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3 people slain outside Alabama Walmart

A bullet-riddled car sits Tuesday in a Walmart parking lot in Tallassee, Ala., after a shooting in which two women and the gunman were killed, authorities said.
A bullet-riddled car sits Tuesday in a Walmart parking lot in Tallassee, Ala., after a shooting in which two women and the gunman were killed, authorities said.

3 people slain outside Alabama Walmart

TALLASSEE, Ala. -- A gunman crashed into a vehicle outside a Walmart store on Tuesday morning, opening fire and killing two women before taking his own life, authorities said.

Tallassee Mayor Johnny Hammock said that it appeared the shooter rammed a car into another vehicle in the store parking lot before he opened fire.

Two women inside the vehicle were fatally wounded, he said, adding the gunman then turned the weapon on himself.

The victims were identified by police as Tresea Miller, 58, and Barbara Buttles, 75. The suspect is Harold Miller, 65. Police have ruled the case a murder-suicide.

The violence appeared to be related to a domestic dispute and there was no wider danger, Police Chief Matthew Higgins told reporters.

Police later said the women had just been granted a protective order against the suspect, who was married to Tresea Miller. The couple had a divorce pending.

NYC to stop arresting most pot smokers

NEW YORK -- The New York Police Department will issue criminal summonses to most people caught smoking marijuana in public instead of arresting them starting Sept. 1.

Officers will still arrest people with prior arrests for violent crimes, parolees, drivers and some others under the policy Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner James O'Neill announced Tuesday.

People with summonses will have to go to court and pay a $100 fine.

De Blasio estimates that the move will eliminate at least 10,000 arrests a year. The mayor ordered the overhaul last month after a report showed persistent racial gaps in marijuana arrests.

"Nobody's destiny should hinge on a minor nonviolent offense," said de Blasio.

Manhattan's district attorney had already announced his office will stop prosecuting most low-level marijuana cases Aug. 1.

Ex-CIA engineer charged in data thefts

WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors have charged a former software engineer at the center of a huge CIA breach with stealing classified information, theft of government property and lying to the FBI.

The engineer, Joshua A. Schulte, 29, of New York, had been the main suspect in one of the worst losses of classified documents in the spy agency's history.

Government investigators suspect that he provided WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, with a stolen archive of documents detailing the CIA's hacking operations, but they had not initially charged him in that crime.

The breach, known as the Vault 7 leak, was a major embarrassment to the CIA and set off a furious hunt to identify who was behind the 2017 disclosure.

Schulte worked in the CIA's Engineering Development Group, which designed the hacking tools used by its Center for Cyber Intelligence. In late 2016, he left the spy agency and moved to New York for a job.

photo

AP/The Oxford Eagle/BRUCE NEWMAN

Hannah Grace Purdy rolls up a firehose Tuesday during the Oxford Fire Department’s annual Fire Camp, at Fire Station 1 in Oxford, Miss.

5 people face smuggling counts in crash

DALLAS -- Five people have been charged in a "smuggling scheme" after the fatal crash of an SUV that was fleeing Border Patrol agents and sheriff's deputies in South Texas, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

The crash occurred Sunday after Border Patrol agents became suspicious of three vehicles traveling in a convoy between El Indio and Carrizo Springs, Texas, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office for the Western District of Texas. When agents tried to make "immigration inspections," two of the three vehicles led authorities on a high speed chase.

An SUV carrying 14 people and traveling more than 100 mph lost control and overturned on Texas Highway 85. Most of the occupants were ejected.

The driver, Jorge Luis Monsivais Jr., 20, was among those charged, along with the driver of the vehicle that did not take off when agents approached, Marcial Gomez Santana, 55. Two of the others charged are Santana's children. The fifth person charged was a passenger in the convoy.

They are charged with transporting and conspiracy to transport and harbor "illegal aliens resulting in serious bodily injury and death."

-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports

A Section on 06/20/2018

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