2 golf course shooting victims were bound, gagged in truck bed, warrant says
ATLANTA — Two of the three men found shot to death on a Cobb County golf course last weekend had been bound and gagged with tape before being placed in the bed of a pickup truck, according to warrants made public Friday.
Bryan Rhoden, 23, was arrested Thursday after being identified as the “lone shooter” in the bizarre triple homicide at an affluent Kennesaw-area country club over the Fourth of July weekend.
He faces three counts of murder, three counts of aggravated assault and two counts of kidnapping in Saturday’s shooting deaths of golf pro Gene Siller, 46, and the two victims found in the truck, 46-year-old Henry Valdez and 76-year-old Paul Pierson.
Investigators said Valdez, of Anaheim, California, and Pierson, of Topeka, Kansas, were dead in the back of a Dodge Ram when Rhoden drove the vehicle onto the 10th hole of the Pinetree Country Club and got stuck near the green. The pickup belonged to Pierson, according to police.
Siller, a father of two and Pinetree’s director of golf, was shot in the head when he went onto the course to investigate,authorities said.
Cobb police Chief Tim Cox declined to say how Rhoden knew Valdez and Pierson, and did not provide a possible motive for their shootings.
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Biogen faces FDA probe of Alzheimer’s drug approval
The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said she is seeking a federal investigation of the approval of the Biogen Inc. Alzheimer’s disease drug Aduhelm, a highly unusual step that will increase scrutiny of a heavily criticized clearance.
In a letter posted on Twitter, Janet Woodcock, the agency’s acting commissioner, said she was requesting an independent review of whether any interactions between Biogen and FDA staff were inconsistent with the agency's policies and procedures. The inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services would undertake the probe.
Aduhelm was granted approval by the FDA last month over the objection of outside scientific advisers who had voted against the drug last November. The agency ordered Biogen to do an additional trial to confirm that the drug benefits patients, and given nine years to produce data.
Biogen has priced the therapy at $56,000 annually.
In the letter, Woodcock said she had “tremendous confidence in the integrity” of the FDA staff, but said there were concerns over contacts between the agency and Biogen that may have occurred outside the normal formal correspondence process.
“It is critical that the events at issue be reviewed by an independent body,” she wrote.
A Biogen spokeswoman said that the company would cooperate with any inquiry into the Aduhelm review process.
—Bloomberg News
Cuba sets new COVID-19 record with more than 6,000 daily cases and 28 deaths
COVID-19 cases in Cuba soared to a record 6,422 on Friday, nearly twice the number registered just a few days ago, while deaths reached 28 as the island struggles to contain the virus in high-transmission areas and in the capital Havana.
The record comes the same day one of Cuba’s five vaccine candidates, the three-shot Abdala, received local regulatory approval for emergency use, which could help speed up the vaccination campaign in the island that decided to make its own shots rather than buy vaccines from other countries.
About half of all cases occurred in the province of Matanzas, the current epicenter of Cuba’s pandemic, where the beach resort of Varadero reopened to tourism late last year, which likely increased transmission, local health authorities said.
“I don’t have to say that this is the worst day for Cuba since the start of the pandemic,” Dr. Francisco Durán, national director of epidemiology, said in a video conference Friday.
COVID-19 case numbers have been rising steadily since late last year after Cuba reopened its borders to tourism in November.Total cases since the start of the pandemic reached 219,000 on Friday and 1,431 deaths have been confirmed, according to the Ministry of Public Health.
—Miami Herald
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