Husband agonizes over sick wife’s death during 911 call, says he did it to end cancer pain
Husband agonizes over sick wife’s death during 911 call, says he did it to end cancer pain
LONDON, Ky. — A Kentucky man called 911 just minutes after killing his wife, sobbing and confessing to a dispatcher that he fatally shot the cancer-stricken woman, and asking to take a last look at her before his arrest, according to recordings released Thursday.
Ernest Chris Chumbley, 48, cries throughout the 16-minute call placed around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday and says he shot the woman twice in the face with a .32-caliber handgun in their southeastern Kentucky home. He said in a jailhouse interview after the shooting that he shot his wife to end her pain from terminal breast cancer.
“Give me police, I’m under arrest,” Chumbley said on the call.
Chumbley has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge and is being held in jail on a $200,000 bond. He is being kept in a single isolation cell, which is monitored continuously by video, Laurel County Jailer Jamie Mosley said Thursday afternoon.
Police found 44-year-old Virginia Chumbley’s body in the bedroom when they arrived.
Victim’s mother rejects Montana judge’s apology over comments in rape case
BILLINGS, Mont. — The mother of a 14-year-old girl who was raped by her teacher and later committed suicide appeared at a raucous Thursday protest against the judge who sentenced the man to a month in jail and said the victim was “older than her chronological age.”
The protest came as prosecutors considered an appeal of the sentence by Montana District Judge G. Todd Baugh, whose actions in the case have drawn condemnation from across the country. Joining in the backlash was Montana’s governor, who said the judge’s comments “made me angry.”
The victim’s mother, Auliea Hanlon, said the judge was merely “covering his butt” when he apologized on Wednesday for his comments. She criticized him for standing by the relatively light sentence given to former Billings Senior High School teacher Stacey Rambold.
“He’s just covering his butt. He wouldn’t have said anything if people hadn’t spoken up,” Hanlon told an Associated Press reporter. “He didn’t reverse his decision, so it’s irrelevant.”
Hanlon’s daughter, Cherice Moralez, killed herself before Rambold’s case came to trial.
Louisiana chimpanzee wins $10K grand prize for sanctuary in Humane Society of US art contest
NEW ORLEANS — A painting by a 37-year-old Louisiana primate who applies color with his tongue instead of a brush has been deemed the finest chimpanzee art in the land.
Brent, a retired laboratory animal, was the top vote-getter in an online chimp art contest organized by the Humane Society of the United States, which announced the results Thursday. He won $10,000 for the Chimp Haven sanctuary in northwest Louisiana.
A Chimp Haven spokeswoman said Brent was unavailable for comment Thursday. “I think he’s asleep,” Ashley Gordon said.
But as the society said on its website, “The votes are in, so let the pant hooting begin!” — pant hooting being the characteristic call of an excited chimp.
Five other sanctuaries around the country competed, using paintings created during “enrichment sessions,” which can include any of a wide variety of activities and playthings.