Gunman ambushes teens going home after party in Jamaica; 1 dead, 3 hurt

A gunman jumped out from behind a parked car and ambushed four young men in Queens early Sunday - killing a recent high school graduate and wounding the others.

Clad in a black hoodie and armed with a .40-caliber pistol, the gunman set his deathtrap near the intersection of 113th Ave. and 157th St. in Jamaica, police sources said.

"It was a major shootout," said Brandi Johnson, 23, who was on her porch nearby and saw the gun's muzzle flashing as the gunman unleashed two volleys shortly after 4 a.m.

Terrell Fountain, 18, who was planning to attend college in Pennsylvania, was mortally wounded - hit in the chest, back and one of his arms, police said.

Three other teens, including Darryl Adams, 18, were each hit once and survived.

The four were coming home from a cookout nearby.

"They were waiting for the bus, and when it didn't come, they decided to walk," said Fountain's aunt Shanel Mitchell, 43. "I was planning for his college; now I have to plan for a funeral."

Fountain, who lived in Springfield Gardens and was captain of the basketball team at the St. Christopher School in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County, was taken by ambulance to Jamaica Hospital. He was also part of a dance group called "Team Up."

"Before he even got to the hospital, he was gone," said his mother, Brigitte Hoggard, 44, who visited her slain son at the hospital - the very place where he came into the world.

"When I went to the hospital, they took me into the room, and I knew something was wrong," she said. "I just cried."

There were no arrests Sunday, and police did not reveal a possible motive.

Adams was shot in the buttocks. His mother, Shanta Merritt, 41, said he was "okay" - but it was lucky the round did not do more damage.

"It just missed his intestines," she said.

Man seeking cross-border access card jailed on U.S. murder warrant

Burnaby, B.C. man applying for a cross-border travel card found himself in handcuffs in a U.S. customs office after a fingerprint scan determined he was wanted for murder in Oklahoma.
U.S. customs officials say 48-year-old Suhail Shanti was at the Pacific Highway border crossing south of Vancouver on June 24 applying for a NEXUS card.
As part of the process, his fingerprints were electronically scanned and compared with a national U.S. crime database, which determined he was wanted for first degree murder in a case dating back to 1983 in LeFlore Country, Oklahoma.
Border agents confirmed his arrest warrant with Oklahoma officials before they slapped the handcuffs on Shanti, who was still waiting in the NEXUS office.
He was taken to jail to await extradition back to Oklahoma.
People applying for the NEXUS card, which allows speedy travel between the U.S. and Canada, must undergo a detailed background check.

 

Notorious: Can "Whitey" Bulger get a fair trial in Boston?

With his reign as the former leader of Boston's notorious Irish-American Winter Hill Gang already fodder for books and movies, many doubt that James "Whitey" Bulger can get a fair trial in his home town.

"It will be as close to impossible for Mr. Bulger to get a fair trial on these charges," Bulger's provisional attorney Peter Krupp said in a court document filed late on Monday.

Bulger, 81, was apprehended last week after 16 years on the run. He had been sought by authorities for 19 counts of murder committed in the 1970s and 1980s, many of them brutal slayings, and charges of drug dealing, extortion, money laundering and conspiracy.

After his capture at a seaside apartment in Santa Monica, California, Bulger was returned to Massachusetts and appeared in federal court on Friday, just blocks from his old South Boston neighborhood.

The jury pool has "surely been tainted," because of saturation media coverage and the mystique around Bulger and his alleged crimes over the decades.

Other court filings show that Bulger himself questions whether a fair trial is possible.

In addition to several books, the Bulger story inspired Martin Scorsese's 2006 Oscar-winning film "The Departed," in which Jack Nicholson portrayed a character based on the notorious mob boss.

Hiring or assigning counsel to represent Bulger -- a question expected to be addressed on Tuesday in court -- will be a massive undertaking with thousands of documents, multiple cases and charges spanning some 40 years.

Each murder allegation is a "case in itself, which will have to be separately investigated and defended, and will include investigation of informants and cooperating witnesses who have every incentive to lie and to finger Mr. Bulger as the wrongdoer," Krupp said in the filing.

At his initial court hearing, Bulger said he could not afford an attorney because the government seized his assets.

Authorities found more than $800,000 in cash inside Bulger's seaside hideout along with a cache of guns, other weapons, and fake IDs.

The cost to mount a defense on his behalf means paying a team of attorneys, paralegals and investigators that could work for years, Krupp wrote.

Prosecutors have opposed the use of taxpayer funds to pay for a court appointed attorney as requested by Bulger and suggested the defendant's family may be willing to pay.

The government demanded Bulger's brothers, including William "Billy" Bulger, a former president of the Massachusetts State Senate, provide sworn affidavits about his financial position.

A filing on behalf of Bulger stated he will not ask his family to pay for his defense and his family has not come forward so far to hire counsel on his behalf.