1. Police reveal baffling twist in case of woman who lost her baby after gunmen stormed her baby shower.
Police investigating the case of a ‘gender reveal’ party in Ohio that was attacked by two gunmen have revealed a stunning twist in the case.
Autumn Garret, 22, was killed when two men burst into a home and fired shots into the living room on July 8.
Her cousin, 21-year-old Cheyanne Willis, had spent the day celebrating the impending arrival of her baby, which she revealed was a boy during the festivities, posting images on Facebook just hours before the shooting.
Cheyanne was shot in the leg, and told media outlets she had lost her baby due to her injuries.
But now, USA Today reports police investigating the case have revealed that Cheyenne was never pregnant, despite her and her family claiming otherwise.
“Sadly, the police department, media and public have been given information we have found to be false,” Colerain Township Police Chief Mark Denney said.
Denney said the false information had significantly slowed their investigation into the shooting which killed Autumn and left eight others, including children, injured.
“Hours and days have been wasted following leads known to be lies when they were provided to our officers,” he said.
“We were led to believe an unborn child was murdered in this incident only to find out that was not the case.
“That information is not provided to embarrass anyone, only to provide a fair understanding of the challenges we have faced in the past nine days.”
Police do not yet have an explanation as to why the 21-year-old was hosting a gender reveal party when she was not actually pregnant.
2. Sydney dad accused of murdering 8-week-old daughter blamed death on her older brother.
A father on trial for murdering his eight-week-old daughter claimed her head injuries were caused by her older brother who hit the baby with a hairbrush, a Sydney court has heard.
The man, who can’t be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to murdering the premature newborn at a Regents Park home, in Sydney’s west, nearly three years ago, AAP reports.
“Your son just gave your daughter a black eye because he hit her in the face with a brush,” the man allegedly told his partner on August 11, 2014.
The baby died 12 hours later.
In her opening address at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen SC said the baby, who weighed just 2.75kg, died from blunt force craniospinal injury.
She had bruises around the eye, the cheek and the forehead, had brain injuries and a skull fracture, she said.
All of her ribs at the front and back of her chest had also been injured – some more recently than others.
Paramedics were called to the house just before 5am on August 12 after the baby stopped breathing.
“She had no pulse, she was grey and she was limp,” paramedic Kirsti Danvers told the court.
Intensive care paramedics Rory Shanahan and Claire Goodall both said the baby had multiple bruises over her face.
“We just looked at each other and went ‘what’s with the marks?’,” Mr Shanahan said.
The baby’s older sister, now nine-years-old, is expected to give evidence the man “always” hurt the newborn.
She told police the accused “always threw (the baby) on the bed and hurt her,” Ms Cunneen said.
“He’s always hurting her, like everywhere, like on her stomach.
“He throws (the baby) on the bed like when she’s crying… he’s always shaking (the baby) up and down.”
The girl also told police the man would press hard on the baby’s stomach and back, Ms Cunneen said.
In his first police interview the accused said he left the newborn alone with her brother for a minute and returned to find the baby bruised and bleeding from the nose, and the boy jumping around holding a hairbrush, Ms Cunneen said.
She said this explanation was insufficient and it was the accused who “did acts to (the baby) to bring about her death”.
Defence lawyer Hugh White told the court the man “wishes to express his innocence in the strongest possible terms”.
He said the man told police “he accidentally dropped (the baby) on the floor which he now believes caused the fatal blow to her head”.
The trial continues.
3. Stepdad found guilty of abusing his teenage stepdaughter, drugging her mum.
For years a Sydney man drugged his teenage stepdaughter with whom he thought he was in relationship and filmed himself raping her.
“I could do anything I wanted to you while you were asleep,” he told the girl.
The 45-year-old man pleaded guilty to 99 charges relating to the girl’s abuse from the time she was 12, but he steadfastly denied drugging her and her mum during his NSW District Court trial.
The court heard he would mix travel sickness tablets into his wife’s food and drink so she would fall asleep and he could have sex with his stepdaughter.
On Tuesday the jury found him guilty of four of five counts of administering an intoxicating substance to the mother in order to commit a crime, 22 drugging counts relating to his stepdaughter, and two counts of indecently assaulting her younger sister when she was about 11, AAP reports.
He maintained he was in a consensual relationship with the older stepdaughter – whom he had known since she was four – and they “acted like a married couple”.
He claimed the girl drugged his wife because she wanted time with him alone.
“A young girl loved me and that’s the reason why she used an over-the-counter medicine because she had access to it,” he said at his trial.
SD memory cards discovered in the lining of the man’s jacket contained 78 videos and 778 images showing him sexually and indecently assaulting the older stepdaughter, sometimes while she’s asleep.
“I apologise for every second of every single video you’ve watched,” the man told the jury.
“I didn’t drug (her). She was up late, (she) was waiting up for me, she was tired.”
He said he started filming her sleeping after telling her, “I could do anything I wanted to you while you were asleep”.
He said the girl responded “do it.”
So the pair played a “game” where he would see how many sex acts he could commit on her before she woke up, he said.
The teen denied drugging her mum and acting like husband and wife with her stepfather, who called her “princess” and bought her lacy lingerie.
“I loved my stepfather as my dad, not as anything else, and I didn’t want my mum to go sleep,” she said.
Judge Paul Conlon on Tuesday adjourned the case for a sentence hearing on September 8.
4. Peter Dutton is heading up a new ‘mega’ security portfolio.
Peter Dutton insists Australia’s intelligence and security agencies fully support the creation of a new mega-portfolio under his reign, AAP reports.
And the soon-to-be Home Affairs minister dismissed as “juvenile” claims by Labor it’s merely a move to shore up his support for Malcolm Turnbull.
The Prime Minister on Tuesday dubbed the restructure the most significant of its kind in four decades as Australia tried to stay ahead of the threats it faced.
“It is not about politics. It is about safety, Australians’ public safety,” he told reporters in Canberra.
“The arrangements that I have announced are … logical, they are rational, they make operational sense.”
They would also give Mr Dutton responsibility for the agencies “defending, preserving, protecting our national security at home”.
The portfolio, modelled on the UK’s Home Office, not the Department of Homeland Security in the US, will include domestic spy agency ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Border Force and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.
Mr Dutton, who now holds the immigration and border protection portfolio, will be assisted by Attorney-General George Brandis and Justice Minister Michael Keenan. The transition will be managed by a taskforce and be completed by mid-2018.
Mr Turnbull says the changes follow a review of Australia’s intelligence community by Michael L’Estrange, a former head of the foreign affairs department.
But he conceded a home affairs ministry wasn’t a specific recommendation as the idea wasn’t within the review’s remit.
“We need these reforms, not because the system is broken, but because our security environment is evolving quickly,” he said.
Mr Dutton refused to say whether the AFP or ASIO asked for the changes, questioning why anyone would not want an arrangement with greater collaboration and sharing of information.
“I believe the agencies support very strongly the announcement,” he told ABC’s 7.30 program.
“The intent of the government is to do whatever we can to make Australians safe.”
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten warned the idea was more about resolving Liberal party civil wars than developing a national anti-terrorism strategy.
“I don’t think this is a captain’s call. I think it’s Peter Dutton’s call,” he told reporters in Sydney.
“Everybody knows that Malcolm Turnbull has to keep Peter Dutton onside so Malcolm Turnbull can keep his own job.”
Mr Dutton labelled it a juvenile statement.
5. Blind elderly woman found dead in home after her carer husband died.
An elderly blind woman has died alone after her husband passed away in their home in Sydney’s northern beaches, leaving her without support, AAP reports.
Police were called to the couple’s house on Bynya Road in Palm Beach shortly before 9am on Tuesday.
The husband was the carer for his life-long partner, who was blind and had other disabilities, police say. Both were aged in their 80s.
“Although yet to be confirmed by autopsies, we believe the husband has passed away naturally, unfortunately leaving the wife with no means of support,” Northern Beaches police said on Facebook.
“She has subsequently died due to a lack of care.”
Police do not believe the deaths are suspicious but a crime scene has been established and will be examined by forensic officers.
Their identities are yet to be released.
6. Melting glacier reveals the bodies of a couple who have been missing for 75 years.
The frozen bodies of a Swiss couple who went missing 75 years ago in the Alps have been found on a shrinking glacier.
Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin, the parents of seven children, had gone to milk their cows in a meadow above Chandolin in the Valais canton on August 15, 1942, AAP reports.
“We spent our whole lives looking for them, without stopping. We thought that we could give them the funeral they deserved one day,” their youngest daughter Marceline Udry-Dumoulin told the Lausanne daily Le Matin.
“I can say that after 75 years of waiting this news gives me a deep sense of calm,” added the 79-year-old.
In an overnight statement, Valais cantonal police said two bodies bearing identity papers had been discovered last week by a worker on Tsanfleuron glacier near a ski lift above Les Diablerets resort at an altitude of 2615 metres.
DNA testing would be carried out to confirm the identities of the couple.
“The bodies were lying near each other. It was a man and a woman wearing clothing dating from the period of World War Two,” Bernhard Tschannen, director of Glacier 3000, told the paper.
“They were perfectly preserved in the glacier and their belongings were intact.”
“We think they may have fallen into a crevasse where they stayed for decades. As the glacier receded, it gave up their bodies,” he told the daily Tribune de Geneve.
Marcelin Dumoulin, 40, was a shoemaker, while Francine, 37, was a teacher. They left five sons and two daughters.
“It was the first time my mother went with him on such an excursion. She was always pregnant and couldn’t climb in the difficult conditions of a glacier,” Udry-Dumoulin said.
“After a while, we children were separated and placed in families. I was lucky to stay with my aunt,” she said. “We all lived in the region but became strangers.”
“For the funeral, I won’t wear black. I think that white would be more appropriate. It represents hope, which I never lost.”
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