Pregnant St. Louis woman loses left eye after police officer shoots non-lethal round at car - Yahoo News

Pregnant St. Louis woman loses left eye after police officer shoots non-lethal round at car - Yahoo News

















JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:

A pregnant St. Louis woman lost her left eye after a violent run-in with law enforcement earlier this week.

Dornnella Conners says an officer fired a non-lethal bean-bag round at the car she was in – shattering the passenger side window.

Shards of glass bloodied her face and robbed her of sight in her left eye, according to reports.

“I will have justice for what they did to me but I’m happy I’m alive,” she wrote on Facebook on Thanksgiving.

Conners was injured early Tuesday morning shortly after the announcement that Darren Wilson would not be indicted in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Crowds of demonstrators had taken to the streets to protest what they consider a travesty of justice.

Conners, who was angry about the grand jury’s decision, and her boyfriend, De’Angelas Lee, were parked at a BP gas station on New Halls Ferry Road in St. Louis, just north of Ferguson, KMOV reported.

As her boyfriend started to drive away, she says, several police officers arrived.

“They pulled up while we were coming towards the street, De’Anglas was trying to get away, they blocked us from the side, front and back,” Conners told the CBS affiliate.

That’s when an officer fired the bean bag round because he feared for his safety, police said.

Conners found another officer who could help her get medical attention.

 Dornella’s father, Donnell Conners, says he understands that the cops have a difficult job to do but there was no excuse for what happened to his daughter.

“I’m very upset, very disappointed with tactics that they used trying to get control of situation,” he told KMOV. “I understand tough job, I understand that it was chaos, there was no reason to fire upon innocent person sitting in a vehicle.”

Conners says her left eye was so badly damaged that it needed to be removed and reports blurriness in her right eyes but is thankful she can still see the world at all.

Police say they arrested 16 suspects at the station after gunshots were reportedly fired.

Authorities have issued a warrant for Lee’s arrest, according to reports.

Erdogan says Muslims, not Columbus, discovered Americas - Yahoo News

Erdogan says Muslims, not Columbus, discovered Americas - Yahoo
 

JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there.

"Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the conservative president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America.

"Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said.

Erdogan said that Ankara was even prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer.

"I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today," the Turkish leader said.

History books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492 as he was seeking a new maritime route to India.

A tiny minority of Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbian ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.

In a controversial article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh refers to a diary entry from Columbus that mentions a mosque in Cuba. But the passage is widely understood to be a metaphorical reference to the shape of the landscape.

Ben Carson Kicks Off Bid For Presidency Of Country He Says Is 'Like Nazi Germany'

Ben Carson Kicks Off Bid For Presidency Of Country He Says Is 'Like Nazi Germany'

 

JohnButts@JBmedia - Reports:
Ben Carson, the popular conservative activist who rose to national prominence in 2013 when he delivered a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that was widely hailed in conservative circles, is apparently running for president, and kicking off his campaign this weekend with an hour-long infomercial for himself.

Though Carson has not officially declared his run for the Republican 2016 presidential nomination, the infomercial entitled Ben Carson: A Breath of Fresh Air; A New Prescription for America is set to air in 22 states and Washington D.C. after Carson’s friend and reported business manager Armstrong Williams bought airtime on numerous local and network stations to broadcast what is being called the first campaign ad of the 2016 campaign.

Just a few weeks ago, Carson said that he was reluctant to run for president in part because he feared that the 2016 presidential election might be canceled due to “widespread anarchy.”

Since his 2013 Prayer Breakfast speech, Carson has been known mainly for his controversial and hyperbolic public statements, particularly with regard to the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act, better known as “Obamacare.”

In a speech last year, the 63-year-old Carson, an African-American and a leading neurosurgeon formerly at Johns Hopkins University, called the healthcare reform law “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

Carson has also described the healthcare law, which according to the New York Times has allowed 10 million previously uninsured Americans to obtain health coverage, as worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks “because 9/11 was an isolated incident.” He later walked back that statement.

Carson has been a paid commentator for the conservative news network Fox News, but on Saturday, he announced that he had quit his job with the network, a move generally seen as signaling his initial entry into electoral politics.

Among his numerous other contentious public pronouncements, Carson has said that the United States “is very much like Nazi Germany,” adding, ” I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness.”

As the basis for his comparison between the United States and the fascist state of Nazi Germany, in which Jews and other minority groups were persecuted, imprisoned and murdered by the millions, Carson cites his view that, “We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”

Carson did not note, however, that he, himself, delivered his Prayer Breakfast speech harshly critical of President Barack Obama with the president sitting on the podium next to him.

And yet not only did Ben Carson escape arrest and incarceration for saying what he actually believed, he was rewarded with national recognition and a paid contributor’s position on a national television network.

Woman in Philadelphia Abduction Found Alive, Kidnapper Arrested, FBI Says - Yahoo

Woman in Philadelphia Abduction Found Alive, Kidnapper Arrested, FBI Says - Yahoo



JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
The woman who was kidnapped on Sunday off a desolate Philadelphia street -- a harrowing crime that was caught on surveillance camera -- was found alive today in Maryland, while her abductor was arrested, authorities said.

Carlesha Freeland-Gaither, 22, was found by FBI agents inside a parked car in Jessup, Maryland.

Her alleged abductor, Delvin Barnes, 37, was arrested at the scene, according to the FBI.

Police Release Surveillance Footage of 'Person of Interest' in Philly Abduction Case

New Leads in Videotaped Philadelphia Abduction

Chilling Video Shows Woman's Abduction in Philadelphia

Ed Hanko, the special agent in charge of the Philadelphia FBI field office, said that because of tips called in from the public, investigators were "able to identify this individual, identify his car and track it into Maryland."

FBI agents were joined by U.S. Marshals and Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents who located the car and approached when Barnes stepped out of the vehicle.

Freeland-Gaither was found inside the car and is now being treated at a local hospital, police said.

Hanko said that she is "in good shape," but police still have not had a chance to interview her.

Freeland-Gaither's mother, whose name was not released, attended tonight's news conference and said that she has been able to speak to her daughter by phone from the hospital, but will be reunited later this evening.

"She was very upset. She was crying," she said of her daughter.

"Thank you for keeping me up. Thank you for being there for us. I'm taking my baby home," she added.

Barnes is being held as a result of an outstanding attempted capital murder warrant that was issued for him in Virginia, though he is expected to face federal charges once the ongoing investigation into Freeland-Gaither's case is complete.

Investigators said that they have no reason to believe Barnes knew his victim before the abduction.

"He's a thug and this is what he does apparently," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told reporters. "People like this, there's nothing that makes sense."

In the surveillance video released Monday, Freeland-Gaither can be seen fighting to get away from her attacker during Sunday's abduction.

Freeland-Gaither was pulled down the street in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia toward the man’s car, which police believed to be a 2000 or 2002 gray Ford Taurus. At one point, she even fell to the ground to try and get away before she was pushed into the car.