Former National Basketball Association player Javaris Crittenton pleaded guilty on Wednesday in the 2011 death of an Atlanta woman, admitting he fired an automatic rifle in a drive-by shooting but saying he never meant to kill anyone.
Crittenton, 27, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter with a weapon and aggravated assault with a firearm. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped a murder charge and a judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison and 17 years of probation.
Current Events
Video: Protestors Attack A Police Car In Baltimore
Lil Wayne’s Tour Bus Shot In Atlanta
Shots were fired at rapper Lil Wayne’s tour bus overnight in Cobb County, police said.
Atlanta police spokeswoman Elizabeth Espy said officers from her department were called to the Mandarin Oriental hotel on Peachtree Road at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday “regarding someone shooting at a bus that Lil Wayne was on.” Responding officers found two tour buses that had been shot multiple times, Espy said.
Powerful image of Crips, Bloods, and Nation Of Islam Uniting To Protest For #FreddieGray
Video: Protestor At The #FreddieGray Rally Smashes A Police Car With A Garbage Can
A Riker’s Correction Officer Fired After Her Husband Shot Her In The Face
On December 21, 2013, Janine Howard, a 40-year-old Rikers corrections officer, wasreportedly shot in the face by her husband, Brian Martin, another corrections officer, after a domestic dispute in their home on Long Island. Howard suffered permanent nerve damage and critical injuries that necessitated the complete reconstruction of her jaw and her eye socket, the placement of plates in and around her mouth. Martin, who has a history of violence, was immediately arrested, and pled not guilty to charges of attempted murder last January.
But, at a Downtown Manhattan law firm on Friday, the story was what happened afterward.
Sitting with a few reporters, myself included, Corrections Officer Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook, Mercedes Maldonado, Howard’s lawyer, and Howard passed around copies of a petition that was filed against the Department of Corrections and Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte on Tuesday, alleging that the agency in charge of Rikers unlawfully terminated Howard once she returned to her job this past December, without any reason given whatsoever.
Video: T.I. and Kap G On CNN With Don Lemon Discussing Racial Profiling
Virtual Reality App Puts You At The Scene Of The Trayvon Martin Murder
Headed up by veteran journalist Nonny de la Peña and her company, Emblematic Group, the experience puts you on the same street in the gated community in Sanford where the incident occurred, complete with rain effects and nighttime atmospherics that add to its realism.
Using the audio files of real 911 calls, architectural drawings of the area and witness testimony from the subsequent trial of Zimmerman, who was found not guilty of second-degree murder in 2013, the VR experience is disturbingly effective in transmitting what being at the scene of the incident might have felt like.
DOJ Opens Up An Investigation In The Freddie Gray Death In Baltimore
“The Department of Justice has been monitoring the developments in Baltimore, Md., regarding the death of Freddie Gray,” spokeswoman Dena Iverson said in a statement. “Based on preliminary information, the Department of Justice has officially opened this matter and is gathering information to determine whether any prosecutable civil rights violation occurred.”
The federal agency did not release details about the investigation, but said it would include the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office and civil rights lawyers within the department.
Uber Tried To Charge $12,000 For A Ride
Gothamist reports on the harrowing tale of a woman who got in an Uber and took the “car ride from Hell” to get from Williamsburg to Midtown East, after which she had to dispute a $12,000 bill for her trouble. Sure, surge pricing was in effect, but she didn’t know it was going to beplatinum surge pricing.
Jaime Hessel told Gothamist her trouble started when her Uber driver “just sat there for a little bit. Maybe for five minutes or so,” at the beginning of the ride. His behavior allegedly grew more suspect as her ride continued: he repeatedly missed a turn, then ended up reversing down the BQE onramp, cutting across lanes in the process.
Instead of bailing, she let him take her all the way to Manhattan—she had a charity bar crawl to get to, and the sunk cost fallacy exists—but contacted Uber to complain about how long her ride took and how scary it was.
Got The Drop 