UPDATE: More Info On Female Shooter (LaTina Williams) In LA..

Still Many Questions Surround Deadly Shooting

(victim, Karsheika Graves)
(victim, Taneisha Butler)
(students mourn, below)
(scene of shooting-LA Tech College)

(Baton Rouge, LA - WAFB) Baton Rouge police say a young woman killed two female students in a classroom at a vo-tech college Friday, then killed herself. Police identified the victims as Karsheika Graves, age 21, and Tanieshia-Deanna Butler, age 26. Investigators identified the shooter as Latina Williams, age 23. Sergeant Don Kelly with Baton Rouge police says all three were students at the Louisiana Technical College campus. The shooter's family lives in Mississippi. Baton Rouge police visited with them Friday night, trying to figure out what might have led Latina Williams to open fire. Funeral arrangements for the victims are still pending.

9NEWS spoke with the family of Karsheika Graves. The tight-knit group believes Karsheika Graves will always be with them. "She was a beautiful person. Humble, kind, patient, never said an ill word about anyone," says Karlyn Leblanc, Karsheika's aunt. Her family is baffled. They have no idea why someone would shoot and kill the artistic mother of two. Graves was a painter, and on her way to becoming a nurse. Family members say in December, she would have graduated from Louisiana Technical College. "She had two babies but she wasn't going to let that stop her. And that's what I admired about her," Leblanc says. She also says coroners tell her Graves' body was found with a pencil in her hand, a strong indication of the kind of dedicated student she was. Graves was the mother of a one-year-old and a five-month-old baby. Funeral arrangements for the victims are still pending.

The family of Tanieshia Butler was kind enough to invite 9NEWS to their home to share Tanieshia's life. Butler was shot to death Friday morning while just simply sitting in a nursing class. "I am in disbelief. Until I actually see her face, I just don't believe. Right now, I don't believe it," Ernest Butler says. Tanieshia's husband is having a hard time staying strong, but he says he has to. "Right now, I am trying to pull it together for the kids, trying to get them through this." The couple's three children are 4, 9, and 12 years old. Tanieshia worked hard to put herself through school so that she could give her children a better life. Now, her mother wants to know how she's supposed to encourage Tanieshia's children to go to school. "You don't want to live out your kids, you are supposed to be able to go to school. It's supposed to be a safe place to go," says Bobbie Landry. Tanieshia's mother says she doesn't why the shooter chose her daughter, but she does have a message for the family. "Out of your hands once they grow up. I pray for you. I'm sorry for your loss." This family hopes whatever you take away from this that you learn from their lesson. "We've got little ones. You are preaching to them, teaching them to go to school and now, how are we supposed to tell them this, if they fear their lives how can you send them." Friday morning, Tanieshia's sister, Tont, was also at the college. She was across the hall, in another classroom. She heard the shots fired. Students and faculty at the school were kept on lockdown for nearly four hours as police interviewed witnesses to the classroom killings.

Young people called their parents from the Louisiana Technical College Friday morning, pleading for them to call 911. The school is located on Airline Highway at Winbourne Avenue. The investigation continues into why anyone would shoot and kill innocent school mates. Here is what we do know:

At 8:36, phone calls started pouring into Baton Rouge police from students inside the classroom building where the shots were fired.

At 8:37, police were on their way to the campus to investigate the complaints.

By 8:40, officers were entering the building, not knowing if the shooting was over or if someone with a gun was still roaming the halls.

"This is a situation where you have to analyze everything that goes on. There was nobody virtually that could have stopped, I believe, what happened today, absent checking everybody as they came into the building. But besides that, it's a sad commentary when you have young people who are here to be educated at a great institution. And yet, they are gunned down and become innocent victims of violence at school. So to those families, to parents, to other people in the community, relatives of these individuals on both sides, this is a tragic day for Baton Rouge, it's a tragic day for the nation," Mayor Kip Holden says.

The campus will remain closed until next Wednesday, February 13th. However, school officials say that may change, depending on funeral arrangements. LTC officials will meet with faculty and staff on Tuesday to help prepare them to work with students once they return to class. The school says ICare counselors are currently on-site providing support for students, faculty, staff, and family members. If you feel you need help processing the emotional effects of the killings at Louisiana Technical College, call Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention at 924-3900.

Thanks for the story, Deidra!




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House Party Ends in 7 Deaths

Seven Students Die in Beach House Fire
source

OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. (Oct. 28) - An intense fire ravaged a beach house packed with college students early Sunday, killing seven and leaving little left of the structure but its charred frame and the stilts on which it stood.


Photo Gallery: 'A Very Sad Day'
Brian Brough, Wilmington Star-News / AP An early-morning fire ravaged a beach home in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., Sunday and killed seven college students who were vacationing there. "There were three kids sitting on the ground screaming," said one witness.
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Six survivors were hospitalized and released, including one who jumped from the burning home and into a waterway, Mayor Debbie Smith said. The cause was being investigated.

"There were three kids sitting on the ground screaming," said newspaper deliverer Tim Burns, who called 911 after seeing a column of smoke rising from the house. "There was one guy hanging out the window, and he jumped in the canal. I know he got out because he was yelling for a girl to follow him."

Burns said he didn't know whether that girl was able to escape.

Officials at the University of South Carolina said six of the students who died were from the school in Columbia; the seventh attended Clemson University. The six who survived were also from USC. The private home was being used by the owner's daughter and a group of her friends, Smith said.

"These are young people in the prime of their life," USC President Andrew Sorensen said at a news conference. "They had so much to look forward to, and it's just profoundly tragic."





Students will have access to counselors, residence hall advisers and clergy members, Sorensen said. Classes will be held Monday.

Dennis Pruitt, dean of students, said the fire appears to have affected two Greek organizations — the Delta Delta Delta sorority and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Earlier in the day, a campus minister at the sorority house declined to comment, as did an adult who answered the door at the fraternity house. Messages left with the national headquarters of the organizations were not immediately returned.

The fire struck sometime before 7 a.m. and burned completely through the first and second floors, leaving only part of the frame standing. The waterfront home — named "Changing Channels" — was built on stilts, forcing firefighters to climb a ladder onto the house's deck to reach the first living floor. Smith said the house was a total loss.

"We ran down the street to get away," said Nick Cain, a student at the University of North Carolina who was staying at a house about 100 feet away. "The ash and the smoke were coming down on us. We were just trying to get away."

Cain was one of the dozens of college students who filled at least four houses within a block of the burned home. Neighbor Jeff Newsome said the students were going back and forth between the houses all weekend long.

"We didn't have any big complaints," Newsome said. "The lights were on all night. They were having a good time."

Winds blowing flames over the water, and not toward any of the other residences on the tightly packed row of vacation homes, kept the fire from spreading. The intense heat kept Burns and others from attempting a rescue, although he said he had to fight to keep several of those who escaped from trying. When he approached the front door, he said, it was too hot to open.

"When I was going up to the entryway, you could hear the windows above me explode," Burns said. "When I knew the flames had taken over, I don't think I've ever felt as helpless in my life."

Some of the people in the house had been friends since high school, said Rick Wylie of Greenville, S.C., who identified his son Trip as the young man who jumped from the burning home.

"He's in shock," Wylie said. "It's just an incomprehensible thing for these parents."

Authorities erected a blue tarp to block the view of the fire scene, but neighbor Bob Alexander said he saw investigators removing bodies from the remnants of the home early Sunday afternoon.

"It's terrible to see somebody's children come out of that house this way," Alexander said.

The victim's bodies were to be taken to the state medical examiner's office in Chapel Hill. Authorities from the State Bureau of Investigation and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are leading the investigation, said Randy Thompson, Brunswick County's emergency services director.

The home had working smoke detectors, Smith said.

Ocean Isle Beach is at the southern end of North Carolina's Atlantic Coast, about 30 miles north of Myrtle Beach, S.C. Only about 500 people live there year-round, but the town is home to several thousand rental and vacation homes and condos.

The burned home sits on one of a series of peninsulas, all tightly packed with homes, that are about two blocks from the beach and connect with the Intracoastal Waterway.

Oprah, what kind of hiring process is this??

SEXUAL, PHYSICAL ABUSE ALLEGATIONS AT OPRAH'S SCHOOL: Host flies in over weekend to personally assess the situation.
source

*More details of the alleged misconduct by a dorm parent at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa have surfaced. According to Fox News, an Afrikaans-language newspaper reported that the female employee is accused of various incidents of physical and sexual abuse against the students.

The woman, who has since been removed from the campus, allegedly grabbed a girl by the throat and threw her against a wall. Other alleged charges were that she swore and screamed at the girls, assaulted them and had sexually fondled at least one of them, according to Rapport newspaper.

The alleged incidents went public after one of the pupils ran away from the school because the abuse had become intolerable, according to Rapport. Her parents immediately notified the school.

Winfrey, herself the victim of childhood sexual abuse, immediately caught a flight to South Africa to check on the allegations. She is said to have arrived just over a week ago, missing an important Hollywood engagement. She then returned unexpectedly on Friday and left again on Sunday, reports Fox News.

The TV mogul met with the school’s executive and private investigators and held a two-hour meeting with the parents of her students, who were flown to Johannesburg from all over the country. A report by a private investigator flown in from the United States to conduct an inquiry with a South African counterpart has been turned over to the local police.

In her only public comment about the incident, Winfrey issued a statement saying: “Nothing is more serious or devastating to me than an allegation of misconduct by an adult against any girl at the academy.”

****

Ok, Oprah.

You offended many Americans after you opened your school in the Motherland.

But in light of recent events, I'm glad you didn't.

I'm not sure what the hiring process is over there, but it seems pervs slip thru the cracks over there, just like in America!

It takes more than throwing your name on top of a building, you need hands on involvement, and I don't mean like the kind that female employee (above) exhibited.

I pray that you and your team screen these potential employees more closely. Just because they live in the motherland doesn't mean ulterior motives do not run amok there as well.

I'm sure you'll be able to put a "spin'' on this when you return home.

Please see to it that those young ladies receive counseling...and put the perv under the school!

You betta recognize Oprah, issues ARE UNIVERSAL!

Was it Really That Serious, Loyer?

TWO STUDENTS QUESTIONED IN DELAWARE STATE SHOOTING: Campus put on lockdown Friday; two D.C. students hospitalized.
(September 24, 2007) source: eurweb.com



*Classes at historically black Delaware State University were cancelled and the campus put on lock down early Friday after the shooting of two students following an apparent argument.
University spokesman Carlos Holmes said police had identified "two persons of interest" -- both students -- one of whom was already in custody. He told reporters it appeared the shooting followed an argument in a campus cafeteria.



One of the wounded students was a female who had "potentially life-threatening" injuries, while the other, a male, was in "stable condition," at a local hospital, he said. Both are from Washington D.C. The female was shot twice and the male once.



Delaware State University Police Chief James Overton said in a statement that between 8 and 10 students had left a campus cafeteria between midnight and 1 a.m. and "a gun was produced in the area among those people and four to six shots were fired."



The university alerted students to the incident by telephone, the Web site and by flyers, a statement on its Web site said. Students and staff who were not on the campus were told to stay away until further notice. The university directed nonessential personnel not to report to work.



"I don't think any institution in the country did not learn from Virginia Tech and we certainly did," Holmes said on CNN when asked about decision to lock down the campus.



Founded in 1891, the historically black university has about 3,300 undergraduate students on a 400-acre residential campus about 100 miles northeast of D.C.





update: Arrest in University Shootings
Published: September 25, 2007


source: nytimes.com


DOVER, Del., Sept. 24 (AP) — The police arrested an 18-year-old man Monday in last week’s shooting of two students at Delaware State University, the authorities said. As he was led into a courthouse, the man, Loyer D. Braden, told reporters, “I’m sorry.”

Mr. Braden, who is from East Orange, N.J., was charged with attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment, and also faced a gun charge, according to court documents.
Mr. Braden appeared before a justice of the peace and was ordered held in $75,000 bail. He was also ordered to stay away from the victims and the university.



Nathaniel Pugh III and Shalita Middleton, two 17-year-old students from Washington, were hurt early Friday in the attack. Ms. Middleton suffered serious abdominal injuries from two gunshots and is hospitalized. Mr. Pugh was shot once in the ankle.
Mr. Braden was also accused of firing at a third student, James Richmond, according to the documents describing the reckless endangerment charge.



Four Dover police officers escorted Mr. Braden to the court on Monday afternoon with his hands cuffed and his legs shackled. In response to reporters’ questions, he said softly, “I’m sorry.” Asked what he was sorry for, he replied only, “She’s in the hospital.”



Mr. Braden graduated in June from Immaculate Conception High School in Montclair, N.J., where he played basketball and football.


*************
Well, what can be said that hasn't been said over, and over, and over again??? Crime doesn't pay. You know you'll be locked up for a lonnng time. Is it worth it, Loyer? I'm not going to preach...it's all been said before. But this black-on-black crime HAS GOT (that's right I said "Got!") to stop!
Black people are protesting Mychal Bell's incarceration in Jena, LA and we have youth who commit crimes intentionally-knowing they'll end up behind bars! What is really going on?! I'm going to leave this one alone. My prayers are with all of the families, and in Jesus' name I pray that a laborer be sent to Loyer--there are many Christians who are incarcerated as well.

Youth- you BETTER recognize!!

Ivent