A fight over a dog urinating in the house caused the ambush of 3 policemen

PITTSBURGH — An emergency call that brought two police officers to a home where they were ambushed, and where a third was also killed later during a four-hour siege, was precipitated by a fight between the gunman and his mother over a dog urinating in the house.
The Saturday argument between Margaret and Richard Poplawski escalated to the point that she threatened to kick him out and she called police to do it, according to a 12-page criminal complaint and affidavit filed late Saturday.

When officers Paul Sciullo II and Stephen Mayhle arrived, Margaret Poplawski opened the door and told them to come in and take her 23-year-old son, apparently unaware he was standing behind her with a rifle, the affidavit said. Hearing gunshots, she spun around to see her son with the gun and ran to the basement.
"What the hell have you done?" she shouted.
The mother told police her son had been stockpiling guns and ammunition "because he believed that as a result of economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society," the affidavit said.
Friends have said Poplawski was concerned about his weapons being seized during Barack Obama's presidency, and friends said he owned several handguns and an AK-47 assault rifle. Police have not said, specifically, what weapons were used to kill the officers.
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Autopsies show Sciullo, 37, died of wounds to the head and torso. Mayhle, 29, was shot in the head.
A witness awakened by two gunshots told investigators of seeing the gunman standing in the home's front doorway and firing two to three shots into one officer who was already down. Sciullo was later found dead in the home's living room, and Mayhle near the front stoop, police said.
A third officer, Eric Kelly, 41, was killed as he arrived to assist the first two officers. Kelly was in uniform but on his way home when he responded and was gunned down in the street.
Kelly's radio call for help summoned other officers, including a police commando team. The ensuing standoff included a gun battle in which police say Richard Poplawski tried to kill other officers.

Saturday's slayings occurred just two weeks after four police officers were fatally shot in Oakland, California, in the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Poplawski is charged with three counts of criminal homicide and nine counts of attempted homicide — one each for the eight officers who were shot at in an armored police vehicle, plus a ninth who was shot in the hand as he tried to help Kelly.
Poplawski also was charged with possessing an instrument of crime: the bulletproof vest he wore during the gun battle. The criminal complaint does not say how Poplawski obtained the vest. more

Man robbed store with his 9 year old daughter

The nine year old daughter of the man who robbed an Ellensburg store was found safe today in California but her dad, who took the girl along for robbery, got away.
Police are still looking for 42-year old Robert Daniel Webb who led them on a high speed chase. Webb was identified as the suspect who robbed an AM-PM convenience store off I-90 near Ellensburg with his daughter in tow.
The father of a Humboldt County Sheriff's Deputy, who apparently knew Webb from his past, was asked to watch the girl last night while the father ran some errands. Later in the evening he learned that Webb was being sought by the local police in the town of Fortuna, California for drunk driving and possibly a robbery in Washington. The man checked around with the Fortuna Police Department and figured out that the young girl and her father were the same as those from the robbery.
Q13 Fox News caught up with the girl's mother at her apartment in Everett. She says she is happy her daughter was found safe but she is still concerned that her husband is on the run from police. more

Woman sentenced to 30 years for kidnapping baby

SANFORD - A judge today sent to prison for 30 years the woman who kidnapped a one-day-old baby from the maternity ward of a Sanford hospital last year.Jennifer Latham, 40 of Sanford, pleaded guilty in February, the day testimony was to begin at her trial.She did not explain her actions but today, in a soft voice, apologized to Circuit Judge Debra S. Nelson, saying she suffers from depression and anxiety and needs help.Defense psychiatrist Wade Myers, though, did tell the judge what was going on in Latham's mind the day the baby was abducted, March, 28, 2008.
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She was obsessed with being a mother and was desperate for a baby, he said. She also was depressed, unhappy that she had recently lost an attempt to win custody of her two school-aged children.She had first lost custody to her ex-husband in 2003, Myers said, and that left an enormous hole in her life. more

Man charge with hitting his 70 year old mother in the eye

COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. - A Golden Gate man is in jail, charged with giving his 70-year-old mother a black eye after she accidentally stepped on his foot, according to sheriff’s reports.Mark William Adams, 31, was charged with battery on a person 65 years or older, a felony.Janet Sharpe told deputies that she was walking by her son Adams, whom she lives with, and accidentally stepped on his foot, according to arrest reports.Adams got angry and threw a full can of soda at his mother, striking her in the eye and causing a large black and blue mark, reports said.

Woman arrested for leaving 7 month old child in car overnight and child died

CEDAR HILL — Police arrested a woman whose seven-month-old son died after he was left in a car overnight.
Laheather Wilson, 35, faces a charge of injury to a child/recklessness, a second-degree felony, in the death of Christian Wilson.
Wilson realized early Wednesday morning that she had left Christian in the car after returning from day care the previous evening, said Cedar Hill police spokesman Corky Brown. She found the child unresponsive in the car outside their home in the 1200 block of Brewer Drive, near East Belt Line Road.
Wilson asked a Dallas police officer who lives nearby to help her. The officer gave the child CPR, and someone called 911. Christian was pronounced dead at the scene.
Child Protective Services took custody of Wilson’s other sons, ages 3 and 6, on Wednesday, Brown said.
Wilson was being held Wednesday night at the Dallas County Jail, where her bail had not yet been set.

Woman Cashed Dead Mother's Social Security Checks for 6 years

SEBASTIAN, Fla. -- Police arrested a Sebastian, Fla., woman after discovering the mummified remains of her 96-year-old mother inside her home.
Authorities charged Penelope Jordan, 61, with fraud and grand theft, West Palm Beach television station WPBF reported.
Sebastian police received a search warrant to enter the home on Wimbrow Drive shortly before 5 p.m. Monday.
Code enforcement officers removed eight cats from the home during the weekend and notified police about possible human remains inside.
"There's excessive debris in the residence and it's very difficult to make your way around inside this house," Officer Steve Marcinik said. "While moving around in there, they observed something that was somewhat suspicious and upon that they notified law enforcement."
Neighbors had also been complaining of a foul smell coming from the home.
Michael Pearce said he's complained to the city about feral cats running loose on the property and a foul smell "for at least a decade, if not 12 years" since he has lived there.
Police said Timmie Jordan, 96, had been dead for years. Her mummified body was found in her bed.
Investigators said she still had on her nightgown and her skin had fused to the mattress.
Police said Penelope Jordan, her live-in daughter, admitted to cashing her mother's Social Security checks for at least six years. more

woman accused of felony child abuse charge for burning her brother with curling iron

FORT PIERCE — An 18-year-old woman accused of burning her younger brother with a curling iron after denying his request to take a shower faces a felony child abuse charge, according to a recently released arrest affidavit.
The 14-year-old victim told St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputies that he walked in the bathroom late Sunday night and asked his sister, Zabrik Z. Byrd, if he could take a shower. Byrd, of the 3200 block of West Lake Drive, denied the request and locked the door.
The brother then opened the door with a knife and Byrd allegedly “used a curling iron and burned him on the chest and began punching him in the head,” the affidavit states.
Investigators saw a burn mark on Byrd’s brother’s chest and a cut on the bridge of his nose.
Byrd refused to speak with investigators and was arrested on a child abuse charge.