Mom of stabbing victim: Accused boy, 12, 'could never' hurt sister

VALLEY SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — The mother of an 8-year-old girl who was found stabbed to death in her Northern California home and of the 12-year-old boy accused of killing describes the boy as "protective of his sister."

In an interview with Sacramento television station KOVR on Friday, Priscilla Rodriquez said her son "could never hurt his sister."

The boy — who has not been named by authorities — was arrested Saturday. He will be charged with homicide, Calaveras County Sheriff Gary Kuntz said.

In the interview, Rodriquez said, "I know my son could never hurt his sister.

"They never used to fight when they were little," she said.

Rodriquez told the station that a bitter custody battle had driven a wedge between her and the children's father.

The April 27 attack on Leila Fowler shook the tightknit Valley Springs community of about 7,400 people and set off a massive manhunt.

Investigators did a door-to-door sweep of homes, storage sheds and horse stables scattered across the oak-studded hills foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Divers also searched two nearby reservoirs in search of clues.

After hearing Leila's brother had been arrested, residents were in disbelief.

"I did not want to believe it. You kind of thought so, but it's not something you want to believe," Tammy Ainsworth told Sacramento's KCRA-TV.

By Sunday, investigators had released few details of the arrest and did not return calls from The Associated Press seeking details of what led them to arrest the boy.

The boy had told police he found his sister's body and encountered an intruder in the home while their father and stepmother were at a Little League game. He described the man as being tall with long gray hair. But afterward, police said there was no sign of a burglary or robbery.

A neighbor told detectives she saw a man flee the home, but she later recanted the story and was discredited by police.

As part of the investigation, authorities seized several knives from the Fowler home, where Leila lived with her father, stepmother and siblings.

Leila's brother was taken into custody at 5:10 p.m. Saturday, and police hastily called a news conference to announce the arrest.

"Citizens of Calaveras County, you can sleep a little better tonight," Kuntz said.

Authorities spent more than 2,000 hours on the investigation "to provide Leila Fowler's family answers to her death," the sheriff said.

Kuntz said the investigation was ongoing and declined to provide further details.

Local officials pledged support Sunday. The Calaveras Unified School District "stands ready to provide whatever level of support and assistance is necessary to the Fowler family" and the community, Superintendent Mark Campbell said in a statement. The district will make counselors available at all schools, he said.

Several days after the killing, hundreds of people gathered at Jenny Lind Elementary School where Leila was a popular third-grader. Her stepmother, Krystal Walters, tearfully thanked the crowd for the support.

"I just want to thank the entire community and all of our family and friends for all the overwhelming amount of support you've given our family," Walters said at the time. "It will never be forgotten. Thank you."

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Carjacking victim in bombing case speaks out

"Danny" (NBC/Today)

The man carjacked by one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers after the attack is speaking out about his ordeal—but not revealing himself, at least to the public.

"Danny," identified as a 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur, gave on-camera interviews to NBC, CBS and CNN this week, with his face darkened and voice modified to protect his identify.

Danny told the networks that he was sitting in his parked 2013 Mercedes SUV sending a text message when a man, who police believe was alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, put his hand through an open car window, opened the door from the inside, got in and pointed a gun at him.

"I thought it was just a robbery, you know?" Danny told CBS News. "He told me that 'you know I am serious. Don't be stupid.'"

Tsarnaev, he said, asked him if he had been following the news of the marathon bombings.

“I said, 'Yes, of course,’" Danny told NBC's Matt Lauer. “Then he said, ‘I did that. And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.'" The officer, Sean Collier, a 27-year-old policeman who worked on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was shot to death while he sat in his cruiser, authorities say.

“At first, I can't manage to drive,’’ Danny said. “I was shaking. My body was shaking. Tamerlan told me, ‘Relax, man. Slow down. Don't drive too fast.’’’

Tamerlan’s younger brother, 19-year-old bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Danny said, followed the Mercedes in a separate car. The brothers stopped and loaded what police say were explosives from the second car into the Mercedes.

"This is like something you see in a movie, isn't it?" Tamerlan said at one point during the carjacking, according to Danny.

At another point during the 90-minute ordeal, Danny said, he got a call. He was asked who was calling, and he answered that it was his roommate.

"[Tamerlan] was nervous," recollected Danny. "He took out his gun, [pointed it at] me, saying, ‘If you say any single word in Chinese, I will kill you right now.'"

Danny said he told his friend, in English, that "'I'm going to sleep in my friend's place tonight,' My roommate is like, ‘What? Why you [speaking] English to me?’ I kept talking, [saying], 'I gotta go, I gotta go.'"

He continued: "After, I hang up the phone, Tamerlan was very happy. He said, 'Good job. Good boy.'"

The carjacking victim told CNN he felt the fact he was Chinese—and not American—saved his life.

The group drove to a Shell gas station, where Dzhokhar got out to use an ATM and pump gas. Danny jumped out of the car, leaving his iPhone inside. “I took off," he said. Tamerlan "tried to grab me. He was trying to grab me. It was very close. I can feel it.”

He ran to another gas station and told the attendant to call 911. Using the vehicle's GPS, authorities tracked the Mercedes to Watertown, where Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police. A wounded Dzhokhar evaded capture for 18 hours, later surrendering from a shrink-wrapped boat he was hiding on in a yard.

During the carjacking, Danny heard the brothers reference Manhattan. He told CNN he thought the brothers were going to drive to New York, kill him on the way and dump his body under a bridge.

“I think I was really lucky," Danny told Lauer of his escape. “God was with me.”

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Chinese bomb victim remembered as bright

BOSTON (AP) — Less than 24 hours before she died, Lu Lingzi sent an exuberant email to a professor after learning she had passed part of a major final exam.

"I am so happy to get this result!" she wrote. "Thank you very much."

Lu was killed Monday during the Boston Marathon explosions, according to a statement from Boston University. She was a graduate student studying mathematics and statistics and scheduled to receive her graduate degree in 2015.

Lu was at the finish line of the race with two friends from BU. One, Danling Zhou, had surgeries Monday and Tuesday and is in stable condition at Boston Medical Center, the university's statement said. The other was unharmed.

On Monday morning, Lu put the finishing touches on a group research project she was planning to present at a statistics conference.

She also posted a photo of the breakfast — bread chunks and fruit — she ate the morning she died.

"My wonderful breakfast," she wrote.

Lu was a vivacious chatterbox who had lots of friends on campus, said Tasso Kaper, chair of the mathematics and statistics department, whose face lit up talking about his former student.

"The word bubbly — that's kind of a corny word — but that describes her very well," Kaper said.

Lu loved the springtime and kept asking when the trees would bloom in Boston.

"She was very interested in the flowers," he said. "Spring is a very important time of year for her."

Lu, 23, often shared photos of her home-prepared meals online, including a blueberry-covered waffle. They were almost always served in a shallow, blue-patterned bowl.

In September she showed off her first two-dish meal, stir-fried broccoli and scrambled eggs with tomatoes, often cooked by Chinese students learning to live on their own abroad.

She was described as an exceptional student and bright young scientist at Boston University, where she had been enrolled for about a year. She was in the process of searching for a summer internship with her adviser.

Lingzi would have had just one course left to complete in order to graduate.

Lingzi attended the Beijing Institute of Technology, where she graduated last year once got a perfect score on a differential equations exam. Her LinkedIn profile said she was awarded "excellent student" at the school and that she held jobs or internships at the Beijing offices of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu consultancy and at Dongxing Securities Co. during her undergraduate years. She also spent a semester at the University of California, Riverside.

Chinese state media said Lu was from the northeastern city of Shenyang.

Lingzi's closest friends in Boston did not learn that she had been killed until Tuesday evening, when they were informed by faculty members. Fellow graduate students are struggling to process her death.

"Many of them are still in shock and disbelief," Kaper said.

A memorial service will be held at the campus chapel Wednesday evening. There was a small, private gathering of friends and faculty at the math department early Wednesday to "begin the long grieving process," Kaper said.

Reports of her death drew comments and condolences from friends and strangers, both on Lu's Sina Weibo account — with nearly 20,000 comments as of Wednesday — and on their own. Her former neighbor in Shenyang, Zhang Xinbo, lamented how the news brought home the tragedy of what he considered a faraway event.

"I saw her grow up, and a few scenes from the past are flashing through my mind. Now, she's becoming a girl, a bit Westernized, but a loud bang has changed everything," he wrote in a blog. "I think of her loved ones, and I don't know how they are coping with this painful news, while still searching for any thread of hope."

Many comments reflect a growing awareness that the burgeoning number of Chinese students and elsewhere in recent years has opened them up to dangers ranging from mundane street crime to terrorist attacks.

"Nearly 12 years after Sept. 11, more and more people have realized terrorists are the global enemy. They not only attack Americans but also Chinese, regardless of nationality or race," the well-known blogger and author Li Chengpeng wrote.

___

Tang reported from Beijing.

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Victim of 1963 Alabama church bombing wants restitution, not medal

By Verna Gates

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - A woman who survived a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed her sister and three other black girls in one of most heinous crimes of the civil rights era said she will not accept a medal that Congress may award posthumously to the victims.

Instead, Sarah Collins Rudolph says she wants millions of dollars in restitution for her sister's death and for the injuries she herself suffered as a result of the September 15, 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which was carried out by the Ku Klux Klan.

Rudolph, 12 at the time of the bombing, lost an eye after being hit with shattered glass in the church basement and spent two months in a hospital. She said she was nearly blinded in the other eye and has post-traumatic stress and memory loss.

"I am not going to go get the (medal) until justice has been fulfilled," said Rudolph, now 62, during an interview on Friday at her home in a Birmingham suburb.

Two U.S. representatives from Alabama, Democrat Terri Sewell and Republican Spencer Bachus, introduced legislation in January to give Congress' highest civilian honor to the girls who lost their lives in the bombing.

The lawmakers said awarding the Congressional Gold Medal would recognize their sacrifices as well of those of others in Birmingham in the quest for equal rights for blacks.

The church bombing shocked Americans and helped spur the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

"We should never forget those who marched, prayed and died in the pursuit of civil rights and change," Sewell said in a statement. "The four girls were emblematic of so many who suffered and lost their lives."

The measure has received backing from two-thirds of House members, or 290 signatures, as required to bring it for a vote, Sewell said.

Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14, and 11-year-old Denise McNair were in a basement washroom with Rudolph preparing for a service when the bomb exploded just after McNair asked Collins to tie her sash, Rudolph recalled.

SURVIVORS DIVIDED

Rudolph and family members of the other girls are divided over the appropriate way to mark the deaths, for which three Klansmen were convicted decades after the crime.

McNair's family is hoping Congress will approve the medals to bring attention to the tragedy. More than 20 other members of the church congregation were also injured in the explosion.

"We feel that this honor given by Congress means that our great country recognizes the sacrifices made for freedom in our country," said Lisa McNair, 49, the sister of Denise McNair.

The Congressional Gold Medal was last awarded to those who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Wesley's brother, 61-year-old Fate Morris, agrees with Rudolph that the families deserve restitution instead.

"That medal won't do us any good. Only the politicians will get anything out of it," said Morris, who remembers helping to pick through the rubble after the bombing to look for his sister.

Morris also wants his sister's name corrected in the history books. He said she was living with a family whose surname was Wesley at the time of her death, but her real last name was Morris.

He said a price cannot be put on death. Rudolph suggested $5 million would be fair compensation for her sister's death and the injuries and medical bills that she has incurred.

The family members are unlikely to get money from Alabama, where compensation for crime victims is capped at $15,000 and must be claimed one year after a crime occurs, said Lauren Thompson, a claims assistant for the Alabama Crime Victims Compensation Commission.

Montgomery-based lawyer Jere Beasley said the federal government's failure to protect blacks during the civil rights era could make it responsible for Rudolph's injuries.

"By inaction, you encourage the violence," Beasley said.

(Reporting by Verna Gates; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Paul Simao)

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Family of alleged rape victim to file wrongful death suit

The family of Audrie Pott, the 15-year-old girl who killed herself after learning she was allegedly raped by schoolmates at a party in September, has directed its lawyer to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the three 16-year-old boys accused of assaulting her.

"We intend to prove in a court of law that her death was related to what they did," attorney Bob Allard told Yahoo! News on Sunday.

Allard said the decision was precipitated by comments made by the defendants' lawyers over the weekend, in which they said the boys should be "regarded as innocent." They further advised the public to reserve judgment about the case.

"Much of what has been reported over the last several days is inaccurate," said the suspects' three attorneys, Eric S. Geffon, Alan M. Lagod and Benjamin W. Williams, in a statement reported by the Los Angeles Times. "Most disturbing is the attempt to link [Audrie's] suicide to the specific actions of these three boys."

Allard said the Pott family was deeply distressed over that statement, and that it "sent them over the edge." He accused the opposing lawyers of using a so-called "blame the dead victim defense."

Police say Pott was assaulted at a party by schoolmates at a house near San Jose, Calif. while she was passed out. Eight days later, Allard says Pott learned photos had been taken of the alleged assault, and shared on social media. "Worst day ever," Pott wrote on her Facebook page. She then hanged herself.

"There's no doubt that the combination of the assault and the torture by cyberbullying caused Audrie to end her life," Allard told Yahoo! News Friday.

The names of the suspects, who were arrested at their schools on Thursday and charged with sexual battery, were not released because they are minors. Yahoo! News does not normally release the name of alleged sexual assault victims, but the Pott family wanted Audrie's name known.

Allard said he will file the complaint Monday. The family is also planning a news conference at 11 a.m. PT on Monday in Allard's law office, a day sooner than originally planned.

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Teenage girls charged with online threats against Ohio rape victim

(Reuters) - Two teenage girls were arrested in Ohio on Monday and accused of using social media to threaten the young victim in a high-profile rape trial that concluded this past weekend, state Attorney General Mike DeWine said.

A 16-year-old girl is charged with aggravated menacing after using Twitter to threaten the life of the victim, DeWine said in a statement. A 15-year-old girl is charged with one count of menacing after making a threat on Facebook, he said.

The charges come a day after a juvenile court judge found Steubenville High School football players Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'lik Richmond, 16, delinquent in the sex assault of a 16-year-old girl in the early morning hours of August 12.

(Reporting by Drew Singer, Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Cynthia Johnston)

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