No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough!

Upon seeing this tweet from Eyal Yakoby, I had to check the article to see if it was as bad as I suspected. In some ways, it really wasn’t, because most of it was based on the legal problems for José Ibarra’s defense, and the decision to seek a bench trial, a trial by a judge rather than a jury.

Laken Riley’s killer never stood a chance

For all the political controversy surrounding Jose Ibarra, the outcome of this trial was never in doubt.

By Danny Cevallos, MSNBC legal analyst | Thursday, November 21, 2024 | 7:07 PM EST

Jose Antonio Ibarra was convicted on multiple counts of murder Wednesday in the February killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. Ibarra was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, along with other consecutive sentences for lesser crimes, including aggravated assault with intent to rape and “peeping Tom.”

Riley’s murder became a political rallying cry at this summer’s Republican National Convention because Ibarra entered the country illegally in 2022. But for all the political controversy, the outcome of this trial was never in doubt.

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Let’s hope he was locked up before he reproduced

Ameen Hurst, then 16. Click to enlarge.

Using Robert Stacy McCain’s formulation, say hello to Ameen Hurst, and while you’re at it, you can say goodbye as well.

However, unlike Mr McCain’s “say goodbye” bit, young Mr Hurst has not died due to his own stupidity. Rather, say goodbye because this teenaged killer was just sentenced to 55 to 110 years in prison.

Ameen Hurst sentenced to 55 to 110 years in prison for four murders, robberies as a teenager

Ameen Hurst was arrested at age 16 and charged with killing four people. He was sentenced to 55 to 110 years in prison on Thursday.

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, November 14, 2024 | 4:00 PM EST

By the time Ameen Hurst becomes eligible for parole, he will be an elderly man — nearly three-quarters of the way to 100 years old, and nearly five times the age he was when he committed the crimes that landed him in prison.

For shooting and killing four people, robbing two convenience stores at gunpoint, and then escaping from prison while awaiting trial, Hurst was sentenced Thursday to 55 to 110 years in prison. The sentence surprised even veteran Philadelphia prosecutors — Hurst, after all, was just 16 when he committed the crimes.

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Aspiring rapper update

The “aspiring rapper” headline of this article was inspired by my good friend Robert Stacy McCain’s series of the same name, which occurred to me when I saw the following article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Two more YBC rappers are accused of murder. One said he was at the shooting but didn’t fire a gun.

Rappers and YBC affiliates Quamere Hall, a.k.a. Mere Pablo, and Mark Johnson, a.k.a. Yak Yola, are facing murder charges.
by Ellie Rushing | Wednesday, November 14, 2024 | 4:58 PM EST

Quamere Hall doesn’t deny that he was at the scene of the slaying of Sharif King, his attorney said Wednesday — he just didn’t fire the guns that killed him.

His friend and fellow rapper Mark Johnson, on the other hand, is another story, Hall told detectives.

So, “fellow rappers” have no real loyalty to each other? Bit shocker there! Perhaps young Mr Hall’s lawyer should have told him that it doesn’t matter which one of them actually fired the gun; if they were engaged in the commission of another felony, they can both be convicted of second-degree murder in the Keystone State. Continue reading

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

Spencer Majett, via the Daily Voice.

No, of course The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t publish Spencer Majett’s photo, but it wasn’t difficult to find.

Man charged with murder of a bystander and shooting at cops, police say

Spencer Majett is a suspect in the killing of 23-year-old Felicity Vanatta, a bystander who was fatally shot after an argument outside a Kensington deli erupted into gunfire.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, November 7, 2024 | 1:49 PM EST

A Philadelphia man who was shot by police after being on the run for allegedly killing a bystander in Kensington has been charged with murder, police said Thursday.

Here’s me wondering if the George Soros-sponsored, police hating and criminal loving District Attorney, Larry Krasner, will try to charge the police officers for shooting the distinguished Mr Majett.

Spencer Majett, 29, was shot twice by Philadelphia police officers on Oct. 29 after they tried to arrest him and he ran, setting off a brief foot chase, police said. After the shooting, police said, Majett was in critical but stable condition, and authorities had been waiting for his condition to stabilize to charge him with murder and related crimes in the Oct. 8 slaying of 23-year-old Felicity Vanatta.

Majett also faces two counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and related crimes for shooting at the two officers who chased after him, police said.

Officers were patrolling Kensington Avenue around 5:30 p.m. Oct. 29 when they spotted Majett. He was a suspect in the killing of Vanatta, who was shot outside the Steak N Beer deli on Kensington Avenue when an altercation erupted into gunfire, police said.

According to the Daily Voice, Mr Majett fired the bullet which killed Miss Vanatta from an unrelated fight half a block away.

So, Mr Majett is facing spending the rest of his miserable life in jail, for pulling a gun and shooting in a fight, because he’s just plain stupid. If he’s actually the killer, he deserves it.

He will do it again

Tyler Boyle under arrest, via WPVI-TV.

What sentence did he face originally?

It is always a good thing to see child molesters sentenced to jail, but it’s not a good thing, not a good thing at all, to see them sentenced to far to little time in prison.

An Aldan man was sentenced to county jail for trying to lure underage girls into his car, possessing child porn

Tyler Boyle approached underage girls on two separate occasions as they were walking home from school. After his arrest, police found a hidden cache of child porn on his cell phone.

by Vinny Vella | Hallowe’en, October 31, 2024 | 2:29 PM EDT

An Aldan man who twice tried to lure underage girls walking near their schools to get into his car and asked one to perform a sex act was sentenced Thursday to 11½ to 23 months in county jail.

Tyler Boyle, 21, pleaded guilty in July to luring a child into a motor vehicle, corruption of minors, and related crimes for approaching the girls, as well as possessing child pornography for a hidden cache of images investigators discovered on his cell phone after his arrest.

As a result of the sentence handed down by Delaware County Court Judge Mary Alice Brennan, Boyle must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Assistant District Attorney Bryan Barth said that while it was fortunate none of the victims was physically harmed, Boyle’s behavior warranted incarceration.

So, a guilty plea. His sentence? 11½ to 23 months in the Delaware County jail. Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella continued to tell us that Mr Boyle apologized for his actions and regretted the impact hey had on the victims and their families.

“I’m doing all I can do to change my destructive behavior,” Boyle said. “I vow to get all the help I need, go back to school to finish my degree, and become a productive member of society.”

Tyler Boyle receiving his award for becoming an Eagle Scout, via Pennsylvania’s 163rd Legislative District in Delaware County

Translation: his lawyer told him to express contrition. WPVI-TV identified him as a former Eagle Scout.

Well, perhaps he really is contrite, perhaps he really is sorry for what he did, as well as for having gotten caught. But this wasn’t his first offense.

When he was arrested for this offense, he was already out on bail for exposing himself to a kindergarten aged girl. The girls in the current case were 11-years-old at the time. He still faces the charges for the 2022 arrest.

What, I have to ask, are the odds that Mr Boyle will come out of the county jail reformed? What are the odds that the two incidents for which he was arrested are the only two attempts he made to lure young girls? After his first arrest, if there was ever any chance that Mr Boyle could somehow restrain his sick urges, that chance was obviously zero to judge by the fact that he offended a second time.

The fear of jail didn’t stop him from that second offense, so what are the chances that 11½ to 23 months in county will create enough of an overriding fear that his unnatural urges won’t get the better of him again?

Unfortunately, Mr Vella’s story did not tell us what kind of jail time he was facing. He was charged with “two counts each of felony luring a child into a vehicle, felony unlawful contact with minors, and felony corruption of minors, according to court records.” Under 18 §2910(a)(a.1)(2) Luring a child into a motor vehicle or structure is a second-degree felony, which, under 18 §106 (b)(3) carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison. He could have been locked up for twenty years just on those two counts.

Was Mr Boyle given a lenient plea deal so the children would not have to testify? That kind of thing happens a lot. However, child pornography was found on his cell phone, and that, too, is a felony. Under 18 §6312(d)(d.1)(2)(i) simple possession of child pornography is a third degree felony, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, and none of the victims would have had to have testified for that charge to have been brought to trial.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly has provided for strict sentences for the sexual abuse of children and preying on them, but, as happens far, far, far too often, in many of our states, the criminal justice system is far too lenient in imposing sentences for these crimes.

Gary Plauché was unavailable for comment.

 

 

Killadelphia: Gang-banger killed, two more gang-bangers arrested for it Not the worst result in the world

Two months ago, we noted the murder of Abdul Vicks, 25, a rapper going by the stage name of YBC Dul. Mr Vicks was a ringleader in a Philly gang calling themselves Young Bag Chasers, and I called it a “public service homicide,” because this gang was particularly violent.

Part of that public service was that the punks who targeted and shot Mr Vicks would themselves wind up off the streets, once the Philadelphia Police identified and arrested them: both killers and killed would be removed from society. And so arrests have finally been made:

Second teen arrested for killing West Philly rapper, gang member YBC Dul

Rashawn Williams, 18, has been charged with killing Abdul Vicks, aka YBC Dul.

by Ellie Rushing | Wednesday, October 23, 2024 | 9:46 AM EDT

An 18-year-old has been charged with fatally shooting a local rapper and West Philadelphia gang leader — the second teen in two months to face charges in the high-profile killing.

Rashawn Williams, 18, was arrested Tuesday and charged with the murder of Abdul Vicks, the 25-year-old rapper affiliated with the West Philadelphia-based gang the Young Bag Chasers, or YBC.

Vicks, also known as YBC Dul or “Mr. Disrespectful,” was shot multiple times in a drive-by-style shooting in Olney on Aug. 23. Vicks had just picked up a friend, and was driving down the 100 block of West Olney Avenue when a white car pulled up alongside him at a stoplight. At least two people fired multiple shots into Vicks’ car, before speeding off, police said.

Vicks was struck multiple times in the chest and hand. In a panic, his friend drove back to his house on North Sixth Street, and then, with the help of his uncle, rushed Vicks to Einstein Medical Center, where he died just before 4 p.m.

16-year-old Aiden Waters had been arrested for the same crime in early September. Messrs Williams and Waters were both members of “Fastbreak, a previously little-known gang affiliated with the area around Fourth Street, Nedro Avenue, and Spencer Street in Olney.”

In our previous article on the subject, we noted the violence of Mr Vicks’ gang. The Philadelphia Inquirer described Mr Water’ (alleged) activities:

This dude is just 16! With any luck, the two (alleged) shooters hadn’t knocked up anyone, and will be locked up long enough that they will have Darwin Awarded themselves.

Gang-bangers killing other gang-bangers isn’t really that bad a thing. The biggest problem is that they are so often such rotten shots that they kill or wound innocent bystanders.

Another killed in the Philadelphia Badlands Yet another hit-and-run homicide in the City of Brotherly Love

Am I the only one who wonders if Philadelphia’s “Driving While Black” ordinance has contributed to this? When the police cannot stop vehicles for obvious, if ‘minor’ violations, some people think that they can get away with anything.

Woman killed in hit-and-run crash in North Philly, the latest in string of incidents

The fatal crash is at least the third hit-and-run crash in a week, according to police.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, October 14, 2024 | 9:43 AM EDT

North Fifth Street and West Indiana Avenue, via Google Maps, April 2023.

A woman was killed in a hit-and-run crash in North Philadelphia Sunday night, the latest in a recent string of such incidents that have left several injured and others dead.

Police responded to a report of a fatal crash at the intersection of North Fifth Street and West Indiana Avenue shortly after 7:30 p.m.

Investigators learned a person driving a silver Hyundai Sonata northbound on North Fifth Street struck a 42-year-old pedestrian as the driver made a left turn onto West Indiana Avenue, police said. The woman, whom police did not identify, was taken to Temple University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 8:05 p.m.

The passengers in the Sonata fled the scene on foot, police said. No arrests have been made, and police continue to investigate.

Philadelphia Badlands. Photo via Philadelphia Inquirer Click to enlarge.

The intersection of North Fifth Street and West Indiana Avenue is in the Fairhill neighborhood, squarely in the Philadelphia Badlands, a name The Philadelphia Inquirer truly hates.

The story doesn’t tell us what most people would suspect: the “silver Hyundai Sonata” was possibly stolen and/or the driver was intoxicated, and/or the vehicle was involved in a crime, and that’s why the driver and passengers fled the scene.

WPVI-TV reported more than did the Inky, and did so earlier in the day, so reporter Rodrigo Torrejón knew the information, but chose not to include it, instead telling subscribers old news:

Police say the driver of a silver Hyundai Sonata was speeding and driving recklessly before hitting the 42-year-old woman. . . . .

Investigators believe the driver attempted to swerve around the victim but struck her instead. The driver then reportedly continued down the sidewalk, where the car hit a pillar and several parked cars. . . . .

Officers recovered the badly damaged Hyundai at the scene.

Police and several witnesses said two to three men jumped out of the car and fled the area on foot after the crash.

Officers did try to pursue the suspects but they got away, police said.

Authorities also said a gun and drugs were found inside the car, which is registered out of Lancaster County. Police also said the car has not been reported stolen.

Yup! Reckless driving, speeding, transporting drugs, and a possibly illegal gun and stolen car. Lancaster County is over sixty miles from Philly.

We don’t yet know who the driver and passengers are, but the odds are that, when we do find out, we’ll read that they have been in trouble with the law before.

Killadelphia: Did Teryn Johnson ever have a chance?

Even though I no longer live in the Keystone State, The Philadelphia Inquirer is my favorite newspaper — the Lexington Herald-Leader is the closest thing I have to a local newspaper, but it’s absolutely pathetic — because the Inky has a lot more news coverage, but also reports on the culture of America’s poorest big city in a way that the editors might not realize that it does. I have reported, several times, on the newspaper deliberately concealing facts.

This story doesn’t conceal any facts of which I am aware, but when I read it, I saw the unreported on culture that underlies it.

Halim Evans, mugshot via Philly’s Most Wanted.

A teen wouldn’t get an abortion. So her boyfriend hired his cousin to kill her, prosecutors say.

It’s a case that even the accused killer’s defense attorney said was “just about as bad as we see in Philadelphia, and we see a lot of horrific things.”

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, October 10, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

Halim Evans didn’t want any more children.

So when the then-20-year-old learned that his girlfriend was pregnant, he told her there was only one option.

“We gotta get the abortion jawn,” Evans texted Teryn Johnson, 17, in July 2022. “I ain’t ready for no more kids.”

Johnson made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy, and later told him she was no longer pregnant. But she didn’t go through with it, and when Evans found out, prosecutors say, he hired his cousin to kill her.

Qasim Pointer, mugshot via Philly’s Most Wanted.

There’s a lot more at the original, but no, of course the Inquirer didn’t include the mugshots of the alleged perpetrators, but it didn’t take much effort to find them.

When Mr Evans found out that Miss Johnson was out of the house, walking her dog, he allegedly called his cousin, Qasim Pointer, and told him where to find her. Mr Pointer and Mr Evans other cousin then — again allegedly — drove a stolen Dodge Challenger to Frankford, and spotted the victim. They trailed the victim, and Mr Pointer then jumped out and shot Miss Johnson twice in the back, killing her and her unborn child. I have omitted direct quotes of how the Philadelphia Police put together the evidence, but this part is important:

In a series of recorded conversations, Pointer and his brother, who is serving a 70-year sentence for murder in Maryland, laid out the motive for the crime, (Homicide Detective Robert)Daly said.

“Bro, our cuz … he been dropping babies like motherf— flies bro,” Pointer said on Sept. 7. “He dropping babies like flies but one of them he trying to trim up so I … I mean, I don’t condone this … but like, for that paper I would do it bro.”

“(P)aper” means cash in this instance.

Here is the underlying culture part: the distinguished Mr Evans had “been dropping babies like motherf— flies,” which means that he had been f(ornicating) and knocking up other women, women being plural, and that was part of the street culture in which he lived. Though the newspaper article does not specify it, he didn’t want Miss Johnson to have her baby, I assume because he didn’t want to pay child support. He had a cousin who was willing to commit murder for “paper,” and another who is a convicted murderer in Maryland.

Life meant nothing to these people!

Of course, these guys were all as dumb as a box of rocks, because they were making calls to a man in prison, and everyone knows that those calls can be recorded.

It took more than a year for Pointer’s preliminary hearing to go forward because he was in custody in Delaware for committing a separate shooting. He pleaded guilty to assault and illegal gun possession in that case, Pope said, and was sentenced to 12 years.

Yeah, these guys aren’t exactly models of classy citizenship! And here’s more of the cultural problem:

Johnson’s grandmother agonizes over a hope for justice for her baby, whom she raised from the age of 3. Johnson’s mother struggled with addiction before dying of a fentanyl overdose in October 2021, Waters said, and her father spent most of her childhood in prison.

Despite years of therapy, those traumas affected Johnson’s decisions and personal relationships, Waters said. She struggled with school, and often found herself surrounded by friends and boyfriends who weren’t always looking out for her best interests, her grandmother said.

Did young Miss Johnson ever have a chance in life? Her mother was a long-term junkie — I refuse to use reporter Ellie Rushing’s mealy-mouthed “struggled with addiction” — and her father is a criminal. At age 17, and possibly younger — the age of consent is 16 in Pennsylvania — she was running with a bad crowd; that’s what she “often found herself surrounded by friends and boyfriends who weren’t always looking out for her best interests” means.

The final paragraphs of Miss Rushing’s story tell readers that young Miss Johnson was a good, strong-willed, and independent girl. She was described in glowing terms by the grandmother who was responsible for rearing her. But she was also running with a bad crowd, and had been f(ornicating) a bad guy from a bad family. It would take an absolute [insert slang term for the anus here] to say that she was at least in part responsible for her own killing, but I can live with that epithet; sometimes you have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here] to tell the unvarnished truth, and the unvarnished truth here is that there is a terrible culture in some parts of the City of Brotherly Love, and Miss Johnson participated in it.

Would Miss Johnson be alive and happy today if she had grown up with two decent parents in Chestnut Hill or University City . . . or Jim Thorpe? That’s something only God can answer, and he didn’t tell me what that answer is. But the truth is that the rotten culture where she grew up, and which she at least partly embraced, greatly decreased the probabilities that she’d grow up healthy and happy and a credit to society. And that’s a truth which has to be told.

That this has led to fraud is no surprise at all!

My good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove, has an article this Friday morning on the Biden Administration prosecuting a major ‘carbon offset’ sales company for fraud:

C-Quest Capital LLC Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Newcombe, who stepped down as CEO in February, was indicted Wednesday in New York on wire fraud and commodities fraud charges. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on the most serious charges.

C-Quest develops emission-reduction projects to earn carbon credits that can then be sold to companies or other entities that wish to offset their own emissions. Newcombe, a onetime Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director and World Bank official, founded C-Quest in 2008.

You can read the rest on Mr Teach’s fine site.

But this one speaks to me, due to my experience. It was 2003, and carbon offset salesmen came and made a presentation to the concrete company at which I worked. Ready-mixed concrete producers use pozzolans, materials which are not cementitious alone but when mixed with Portland cement during the production of concrete utilize the excess calcium hydroxide liberated to become cementitious. We use them because they are less expensive than cement. The two most frequently used are flyash, which is harvested from the ignition byproducts of burning coal in power plants, and ground granulated blast furnace slag, the material left over from the smelting of iron ore.

The manufacture of Portland cement is a major carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter, so by the partial substitution of flyash, ready-mix companies reduce their carbon footprint. The salesmen told us that we could gain carbon credits every time we used flyash instead of cement, and that we could sell those carbon credits to other companies, to make it look like they were doing something to help fight global warming climate change, but, since it wouldn’t have changed how we did business since we were already using flyash — other than requiring some bookkeeping — it wouldn’t have reduced CO2 emissions at all! It was simply a way to take money, taking it from one CO2 emitter and giving it to a company which emitted less CO2; virtue signaling for the first, without having to actually spend significantly more money to reduce their emissions, and extra money for us, for doing what was already in our own economic interest.

Is anyone really surprised that fraud would be involved? When it comes to global warming climate change, the scammers and fraudsters will always be buzzing around.