Archive CMS by McQuarro.com

Suspected gunman in suburban Houston standoff after 5 dead, 2 children wounded in Harris County, Texas shooting
The shooting happened near Spring in northern Harris County on Wednesday afternoon. The two children were flown to a hospital.
 Five people were shot dead and two children were wounded in a brutal shooting Wednesday afternoon at a home in suburban Houston, according to reports.

The gunman fled and police tracked him to a gray sedan, which led dozens of patrol cars on a slow-speed chase until being trapped in a cul-de-sac in northern Harris County near Spring.

Dozens of police are holding the suspected killer, still in the car, at gunpoint during a standoff. Police are evacuating homes around the scene.
 It’s unclear what condition the children are in, but they were both flown to the hospital. It’s unclear what sparked the massacre on Leaflet Lane near Interstate 45 and Cypresswood, KTRK reported.

The shooting happened near Lemm Elementary School.

Authorities say multiple fatalities have been reported from a shooting at a home in suburban Houston.

A video still image provided courtesy of KPRC-TV shows the scene of a multiple fatality shooting in the Houston suburb of Spring.

A statement from the Harris County Sheriff's Office says deputy constables have responded to a reported shooting at a home located in Spring, north of Houston. The Sheriff's Office did not say exactly how many people had been shot or how many were dead.

Homicide investigators and the crime scene unit are headed to the location.

No other details have been confirmed.

President Barack Obama, seeking to keep a humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border from becoming a deeper political liability, pushed back Wednesday at critics who have cast his administration's response to the influx of unaccompanied children as slow and ineffective.

Guatemalan migrant Gladys Chinoy, 14, waits along with more than 500 other migrants on June 20 after the freight train they were traveling on suffered a minor derailment, outside Reforma de Pineda, Chiapas state, Mexico.

To those pressing Obama to visit the border during his two-day trip to Texas, he retorted: "This is not theater. This is a problem."

Among Obama's harshest critics has been Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate who is mulling another run for the White House. Perry greeted Obama upon his arrival in the state, then discussed the situation at the border with him privately and during a larger meeting with local officials and faith leaders.

Obama cast his meeting with Perry as "constructive" and argued that he is already seeking to do much of what the governor is calling for, including sending additional resources to the border to make the deportation process more effective.

"Bottom line is that there's nothing the governor indicated he'd like to see that I have a philosophical objection to," Obama said.

Perry, in a statement released after his meeting with Obama, made no mention of having any areas of agreement with the president.

"Five hundred miles south of here in the Rio Grande Valley, there is a humanitarian crisis unfolding that has been created by bad public policy, in particular the failure to secure the border," he said.

A woman police describe as a high-end prostitute has been arrested on suspicion of murder after allegedly injecting heroin into a tech executive on his yacht in Santa Cruz and leaving him to die when he overdosed.


The suspect, Alix Catherine Tichelman, was charged with seven crimes, including manslaughter, at the Santa Cruz County Court on Wednesday.

She has been appointed a public defender and her bail has been set at $1.5 million. She will wait a week before entering plea.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported Tuesday that surveillance video from the boat shows 51-year-old Forrest Timothy Hayes losing consciousness.

Investigators said the 26-year-old from Georgia made no effort to help Hayes, and instead gathered her belongings and even gulped a glass of wine before leaving.

Hayes's body was discovered the next day.

Tichelman was taken into custody last week after being lured back to Santa Cruz County in a prostitution sting.

Police say Tichelman provided heroin for Hayes, a Google executive, while they were aboard the 50-foot yacht.

According to Hayes's obituary, he was a married father of five who had worked as an engineer at Silicon Valley tech companies, including Google, Apple and Sun Microsystems.

Hayes's obituary describes him as a "loving husband and father."


"More than anything else he enjoyed spending time with his family at home and on his boat. His brilliant mind, contagious smile, and warm embrace will be missed and cherished in memories by his friends and family.," Hayes' obituary says.

Police said that Hayes had an ongoing pay-for-sex relationship with Tichelman, but that relationship came to an end last November on his yacht in the small boat harbor in Santa Cruz.

Surveillance video from his vessel shows Tichelman meeting Hayes on board and it captures the crime itself when she allegedly injected him with a lethal dose of heroin, police say.

"So cold and callous was she that she stepped over the victim's body several times, one time to retrieve a glass of wine and finish the contents of the glass of wine while she's cleaning up her property, cleaning up evidence of the crime there," Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark said.

Clark told NBC affiliate KSBW that investigators suspect Tichelman is involved in a similar case in another state that left a man dead.

It appears Tichelman expressed excitement about mass murders in a Facebook post last month. A post from the time attached to her name read "It's really nice to talk with someone about killing sprees and murdering people in cold blood...and they love it too. no judgement. yay!"

The mother of twin Fresno brothers who are accused of murdering a Good Samaritan is coming to their defense.


But, police say what happened to 49-year-old Nathan Halsted can only be described as a senseless crime. "Like an animal pursuing prey and that's what they were if one person walked by, they went after them," said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer.

Gerald and Jared Smith's mother told Action news her twin sons were just trying to defend themselves early Monday morning. "My boys they got jumped, and these weren't boys they were fighting with; these were grown men," said Lou Ann Smith. "They just turned 18, and they have a lot of dreams they work hard for."

Detectives say surveillance video which captured the crime tells a very different story and the teens were actually the predators who attacked a woman near Belmont and Calaveras. They say Halsted tried to protect her before the suspects turned on him.

In a news conference, Chief Dyer said the pair brutally beat Halsted until he was lying unconscious in the middle of Belmont Avenue. Minutes later a driver ran over him and that impact may have killed him. The suspects' mom says that driver, not her sons, should be the one facing murder charges. She said, "They did not run over this man, so where is the person who hit this man. Where is he at?"


But investigators disagree. "The people who are responsible for this are Gerald and Jared Smith who were the ones that beat this victim and allowed him to be run over and killed," said Chief Dyer.

At one point the video shows a driver in a white car pull up. Investigators say the suspects tried to fight him and banged his car leaving some crucial evidence behind. "The crime scene bureau that processed the vehicle, they were able to lift fingerprints from the vehicle," added Dyer.

The suspects got away but detectives say those fingerprints are what led to their arrests. Officers say both teens have confessed and they are now being charged with murder.

Two brothers are set to be arraigned in a Central California courtroom on murder charges in the death of a Good Samaritan who was run over after trying to rescue a woman who was being assaulted.


The Fresno Bee reports (http://bit.ly/1kAoMi2) that 18-year-old twin brothers Gerald and Jared Smith were scheduled to be in court Tuesday.

Police say the brothers were assaulting a 35-year-old woman at a Fresno gas station last week when 49-year-old Nathan Halsted rode by on a bicycle and tried to help.

Police say a surveillance camera captured the brothers as they punched, kicked and stomped on Halsted, leaving him in the street, where a driver fatally struck him.

The boys' mother, Lou Ann Smith, has said her sons were the ones attacked.

Disgraced former New Orleans Mayor Nagin due for sentencing.

Former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin leaves the courthouse in New Orleans.

Disgraced former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was set to be sentenced by a federal judge on Wednesday on 20 corruption charges that could land him in prison for two decades.

A jury in February found Nagin guilty of charges that include bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and tax evasion, all in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Nagin stirred national controversy with his erratic behavior after Katrina in 2005 breached floodwalls and inundated New Orleans, killing at least 1,500 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

Prosecutors have asked for a stiff sentence of about 20 years, while Nagin's attorney, citing his lack of a criminal record, has urged leniency.

Prosecutors said the combined value of the bribes, which included personal parties, private jet rides and first-class airfare for a family shopping trip to New York, totaled more than $500,000.

During the 10-day trial, prosecutors portrayed Nagin as a mayor on the take, granting favors for bribes that included tons of free granite delivered to a kitchen countertop company he ran with his sons.

Testifying on his own behalf, Nagin flatly denied taking any bribe.

A former cable TV executive elected in 2002 on promises of running an ethical government, Nagin won re-election four years later.

According to prosecutors, he immediately began seeking money from contractors to fund the struggling family business.

Nagin's attorney, Robert Jenkins, said after the guilty verdict that the former mayor would appeal his conviction.

Any appeal will likely be complicated by the defense not moving during the trial to have the evidence against Nagin ruled too weak for a conviction, said Herbert Larson, an expert on federal criminal law at the Tulane University Law School.

Such motions are crucial for revisiting those arguments on appeal, Larson said.

"I don't think there are many if any viable avenues for an appeal for Ray Nagin," Larson said.

Jenkins did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

As he sought re-election the year following Hurricane Katrina, Nagin, a black politician who previously enjoyed strong support from both black and white voters, seemed to take a racially divisive approach to his campaign, urging residents to rebuild a "chocolate New Orleans," referring to its majority black population.

He now lives in Frisco, Texas.

A shooting in a bar-hopping Indianapolis neighborhood that injured seven people may have been set off by two people bumping into each other in the street, police said Saturday.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers prepare to clear an area after multiple gunshots were heard by an officer early July 5 in the Broad Ripple neighborhood, police spokesman Lt. Christopher Bailey said in a news release.

"It looks like it was two guys bumped into each other and it took off from there. There was no rhyme or reason," Indianapolis Police Chief Rick Hite said.

Police arrested a 23-year-old man on a preliminary charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and questioned him about the shooting. He was not charged in connection with the shooting, police spokesman Lt. Chris Bailey said.

"We don't know who the shooter was yet. Shooter or shooters," Bailey said.

Investigators were still trying to sort out what happened more than 12 hours later, and were hoping witnesses would come forward once the initial fear had worn down.

"We know some of the things that happened, but we need confirmation," Hite said.

Police said one man was in critical condition at a local hospital. Five other men and a woman also were shot, but did not have life-threatening injuries, authorities said. All of the victims are in their 20s.

Hite said numerous officers, even those who were off duty, responded to the gunfire about 2:23 a.m. Saturday in Broad Ripple, about a half-hour before the bars were to close at 3 a.m. The neighborhood about eight miles north of downtown Indianapolis has many bars and restaurants, and is a popular spot with college students and other young people.

"I've been told there were quite a few people out ... on a typical Friday night, bouncing from bar to bar. Someone opens fire in a crowd like that, we're lucky more weren't hurt," Bailey said at a news conference earlier in the day.

Rob Sabatini, who owns three bars in the area, told The Indianapolis Star that the streets were crowded before the shooting.

"The bars will be half-empty but the streets are packed," he said. "It's wall-to-wall people outside and God forbid you bump into someone and they don't like it."

The shootings are the latest in a violent year for Indianapolis, which is on track to rival its record of 162 homicides, set in 1998.

A World Cup ticket scalping case has revived a reputation FIFA tries hard to fight, and threatens to stain a tournament which has been better than critics expected.

Ray Whelan, a longstanding director and project manager within the MATCH group, arrives at a police station after been arrested, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, July 7, 2014.

Football's international governing body and its president Sepp Blatter have tried to present a new face in recent years after so many allegations of vote-buying and top officials seeming entitled by seeking favors.

Though many rules and faces have changed at the game's headquarters, a skeptical view that the old culture remains in the inner circle has been fueled by the arrest this week of a director from a longtime World Cup commercial partner.

Released from custody by Rio de Janeiro police early Tuesday, Ray Whelan returned to work within hours at the five-star hotel where Blatter stays and the MATCH group of companies operates during FIFA's showpiece event.

The Copacabana Palace is also where police conducted parts of an undercover operation known as Jules Rimet — named after the former FIFA president who launched the World Cup in 1930.

Whelan, a brother-in-law of MATCH founders Jaime and Enrique Byrom, is suspected of providing tickets to a scalping ring dealing corporate hospitality packages at highly inflated prices. Reselling tickets for profit is illegal in Brazil.

Rights to the $600 million market in World Cup corporate tickets are owned by the MATCH Hospitality subsidiary. Its minority shareholders include a sports agency in Switzerland run by Philippe Blatter, a nephew of the FIFA president.

"MATCH have complete faith that the facts will establish that he (Whelan) has not violated any laws," the company said.

The scalping probe is an embarrassment for FIFA and provoked awkward questions after weeks in which predicted street protests in 12 host cities didn't materialize on mass scale.

FIFA has worked with the Byrom family from Mexico for more than 30 years and awarded contracts to the family's companies since the 1994 World Cup in the United States.

Asked Tuesday if Whelan's accreditation would be revoked, FIFA spokeswoman Delia Fischer said football officials couldn't act before getting a full report from police.

"We need all the proof," Fischer told a news briefing. "We want the matter solved quickly and investigated to its fullest extent."

Whelan was arrested Monday in his luxury suite at the hotel where police said they confiscated 82 tickets for upcoming matches, along with his computer, cellphone and other unspecified documents.

Police have described Whelan as the "facilitator" who allowed a large ring of scalpers to have access to tickets, which they re-sold at vastly inflated prices.

His attorney, Fernando Fernandes, told reporters his arrest was "illegal and absurd."

Whelan, who is based in MATCH's Rio office, will not be allowed to leave Brazil during the tournament. He was detained after the earlier arrests of 11 people, including Algerian national Mohamadou Lamine Fofana.

Police said Whelan was heard on wiretapped phone calls negotiating ticket prices with Fofana, a former player agent whose company is a MATCH Hospitality client.

The MATCH Hospitality subsidiary, which is based in Zurich, paid $120 million for exclusive rights to sell and market more than 400,000 corporate hospitality packages for this World Cup.

In 2011, FIFA extended MATCH Hospitality's exclusive rights through the 2018 and 2022 World Cups without inviting rival bidders.

FIFA hailed that deal — which guaranteed $300 million plus a share of MATCH profits — as one which "further strengthens FIFA's fight against ticket touts."

Trying to distance Whelan from hospitality sales, FIFA and MATCH stressed that Whelan was a director of a subsidiary which has contracts to run accommodation, ticketing and IT services at this World Cup. MATCH Services will also organize hotels for FIFA, media and sponsors at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Separately Tuesday, Brazil's federal police said on its website that an Italian and a French citizen, who jointly run a travel agency, were arrested at the international airport in Sao Paulo.

The statement said the two were carrying 48 tickets for the semifinal and final matches — tickets which belonged to "one of the big sponsors" of the World Cup.

The quest to save the ISEE-3—a long-lost NASA probe launched in the disco era and abandoned in the dot-com boom—might just succeed. Late last week, the amateur scientists and engineers working to salvage the probe hit a major milestone: They coaxed the craft into firing its rotational thrusters.

The achievement is important for many reasons. While the amateur team trying to reboot the ISEE-3 has been in radio contact with the probe for more than a month, this is the first time it has successfully commanded moving parts onboard. It’s important for technical reasons. The ISEE-3 is “spin-stabilized,” meaning it only functions properly when it’s tumbling over itself. The team can now adjust that spin.

And, finally, it’s important for planning reasons. Now, the team can begin to fire the ISEE-3’s thrusters and change the ship’s trajectory—hopefully, keeping it from crashing into the moon.

Keith Cowing, a journalist-turned-mission-leader, told me that they hoped to begin changing its course on Tuesday. “We’re pretty much confident now that it’ll come close to the moon but not crash into it,” he said.

Launched in 1978, the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 first served for years as a solar observatory, sitting at a stable orbit point between the Earth and the Sun. By 1986, NASA had replaced the aging craft with superior sensors. They determined it didn’t need to occupy its current position, so they piloted it through the tails of Comet Giacobini-Zinner and Halley’s Comet. The ISEE-3 was renamed ICE, the International Comet Explorer.

And then scientists decided they didn’t need it at all anymore. A NASA engineer directed the probe into a long, looping orbit, far around the sun, that would place it back in Earth’s vicinity around 2014.

That date has now arrived, but NASA won’t be the one monitoring ISEE-3. The agency abandoned the machinery needed to control and talk to the craft in 1997.

Instead, on August 10, 2014, the probe will pass just above the surface of the moon. A group of amateurs led by Cowing and space engineer Dennis Wingo will be paying close attention. They put together the documentation, the engineering know-how, and the radio telemetry equipment needed to pilot the craft out of harm’s way.

The reboot mission had originally hoped to change the ISEE-3’s course weeks ago. When we first talked, Cowing told me that if they hadn’t begun firing its thrusters by July, he’d be nervous.

+But it turns out the probe wasn’t where it first seemed. “Initially, our calculations were based on old data, which showed the spacecraft not being where it was supposed to be,” Cowing said. “But we did a lot of ranging with NASA’s giant dishes—it’s a lot closer to where we thought it’d be.”

That means that they can expend less fuel putting it on a new trajectory, so the critical maneuver they've been planning can happen later. They'll have more time to change the probe's course without having to worry about the gravity of the Earth or moon pulling it onto their surfaces.

In the past month of working with the spacecraft, Cowing said they’d gotten used to its idiosyncrasies. ISEE-3 lacks an onboard computer, so commands must be fed to it one at a time. Cowing compared the process to rock-climbing: When it's time to move to the next outcrop, the movement has to happen quickly and definitively.

“You just have to push through it and the data you get back isn’t exactly what you want. As soon as it would take another command, you just rush through the next one and the next one,” he said.

“It’s like telling an old dot-matrix printer from back in the day to do something.”

One of Britain's most senior civil servants said on Tuesday he did not know who, if anyone, had authorized the removal of over 100 missing government files that could shed light on allegations that well-known politicians abused children in the 1980s.

The disclosure, by Mark Sedwill, the top civil servant in Britain's Home Office (interior ministry), is likely to fuel a media furore in Britain over the allegations, which have not yet been substantiated.

Child protection campaigners have said that at least 10 and possibly more than 20 public figures, including current and former politicians, should be investigated over allegations that they abused young children.

The claims have unsettled the current political elite, still recovering from scandals over parliamentarians' expenses, at a time when Britain is grappling with revelations that several nationally beloved television personalities sexually abused children for decades.

The government on Monday pledged to launch a full-scale inquiry, with Prime Minister David Cameron promising it would leave "no stone unturned" to find out the truth.

Sedwill said last week that 114 files "potentially relevant" to the case had been destroyed or were missing, including allegations brought to the attention of a former Conservative home secretary, Leon Brittan, in the 1980s.

Brittan has said he dealt with the material correctly, but politicians and media have nevertheless raised broader concerns of a possible cover-up by an establishment protecting its own.

Asked by a parliamentary committee on Tuesday whether he knew who had authorized the removal or destruction of the files, Sedwill said: "No, I don't."

"NORMAL DESTRUCTION PROCEDURES"

"Most of these files were probably destroyed because the kinds of topics that they covered would have been subject to the normal file destruction procedures that were in place at that time," he said.

"But they can't be confirmed to be destroyed because there isn't a proper log of what was destroyed and what wasn't."

Sedwill said the fact that files were missing did not necessarily mean someone had deliberately had them removed, adding: "We shouldn't assume there is anything sinister."

Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa May told parliament on Monday that an independent review would be held of a 2013 investigation carried out by her ministry into the handling of allegations that politicians had abused children.

The government will also establish an independent inquiry panel of experts to look more broadly at whether public bodies have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse, May said.

On Tuesday, Sedwill told the committee he could not recall whether he had told May about the missing files last year.

May, a member of Cameron's Conservative party, told parliament on Monday she had deliberately not read the full report because of possible allegations that senior lawmakers, including senior Conservatives, were guilty of child abuse.

A still image taken from video shows Mark Sedwill, the top civil servant at Britain's Home Office, giving evidence at a Commons Home Affairs Select Committee hearing in London July 8, 2014. One of Britain's most senior civil servants was questioned by lawmakers on Tuesday over how his department lost or destroyed files that could shed light on allegations that well-known politicians abused children in the 1980s.

Footage has since emerged of a former Conservative MP suggesting to the BBC in 1995 that party whips - members who maintain party voting discipline - might avoid disclosing colleagues' inappropriate behavior, including that "involving small boys", in order to have leverage over them.

Memphis police say more than 400 officers have called in sick in the past week in what appears to be a deliberate action to protest planned health care cuts.

From left, Memphis Police Officers P. Perez, J. Gay, J. Fulghum, and T. Quinn wait outside of Division 3 Traffic Court in case they are needed to testify on Monday, July 7, 2014 in Memphis, Tenn.

Memphis Police Department spokeswoman Karen Rudolph said Monday that 404 officers have called in sick since June 30, an increase from 308 officers who had called in sick through Sunday. The department has about 2,280 officers.

According to The Commercial Appeal (http://bit.ly/1qNFtxQ), Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said Sunday that the actions come in an apparent protest to a City Council vote that will reduce health care subsidies for city employees so that the funds can be redirected to the city's troubled pension fund.

Because of the number of officers out, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office is helping patrol the city.

Information from: The Commercial Appeal, http://www.commercialappeal.com

A Tampa, Florida, teenager seen pummeled by Israeli police in a video that has sparked outrage among Palestinians remained in stable condition Saturday, an American consulate representative told NBC News. Tariq Abu Khdeir, 15, suffered a broken nose and chin, and injuries to his eyes as a result of Thursday’s altercation with police, his father, Salah Abu Khdeir, told the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Tariq was in Jerusalem to attend the funeral of his 16-year-old cousin, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was burned to death following violence that stemmed from the killings of three missing Israeli teenagers.



Tariq was one of six detained by police during violent clashes ahead of Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s funeral.

He remains at an Israeli police station and is scheduled to appear in court Sunday, said American consulate representative Joshua Wagner. Israeli police said the video, which shows two officers attacking Tariq while he’s on the ground, is “edited and biased” and that it “does not represent the events.” The Florida chapter of CAIR called for the U.S. State Department to demand that Tariq be released from Israeli custody.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Saturday they are "profoundly troubled by reports that [Tariq] was severely beaten while in police custody."


The Israeli Justice Ministry also announced Saturday that they will launch an investigation into the incident, The Jerusalem Post reported.

A freight train derailed in western Montana, sending three cars carrying aircraft components down a steep embankment and into the Clark Fork River.

Thirteen of the cars that derailed were carrying freight, mostly aircraft parts. Via Imgur, ​www.imgur.com/gallery/EJVBCzL

Montana Rail Link spokeswoman Lynda Frost says 19 cars from a westbound train derailed Thursday about 10 miles west of Alberton. No injuries were reported, and the cause of the derailment is under investigation.

Thirteen of the cars that derailed were carrying freight, mostly aircraft parts with some soybeans and denatured alcohol. Six were empty. Frost says the alcohol didn't leak and no soybeans spilled. She said crews were working to remove the aircraft parts from the water.

Frost says the components were headed to Renton, Washington.

Trains were being rerouted while repairs are made. Frost says the line is expected to reopen by Saturday evening.

The California Highway Patrol said Friday it is investigating video of one of its officers straddling a woman and punching her in the head as she lay on the shoulder of a Los Angeles freeway.

In this July 1, 2014 image made from video provided by motorist David Diaz, a California Highway Patrol officer straddles a woman while punching her in the head on the shoulder of a Los Angeles freeway.

The woman had been walking on Interstate 10 west of downtown Los Angeles, endangering herself and people in traffic, and the officer was trying to restrain her, CHP Assistant Chief Chris O'Quinn said at a news conference.

Passing Driver David Diaz recorded the Tuesday incident and provided it to media outlets including The Associated Press.

The officer is on administrative leave while the patrol investigates. He has not been identified.

O'Quinn said the incident report listed no injuries for the woman, who would not give her name. She is undergoing psychiatric evaluation, he said.

He said the officer was answering a report of a pedestrian on the freeway. When he found the woman, she started walking down an off-ramp and then turned around, walked back onto the freeway and started wandering into lanes, O'Quinn said. That's when the incident occurred.

O'Quinn said the video "only shows a small part of what transpired."

Diaz, a Los Angeles native who now lives in West LA, told the AP in a phone interview Friday that he arrived when the woman was walking off the freeway. He said she turned around only after the officer shouted something to her.

"He agitated the situation more than helped it," said Diaz, who started filming soon after.

The video shows the officer on top of the woman delivering blows to her face and head. She can be seen wriggling and trying to sit up.

A man in plain clothes — later identified by O'Quinn as an off-duty law enforcement officer — then appears and helps the officer handcuff the woman.

The video caught the attention of local civil rights leaders, who expressed shock and outrage at their own news conference.

"Speaking for the women of this community, we are angry, we are upset," said Lita Herron of the Youth Advocacy Coalition.

O'Quinn said he could not say what prompted the officer to act as he did. But he noted California Highway Patrol officers have a heightened sense of the dangers of being on the freeway compared with a citizen "who is not accustomed to the speed and conditions," especially outside of a car.

"The most dangerous thing that we face is traffic," O'Quinn said.

He added the CHP would answer community concerns, and that an investigative team already has been assembled and has begun its work.


"We are known as an agency that really polices itself," O'Quinn said.

Community activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, speaking at the local leaders' news conference, agreed.

"Over the years, CHP has had a very good track record in terms of community relations," Hutchinson said. "That's why this was so shocking."