Police are investigating a biker gang brawl that happened in the middle of the median near mile marker 150 along I-44 in Pulaski County.
Callers to the Pulaski County 911 Communications Center reported more than 20 people were involved in the fight at 8:16 Saturday night.
"It was really scary to know that there was people out there shooting at each other and it was really close to here," said a waitress named Heather who works at the Oasis Truck Port off of I-44.
People suspected of being gang members killed 39 people in two days in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, with many of the victims tortured, shot and stuffed in sacks that were dumped on the streets, officials said Thursday. The gangs are said to be affiliated with the city’s main political parties and have been blamed for a surge in killings in recent months. The latest round of violence seemed to be driven by a mix of political and criminal motivations, said Sharfuddin Memon, the security adviser to the government in Sindh Province, where Karachi is located. The recent violence came after the Muttahida Qaumi Movement left the federal coalition led by the Pakistan Peoples Party in late June and joined the opposition.
Wednesday morning, a crowd of reporters descended on a now-infamous stretch of International Boulevard that includes a dilapidated Little Caesars pizzeria, a beauty salon, an appliance shop and a corner convenience store.
This is where 3-year-old Carlitos Nava was killed Aug. 8 by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting that police say was caused by gangs. As reporters have inflitrated the neighborhood, the drug dealers have temporarily vacated their corners, and the boy's death has taken on new life -- as a political issue.
On Wednesday, a group that waged a battle against former City Attorney John Russo over Oakland's gang injunctions held a press conference at the site of the shooting, now a memorial crowding the iron bars in front of the pizzeria. They said they were there in response to council members Ignacio De La Fuente and Larry Reid's demands for injunctions and curfews in the wake of the shooting.
Members of Nava's extended family were the newest additions to the group that included activists from Critical Resistance and Eastside Arts Alliance.
“I believe we need to try to reach out to the community in a better way,” said Jose Nava, one of Carlos' many first cousins, before a crowded cluster of television cameras. “A lot of people are afraid of cops. We need to work on that first before we can pursue other things.”
The toddler's death has become increasingly politicized. Police and city leaders have used the shooting as a platform to push policies, including gang injunctions and curfews, which the council rejected earlier this year. The shooting has inspired community action, including a car wash for the Nava family that raised close to $20,000. Even the Nava family has embraced the vision of Carlitos as a symbol of change. “My son gave up his life to stop the violence,” Carlos Nava said Tuesday at his son's funeral. News outlets have reported the developments, en masse.
Now some of the local business owners have decided to enter the fray, using the focus on their usually neglected neighborhood to help effect change.
On Wednesday afternoon, seven business owners met with Oakland Housing Authority police at a neutral location in Alameda to discuss solutions to the violent crime problem. Mondo Khalid, the owner of the All-Mart on 64th and International Boulevard, said police have pledged to post signs against loitering outside all of the area businesses. If anyone violates the signs, he said police have promised to make arrests.
The group has also pledged to organize long-term projects to help improve the neighborhood. They'll begin with another car wash fundraiser from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. this weekend, continue with a neighborhood block party on Aug. 25, and host a community meeting following the party at Oakland Housing Authority headquarters in Lockwood Gardens. Khalid said the business owners are also working on starting a basketball league for neighborhood youth.
“We're going to grab several of the neighborhood elders, the OGs and grandmas, and we're going to sit down — business owners, parents, mothers, grandmothers -- we're just going to have it all out,” he said. “Do I think it will stop the shootings? No. But I think we can bring people together in the community who can help figure things out, who can come up with alternatives.”
Khalid, who has ingratiated himself with the community since he arrived in the neighborhood three years ago, had decided to stay out of the spotlight following the shooting. He turned down many reporters' requests for interviews, and declined to provide his full name. But after the meeting, he said, he realized he needed to embrace the media attention. He began making calls.
“We need you guys to push our agenda, to get something done,” Khalid said. “We got quite a bit of momentum right now. What needs to happen is that the community needs to get up and do something.”
The prison population reached a record high today as officials said they were developing contingency plans to manage the unprecedented situation caused by hundreds of people being jailed over the riots.
Tough sentencing of those involved in the violence and looting by the courts saw the number of people behind bars in England and Wales rise by more than 100 a day over the past week.
But as some of the first appeals were heard, one woman who was jailed for five months after admitting that she accepted a pair of looted shorts from her housemate walked free from prison.
Mother-of-two Ursula Nevin, 24, who was sent down by a district judge at Manchester Magistrates' Court last week after she pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods, had her sentence reduced on appeal.
The Recorder of Manchester, Judge Andrew Gilbart QC, said the original decision was "wrong in principle" as he ordered that she should instead perform 75 hours of unpaid work for the community.
Nevin was in bed at the time of the widespread disorder in Manchester city centre where her lodger, Gemma Corbett, helped herself to clothing and footwear from the Vans store and then took them back to the house they shared in Stretford, Greater Manchester.
The Prison Service insisted it had enough space to cope with anyone jailed over the disorder, adding that it was developing its contingency plans to manage the "unprecedented situation".
This could involve bringing on new accommodation early, using extra places in the public and private estate, or reopening mothballed accommodation.
But there are currently no plans to halt the closure of Latchmere House prison in Richmond, Surrey, or Brockhill prison in Redditch, Worcestershire, which are set to shut next month.
And plans which would trigger police cells being used to accommodate prisoners have not yet been activated.
Immigration Minister Damian Green also said the Government wanted to deport any foreigners convicted over the riots, adding that it also had the power to cancel their visas.
The total number of prisoners in England and Wales hit 86,654 today, 723 more than last week's record high of 85,931 and less than 1,500 short of the usable operational capacity of 88,093, the Ministry of Justice figures showed.
A tough approach by the courts has seen two-thirds of those charged remanded in custody, compared with just one in 10 of those charged with serious offences last year.
Eoin McLennan-Murray, president of the Prison Governors' Association, said: "What is worrying is if the landscape of sentencing has changed.
"If the courts continue to be heavy-handed with other offences and use custody more readily than they have done previously then that would be problematic longer term."
Campaigners and lawyers have criticised the tougher sentences handed to those involved in rioting and looting last week as disproportionate and have urged the courts not to be swayed by "angry Britain".
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith also warned that Britain cannot simply arrest its way out of the problems which caused the riots that rocked the country.
The country must instead "address why young people join gangs, try to prevent them getting involved in the first place and help those who want to exit gang life", he said.
His comments, in an article in The Guardian newspaper, came as the Government appeared split over its response to the riots, with some Liberal Democrats criticising Tory support for lengthy sentences and suggestions that rioters should be deprived of benefits and evicted from their homes.
Geoff Dobson, deputy director of the Prison Reform Trust, said the rapid increase in prison numbers meant parts of some jails were becoming "human warehouses" which will provide "a fast track to a criminal career" for first-time offenders.
Shadow prisons minister Helen Goodman said the Government has a "responsibility to ensure that the sentences handed down are being served safely".
The record came as an analysis showed that convicted rioters were being handed prison sentences which are on average 25% longer than normal.
Some 70% of defendants in 1,000 riot-related cases have been remanded in custody to await Crown Court trial, and 56 of 80 defendants already sentenced by magistrates have been handed immediate prison sentences.
Half of those jailed were charged with handling stolen goods or theft, receiving an average of 5.1 months, the study by The Guardian found. This is 25% longer than an average custodial sentence of 4.1 months for such crimes during 2010.
The outcry over sentencing began after Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, were jailed for each setting up Facebook pages which encouraged people to riot. Even though no disorder occurred they were given four years each. Blackshaw plans to appeal against his punishment handed out by a judge at Chester Crown Court.
The Court of Appeal has not received any appeals so far about sentences handed out by the Crown Courts, a spokeswoman for the Judicial Office said.
"Anyone who wishes to appeal has 28 days from the passing of the sentence within which to do it. As and when appeals are received, the court is in a position to hear them promptly," she said.
Yesterday, Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions in England and Wales, warned that judges must remain dispassionate
Police searched Mark Phipps' home at Thorntree House in the Cargo Fleet Lane area of the town in March.
Phipps, 47, was sentenced to seven years. Leroy Mitchell, 38, from Daubeney Road, London, was jailed for five years.
The pair appeared at Teesside Crown Court where they were found guilty of intent to supply.
Judge Peter Bowers said that Phipps faced a maximum sentence under the three strikes rule for previous drug convictions.
South Beach man faces deportation to his native India after a justice sentenced him to three years in prison for a felony drug conviction.
Last month, a jury in state Supreme Court, St. George, convicted Ahmed Rasheed of three felony counts of drug possession and other crimes stemming from a June 30, 2010, arrest in his home.
A Staten Island judge imposed sentence on Friday.
Police said the episode was set in motion when Rasheed threatened a male relative and female relative in his seventh-floor apartment on Capodanno Boulevard.
"I'm going to kill you," he said to the male, while telling the female, "I'm going to shoot you."
When cops arrived, they found a loaded gun in a bag alongside a large bag of marijuana, court papers allege. They also discovered several smaller bags of marijuana and crack cocaine and seven oxycodone pills on Rasheed's person, court papers stated.
Officers found another 68 oxycodone pills in a suitcase and 81 Percocet pills in a jacket in a closet, court documents said.
It was revealed at trial that Rasheed boasted of his drug sales and the cash he made from them in a recorded jailhouse telephone conversation, prosecutors said. Rasheed, a native of India, spoke in the Urdu language during the call, according to a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan.
Besides the felony drug convictions, Rasheed was found guilty of misdemeanor marijuana and criminal-contempt charges, along with a lesser count of harassment. He was acquitted on three felony gun-possession counts.
The criminal contempt charges were levied because Rasheed had violated a court order by trying to contact his wife, via letter, from jail, prosecutors said.
The top gun charges of which he was acquitted carry a maximum sentence of 15 years behind bars. The minimum is three and a half years.
Rasheed's lawyer, Mark J. Fonte said his client's is "extremely happy" he was acquitted on all weapons charges.
"This increases the chances that he will not be deported," Fonte said on Friday.
However, Donovan's spokesman, Peter N. Spencer, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take custody of Rasheed, who has a prior conviction, after he serves his sentence. He'll very likely be deported afterward.
Police also seized drugs and weapons, including pistols and machetes.
Kajang police chief Assistant Commissioner Abdul Rashid Abdul Wahab said in the firefight, the suspected drug dealer fired seven shots at policemen and injured one of them. The incident began about 1am.
"The shoot-out at the Flora Apartment in Taman Impian Ehsan lasted three hours. We had no choice but to open fire since he wouldn't budge and continued to shoot at us."
The man had been arrested before for alleged rape in Petaling Jaya.
A 32-year-old woman who was arrested had two previous criminal convictions related to drug offences.
All the suspects, aged between 22 and 47, tested positive for drugs.
Rashid said police seized 110g of heroin, 55g of syabu and 50g of marijuana, weapons, including a semi-automatic Glock 17 pistol and a .22 calibre revolver, as well as two cars - a BMW and a Mitsubishi Evo.
The body was sent to Serdang Hospital for a post-mortem.
