Here we go again with another group of North Korean soldiers pillaging a Chinese town. This is not the first time this has happened and likely won’t be the last:
Five North Korean soldiers who deserted their posts with weapons engaged in a shootout with Chinese authorities on Thursday after armed robberies in Jilin Province, according to diplomatic sources.
The soldiers entered China through Hyesan city in North Korea on July 23 and committed an armed robbery in Changbai Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province.
As the robbery spree intensified, the Chinese army and police formed a task force to catch the soldiers and a major shoot out ensued in a town inside the prefecture on Thursday.
Two of the soldiers were arrested but many of the Chinese were injured. Two Chinese police officers were rushed to a nearby hospital in a critical condition.
Chinese authorities have launched a manhunt for the three remaining soldiers.
“Authorities have issued a curfew to local residents until they arrest all the culprits,” a diplomatic source said. [Korea Times]
Fortunately no one has been killed yet by these thugs unlike what happened in 2014 when a rampaging North Korean soldier killed four elderly Chinese citizens.
It looks like the US Army has found themselves four more volunteers for the drawdown:
Four soldiers from Fort Carson are in custody after a home invasion.
Police said there was a disturbance involving four suspects, one of whom was armed with a gun, at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the 1100-block of Verde Drive in Colorado Springs.
“The suspect with the gun threatened to shot [sic] the family and was demanding property from the victims,” Colorado Springs police said. “After the victims refused to provide the property the suspects left, and threatened to return.”
Instead, police said, the suspects turned themselves in at around 11:30 p.m. Sunday. Dustin Mincy, Mykal Hall, Aaron Hall, Roman Alred were arrested on suspicion of burglary, felony menacing and child abuse, police said.
The family of four, including two small children, were not injured, police said. [Channel 7 News]
I would not be surprised if there is more to this story considering they turned themselves in right after committing the home invasion.
Via a reader tip comes this horrible story out of Japan where once again the mass killer had a history of mental trouble:
Nineteen residents have been killed in a knife attack at a care centre for people with mental disabilities in the Japanese city of Sagamihara.
Such attacks are extremely rare in Japan – the incident is the worst mass killing in decades.
Police have arrested a man who worked at the centre until February, and who turned himself into police after the attack.
He reportedly said he wanted people with disabilities to “disappear”.
The brutal killings have shocked Japan, one of the safest countries in the world.
The suspect has been named as 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu.
He sent letters to politicians in February in which he threatened to kill hundreds of disabled people during a night shift, Kyodo news agency reports.
“My goal is a world in which the severely disabled can be euthanised, with their guardians’ consent, if they are unable to live at home and be active in society,” Uematsu wrote in a letter to the speaker of the lower house of parliament, obtained by Kyodo.
He was kept in hospital for almost two weeks before being released. [BBC]
You can read more at the link, but along with mental health the other thing that causes these mass killings that few talk about to include the BBC is the glorification in the media that allows these killers to act out their fantasies. I do like how the BBC did find space to throw this line into the article though:
Mass killings are extremely rare in Japan, in part because strict gun control laws means almost no-one has access to a firearm.
How would you like to be the commander for the unit this guy belongs to?:
A U.S. Army sergeant stationed at Fort Bliss wore a military uniform bearing his name while allegedly selling methamphetamine to an undercover federal agent in El Paso earlier this year, court documents state.
Sgt. Derek Calderon, 25, who posted a video of himself with a stack of hundred dollar bills on social media, was arrested in connection with the meth trafficking scheme, according to the documents.
Calderon was indicted in a South Florida federal court on June 30 on one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more and two counts of possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more, according to the indictment. He is facing life in prison on all three charges. [El Paso Times]
You can read more at the link, but my favorite part of the article is that not only did this guy conduct a drug deal in uniform, but then he posted the money he received after the deal on Instagram for everyone to see.
Via a reader tip comes this unusual murder story involving two Korean businessman in California. Was it a suicide or murder, that is what a jury had to decide:
Beong Kwun Cho becomes emotional while testifying at his trial. Cho said Yeon Woo Lee wanted to die but wanted to spare his family of the social stigma and trauma of suicide. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Cho’s two daughters grew up considering Lee an uncle, he said. Their families vacationed together. The two men did business together.
Then a few months ago, Lee asked Cho for a favour he wasn’t sure he could do, even for his closest friend, he told the detective.
Lee’s motel business in Korea was foundering. His marriage was falling apart. Lee told Cho he wanted to die, but didn’t want to burden his family with the trauma and social stigma that comes with suicide, Cho said.
Lee tried to hire people he’d met at nearby casinos to kill him and make it look like a random crime, Cho said, but they demanded payment ahead of time and he didn’t trust them to go through with it. Ultimately, he turned to his best friend.
“He said there is no other way – this is the only way,” he told Trapp.
His friend orchestrated the entire scenario, Cho told police. It was Lee who procured the gun and a box of ammunition. Lee drove around scouting out possible sites, choosing a couple spots near bodies of water because he was superstitious. Lee arranged for them to go to a gun range together for target practice, and took Cho to a Wal-Mart where he bought black knit gloves and size 13 shoes – props to make his death look like a robbery.
Lee then chose the date for the deed, Cho said: his wife’s birthday. It would be his last gift.
After dinner that night, they each drove their cars to the first spot Lee had picked out, between Anaheim Lake and a basin, only to find that there were crews working there late into the night. They drove to a second location nearby, a quiet stretch of Miraloma Avenue.
Lee flattened the tyre, ransacked the glove compartment of his rental car and smoked a final cigarette. He handed Cho the revolver wrapped in a T-shirt before dropping to his knees with his back to his friend, Cho said.
“Keep talking to me so that I won’t know when I’m being shot. And while I’m talking … shoot me in the middle of our conversation,” his friend implored, Cho told the detective. [Sydney Morning Herald]
As it turns out the jury agreed with Cho that this was not murder and convicted him of voluntary manslaughter:
A man who shot his friend of more than three decades in the back of his head in an industrial area of east Anaheim is guilty of voluntary manslaughter, not murder, an Orange County jury found Thursday.
Beong Kwun Cho, 56, admitted to police that he shot his friend, Yeon Woo Lee, and left him abandoned on the side of a road near a basin along Miraloma Avenue. But Cho insisted it was at the request of Lee, who wanted to die but didn’t want to burden his family with the social stigma and trauma associated with suicide. [LA Times]
This just goes to show that sickos can come in any rank if the allegations are true:
Shaw Air Force Base’s former vice commander, who was relieved of duty earlier this year, faces criminal charges, including for child pornography.
Base officials report Col. William Jones was charged with possession of child pornography and obstruction of justice June 29, according to a news release. Jones serves as the Ninth Air Force deputy chief of safety.
He took over as the 20th Fighter Wing vice commander at the base in April 2014 but was relieved of duty in February for loss of confidence, according to The Sumter Item.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled Aug. 8 to “conduct an inquiry into the matter,” the release stated. [Myrtle Beach Online]
The teen had been kicked out of the beauty store when she was caught shoplifting with another girl.
A 13-year-old Missouri girl suspected of shooting and critically wounding a Korean couple in their 70s has surrendered to police.
The teen had shot the parents of the owner of King’s Beauty Supply in Bellefontaine Neighbors on Tuesday after she and another juvenile had been booted from the store earlier in the day for stealing, the Post-Dispatch reported.
When the girls returned to the shop, the couple called police, who found the girls in a nearby parking lot.
One girl was taken into custody on a previous juvenile warrant and the other was released with a warning with the couple’s approval, according to Detective Shawn Applegate.
The couple recovered the stolen items, believed to be hair extensions, and the shoplifting was not reported.
However, the girl who was given the warning returned again to the store and shot the couple, cops said. She came into the store, and “then less than a minute later came running out, swinging in her right hand a revolver as she ran,” a witness told authorities, according to the Post-Dispatch. [New York Daily News]
You can read more at the link, but all the best to the family and friends of the victims.
This photo, taken on July 19, 2016, shows a pistol and bullets that the Busan Police Agency has confiscated from a high-ranking member of a major yakuza group known as Kudo-kai. The member smuggled himself into South Korea in January 2015 before being apprehended by police on July 7. The Kudo-kai crime syndicate is based in Kitakyushu, Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture.(Yonhap)
This is a pretty big bust of street racers in the Seoul area:
Seoul police announced Thursday that they have rounded up 73 people involved in racing their luxury cars on public roads during the wee hours of the night.
From May 2015 to May of this year, police found 73 people who participated in 22-kilometer (13.6-mile) races from the Jangam Station in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, to the Songchu three-way intersection and back.
The racers were grouped into twos and threes by the horsepower of their cars, and as many as 10 to 15 such groups participated in the midnight race from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., according to police.
The participants drove at about 60 kilometers-per-hour until they hit the Sapaesan Tunnel, a 4-kilometer-long four-lane tunnel, where they reached speeds of 200 to 324 kilometers per hour. The speed limit in the tunnel is 100 kilometers per hour.
Some motor service center owners helped racers tweak the electronic control unit of their cars in order to allow extreme speeding. Police said some of them received roughly 3 million won ($2,649) per car.
Among the 73 drivers booked by police, only one was a woman.
All 73 face the charge of violating the Road Traffic Act and five have been arrested for being chief organizers of the races. Six men were found to have raced at least 100 times since May of last year. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
