Tuesday 26 March 2013

Medical Examiner’s List Of Unidentified Bodies Begins Yielding Results


Just a few weeks after the Cook County Medical Examiner put its list of unidentified and unclaimed remains online, a family has now stepped forward to make identification.

Before now, he was known by his case number: 180 November 2012.

He choked to death on the Nov. 10, after he collapsed in an alley near Cermak Road and Kedzie Avenue. He carried no ID.

The medical examiner’s office posted information about him on its website – his approximate age, clothing description and tattoos.

On Monday, the phone rang on the desk of Deputy Chief Investigator Timothy Doe.

“I got a call yesterday. A friend of the family called me and they said the family was looking on the website that we have posted, and by the description of one of our decedents matched a family member,” Doe said.

That’s how 52-year-old Baldomino Moctezuma of Chicago was identified, and claimed by his family.

“They were grief-stricken when they learned the truth that he was deceased. I mean, they may have always sensed it, but the unknown is what really tears people up. You just don’t know,” Doe said.

Tuesday 26 March 2013

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/03/26/medical-examiners-list-of-unidentified-bodies-begins-yielding-results/

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Eight die as bus falls into ravine


Seven students of the Vikram Sarabhai Institute of Science and Technology at Vellanad near the capital were among eight people who died as a tourist bus turned turtle near Rajakkad in Idukki on Monday. One of them was a girl.

The bus was on its way to Munnar from Kodaikanal, and was descending a hill. While negotiating a sharp bend, the bus fell nearly 75 feet into a ravine at Thekkinkanam, before hitting the same road running below at about 12.30 pm.

The students were Shaiju, of Kalamassery, Sreejesh of Thrikkunnapuzha South, Jibin John Paul of Nanthankod, Vignesh of Kowdiar, Hemand G.S. Kumar from Palode, Sarath Chandran of Ambalamedu in Kochi and Manju Balakrishnan of Kannur. The cleaner of the bus, Rajkumar, a native of Kazhakuttom, also died.

The bus was carrying 45 people. As many as 41 of them were students – 28 boys and 13 girls, besides two senior relatives of a student.

The students, in their final year electronics and instrumentation course, were on an excursion ahead of the approaching annual examinations. It appears the trip was arranged by the students themselves, and no teacher had accompanied them.

Principal of Vikram Sarabahai College, Dr. M.K. Jana, said the college authorities had no knowledge of the tour, though a good number of students got together for the trip. Some parents, however, said their impression when the students set out was that it was a tour authorized by the college. The uncle and aunt of Vignesh, who died in the accident, had tagged along.

Among the 11 admitted to the Kolencherry Medical Mission Hospital, the condition of three was serious. Some others with minor injuries were admitted to the Government Hospital and Morning Star Hospital in Adimaly.

According to sources, the bus was diverted to the route as repair work was going on, on the main road. The road had no protective wall, and the bus fell straight into the ravine, people from the accident site said.

Chief minister Oommen Chandy said the government would meet the expenses for the treatment of those injured in the accident. Police has registered a case and a probe is on.

College didn’t give approval for picnic

Thiruvananthapuram: Dark clouds and thundershowers were not the reason for the eerie silence at the Sarabhai Institute of Science and Technology near Vellanad. News of Monday’s bus tragedy which claimed the lives of 8 students plunged the institute into deep shock and grief.

“It is a rude shock for us. We were expecting the students to be preparing for their final semester exam is scheduled to begin on April 1,” said college principal M. K. Jana. “As soon as news of the accident reached us a team led by assistant professor Bijoy Babu rushed to the accident spot. All possible assistance will be provided. Although the students went without our knowledge, we cannot delineate from our commitment,” said Jana.

It was around 2 pm when the news of the bus accident, involving 39 students of the final year Electronics and Instrumentation reached the college. Ironically, the 43 students of the batch had been given a warm send off only recently. News of the accident spread like wildfire across the campus with students and faculty members glued to a television set to get news updates. The office staff were busy attending phone calls from parents and media.

“A decision on keeping the bodies in the college has to be taken by the parents. We will stand by the parents’ wish,” said a college official.

Tuesday 26 March 2013

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130326/news-current-affairs/article/eight-die-bus-falls-ravine

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10 killed, 2 missing as boat sinks in Liguasan River in Maguindanao


Ten people drowned and two others were reported missing when a motorized boat capsized at dusk Monday in a deep portion of the Liguasan marsh near Sultan sa Barongis in Maguindanao, officials reported yesterday.

Sultan sa Barongis Mayor Allan Angas, chairman of the municipal disaster council, said the bodies of the 10 victims had been recovered. As of last night, rescue teams were still looking for the two missing passengers.

“There were 16 passengers in all. The victims came from a family gathering and were on their way home to our town,” Angas told The STAR.

Angas said barangay officials and fishermen who joined the search teams recovered the bodies of the victims.

He said the police, military and local members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front also helped in the search and rescue operations.

Angas said the four passengers who were rescued have returned to their homes.

He said the overloaded boat overturned when strong winds caused waves in the Liguasan marsh, a 220,000-hectare swampy area bounded by Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat provinces.

Tuesday 26 March 2013

http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/03/27/924427/mishap-marsh-leaves-10-dead

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10 Bodies Recovered at Site of West Java Landslide


Search and rescue teams have discovered two more bodies in Cililin, West Bandung, bringing the total number of deaths to 10, after a landslide buried nine houses, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said.

Seven others are still missing as some 150 rescuers search through the disaster area. Search efforts were put on hold on Monday after heavy rains triggered another landslide.

“Nine people have not been found yet, including a six-month-old baby girl,” BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said. “Six people sustained injuries [in the landslide] and were treated at Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung.”

At least 17 people and nine houses were buried in Monday morning’s landslide after heavy rains pounded the subdistrict. The West Bandung mayor has placed the district in a state of emergency until March 31.

The district administration set up some evacuation shelters to help those affected by the disaster.

It is the second deadly landslide to strike Indonesia this month.

Three people were killed and one injured after heavy downpours triggered a landslide in Papua’s provincial capital.

Tuesday 26 March 2013

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/10-bodies-recovered-at-site-of-west-java-landslide/582143

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Amid drug war, a mystery about missing bodies


Heavy gunfire echoed along the main thoroughfare and across several neighborhoods in a firefight that lasted for hours, leaving perforated and burned vehicles scattered across the border city.

Social media exploded with reports of dozens dead. Witnesses saw at least 12.

But the hours of intense gun battles in Reynosa on March 10 gave way to an official body count the next day of a head-scratching two.

The men who handle the city’s dead insist the real figure is upward of 35, likely even more than 50. Ask where those bodies are and they avert their eyes and shift in their seats.

Cartel members, they say, are retrieving and burying their own casualties.

“Physically, there are no bodies,” said Ramon Martinez, director of Funerales San Jose in Reynosa, who put the toll at between 40 and 50. “It’s very delicate.”

If Reynosa is an example, even the government can’t count how many are dying from drug violence. The Felipe Calderon government stopped counting in September 2011. Since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office Dec. 1, the government has issued monthly statistics, saying that January killings were down slightly from December, and that February saw the lowest number of killings in 40 months — without providing numbers for the other 39 months.

Even officials have trouble settling on a figure. In April, the mayor of a town in Sinaloa state told news media that at least 40 people had died in shootouts between armed men and soldiers. State police later said seven. Local news media said 13.

Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper is keeping its own count. It says the killings in Pena Nieto’s first 100 days exceed those in the first 100 days of his predecessor, who intensified the country’s assault on organized crime.

In Reynosa, the fight for territory has caused at least four major gunbattles this month, the result of a split within the Gulf Cartel after the Mexican government made significant blows to its leadership. The biggest was the capture of Gulf capo Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez in September, leaving a power vacuum and the anticipation that the battle would intensify south of the Texas border in northeast Mexico, a region that has seen some of the most horrific violence.

Michael Villarreal, also known as “Gringo Mike,” had moved against the man recently appointed by Gulf cartel boss Mario “Pelon” Ramirez Trevino to run the cartel’s business in Reynosa, U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the situation said Monday.

The local boss heard Villarreal was coming for him and, with Ramirez’s support, beat back Villarreal and his men.

“They went in to whack him and got whacked themselves,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and had no independent count of how many people died in the battle.

State authorities said that “armed civilians” fought their way through the city across the border from McAllen, Texas, on March 10, blocking streets and leaving two bystanders dead. The day after the battle, a spokesman at the local army base said the fighting was among “delinquents,” usually shorthand for cartel gunmen.

“It’s illogical,” said one funeral director, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons, speaking four days later. “People here agree that more than 50 have died.”

After all, the fighting lasted for hours in a densely populated city and the government said it seized 22 vehicles afterward. The local media as usual reported nothing, leaving residents to rely on Twitter and other social media, where details can be exaggerated.

That funeral director said his company used to pick up the bodies from shootouts and take them to the city’s morgue. But that stopped about a year and a half ago when his management decided to step back and a new funeral home started taking all that business. He said they let it go because they often weren’t getting paid for their services in those cases, but he added, “We live with fear here.”

His company still drives bodies to the morgue, “but not this kind of people,” not people who die in shootouts, he said.

A man washing down a forensics van at the city morgue under the gaze of soldiers referred questions about the body count to a supervisor downtown. That supervisor kicked inquiries upstairs, where an investigator with the state attorney general’s office pulled out two thin manila folders and said, “officially, only these two.”

They were a 37-year-old taxi driver shot through his windshield and an 8-year-old boy shot inside his father’s car at a convenience store. His father was also hit in the neck, but survived.

An employee at another funeral home, who also declined to give his name for safety reasons, said they too used to go to the crime scenes to transport bodies to the morgue, but now they don’t bother. Either the bodies are already gone or the authorities take them.

“People say there were many (bodies), but where are they?” he asked.

His competitors say Martinez at Funerales San Jose knows the answer. Without logos on their shirts or vehicles, San Jose’s people pick up the bodies, competitors say.

One competitor at first said he had no idea where Funerales San Jose was located. Later he acknowledged he did know, but was afraid to share it.

San Jose is a white stucco building on a small lot in a residential neighborhood near schools and a supermarket. Unlike its competitors’ polished showrooms, plush furnishings and uniformed attendants, it is a small, spare operation.

A young man in T-shirt and jeans sat on a chair in its empty gravel lot playing with his phone. Martinez arrived in a pickup with flashy rims and welcomed a visitor into his office. The cramped room, which smelled heavily of cigarettes, doubled as the showroom. With a wave at the eight caskets, some still wrapped in plastic, stacked along two walls, he said, “I’m tiny, small.”

One competitor said Martinez cremates the gunmen he retrieves. Martinez said that was ridiculous and guessed that the cartel takes them to their own secret graves.

Martinez, the only funeral director who agreed to be identified, didn’t seem surprised by the allegation though.

“It’s like all businesses, there’s jealousy,” he said.

Martinez is the new guy in town. He expanded about two years ago from Diaz Ordaz, a smaller town and hotbed of cartel activity about 25 miles up the border. That’s about when his competitors say they stopped getting the bodies from shootouts. Martinez said Reynosa’s established parlors just don’t like the competition.

Word had apparently trickled onto the street that Funerales San Jose does the mopping up. Martinez said that since Sunday’s shooting, at least 10 people had come to him looking for their loved ones. He declined to share their contact information saying it was confidential. He said he took down their descriptions and promised to call if they turn up, but he swears he hasn’t received any bodies.

Authorities drive by his business all the time, Martinez said. If he were taking bodies without the proper documentation, he’d wind up in jail, he said.

“I provide a public service like any other,” he said.

That afternoon, March 14, a few miles away on Miguel Hidalgo, one of Reynosa’s main arteries, traffic glided slowly through the city’s center where the four lanes curve to parallel a canal.

A silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was parked on one corner. A young man, clad in jeans and a casual shirt faced traffic, his head swiveling from side to side. He held an AK-47 style assault rifle with its signature curved ammunition clip. More men, similarly armed, piled out of the Jeep and moved with purpose along the side of a building where still more armed men waited. The Jeep and a large grey pickup briefly backed into traffic and then quickly disappeared up the side street.

Traffic continued unabated. A block away people strolled down the sidewalk, and the street window washers splashed and scraped the windshields of cars waiting at the stoplight.

In the hours that followed, social media burst again with reports of gunfights and photos of bullet-riddled trucks.

The next day, the state announced that gunmen had battled soldiers and state police at various points in the city.

Officially, one gunman was killed.

Tuesday 26 March 2013

http://www.azcentral.com/news/free/20130326mexico-drug-war-mystery-about-missing-bodies.html

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Bodies in Qaddafi’s secret morgue identified


Two of the corpses kept in the secret morgue in Shara Zawia Hospital since 1984 have been identified as those of Hadi Masoud Umrani from Zwara and Azhari Saleh Mohamed Al-Megrahi from Tripoli’s Bab Ben-Ghashir district. They were identified through the use of DNA samples.

The identification was announced yesterday, Sunday, by the Ministry of the Martyrs and the Missing.

According to the Ministry’s press office director, Hamad Al-Malki, the next of kin have already been informed by the Ministry’s Undersecretary, Mohamed Sidi Ibrahim, and a report of the procedures taken been forwarded to the Attorney General. The latter is expected to now give the permission for the bodies to be handed over for burial.

The secret mortuary was discovered on 30 August 2011, shortly after the liberation of Tripoli. The colonel in charge of security for the hospital told revolutionaries that it contained the bodies of those who had been hanged for their part in the audacious but abortive attack on Qaddafi’s Bab al Aziziya barracks in 1984, organised by the National Front for the Salvation of Libya.

Sixteen bodies were kept on ice in the morgue on Qaddafi’s orders for the next 27 years. In that time they became unrecognisable, dried out and blacked over time.

The Ministry has appealed to people to contact it and report their missing relatives and give DNA samples to facilitate the identification of the remaining nine unidentified bodies found in Shara Zawia Hospital.

Monday 26 March 2013

http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/03/25/bodies-in-qaddafis-secret-morgue-identified/

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