Man Suspected of Five Murders in Kansas, Missouri in Custody

Kansas & Missouri need to control their borders.. 

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP/KMOX) – A man suspected of fatally shooting four people at his neighbor’s home in Kansas before killing another man about 170 miles away in a rural Missouri house was taken into custody early Wednesday morning after an extensive manhunt, the Missouri Highway Patrol said.

The Highway Patrol told the Kansas City Star that Pablo Antonio Serrano-Vitorino was arrested in Montgomery Co., Missouri. The suspect was found lying face down on a hill just north of Interstate 70 and no shots were fired, the newspaper reported. That location is near a McDonald’s and several motels.

“He looked exhausted,” Sgt. James Hedrick said.

Serrano-Vitorino, a Mexican national who authorities said was in the country illegally, is accused of fatally shooting four men late Monday night at his neighbor’s home in Kansas City, Kansas. One of those men called police before he died. He was also wanted in connection with the shooting death of 49-year-old Randy Nordman in Montgomery County.

Representatives for the Missouri Highway Patrol and Kansas City, Kansas, police department could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press.

Hunger in Missouri, Ozarks among highest in the Union

(kspr.com) - Struggling to find that next meal is a feeling all too familiar with many here in the Ozarks.

Now a new U.S. Department of Agriculture study ranks Missouri in the bottom 10 of places with food insecurities in the United States.

The major issue is there's just not enough money.

The director at Crosslines, Mark Struckhoff, says many in the state of Missouri don't make enough to buy food for their families on top of all their other expenses.

Making the problem even worse is the fact that many people hide their hunger.That makes it more difficult for people in the community to find those who need help.

Many who go to Crosslines are working parents who say it's hard making it on a limited income.

“This is actually my first time coming here they have things like that where i am from but it's...they run out of things fast because it's a lot worse there but it's nice to have an organization to help you like this,” says Katie Conway who recently moved to Springfield for more opportunities from Flint, Mich.

Conway is looking for a full time job and she says if Missouri raises its minimum wage it would make a big difference for people who are struggling.

Struckhoff says many of the people who come here also have other issues that affect their ability to buy food. That includes disabilities, unexpected circumstances and family illness.

Crosslines says it's already served 34,000 people this year at its food bank and the director says poverty has doubled in Greene County in the last ten years.

However, Struckhoff says city leaders in Springfield seem to be trying to make changes to address the need for food and we should start seeing some changes in the near future.

Sign-ups for Crosslines holiday food baskets will start later this month.

That will be October 19th, Crosslines says it's looking for volunteers and money to assist those families needing a little more help during the holidays.

Missouri: More racial unrest in St. Louis after police kill black suspect

(Reuters) St. Louis police fatally shot a black teenager who they say pointed a gun at them on Wednesday and arrested three protesters, recalling racial tensions sparked by the killing of an unarmed African-American teen in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, a year ago.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said the shooting took place in the late morning as officers were carrying out a search warrant and two young black men ran out the back door of the targeted house.

Officers ordered the pair to stop in the alley behind the house. One suspect pointed a gun at officers who then fired four times, killing him, Dotson said.

Reuters video showed dozens of protesters blocking a nearby intersection shortly after the shooting, monitored by police. Three people were arrested for blocking traffic, police said.

Protesters gathered again at the intersection in the early evening. NBC television affiliate KSDK reported that they threw rocks at officers, who responded with what appeared to be tear gas.

Police identified the slain suspect as Mansur Ball-Bey, 18. The second youth fled and was described in his mid- to late teens.

Dotson told reporters Ball-Bey's gun was stolen. He said officers recovered crack cocaine at the scene.

"Detectives were looking for guns, looking for violent felons, looking for people that have been committing the crimes in the neighborhood," he said.

A 93-year-old member of the Tuskegee Airmen, a black aviation unit from World War Two, was robbed and carjacked in the neighborhood on Sunday. A woman was killed this week in the area.

St. Louis police said the officers involved in the shooting were white, ages 33 and 29, and each with about seven years on the force. They are on administrative leave.

The shooting came 10 days after the St. Louis area was flooded with protesters marking the anniversary of the Aug. 9 police killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer.

Brown's death helped spur a nationwide movement against what protesters say is a pattern of police violence against minorities.

Wednesday's shooting came as activists were in the area to mark the anniversary of the police shooting of another black man in St. Louis, Kajieme Powell.

Police say officers shot Powell when he approached them with a knife. Missouri prosecutors are reviewing the case for possible criminal charges, and Powell's family has filed a wrongful death suit.

Missouri pressured to halt execution of (black) man sentenced by (all-white) jury

RACISTISM!

(theguardian) - Jay Nixon, the Democratic governor of Missouri, is coming under intense pressure to stay the imminent execution of an African American man who was sentenced to death by an all-white jury in St Louis County – the jurisdiction that covers Ferguson, scene of last summer’s dramatic unrest over state-sanctioned racial discrimination.

Barring last-minute intervention by Nixon or the US supreme court, Andre Cole, 42, will be killed by lethal injection at 6pm local time on Tuesday in a case that displays disturbing signs of racial animus. All three potential black jurors were removed from the jury pool at the demand of St Louis County prosecutors, who secured a death sentence from the resulting panel of 12 white men and women.

Such controversial circumstances have provoked a flurry of 11th-hour protests, including appeals to Nixon that he use his governor’s prerogative to stop the execution. The complaints are all the more charged coming from the county of Ferguson which August erupted in prolonged clashes between protesters and police after the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

“This case highlights the disparate treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system. Ferguson exposed unequal treatment by police, and the pending execution of Andre Cole exposes the same disparity from prosecutors and the courts,” said Elston McCowan of the Missouri branch of the NAACP.

A coalition of civil rights activists, African American organizations and religious leaders have written to Nixon demanding an official inquiry into what they claim is rampant and systemic racial bias within St Louis County that has put a vastly disproportionate number of black men on to death row. The investigation would ensure, the 60 signatories write, “that racial bias has not infected the death sentences imposed in St Louis County”.

The numbers speak for themselves. Eleven death row prisoners were prosecuted in St Louis County. Of those, seven or 64% are black, in stark contrast to the general population of the area which is 24% African American.

Behind those startling figures lie evidence of racial distortions in the way that juries are configured. Evidence has been presented to court in seven separate death penalty cases in Missouri in which potential black jurors were struck off for no apparent reason.

Cole was convicted in 2001 for murdering the boyfriend of his former wife. Of the three potential black jurors struck off by St Louis County prosecutors, one was removed on grounds that he was divorced – even though a white divorcee was put on the final panel. “Prosecutors were asked to explain why they had struck off the black jurors, and the reasons they gave don’t hold up very well when you read the record,” said Cole’s attorney, Joseph Luby of the Death Penalty Litigation Clinic.

Full Story

Missouri Vice Gov. Claims The Justice Department Is More Racist Than Ferguson

(msn.com) 03/16/15 - Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder (PR) said that the protests in Ferguson that followed the death of Michael Brown were "based on a lie" and that there was more racism in the Department of Justice than there was in the St. Louis area.

"The whole blow up of this protest movement was based on the lie that never happened of hands up don't shoot," Kinder told NewsmaxTV’s "Steve Malzberg Show" Monday in comments that were first highlighted by BuzzFeed.

Kinder was referring to a Department of Justice report released last week which concluded that witness accounts that Brown had his hands up when police officer Darren Wilson shot him were "inconsistent with physical and forensic evidence."

But a separate DOJ report on Ferguson police practices found that the protesters were justified in their demonstrations, even if Brown did not in fact have his hands up when he was killed. The DOJ report found that Ferguson police systematically discriminated against African-American citizens and acted as a vehicle for collecting revenue for the town instead of protecting its citizens.

"Clearly, these findings -- and others included in the report -- demonstrate that, although some community perceptions of Michael Brown’s tragic death may not have been accurate, the widespread conditions that these perceptions were based upon, and the climate that gave rise to them, were all too real," Holder said in reference to the report last week.

Kinder also said that the DOJ was staffed with "hard-left radical leftist lawyers," but admitted that the report identified some "legitimate grievances." Kinder pointed to the resignation of six Ferguson employees, including police chief Thomas Jackson, as evidence that reforms were being implemented.

"At some point the protesters need to give us a respite," he said.

Kinder, who has been lieutenant governor since 2005, said that the media and the Justice Department magnified what was going on in Ferguson.

"There is more racism in the Justice Department than anywhere I see in the St. Louis area," he said. "We've come an enormous way in 50 years, that's not to say that we don't have still more to do. It is the left, it is the Eric Holder and the Obama left and their minions that are obsessed with race while the rest of us are moving on beyond it." Full Story

9 dead, including suspect, after shootings in Missouri town

(NewYorkPost) - Eight people were killed in overnight shootings in southern Missouri — and the gunman was found dead early Friday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to reports.

The attacks occurred in various locations in and around the town of Tyrone, in Texas County, about 40 miles north of the Arkansas border, police said. The victims were found at four separate homes.

The 36-year-old suspect — who was found dead in Shannon County — and the victims have not yet been named. A motive for the killings and possible ties between the shooter and victims were not immediately clear.

Texas County Sheriff James Sigman told the Houston Herald that there are four confirmed crime scenes at Tyrone, a possible fifth location and a sixth outside of Texas County in Shannon County.

He declined to provide any additional information.

An elderly woman, whose body was found in another residence, appeared to have died from natural causes, Reuters reported.

One wounded person found at a residence was taken to a hospital, the Missouri State Highway Patrol said. Full Story

‘Shut It Down': Dozens Of Ferguson MO Protesters Interrupt Black Friday Shopping At Wal-Mart, Target

MANCHESTER, Mo. (CBS St. Louis/AP) — Demonstrators sought to catch the attention of shoppers looking for good deals on Friday, going to major retailers around the St. Louis area to speak out about a grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown.

Other Black Friday protests were planned at shopping centers around the nation, though attendance was seemingly sparse aside from in Chicago, where about 200 people gathered near the city’s popular Magnificent Mile shopping district.

Early Friday in the St. Louis suburb of Manchester, about two dozen people chanted “no justice, no peace, no racist police” and “no more Black Friday” after police moved them out of a Wal-Mart.

Officers warned the protesters risked arrest if they didn’t move at least 50 feet from the store’s entrance, then began advancing in unison until the protesters moved further into the parking lot. The mostly black group of protesters chanted in the faces of the officers — most of whom were white — as shoppers looked on.

Scores arrested as Ferguson, MO protests spread to other U.S. cities

THE JEWS!

(Reuters) - Police arrested scores of people in cities around the United States who were protesting a Missouri grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer for killing an unarmed black teenager, authorities said on Wednesday, but the town where the shooting took place was a little calmer.

Protests in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and elsewhere came on a second night of street violence in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, where policeman Darren Wilson shot to death 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9. The shooting has highlighted the often-tense nature of U.S. race relations and the strains between black communities and police.

There was less violence on the streets of Ferguson than on the previous night, as the deployment of some 2,000 National Guard troops to the area helped police prevent the rioting, looting and arson that erupted on Monday night.