Category Archives: Crime

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Run her out of town on a rail! Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, Leslie Richards needs a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

If you were apprehended after shooting at a crowd of people in a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority station, would you expect to simply be let go, even if you had missed everyone? I wouldn’t, but, then again, I’m not a 16-year-old girl.

A 16-year-old girl is facing arrest for a SEPTA subway shooting at the 15th and Market station

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office issued a warrant in the Nov. 19 shooting at the 15th and Market Street station.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, November 27, 2023 | 1:00 PM EST

A 16-year-old girl who police say shot at a group of juveniles inside the SEPTA station at 15th and Market Street earlier this month — but struck no one — will be arrested for that crime, authorities said Monday.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said an arrest warrant had been issued for the teen in connection with the Nov. 19 shooting on the station concourse. The girl, whom authorities did not identify because she is a juvenile, is expected to face charges of aggravated assault and firearms violations.

The teen had been detained at the 11th Street station on the day of the shooting because she was wanted on a family court bench warrant for theft, the district attorney’s office said.

She is expected to be arrested for the shooting by the end of the week, authorities said.

The language on this story is unclear, to say no more. Was she already locked up on the bench warrant? Will she be arrested while already behind bars, or is she out on the streets? Normally, one would expect an apprehended shooter to have been arrested on the assault and firearms charges right away. Were the police waiting to see if uber-permissive District Attorney Larry Krasner would want to take any action since the shooter was a 16-year-old girl?

The teen girl opened fire on a group of juveniles who were following her out of the station and up the exit stairs, the district attorney’s office said in a statement. Video obtained by investigators shows the teen shooting from the steps, fleeing, and then throwing a backpack into a trash can in the concourse, the statement said.

A handgun was recovered from the trash can and matched the live rounds and shell casings found at the scene of the shooting, the district attorney’s office said. When the teen was detained on the bench warrant, authorities said, she was wearing clothing that matched what the shooter was seen wearing on surveillance footage.

There’s more at the original, but it’s about SEPTA’s negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109, who have been working without a contract since March 31st. The union postponed a strike date of November 20th, until a decision on December 13th:

The transit police officers are asking for a pay increase amid a staffing shortage and a rise in antisocial behaviors — like smoking and turnstile jumping — but not violent crimes.

Is shooting up a subway station not a violent crime if the shooter never hit anyone?

But I have to laugh at that last quoted paragraph for other reasons: reporter Rodrigo Torrejón listed “smoking and turnstile jumping” as the antisocial behaviors, but for some reason declined to mention the biggest “antisocial behavior” plaguing not just SEPTA stations but the city itself: drug addicts littering the stations and the tracks with used needles, and junkies passed out on the streets and in the stations and even the train cars.

The (supposed) marathon bargaining session scheduled to begin on October 23rd obviously didn’t solve anything, and SEPTA has only been surviving on federal deficit spending aid due to the COVID-19 panicdemic.[1]No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus. Now CEO Leslie Richards, who has presided over worsening service yet got a $75,000 raise earlier in the year, a plethora of bus and trolley accidents, and train stations littered with the homeless and drug needles, with the transit service plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff wants more money from the taxpayers to subsidize SEPTA passengers. Just yesterday, a day in which SEPTA had a whopping forty routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator shortages,’ a man on the system stabbed three people at the Walnut Locust station before being shot by a SEPTA police officer.

But, things have improved today: only 21 routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator unavailability.’

The Philadelphia Inquirer, not exactly an evil reich-wing site, described the SEPTA trains:

The Market-Frankford Line has its own incense: a combination of cigarette, weed, or K2 smoke. People in the throes of opioid addiction are sometimes frozen in a forward lean in train cars and on platforms. People experiencing homelessness might use a couple of seats or a station to seek rest away from the cold and the heat.

To me, that’s a bit more serious than “smoking and turnstile jumping,” but yeah, I’m an evil reich-wing Republican! I’m the kind of man who would have used the word “junkies” rather than “people in the throes of opioid addiction,” and “vagrants” rather than “people experiencing homelessness.”

Miss Richards will have to somehow hammer out a contract with the SEPTA police officers, and will have to do it in the face of reduced revenues, from a lower number of riders and the loss of Federal dollars as the Covidiocy spending ends.

At a time when the left want to push people out of their cars and onto public transportation, Miss Richards has overseen a real decrease in the quality and service of one of our nations larger public transportation systems. Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, she needs to get a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

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↑1 No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus.
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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

I suppose that the judge felt that she had no choice. Section 16 of the Kentucky state Constitution specifies that, “All prisoners shall be bailable by sufficient securities, unless for capital offenses when the proof is evident or the presumption great; and the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” But good Lord, this story is dumb!

Sheriff: Kentucky murder suspect slips ankle monitor and flees home incarceration

by John Cheeves | Wednesday, November 22, 2023 | 3:51 PM EST

A murder suspect on home incarceration in Somerset disappeared early Wednesday after removing the ankle monitor meant to track his location, Pulaski County Sheriff Bobby Jones said in a news release.

Samuel L. Baker, 24, was scheduled to stand trial Dec. 4 in Pulaski Circuit Court before Judge Teresa Whitaker on charges of murder, first-degree burglary, persistent felony offender and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

I admit to being shocked that the Lexington Herald-Leader published Mr Baker’s mugshot.

Baker is believed to have a gun with him and should be considered armed and dangerous, Jones said. He is believed to be with Adriana Brown, 28, in a 2016 black Dodge Grand Caravan, the sheriff added.

Miss Brown, you in a heap o’ trouble, girl! The state does not look kindly on helping criminals escape prosecution.

Baker was charged with the 2021 shooting death of Robert Claunch, 62, of Pulaski County.

Baker originally was jailed in lieu of a $500,000 bond. In August, after several trial delays, Whitaker agreed to reduce his bond to $25,000 in cash or $50,000 in property, on the condition that Baker agree to home incarceration with an ankle monitor, to not have a firearm and to not use alcohol or illegal drugs.

Mr Baker was arrested on March 19, 2021, so the “several trial delays” mean that he had been locked up on the charges for almost 2½ years without being tried. The obvious question is: why was there no more urgency to bring him to trial? There was still some COVID-19-related stupidity delaying trials in early 2021, but that has been over for well over a year now. If Mr Baker and his attorney had been the ones getting the trial delayed, then there was no reason for Judge Whitaker to reduce his bond; if the trial, which was now scheduled for December 4th, was delayed by the actions of the Commonwealth, then yes, I can see how the judge believed that she had no choice. She was aware that Mr Baker had failed to follow legal instructions in the past.

Mr Baker, the judge noted, was facing a possible sentence of life without the possibility of parole. In essence, Mr Baker had every incentive to cut off his ankle monitor and head for the hills; with a potential sentence of life without parole, there’s nothing more the Commonwealth could do to him. Mr Baker’s bond was posted on August 21st.

So, what happened? Mr Baker had every incentive to flee, but Miss Brown, if she indeed enabled his escape, would face charges herself, but stupid is as stupid does.

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Even now, Jayana Webb is catching a bit of a break

On March 25, 2022, we reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer tries to ramp up sympathy for the drunk driver who killed three men how our nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper tried to ‘humanize’ Jayana Webb, to let readers know that it was not just the three men she killed but her own life which was now so negatively impacted.

Miss Webb had been pulled over by State Troopers Brendan Sisca, 29, Martin Mack,33, for doing 110 MPH in a 50 MPH zone of southbound Interstate 95. She got away with that, because the Troopers were suddenly called to a man trying to jump median barriers near Lincoln Financial Field. The Troopers let Miss Webb go, and found Reyes Rivera Oliveras, a 28-year-old electrician, around the median barriers.

Miss Webb, a very fortunate woman for getting away with that speeding and reckless driving stop, then headed south herself, and struck Messrs Siska, Mack, and Oliveras, so hard that she tore the doors off the State Police vehicle, sending the Troopers flying over the median divider, and the three men all to their deaths.

Unfortunately, reckless did not translate into wreckless.

    Webb, who prosecutors said admitted to drinking Hennessy cognac that night, proceeded south on I-95 and crashed into the three men at such a speed that the impact ripped the doors off their stopped state police SUV and sent the troopers flying over a highway divider.

The troopers and Mr Oliveras were in the left hand median; to have struck them, Miss Webb had to have been driving down the “hammer” lane, the left-hand passing lane. She got away with speeding, and she was speeding again.

Webb now faces three counts of third-degree murder and potentially decades in prison. Her friends are reckoning with how a popular and promising young entrepreneur ended up in jail without bail over the deaths of three men.

“(A) popular and promising young entrepreneur”, huh? Here the Inquirer was trying to humanize her, to make her sympathetic character, not a killer, not a murderess, but just some poor thing who happened to make a mistake.

Image of tweet, via Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

By the time Webb’s mugshot hit national news, she had already shown indications of reckless driving. Tweets from before the crash quickly emerged in which she bragged about drinking and driving. One January post read: “If you ask me, I’m the best drunk driver ever.”

Some in her social circle, meanwhile, were in shock. How could Webb — a track-and-field star with no past DUIs and a hair-braiding business — be responsible for the deaths of three people?

Jayana Webb perp walk, via Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

Some said Webb deserves what’s coming. Others, sometimes posting under the hashtag “#TeamJay,” said Webb made a terrible error, egged on by a pervasive culture of casual drunk driving.

“What she did was not right,” said a friend, who spoke to the The Inquirer on condition of anonymity due to the high-profile nature of the case. “But at the same time we’re all human and we all make mistakes.”

There’s more at the original, and it’s utterly disgusting. The Inquirer let us know what a wonderful person she really was, someone who just happened to get caught up in a culture of drinking, partying hearty, and driving drunk. Remember: the Inquirer also tried to make a martyr out of 12-year-old Thomas Siderio, Jr, who fired a shot at Philadelphia Police officers, and wrote about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes as though he was an innocent kid just walking to school, when he was not.

It’s really not her fault, you know, she just made a mistake.

A mistake that left three men, three men with families, three apparently hard-working men, stone cold graveyard dead.

Well, she has now been sentenced.

Pregnant woman faces up to 60 years in prison for DUI crash that killed two state troopers and a civilian

Jayana Webb, 23, will start her prison term of 27.5 to 60 years in prison early next year, after giving birth to her child, her attorney said.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Wednesday, November 22, 2023 | 2:26 PM EST

A Montgomery County woman will serve between 27.5 and 60 years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to driving drunk and fatally striking two Pennsylvania State Troopers and the civilian they were assisting on I-95 last spring.

Jayana Webb, 23, of Eagleville, pleaded guilty to three counts of third degree murder, three counts of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, and one count of DUI for fatally hitting Troopers Martin Mack III, 33, and Branden T. Sisca, 29, along with Reyes Rivera Oliveras, 28, with her car on I-95 in the early morning hours of March 21, 2022.

As part of the terms of her guilty plea, Webb, who is seven months pregnant, will be allowed to remain out of custody until she gives birth in February, her attorney Michael Walker said. After she gives birth, Webb will be allowed some bonding time with the child before she reports to prison, he said.

This is the part that really pisses me off annoys me. She should go to jail, go directly to jail! She was out on bail, at least long enough to go out and get knocked up, and now, even after her sentencing, gets time before having to report to prison to have the baby, and then additional time to ‘bond with’ the unfortunate child. While the Commonwealth cannot force her to give up her baby for adoption, she should still go to prison immediately, be released to the hospital when she is ready to be delivered of the child, and then go immediately back to jail, to let whomever is going to care for the baby to bond with the child, not with Miss Webb. If she is going to serve a minimum of 27½ years, the child will be well into adulthood when his mother gets out of the slammer.

In a statement, District Attorney Larry Krasner called Wednesday’s guilty plea and sentencing by Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott a “just resolution” to “one of the most shocking incidents of vehicular violence in recent memory.”

A “just resolution”? Will Messrs Siska, Mack, and Oliveras have come back to life in 27½ years? Will they be walking and talking and enjoying life with their families in the sixty years which constitutes her maximum sentence?

The newspaper was still trying to drum up sympathy for Miss Webb. The original title for the story, as I read it in the ‘tab’ in my browser, was “Drunk driver sentenced after killing 3 people in 2022,” but an editor changed it to “Pregnant woman faces up to 60 years in prison for DUI crash that killed two state troopers and a civilian”, just so readers catch that she is pregnant.

The newspaper also reported that Miss Webb’s blood alcohol level was 0.211, when tested sometime after the crash, so it must have been higher than that when the crash occurred. She also tested positive for marijuana use, though that test does not measure active marijuana intoxication at the time taken.

27½ years means that Miss Webb will be somewhere around 50 to 51 years old when her minimum sentence has been served; if she has to do the full 60, she wouldn’t get out until she’s 83 or 84. According to the state Department of Corrections, a prisoner must serve the entire minimum sentence before becoming eligible for parole.

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I hope that he lives for 707 years and 8 months!

Given that this happened in California, I’m a bit surprised that this “minor attracted person” didn’t get probation.

Costa Mesa babysitter gets life in prison for molestations

by Paul Anderson | Friday, November 17, 2023 | 4:54 PM PST

Note how Matthew Antonio Zakrzewski is smiling in this picture of him on the beach. He might not be smiling much anymore.

A 34-year-old child care service provider from Costa Mesa was sentenced today to 707 years and eight months to life in prison for molesting 16 boys, aged 2 to 14, and showing another victim child pornography.

Matthew Antonio Zakrzewski was convicted Oct. 3 of 34 felony sex charges related to 17 victims in crimes that prosecutors said took place from 2014 through 2019.

Jurors in the trial also heard evidence relating to two other boys, including one who was allegedly molested, but the defendant was not charged with attacking those alleged victims, Deputy Dist. Atty. Juliet Oliver said.

We were told, especially after the John Jay Report showing that 81% of the sexual abuse victims of the all-male Catholic priesthood were male, that child abusers care much more about opportunity than the sex of their victims. Why, then, were all of Mr Zakrzewski’s victims, as was also the case with Jerry Sandusky, male? If the chances of selecting a male victim out of an even chance is 50%, then there is only a 0.001220703125% chance that all sixteen victims would be male.

Multiple parents told Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Menninger how the defendant’s crimes affected them. One victim offered the defendant forgiveness, while another implored him to seek redemption in religion because, “It’s never too late to turn to God.”

Further down, after several paragraphs on what parents of victims said, we come to this:

(A mother) said he is so conniving that no parole board should ever give credence to what he says about rehabilitation.

“He’ll know what to say,” she said. “No future committee can believe any of that.”

Which tells us that Mr Zakrzewski will eventually be eligible for parole.

In her closing argument of the trial, Oliver said Zakrzewski had an “entire book” on pedophilia on his computer.

“In it there’s a chapter titled ‘Hunting Season,’” she said. “… When the defendant reached out to [one of his victims] saying ‘Let me be his occasional babysitter,’ he was hunting [the boy]. He was hunting every family in this case. … He wasn’t just reading the book, he could have written the book.”

All accused are entitled to a defense, and I feel sorry for Jennifer Ryan of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, who had to put up some sort of defense for her client, a task made enormously difficult because Mr Zakrzewski liked to videotape the abuse he wrought on his victims. Miss Ryan made some feeble attempts, but feeble was the best that could be done, because the evidence was so overwhelming.

We are not supposed to be happy that prison rape occurs, and it should never be part of a convict’s punishment, but it’s very difficult for me not to wish to see Mr Zakrzewski put in a maximum security prison’s ‘general population,’ with the other prisoners made aware of just who he is and what he did. I suspect that he will not have an easy life in prison, and I hope that he spends all 707 years and 8 months alive, behind bars, suffering whatever that life for him is like.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, girl!

At some point, you’d think that education professionals, all of whom have collegiate degrees, would be smarter than this, but I guess if you did think that, you’d be wrong. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A guidance counselor at a Bucks County middle school had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student, police say

Kelly Schutte had multiple sexual encounters with the teen this year, both in her car and at the teen’s home in West Rockhill Township, according to police.

by Vinny Vella | Friday, November 10, 2023 | 12:52 PM EST | Updated: 2:21 PM EDT Continue reading →

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Three pages of Nashville shooter’s notebooks leaked

Steven Crowder, host of Louder with Crowder, a daily political podcast and YouTube channel with commentary segments, somehow got possession of photographs of three pages of the ‘Death Day’ notebook of Audrey Hale, the 28-year-old white woman who was so mentally ill that she thought she was a male named ‘Aiden,’ and who killed six people at the Covenant School outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Plenty of other people, including Robert Stacy McCain, have commented on Miss Hale’s notebook — I can’t seriously call it a ‘manifesto’ — and the fact that Miss Hale was just plain off-her-rocker.

Rather, what interests me is the reaction from the authorities: Continue reading →

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Killadelphia The numbers are down, but Philly will still see well over 400 murders in 2023

The ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties of Hallowe’en have left, and, according to the Philadelphia Police Department, there have been 358n homicides through the end of October in the City of Brotherly Love. Yes, that number is a great improvement over the same date during the past three years, but, if you open the website, you’ll see that, for other than the last three years, it is a higher to date total than any of the other years listed, going back through 2007. More, 358 is higher than the entire year totals for 2008 through 2019.

Oh, that “*Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2021” footnote? That’s wrong; it’s the annual percentage change compared to the same day in the previous year, 2022, not 2021, a sloppiness I reported back on April 27th, and something I reported to the Police Department vis Twitter back then; it still hasn’t been corrected.

So, how do the numbers work out? Hallowe’en was the 304th day of the year, which means Philly has been seeing 1.1776 homicides per day, which, multiplied by 365 days in the year, yields 429.84 total murders for 2023. That’s certainly a great improvement over the past three years, but, assuming 430 homicides for the year, 2023 will still be higher than any year since 1995, other, of course, than the last three. And, if the number winds up 430, it will mean that the triumvirate of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw[1]Miss Outlaw resigned as of September 22nd to take a lower-level job with the Port Authority of New York, because she knew she was toast in Philadelphia. will have averaged slightly more than 500 homicides per year, 501.75 to be exact, during their four years together. For that number to drop below 500 would require the city to see only 422 killings this year, possible but improbable.

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↑1 Miss Outlaw resigned as of September 22nd to take a lower-level job with the Port Authority of New York, because she knew she was toast in Philadelphia.
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How many crimes are connected to the killing of Josh Kruger?

Josh Kruger and his cat, Mason.

We have fairly extensively covered the murder of homosexual and homeless advocate Josh Kriger in Philadelphia:

Once the allegations that the 39-year-old Mr Kruger had been sexually involved with his 19-year-old alleged murderer, since the (alleged) killer, Robert Davis, was 15 — in Pennsylvania, the age of consent is 16, not 18 — the story changed fairly dramatically. All of the ‘tributes’ for Mr Kruger suddenly dried up. If any sexual activity took place while Mr Davis was 15, Mr Kruger would have been, under Pennsylvania Title 18 §3122(1)(b), guilty of a first-degree felony. Mr Kruger was a minor celebrity in Philly, and had a lot of friends, including Mayor Jim Kenney. Among those who followed him on Twitter were District Attorney Larry Krasner, the District Attorney’s Office, Inquirer editorial writer Daniel Pearson, and CNN’s Jake Tapper. Now that Mr Davis’ family are telling us that Mr Kruger was a sexual predator, essentially a chickenhawk, and everyone seemed to just keep their mouths tightly shut. Continue reading →

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The left only care about gun control when white people get killed, and heterosexual white men are the killers

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter biography photo was taken in a bar, with a “Bud Light” sign in the window.

As we have previously noted, the very lovely Amanda Marcotte, native Texan and later Brooklynite, moved away from the Big Apple to South Philadelphia sometime in late 2018 or early 2019. I have no idea if Marc Faletti, her POSSLQ, and she still live in the City of Brotherly Love, because, at least in her gig with Salon, she almost never writes about the city, but, at least for this article, I’m operating under the assumption that they still do.

Miss Marcotte might not really care that much about Philly, but she certainly does care about guns, or at least she does when a white guy kills a bunch of other mostly white people! Continue reading →