View Full Version : Nutty woman astronaut not charged with murder
No attempted murder charge for astronaut Nowak
POSTED: 4:21 p.m. EST, March 2, 2007
ORLANDO, Florida (AP) -- Florida prosecutors charged an astronaut Friday with trying to kidnap a romantic rival, but they declined to file an attempted murder charge recommended by police.
Lisa Nowak, 43, was formally charged almost a month after she was arrested at an Orlando airport parking lot.
Police have said the mother of three had raced 900 miles in her car from Houston to Orlando on February 5 to confront a woman she viewed as a rival for a space shuttle pilot's affection. Nowak donned a wig and trench coat, then sprayed a chemical into the woman's car when she wouldn't let Nowak in, police said.
Officers found a BB-gun, a new steel mallet, knife and rubber tubing in Nowak's car, and recommended she be charged with attempted murder.
Nowak pleaded not guilty last month on all counts that police recommended. Her attorney, Donald Lykkebak, said that she denies the charges filed Friday: attempted kidnapping with intent to inflict bodily harm, burglary with an assault using a weapon and battery.
"The state attorney appears to recognize that the initial charges were overreaching," Lykkebak said. "Unfortunately ... the state's current assessment still overstates the conduct."
Nowak believed Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman was romantically involved with Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein, a pilot during space shuttle Discovery's trip to the space station last December, according to police. After the confrontation, Shipman drove to a parking lot booth for help.
Kepler Funk, Shipman's attorney, said Shipman was pleased prosecutors talked to her before filing the new charges.
NASA reaction
Meanwhile, NASA's boss told lawmakers on Wednesday the agency failed to recognize Nowak's troubled mental state.
"Clearly she [Nowak] is in major trouble, and clearly we failed as an institution to recognize that she was very troubled," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat. (Full story)
Griffin made the comments to lawmakers during a budget hearing. (Full story)
Nowak flew on Discovery last summer and won praise for operating the shuttle's robotic arm. NASA relieved her of all mission duties after her arrest and placed her on a 30-day leave, which is up next Thursday.
She had been scheduled to be the ground communicator with the space shuttle Atlantis crew that is scheduled to launch on a mission to the international space station no earlier than late April.
"As of this morning, there is no change in her status and I do not have information on what her status will be when the 30-day leave is up," said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield in Houston.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/02/nowak.charges.ap/index.html
No attempted murder charge? Come on, the woman had a steel mallet and a knife; what was she going to do with them, kill a wild animal and tenderize its meat. What a joke. This woman needs to be locked away in a psychiatric hospital.
What really gets me though is
Nowak pleaded not guilty last month on all counts that police recommended. Her attorney, Donald Lykkebak, said that she denies the charges filed Friday: attempted kidnapping with intent to inflict bodily harm, burglary with an assault using a weapon and battery.
"The state attorney appears to recognize that the initial charges were overreaching," Lykkebak said. "Unfortunately ... the state's current assessment still overstates the conduct."How can the kooky woman deny what she was doing? Oh, I know, she was just carrying around the tools of a killer but she never intended to use them. :rolleyes:
As for the attorney; this is why everyone hates attorneys. This guy can say with a straight face what is obviously a lie. The DA is letting the woman off with lesser charges when the police wanted her charged with attempted murder. I'd accept this gift and discontinue this blatantly stupid conduct as her attorney.
I guess no one else is worried about diaper wearing whackjobs dropping by their house to kill them after NASA figured she was sane enough to go into space.
The let's move onto the next stupid thing in the news:
Video appears to show brothers, 2 and 5, smoking pot
POSTED: 9:35 a.m. EST, March 4, 2007
WATAUGA, Texas (CNN) -- Police in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, said a videotape found in a search for stolen goods appears to show two teenagers persuading a 2-year-old boy and his 5-year-old brother to smoke marijuana.
Third-degree felony charges have been filed against the teenagers.
"I have never seen anything like this quite so disturbing," said Bruce Ure, director of public safety for the Watauga Police Department. "Our children count on us to protect them; these individuals did everything but protect these children."
The incident began unfolding February 22, when the Fort Worth Police Department executed a search warrant to look for stolen goods in the apartment of 17-year-old Demetris McCoy, the unemployed uncle of the two children, and 18-year-old Vanswan Polty, Ure said.
Among the items recovered was camera equipment, Ure said. Upon looking at one of the tapes, investigators came across "a session where these two males were providing marijuana" to the youngsters, he said. "They were essentially trying to get them high, laughing. The children are stumbling, falling around."
Ure said it appeared that the videotaped scene was not the boys' first such session.
The 2-year-old was holding what appeared to be a marijuana cigarette "like he's done it before," Ure said. "He's inhaling."
The boys' mother, McCoy's sister, has told police she was sleeping in the back bedroom during the incident. She has not been charged, Ure said.
Nor has another minor, who served as the cameraman, Ure said.
In the video, a man puts a cigarette into the toddler's mouth. The other boy is seen smoking without prompting.
The children have been in the custody of Child Protective Services, Ure said.http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/04/pot.kids/index.html
If the uncle and his friend want to mess up their lives by smoking pot, they are only hurting themselves but when they involve a 2 year old and a 5 year old, the uncle and friend should receive severe jail time.
How messed up on pot do you have to be to think teaching a 2 year old and 5 year old to smoke pot is smart? 15 to 20 years in jail should smarten them up.
As for the mom, who was sleeping in a back bedroom; she sure won't win mom of the year. The uncle and friend were smoking pot in the house; meaning you can smell it for a long time afterwards. Even if the kids were in no way involved, did the mom think it was right for the uncle and his friend to be smoking pot in a house with young children in it? As for the fact that the children had smoked pot before; how could the mom not know it happened. The kids are 2 and 5, one of them had to tell their mom. What about the after effects? Was the mom not around her children for hours and hours after the incidents when the kids were high?
I'm glad the kids were taken away by Child Services and frankly the mom should never get them back if she's stupid enough to leave them in the care of a pot smoking uncle and is unable to figure out what he was doing to her kids.
I saw that story Tea bag. They actually video taped it the idiots. That's how they got caught.
In other news from the weekend, a woman's torso was found in a suitcase (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,256600,00.html) in the quiet town I currently dwell. Flooding was bad - but I did not expect a torso to come floating by.
*shrug*
I saw that story Tea bag. They actually video taped it the idiots. That's how they got caught.
In other news from the weekend, a woman's torso was found in a suitcase (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,256600,00.html) in the quiet town I currently dwell. Flooding was bad - but I did not expect a torso to come floating by.
*shrug*Holy crap. You got some sick bastard walking around your town. Your neighbour could be dismembering bodies in his basement.
The next stupid idiot news story is:
Mom: Giggling bandits 'little girls that made a bad choice'
POSTED: 1:52 p.m. EST, March 5, 2007
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- The mother of a 19-year-old arrested in a bank theft scheme said Monday that her daughter isn't a bandit, she just fell in with the wrong crowd and made a bad choice.
Joy Miller said her daughter, Ashley Miller, is sorry for what she did.
Ashley Miller and Heather Johnston, both 19, were videotaped wearing sunglasses and laughing as they appeared to rob a Bank of America in upscale Acworth on February 27.
Police also arrested a bank teller and another man in connection with the theft, saying the heist appeared to be an inside job. Miller and Johnston remained jailed Monday morning.
"I want (people) to know that her and Heather both are not bandits," Joy Miller told ABC's "Good Morning America" Monday." "They're little girls that made a bad choice."
Johnston's father, Edward Johnston, has said his family was in shock.
"God gives us free will and it's up to us what we do with it," he said. "Any adult has to make decisions and live with them -- good, bad or indifferent."
Dubbed the "Barbie Bandits" by some Atlanta media, the teens were captured by a surveillance camera handing a bank teller a note then casually waiting for money as if "it's all fun and games to them," said Cobb County Police spokesman Wayne Delk.
Authorities have not said how much money the girls took, but Delk said it is "considerable."http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/05/giggling.bandits.ap/index.html
Falling in with the wrong crowd and doing something stupid is the appropriate answer for skipping school, shoplifting and doing drugs but not the answer for robbing a bank.
If they were giggling, they weren't being coerced into the robbery, these girls were well aware of what they were doing, and they should go to jail for how long bank robbery gets you in Georgia.
One of the girls' father got it right,"God gives us free will and it's up to us what we do with it," he said. "Any adult has to make decisions and live with them -- good, bad or indifferent."
They should do time for this but I expect a slap on the wrist.:rolleyes:
Big-time dentist files suit against Lidle's estate
March 1, 2007
CBS SportsLine.com wire reports
NEW YORK -- A dentist to the rich and famous has filed a $7 million lawsuit against the estate of late New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, claiming his home was destroyed when the ballplayer's small airplane crashed into his apartment building.
Dr. Lawrence Rosenthal says in court papers that after Lidle's Cirrus SR-20 aircraft crashed into the Manhattan building where he lived with his wife and teenage son, they had to vacate their 43rd-floor apartment.
Rosenthal, whose patients include Donald Trump, Bruce Springsteen and Catherine Zeta-Jones, said his apartment sustained "severe damage, including broken windows, smoke damage, loose bricks and extensive other damage" that forced them out.
The plane, with Lidle and flight instructor Tyler Stanger aboard, hit the Upper East Side building on the 30th floor, 13 floors below Rosenthal's apartment, on Oct 11. Lidle, 34, and Stanger, 26, were killed in the crash.
The two had taken a midday flight past the Statue of Liberty and north up the East River. They apparently had trouble when they tried to turn and head south.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated, but its report said it reached no final conclusions about the cause of the accident, nor did the agency's report say who was at the controls when the airplane crashed.
Rosenthal's lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, said Thursday that "everything was destroyed" in his client's home and the family has been renting while waiting to return. He said their home is actually three apartments joined to make one apartment that is worth "several million dollars."
Rosenthal's lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Manhattan state Supreme Court, names Lidle's wife, Melanie Lidle, as the defendant in her capacity as administratrix of her late husband's estate.
A lawyer for her, Robert N. Clarke Jr., issued a statement saying attorneys for the Lidle and Stanger families had filed wrongful-death lawsuits against Cirrus Design Corp., maker of the airplane, in California. He said the lawsuits allege product liability, negligence and other complaints.
A spokeswoman for Cirrus Design didn't immediately return messages left on her office phone and cell phone on Thursday.
Rosenthal was in the news in January, when he sued best-selling dating-book author Ellen Fein for $5 million after she called him a quack on the LyingDentist.com and BadDentist.com websites. She accused him of ruining her mouth.
The lawsuit accused Fein, author of The Rules, of defamation, harassment and extortion.
Fein's lawyer, Ann McGrane, said she planned to file a motion to dismiss Rosenthal's lawsuit, and she said she was sure it would be granted.
AP NEWS
The Associated Press News Service
Copyright 2006-2007, The Associated Press, All Rights Reservedhttp://sportsline.com/mlb/story/10031373
Can you believe this? It was discussed on Sportsnet's Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown. I can't stop laughing at how stupid this guy is. His apartment is 13 floors above the crash site and his apartment was "destroyed". No one on any other floor between the 30th and 43rd is suing, not even the woman whose apartment was destroyed by the plane. But somehow Rosenthal's apartment was destroyed. :rolleyes:
What a total crock, this lawsuit should be thrown out for being stupid.
http://www.lyingdentist.com/ and http://www.baddentist.com/ are very good reads and show Rosenthal for what he is; a greedy bastard with no soul. I can't believe that the suit can even be filed for something so fraudulent. If this suit is allowed to go forward, the legal system will reach a new low.
Like Bob McCown said, I can't wait for the New York media to destroy Rosenthal.
More on the giggling bandits:
Alleged Barbie bandits were strippers, co-worker says
POSTED: 11:59 p.m. EST, March 7, 2007
By Ashley Fantz
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Parents of an alleged teenage bank robbing duo said on national television this week they couldn't comprehend how their daughters could have, as police and surveillance tape suggest, giggled behind fashionable sunglasses as they robbed a Bank of America branch last week.
There also was shock at Shooter Alley, a nude dance club outside Atlanta, where co-workers say Ashley Miller and Heather Johnston, both 19, worked the afternoon shift.
"I would have never thought...ever," said a 26-year-old dancer, "Dream," who says she worked with Miller -- stage name "Adrienne" -- and Johnston -- "Charlie" -- for at least two months.
"Charlie was always smiling, just a sweetheart. She just said she played tennis in high school. We talked about kids, relationships, never nothing about criminal stuff."
"Charlie was just innocent looking. She could make you laugh just by watching her dance. She could just look at you, stick her tongue out; it was funny, being kiddie."
"Dream" said she and Johnston talked often, but she never heard the young women talk about two men who authorities say helped pull the heist off.
Benny Herman Allen III, 22, was the bank teller who accepted the teenagers' demand note, police said, opening his drawer and giving them what investigators said was a sum "significantly more" than $500.
Police: Miller said she was a "drug dealer"
According to arrest warrants, Allen met the young women through a man named Michael Darrell Chastang, 27, who Georgia Department of Corrections records show is a convicted felon with many arrests.
The plan, the warrant states, was to split the money four ways.
By most accounts, the bank robbery went smoothly. The incident caused such little stir that a customer standing behind them later told a reporter that she had no idea the bank had been robbed.
In the two days after the crime, the teenagers went on a shopping spree at a Gucci store in Atlanta and got their hair done, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
On March 2, Chastang, Miller and Johnston led police on a short car chase not far from Six Flags amusement park in Atlanta and were apprehended. According to arrest warrants, police found marijuana in the car and ecstasy pills on Miller.
The warrants also said ecstasy was found on Chastang, but Miller told police, "Those pills are mine and he is just holding them for me." In a later interview, police say Miller told them she was a "drug dealer."
Allen was arrested at a different location. All four are charged with felony theft, said Cobb County Police spokeswoman Cassie Reece.
Johnston, Chastang and Miller also face drug-related charges. Johnston, Chastang, and Allen's attorneys could not be reached late Wednesday.
Johnston is charged with theft and marijuana possession. According to the arrest warrant, she confessed to police her role in the robbery and identified her accomplices.
A mother's anguish
Repeated phone calls by CNN.com to Johnston's family were not returned. Allen has bonded out of the Cobb County Jail.
Chastang, Johnston, and Miller remain there. Miller was not given a bond; she violated probation on an August 2006 DUI conviction, said her attorney, Bruce Harvey.
His client intends to plead not guilty, he said. Her next court appearance is March 23.
"She's a frightened young kid who finds herself in the eyes of a media whirlwind that she never anticipated," Harvey said.
Asked how he will build a defense against his client's admission to police that she is a drug dealer, he replied, "Obviously, not a very sophisticated statement."
The girl's mother, Joy Miller, rejected the allegation that her daughter is involved with drugs. "She is taking the blame for the boy who has the drugs, 'cause she's a sweet girl with a big heart."http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/07/teen.bandits/index.html
Hahaha, this story just keeps getting funnier.
The mom has to wake up and smell the coffee. Her sweet girl is a stripper, drunk driver, and drug dealer. Mom may be right about her daughter taking the blame for dealing drugs but she can't deny that her daughter is a stripper or a drunk driver. Not exactly the sweet little innocent child the mother thinks she is.
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