Mom of 11-year-old boy who hanged himself says girlfriend should get 'highest punishment' for bullying him

The mom whose 11-year-old son hanged himself because of an internet prank wants the boy’s girlfriend to be punished.

Katrina Goss told the Detroit Free Press her son’s 13-year-old girlfriend — who faked her death on social media, prompting the boy to take his own life — knowingly did the wrong thing.

"I think she deserves the highest punishment that she can get for her age," Goss said of the girl, whose name hasn’t been disclosed because of her age. “Even when you're young you can still commit a crime.”

Tysen Benz died Tuesday, having spent three weeks on life support after hanging himself on March 14.

The boy had secretly been communicating with the girl for several months. When he came home that day, the girl told Tysen she was going to kill herself and used a friend’s computer to make it seem as if she was dead, Goss previously told the Daily News.

Goss said she later found Tysen in a closet — hanging from his belt. She rushed him to the hospital in their native Marquette, Mich. He was moved to another hospital where he died earlier this week.

The eighth-grade girl was arrested this week because authorities said she made a false report of someone’s death, according to the Detroit Free Press. She was charged with telecommunication services-malicious use and using a computer to commit a crime, the newspaper reported.

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Marquette County Prosecutor Matt Wiese said he wants parents to also monitor what their kids are saying to each other online.

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"If we're buying them a $600 smartphone and giving them access to this digital world, we need to know where they're going, what they're doing and who they're talking to,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “If they're not open, then we have a responsibility not to give them access."

The charges carry up to a year in jail.

Goss alleged the girl knowingly tried to hurt her son, saying the act was bullying.

“She's intelligent,” Goss told the newspaper. “She knows right from wrong. She's 13. She took advantage of a little 11-year-old. I feel like she deserves the full extent of punishment for her age."
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U.S. Navy strike force rerouted to Korean peninsula amid tensions with North Korea

A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike group is on the way to the Korean peninsula amid rising tensions with North Korea, officials said Saturday.

The U.S. Pacific Command ordered the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and multiple destroyers to sail toward the western Pacific Ocean within days of North Korea's latest missile test and threats to unleash more.

"We feel the increased presence is necessary," a military official told Reuters, citing North Korea's latest missile release.

The isolated nation on Wednesday launched a lackluster Scud missile that flew only 36 miles, according to South Korea’s military.

The show of naval force follows President Trump's airstrike against a Syrian airbase on Thursday in retaliation for a deadly chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians, including children.

The San Diego-based Carl Vinson carrier will be joined by three guided-missile destroyers, the USS Wayne E. Meyer, USS Michael Murphy and the USS Lake Champlain, all of which have been deployed since Jan. 5, U.S. Third Fleet officials said in a statement.

The strike force had been docked in Singapore with about 6,500 sailors on board since April 4 and was scheduled to visit Australia next, officials said. The port visit followed two weeks of routine operations with joint-martine exercises with South Korea and Japan in the Asia-Pacific region.

On Friday, Trump spoke to South Korea’s acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn and pledged to “stay in close touch” about North Korea but a White House readout made no mention of the Navy’s plan to send ships toward the peninsula.
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City owes EMS workers so much more after Yadira Arroyo gets killed on her day off

 EMT Yadira Arroyo died on her day off.

That is to say, it should have been her day off — if Yadira Arroyo hadn’t found herself on the endless treadmill of needing overtime to make ends meet.

And in a 24-7 department of roughly 4,000 EMTs and paramedics — responding to as many as 5,000 emergency medical calls a day — it was always offered.

Yadira had no way of knowing that Thursday was going to cost her everything.

Her path crossed with Jose Gonzalez, who authorities describe as a 25-year-old serial criminal with a history of mental illness. She couldn't have foreseen that he was going to yank her from her ambulance and, as authorities have alleged in the two murder charges against him, viciously run her down on a Bronx street.

EMS workers are trained to see patients as people first, and problems second — even though they know things can go sour in a heartbeat.

The same threat rides alongside every police officer and firefighter and quite a few other city workers who don’t get to carry the title of first responder.

But Yadira belongs to a special group. New York’s EMTs and paramedics bear much of the burden of responding to the city’s most vulnerable. That includes the mentally ill, the addicted, the poor and the dying — as well as those caught in the grip of tragic accidents.

Like most healthcare workers, EMTs and paramedics get little acclaim, and inadequate compensation.

New Yorkers are quick to laud — and rightly so — our firefighters and our cops. And the city loves its hero sanitation men and women, too, just as we honor the quick-thinking transit worker who averts a subway suicide.

But we’ve been slow to recognize the strain on EMS — and the intense pressure of their heavy FDNY workload. Nearly 2 million 911 calls a year.

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After 14 years on the job, Yadira Arroyo, a mother of five with a state-issued EMT certification that had to be renewed every three years, earned a base salary of $48,153.

She got enough overtime to raise it to $66,750 — that’s a lot of missed holidays and double-shifts.

Until Yadira Arroyo died in the Bronx Thursday, few of us grasped the risks and dangers faced by EMTs and paramedics.

New York is a city that knows some debts can never be repaid. But we owe it to Yadira Arroyo to do more for her EMS family.
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Midtown stabbing victim stumbles into police station to report his attacker before dying from wounds

 A 66-year-old man staggered into the Midtown South Precinct station house bleeding from multiple stab wounds in his chest and back before he died Monday night.

The victim entered the stationhouse on W. 35th St. near 9th Ave. at about 11:25 p.m., moments after he was attacked at the southeast corner of W. 36th St. and 9th Ave., officials said.

Medics rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, where he died at 1:23 a.m.

Cops said he argued with his assailant and was stabbed. His white attacker fled, but the victim identified him to cops before he died.

Detectives were poring over security video of the attack, officials said.
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FBI wiretapped Russian gambling ring headquarted at Trump Tower for two years

 Turns out there was a wiretap at Trump Tower after all — just not the way President Trump has said.

The FBI had a court-sanctioned warrant for two years to monitor a Russian crime organization working out of a unit three floors below President Trump’s penthouse, according to an ABC News report.

Listening in on the Russians’ happenings resulted in north of 30 people being indicted in April 2013, with federal agents raiding the Trump Tower apartment. But the mastermind, Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, got away and has since fled the United States justice system.

Later in 2013, ABC News notes, he was in the VIP section of Miss Universe Moscow not far from President Trump. The President had previously sold the rights to the Russian incarnation of the show to a billionaire developer based in the country.

“He is a major player,” Mike Gaeta, lead agent on the FBI investigation, said of Tokhtakhunov in 2014. “He is prominent, he has extremely good connections in the business world as well as the criminal world, overseas, in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, other countries.”

Tokhtakhunov is accused of having run a major gambling ring — headquartered out of unit 63A of Trump Tower — that saw $50 million of illegal money come into the U.S., according to ABC News.

He’s no stranger to the law’s radar, either. Tokhtakhunov was previously indicted for trying to fix figure-skating competitions at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The President wasn’t named in the investigation, but his flagship skyscraper was under heavy surveillance.

Just a few floors below Trump’s home, ABC reported, prosecutors said there was an “international money laundering, sports gambling and extortion ring.”

Vadim Trincher, a Russian businessman and power player, lived in the 63rd-floor unit, and was sentenced to five years in jail for his illegal happenings at the tower.

“He would have people come in and meet with them,” said ABC News consultant and ex-FBI agent Rich Frankel. “He would use the phones ... His base of operations was in the Trump Tower.”

Trump’s claim that President Obama tapped his own residence has proved to not be as successful.

National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers and FBI Director James Comey both testified before the House Intelligence Committee that there was no evidence the President’s home was secretly monitored in the lead up to last year’s election.
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Board recommended discipline for Officer Daniel Pantaleo years before fatal Eric Garner chokehold: report

 Newly obtained documents appear to detail the disciplinary history of the officer who choked Eric Garner to death on Staten Island in 2014.

The documents were sent to the website ThinkProgress by an anonymous employee of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the website said.

The site said that the CCRB substantiated four complaints and recommended disciplinary action against Pantaleo years before he encountered Garner, who was selling loose cigarettes on July 17, 2014.

The agency found credible allegations about an “abusive” stop and frisk in 2011, the website said. The CCRB recommended he receive a talking-to, but no further discipline.

Allegations of an abusive stop and frisk in 2012 were also substantiated, according to the website. The CCRB recommended the loss of eight vacation days as punishment. The NYPD gave him just two.

The website said Pantaleo was also accused of failing to seek medical aid for someone in 2009, struck another person with an object in 2011 and made bad car stops and searches twice in 2012, the website said. He also was accused of improperly using physical force in 2013.

All of those cases were closed either because the CCRB ruled the claims could not be verified or the victim became uncooperative.

In all, eight or more CCRB complaints were filed against Pantaleo - higher than normal for an individual NYPD officer.

Garner yelled “I can’t breathe” repeatedly during the encounter with Pantaleo - a term that became a battle cry of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

In December 2014, a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict the officer. A federal civil rights investigation is ongoing, with no end in sight. The city settled with Garner’s family in a lawsuit they filed for $5.9 million.
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Preet Bharara gets job at NYU School of Law

 ALBANY — Preet landed on his feet.

Former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara found his first gig since being fired on March 11 by the Trump administration.

Bharara will join the NYU School of Law as a distinguished scholar in residence as of April 1, the school announced Tuesday morning.

The crusading prosecutor's future has been the subject of much speculation since he refused to submit his resignation along with 45 other U.S. attorneys as requested by the Trump administration and instead forced it to fire him.

"I am honored to join the NYU School of Law, one of the great educational institutions in America, and I welcome the chance to contribute in such a thoughtful setting," Bharara said. "I am thrilled for this opportunity to continue addressing the issues I so deeply care about — criminal and social justice, honest government, national security, civil rights, and corporate accountability, to name a few."

On his Twitter account announcing the new job, Bharara hinted there could be more to come, saying, "This is one way I plan to keep working hard on important issues I care about @nyu."

Speculation has been high about a possible future political career for Bharara, even though in the past he has suggested he has no interest in running for public office.

The Daily News on Monday reported that Bradley Tusk, a one-time aide to Michael Bloomberg, had considered asking Bharara to challenge Mayor de Blasio this year in a primary. Tusk's interest cooled, however, after a few days once Bharara's old office announced it was closing an investigation into de Blasio and his associates without brining any charges.

He's also been mentioned as a possible Democratic primary challenger to Gov. Cuomo in 2018.

Bharara was appointed to the powerful post of Manhattan U.S. attorney by then-President Barack Obama in 2009.

During his tenure, he attacked public corruption, winning the convictions of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, both of whom are appealing.

He also brought criminal charges against nine Cuomo associates, including former top aide and close friend Joseph Percoco. Those cases are due to go to trial this year.

He also won a number of insider trading convictions against hedge funders, though some were overturned on appeal. And he's been criticized for not bringing criminal cases against the Wall Street bankers behind the Great Recession in 2008-09.

Bharara is considered a protege of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, for whom he served as chief counsel in the Senate.
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