Detainee who hanged himself is 14th NYC jail death this year
NEW YORK — A detainee who used a shoestring to hang himself Thursday in a Manhattan criminal court holding cell has died, Correction Department officials said.
Anthony Scott, 58, was found unresponsive about 4:45 p.m. in an admission cell at Central Booking after he was arrested for assaulting a nurse at New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia. He was about to be transported to Rikers Island.
He died Tuesday in intensive care at New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital.
A source said as many as four correction officers were nearby when Scott tied the shoestring to a partition at about 4:25 p.m. DOC officials said the incident is under investigation.
The suicide attempt came as 13 detainees have died in city custody so far this year, a grim sign of crisis conditions at Rikers Island and other lockups. Scott was not technically in city custody when he died, having been released by the court while he was in intensive care.
Scott was arrested about 4 a.m. on Wednesday, after a nurse at Columbia-Presbyterian told police he punched her in the face, court records show. He was charged with assault.
Prosecutors asked for cash bail of $30,000, citing Scott’s lengthy arrest record, including two prior violent felony convictions.
Judge Nestor Diaz set bail at $15,000 cash, $45,000 bond, records show.
Scott reached the holding area at Manhattan criminal court about 1 p.m. Thursday. Less than four hours later he jammed a lock to his cell and hanged himself, records show.
—New York Daily News
Florida officer was fatally shot by teen let out of jail 30 days ago
Stepping before a judge is something that Jason Banegas, the teen charged in the shooting death of a Hollywood police officer, has done before. It was just 30 days ago that the 18-year-old was freed from jail in Miami-Dade County on burglary, trespassing and cocaine charges.
Now Banegas faces the prospect of never being a free man again.
Banegas walked to the lectern and lowered his head Tuesday in bond court as Judge Tabitha Blackmon read through a heady list of charges he now faces, including first-degree murder.
Officer Yandy Chirino was shot in the face late Sunday night after responding to the Emerald Hills neighborhood of Hollywood when someone called to say a teen on a red bicycle was acting suspiciously and possibly trying to break into cars.
Within 25 minutes of the call, Chirino was shot in the face after some sort of struggle with the teen, officials said.
Chirino was pronounced dead at Memorial Regional Hospital sometime after midnight. He was just 28.
By midday Monday, officers from the Hollywood Police Department rushed to hospital to help carry the fallen officer’s flag-draped casket out of the hospital and into a Hollywood Fire & Rescue ambulance.
Banegas will be represented by the public defender’s office. Blackmon ordered him to undergo a mental health screening at the request of his lawyer.
He was denied bond.
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Drought-stricken California cut its water use by 5% in August
LOS ANGELES — Californians used 5% less water statewide in August than during the same month last year, an improvement in conservation that state regulators said they hope to see redoubled to address one of the most severe droughts on record.
People saved more water in cities and towns across the state during August than in July, when they used just 1.8% less than the previous year.
The monthly water conservation figures, which were released Tuesday during a meeting of the State Water Resources Control Board, showed parts of the state already meeting or approaching Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for Californians to voluntarily reduce water use by 15%.
Water use decreased 18.3% in August in the North Coast region, and was down 9.9% in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In the South Coast region of Southern California, which is home to more than half the state’s population, people used 3.1% less water in August than they did in the same month in 2020. While still far from Newsom’s target, that was significantly better than in July, when the region’s water use was down a minuscule 0.1%.
The unrelenting dryness over the past year, which was compounded by extreme heat, ranks among the most severe droughts in more than a century of records in California.
Based on statewide precipitation totals, the water year that ended Sept. 30 was the second driest on record, surpassed only by 1924. State officials say the past two water years have been the driest on record for a two-year period, surpassing the drought of 1976-77.
—Los Angeles Times
FBI raids Russian billionaire’s Washington, D.C., mansion
WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided a Washington, D.C., mansion linked to sanctioned Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in a “court-authorized law enforcement activity” Tuesday.
Aluminum tycoon Deripaska and his companies were targeted by U.S. Treasury Department sanctions in 2018 over his ties to Vladimir Putin in response to Russia’s “malign activity around the globe.”
At the time, Deripaska was forced to relinquish control of United Co. Rusal International PJSC, the largest aluminum producer outside of China, in order to remove it from the sanctions list. Deripaska personally remains under the penalties.
“The FBI really is searching houses that are owned by Deripaska’s family members,” a spokeswoman for the tycoon said. “This is done based on two court orders linked to American sanctions. Those houses are in New York and Washington, but Oleg Deripaska doesn’t own them.”
The raid could signal a new chapter under the Biden administration to crack down on Deripaska and others for violating U.S. sanctions.
Although Deripaska was forced to relinquish control of his company, European officials provided information to the U.S. government last year indicating that he continued to be involved.
Lawyers for Deripaska said the European officials’ allegations weren’t true.
—Bloomberg News
