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By Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 12, 2000
Eight guards injured in N.M. prison riot
ESTANCIA, N.M. -- Eight guards were injured, two seriously, during a prison uprising early Saturday in which 32 inmates took corrections officers hostage, authorities said.
The riot began around 12:30 a.m. and was quelled after about two hours when an emergency response team threw tear gas into the area, State Police Lt. Gary Smith said.
None of the inmates was injured in the fighting, Smith said.
Fifteen of the 32 were directly involved in the assaults, and charges will be filed against them, said prison spokeswoman Abby Fink. She said all 32 would be placed in isolation.
The uprising at the privately run Torrance County Detention Facility began after inmates refused to go to their cells for the night, Smith said. Inmates beat and stabbed guards with parts of torn-up furniture from their cells, he said.
Two guards stabbed during the disturbance were originally listed in critical condition but underwent surgery and were taken off the critical list on Saturday, Fink said. Five other guards were in stable condition, and one guard was treated on the scene for minor injuries.
The prison, which is about 40 miles east of Albuquerque, is operated by Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America. It has been the site of several disturbances in recent years.
In August 1999, a fight during an inmate softball game left five prisoners and two guards injured. In 1998, one inmate was fatally stabbed, and other disturbances injured seven inmates and five guards.
WASHINGTON -- The CIA is investigating 160 employees and contractors for exchanging "inappropriate" e-mail and off-color jokes in a secret chat room created within the agency's classified computer network and hidden from management.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said the willful "misuse of computers" did not "involve the compromise of any classified information."
But the probe, nearing completion, involves employees at all levels of the agency, including some senior managers, and most likely will result in at least a few firings, the Washington Post, citing agency officials, reported.
The House and Senate intelligence committees have been briefed about the secret chat room, which CIA investigators discovered while performing routine security checks, Harlow said.
"Investigators uncovered evidence of long-term misuse involving multiple violations of CIA computer regulations," he said.
An internal notice sent to all employees in May said, "This activity has apparently been taking place for some time and involves the use of unauthorized chat rooms and data bases in an apparent willful misuse of the agency's computer networks. Indeed, it appears that this group went to great lengths to conceal these actions. . . . Any attempts to alter or delete information on agency computer networks related to this investigation . . . could amount to a violation of federal criminal law."
Since then, all 160 employees and contractors who participated in what officials describe as an "invitation only" communications channel have been interviewed and given five days to explain their conduct in writing.
RICHMOND, Va. -- Three newspapers have joined legal efforts seeking new DNA testing in the case of a man executed in 1992 after his conviction for rape and murder.
The Washington Post, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk on Saturday asked Buchanan County Circuit Court Judge K.R. Williams to allow the tests on evidence that helped put to death Roger Keith Coleman, who had insisted he was innocent.
"DNA testing in the criminal justice system and in the Coleman case, in particular, is a matter of significant public interest," said Megan Rupp, an attorney for the Post.
A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 8. The new requests join ones filed in September by the Boston Globe and Centurion Ministry, a New Jersey charity that investigates claims of wrongful convictions.
They asked that Coleman's genes again be compared with sperm found on the body of Wanda McCoy, who was raped and stabbed to death in Grundy, Va., in 1981.
A 1991 test showed that sperm from the rape matched DNA in 2 percent of the population, including Coleman. Also, Coleman failed a lie detector test the morning he was executed.
New techniques could resolve the question of Coleman's guilt, said Edward Blake, head of Forensic Science Associates, the California laboratory that did the 1991 DNA testing.
Virginia opposes retesting, saying Coleman's guilt is clear.
ELYRIA, Ohio -- A man who frequently visited his parents' side-by-side graves was found dead, lying in between them, after an apparent heart attack.
Last week's death of Dimitri Demetral, 69, was likely due to the grief of visiting the cemetery and pre-existing medical conditions, a coroner said.
"Immediately we knew that somehow it was meant to be," Nicholas Barbaresso, Demetral's brother-in-law, said.
Demetral visited the cemetery at least three times in three days before he stopped by last Sunday to say goodbye to the Barbaressos. During that visit, Demetral talked about his father's love and compassion. His father died 15 years ago.
When the Barbaresso couple went to the morgue to identify Demetral's body, they said he looked happy and peaceful.
"When it came time for him to die, there was no other place," Barbaresso said.
LOS ANGELES -- A man who neighbors said often argued with his roommate was found cut into pieces and stashed inside the apartment's refrigerator and freezer, police said.
The roommate, a middle-aged woman who would not give her name to police, was booked Friday for investigation of murder, said Capt. Jerry Szymanski of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Neighbors told police the man and woman often argued in their second-story lodgings in a luxury apartment complex in the Canoga Park section of the San Fernando Valley.
The victim's niece went to the apartment Friday morning to see her uncle and found his body, said Officer Lyle Michelson.
Szymanski said the woman was being held in a hospital until authorities could learn more about the man's death. The woman had self-inflicted slash wounds that were not life-threatening, he said.
The victim's identity was not immediately released.
SACRAMENTO -- A newly estranged couple apparently shot each other to death while their two young girls watched a video, unaware of what had happened.
The bodies of David Glahn, 34, and Paula Snow, 31, were found late Thursday on the front porch of their home in suburban Laguna next to three handguns and a shotgun, sheriff's detectives said.
Officers had gone to the house after neighbors reported hearing volleys of gunfire.
Neither parent was holding a gun, but bullets of several calibers had been fired. Ballistic tests to show how many and which guns were fired had not been completed.
When deputies arrived, the couple's daughters, aged 7 and 3, were watching a movie in the master bedroom.
Glahn, who had a doctorate in biology, had been teaching at a private school in the San Francisco area, said homicide detective Dave Wright. Snow, who also had a doctorate, operated a day-care center in her home and had recently been estranged from Glahn, Wright said.
The couple had no apparent history of physical abuse, although neighbors described Glahn as subject to occasional bouts of anger.
"We're attempting to piece this together by the evidence we have. But there will always be questions remaining," Wright said.