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New Hampshire security officer honored for nabbing mugger www.privateofficer.com
Police say Nicholas Laliberte was working at the Currier Museum of Art Dec. 7 when he used a security camera to follow a man who parked illegally behind the museum.
Several minutes later the man is seen on video stealing a purse from an elderly woman, knocking the woman and a friend to the ground.
The New Hampshire Union Leader says Laliberte’s actions helped capture a dangerous person.
Police subsequently arrested 22-year-old Joseph Audet Jr. of Manchester for assaulting the women
High school student receives award for aiding security officer www.privateofficer.com
VINELAND NJ Dec 17 2010 — When Vineland High School senior Joyce Figueroa saw someone in trouble, she sprang into action.
The basketball player and Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, or JROTC, cadet was sitting in the school’s cafeteria last Thursday when two students began fighting, knocking a female security guard to the ground in the process.
Figueroa jumped up and pulled the students away from the guard, Cindy Kidwell, and then accompanied the injured woman to the nurse’s office.
“She was down, she was crying,” Figueroa said. “Of course I wanted to help her.”
Figueroa was honored Wednesday afternoon with a Humanitarian Award Certificate and a promotion to Cadet Staff Sergeant for her heroic deed.
“In the 24 years I’ve been a security guard, no one has ever come to my rescue,” Kidwell said during the ceremony, choking back tears. “You went above and beyond and did the ‘uncool’ thing to help me.”
Robert Simpson, senior aerospace science instructor at VHS, commended Figueroa and presented her with the award at a formal ceremony in the JROTC classroom.
Simpson, a retired major with the U.S. Air Force, said his student went “above and beyond the call of duty” and showed her character when it truly mattered.
“I’d like to accentuate and point out the positive,” Simpson said. “A lot of times, we only recognize the negative. This wasn’t anything we forced her to do.”
Figueroa is a second-year member of the school’s newly established JROTC program. She said she plans to attend college following graduation.
Source:The Daily Journel
Apartment security in gun battle with trespasser www.privateofficer.com
Indianapolis In Dec 17 2010 A security guard exchanged gunfire with a man he found sleeping in a hallway at an apartment complex on the Northeastside this morning.
Kenneth Daniels, 49, was on patrol in a building at 3830 N. Emerson Ave. at 3:45 a.m. when he spotted Darnell L. Bell, 37, Indianapolis, asleep in a hallway, according to an Indianapolis Metro police report.
Daniels told police he woke up Bell and Bell pushed him against a wall. Daniels hit him with a nightstick and Bell pulled out a handgun, police said.
Daniels then pulled out his own handgun and led Bell outside. Bell turned around and fired three shots at Daniels, police said, and Daniels fired three shots back at him.
Bell ran away but police followed his footprints in the snow and found him.
Bell was shot in the foot and taken Wishard Memorial Hospital in good condition, according police. He was preliminarily charged with criminal recklessness; pointing a firearm; possession of a firearm by a serious felon; and failure to have license to carry a handgun.
Source:InyStar.com
School Security Chief “I’m No Hero” www.privateofficer.com
Panama City Fla Dec 17 2010 The security officer hailed as a hero for taking down a shooter in a vicious gun battle in a Florida school board meeting said today that he opened fire after he thought his friend had been killed, and then cried when he saw his friend alive.
The incident began Tuesday when police said 56-year-old Clay Duke disrupted the school board meeting by proclaiming he had “a motion” and spray-painted a large V with a circle around it on the wall and threatening the room with a gun. Apparently intent on avenging his wife’s 2008 firing, Duke aimed his weapon at the board members several times and told them he was planning to die that day.
Duke’s first shot, which school superindentent Bill Husfelt said was aimed directly at him from no more than 15 feet away, somehow missed. That’s when Jones burst into the room and began firing, shooting Duke in the back three times.
When Duke hit the ground still firing, Jones hit the ground too, crawling behind the desks as gunfire erupted around him. By the time he crawled into a position to fire on Duke again, Jones said he saw Duke raise his gun to his own head and pull the trigger.
Despite all the gunfire, Jones’ only injury was hurting his knee from hitting the deck. But Jones said he didn’t feel relieved until Husfelt, his friend and boss, stood up from where he had fallen behind his desk.
“To see him coming from behind that desk and see that he’s OK… When he came around from that desk, it was like seeing a new born baby for the first time,” Jones said.
Jones, trying to choke back tears at the memory, said he broke down crying at the sight of his friend.
“I can’t get that out of my mind. It’s the picture that I see the most. I don’t see the shots being fired, I don’t see the bullets. I see him and them coming from behind that desk and I knew it was ok,” he said.
Since the incident, Husfelt and just about everyone involved or that’s even heard the story has called Jones a hero, but it’s not a title he accepts.
“I’m not a hero, folks,” he said. “I was just doing my job.”
Inside the meeting was reporter Nadeen Yanes of ABC affiliate WMBB-TV, who shot the exclusive video of the incident.
Duke’s wife said Wednesday that he likely missed all the board members on purpose, but police today contend there’s no doubt his intent was to injure or kill.
“He didn’t want anyone to get hurt but himself,” Clay Duke’s wife, Rebecca Duke, told reporters Wednesday. Rebecca Duke, who called her husband a “gentle giant,” said he was trying to stand up for her after she lost her job as a special education teacher in 2008.
“Basically …he loved me, he loved his family, and he was just trying to have people stop as he would say dump on me,” she said.
But police aren’t buying it and say that while Duke’s motive may never fully be known, there’s little doubt he went into that school board meeting Tuesday with anything but mayhem on his mind.
“I stick by my point that I believe Mr. Duke went there with a purpose and that purpose was to do harm and possibly kill other individuals,” Panama City Police Deputy Chief Robert Colbert told “Good Morning America.” “I understand that that may be a part of the reasoning process for her [Rebecca Duke] that he went there to scare people, but I believe law enforcement is operating on the full notion that he went there to harm or kill superintendent [Bill] Husfelt.”
Duke’s wife said he was bipolar and took medication for mental health issues. Colbert said he could not specifically confirm Duke’s condition, but mental issues “probably” played a part.
Police said Duke had planned the attack carefully, carrying two full clips of bullets. The date of the attack, Dec. 14, was circled in red on a calendar in Duke’s home, investigators said. Before he was wounded by Jones, police said Duke fired 14 shots — none of them hitting their targets.
Jones was taken to the hospital with chest pains after the shooting, but has been released
Jones isn’t the only person in that room being hailed a hero. School board member Ginger Littleton was given the chance to escape, but instead chose to attack Duke with her purse.
In the video, Duke is seen dismissing the women and children from the room before Husfelt tried to talk Duke out of the attack, or at least letting the other board members go.
But after she was dismissed and given the chance to leave with her life, Littleton stopped and thought about her friends who were still in danger. She turned back, snuck up and swatted his hand holding the pistol with her purse.
“I had the choice of leaving,” Littleton told “Good Morning America” Wednesday. “When I turned back around he was up on the level with my guys and they were all sitting there lined up like ducks in a pond … completely defenseless.
“So I could either walk away, thinking something bad was going to happen and try to live with myself, or I could try to do something to divert or delay. So my bag was what I had and so that’s what I did,” Littleton said.
In a video that was recording the board meeting, Littleton is seen sneaking up behind Duke before smacking his arm with her purse. Duke overpowered Littleton but let her go again.
Then, school superintendent Husfelt attempted to talk Duke out of the attack, or at least into allowing others to leave.
“Will you let them go? You’re obviously upset at me, so why are they here?” Husfelt said in the video. “This isn’t worth it. This is a problem.”
Then, when Duke trained his weapon on Husfelt, Husfelt shifted in his seat and asked, “Please don’t. Please don’t. Please.”
“Right before he pulled that trigger, I knew he was going to pull the trigger,” Husfelt told “GMA” today. “There was a miracle that I wasn’t shot. He literally had the gun pointed right at me. … God was standing in front of me. I believe that with all my heart.”
Source:ABC
Armored truck robbery reported in Louisiana www.privateofficer.com
COVINGTON, La.Dec 17 2010 — Two armed men in ski masks held up an armored car in Covington on Thursday morning, the sheriff’s office said.
The Brinks armored car was parked at an Outback Steakhouse on Park Place Drive when the two robbers approached, according to the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office.
The men were armed with a long rifle and wore all black, with ski masks covering their faces, deputies said. They took an undetermined amount of money from the truck before fleeing the scene.
The armored car guards were unharmed during the robbery, deputies said.
Investigators said the robbers fled in a late-model silver SUV.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office at 985-898-2338.
Source:WDSU.com
Police arrest 13 students in Chicago school fight www.privateofficer.com
Chicago IL Dec 17 2010 Thirteen Foreman High School students are facing charges following a melee that erupted in a hallway at the Northwest Side school Thursday afternoon.
The incident happened about 1 p.m. in a third floor hallway of the school, 3235 N. Leclaire Ave., according to a Jefferson Park District police lieutenant.
It started out as a spontaneous fight only between students but school security officers on the scene called the Chicago Police because of the size of the fracas.
Police said it may have started when the kids started to bump into each other, which turned into punching and shoving, before escalating into students throwing punches.
“It snowballed,’’ the lieutenant said.
Police arrived but the fight continued and one tactical officer was knocked down.
“It sounds like he was hit in the head,’’ the lieutenant said. “He was in the crowd, trying to break it up and the next thing he knows he’s on the floor. He didn’t see it coming.’’
While there were no weapons used, the officer suffered some “numbness and tingling’’ and was taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge where he was in fair condition, the lieutenant said.
An ambulance was also called for a female student who suffered a possible anxiety attack because of the brawl. It was not known immediately if she would be taken to a hospital.
A female teacher was also injured, but she did not require hospitalization.
One student, who the lieutenant described as possibly the instigator, was also taken to a hospital for an unidentified injury, but he was on his way back to the Jefferson Park District station to be processed, with twelve others male students who were also under arrest.
The thirteen face charges of reckless conduct, obstructing a police officer, battery to a police officer and battery to a teacher, according to the lieutenant, who did not know why the fight began.
Source:Chicago Sun Times
Body of baby girl found in a box in Texas www.privateofficer.com
McAllen TX Dec 17 2010 A baby girl from Arizona was found dead Thursday inside a cardboard box that was shipped to a warehouse in Texas, authorities said.
A McAllen Police Department spokesman, Sgt. Ricardo Cantu, said a truck carrying used clothing from Phoenix to McAllen arrived at a warehouse Wednesday evening. The truck was unloaded the next day, and workers found the remains of the baby stuffed between garments.
The baby has not been identified. Police are unsure whether the child was born alive.
The clothes are either donated or purchased somewhere else and then sold to the poor in McAllen, Cantu said.
Alabama Paramedic killed on Interstate 65 www.privateofficer.com
Montgomery AL Dec 17 2010 A Morgan County woman died Wednesday in Montgomery while trying to help wreck victims there. Twenty-nine-year old Laura Smith Pullam was a member of the Morgan County Rescue Squad and was working for an ambulance service in Montgomery. An icy bridge is blamed for a crash on Interstate 65 just south of Montgomery. Its where Laura Pullam was trying to save lives–and where she tragically lost her own.
Alabama State Troopers say Laura Pullam was killed when a pickup truck driven by Robert Cumbie of Montgomery hit her. Morgan County Rescue Squad Chief Tony Wiekert remembers Laura Pullam as a volunteer and a friend.
“She was a diver with us as well as a paramedic,” said Wiekert. “I think anybody would tell you that she was a great paramedic and a super person to have as a friend.”
State troopers say a preliminary investigation shows the man who hit Laura was speeding and passing traffic that had slowed due to icy road conditions. Tony says he can’t emphasize enough the importance of patience.
“Take the extra minute,” says Wiekert, “its not going to be that much longer for you to slow down and let the traffic flow through naturally–don’t try to speed around, cut corners and those kind of things, because these, unfortunately, are the things that can happen.”
Troopers are conducting a traffic homicide investigation, which will be forwarded to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office for review. Wiekert, the rescue squad and Pullam’s family must now take solace in anything they can.
“If there’s any good part that you could take from it,” says Wiekert, “she was doing what she loved at the very moment that she lost her life.”
Wiekert met with other rescue squad members Wednesday night to discuss how they’ll help Laura’s family with funeral expenses. They plan to ask the Alabama Honor Guard to be present at Laura’s burial.
Laura Pullam leaves behind her 11-month-old daughter Belle and her husband, Shane, also a long time volunteer. The couple met through the Morgan County Rescue Squad. The family is working on funeral arrangements.
