An NYPD detective has been suspended without pay after a kidnapping victim was found tied up in his Queens garage, sources tell NBC 4 New York.
Sources say Ondre Johnson, a 17-year veteran of the Brooklyn North gang unit, was being questioned by internal affairs about his involvement in the kidnapping of a 25-year-old victim off the street early Friday morning.
Sources say a demand for a $75,000 ransom was made.
Police tracked the victim to the house in St. Albans off the victim's cell phone pings.
When police arrived Friday night, they found the victim tied up in the garage.
Johnson denied any involvement with the kidnapping, but his cousin, Hakeem Clark -- who lives in the other half of the detective's two-family home -- has been charged with kidnapping, along with three other men.
Sources say police found a safe and equipment used to make fake credit cards inside the home.
Law enforcement sources told NBC 4 New York that Johnson is not expected to be charged with kidnapping at this point, but he has been suspended and stripped of his badge and his gun as the investigation continues.
Society's Child
© Reuters
A storm punctuated by repeated lightning strikes hit the area where the four hikers were last seen.
A storm punctuated by repeated lightning strikes hit the area where the four hikers were last seen.
The four, a couple in their 50s, their daughter and her boyfriend were last seen on Wednesday when they went off the trail in search of shelter from a violent storm.
Their bodies were found on Friday at the bottom of a ravine in the Pieniny mountains, near the Slovak border.
A disgruntled hospital employee claims she got the sack because she smelt of cigarette smoke at work.
Stephanie Cannon said she was made to feel 'like a leper' at the Minnesota hospital where she worked as a receptionist.
She insists she never smoked at the Frauenshuh Cancer Center, cutting back on her pack-a-day habit to avoid smoking on her breaks or in her car.
Stephanie Cannon said she was made to feel 'like a leper' at the Minnesota hospital where she worked as a receptionist.
She insists she never smoked at the Frauenshuh Cancer Center, cutting back on her pack-a-day habit to avoid smoking on her breaks or in her car.
© Rouelle Umali/Xinhua/ZUMAPRESS.com
Woman holds crucifix up to teeth-baring kidnapper in Quezon City, Philippines early Saturday morning
Woman holds crucifix up to teeth-baring kidnapper in Quezon City, Philippines early Saturday morning
Wielding an ice pick, a crazed young man held a nine-year-old hostage in an event that easily could have turned tragic in Quezon City, Philippines early Saturday morning.
Reimer Parparan, 24, held the ice pick to Mark Jason Pineda's throat as a woman calmly approached the scene holding a crucifix to the aggressor. The woman is believed to be Mark's mother, reports the Daily Mail.
The Quezon City Police Department exercised diplomacy to recover the child. The hostage negotiator chose to wait and wear down the assailant rather than enact a tactical maneuver.
© Alamy
Criticism: Staff (not pictured) have come under fire for allegedly continuing to serve customers (file photo)
Criticism: Staff (not pictured) have come under fire for allegedly continuing to serve customers (file photo)
After efforts to revive her failed, the woman was instead propped up in the corner of the restaurant and had a napkin placed over her head as workers continued to serve other customers, it has been claimed.
© Unknown
Restaurant staff claimed it was only the drive-thru section that remained in operation.
Restaurant staff claimed it was only the drive-thru section that remained in operation.
She collapsed at the counter and, despite emergency services being called, doctors were unable to revive the Bosnian woman, who lived in Denmark but had been visiting the area.
Staff have been criticised after they carried on serving drive-through customers after she was declared dead.
Croatian media reported that the body was in the restaurant for an hour-and-a-half before a mortuary car arrived to remove it.
© Unknown
James Holmes, the 24-year old suspect in the mass shooting of Batman "The Dark Knight Rises" movie goers in Aurora, Colorado that left 12 people dead and 58 injured, has had a number of links to U.S. government-funded research centers. Holmes's past association with government research projects has prompted police and federal law enforcement officials to order laboratories and schools with which Holmes has had a past association not to talk to the press about Holmes.
Holmes was one of six recipients of a National Institutes of Health Neuroscience Training Grant at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Denver. Holmes is a graduate of the University of California at Riverside with a Bachelor of Science degree in neuroscience. Although Holmes dropped out of the PhD neuroscience program at Anschutz in June, police evacuated two buildings at the Anschutz center after the massacre at the Aurora movie theater. Holmes reportedly gave a presentation at the Anschutz campus in May on Micro DNA Biomarkers in a class titled "Biological Basis of Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders."
Initial reports of Holmes having an accomplice in the theater shooting have been discounted by the Aurora police. However, no explanation has been given by police why the Anschutz campus buildings were evacuated after Holmes was already in custody in the Arapahoe County jail.
The Anschutz Medical Campus is on the recently de-commissioned site of the U.S. Army's Fitzsimons Army Medical Center and is named after Philip Anschutz, the billionaire Christian fundamentalist oil and railroad tycoon who also owns The Examiner newspaper chain and website and the neo-conservative Weekly Standard. The Anschutz Medical Campus was built by a $91 million grant from the Anschutz Foundation.
© JASON REED/Reuters
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks to the press after his meetings with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in London on Thursday.
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks to the press after his meetings with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in London on Thursday.
But then there's Mitt Romney.
The presumed Republican candidate arrived in London Wednesday on the first stop of a three-country tour. His plan was simple: Make a round of high-profile visits, including meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron, raise some money at a fundraising dinner, and attend Friday's opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympic Games.
Lavoie claims that Perez told him his prize was only $40, and allegedly pocketed the remaining $560.
Lavoie thought he had only gotten three of the winning numbers, but his son found that he had gotten four numbers and called to congratulate him.
The Shell gas station clerk, Perez, told Lavoie that his winning ticket had been lost. Lavoie went to the Virginia Lottery and Perez was, later, indicted on felony larceny charges.
Lavoie says that if Perez had told him that she needed the money, he would have given it to her.
Helen and Len Prior remain victims of the Spanish property scandal
During the good times when new developments were shooting up along Spanish coastlines faster than bamboo, thousands of British and other European nationals invested in Spanish properties. Many were retirees who spent their nest eggs on apartments and villas hoping that they could spend their twilight years in a sunny bolt hole, the reward for a life time's hard slog. Unbeknown to hordes of British investors, the homes they bought in good faith turned out to be illegally built by unscrupulous developers aided and abetted by corrupt local councils and lawyers. The problem was further compounded by poorly enforced planning legislation. Building permits were issued by councils illegally and when the scale of the problem was revealed, regional governments were quick to react.
© AFP/File
Cambodians gather around a log at Prey Yeang village in Pursat province on July 19.
Cambodians gather around a log at Prey Yeang village in Pursat province on July 19.
Some 4,000 to 5,000 people have already been to see the 13-metre-long log (42 feet) that was discovered earlier this month when a family excavated a pond in western Pursat province, Prey Yeang village chief Hun Nov told AFP by phone.
"They believe the log has magical powers," he said, adding that visitors were coming loaded with offerings such as pig heads and boiled whole chickens after some locals who touched the wood won money in the lottery.
