Missouri firefighter-paramedic stabbed to death in ‘senseless act’: Officials
KCFD
(KANSAS CITY, MI) — In what officials called “a senseless act,” a paramedic Graham Hoffman, 29 years old, had been with the Kansas City Fire Department since 2022.
“Early Sunday morning, Firefighter Hoffman was critically injured after being stabbed in the chest, piercing his heart, while transporting a patient to a local hospital on what began as a routine medical call from the police,” a statement from the city said. “His partner immediately initiated a crew emergency.”
He was rushed to North Kansas City Hospital, where he died from his injuries, Fire Chief Ross Grundyson said.
“KCFD crews worked tirelessly to save Firefighter Hoffman’s life en route to North Kansas City Hospital,” the city’s statement added. “Lifesaving efforts continued in the emergency room before Graham was moved into surgery. Despite the heroic efforts … Firefighter Hoffman, succumbed to his injuries in the intensive care unit.”
Officials said the suspect was in custody on Sunday, but did not provide details.
“I expect and will demand justice,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said at a news conference on Sunday. “I never expected a line of duty death like this one.”
“Graham was a dedicated professional who loved serving his city,” the KCFD posted on Facebook. “He will be greatly missed.”
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Karen Read’s petition for certiorari, and therefore will not review her case.
Read had asked the Supreme Court to intervene in her case, arguing double jeopardy after the jurors allegedly agreed on acquittal for two charges in her first trial.
Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, in January 2022. Prosecutors allege Read hit O’Keefe with her vehicle and left him to die as Boston was hit with a major blizzard. Read has denied the allegations and maintained her innocence.
Testimony in Read’s retrial — now in its second week — resumed Monday morning with testimony from Ian Whiffin, a digital forensics examiner from Cellebrite.
The judge declared a mistrial in Read’s first trial last year after the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on all of the counts.
She was charged with first-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. She pleaded not guilty.
Read’s attorneys asked multiple appeals courts to dismiss the charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident in the retrial. They argued in court filings that retrying her on the charges would violate double jeopardy protections because, based on subsequent statements from four jurors, the jury had reached a unanimous decision to acquit Read on the charges.
With the Supreme Court on Monday rejecting to hear her appeal, she’s run out of options.
Among the most dramatic testimony in the first week of the retrial was from O’Keefe’s mother, Margaret “Peggy” O’Keefe, who was not called to testify in Read’s first trial.
Peggy O’Keefe described her son as an “enthusiastic” fan of sports who was “wonderful” with his niece and nephew, for whom he provided primary guardianship following their parents’ untimely deaths.
“He was their No. 1,” she said, shakily, “They called him JJ.”
She sobbed when special prosecutor Hank Brennan showed a photo of her son smiling.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
A woman was charged for allegedly holding her “severely emaciated” stepson in captivity for over 20 years, since he was 11 years old, and forcing him to endure “prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment,” police said. Facebook / Waterbury Police Department
(WATERBURY, Conn.) — A crowdfunding effort has raised over $100,000 for a Connecticut man who was held captive for over 20 years in his home.
His stepmother was arrested last week for allegedly holding her “severely emaciated” stepson in captivity since he was 11 years old.
The now-32-year-old man suffered prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect and inhumane treatment, according to police. He had not received basic medical and dental care and an education.
The man is 5-foot-9 and weighed just 68 pounds when he was found, according to officials.
The crowdsourced effort, organized by Safe Haven of Greater Waterbury, will be used to pay for medical and dental care, counseling and therapy for physical and emotional recovery, housing and daily living expenses and support for legal fees, the nonprofit said.
Safe Haven of Greater Waterbury said it is in the process of setting up a trust for the man. The crowdfunding effort has gathered donations from over 300 people as of Wednesday morning.
The man was discovered on Feb. 17, when Waterbury Police Department officers, along with personnel from the Waterbury Fire Department, responded to a house fire.
The fire was quickly extinguished and two occupants were found inside the home at the time. The first person was identified as 56-year-old Kimberly Sullivan, the owner of the property who called authorities for help, and the second person was identified as a 32-year-old man who was later determined to be Sullivan’s stepson.
Sullivan was evacuated to safety following the fire but the male occupant, who had suffered smoke inhalation and exposure to the fire, had to be assisted from the home by Waterbury Fire Department personnel and was placed in the care of emergency medical services, police said.
Investigators quickly realized there was a room in the house that appeared to have exterior locks on the door and, as they began speaking to the male victim, he disclosed he had been held captive in the house for approximately 20 years.
The victim then told police he had started the fire, telling first responders, “I wanted my freedom,” officials said.
Sullivan’s lawyer defended his client and said it was the victim’s late father who was responsible.
“He was not locked in the room. She did not restrain him in any way. She provided food. She provided shelter. She is blown away by these allegations,” her lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, told New Haven ABC affiliate WTNH last week.
Kaloidis said the stepson’s late biological father “dictated how the boy would be raised.”
Lawyers for the man accused of killing four Idaho college students are asking the judge in his capital murder case to ban a key witness from using the phrase “bushy eyebrows” to describe the assailant she saw the night of the bloody attack.
That request was included in roughly 100 pages of court filings unsealed Tuesday as preparations continue in advance of the August trial of Bryan Kohberger, who’s charged in the November 2022 killings of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
A roommate of the victims, who lived at the off-campus Moscow, Idaho, home where the killings occurred originally told detectives that the masked male intruder she saw on the night of the killings had a singular physical attribute: “bushy eyebrows.” That phrase has rocketed around the world as the headline-grabbing case has moved slowly toward a trial in Boise, Idaho.
Kohberger’s defense attorneys argued the superficial description will unfairly point the finger at him and potentially bias the jury.
“The description provided by [the roommate] is unreliable and should be excluded,” defense lawyer Elisa Massoth wrote. “Although she has never identified Mr. Kohberger, testimony by [the roommate] from the witness stand, describing bushy eyebrows while Mr. Kohberger sits as the accused at trial, will be as damning as her pointing to him and saying, ‘he is the man that did this.'”
The roommate’s varying accounts and self-confessed sleepy intoxication that night make her memory fickle, Kohberger’s lawyers have argued. And, they argued, she seemed preoccupied with bushy eyebrows even before her friends were killed.
When police photographed the crime scene right after the killings, her room was found to have “many pictures of eyes with prominent eyebrows” on the walls in her room, Kohberger’s lawyers said.
“Many of which she had drawn. Some of the eyebrows are heavy, voluminous, puffy, or perhaps subjectively bushy,” and there was “artwork of human figures with an emphasis upon the eyes and eyebrows were pinned to corkboards,” they said.
Kohberger’s defense attorneys have also asked the judge to bar words like “murder,” “psychopath” and “sociopath” during the trial.
“To label Mr. Kohberger as a ‘murderer,’ the alleged weapon consistent with an empty sheath as a ‘murder weapon’ or to assert that any of the four decedents was ‘murdered’ by Mr. Kohberger denies his right to a fair trial and the right to be presumed innocent,” the defense said.
Prosecutors allege that in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, Kohberger broke into an off-campus home and stabbed the four students to death. He was arrested in late December, after a six-week manhunt, at his parents’ Pennsylvania home and indicted in May 2023.
He was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. At his arraignment, he declined to offer a plea, so the judge entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf.
If convicted, Kohberger could face the death penalty. But not if his lawyers get their way.
Defense attorneys cite autism in bid to strike death penalty
Among the flurry of new filings, the defense also argued his life should not be on the line — because he has been diagnosed with autism, and so his impairments in communication, problems with social skills and impulse control mean he is “insufficiently culpable to be executed.”
His diagnosis however should not be wielded against him, the defense said — arguing prosecutors should not be allowed to use it “by criminalizing his status as a disabled person.”
Even if this does not work to strike the death penalty, his diagnosis could resurface in the sentencing phase if Kohberger is convicted, where his lawyers will likely raise it again as a mitigating factor.
This is not the first time his lawyers have attempted to get the death penalty taken off the table.
In their argument about his condition now, Kohberger’s lawyers shed new light on what has been a heretofore little-known person to the public.
“Mr. Kohberger displays extremely rigid thinking, perseverates on specific topics, processes information on a piece-meal basis, struggles to plan ahead, and demonstrates little insight into his own behaviors and emotions” and “his tone and cadence are abnormal, his interactions lack fluidity, and his language is often overinclusive, disorganized, highly repetitive, and oddly formal,” they argued.
He “frequently shifts the topic back to himself even when it is inappropriate. He uses abrupt, matter-of-fact phrases that would be considered rude. He carries on about topics in a circular manner and perseverates about specific, non-essential details,” they said, adding his autism is “also accompanied by obsessive-compulsiveness, and an eating disorder. Since childhood, Mr. Kohberger has exhibited compulsions around getting things in his eyes, hand-washing and other germ avoidant behaviors.”
