Crandon, Wis.
Deputy slays six: A sheriff’s deputy, apparently enraged over a slight from a former girlfriend, shot and killed six people this week before turning his gun on himself. Tyler Peterson, 20, interrupted a house party in rural northeast Wisconsin during the early morning hours of Oct. 7. Witnesses say he confronted 18-year-old Jordanne Murray, his former girlfriend, and accused her of infidelity. He left, but soon returned with a rifle issued to him by the Forest County Sheriff’s Department. He opened fire on the seven people in the room, authorities said, killing six, including Murray. Charlie Neitzel, 21, survived by playing dead. Peterson then drove around aimlessly for hours, calling in false reports to police in an effort to throw them off his trail. They eventually caught him hiding in a cabin in a nearby town. Authorities say they were negotiating with Peterson to surrender when he killed himself with a pistol.
Chicago
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Marathon debacle: Soaring temperatures and high humidity played havoc with the Chicago Marathon this week, sending scores of runners to the hospital and forcing organizers to cancel the event mid-race. With unseasonable temperatures peaking at 88 degrees and supplies of water running low, emergency workers were overwhelmed by racers suffering from the heat. Four hours into the event, organizers closed the course, allowing only runners who were past the halfway mark to finish. One runner, 35-year-old police officer Chad Schieber, died during the race; the Chicago medical examiner said a faulty heart valve, not the weather, caused his death.
Tulsa
Scandal at Oral Roberts: Richard Roberts, son of the televangelist Oral Roberts and chancellor of the university named for his father, is living the high life at the school’s expense, three university professors claimed in a lawsuit last week. The suit alleges that Roberts used school resources to back a local political campaign, a violation of state and federal law. It also charges that Roberts used the university’s jet to ferry his teenage daughter to the Bahamas, and that Roberts’ wife, Lindsay, sent hundreds of late-night text messages to “underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.” The university’s board of regents promised an investigation. Richard Roberts said the suit was “about intimidation, blackmail, and extortion.”
Potosi, Mo.
Predator pleads: Michael Devlin, the pizzeria manager charged with holding a boy captive for four years, pleaded guilty this week and was sentenced to life in prison. Devlin, 41, admitted that he molested and then attempted to strangle Shawn Horbeck, then 11, letting the boy survive only when he offered to do whatever Devlin wanted. Prosecutors said Horbeck “made a deal with the devil,’’ surviving only because he endured years of abuse and psychological terror. Police stormed Devlin’s apartment in a St. Louis suburb in January, after Devlin kidnapped a second boy, William “Ben” Ownby, then 13. Devlin’s lawyer said the evidence against his client was “absolutely overwhelming,” adding, “Nothing good would have come from a trial.”
Yara, Cuba
Crash kills dozens: Cuba suffered its worst transportation accident in years this week when a passenger train and a bus collided in rural southeast Cuba, leaving at least 28 people dead and 70 injured. The accident occurred when a train en route from Santiago to Manzanillo crashed into a crowded bus at a road crossing. Buses and trains are often filled to capacity or beyond in Cuba, where the infrastructure is crumbling and private cars are rare.
Bogotá, Colombia
Journalist threatened: A reporter for the Miami-based El Nuevo Herald fled Colombia this week, saying he had received numerous death threats after Colombian President Ãlvaro Uribe publicly denounced him. The reporter, Gonzalo Guillén, is the author of The Confidants of Pablo Escobar, in which he claims Uribe had ties to the now-dead drug lord. Uribe denied the claim during a television appearance last week. He also called Guillén “a professional slanderer” and claimed Guillén once ghostwrote a book with Escobar’s mistress, Virginia Vallejo. Guillén, who denied writing Vallejo’s book, said from an unknown location that he had received 24 death threats since Uribe’s denunciation. More than 40 journalists have been assassinated in Colombia since 1992.
