Florida
Judge accused of punching asst. public defender
VIERA, Fla. (AP) — A judge on Florida’s space coast is accused of punching an assistant public defender during an altercation in a hallway outside a courtroom.
WFTV in Orlando reports that Judge John Murphy hit assistant public defender Andrew Weinstock after the two exchanged words over whether his client could have a speedy trial in the Brevard County courtroom.
Weinstock’s supervisor, Public Defender Blaise Trettis, tells WFTV the judge grabbed Weinstock’s collar in the hallway off the courtroom after the judge asked the attorney to come into the hallway.
Deputies broke up the scuffle and Murphy wasn’t arrested.
Pennsylvania
Dan Marino files concussion suit against the NFL
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino is among the latest group of football players to file a concussion-related lawsuit against the National Football League.
The 52-year-old former Miami Dolphins quarterback is one of 15 former players who filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia last week.
Marino and the other 14 plaintiffs join more than 4,800 others who have alleged the NFL misled players about the long-term dangers of concussions. The NFL has denied those claims.
The lawsuit doesn’t specify any medical problems suffered by the plaintiffs including Marino, who retired in 1999. It seeks unspecified damages and medical monitoring.
The NFL and the original group of players agreed on a $765 million settlement last August. But the settlement was rejected by a federal judge in January.
New York
Police: Ex-cop killed wife, spent days with body
MALTA, N.Y. (AP) — A 69-year-old retired police officer killed his wife inside their upstate New York home last week, then spent several days with the body, authorities said Monday.
A sheriff’s deputy looking into the welfare of 65-year-old Kathleen Wilkinson found her body Sunday on a bedroom floor in her home in Malta, 20 miles north of Albany, Saratoga County District Attorney James Murphy III said.
She was killed during a domestic dispute last week with her husband, Charles Wilkinson, a retired officer in Long Island’s Nassau County, Murphy said. The man spent the weekend in the house with the body before letting the deputy in after police received calls from her acquaintances saying they hadn’t heard from her for several days, the prosecutor said.
Friends of the woman had gone to the home, but Charles Wilkinson wouldn’t let them in, Murphy said.
His wife was strangled and asphyxiated, an autopsy determined.
Wilkinson was charged with second-degree murder and was being held in the county jail without bail. Murphy said he didn’t know whether Wilkinson had a lawyer.
Wilkinson retired after 13 years with the Nassau County Police Department. The couple had lived in Malta for about 10 years and have two adult children who live in the Boston area, Murphy said.
The slaying occurred in a tidy suburban development a few miles south of Saratoga Springs. Neighbors spoke highly of the couple and said they weren’t aware of any domestic issues, Murphy said.
“We’re very lucky to have very few murders,” he said. “Certainly it’s very disturbing to have it happen in a very quiet neighborhood.”
New York
FBI: Man from Yemen plotted to kill troops
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — A New York business owner from Yemen plotted vengeance attacks against members of the U.S. military for American actions overseas and Shiite Muslims over the civil war in Syria, according to federal authorities.
Federal authorities said in court papers that Mufid Elfgeeh, 30, of Rochester, bought two handguns and two silencers as part of a plan to kill members of the U.S. armed forces returning from war, as well as Shiites in the Rochester area.
Elfgeeh was arrested Saturday and faces two counts of receiving and possessing an unregistered firearm silencer. No plea was entered during a court appearance Monday. Public defender Mark Hosken, who was appointed to handle the case, was not available for comment.
The investigation included linking Elfgeeh’s home computer to tweets from alias Twitter accounts expressing support for al-Qaida, violent holy war and Sunni insurgent groups in Syria, according to court papers.
The FBI gave an informant a Walther PPK .32-caliber handgun and a Glock 26, 9 mm handgun, both with functional silencers affixed to the barrels, two boxes of .32-caliber ammunition, and two boxes of 9-millimeter ammunition, according to the affidavit.
Elfgeeh, a naturalized U.S. citizen who operates Halal Mojo and Food Mart in Rochester, paid the informant $1,050 in the transaction completed Saturday afternoon and was immediately arrested for possession of the silencers not registered in his name.
U.S. Attorney William Hochul said Monday that Elfgeeh faces 10 years in prison for each silencer and the possibility of a $250,000 fine.
Elfgeeh frequently used Twitter to tweet and retweet messages expressing support for various terrorist groups and holy war, seeking donations to assist fighters in Syria, and praising al-Qaida as “our only savior,” authorities said.
According to an FBI affidavit, a government informant taped a December conversation with Elfgeeh in which he stated: “I’m thinking about doing something here to be honest with you. I’m thinking about just go buy a big automatic gun from off the street or something and a lot of bullets and just put on a vest or whatever and just go around and start shooting.”
Authorities said Elfgeeh changed his plans in March to killing returning soldiers, and he said in a taped conversation with an informant that he planned to act alone: “It could be right now in the daytime, and I could be ... like this guy here or something ... I could just go back and wait for him to when he leave to go to his garage, and just walk up slowly, boom, boom, boom, inside his garage.”
When an informant asked him whether he was going to release a video message of his attacks, Elfgeeh responded, “Once we do five or ten already, 15, something like that ... then we gonna say something,” according to the affidavit.
Even though Elfgeeh used the word “we,” most of his comments indicated he intended to act alone and not immediately.
The FBI said it had been investigating Elfgeeh since early last year.
In an appearance Monday before a federal magistrate, Elfgeeh was appointed a lawyer from the Federal Public Defender’s Office and was sent to Monroe County Jail.
A bail hearing has been scheduled for June 16.
