4 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(06/23/09 1:49pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>WASHINGTON – The subway train that plowed into another, killing nine people in the nation’s capital, was part of an aging fleet that federal officials had sought to phase out because of safety concerns, an investigator said Tuesday.But the Metrorail transit system kept the old trains kept running despite warnings in 2006, said Debbie Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board.The rush-hour crash sent more than 70 people to hospitals. The three-decades-old Metro system, the pride of the District of Colombia tourism industry, has shuttled tourists and commuters from Washington to Maryland and Virginia suburbs.Mayor Adrian Fenty announced Tuesday that seven had died in the crash. Earlier, the District of Columbia Fire Department Web site announced that three bodies had been found in addition to the six fatalities reported Monday.Fenty said two victims were hospitalized in critical condition.Hersman said investigators expect to recover recorders from the train that was struck. The recorders could provide valuable information that might help determine why the crash occurred.The train that triggered the collision was part of an old fleet that was not equipped with the devices, Hersman said.She told The Associated Press that the NTSB had warned of safety problems and recommended the old fleet be phased out or retrofitted to make it better withstand a crash. Neither was done, she said, which the NTSB considered “unacceptable.”The crash was the worst in the history of Metrorail.Maya Maroto recalled hearing the sound of “metal on metal” as the train she was riding rear-ended another one.“We were going full speed — I didn’t hear any breaking. Everything was just going normally. Then there was a very loud impact. We all fell out of our seats. Then the train filled up with smoke. I was coughing,” the 31-year-old said.Maroto, of Burtonsville, Md., said there was confusion after the impact because no announcements were immediately made. She said some passengers wanted to climb out, but others were afraid of being electrocuted by a rail.Tijuana Cox, 21, was in the train that was hit. She had her sprained arm in a sling Tuesday.“Everybody just went forward and came back,” with people’s knees hitting the seats in front of them, said Cox, of Lanham, Md.The only other fatal crash in the Metro subway system occurred Jan. 13, 1982, when three people died as a result of a derailment. That was a day of disaster in the capital: Shortly before the subway crash, an Air Florida plane slammed into the 14th Street Bridge immediately after takeoff from Washington National Airport. The plane crash, during a severe snowstorm, killed 78 people.In January 2007, a subway train derailed in downtown Washington, sending 20 people to the hospital and prompting the rescue of 60 others from the tunnel. In November 2006, two Metro track workers were struck and killed by an out-of-service train. An investigation found that the train operator failed to follow safety procedures. Another Metro worker was struck and killed in May 2006.
(12/08/03 5:18am)
BALTIMORE -- Federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna traveled in recent months to the area of Pennsylvania where his body was found, and authorities were not immediately aware of any work-related business that would have taken him to the region, The Associated Press learned Sunday.\nInvestigators also were looking into a credit card Luna held without his wife's knowledge and into postings of messages by someone who went by the name of Jonathan Luna in Web sites where people advertise for female sex partners, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.\nBaltimore FBI spokesman Larry Foust said Sunday that investigators were still trying to determine a motive for Luna's killing. His body was found Thursday, stabbed 36 times and left face down in a creek.\n"This is a full-court press, but we just don't know. There's a lot of information and a lot of misinformation out there," Foust said. "We have people working nonstop, overturning every stone, going where the facts lead them."\nWhile a federal law enforcement source told the AP that investigators had found nothing to indicate the killing was related to Luna's work, Luna's father and friends are convinced his death was tied to his career.\nLuna's father, Paul D. Luna, said authorities are asking questions about his son's personal life, including his finances, relationships and trips he made in the last month.\nPaul Luna, 83, said he had urged his son to return to private practice instead of prosecuting drug dealers and violent criminals. The assistant U.S. attorney had just worked out plea deals in one drug case late Wednesday.\n"I was warning him many times," Paul Luna told the AP on Sunday. "I'm very positive that this is for his work. I even told that to the FBI."\nHe said two FBI agents interviewed him for about three hours Saturday.\nThe same day, investigators were in Lancaster County, Pa., showing hotel owners pictures of the slain 38-year-old prosecutor. Hotel owners and managers said they were asked to review their guest registers for Wednesday and Thursday nights and asked if they had video security cameras.\nPennsylvania State Police also contacted their counterparts in Delaware on Saturday about the case, said Lt. Joe Aviola, a Delaware State Police spokesman. He did not have any details about what they were looking for in Delaware.\nPaul Luna said he told the FBI agents about a planned trip to New York after Thanksgiving, which was the last time he saw his son.\n"I reminded him about taking me to New York. He says, 'Not this week, Dad. I'm sorry, because I have a case. I have to go to Pennsylvania,'" he recalled his son saying. Paul Luna said he didn't know what the case or trip was related to and that his son rarely told him details about his work.\nHe said investigators also asked him whether his son had any financial dealings with anyone and whether he was having financial problems.\n"I don't think he was having problems because he was planning to go to the Philippines with me next month," said the father, who is from that country. "So if he has problems, why should he do that?"\nFriends also said money was never a problem for Luna. Though he was a successful prosecutor and his wife is an obstetrician, they own modest family sedans.\nThey bought their Elkridge townhouse for $174,900 in 2000. They talked later about buying a bigger home but decided against it because they would rather spend the extra money on family vacations, said neighbor Dana Stango.\nPaul Luna said he gave investigators names of his son's friends in New York, where his son had been an assistant district attorney in the late 1990s.\nHe also said he was asked about relationships his son may have had but said he had no knowledge of any possible extramarital affair. His son appeared to be happily married to his wife, Angela, he said.\n"It looked like they were very much in love with each other," Paul Luna said. He said he saw the couple and their two young sons frequently.\nTwo of Luna's friends in New York also believe his death is connected to his job, though they said he never expressed fear of the people he was prosecuting.\n"Those that he was putting away were more likely than personal acquaintances, I think, to take that kind of action," said Merlin Bass, a New York tax attorney who roomed with Luna during law school and remained close to him.\nReggie Shuford, another former University of North Carolina law school friend, said he was shocked when he heard investigators were probing Luna's personal life.\n"It's absolutely amazing to me," Shuford said. "I cannot fathom that."\nPaul Luna said he had not heard from investigators on Sunday, but planned to call them today to find out how much closer they were getting to "nail down this criminal who killed my son."\n"He killed my son, but he also killed me," he said.
(12/05/03 6:44am)
BALTIMORE -- A federal prosecutor was found stabbed to death in a Pennsylvania creek Thursday after failing to show up at the trial of a rapper and another man accused of dealing heroin.\nAssistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan P. Luna, 38, was discovered face-down in the water behind the parking lot of a well-drilling company in Lancaster County, Pa., about 70 miles from Baltimore, police said. A car was near the body, police said.\n"Let there be no doubt. Let there be no doubt that everyone in law enforcement, local police, state police, the United States Marshals Service, ATF, FBI, are united," U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio said. "We will find out who did this and we are dedicated to bringing the person responsible for this tragedy to justice."\nLuna was prosecuting Baltimore rapper Deon Lionnel Smith, 32, and Walter Oriley Poindexter, 28, who were accused of dealing heroin and running a violent drug ring from their Stash House Records studio. Smith recorded under the name Papi Jenkinz.\nAuthorities did not say whether the two men are under suspicion in the slaying. They were behind bars at the time.\nLuna and the defense attorneys negotiated through the afternoon Wednesday and reached a plea bargain on the drug charges at the end of the day, said U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. The men entered their guilty pleas around noon Thursday.\nSmith pleaded guilty to distribution of heroin and possession of a weapon for the purposes of drug trafficking. Poindexter pleaded guilty to distribution of heroin to a government witness.\nLuna got a phone call at his home Wednesday night and left the house about midnight, said a federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity. His wife reported him missing, and the FBI later began looking for him.\nLuna's body was found around daybreak not far from an exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The judge said Luna had been stabbed and shot, but the police report only mentioned stab wounds.\nLuna was married and had two children. He grew up in New York City, attended Fordham University and went on to law school at the University of North Carolina.\nHe was an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission from 1994 until 1997. He then worked as a prosecutor in Brooklyn before coming to Baltimore.\nLuna, who was black, was a champion of the disadvantaged, often writing letters to the editor on behalf of minorities and the poor.\nIn 1991, he wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times, saying he was "offended" at the title of a recent series of articles on the Mott Haven section of the south Bronx where he grew up. The series was titled "Life at the Bottom."\nLuna wrote that there were people in the neighborhood like his parents who were "struggling every day to make a life for themselves and their families in Mott Haven. My dad struggled in the restaurant business, while my mom stayed at home to raise my brother and me."\nQuarles described Luna as a "wonderful young man, responsible, charming and highly intelligent. He had genuine trial skills as a lawyer, and juries loved him."\nAttorney General John Ashcroft called it a "tragic death."\n"I express our deepest condolences to Jonathan's family, colleagues and friends," Ashcroft said. "We share his family's grief and will provide any support and assistance to help them through this difficult time."\nSmith's attorney, Kenneth Ravenell, called Luna a "a good friend."\n"I was kind of his mentor in many ways," Ravenell said. "He'd call me often and discuss things outside of what we did on cases."\nDuring opening statements in the trial, Ravenell urged jurors to separate what they have heard about rap music from the trial.\n"I suspect that what a lot of you know about rap music is what you hear on the radio or see on the TV, and a lot of that's not good," he said. "But Mr. Smith isn't on trial for being part of the rap industry."\nHe said that as Smith tried to build a legitimate career in the music business, he made the mistake of failing to cut his ties with criminal associates from his past.\nThe charges against Smith carry up to 25 years in prison, and those against Poindexter carry up to 60 years.\nLuna had also prosecuted cases against a man who videotaped a neighbor's child as she slept in her home and against a man who plotted to burn down a home to force six Mexican men out of a neighborhood. Luna also tried three men involved in a violent crack distribution network in Baltimore. All the defendants entered guilty pleas.\nOther federal prosecutors have been targets of violence in the past.\nAssistant U.S. Attorney Thomas C. Wales was shot to death in Seattle three years ago in an unsolved murder. The search for the killer has focused on at least one of the cases he had prosecuted.\nFederal prosecutor Larry Barcella, now in private practice, was the target of a thwarted murder-for-hire scheme by ex-CIA agent Ed Wilson, whom Barcella had helped put behind bars for selling weapons and explosives to Libya. Barcella lured Wilson out of hiding and into federal custody in 1982.
(11/05/02 6:04am)
BALTIMORE -- Authorities are investigating whether the suspects in the Washington-area sniper attacks may have shot and wounded two people a month earlier in the town where the ex-wife of one suspect lives.\nIn one of the shootings, Paul LaRuffa was shot six times at close range after closing his restaurant on Sept. 5. Prince George's County police Capt. Andy Ellis said Sunday that the department is looking into whether the shooting in the town of Clinton is related to the sniper case.\nIn the other shooting, a liquor store clerk was shot and robbed as he locked the Clinton store where he works on Sept. 15, said police Cpl. Diane Richardson.\nClinton, southeast of Baltimore, is the home of John Allen Muhammad's ex-wife Mildred.\nA Sony laptop computer was stolen from LaRuffa, along with more than $3,000 in receipts. A Sony laptop was found in Muhammad's car when he and John Lee Malvo were arrested Oct. 24 at a rest stop.\nLaRuffa, 55, said Sunday he wanted to know if the laptop was his.\n"I wish somebody would tell me 'yes, it's yours, no, it's not yours,' and that's what's frustrating about it," LaRuffa said.\nHe said he was shot with a .22-caliber weapon. Muhammad and Malvo have also been charged in a Montgomery, Ala., liquor store shooting. A .22-caliber handgun was found near the spot where a clerk was killed and another person was wounded.\n"I don't know if it's linked," LaRuffa said. "Yes, there are coincidences. I don't know."\nIn the Sept. 15 shooting, an attacker fired several shots from a small-caliber gun, striking the unidentified victim once in the abdomen, Richardson said. The man then fled with the man's wallet. The victim has recovered.\nRichardson said the task force was investigating the Sept. 15 case because of the proximity to the earlier restaurant shooting and because Clinton is the home of Muhammad's ex-wife. She did not know if ballistic evidence linked the incident to any of the other crimes.\nMuhammad, 41, and Malvo, 17, also face state and federal counts in the shootings in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C, that left 10 people dead.\nThose shootings involved a single gunshot fired from a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle.\nThe suspects also have been charged in the shooting of a woman in Louisiana.\nOn Friday, Montgomery County police linked a Sept. 14 shooting in front of a beer and wine store in Silver Spring to the sniper suspects. The store clerk, 22-year-old Rupinder Oberoi, survived.\nA court hearing was scheduled Monday to determine whether Malvo should be detained on federal juvenile charges related to the sniper attacks.\nLast week, a federal judge refused to allow open access to the hearing, saying public interest in the shootings does not outweigh Malvo's right to be shielded from scrutiny as a juvenile.