Police: Wyoming murder-suicide happened during class
Police: Wyoming murder-suicide happened during class
CASPER, Wyo. — A man wielding a sharp-edged weapon killed one person in a Casper neighborhood Friday before killing a male teacher and himself in front of students in a community college classroom, causing a campus-wide lockdown as authorities tried to piece together what happened.
Police found the suspect and teacher dead at a science building on the Casper College campus, which was locked down for about two hours, school and police officials said. The other victim, a woman, was found in a street about two miles away.
Casper Police Chief Chris Walsh said the murder-suicide took place in a classroom with students present, but he didn’t know how many students or what the class topic was.
He said investigators were still trying to determine a motive.
Walsh said an “edged weapon” was used it at least one of the killings, but he didn’t offer specifics and it was unclear if the same or a similar weapon was used in all of the deaths.
War rips apart families, neighbors in Syria as political, sectarian loyalties take over
BEIRUT — It’s at night that worries over her children hit the matriarch of the Khayyat family hardest, tormenting her as she tries to sleep.
Four of her sons have joined the tens of thousands of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. The fifth is a sergeant in Assad’s army, a draftee. Worsening her troubles, her own brother no longer speaks to her because of her sons in the rebellion.
“This is what it has come to in Syria,” said the 60-year-old Sunni Muslim woman as she sat in the family home on the outskirts of Damascus. “This is my son, and the other is my son, but each is fighting on a different side in this war. It burns my heart.” Because of fears of reprisals against any of her children, she spoke on condition she not be identified except by the name of her large, extended family.
More than any of the other uprisings that toppled longtime dictators in the Arab world, the civil war in Syria has sharply polarized the country — ripping apart families and neighbors and bringing a bloody end to decades of coexistence.
The war has riven Syria along sectarian lines. The Sunni majority forms the backbone of the revolt. The minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiism, backs the regime of Assad, who is himself an Alawite and has stacked his leadership with members of the community. Other minorities like Christians largely support Assad or stand on the sidelines, worried that Assad’s fall would bring a more Islamist rule over them.
Missouri lottery winners want
to live normally
DEARBORN, Mo. — To announce one of the biggest events of their lives together, Cindy and Mark Hill returned to the place where it all began — the high school where they became sweethearts in the 1970s.
Surrounded by family and friends, the two were introduced Friday as winners in this week’s huge Powerball lottery — an extraordinary stroke of luck that gives them half of the $588 million jackpot.
The nostalgic high school homecoming seemed to reflect the couple’s hopes of staying true to their roots and living simply, at least as simply as possible for winners of one of the biggest lottery prizes in history.
“We will still be going down to the corner cafe for breakfast or fish day. I can guarantee you,” Cindy Hill said. “You know it’s just us. We’re just normal human beings. We’re as common as anybody. We just have a little bit more money.”
The Hills, who have three grown sons and a 6-year-old daughter, said they don’t play the lottery regularly. They spent $10 on five tickets with random numbers. The result: After taxes, they will take home a lump sum of $136.5 million.
By wire sources