Shooting at Calif school claims 3

Roof gets 9 life sentences

SAN BERNARDINO, California, April 11, (Agencies): A special education teacher and one of her students were fatally shot by her estranged husband when he opened fire with a high-caliber revolver before killing himself in her classroom at a San Bernardino, California, elementary school, police said.

A second student was badly wounded by the gunman, who authorities said had a criminal history that included weapons charges and domestic violence that predated his brief marriage to the slain teacher.

Police said the two students, both boys, were believed to have been inadvertently caught in the gunfire as bystanders to Monday’s shooting, which took place about 8 miles (13 km) from where a radicalized Muslim couple killed 14 people in a December 2015 shooting rampage.

Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said the shooting at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino, about 65 miles east of Los Angeles, was an apparent murder-suicide. It was the latest in dozens of cases of gun violence at U.S. school campuses.

The gunman was identified as Cedric Anderson, and his wife as Karen Elaine Smith, both 53. Burguan said the couple had been married briefly and had been separated for about a month or month and a half.

The two students struck by gunfire had been standing behind Smith, the chief said. One 8-yearold boy, identified as Jonathan Martinez, died from his wounds. A 9-year-old classmate who was not publicly identified was admitted to a hospital, where he was said to be in stable condition.

Fifteen students and two adult teacher assistants were in the classroom along with the couple at the time of the shooting, police said.

Police said Anderson was welcomed into the school as a legitimate visitor, stopping by the “drop something off with his wife,” and kept his weapon concealed until opening fire in the classroom, Burguan said.

The school was evacuated after the shooting and students were bused to the campus of California State University at San Bernardino to be briefed and interviewed by authorities. From there, they were taken to a nearby high school and be reunited with their families. Aerial television footage showed children holding hands and walking single-file across the campus to waiting buses.

Parents waved and cheered as they greeted their children, who school staff had plied with bottled water, sandwiches and snack bars while waiting for parents to arrive. “I’m glad my daughter is fine,” said Angelique Youmans, 31, as she hugged her 10-year-old daughter. “She is too young to understand what happened.”

Anderson

Roof gets 9 life sentences:

With Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof getting nine life sentences in state court on top of a federal death sentence, his prosecutions are finally over — and some relatives of the nine parishioners he killed at a historically black church say they can finally begin to heal.

Nadine Collier, daughter of the slain 70-year-old Ethel Lance, wore a white suit to Roof’s sentencing Monday; a color she said lets the world know a chapter in her life had closed.

“I will not open that book again,” she said to Roof, before he was sentenced. “I just want to say, have mercy on your soul.”

The 23-year-old avowed white supremacist said nothing in his own defense as he was sentenced Monday on nine counts of murder, along with three charges of attempted murder and a weapons charge. He was taken from court back to the Charleston County jail, where he’ll await transfer to a federal prison and, ultimately, the federal system’s death row in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Roof’s plea deal came in exchange for an agreement that state prosecutors would drop their own pursuit of the death penalty against him for the June 2015 slaughter at Emanuel AME Church. Judge J.C. Nicholson handed down nine consecutive life sentences.

Criminal case judge fatally shot:

A judge who oversaw criminal cases in Cook County, Illinois, was shot to death early Monday outside his Chicago home and a woman he knew was shot and wounded, police said.

Investigators are looking at the possibility that the shooting of Associate Circuit Court Judge Raymond Myles and the acquaintance could have been part of an attempted robbery, although police don’t believe anything was stolen from the victims or the house. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Myles also “may have been targeted for one reason or another.”

“The offender shot him numerous times,” Guglielmi said.

No arrests have been made in the shootings that happened around 5 a.m. on Chicago’s South Side. Myles was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Since the woman who was shot is a witness to a killing, her name is not expected to be released, Guglielmi said. Chief of Detectives Melissa Staples described the woman as a close associate of Myles and said she was shot once and is expected to survive.

Gunman who killed lawman kiiled self:

A man who fatally shot a Houston-area deputy constable outside a county courthouse last week killed himself the next day, police said Monday.

William Kenny, 64, was the man who shot Harris County Precinct 3 Assistant Chief Deputy Clinton Greenwood on April 3 moments after Greenwood arrived for work, Baytown police Lt Steve Dorris said at a news conference. The attack prompted a massive manhunt.

Dorris said investigators hadn’t identified Kenny as the gunman until late Sunday and had been searching for him Monday when they discovered he already was dead. Authorities determined he shot himself on April 4 outside Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital, where the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office took jurisdiction of his body. Spokeswoman Tricia Bentley said the autopsy was completed the following day and a funeral home designated by Kenny’s family picked it up Friday.