• 7-YEAR-OLD GIRL ACCIDENTALLY SHOT, KILLED AT PARTY: GASTON, S.C. (AP) — Authorities say a 7-year-old girl was killed at a birthday party in South Carolina after a 5-year-old boy accidentally fired a gun that he thought was a toy.
Lexington County Sheriff James Metts says the boy was trying to get a toy gun out of a trunk Saturday night at a home in Gaston when he picked up a real gun also in the trunk by mistake.
Deputies say the bullet went through a car, and fragments hit Juliet Lynch in the chest. She died a short time later.
Metts says the real gun belonged to the boyfriend of the boy’s mother and she did not know it was in the trunk.
• AFTER ATTACK, OFFICIALS KILL 5 BEARS IN FLORIDA: LAKE MARY, Fla. (AP) — After a bear mauled a woman in the driveway of her suburban Florida home, dragging her four feet before she escaped, wildlife officials said Monday that they had killed five of the animals, who had become dangerously accustomed to humans.
It was unclear whether the bear that attacked Terri Frana, 45, on Saturday was one of those killed. DNA and other tests will be done on the five animals — one shot and four euthanized — in an attempt to determine that, officials said. .
Frana, 45, said the bear had her head in its mouth and dragged her about 4 feet toward a wooded area.
“She opened her jaw and clamped down onto my head, and I could just hear her teeth marks,” Frana told WFTV-TV.
She managed to escape from the bear’s jaw, and then ran inside the house, where she collapsed.
All five bears were “highly habituated,” Florida Fish and Wildlife officer Greg Workman said during a news conference Monday. “They had no fear of humans, making them dangerous bears,” he said. “We’re erring on the side of public safety.”
• POLICE: SCHOOL STABBER APPARENTLY BEHIND THREATS: MURRYSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Detectives believe a boy charged with stabbing 21 other students and a security guard at his Pittsburgh-area high school threatened two students by phone before the attack, according to a search warrant. Neither was one of the victims.
The warrant, obtained for the home of Alex Hribal hours after last Wednesday’s rampage, said two students received “threatening phone messages and completed calls” from someone believed to be Hribal.
It said the threat of violence contained an expletive.
District Attorney John Peck said the two male students who got the calls were not among those stabbed or slashed in the attack, which occurred minutes before the start of classes at Franklin Regional High School.
Neither Peck nor the warrant say when the calls were made. Murrsyville police Chief Thomas Seefeld previously said investigators were looking into a threatening phone call the night before the assaults.
“The caller is believed to be the actor because of the subsequent conduct of the actor coming to school and attacking numerous individuals,” the warrant said.
Seefeld noted Monday that police had not definitively linked the calls to the 16-year-old suspect but were seeking phone records to determine if they came from a phone he could have used.
Four students remained hospitalized Monday, three in critical condition. The fourth was upgraded to fair condition
The high school’s teachers attended a counseling session at a nearby church before returning to the school for the first time Monday, part of a three-day effort by school officials and a hired crisis management team to fully reopen the school for classes Wednesday.
On Tuesday, students and parents will get a chance to see that hallways have been cleaned up and other steps taken to return the school to normal.
