• POLICE: ARIZONA WALMART SHOOTING WAS SELF-DEFENSE: PHOENIX (AP) — A man who shot and killed another man inside a suburban Phoenix Walmart opened fire in self-defense, Chandler police said Monday.
According to Chandler police, Kyle Wayne Quadlin, 25, shot Kriston Charles Belinte Chee, 36, following a fight at a service counter Sunday afternoon.
Detectives reviewing surveillance video report the two men fought in the store before the shooting Sunday afternoon.
Quadlin told police he pulled his gun in self-defense.
“Mr. Quadlin was losing the fight and indicated he ‘was in fear for his life,’ so he pulled his gun and shot Mr. Belinte Chee,” police said in a statement.
Belinte Chee was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said. Investigators said the pair did not know each other before the shooting.
Authorities said Quadlin remained at the store for a little while following the shooting and then fled. Police found him after a family member called authorities to report his whereabouts.
Quadlin was not booked in the case and Chandler police said they will submit their investigation for review to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Walmart spokeswoman Dianna Gee says the retailer is working with police to provide them any information they might find useful. She said the company’s “thoughts and prayers are with all of those involved.”
In the meantime, Walmart said it is sending crisis counselors to the store to talk with employees.
• POLICE: TAMPA MAN FATALLY BEATEN OVER CHICKEN FOOT: TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Police in Tampa say a man is facing manslaughter charges after he beat his roommate to death in a dispute over a chicken foot.
Authorities say 52-year-old James Jugo was arrested after the beating death of 56-year-old Benjamin Calderon on Saturday. The fight on Monday started after Calderon took the chicken foot from a skillet where Jugo was cooking.
An autopsy showed Calderon suffered internal bleeding after being hit numerous times on the face, neck and elsewhere. A witness told police that she saw Jugo hit Calderon with a board.
Jugo was jailed on $15,000 bail. Court records did not indicate whether he had hired a lawyer.
• ATTORNEY ARGUES IND. MAN’S SPY SENTENCE TOO SEVERE: INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A lawyer for a former Indiana truck driver convicted of trying to sell U.S. secrets to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government said Monday that the 13-year sentence the man received is too harsh and he shouldn’t be serving it in a federal Supermax prison.
Federal prosecutors said Shaaban Shaaban traveled to Baghdad in late 2002 to sell Hussein’s government the names of CIA operatives in Iraq for $3 million and to coordinate human shields once the U.S. invaded but was unable to seal the deal. When federal agents searched Shaaban’s house in Greenfield, 20 miles east of Indianapolis, they found no evidence that he possessed such information, court documents said.
“He really had nothing to sell,” Shaaban’s attorney, Bernard Kleinman, of White Plains, N.Y., told The Associated Press. “He was convicted of trying to fool the Iraqi government.”
Shaaban, who was born in Jordan, was indicted in 2005 on charges he had acted as a foreign agent. The following year, he was convicted, sentenced to prison and stripped of his citizenship.
Shaaban was initially housed in the federal prison at Terre Haute but was later moved to the Supermax prison in Colorado. The “super maximum security” prison houses some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, including Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski.
“I don’t think he’s ever been a threat whatsoever to the public,” Kleinman told the AP. “I don’t think he’s any threat to national security.”
• EX-MILITANTS WHO ADMIT KILLING NY COPS SEEK PAROLE: NEW YORK (AP) — Since they became eligible for parole a decade ago, two aging ex-members of a militant black power group serving 25-years-to-life sentences for the 1971 killings of two New York City police officers have been routinely rejected for release after displaying little or no remorse.
Starting this week, Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom will again go before the state Parole Board to ask for freedom. But this time, it will be after admitting for the first time that they were involved in the execution-style slayings.
The admissions have reignited a debate over whether the men, who still call themselves political prisoners, have become rehabilitated after four decades in prison or are simply more willing to game the system.
“As long as they keep admitting they’re political prisoners, then they aren’t taking responsibility for their actions,” said Diane Piagentini, the widow of one of the slain officers who still lives in the same Long Island home she bought with him before he was killed at 28. “They should never be paroled.”
The case dates to the late 1960s and early ‘70s, when a violent offshoot of the Black Panthers called the Black Liberation Army sanctioned symbolic killings of police officers regardless of their race in New York and California and robbed banks to finance its activities, authorities have said. Declassified documents show the FBI then initiated a covert campaign to infiltrate and disrupt the BLA and other violent radical movements.
• DAVID CROSBY POSTPONES SHOWS AFTER HEART SURGERY: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rock performer David Crosby has undergone heart surgery and is postponing his sold-out California shows.
Publicist Michael Jensen tells City News Service that the 72-year-old had a cardiac catheterization last week to fix a blocked coronary artery.
He’s expected to make a full recovery, but concerts planned for February in San Francisco and West Hollywood will be moved to April.
Crosby says he’ll be ready to perform with the group Crosby, Stills and Nash on a tour that kicks off in Richmond, Va., on March 4.
Crosby underwent a liver transplant in 1994.
In a statement, the performer says he is “once again a very lucky man.”
