeks before she died, and on Wednesday, October 21, from a neighbour who said he heard banging and chainsaw sounds for half an hour from the flat below his on the day she was killed.

Ms Choi, 28, was found dismembered at a village house in Hong Kong on February 24, 2023. Her former husband Alex Kwong, 31, his father Kwong Kau, 68, and his brother Anthony Kwong, 35, are charged with murdering her on February 21, 2023, and with preventing the lawful burial of her body between February 21 and 23 that year, The Straits Times reported.

On Tuesday, a shop assistant at a kitchenware shop testified anonymously that at about noon on February 8, 2023, a white-haired man about 1.7 metres tall, whom CCTV confirmed was Kwong Kau, came in and was shown several meat mincers. He chose a more expensive model said to mince more finely, and also bought a 14-by-14-inch soup pot, a 15-inch chopping board and an 11-inch ladle, shown to the court in photos, for HK$9,153, discounted to HK$8,700. She said the shop’s large kitchenware was aimed at restaurants and caterers. A younger man then arrived, and Kwong Kau asked whether the shop sold a bone-crushing machine. At around HK$35,000, the two decided it was too expensive.

The court also heard from Ms Choi’s former chauffeur, Chin Kei Shun, who was hired in May 2021 and paid in cash by her former mother-in-law, Jenny Li. He said Ms Choi used to carry large sums of cash but that this changed in 2022, and that she sometimes asked him to pay for shopping and repaid him later. He described a night in February 2022 when two or three men were waiting outside her home and she hid in the car, which he linked to gambling debts he said she and her partner, Chris Tam, had run up in Macau. He said he overheard her ask Anthony Kwong for HK$600,000, then drove Anthony Kwong to a mall to collect an envelope said to contain that sum, and the next day drove Ms Choi to another mall with the same envelope, where she met Kwong Kau and came back without it. Asked by the prosecution, he denied ever being accused of theft or gambling and disclosed past drug possession convictions.

On Wednesday, estate agent Wong Tak-sing confirmed that sale documents for a Kadoorie Hill property bore Kwong Kau’s signature. The unit sold for HK$60.6 million, TVB News reported.

The prosecution then called Cho Chin-to, a resident of Lung Mei Tsuen who lived one floor above the flat where the killing is alleged to have happened. He said a new tenant moved in below him in February 2023 and covered the windows with black material. On February 21, 2023, he said, he saw two cars park beside the building, heard heavy objects being lifted for several minutes, and then heard what sounded like construction work, with banging and chainsaw sounds, for about half an hour. A friend he was on the phone with hung up because of the noise. He said he heard no cries for help. From about 7pm he smelled what he thought was green radish and carrot soup, and it lasted until about 8:30pm.

Oliver Davies, for Kwong Kau, put to him that his earlier witness statement said he could not describe the smell, and suggested he took the description from news reports. Mr Cho disagreed. Andrew Raffell, for Alex Kwong, established that the village is densely populated and that Mr Cho had never seen his client. A watch shop employee testified that Alex Kwong had bought a luxury watch, left it at the store and called to collect it on the day Ms Choi died. The trial continues.

Sources

Wellington: Supreme Court reserves decision in Scott Watson’s appeal over Sounds murders

Location: Wellington, New Zealand (Supreme Court)

Legal status: Scott Watson was convicted in 1999 of murdering Ben Smart and Olivia Hope and sentenced to life imprisonment. His appeal to the Supreme Court was heard October 20 and 21, 2026. Judgment is reserved.

New Zealand’s Supreme Court finished hearing Scott Watson’s appeal against his double-murder conviction on Wednesday, October 21, and reserved its decision. The appeal turns on one question: whether a miscarriage of justice arose when the original trial judge admitted the photo identification evidence of water-taxi driver Guy Wallace.

Ben Smart, 21, and Olivia Hope, 17, friends from Blenheim, were last seen in the early hours of January 1, 1998, stepping off a water taxi onto a stranger’s yacht in Endeavour Inlet in the Marlborough Sounds after a New Year’s Eve party at Furneaux Lodge. Their bodies have never been found. Watson was found guilty of both murders in 1999 after an 11-week jury trial involving about 500 witnesses and was sentenced to life imprisonment. RNZ reports he has been in prison for 27 years.

His first appeal after the trial was dismissed and two further applications failed. A 2017 application for the royal prerogative of mercy led to the case being referred to the Court of Appeal, which rejected his bid to quash the convictions. That challenge had also attacked the DNA evidence of two blonde hairs found on a tiger-patterned blanket on Watson’s boat, Blade. Law News reports the Court of Appeal rejected the claim that the hair evidence was mishandled, and the Supreme Court excluded it from this week’s hearing.

Mr Wallace identified Watson by photo montage on April 20, 1998, as the man he took in his water taxi, the Naiad, to a boat with Smart and Hope. On Tuesday, defence counsel Nick Chisnall KC told the five judges that the identification was “inadmissible” and “tainted”, and “a crucial part” of the Crown case. He said it came about three and a half months after Watson was identified as the suspect, and that police had already shown Mr Wallace a photo of Watson in early January 1998, when Mr Wallace said he did not recognise him.

Mr Chisnall argued police then pressured the witness, describing Watson as the “lone” man, the “sleazy” man and the “mystery man”, and that “media saturation” reinforced the message. He said a detective applied “moral pressure” in a video interview, and criticised the photo used in Montage B, in which Watson’s eyes are half open, when other photos taken front on with his eyes open were available. “In my submission, police primed Mr Wallace to identify Mr Watson,” he said. Co-counsel Kerry Cook KC said that if the appeal succeeds there should be no retrial, citing the passage of time, the media coverage and books about the case, and the death of Mr Wallace.

On Wednesday, Crown counsel Madeleine Laracy told the court that “this was and is an overwhelming case” resting on a large volume of evidence. She set out what she called a chain of coincidences that would have to be true if Watson was not the man on the Naiad: a lone man, with a yacht, moored out from the jetty, in the same age range and so like Watson in appearance as to mislead Mr Wallace. Law News reports she added the distinctive hairline that Olivia’s sister, Amelia Hope, recognised. Ms Laracy said motive, “a long-harboured intention to kill a woman”, ran through the Crown case.

Crown counsel Stuart Baker said this “was not a case of a fleeting glance”, because Mr Wallace watched the man in the lodge’s bars through the evening and gave detailed descriptions before any montage. Justice Joe Williams asked whether the January interview was “inappropriate”, saying he had never read an interview like it. Mr Baker accepted the questioning was “challenging” and would not be acceptable today, but said Mr Wallace did not give in to it. Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann called the Montage B image “quite an extraordinary photograph”. Mr Baker replied that about half of the 53 people shown Montage B chose Watson.

The bench was Chief Justice Winkelmann and Justices Ellen France, Joe Williams, Francis Cooke and Stephen Kós. No date has been set for the judgment.

Sources

Singapore: Parents jailed for 16 years and 15 years 3 months over fatal abuse of eight-month-old son

Location: Singapore (High Court)

Legal status: Neo Jia Ming, 27, and Chloe Gan Ci Xuan, 23, pleaded guilty and were sentenced on October 21, 2026. Neo was jailed for 16 years for allowing the death of a child, ill-treatment, permitting ill-treatment and domestic abuse. Gan was jailed for 15 years and three months for causing the death of a child, ill-treatment and permitting ill-treatment.

Singapore’s High Court on Wednesday, October 21, jailed a young married couple over the death of their eight-month-old son, Trevor Neo Yu Hin, who was shaken, smothered and hit for almost his whole life. Justice Hoo Sheau Peng sentenced the father, Neo Jia Ming, 27, to 16 years and the mother, Chloe Gan Ci Xuan, 23, to 15 years and three months. “Notwithstanding their youth and inexperience, the accused persons must be held fully accountable for their cruel acts,” she said.

Gan pleaded guilty to causing the death of a child, ill-treating a child and permitting ill-treatment. Neo pleaded guilty to allowing the death of a child, ill-treating a child, permitting Gan’s ill-treatment, and domestic abuse of his wife. Prosecutors sought 15 to 16 years for Neo and 14 to 15 for Gan. Gan’s lawyers asked for no more than 12 and a half to 13 years. Neo’s pro bono lawyers sought seven years and seven weeks.

Trevor was born on December 9, 2023. The couple, who married in August 2023, hired a nanny from February 2024 for weekdays, and relatives helped on weekends. Both parents frequently shook him vigorously to stop him crying, and covered his nose and mouth. CNA reported that Gan realised shaking could make the baby stop crying or faint after seeing her husband do it. Neo slapped him hard enough to bruise, dug his fingers into his mouth and pinched his fingers to provoke a reaction, which he found funny, The Straits Times reported. The two joked by text about the shaking causing brain damage. Once Neo covered the baby’s nose and mouth for about a minute until he vomited milk and turned purple, then told Gan he did not want to care for him any more because he was afraid he might kill him.

There were warnings. At about 41 days old, Trevor was hospitalised at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital from January 18 to 23, 2024, after Gan shook him unconscious. No injuries were found. On April 2, 2024, after the nanny saw bleeding under his tongue and insisted he see a doctor, the couple took him to the same hospital, where redness was noted. Neo had caused it digging in his mouth and lied to the nanny. In May 2024, Gan’s mother saw bruises and told her to stop hitting him. In August, Neo texted Gan not to hit the baby until after a doctor’s visit so there would be no bruises. CNA said it had asked the hospital about its response.

On the night of September 1, 2024, Gan pulled a blanket over Trevor’s face and pressed down repeatedly, then covered his nose and mouth with both hands and pounded her covering hand with her other fist, before turning him face down and going to sleep. Neo was in the room playing a phone game. The judge said he had told Gan to “wait for the baby to make noise first, then you try again.” At about 11:30pm he found the baby not breathing. After failing to resuscitate him, the couple took a taxi to hospital because Neo did not want to pay for an ambulance. Trevor was pronounced dead at about 12:20am on September 2. Hospital staff called police. An autopsy could not determine a definitive cause of death.

Justice Hoo rejected the argument that the couple were overwhelmed, finding they were well supported and “made light” of the abuse. She rejected Neo’s claim that he was far less culpable, noting he was first to shake and smother the baby and “simply did not wish to be inconvenienced.” She compared the case with the death of four-year-old Megan Khung, finding Trevor more vulnerable but the abuse shorter and objectively less severe. Gan received a 20 per cent discount for her early plea and 5 per cent for an adjustment disorder with a minor contributory link. Neo received 20 per cent for his plea. Neo also punched Gan repeatedly in 2024, including more than 10 times to the head over cereal made with lukewarm water.

Sources

Meishan: Man who stabbed four people in three hours, killing three including his old teacher, sentenced to death

Location: Renshou county, Meishan, Sichuan province, China

Legal status: Convicted of intentional homicide by the Meishan Intermediate People’s Court on October 21, 2026, and sentenced to death, with lifelong deprivation of political rights. First-instance verdict, open to appeal.

The Meishan Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan province sentenced a 49-year-old man to death on Wednesday, October 21, for a knife attack in September 2025 in which he killed three people, among them his maternal uncle and his 82-year-old former primary school teacher, and seriously wounded a fourth. Chinese media identify him only by surname, and no English-language outlet has reported the case. The verdict was announced in court at about 10am, Lizhi News reported, and the written judgment is to be served on the victims’ families within five days.

According to the indictment, as reported by China Newsweek, at about 8am on September 9, 2025, the defendant left his home in Renshou county wearing a peaked cap and carrying a dagger he had prepared in advance. He attacked his uncle, then an elder from the same village he met on the road, and then the retired teacher, killing all three. He went on to the home of a neighbour and stabbed her husband, then fled on an electric scooter. Police caught him at about 11:30am the same day. He was criminally detained that day and formally arrested on September 24 with the approval of the Renshou County People’s Procuratorate.

Forensic examinations found that all three dead had been stabbed in the chest with a single-edged blade, rupturing the heart, lungs and other vital organs, and died of massive blood loss. The fourth victim’s injuries were graded as serious.

Home security cameras recorded the teacher’s killing. China Newsweek reported that at about 8:32am the defendant walked into the family’s courtyard, could not find him, and called out “Teacher” several times. The teacher, who was feeding ducks behind the house, answered. The defendant followed the voice, drew the dagger from behind his back, stabbed him in the chest and ran. The teacher’s son told China Newsweek his father lifted his shirt to look at the wound and hurried toward the living room, apparently to reach his phone, but did not make it. “It was one stab, straight into the heart,” he said. The footage showed the defendant leaving at about 8:37am.

Police told the family the defendant confessed that he killed the teacher because he had been “too strict” with him in school, and that he said the other killings were to “settle grudges”. A village official told China Newsweek he had never heard of any dispute between the defendant and the four households, which lay a few hundred metres from his home.

In October 2025, the West China forensic appraisal centre in Sichuan found that the defendant had schizophrenia and had partial criminal responsibility at the time. The victims’ families dispute that finding. The teacher’s son said police interview records and pre-trial disclosures showed the defendant had switched off his phone and thrown away its SIM card, planned his route, limited how long he stayed at each place, asked villagers about one family’s house three months earlier, and escaped by a remote farm track. In May the family asked for a new psychiatric evaluation. Lizhi News quoted a man it identified as the son of one of the dead, as saying he could not accept it.

Prosecutors said the defendant was a repeat offender. He was jailed for picking quarrels and provoking trouble in 2006, for obstructing official duties in 2010 and for intentional injury in 2023, according to the indictment. Prosecutors argued his confession and partial responsibility allowed leniency, while his reoffending within five years made him a recidivist who should be punished more heavily.

The case was tried on July 24, 2026. China Newsweek reported that the teacher’s body has remained in a funeral home, with refrigeration fees now above 170,000 yuan. When this was raised in court, the defendant said he was mentally ill and “unable to pay.”

Sources

Liaocheng: Man who stabbed three neighbours at a village opera, killing two, sentenced to death

Location: Liaocheng, Shandong province, China

Legal status: Convicted of intentional homicide by the Liaocheng Intermediate People’s Court on October 20, 2026, and sentenced to death, with lifelong deprivation of political rights. First-instance verdict; he told the court he would “think about” an appeal.

The Liaocheng Intermediate People’s Court in Shandong province sentenced a man to death on Tuesday, October 20, for stabbing three members of a neighbouring family in a village lane, killing two of them, after what the court found was an auditory hallucination that performers were insulting his mother. Chinese media identify the defendant only by a partly withheld name, and no English-language outlet has romanized it.

The court accepted that he had schizophrenia at the time and had “limited criminal responsibility”, a status in Chinese law that allows a lighter sentence. It also accepted that he surrendered himself and that his relatives paid part of the victims’ losses. It still refused to reduce the sentence, finding that his illness “did not completely deprive him of the ability to recognise and control” his actions. The verdict was decided after discussion by the court’s adjudication committee, Yangtse Evening Post reported.

According to the first-instance judgment, obtained by Red Star News and the Yangtse Evening Post, the attack happened on the evening of October 23, 2025. A family in the village had hired a travelling opera troupe for the anniversary of a relative’s death. The defendant, hearing voices, believed the troupe’s performers were abusing his mother, went to the stage to confront them and argued with the troupe’s host. A member of the family heard about the confrontation and called two relatives to go and find him. The two sides met in a lane and argued. The defendant pulled out a sharp knife he was carrying and stabbed all three men in turn. Two died at the scene. The third, a man named in the Yangtse Evening Post report, suffered what Chinese forensic grading classes as a second-degree minor injury.

The court found that the defendant’s hallucinations had led to repeated conflicts with other people before, that he still took a knife to the performance that night, and that he started the confrontation himself. For that reason it ruled the killings could not be treated as arising from an ordinary neighbourhood dispute. It said he had stabbed the victims repeatedly in vital areas with a knife of considerable lethality, and that because he continued to argue he had intended only to injure, not kill, his attitude could not be considered genuinely remorseful.

On his mental state, the court relied on witness and victim statements to find that he understood the means and consequences of what he did and the legal penalties involved. It singled out the timing: he killed two men while their family was mourning a dead relative, which the court said showed “the cruelty of his methods, the vileness of the circumstances, the gravity of the consequences and his great danger to others.”

The court concluded that his crimes were “extremely serious” and that the mitigating factors were “not sufficient” to lessen the punishment. He was sentenced to death for intentional homicide, stripped of political rights for life and ordered to pay compensation to the plaintiffs in the attached civil action.

The surviving victim, treated in hospital after the attack, told Red Star News that when the judge asked whether the defendant would appeal, he replied that he would think about it. The survivor said the death sentence was what the family had wanted, but that it could not make up for the harm done to them.

Sources

Osaka: Husband gets 12 and a half years for killing wife whose body has never been found

Location: Osaka, Japan

Legal status: Convicted by the Osaka District Court lay-judge panel on October 20, 2026, of injury causing death and abandoning a corpse, and sentenced to 12 years and 6 months in prison, above the 12 years prosecutors sought. He pleaded not guilty through his lawyers and can appeal.

A 36-year-old man was sentenced to 12 years and 6 months in prison by the Osaka District Court on Tuesday, October 20, for fatally assaulting his 52-year-old wife and disposing of her body, which has never been found. The sentence is six months longer than prosecutors asked for. TokyoReporter, an English-language outlet that covered the trial, names him as Yoshifumi Kuroki and his wife as Izumi. None of the sources read for this card prints a romanized form of either name, so the Ledger gives them in the original Japanese.

The case was tried before a lay-judge panel, Japan’s mixed bench of professional and citizen judges. The charges included injury causing death and abandoning a corpse. Murder was not charged.

According to the judgment as reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun, around May 26, 2024, the defendant subjected his wife to some form of assault at their then home in Osaka city, killing her. Around June 5, 2024, he conspired with a male acquaintance to carry her body by car and dump it in or around Okayama prefecture. Her remains have not been recovered.

There was no direct evidence identifying the attacker and no body, the Sankei Shimbun noted. The defendant remained silent about the charges throughout the trial. His lawyers argued for acquittal, saying the crime had not been proved, and argued there was a possibility the wife was not dead, Jiji Press reported.

Prosecutors built the case on circumstantial evidence, which the Sankei summarised in four strands. A neighbour heard a woman scream “I’m going to be killed” and called police. A considerable amount of the wife’s blood was found on an electric fan in the home. The defendant’s male acquaintance told people around him that he had helped in the crime and had dismembered the body while burning it and then thrown it away. And burned human bones were found at the acquaintance’s home.

The acquaintance took his own life after the events, so the trial turned in part on whether friends who said they had heard his confession could be believed. Asahi Broadcasting reported that blood was also found inside the front entrance of the home.

The presiding judge found that the friends’ accounts were consistent with the objective evidence, including the state of the home, and were credible. Citing the neighbour’s testimony about the scream and the bloodstains, the court said it was established “beyond reasonable doubt” that the defendant had violently assaulted his wife, causing her death, and had abandoned her body.

On sentence, the court said the assault, which the Sankei reported went on for about an hour, was “persistent” and “extremely malicious”, and that “the loss of a human life is extremely grave.” The judge said the treatment of the body showed an “ultimate lack” of respect for the dead, and Asahi Broadcasting quoted the court as saying the defendant showed “no remorse whatsoever.” The court concluded the crime deserved “extremely severe condemnation” and went above the prosecution’s request of 12 years.

The sources read for this card do not report whether the defence will appeal.

Sources

Sydney: Lamarre-Condon murder trial hears from friend on van trip to farm dam, as defence accuses her of helping

Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (NSW Supreme Court)

Legal status: Beau Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one of aggravated break and enter. His lawyers say the deaths happened in self-defence. The jury trial before Justice Natalie Adams is continuing. He is presumed innocent.

A friend of former NSW police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon told his murder trial on Wednesday, October 21, that two days after the deaths of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies he drove her in a white van to a farm near Bungonia, south of Sydney, covered the van’s number plates with garbage bags and left her at the gate for 30 to 40 minutes. The Crown alleges that was when he tried to sink the couple’s bodies in a dam. His barrister put it to her that she knew the bodies were in the van and went to help him dispose of them, which she denied.

Mr Lamarre-Condon, 31, is accused of shooting Mr Baird and his partner Mr Davies with his police pistol at Mr Baird’s Paddington share house on February 19, 2024. He has pleaded not guilty. Defence counsel John Stratton SC has told the jury the men were shot accidentally in self-defence, and that his client cleaned up and disposed of the bodies afterwards because he “panicked considerably.” The trial is in its fifth week.

The witness gave evidence under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kennedy and under a certificate from Justice Adams, which means her testimony cannot be used against her in a NSW court. The jury heard she had given police an induced statement under a similar arrangement.

She said he picked her up at about 3pm on February 21, 2024, and that she thought they were going to lunch. There was a blue tarp in the back and the van smelled “lemony”, as if just cleaned. He kept the windows down and the air conditioning on full, would not let her change either, and asked her to switch off her phone. Every time she asked how far, he said “just 50 more minutes.” The drive to Goulburn took about two hours.

At Bunnings in Goulburn, she said, he asked her to pay for an angle grinder and padlock because he had no cash. A Bunnings sales assistant’s statement read to the court said two customers told him they were locked out of a friend’s farm at Bungonia, and he suggested an angle grinder. At the farm, she said, he told her he knew the owners. “Before he did the padlock thing … he asked me to put garbage bags over the number plates. And I said no. So he got out and did it himself,” she said. Asked by Crown prosecutor Caitlin Diggins whether he explained why, she said: “No, I thought he was up to something.” He cut the padlock, cutting himself, and drove out of sight. She said she had a panic attack. When he came back in gumboots, he told her to shush and checked whether she had used her phone. “He said: ‘I don’t want to involve you’,” she told the jury.

On the drive home, she said, he avoided toll roads, was “weird and cryptic”, tried to call another police officer friend and swore when there was no answer, and said he would have to go back and be “up all night.” At a service station he asked her to fill the van, and when she could not, he said he did not want to be on camera. She said the tarp was gone. The court has heard the bodies were found eight days after the deaths near a monastery in the Bungonia area, about 15 minutes from the farm.

Mr Stratton suggested his client had shown her Mr Baird’s head under the tarp, and that it was she who said the situation was “like a Taylor Swift song, No Body, No Crime.” She denied both. “He was the one who put that song on in the car, and it’s a very niche Taylor Swift song,” she said. Asked whether she carried a body, she told the court: “I’m five foot and weigh 55 kilos so I don’t think I could carry a body even if I tried.”

The court also released two hours of CCTV played to the jury, which the Crown says shows Mr Lamarre-Condon on February 20, 2024, withdrawing $500, buying a drill, hi-vis clothing, gumboots and dust masks at Bunnings Alexandria, and later at a Cronulla bowls club where a friend looked into a skip bin. The court has heard a groundskeeper later found bloodied items and identification cards in that bin. The trial continues.

Sources

Wangaratta: Man charged over car attack on MP Helen Haines faces court, remanded until February

Location: Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia

Legal status: Brendan Nugent, 43, is charged with dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentionally causing serious injury, causing harm to a Commonwealth public official, cultivating cannabis and possessing cannabis. He has not entered a plea, did not apply for bail and is remanded in custody. He is presumed innocent.

Independent federal MP Helen Haines, the member for Indi since 2019, was critically injured just after 3:30pm on Monday, October 19, outside her electorate office on Murphy Street in Wangaratta, in Victoria’s north-east. Police allege she was struck by a vehicle and pinned between two cars. ABC News reported that the vehicle was a Toyota LandCruiser. Ms Haines, 65, was taken to a local hospital and then flown to The Alfred hospital in Melbourne, where she underwent surgery overnight.

The extent of her injuries has been reported in stages. On Tuesday, the ABC confirmed she had lost one leg and that doctors were fighting to save the other. Guardian Australia reported on Wednesday that both legs had been amputated and that she was in a stable condition. ABC News described her on Wednesday as critical but stable.

Police arrested a 43-year-old man at the scene. Ricky Jefferies, a barber whose shop neighbours the electorate office, told reporters he heard “a loud bang with no brakes”, ran outside and got the driver out of the vehicle, then stood over him on the ground and told him he was not free to leave until police arrived. Mr Jefferies said another local man had sat down in front of the vehicle while the driver was still inside it. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Mr Jefferies a hero. Mr Jefferies rejected the label and said many people “didn’t even check for danger, they just ran to help.”

The man spent Monday night in custody at Wangaratta police station. Police said on Tuesday morning that he would be interviewed and that no motive had yet been identified. On Tuesday evening, Victoria Police named him as Brendan Nugent, 43, of Tarrawingee, about 15 kilometres east of Wangaratta, and charged him with dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentionally causing serious injury, and the federal offence of causing harm to a Commonwealth public official. The federal charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. In a statement, Victoria Police said officers would allege the incident was targeted. Officers searched Mr Nugent’s Tarrawingee home on Tuesday.

Mr Nugent’s father, Rod Nugent, and his partner, Christine Cunningham, released a statement on Tuesday saying Ms Haines had been their friend for more than 20 years and that the events were “devastating and unfathomable.” They thanked the community members and police who came to her aid and said they would assist Victoria Police “in any way we can.”

Mr Nugent appeared in the Wangaratta Magistrates’ Court shortly after 10am on Wednesday, October 21, in a courtroom so crowded with reporters that some had to follow remotely. Court documents released on Wednesday showed police had added charges of cultivating cannabis and possessing cannabis. Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush told a press conference that the investigation was “far from complete” and that police were not ruling out “further serious charges.”

His lawyer, Chirag Patel, told Magistrate Allison Vaughan that Mr Nugent had mental health concerns, that it was his first time in custody, and that he suffers from idiopathic transverse myelitis, a rare inflammatory condition of the spinal cord, and had been suffering from concussion. Mr Patel said his client was not medicated and there were no concerns about drug withdrawal. Magistrate Vaughan asked that a medical professional see him immediately.

Mr Nugent was not required to speak or enter a plea, and no bail application was made. Further details of the alleged offending were not aired in court. Police must provide the brief of evidence to the defence by December 24, and the case returns to Wangaratta for a committal mention on February 4, 2027. The ABC understands he was to be transferred to the Melbourne Assessment Prison. His motive remains under investigation. Mr Nugent is presumed innocent, and the allegations have not been tested in court.

Ms Haines, a former midwife, remains in hospital. Flowers and cards, many in the orange of the regional independent movement, have piled up outside her shuttered office.

Sources

Durgapur, Netrokona: Second suspect remanded in shooting of journalist Alif Fakir, who had warned police he would be killed

Location: Durgapur upazila, Netrokona district, Bangladesh

Legal status: Two arrested, neither charged; second arrestee on three-day remand from Oct 21

A court in Netrokona on Wednesday, October 21, placed a 21-year-old man on three days of police remand over the shooting death of Lutfuzzaman Fakir Alif, a local television correspondent and Facebook investigator who had publicly said for nearly a year that armed men were waiting for him. He is the second person held in the case. No one has been charged.

Senior Judicial Magistrate Court-2 Judge Md Alimul Islam granted the remand after police produced Ashikur Rahman Prangon, 21, of the Bagichapara area of Durgapur municipality, and asked for seven days, Court Inspector Md Abdul Momin told The Daily Star. The paper’s two reports that day spell his first name both Ashikur and Ashiqur. A team from the Special Response Battalion (SRB-14) arrested him in the Shaheed Minar area of Durgapur at about 11:45 pm on Tuesday, working at the request of the case investigator and, the SRB said, using “information technology and intelligence tracking.” Abul Hasan, an additional superintendent with SRB-14’s media wing in Mymensingh, would say only that “considering the technical aspects of the incident,” Prangon “can be considered one of the key suspects.” Durgapur’s officer in charge, Khandakar Shaker Ahmed, said Prangon is the nephew of a local man known as “Shooter Shamim,” who he said faces at least 30 cases at the station, three of them murder.

The killing happened on the evening of Thursday, October 15, in the Telanjia area near Utrail Bazar on the Shyamganj-Birishiri road, a short way from the family home of Alif’s second wife, where he had been living. Accounts of the time vary: bdnews24 quoted the officer in charge as saying about 7:30 pm, the Daily Star and Dhaka Tribune put it at about 8 pm, and a later Daily Star report said around 8:15 pm. A shopkeeper, Robin Rangsa, told bdnews24 that Alif came for cigarettes, left his phone behind, returned for it, and was followed out by two men. “Then I heard gunshots. I got scared and went inside the shop.” According to police and witnesses cited by the Dhaka Tribune, the two young men had asked the shopkeeper for cigarettes before opening fire. Police told the Daily Star the two had arrived on a motorcycle. They fled as residents ran towards the gunfire. Alif was declared dead at the Durgapur upazila health complex. Police recovered pistol casings and an unfired round at the scene.

Dr Shraddhyananda Nath, who carried out the post-mortem at Netrokona Sadar Hospital on October 16, told reporters there were six gunshot wounds. Three were to the chest. Two of those bullets passed through, and the third lodged in his back and was removed. One bullet entered the right side of the forehead and exited the back of the head. Two more grazed the scalp and the skin near the right shoulder. From the entry and exit wounds, he said, the initial view was that Alif was shot from the front with a pistol.

Alif was the Netrokona correspondent of the IP television channel Ruposhi Bangla (spelled Rupashi Bangla by bdnews24 and the Dhaka Tribune) and ran a Facebook page called “Detective Article,” posting on border smuggling, trafficking and local crime. On November 10 last year he was hacked with sharp weapons near Teribazar ghat on the Someshwari river and survived. Two named suspects were arrested and later bailed, the Dhaka Tribune reported. In a resurfaced video of a meeting with police, he said men with firearms, including a 9mm pistol, were waiting for him on a road, and that he might have to leave the country if they were not arrested. The officer in charge told the Dhaka Tribune that police had advised him to tell them whenever he visited the area so security could be arranged. He said investigators suspect a planned killing by an organised group, possibly over Alif’s reporting, but have not established who ordered or carried it out.

His wife, Anandita Sangma, filed a murder case on October 16 against seven to eight unidentified people. Police arrested the first suspect, a 22-year-old identified by a single name, spelled Opurba and Apurbo in different Daily Star reports, outside the old cinema hall in Durgapur just after midnight on October 17 into 18. Police allege he was at the scene carrying the bag with the weapons, and that he is the nephew of the alleged prime suspect shooter, whom they describe as a contract killer. Police said he admitted involvement under initial questioning. That claim was made by police and has not been tested in court. Police also say he is an accused in the 2025 hacking case. The Daily Star reported him on a four-day remand. Both men are presumed innocent.

Sources

Lucknow: Model and two others arrested in Nagpur over fall death of cafe owner Shiva Sharma

Location: Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India (arrests in Nagpur, Maharashtra)

Legal status: Shraddha Dubey, her sister Rashmi Dubey and their driver, named by Hindustan Times as Tanveer Ali alias Danish, were arrested on October 20, 2026, in a murder case registered under Section 103(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and taken to Lucknow on transit remand. They have not been charged in court or convicted. Shraddha Dubey denies any role. All three are presumed innocent.

An 11-day search across several states ended in Nagpur on Tuesday, October 20, when a joint team of Lucknow Police and the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force, helped by Nagpur Police, arrested model Shraddha Dubey, 31, her younger sister Rashmi Dubey and their driver in connection with the death of Lucknow cafe owner Shiva Sharma. Each carried a reward of 50,000 rupees. Lucknow Police Commissioner Tarun Gauba said all three were produced before a Nagpur court and were being brought back to Lucknow on transit remand.

Shiva Sharma, a cafe owner and businessman whom Hindustan Times describes as Ms Dubey’s live-in partner, died on October 9 after falling from the fourth floor of the apartment building in Lucknow’s Hazratganj area where she lived. Hindustan Times gives his age as 28 and India TV as 27. The death was first treated as an accidental fall. On October 10, his mother, Ranjana Sharma, filed a complaint alleging her son had been assaulted, tortured and thrown from the building, and police registered a murder case under Section 103(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

India TV reported that police had found a purported audio clip in which the two could be heard arguing. Police said Ms Dubey then went missing. During the hunt, a Mahindra Scorpio-N registered in her name was found abandoned in Rupaidiha, a town in Bahraich district on the border with Nepal, and investigators suspected the three had crossed over. Courts issued non-bailable warrants and police doubled the reward on each from 25,000 to 50,000 rupees. Preliminary information suggested they had gone to Agra and flown to Nagpur, Hindustan Times reported, though police have not disclosed the intelligence that led them there.

Amitabh Yash, Uttar Pradesh’s additional director general for law and order, said the arrests took time because the main accused “was familiar with police procedures, working methods, and technical aspects.” During the investigation, the Hazratganj station house officer was moved to Police Lines, an assistant commissioner was moved to the Crime Branch, and the deputy commissioner for the central zone was attached to police headquarters, Hindustan Times reported. Officials have not publicly linked those transfers to specific failings.

While in hiding, Ms Dubey released several videos and gave a video interview denying involvement. She says Mr Sharma died by suicide. Hindustan Times reported that she claimed he owed 15 to 20 lakh rupees to moneylenders and had threatened to kill himself before, and that on the night of October 9 he locked himself in her bathroom and jumped from the balcony before her sister could open the door. She told the news agency ANI, as quoted by India TV, that she had known him only four months, that “all the allegations are baseless”, that she “witnessed him jump from the fourth floor”, and that the building’s CCTV footage would prove her innocence. She said his mother had made false accusations “because she never liked me.” She has also said she handed his phone to police.

None of these claims has been tested in court. The reports read for this card do not describe the CCTV footage, any post-mortem finding or the contents of the audio clip.

Ranjana Sharma thanked the media, police, the Special Task Force and the administration. “On Vijayadashami, this is the first step towards justice for my son,” she said. “There are still many processes to be completed, and I am hopeful that he will get justice.”

Sources

Puri: Son arrested in Jharkhand 57 days after mother’s body was found under a freshly cemented kitchen floor

Location: Puri, Odisha, India (arrest in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand)

Legal status: Madan Gajanan Dalei was arrested on October 20, 2026, on suspicion of murdering his mother. Police plan to seek remand for questioning. He has not been convicted and is presumed innocent.

Odisha Police on Tuesday, October 20, arrested a man in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, nearly two months after the body of his mother was dug out from under a freshly cemented kitchen floor in the house the two rented in Puri. Puri Superintendent of Police Prateek Singh announced the arrest at a press conference. PTI and Odisha TV give the man’s name as Madan Gajanan Dalei and his age as 40. The Times of India spells the family name Dalai and gives his age as 42. His mother was Annapurna, whom the Times of India reports was 65.

The body was found on August 24. The owner of the house in Puri’s Kumbharapada area told police about a foul smell from a locked room rented by the son and his mother, who were from Gajapati district and had lived there since March, the Times of India reported. Police opened the room. The Kumbharapada inspector in charge saw fresh plasterwork over part of the kitchen slab and, with a scientific team, had it dug up. A woman’s decomposed body was underneath, the SP said.

Investigators reconstructed the days before from CCTV footage at the house and in the neighbourhood. It showed mother and son leaving the house on the morning of August 20 and sitting near the Jagannath Temple, where, police said, she appeared to be seeking alms. Odisha TV reported that the footage showed the routine was regular and that they usually came home around 11am. Footage from August 21 showed him buying sand and cement, and police believe she was killed on the night of August 20 and buried the next day. He left Puri on August 23, the Times of India reported. Odisha TV’s account uses September dates for the same events, which conflict with the August 24 discovery, so the Ledger follows the PTI and Times of India timeline.

According to the SP, he travelled by bus to Bhubaneswar, then by train through Titlagarh to Raipur, where Odisha TV reported he sold his mobile phone and bought a basic handset. Police traced that shop and seized the phone. He went on to Kolkata to see his sister, telling her their mother was unwell, Odisha TV reported, worked at roadside eateries in Mumbai, and moved to Jamshedpur. Teams searched in Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu and announced rewards. By the time police first reached Jamshedpur, he had moved on.

The SP said he changed where he stayed often and rarely used a phone. Odisha TV reported that he had no bank account or regular phone, and that police used facial recognition and the National Intelligence Grid. Acting on fresh information that he was back in Jamshedpur, the Kumbharapada team found him working at a snacks shop, according to the Times of India under a false identity, and arrested him.

Accounts of what he told police differ. PTI quoted the SP as saying, “Though he has confessed to the crime, he is yet to reveal the reason behind the incident.” The Times of India reported that under questioning he claimed his mother died of natural causes and that he only hid her body, and that police do not believe him. No cause of death from the post-mortem has been reported.

On motive, the SP told Odisha TV that Annapurna had been ill for a long time and that investigators suspect the difficulty of caring for her may have contributed, but “the exact trigger remains unclear.” The SP told the Times of India that police would take him on remand for further questioning.

Sources

Sohna, Gurugram: Two alleged hired killers arrested in Roorkee over taped-and-strangled woman in land dispute

Location: Sohna, Gurugram district, Haryana, India

Legal status: Three men, Sandeep, Anuj Rana and Avnish, are arrested in a murder case registered under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Section 103(1) and other sections. Sandeep was remanded to police custody. None has been charged in court or convicted. All are presumed innocent.

Gurugram police said on Tuesday, October 20, that they had arrested two men from Roorkee, Uttarakhand, accused of strangling a woman in her home near Sohna on October 16, completing the arrest of three suspects in what police describe as a killing ordered over a family land deal. The woman, Neetu, was found in the bathroom of her home with her limbs tied and several layers of masking tape over her mouth and nose. The Times of India and PTI give her age as 34. Hindustan Times gives 37.

Police name the alleged organiser as Sandeep, 35, a relative of Neetu’s husband, Prashant Kumar, a private school teacher. Hindustan Times and the Times of India describe Sandeep as Prashant’s cousin, while PTI, citing police, called him his nephew. The other two are Anuj Rana, 29, and Avnish, 30, both from Roorkee in Haridwar district, the Times of India reported. Hindustan Times gives Anuj’s home as Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh.

According to Assistant Commissioner of Police (crime) Naveen Sharma, Sandeep wanted to arrange the sale of a family plot of about seven kanals, or 0.8 acres, and had paid Prashant an advance of 1 lakh rupees. Neetu thought the agreed price was too low and persuaded her husband to return the money. “This was his motive to kill Neetu. She was a hurdle in selling the land,” the ACP told Hindustan Times. Police said the plan took nearly two months, and that the accused scouted the house on August 31.

On the morning of October 16, police said, Anuj and Avnish travelled from Roorkee and Sandeep took them to the house on his motorcycle. PTI reported that CCTV showed him dropping two men at a shrine near the house at about 8am. The Times of India, citing the ACP, reported that a first attempt at about 9am was abandoned because Neetu was on the phone. At about 10:05am, Sandeep and Anuj allegedly went in while Avnish kept watch outside. Police said they brought tape and rope in a bag, taped her mouth and nose, tied her limbs and strangled her. Hindustan Times reported they were inside for about 44 minutes. They allegedly ransacked the house to make it look like a burglary and took gold and silver jewellery. Sandeep promised his accomplices 10 lakh rupees, police said.

Accounts differ on who found her. The Times of India and PTI say her husband found her when he came home with their children in the afternoon, removed the tape, untied her and rushed her to hospital. Hindustan Times says a family member found the house open and ransacked and alerted neighbours, who called the husband. She was declared dead at hospital.

Villagers blocked the Sohna to Gurugram road for about an hour in protest at the lack of arrests. Police said the family suspected Sandeep because of frequent arguments over the property, and that he did not flee and attended Neetu’s cremation. Crime branch teams arrested him in Sohna, on October 19 according to the Times of India. PTI reported on October 19 that he had been arrested the previous night and confessed to hiring the two men. He named his co-accused, police said, and the two were arrested in Roorkee on October 20.

Police say Sandeep served in the Indian Army but was court-martialled and dismissed in 2023 over alleged fraud, including extorting money on the promise of jobs. He knew Anuj because Anuj had worked as a contract cook for the Army, the ACP said. The motorcycle used belonged to Anuj. The FIR at Sohna Sadar police station cites sections covering murder, wrongful restraint, dishonest removal of property and common intention. Sandeep was remanded to four days of police custody.

Sources

Tangerang Selatan: Junior officer named suspect and detained over shooting death of colleague at police base

Location: Pondok Cabe, Tangerang Selatan, Banten, Indonesia

Legal status: Bharada Andika Ramadani was named a suspect and detained by Jakarta Metropolitan Regional Police (Polda Metro Jaya), announced October 20, 2026. He has not been charged in court or convicted and is presumed innocent.

Jakarta’s regional police have named a junior officer as the suspect in the shooting death of a fellow officer at a national police base in Pondok Cabe, Tangerang Selatan, and have detained him, Polda Metro Jaya spokesman Kombes Budi Hermanto said on Tuesday, October 20. The suspect, a Bharada-rank officer, is named in detik reports as Andika Ramadani and by CNN Indonesia as Andika Rahmadani. The victim was Bharatu Laurentius Valdo Fernandes, spelled Fernandez by CNN Indonesia, a police officer from East Flores in East Nusa Tenggara. detikBali and CNN Indonesia give his family name as Lewai and Lawai respectively.

The shooting happened at about 5:30am on Friday, October 16, inside the headquarters of the national police’s water and air police unit (Mako Polairud) in Pondok Cabe, Pamulang, according to police. CNN Indonesia reported that the victim was a member of the police air directorate and that the suspect was his junior.

“The incident between Bharatu LVL and Bharada AR happened on Friday. The scene examination, handling and detention of the suspect have been carried out,” Kombes Budi told reporters at the National Monument in central Jakarta on Tuesday. Police seized evidence including spent cartridge cases, a bladed weapon and personal belongings, he said.

Police have not given a motive. “We investigators have also not yet been able to carry out a comprehensive in-depth examination given the situation and condition of the perpetrator. That is why we cannot yet state a motive,” Kombes Budi said. He said the case would be investigated “thoroughly” by both the general crimes directorate and the internal affairs division, and that the police “do not give space to personnel who commit violations or crimes.”

The family’s lawyer, Petrus Bala Pattyona, gave the first account of the autopsy on Monday, October 19, after meeting investigators at Polda Metro Jaya. He said the autopsy at the national police hospital in Kramat Jati found serious wounds to the head, neck and arms. “There were four bullets inside the victim’s head,” he said, adding that the hospital team had explained that four projectiles were inside the skull. detik also reported the finding of four projectiles in the head. The lawyer said his own inquiries suggested the weapons used were a long-barrelled firearm and a bayonet, and he asked how a junior officer could be holding both, urging police to establish where the rifle came from.

The lawyer said investigators told him the suspect may have been reacting to bullying, but not by the victim. “The investigators explained that the perpetrator vented his anger on the victim because, according to the investigators, the victim’s classmates often bullied the suspect. So it was not the late victim who bullied him, but his friends,” Mr Pattyona said. Police have not publicly confirmed that account.

The victim was buried in his home village in East Flores on Sunday, October 18, detikBali reported. Police said the suspect is being held by the violent crimes subdirectorate of Polda Metro Jaya while the investigation continues. No date has been given for the case file to go to prosecutors.

Sources

Kobe: Former gang boss, 79, rearrested on murder charge over daytime shootings in moving car

Location: Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Japan

Legal status: A 79-year-old former organised crime boss was rearrested on suspicion of murder on October 21, 2026, after his initial arrest on September 30 for attempted murder. Police say he admits the allegations. He has not been indicted on the murder allegation or convicted, and is presumed innocent.

Hyogo Prefectural Police on Wednesday, October 21, rearrested a 79-year-old former gang boss on suspicion of murdering a 58-year-old company owner, who was shot dead inside a car in central Kobe on the afternoon of September 30. The Japan Times names the suspect as Naoto Kametani, an unemployed former yakuza member of no fixed address, and the dead man as Masayuki Akada. No source read for this card prints romanized forms of their names, so the Ledger gives them in Japanese.

Police say the suspect admits the murder allegation and has said “there was trouble connected to a real estate deal” with the victim, the Sankei Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun reported. Police said they had received no information pointing to a conflict between gangs and are treating the case as a personal dispute. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported, citing investigative sources, that the suspect was formerly the boss of a group affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, and that there was no information linking the shootings to the conflict surrounding that syndicate.

According to police, quoted by the Asahi, the three men met near JR Shin-Kobe Station before the shooting, a meeting police traced from security camera footage. The car was driven by a 54-year-old man who works at a real estate company that the victim effectively ran. The victim sat in the front passenger seat and the suspect sat in the back. Between about 1:06pm and 1:13pm, while the car was moving and stopped on streets in Kobe’s Chuo ward, the suspect allegedly fired several shots from a handgun into the victim from the rear seat. The victim got out and collapsed in the road. He died of haemorrhagic shock from gunshot wounds including to the right side of his chest, the Sankei reported. The Yomiuri reported that a passer-by called police at about 1:15pm and that he was taken to hospital in cardiac arrest and died about an hour later.

The suspect then stayed in the car with the driver as it travelled to Hyogo ward, about 4.5 to 5 kilometres away. There the car drove into the parking area of a house, which the Asahi identified as belonging to the president of a construction company, and stopped. The suspect allegedly shot the driver from behind. A call about a man saying he had been shot came in at about 1:30pm. The driver was seriously wounded in the side but his life is not in danger.

Officers found the suspect on a street about 20 metres from the house. During questioning on the spot he admitted involvement in the Hyogo ward shooting and was arrested at about 2pm on suspicion of attempted murder, the Yomiuri reported. He told police then: “It is exactly as the facts say. There is no mistake.” Police recovered a handgun believed to be the weapon near the Hyogo ward scene. A neighbour who watched the arrest told the Yomiuri he wore whitish work clothes and walked quietly with officers, looking down.

The shootings happened in daylight in residential areas as children were leaving school, and the Kobe city education board organised supervised group walks home. A security guard near the first scene told the Yomiuri he heard a single bang like a tyre bursting and then saw a man lying in the road.

Police are now checking the suspect’s account of a real estate dispute.

Sources

Multan: Contractor remanded in custody, accused of chasing down and running over 15-year-old apprentice Waseem Abbas

Location: Multan, Punjab, Pakistan

Legal status: Tauqeer Nazir is named in a murder case under Sections 302 and 34 of the Pakistan Penal Code and was placed on physical remand on October 20, 2026. A second suspect, named by police as Amjad Ali, is being sought. Neither has been convicted. Both are presumed innocent.

A judicial magistrate in Multan on Tuesday, October 20, handed police a contractor accused of deliberately running over a 15-year-old orphan apprentice, Waseem Abbas, after the boy fled his workplace. Police had asked for 14 days of physical remand. Judicial Magistrate Saadia Aslam granted three, Dawn reported. Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari separately said the suspect had been remanded for five days. The suspect is named by Dawn and The News as Tauqeer Nazir and by ARY News as Touqeer Nazir.

As he was led from the court, a large number of lawyers gathered outside and some allegedly attacked and slapped him. Police got him away to the police station in a rickshaw, Dawn reported.

Waseem was from Muzaffargarh district. Relatives told Dawn that after his father died he was sent to an orphanage. Ms Bokhari said he had lived for six years at the Dar-ul-Khuda orphanage, which a week before his death had handed him to the contractor to learn electrical work. Multan City Police Officer Akhtar Farooq said the orphanage, run by a non-governmental organisation, had sent other children to the same man for vocational training before. Police have detained some members of the orphanage administration for questioning.

According to the first information report, cited by Dawn, the boy’s cousin, Mukhtiar Ahmed, told police Waseem had faced violence and threats from the suspects and, fearing more abuse, tried to run away. The FIR says the suspects pursued him in a car and ran him over in a street in the Royal Orchard housing scheme, and that he died on the spot. Ms Bokhari said Tauqeer Nazir and an associate, Amjad, chased him by car for about a kilometre. ARY News reported police as saying the contractor first chased him on foot and then followed in the car with Amjad Ali.

Security camera footage described by Dawn shows a boy running along a road after spotting a car. The car swerves and chases him and hits him, and he is thrown into the gate of a house and dies on impact. Police said their initial inquiries found no evidence that the boy had stolen anything.

In his initial statement to police, reported by ARY News, the contractor said Waseem had been learning electrical work from him, would leave work without permission, and that he drove after the boy because he wanted to stop him.

Police arrested him at the scene and impounded the car. Amjad Ali escaped, and Ms Bokhari said raids were under way in Faisalabad to find him. The FIR, No. 990/2026, was registered at the DHA police station with the state as complainant. “Police are complainant in the case, so that there could be no compromise between the two parties,” the CPO said. Two residents of the housing scheme are named as witnesses. “We all are in deep pain,” Mr Farooq said, adding that the orphan boy had been “subjected to barbarity.”

Waseem was buried in his family’s ancestral graveyard after funeral prayers in Daulatpur village, Muzaffargarh. His uncle, Jaafar Hussain, said his nephew had been killed deliberately and demanded justice. Ms Bokhari said Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz was overseeing the case and that “such crimes will not be tolerated under any circumstances in Punjab.” The child protection group Search for Justice called on national and provincial child rights bodies to follow the case.

Sources

Santo Tomas, Batangas: Alleged getaway driver arrested in shooting of barangay chairman Dennis Austria

Location: Santo Tomas City, Batangas, Philippines

Legal status: Michael Ben Calalo, 30, was arrested on October 20, 2026. Police are preparing documents for inquest proceedings. He has not been formally charged in court. Five other suspects remain at large. All are presumed innocent.

Philippine police on Tuesday, October 20, arrested the man they say drove the getaway motorcycle for the gunman who shot dead Dennis Austria, chairman of Barangay Santa Anastacia in Santo Tomas City, Batangas, on October 15. Philippine National Police chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. named the suspect as Michael Ben Calalo, 30. ABS-CBN News, citing the regional police, identified him by the alias “Ben” and reported that he was arrested by a joint police team at about 12:05am on October 20 in Barangay Balagtasin, San Jose, Batangas.

Mr Austria, 50, was killed at about 6:20am on Thursday, October 15, outside his home in a Santo Tomas subdivision. The Philippine Star reported he was cleaning his property when two men came in and shot him multiple times, and that he died of two gunshot wounds to the head and four to the body.

Police say the killing was a planned hit with six people involved. Investigators identified the alleged gunman as Mr Calalo’s 45-year-old cousin, a construction worker from San Jose, Batangas, the Daily Tribune reported. Two businessmen were identified as the alleged masterminds: a 35-year-old towing company owner who ran unsuccessfully for barangay councillor in 2023, and his uncle. A towing company employee is accused of driving a white Suzuki APV used in the operation, and a serving barangay councillor is accused of monitoring Mr Austria’s movements. All five remain at large, and police have not publicly named them.

Security camera footage was central. Police said the white Suzuki APV entered the subdivision several times on October 14, the day before the shooting, and came back the next morning, with footage reportedly showing the gunman approaching Mr Austria’s home shortly before the attack. ABS-CBN reported that footage and other evidence showed the suspect switching from the motorcycle to a Toyota Vios after the shooting, and that police recovered that car, which is registered in his name. Investigators also compared shoes the suspect wore in a Facebook photograph with shoes captured on CCTV, alongside vehicle records and witness statements, according to the Tribune.

Days earlier, the Philippine Star reported that police had identified one suspect from footage showing his face and the plate number of the escape motorcycle, and that the Highway Patrol Group had asked the Land Transportation Office to trace its owner. At that stage, police said they were looking at an old grudge, had two persons of interest including a former policeman said to have a land dispute with Mr Austria, and noted that his widow believed the killing was political. The later account from police leadership points instead to a paid hit.

Investigators are examining allegations that the killing was financed with 220,000 pesos and planned as early as September to clear the way for projects from which certain people allegedly stood to benefit, the Tribune reported. They are also looking at whether a death threat complaint Mr Austria filed in August 2025 is connected.

“We will not stop at identifying those who carried out the crime. We will pursue those who allegedly planned, financed, and facilitated it,” Gen. Nartatez said on October 21. He ordered the Special Investigation Task Group Austria to step up operations against the remaining suspects. Santo Tomas Mayor Arth Jhun Marasigan has offered a 200,000-peso reward for information leading to arrests. Police are still trying to recover the getaway motorcycle.

Sources

Daegu: Man who stabbed upstairs neighbour to death in lift over floor noise gets 25 years

Location: Daegu, South Korea

Legal status: Convicted of murder by the Daegu District Court after a jury trial and sentenced on October 21, 2026, to 25 years in prison. He can appeal. Korean media identify the defendant and victim only by initials.

The Daegu District Court sentenced a 28-year-old man to 25 years in prison on Wednesday, October 21, for murdering the man who lived in the flat directly above him, stabbing him dozens of times inside the building’s lift after a long dispute over floor noise. Korean media identify the defendant as A and the victim, a man in his 50s, as B.

The case was heard over two days as a citizen participation trial, South Korea’s jury format, in which a panel of seven gives a non-binding verdict and sentencing opinion to the judges. The 11th Criminal Division accepted the jury’s view. Five of the seven jurors recommended 30 years and the other two recommended 25. Prosecutors had asked for 20 years, so the sentence is five years longer than the prosecution sought, Maeil Shinmun reported.

The killing happened at about 10:40am on May 9 in a lift at an apartment block in Daegu’s Seo district. According to Yonhap and Maeil Shinmun, A had been asleep, was woken by what he took to be noise from upstairs, and concluded B’s family was making it deliberately. He armed himself with a knife, caught the lift as it came down with B inside and attacked him as soon as they met. Security camera footage showed him swinging the knife dozens of times, then harming himself, then stabbing B in the neck once more. B was taken to a nearby hospital and died about an hour later of hypovolemic shock from heavy blood loss, Maeil Shinmun reported.

A told investigators: “I thought they were making floor noise on purpose to torment me.” He also said: “The victim was making sounds and seemed to be in pain, so at the end I stabbed his neck one more time.”

The dispute dated to 2023, when A moved into the building. He said that to block the noise he had spent 12.7 million won on a soundproof booth in his room and lived wearing headphones, but still felt noise and vibration. Last year the two households argued over the building intercom and police were called once to mediate. B’s family told Maeil Shinmun that after the first complaints in 2023 they laid noise-reduction mats and wore indoor slippers, that A complained of loud “mouse clicking” even though they had no computer, and that B reported A to police in May last year after feeling threatened by his protests. The building management carried out an inspection but could not find the cause of the noise, the family said.

In court, B’s daughter said the family had taken great care and “did not make noise on purpose to torment anyone,” and asked for a severe sentence. A’s lawyers played video of the noise and argued he had suffered years of mental distress caused by B’s family. They also argued he had mental health problems, but a psychiatric evaluation found no abnormality.

The court rejected both arguments. It noted that noise from the building’s internal plumbing had been a known problem, with a notice posted in the lift, and said it was hard to conclude that all the noise A complained of came from B’s household. “A himself was not sure whether the noise was caused by B’s family,” the court said. It found that stabbing the victim “dozens of times in the neck, lungs and organs” and the defendant’s lack of remorse were aggravating factors. The jury, Yonhap reported, cited the way A shifted blame onto B’s family.

The defendant was detained and indicted on a murder charge after the attack. Either side can appeal the sentence to the high court.

Sources

Jeju: Man held on retaliatory murder charge after killing ex-partner who had reported him to police four times

Location: Jeju, South Korea

Legal status: The Jeju District Court issued a detention warrant on October 21, 2026, for a man in his 60s suspected of retaliatory murder and four other offences. He has not been indicted or convicted and is presumed innocent. Police say he has admitted most of the allegations. Korean media identify him and the victim only by initials.

The Jeju District Court on Wednesday, October 21, ordered the detention of a man in his 60s suspected of stabbing to death his former partner, a woman in her 40s, on a Jeju city street on October 12, after she had reported him to police four times in a year for stalking, sexual violence and dating violence. The court cited the risk that he would flee. Korean outlets identify the man as A and the woman as B.

Jeju Western Police Station is investigating him for retaliatory murder under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes, as well as aggravated trespass, preparation of arson of an inhabited building, aggravated arrest and attempted aggravated confinement, Yonhap News Agency reported. Police said he admitted most of the allegations during questioning.

According to police, the man had placed paint thinner and a knife beside the ground-floor stairs of the building where the woman lived, then waited for her. Jeju Today reported he had prepared the knife and the flammable liquid in advance, and the Hankyoreh, citing police, reported the knife had been bought about a month earlier and that he waited for her for about ten minutes. At about 1:38am on October 12, as she came home, he ripped off the police-issued smartwatch she wore on her wrist and dragged her to a rental car he had parked on the street. Nearby security cameras captured him forcing her toward the car. He then attacked her with the knife as she sat in the car’s front passenger seat, police said, and drove off. She was found collapsed in the street and died in hospital.

He was arrested within hours of the killing, Jeju Today and the Hankyoreh reported. Police believe he drank pesticide as he fled. He complained of health problems after his arrest and was admitted to hospital on October 13. Police released him temporarily because of his condition, then executed an arrest warrant on October 19 when he was discharged, Yonhap reported.

The woman had gone to police repeatedly. The Hankyoreh, citing the Jeju Western Police Station, reported that she reported him twice for stalking in October 2025, for sexual violence in March and for dating violence in May. Each time she did not want a formal case opened. The stalking and dating violence calls ended with warnings at the scene. The sexual violence case was opened, but closed for insufficient evidence after she declined to give a statement and submitted a letter saying she did not want him punished.

She had been under police protection for relationship crime victims since October 19, 2025, classed at a relatively low risk level, and police carried out 14 in-person and remote check-ins. She received the smartwatch on September 16 and a personal alarm on September 22. The next day, when the man came to her workplace, she set off the alarm and he left. Officers met her on September 28 and October 8, four days before her death, to urge her to file a formal complaint, but she declined, the Hankyoreh reported. Police did not use their power to impose an emergency 100-metre restraining measure on their own authority or ask prosecutors to seek one. An officer said they needed objective material such as a victim statement to persuade prosecutors and judges.

Police say the two had been together about a year and separated around August. According to reports of his statements to police, he said he asked her to get back together and was refused, and that she owed him money and he was angry she had reported him for stalking. Police said they had not confirmed his claim about the money. A police panel is due to decide this week whether to release his name and photo.

Sources

Moratuwa: Restaurant owner shot dead with T-56 rifle, gunmen’s getaway car breaks down and they hijack a motorcycle

Location: Soysapura, Moratuwa, Western Province, Sri Lanka

Legal status: No arrests; seven police teams investigating

A gunman with a T-56 assault rifle shot dead a restaurant owner inside his premises in Soysapura, Moratuwa, south of Colombo, on the night of Tuesday, October 20. The killers then lost their getaway car to a broken wheel, fired on a lorry driver who would not stop for them, and took a motorcycle at gunpoint. As of Wednesday no one had been arrested. Police have put seven teams on the case and suspect an organised crime figure involved in drug trafficking, News 1st reported.

The dead man was identified by News 1st as Pinnawala Appuhamilage Lasantha Kumara, 49, of Sandalankawa, Pannala, known as “Raththaran.” Ceylon Today gave his name as Lasantha Kumara, also 49. He had run the restaurant on a rented basis for nearly ten years. The time of the attack is given as about 8:30 pm by Ceylon Today and about 8:45 pm by News 1st. Three men arrived in a vehicle, according to News 1st, and one walked in with the rifle, fired, and left with the other two in the same car. Ceylon Today said the gunman fired multiple times and that Kumara died at the scene. The Daily Mirror, quoting the police media spokesperson on Tuesday night, said he was taken to hospital and died of his injuries there. Neither outlet has reported post-mortem findings. A woman from Thelawala, Moratuwa, who had come in to buy food was hit in the right leg. Hospital sources told News 1st her injuries were not life-threatening.

The escape, as police reconstructed it for News 1st, came apart quickly. Fleeing, the car hit a motorcycle, and the rider gave chase before losing it. The car ran through Soysapura, Katubedda, Rawathawatta, Moratumulla and over the Kospalana Bridge before a front wheel failed in the Suwarapola area of Piliyandala. The three men abandoned it and tried to flag down a passing lorry, waving the T-56. The driver refused to stop. They fired at the lorry and hit him. Still wounded, he drove on and later admitted himself to Kalubowila Teaching Hospital. The men then fired into the air, threatened a passing motorcyclist and took his machine. At the Piliyandala bypass junction, News 1st said, two got off, leaving the gunman alone. He rode to Siddhamulla, dumped the motorcycle and got on a Kottawa to Mount Lavinia bus. Ceylon Today’s account says the gunman fled on the motorcycle with the driver. Police recovered the motorcycle in Siddhamulla on Tuesday night. The abandoned car carried a false number plate. The registration, police said, belongs to a three-wheeler owned by a resident of Nugegoda.

The restaurant had been attacked before. News 1st said it was attacked in 2019, after which Mount Lavinia police posted two officers there, and that a gunman opened fire on it again in January 2020. Ceylon Today dated an earlier armed attack to May 2020. Police linked the earlier attacks to two organised crime figures and drug traffickers based overseas, News 1st reported. Ceylon Today said police noted that Kumara had been receiving death threats from organised criminal networks, including factions it named as linked to one figure held in Dubai and another based in France. Police have not said who ordered or carried out Tuesday’s shooting. The Daily Mirror quoted police as saying the motive and the identities of the attackers had not been established.

The investigation is being run by specialised units under Senior DIG for Western Province Sanjeewa Medawatte, according to Ceylon Today. News 1st cited police figures showing 39 organised shootings in Sri Lanka so far this year, with 25 people killed. It said this was the fifth shooting of the year aimed at a hotel or restaurant owner. Police told the outlet that 18 gunmen, 15 riders and 130 people accused of supporting such operations had been arrested this year, and that 987 weapons had been seized, including 16 T-56 rifles.

Sources

Taichung: Man who hacked talent agency chief Chan Chih-neng in a convenience store gets 18 years, as jurors reject his revenge story

Location: Fengyuan District, Taichung, Taiwan

Legal status: Convicted at first instance of injury causing death Oct 21; 18 years; appeal possible

A citizen-judge bench at the Taichung District Court on Wednesday, October 21, sentenced a man surnamed Huang to 18 years in prison for the August 2025 killing of Chan Chih-neng, general manager of the talent agency that brought South Korean cheerleaders Ha Ji-won and Woo Su-han to Taiwan’s Rakuten Monkeys. Huang was convicted of injury causing death, the charge prosecutors brought, rather than murder. The verdict can be appealed. Taiwanese outlets give his age as 41 (ETtoday) and 42 (United Daily News). English-language reports have identified him only by surname, and the Ledger does the same. The trial ran over three days from Monday, October 19.

According to the indictment, as reported by the Central News Agency, Huang drove a borrowed car from Taipei’s Wanhua District early on August 4, 2025, and waited near a convenience store on Nanyang Road in Fengyuan. The Taipei Times, citing CNA, said surveillance footage showed him tailing Chan’s car to the FamilyMart, getting out with a 53-year-old passenger surnamed Kang, and lingering near Chan’s vehicle. Chan arrived shortly after 10 am in a Porsche SUV, United Daily News said, and the Taipei Times put the attack at 10:27 am. When he came out of the shop, prosecutors say, Huang shoved him and sprayed pepper spray in his face. Chan ran back inside. Huang followed him in with a watermelon knife he had brought, a long-bladed kitchen knife, and struck him at the checkout. The indictment as quoted by CNA lists two blows to the left arm and two to the left leg. UDN reported at least four knife wounds to the left arm and leg, and other outlets’ headlines put the count at four or six. A blow to the back of the knee severed an artery, and Chan died of haemorrhagic shock, ETtoday reported. Store staff intervened and called police, and Huang drove off. Kang was left behind and walked away.

About an hour later Huang took a taxi to the Yongxing police post in Taichung’s North District and surrendered with the bloodied knife. He told police he had come south to settle a score because Chan had sexually harassed his former girlfriend. Prosecutors and police said at the time that they had reservations about that account. Huang has been in custody since, held incommunicado at first. A bid to be released was refused after the court noted, UDN reported, that he could produce no messages or call records with the former girlfriend, had fled before surrendering, and had deleted LINE conversations with people connected to the case.

At trial, a lawyer for Chan’s family argued that the motive was something else. ETtoday reported that the family’s representative told the court Chan had been set up in mainland China into signing a promissory note for US$5 million (about NT$150 million), that debt collectors had already turned up at his door, and that the family suspected a paid attack.

The bench did reject Huang’s version. Jurors found his stated motive “inconsistent with ordinary experience,” ETtoday reported, and dismissed it as an attempt to shift blame. The judges refused the usual reduction for voluntary surrender. They found that deleting messages showed the surrender was part of a plan rather than genuine remorse. They added time because he is a repeat offender with a prior conviction for violence. They cited the attack’s brutality, at a checkout in a busy shop in front of witnesses, leaving Chan “bleeding profusely with no chance to defend himself.” They also noted that Huang still refuses to give his real motive, has paid no compensation and has not reconciled with the family, who the court said remain in fear.

United Daily News noted that Chan had separately been the subject of a civil judgment ordering him to pay NT$1 million to a former female employee who accused him of sexual harassment, a ruling that was under appeal. The court has not linked that case to the killing.

Sources

Pattaya: Two men admit all nine charges in rape and murder of Russian brother and sister

Location: Pattaya, Chonburi province, Thailand

Legal status: Thana Kerdthong, 43, and Thongchai Srinil, 39, pleaded guilty on October 20, 2026, to all nine charges, including premeditated murder and aggravated rape causing death. They have not been convicted or sentenced: Thai law requires the court to hear supporting evidence first, set for November 30. They remain presumed innocent until judgment.

Two Thai men charged with abducting, raping and murdering a Russian woman and her teenage brother outside Pattaya reversed their pleas at Pattaya Provincial Court on Tuesday, October 20, and admitted every charge in the indictment. The victims were a 22-year-old woman and her 17-year-old brother, originally from Russia’s Tyumen region, who lived with their mother in Huai Yai, Bang Lamung district. Because the indictment includes a rape charge, the Ledger does not name the victims.

The defendants are Thana Kerdthong, 43, known as Pong, and Thongchai Srinil, 39, known as Thong. At an earlier hearing on October 1, both had admitted the firearms counts, impersonating police officers, unlawful detention, aggravated night-time robbery and concealing bodies, but denied premeditated murder. Thana also denied rape, which Thongchai had already admitted, Thai PBS reported. On Tuesday, after the judge read and explained the indictment again with their lawyers present, both men changed their pleas to guilty on all counts.

The guilty pleas do not end the case. Under Section 176 of Thailand’s Criminal Procedure Code, the court must hear evidence supporting a confession where the offence carries a severe penalty, and prosecutors asked to present it. The court set the hearing for November 30 at 9am and ordered both men brought from custody. No date has been set for judgment. Thai Examiner reports that the charges carry a possible death sentence. Thana also acknowledged being the defendant in an earlier Pattaya Provincial Court judgment, which prosecutors have cited in asking for an increased penalty.

At the same hearing, the court allowed the siblings’ mother, who attended with a lawyer and a Russian interpreter, to join the prosecution as a co-plaintiff under Sections 276, 277 bis and 289 of the Criminal Code, which cover rape and aggravated murder. Prosecutors confirmed she was the mother of both victims and did not object. The court refused her application on the remaining charges, ruling that the state alone is the injured party in those.

The prosecution filed the nine charges on September 30. They cover possessing firearms, ammunition and military equipment without a licence, carrying a firearm and a hand grenade in public, impersonating an official, unlawful detention, night-time robbery while posing as police and using a firearm, causing death, including premeditated murder, rape with force and a firearm causing death and committed with cruelty, and hiding or destroying bodies to conceal the deaths.

According to the earlier reporting, the siblings left home on a rented motorcycle at about 4am on July 26 and did not return. Their mother reported them missing. On July 29, officers found the motorcycle dismantled and buried. Warrants were issued, and the two men were arrested on July 31 in Sa Kaeo province, near the Cambodian border. Investigators then found both bodies buried near the home of a relative of one suspect in Huai Yai. Police accounts reported by Thai Examiner said the attackers posed as police officers to stop the siblings, that the brother was shot, and that the sister suffered a fatal assault.

During the investigation the two men gave conflicting accounts. Thongchai told police Thana carried out the killings and forced him to help bury the bodies under threat to his family. Thana admitted attacking the siblings but said it was only to steal the motorcycle and denied any rape, ThaiPTV reported.

Police have separately linked both men, with two others, Chatchanan Paen-iam, known as Fluke, and Atsadang Chuwong, known as Ball, to the earlier killings of a Thai couple and their teenage daughter, whose bodies were found buried in a coconut plantation about two kilometres away. That is a separate case, and the court status of those charges has not been reported. Everyone accused in it is presumed innocent.

Sources

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