Hard Boiled News

True Crime and News of the Weird from around the Globe

Man Tries Fireworks to Zap Bee’s Nest, Torches Garage Instead

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GRAND BLANC TOWNSHIP, Michigan — At least he’s a patriotic dumbass.

A Michigan man accidentally set his garage on fire when he tried to use fireworks to remove a bee’s nest inside, authorities said.

The blaze set off even more fireworks that were apparently store inside, sending rockets blazing across the night sky, fire officials said.

“The homeowner was doing something with a smoke bomb trying to get a bees nest out of the garage,”  Grand Blanc Fire Chief, Bob Burdett, told Mlive.com.

No one was hurt and the fire was contained to the garage and a fence and didn’t spread to the clueless homeowner’s home.

Mike Tingley, who sparked the fire, said he was simply glad it wasn’t worse.

“We really weren’t going to celebrate the Fourth of July so much as we just have fun in our backyard, we like to have barbecues, we had a patio back there,” said Tingley, who was home with his wife and daughter at the time of the fire. “It is depressing losing a place where we had a lot of fun, but everyone is safe and that’s the main thing.”

White Cop Files Race Discrimination Suit After Discovering He is Part Black

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Cleon Brown recently discovered that he is 18% black

HASTINGS, Michigan — A Michigan cop has filed a racial discrimination suit against his department, saying he became the subject of non-stop racist taunting after discovering he had black ancestry.

Sgt. Cleon Brown, 49, said in his civil suit that the police chief repeatedly called him “Kunta,” after the character Kunta Kinte in the famed slave epic, “Roots,” by Alex Haley. He said others whispered “Black Lives Matter,” and raised their fists in a black power salute as he walked past.

And at Christmas time, the sergeant said he found a black Santa figurine with “18%” written on its beard, in a stocking that hung in the department with Brown’s name on it.

The figure was a reference to the 18% black ancestry Brown discovered he had when he had done an Ancestry.com genetic test. Brown says department staff grew increasingly chilly towards him after he objected to the taunts, and began to ignore him completely after he filed a complaint with the equal employment opportunity commission.

The suit, filed in federal court, names Police Chief Jeff Pratt, City Manager Jeff Mansfield, and several others.

Brown found this statue in his office Christmas stocking

The department and Mansfield countered that it  was Brown who started the racial bantering and that others just followed suit when he would joke about his black ancestry. They accused Brown on engaging in “typical racial stereotypes.”

City officials told MLive.com that they weren’t even sure if Brown’s genetic makeup even qualified him as a protected class under civil rights laws.

Brown has served on the force since 1998 and had spent seven years in the Army before joining the Hastings department.

Detroit Doc Charged with Performing Female Genital Mutilation

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DETROIT — An emergency room physician has been charged with performing female genital mutilation in Michigan on girls as 6-years-old, in what prosecutors are saying is the first case of its kind brought in the United States.

Jumana Nagarwala, 44, is charged with performing the procedures at a a medical office in Livonia, Michigan. According to the criminal complaint, some of the girls — who were between the ages of six and eight — travelled from out of state to have the procedure done.

“Despite her oath to care for her patients, Dr. Nagarwala is alleged to have performed horrifying acts of brutality on the most vulnerable victims,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Blanco.

Prosecutors said they believe this is the first criminal case to be brought under a federal statute that bans female genital mutilation that has been in place since 1997.

“The Department of Justice is committed to stopping female genital mutilation in this country, and will use the full power of the law to ensure that no girls suffer such physical and emotional abuse,” Blanco said.

Female genital mutilation is defined by the World Health Organization as any procedure that  intentionally alters female genitalia for non-medical reasons. The practice is mostly commonly seen in Africa and the Middle East and parts of Asia, but is considered barbaric in the West.

It is mostly performed on young girls before they reach puberty. An estimated 200 million women worldwide have undergone some form of the procedure, according to the WHO.

Nagarwala is listed as a specialist in emergency medicine at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit An online profile for her says she received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University .

Killer Robot That Went Rogue Responsible for Auto Worker’s Death: Suit

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An assembly line robot is accused of going rogue in the death of an auto plant worker

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — When future generations look back at history, they may consider July 7, 2015 as the day when the machines became self aware.

A federal lawsuit filed in Michigan accuses several companies of negligence for an episode that day where an auto plant robot went rogue and killed an employee.

Wanda Holbrook, a 57-year-old technician at the Ventra Ionia plant in Ionia, Michigan where bumpers and hitch assemblies are manufactured, was killed when the robot entered an area it was not supposed to be in and crushed her head as she inspected equipment.

For reasons that are unclear, the robot’s arm “took Wanda by surprise, entering the section she was working in” and “hit and crushed Wanda’s head between a hitch assembly it was attempting to place” in a fixture.

Wanda Holbrook

The suit alleges that a number of safety mechanisms designed to keep the robot from entering the area where Holbrook was had failed.

Her husband, William Holbrook, is accusing the robotics companies Prodomax Automation Canada, Flex-N-Gate LLC, FANUC America Corp., Nachi Robotic Systems Inc., and Lincoln Electric Company of negligence and defective design in his wife’s death.

Wanda Holbrook had worked at the factory for 12 years and specialized in fixing assembly line robots if something went wrong.

The suit says other employees noticed that the assembly line appeared to not be working properly so they went to look for Holbrook when they discovered her dead.

“I want to make sure nothing like this happens to another family,” Bill Holbrook told the Detroit Free Press. “We would feel terrible if we didn’t do anything and then another family had to go through something similar to this. If it’s an accident, it’s an accident. If it’s preventable, I want it to be prevented.”

Ex-Gang Member ‘Executed’ 2 Months After Obama Commuted His Sentence

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpMNd5S4MjI

SAGINAW, Michigan (Jan. 28, 2017) — Two men armed with assault rifles gunned down a federal prisoner in a halfway house just two months after his 19-year sentence for drug dealing had been commuted by President Obama.

Surveillance video shows the two men, dressed in dark clothes and wearing masks, force their way into Bannum Place, a federal halfway house in Saginaw, Michigan, on the evening of Jan. 23.

As one of them held the other two dozen residents at bay, the other hunted down and killing 31-year-old Demarlon Thomas, shooting him numerous times, including once in the head.

“If you look at the way this was executed, it was no accident — they knew exactly who they were looking for and knew exactly where he was at,” Michigan State Police Lt. David Kaiser told the Saginaw News.

Thomas was a former member of the Sunny Side Gang, a drug outfit that had for years run Saginaw’s South Side. But in 2008, secured convictions against dozens of members of the gang, including Thomas, who was sentenced to 19 years in prison.

But in November, President Obama included Thomas on a list of 79 people across the country whose sentences would be commuted. The agreement shaved about eight years off of Thomas sentence. He was awaiting a full released on March 22.

Demarlon Thomas’s sentence was shortened by President Obama

Thomas, who had been a star football player in high school and attended college on an athletic scholarship, admitted selling just shy of 15 grams of crack cocaine to a confidential informant three separate times. He  also had two previous felony drug convictions.

He had argued in an appeal that was rejected that his sentence was unduly harsh, as he was just a low-level street dealer in the gang.

“He was just happy to be free and have a second chance at life,” childhood friend Carla Robinson told the Saginaw newspaper. “Since he’s been home, all he’s been trying to do is do right. He’s been trying to find a job. He wasn’t a troublemaker, even with his convictions.”

 

House Sale Falls Through When Buyer Finds Mummified Corpse in Garage

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Investigators don’t know how long the mummy had been in the house or even if it was a man or a woman

DETROIT — This will kill a real estate deal fast.

A man looking to buy a house in Detroit made a grisly discovery when he walked into the garage and found a mummified body behind the wheel of car parked there, police said.

The man made the terrifying discovery when he opened the door of a 1990 or 1991 Plymouth Acclaim that sat in the unused garage and found a very badly decomposed body behind the wheel, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Authorities said the body had been there “for years” and it was not immediately possible to even tell what gender it had been. Lloyd Jackson, a spokesman for the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office said an anthropologist from the University of Michigan would be brought in to examine the remains.

“At this point, they don’t know if it’s male or female, or cause or manner of death or anything like that,” Jackson said. “That’s when the anthropologist comes in and checks it out. They didn’t do an autopsy, they just did an inspection because that’s usually what they do when they get these bodies that have been really badly decomposed or mummified.”

Police say the current renters of the home told investigators that they had never been inside the garage as the owner had told them they did not have access to it.

Police spokesman Dan Donakowski said investigators were in the process of contacting the homeowner.

“This is an open investigation and I know we’re going to do a thorough investigation on it, but we obviously have to find out what went on,” he said. “A lot of the investigation is going to be geared to the findings of the medical examiner’s office so we can actually see what happened and we’re going to go from there.”

The situation is reminiscent of the 1999 discovery by a new homeowner in Jericho, N.Y. of the mummified remains of a woman stuffed into an oil drum hidden a crawl space beneath his new home.

The investigation revealed that the woman had been an immigrant from El Salvador who worked for plastic flower company co-owned by Howard Elkins, who had owned the house 30 years earlier. She had had an affair with the married Elkins and eventually became pregnant with his child, so he killed her.

When investigators eventually approached Elkins, who had since retired to Florida, he committed suicide.

Midwest Trucker Charged With Hiding Serbian Death Squad Past

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Prosecutors say trucker Alexander Kneginich was hiding a dark past

 

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — A mid-western trucker has been arrested for allegedly hiding  that he’d been part of a Serbian death squad in the 1990s and had faced trial in Bosnia for murdering Muslims when he applied to come to U.S. as a refugee and later became a citizen.

Alexander Kneginich, 56, of Crown Point, Indiana, had served in an ethnic Serb army during Bosnia’s brutal civil war in the early 1990s, federal prosecutors said. In 1994, he and three others were charged with storming into a Muslim couple’s home and fatally shooting them.

The men were initially acquitted, but in 1996, the verdict was overturned and they faced retrial. In 2000, Kneginich allegedly lied on an application for refugee status in the United States, by claiming that his wife was ethnic Croat and that as a mixed-marriage couple they feared for their safety. Prosecutors say his now ex-wife is actually Serbian.

Kneginich posted this flag of a banned Serbian ultra-nationalist party on his Facebook page

On his Facebook page, Kneginich featured a picture of a flag of a banned fascist party in Serbia that has been accused of burning synagogues and mosques and attacking ethnic Roma.  On his right arm, Kneginich sports a prison tattoo of a Serbian crucifix.

In 2001, Kneginich was granted refugee status and settled in northern Indiana where he has worked as an electrician and a long-haul trucker. In 2007, he became a U.S. citizen in Michigan. Two years later, two of his co-defendants were retried in Bosnia and were convicted. Kneginich avoided retrial because he had resettled in the U.S.

Throughout his immigration process, prosecutors say he lied on his applications by failing to disclose that he had been charged with murder and had spent time in jail awaiting trial. He is also accused of lying about his wife’s ethnicity to gain refugee status.

“For persons who immigrate into the United States, citizenship is the brass ring,” said Pat Miles, U.S. Attorney in Michigan. “This office will zealously pursue any case where that prized status appears to have been obtained through fraud and deceit.”

Kneginich faces up to 10 years in prison and will lose his citizenship and be deported back to Bosnia if he is convicted.

 

Overly Prideful Uber Driver Stabs Fare after Feeling His Car was ‘Disrespected’

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Jacob Allemon was a bit too prideful about his 2012 Honda Civic

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Michigan — An Uber ride that began with the driver feeling a passenger had “disrespected his car” ended in bloodshed when the driver pulled out a knife and stabbed the man five times, police in Michigan said.

Bloomfield Township police say the altercation began early Saturday when a husband and wife leaving a party called for an Uber. When Jacob Matthew Allemon, 23, arrived in his 2012 Honda Civic, the male passenger knocked on his windshield.

“Allemon felt that his vehicle was disrespected when the victim tapped on the window,” police said in a statement.

After driving the couple a mile, Allemon decided to end the ride in a parking lot, but the couple declined to get out of his car until they could get another Uber to pick them up as it was snowing, police said.

“The husband tells him, ‘(Expletive) you, you little (expletive). We are not getting out until another Uber driver arrives,’ ” according to a police report obtained by the Detroit News.

Allemon told cops that the man started to choke him and that he feared for his life so he pulled out a knife in self defense. Investigators have cast doubt on Allemon’s version of events because he had no visible marks on his body.

The passenger in his statement to cops  insists he didn’t get physical with Allemon until he lunged into the back seat and started hacking away with a knife. His wife called 911 and the passenger managed to restrain Allemon until cops arrived.

When police arrived, they said the passenger was covered in blood. He was taken to a nearby hospital and was released the next day. Allemon was charged with assault with intent to do bodily harm and was held on $250,000 bond.

In a statement, Uber said it was appalled by Allemon’s actions and that he has been banned from the ride-sharing app.

 

Michigan Girl Slain by Family Dog

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Kiyana McNeal, 4, was killed by her family's new dog

Kiyana McNeal, 4, was killed by her family’s new dog

SHERMAN TOWNSHIP, Michigan — A 4-year-old girl was killed after being attacked by her family’s new dog, Michigan authorities said.

The St. Joseph County Sheriff’s office said the attack happened Sunday afternoon in the backyard of the family’s home in Sherman Township,when the girl offered the dog a treat.

“The dog come and sniffed it. And then stepped back. Then come, sniffed it again,” neighbor Becky Davis told WOOD-TV. “And evidently the third time he got her.”

Police say the girl’s mother, Jacey McNeal Wolkins, tried to fight off the dog — which was believed to be a Doberman  mix — to protect her daughter but failed. She was hospitalized with  wounds to her head and hands.

Relatives identified the girl as Kiyana McNeal. She was described as “beautiful, vibrant, funny, and more empathetic than most adults we know,” on a fundraising page set up by her family.

“She loved to dance, read, and, most of all, sing.  She was a performer; a sweet light that was put out far too early,” the page read.

The family had just gotten the dog that day to replace a dog that had recently died, according to WWMT-TV. The animal was taken into custody by the local animal care and control.