Charlotte.com: Nation

Tropical Storm Cristobal rumbles off the Carolinas

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:39 EDT

Tropical Storm Cristobal, the first tropical storm to menace the Southeast seaboard this hurricane season, continued to move along the North Carolina coast early Sunday, and was expected to dump several inches in some areas of the drought-stricken state.

At 5 a.m. EDT, the center of the storm was about 60 miles southwest of Cape Lookout, N.C., and about 130 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, N.C. The National Hurricane Center said Cristobal was moving northeast at about 6 mph with maximum sustained winds of about 45 mph and some higher gusts.

"Basically the track is running parallel to the coast," said lead center forecaster Martin Nelson, speaking with The Associated Press by telephone from Miami. "Slow strengthening is forecast for the next day or two."

At the By The Sea Motel in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., out-of-state visitors photographed outer storm bands as Cristobal churned off the coast, said hotel manager Charlie Peterson. Intermittent light rain fell in the afternoon but that wasn't enough to chase them away.

"They've got their cameras set and they think there is going to be lightning over the water," he said.

Bradley Rose, a surf instructor at SandBarz in Carolina Beach, N.C., said surfers took the plunge.

"It looks pretty fun out there," Rose said.

Tropical storm warnings remained in effect from north of Little River Inlet in South Carolina to the North Carolina-Virginia state line.

Flood advisories were posted for coastal counties and Wilmington, N.C., received 2 1/2 inches of rain Saturday, said Stephen Keebler, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service there.

Cristobal's winds were not expected to be a problem, Keebler said.

Forecasters predicted up to 5 inches of rain along the North Carolina coast, with heavier amounts in some areas.

Eastern North Carolina is under a moderate drought while areas along South Carolina's northern coast are considered abnormally dry, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Officials have blamed the drought for a huge wildfire that has charred more than 40,000 acres in eastern North Carolina since it began June 1 with a lightning strike.

Elsewhere Sunday, Hurricane Fausto was expected to weaken far off Mexico's Pacific coast, while Hurricane Bertha, the longest-lived July tropical storm in history, was downgraded to a tropical storm Saturday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said early Sunday that Bertha continued to move northeastward over the north Atlantic.

At 5 a.m. Sunday EDT, the hurricane center reported that Bertha's center was about 670 miles east-northeast of Cape Race Newfoundland, moving northeast at near 30 mph with maximum sustained winds of nearly 70 mph.

Bertha battered Bermuda earlier this week, knocking out electricity to thousands at the Atlantic tourist destination.

As wars lengthen, toll on military families mounts

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:39 EDT

Far from the combat zones, the strains and separations of no-end-in-sight wars are taking an ever-growing toll on military families despite the armed services' earnest efforts to help.

Divorce lawyers see it in the breakup of youthful marriages as long, multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan fuel alienation and mistrust. Domestic violence experts see it in the scuffles that often precede a soldier's departure or sour a briefly joyous homecoming.

Teresa Moss, a counselor at Fort Campbell's Lincoln Elementary School, hears it in the voices of deployed soldiers' children as they meet in groups to share accounts of nightmares, bedwetting and heartache.

"They listen to each other. They hear that they aren't the only ones not able to sleep, having their teachers yell at them," Moss said.

Even for Army spouses with solid marriages, the repeated separations are an ordeal.

"Three deployments in, I still have days when I want to hide under the bed and cry," said Jessica Leonard, who is raising two small children and teaching a "family team building" class to other wives at Fort Campbell. Her husband, Capt. Lance Leonard, is in Iraq.

Those classes are among numerous initiatives to support war-strained families. Yet military officials acknowledge that the vast needs outweigh available resources, and critics complain of persistent shortcomings - a dearth of updated data on domestic violence, short shrift for families of National Guard and Reserve members, inadequate support for spouses and children of wounded and traumatized soldiers.

If the burden sounds heavier than what families bore in the longest wars of the 20th century - World War II and Vietnam - that's because it is, at least in some ways. What makes today's wars distinctive is the deployment pattern - two, three, sometimes four overseas stints of 12 or 15 months. In the past, that kind of schedule was virtually unheard of.

"Its hard to go away, it's hard to come back, and go away and come back again," said Dr. David Benedek, a leading Army psychiatrist. "That is happening on a larger scale than in our previous military endeavors. They're just getting their feet wet with some sort of sense of normalcy, and then they have to go again."

Almost in one breath, military officials praise the resiliency that enables most families to endure and acknowledge candidly that the wars expose them to unprecedented stresses and the risk of long-lasting scars.

"There's nothing that has prepared many of our families for the length of these deployments," said Rene Robichaux, social work programs manager for the U.S. Army Medical Command. "It's hard to communicate to a family member how stressful the environment is, not just the risk of injury or death, but the austere circumstances, the climate, the living conditions."

An array of studies by the Army and outside researchers say that marital strains, risk of child maltreatment and other problems harmful to families worsen as soldiers serve multiple combat tours.

For example, a Pentagon-funded study last year concluded that children in some Army families were markedly more vulnerable to abuse and neglect by their mothers when their fathers were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, the latest survey by Army mental health experts showed that more than 15 percent of married soldiers deployed there were planning a divorce, with the rates for soldiers at the late stages of deployment triple those of recent arrivals.

For the Army, especially, the challenges are staggering as it furnishes the bulk of combat forces. As of last year, more than 55 percent of its soldiers were married, a far higher rate than during the Vietnam war. The nearly 513,000 soldiers on active duty collectively had more than 493,000 children.

Jessica Leonard at Fort Campbell says family support programs there have improved since her husband's first combat tour, helping her feel more self-reliant. Yet she's convinced that domestic violence and divorce are rising at the base, which is home to the 101st Airborne Division.

"Infidelity is huge on both sides - a wife is lonely, she looks for attention and finds it easier to cheat," she said. "It does make even the most sound marriages second-guess."

Among soldiers coming home, whether for two-week breaks that often end with wrenching good-byes or for longer stays, she sees evidence of lower morale and rising depression.

"They come home, and find that problems are still there," she said. "Instead of a refreshing R-and-R, a nice little second honeymoon, it's battle for two weeks."

There have been some horrific incidents shattering families of soldiers back from the wars - a former Army paratrooper from Michigan charged with raping and beating his infant daughter; a sergeant from Hawaii's Army National Guard accused of killing his 14-year-old son as the boy tried to save his pregnant mother from a knife attack by the soldier.

In one of the saddest cases, a recently divorced airman who served with distinction in Iraq chased his ex-wife out of military housing with a pistol in February before killing his two young children and himself at Oklahoma's Tinker Air Force Base. Tech. Sgt. Dustin Thorson's former wife had sought a protection order against him, saying he threatened to kill the children if she filed for divorce.

Officials at Tinker, while confirming that Thorson had been getting mental health care, would not say whether those problems related to his service in Iraq.

His brother, Shane Thorson, a sheriff's deputy from Pasco, Wash., who also served in Iraq, has no doubt Dustin's war experiences contributed to the tragedy.

"He didn't want to go - he was afraid, but he had a job that he'd signed up to do and he went and did it," Shane said. "I do think it led up to everything that happened. ... It opened up a world of death and chaos and uncertainty."

Shane, who is married and has an 8-year-old daughter, is sure the deployments have damaged many marriages.

"My wife and friends, they tell me I'm not the same person before I came back - not as loving," he said. "You really realize how insignificant you are in this world, and life moves on whether you're there or not."

Overall, the Army says its domestic violence rates are no worse than for civilian families. However, critics say there is a lack of comprehensive, updated data that reflects the impact of war-zone deployments and tracks cases involving veterans, reservists and National Guard members.

The Miles Foundation, which provides domestic-violence assistance to military wives, says its caseload has more than quadrupled during the Iraq and Afghan conflicts.

"The tactics learned as part of military training are often used by those who commit domestic violence," said the foundation's executive director, Christine Hansen, citing increased proficiency with weapons and psychological tactics such as sleep deprivation.

Jackie Campbell is a nursing professor at Johns Hopkins who served on a Defense Department task force examining domestic violence. She says the military's data on the problem is based only on officially reported incidents, and should be supplemented with confidential surveys such as some that were conducted before the Iraq war.

"They have no clue what the rate of domestic violence is - they only know what's reported to the system, and that's always lower than the actual rate," Campbell said. "I'm disappointed.... I know the system is stressed to the umpteenth degree. But I do think they need to do the right kind of research so they can keep up with this."

One complication, she said, is the high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder among service members returning from war. She said PTSD raises the risk of domestic violence, yet many soldiers and their spouses don't want to acknowledge PTSD or any domestic crises for fear of derailing the soldier's career.

"They know the power of the military will come down on them," Campbell said. "The women are often reluctant to have that happen."

At Fort Campbell, Family Advocacy Program director Louie Sumner - who's in charge of combatting domestic violence - has encouraged people to report suspected abuse, to the point where many allegations turn out to be unsubstantiated.

But Sumner said his program, though considered one of the Army's best, should do more outreach with the majority of families who live off the huge base, in subdivisions, apartments and trailer parks where many couples' troubles may go undetected.

Sumner is sure that the repeated deployments heighten the risk of family violence. "When the soldier goes overseas three, four times, the fuse is a lot shorter," he said. "They explode quicker, and the victim gets hurt worse."

He marveled that some of the hasty marriages by youthful soldiers survive the rigors of deployment.

"My wife and I have been married 38 years," he said. "I'm not sure we could have stood being apart 30 of the next 42 months at the start of our marriage. That's a long time when you're real young."

The independence that wives develop at home alone leads to friction when a returning husband seeks to restore the old order in household decision-making.

"Somebody who's violent and controlling of his partner before he leaves will spend a lot of time while he's away wondering what she's doing, worrying that he doesn't have that day-to-day control," said Debbie Tucker, who co-chaired the Pentagon's domestic violence task force. "He comes back with the attitude that it needs to be re-established as firmly as possible."

Despite the stresses, a study published in April by Rand Corp. concluded that divorce rate among military families between 2001 and 2005 was no higher than during peacetime a decade earlier. But the study doesn't reflect the third and fourth war zone deployments that have strained many military marriages over the past three years.

Maj. Mike Oeschger gets a closer look at struggling marriages than he'd like in his role as rear detachment commander for the 1st Brigade Combat Team at Fort Campbell. Dealing with family crises while the brigade is in Iraq is a critical part of his job.

"The biggest problems usually revolve around money - the husband may not have given the wife access to funds," he said.

Oeschger, a husband and father who served in Iraq himself, has seen infidelity in multiple forms. Some wives at the base are preyed on by men who know the husbands are overseas; some war-zone soldiers pursue extramarital affairs over the Internet.

"Often the guy comes back, tells his wife, 'I'm not interested in you any more. I think we're done,'" Oeschger said.

He'd rather stay out of his soldiers' personal lives, but that's not always an option.

"There's almost nothing that's private in the Army," he said. "Once it starts to affect performance, I'm involved and want to know every detail. It's miserable stuff ... but it's my job."

Col. Ronald Crews, one of several chaplains called from the reserves to help with family counseling, said long-distance marital crises became so severe for two Fort Campbell soldiers recently that they were sent home from Iraq to handle them.

"Their commander said they wouldn't be of any use until the problems were resolved," Crews said. The soldiers were required to meet with him weekly. One returned to Iraq and the other did not.

For some time, chaplains have been conducting marriage workshops for soldiers back from deployment. Now, says Crews, married soldiers also are being required to attend such workshops before they leave.

"Deployments don't help in strengthening a marriage, but they do not have to kill marriages," Crews said. "That's a choice a couple has to make."

Medical personnel, meanwhile, have been directed to be more aggressive in screening spouses of deployed soldiers for depression. More than 1,000 "family readiness support assistants" are being added, as are dozens of marriage and family therapists. A respite child care program is expanding to provide more relief to stressed mothers.

However, for families living off-base, there are often far fewer support programs readily available.

Advocacy groups also say more must be done for families of wounded and traumatized soldiers who leave the service. At a recent congressional hearing, Barbara Cohoon of the National Military Families Association suggested the Veterans Administration is not meeting these needs, and said the anguish of wounded soldiers' children "is often overlooked and underestimated."

Stacy Bannerman, an anti-war activist whose husband served with the Washington State National Guard in Iraq, says many Guard members and reservists don't get adequate treatment when - like her husband - they are diagnosed with PTSD.

"The families are scattered everywhere, and we don't have the support networks that active duty does," Bannerman said. "There's very little attention paid to reintegration - bammo, you suddenly go back to your civilian life. I haven't spoken to anyone who hasn't experienced some degree of stress on a marriage."

Her own marriage nearly became one of the casualties. She and her husband, Lorin, were separated for more than a year, but now - after finding a counselor outside the military - are working at reconciliation even as Lorin faces a second deployment to Iraq in August.

"It's been a long, arduous process," said Bannerman, who has moved to Oregon to work at an animal sanctuary which is seeking to involve traumatized veterans in its programs.

Many returning soldiers experience some form of depression, lapsing into substance abuse, sleeping fitfully, withdrawing from family activities. Children may feel their father is too distant, or unsettlingly changed.

"The kids may not really recognize their parent," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general. "Their expectations build up, and then expectations aren't met."

The Army would like to beef up psychiatric care for children, Ritchie said, but is hampered by a national shortage of child psychiatrists.

"The children of these families are suffering damage emotionally and a lot of them aren't getting any help," said Lee Rosen, whose North Carolina law firm handles many military divorces. "We're going to have fallout from this for a long time."

Rosen says the breaking point for many couples often arrives with a second or third deployment.

"To go off for one deployment for a year is difficult, but when that soldier comes back, people are able to adjust, to heal," he said. "When you go a second time, and are threatened with the possibility of a third, it's just devastating."

Yet many marriages don't survive even a first deployment.

While 1st Lt. Mike Robison was serving in Iraq in 2003-04, his wife, Candance, depicted him as a "good, brave man" in a letter she wrote to President Bush. But the marriage fell apart after Robison's return home to Texas. Candance said they argued over her role managing the household and how he treated her 10-year daughter from a previous relationship.

"It absolutely changed him," Candance said of his deployment. "I still struggle every day - that year has affected every single aspect of my life."

Andrew Brown, an Army Reserve sergeant from Pennsylvania, says his marriage failed to survive the effects of his Iraq deployment in 2004-05. Returning home, he was diagnosed with PTSD and deduced that his wife, lonely in his absence, had been having an affair.

"With the mental state I was in, I was relying on her to provide support, and she wasn't ready to do that," Brown said.

"What I went through is not an isolated incident," he added. "Guys came back - they'd shut down, turn to the bottle, have lots of fights with their spouses."

At their small ranch house near Fort Campbell, Staff Sgt. Brian Powell and his wife, Krystal, expressed determination to keep their marriage on track as they raise two young sons and as Brian faces a second deployment - this time to Afghanistan - starting in December.

Brian was in Iraq when his eldest son, Jamison, was born in 2006. He got home on a brief leave three days after the birth.

"It was just two weeks," Brian said. "You don't want to get attached because you know you have to go back."

"It's a really hard transition, coming back from blood, death, corruption to a wife and baby. You feel you don't know each other," Krystal added. "But if you have faith, you get through it."

Teen charged in death of Ohio woman shot on porch

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:09 EDT

Cleveland authorities have charged a 17-year-old in the fatal shooting of a woman who was gunned down as she grieved the cancer death of her mother while sitting on her front porch.

Authorities say Marcus Hardwick was charged Saturday with aggravated murder. He was being held at a juvenile detention center. Officials won't say if he has an attorney.

Thirty-one-year-old Ebony Jefferson was playing cards at her aunt's house Tuesday night when someone walked up and threatened them.

Family members told him to leave. Police said he started to walk away, then turned and fired.

Jefferson later died at a hospital. Her mother, 55-year-old Lorena Jefferson, died July 13 from breast cancer.

A funeral for both women drew hundreds of mourners Saturday.

Search team finds no sign of Steve Fossett

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:54 EDT

A team of elite athletes and expert mountaineers has ended a weeklong hunt for Steve Fossett, finding no sign of the missing adventurer or his plane but eliminating miles of rugged terrain from areas that still must be searched.

The 10 searchers, headed by Canadian geologist and adventure racer Simon Donato, 31, packed up their gear on Saturday after taking a day to explore a steep canyon in Nevada's Wassuk Range, dominated by 11,239-foot-high Mount Grant. That followed six days of hiking in the Sweetwater Mountains and Bodie Hills to the west, on the state's border with California.

"We didn't find what we were looking for, but we covered a lot of land that can basically be crossed off the (search) map now," team member Greg Francek said in a telephone interview. "We were looking for wreckage probably the size of one or two shopping carts - and it's hard describe the huge scale of the wild, tough country we were in. It's really something."

For their volunteer efforts, the team members got more than blisters, scratches from thick brush, and run-ins with a bear, bobcat, rattlesnake and scorpion. They also won praise from local authorities whose lean budgets prevent them from the sort of extensive searching that followed Fossett's disappearance last September.

"We appreciate any help from anyone who has a desire to go out," said Lyon County, Nev., Undersheriff Joe Sanford. "I truly believe this thing will come to a close through an outdoorsman."

"We simply don't have the resources or the funding to continue to go out and look unless we have a solid lead. Up to that point, we are truly relying on individuals," Sanford added. "It's great that they have the wherewithal and the interest to keep this thing alive."

There were some highs during the week, such as finding a small aluminum door that appeared to have come from a plane. But team member Greg Francek said a close look at the door showed that it probably came from a snowcat, an enclosed vehicle that moves on tracks through snow.

Francek said the door had an external handle and heavy hinges more likely to be seen on a snowcat than on a plane. He added the door, even if from a plane, was too old to have come from the fabric and aluminum-frame plane Fossett was flying when he disappeared last September.

While one private search for multimillionaire Fossett is over, others are continuing or are in the planning stages.

Mike Larson, 49, of Carson City, said Friday that he and search partner Kelly Stephenson have been riding ATVs and hiking on foot southwest of Hawthorne for several months on days off from work in search of Fossett.

In late August, Robert Hyman, a Washington, D.C., investor and alpinist, plans to bring in a team of up to 15 climbers, mountain guides and others with backcountry expertise to search in the Wassuks, near Hawthorne. When Fossett took off Sept. 3 from a remote Nevada ranch on what was supposed to be a short pleasure flight, he headed toward Lucky Boy Pass in the Wassuks.

The search areas are rugged and it has on occasion taken decades to find missing people whose planes crashed in the area. Some have never been found.

Fossett gained worldwide fame for his scores of attempts and successes in setting records in high-tech balloons, gliders, jets and boats. In 2002, he became the first person to circle the world solo in a balloon. He was declared legally dead in February.

Stunt pilot joins National Aviation Hall of Fame

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:49 EDT

Stunt pilot Sean Tucker, who has thrilled air show audiences with daredevil moves in more than 1,000 performances, said he got his start by trying to face his flying fears.

As a young pilot in the 1970s, Tucker had an instructor get him into a beat-up, single-engine, fabric-skinned trainer, take him up in the sky over San Jose, Calif., and demonstrate a roll.

"I'll never forget the dust and dirt that came off of the floorboards - and we recovered," Tucker said. "I fell in love with aerobatics. That's when my journey began."

Tucker, 56, of Monterey, Calif., was among pilots and aviation pioneers being inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame on Saturday.

"When I got done flying today upside down, 10 feet from the ground and 250 mph, I thought 'I'm going to make it. I'm going to be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame,'" he said.

The other enshrinees include Herbert Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines Co.; naval aviation pioneer William Moffett; and Col. Clarence "Bud" Anderson, a military pilot who flew in both World War II and the Vietnam War.

"The Aviation Hall of Fame enshrines so many of my personal heroes and heroines that it sends chills down my spine to be among them," Kelleher, who is not a pilot, told a crowded audience at the Dayton Convention Center.

Kelleher is chairman emeritus of Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, which began service in 1971 with three airplanes. Today, Southwest operates more than 530 airplanes performing about 3,400 flights a day.

Anderson became a triple ace while flying P-51 Mustangs over Europe in World War II. He later flew F-105 Thunderchiefs on bombing runs over North Vietnam.

Moffett received the Medal of Honor for his action in support of the landing at Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914 while commanding the cruiser Chester. During World War I, he took command of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station and established an aviation training program.

Moffett died April 4, 1933, when the airship Akron went down off the coast of New Jersey.

Tucker said he is honored to be inducted into the hall with the likes of the Wright brothers and astronaut Neil Armstrong and 193 other previous inductees.

"Those are some big footsteps and some big shoes, and I'm really humbled. I've never done anything great like these guys," Tucker said. "I'm a journeyman 20th century barnstormer."

Woman in Pa. baby mystery partially eviscerated

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:44 EDT

Investigators hoped to confirm Sunday the identity of a woman whose body was found bound with duct tape with her uterus cut open in the apartment of another woman who falsely claimed a newborn baby was her own.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office has tentatively identified the victim as Kia Johnson, an investigator at the office who declined to give her name said Saturday night. Officials hoped to confirm the identity Sunday using dental records.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported earlier Saturday that Johnson's family had spoken to police. The paper said she was 18 years old and due to deliver July 30.

Allegheny County Police Assistant Superintendent James Morton said investigators were also trying to verify that the dead woman was the mother of a baby brought by Andrea Curry-Demus to West Penn Hospital on Thursday night.

"Circumstances would dictate that it has to be. There can't be too many cases similar to this at the same time," Allegheny County Medical Examiner Dr. Karl Williams said.

The body was found Friday after reporters called authorities about a foul odor coming from inside Curry-Demus' Wilkinsburg apartment. Police had been at the building Thursday night, but did not go into that apartment, Wilkinsburg Police Chief Ophelia Coleman said. Instead, a relative of Curry-Demus led them to another apartment, she said.

The woman appeared to have been dead for about two days, Williams said. Her hands and feet were bound with duct tape, and her face was covered with a plastic material that had also been secured with duct tape.

"We found a lot of evidence of a struggle having occurred," Williams said. He said there was evidence of drugs at the scene and investigators will look for their presence in the victim's system.

The woman had been pregnant and her body showed "evidence that there had been a partial evisceration - meaning her abdomen had been opened with a sharp weapon, the uterus had been opened," Williams said. Detectives found placenta at the scene.

The cause of death had not been determined, Williams said.

The baby was "apparently doing well" although there had been problems initially with a low heart rate and low temperature associated with blood loss, Williams said. The hospital would not release any information about the child.

According to police, Curry-Demus showed up at the hospital Thursday with a newborn that still had the umbilical cord attached. Tests later proved that she was not the mother.

Curry-Demus then told police she miscarried in June and didn't want to upset her own mother by telling her she had lost the baby. She said she befriended a pregnant woman and discussed buying her child when it was born, according to the criminal complaint. Curry-Demus told police she paid a woman named Tina $1,000 for the baby.

Curry-Demus was charged with child endangerment and dealing in infant children. She has been jailed in lieu of $10,000 bond and a psychiatric exam.

Morton said further charges in the case would be filed after the body is identified.

Jail officials declined to say if Curry-Demus had an attorney, and Morton said he didn't know. An attorney who once represented her did not immediately respond to a phone message left Saturday.

Ivee Blunt, a neighbor who attended a shower for Curry-Demus, said she wanted her in the delivery room when she delivered. Blunt said Curry-Demus told her on Sunday night that she expected to have the baby the next day, but on Monday said she wasn't ready to give birth.

In 1990, Curry-Demus, then known as Andrea Curry, was accused of stabbing a Wilkinsburg woman in an alleged plot to steal the woman's infant. A day after the stabbing, Curry-Demus snatched a 3-week-old baby girl from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. The baby was found unharmed with Curry-Demus at her home the next day.

Curry-Demus pleaded guilty in 1991 to various charges stemming from both incidents and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, according to court records. She was paroled in August 1998 and began serving a 10-year probation term.

Rapper DMX arrested at Phoenix mall

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:39 EDT

Rapper DMX was arrested at a Phoenix mall Saturday on suspicion that he gave a gave a false name and Social Security number to a hospital to get out of paying for medical expenses.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said that when DMX, whose real name is Earl Simmons, went to Scottsdale's Mayo Clinic in April, he used the name "Troy Jones" and failed to pay a $7,500 bill.

DMX's Scottsdale attorney, Cameron Morgan, declined to comment.

Arpaio said his office began investigating the charge following an animal neglect investigation last year at the 37-year-old rapper's north Phoenix home. DMX was arrested in that case on felony drug possession and misdemeanor animal cruelty charges after authorities seized 12 pit bull dogs and dug up the remains of three others.

The musician/actor has had other recent run-ins with the law, including an arrest at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport earlier this month on outstanding warrants after he failed to appear in court.

The week before, he was arrested in Miami on charges of attempting to purchase cocaine and marijuana.

"He's back in jail again," Arpaio said. "I don't know why judges keep letting this guy out. Every time he goes in there, he gets out on bond.

"I'm hoping this is the one time he's going to pay the penalty for his offense," he added.

Arpaio said the bond had not been set in the recent arrest.

If DMX remains jailed, the sheriff said he would be isolated from the rest of the inmates for his own safety. "They may not like his music," he said.

Search continues for missing Fort Bliss soldier

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:29 EDT

A missing Fort Bliss soldier sent a text message about leaving her husband two days before she vanished, her sister said Saturday.

"Hey sis he's gone so when my check comes I'm going to buy a futon," Army Pfc. Jeneesa Lewis wrote in the text message Wednesday, said her sister, Tammy Skelton. "Yeah, he's gone. Had police go with me yesterday, it's all clear."

Authorities say that by Friday morning, Clinton W. Lewis had come back and taken off with his wife. Now her family is worried about the 29-year-old air defense artillery soldier and mother of three children.

Army officials reported Jeneesa Lewis missing Friday morning after she didn't show up at work and no one appeared to be in her locked apartment. When El Paso police arrived and went into the apartment the couple had shared, the place was a mess and there was blood, Skelton said.

"The only thing I know ... is my sister is neat as a pin, nothing is ever out of place," Skelton, 26, told The Associated Press from her home in Rogersville, Tenn. "The place was a complete wreck and they found blood."

El Paso police officer Chris Mears said Friday that officers found "evidence of foul play" inside the apartment but declined to give specific details.

Mears said Jeneesa Lewis is considered missing and endangered. He said police believe she may be with Clinton Lewis, who has not been charged and is also missing.

Skelton said she last heard from her sister in a text message sent at 4:56 p.m. Thursday. The two had been chatting about the soldier's plans to have the phone company come to set up a new line at the apartment.

Jeneesa and Clinton Lewis married two years ago, Skelton said. She described their relationship as tumultuous and said Jeneesa joined the Army "to make a life for her and her children without having to depend on anyone."

"She wanted to make a life with them. She wanted to stand on her own two feet," Skelton said.

Jeneesa Lewis' three children - 4-year-old Clinton Jr., 7-year-old Gabrielle Buttry, and 9-year-old Toni Marie Buttry - have been living with her mother in Tennessee since she joined the Army last year.

Fort Bliss was her first duty assignment and she planned to move the children to Texas once she got on-post housing, Skelton said.

"She had looked up the different schools and the different programs for the children," Skelton said. "She was excited about it. She was absolutely thrilled."

As the investigation continued Saturday, police have offered few new details. Skelton said she hopes her sister "has her wits about her."

Jeneesa Lewis is the fourth female service member gone missing in recent months.

A young Marine and two Army soldiers who vanished in North Carolina were later found dead.

Small plane crashes in northeast Texas; 3 killed

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:29 EDT

A single-engine plane crashed shortly after takeoff Saturday, killing all three people aboard and sparking a fire that burned two rural acres, authorities said.

It was not immediately known what caused the accident, which left the plane charred to nearly a skeleton in the middle of a scorched field about 40 miles southeast of Dallas.

No one else besides the three killed were on board, Kaufman County Sheriff's spokesman Bryan Francis said. Names of the victims were not immediately released.

Shelley Bradley told The Dallas Morning News that she was standing near the small private grass airstrip when the plane dipped its wings and lost airspeed.

"He took off and the wind changed," Bradley said. "He should have banked to the right but he banked to the left. He was flapping his wings as if he was saying goodbye, but then we realized he was in trouble."

Firefighters from four nearby departments responded to the crash late Saturday afternoon, Francis said. The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating.

Lawsuit exposes growing rift among King children

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:44 EDT

For years, they were the picture of solidarity: the four children of Martin Luther King Jr. carrying on the legacy of the civil rights icon.

But a lawsuit over how their father's estate is being run has left a rift in one of the world's most famous families. And it may now be up to a judge to get the King children in the same room.

"Strong parents have strong children, and strong children have strong opinions, and that usually leads to conflicts that they have difficulty reconciling," said Andrew Young, the former Congressman and Atlanta mayor who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement and remains close to the family.

The lawsuit filed July 10 claims that Dexter King, administrator of his father's estate, has failed to provide his surviving siblings with essential documents, including financial records and contracts.

It claims that he and the estate "converted substantial funds from the estate's financial account ... for their own use" on June 20 without notifying his sister and brother. It is not about money, but instead is a last-resort effort to talk to Dexter King about the family's affairs, even if it's through a judge, Young said.

"It's simply a matter of asking for help," he said. "That's consistent with the civil rights movement. Everything we did, we went to judges to reconcile the differences. I don't think there's any animosity or hostility involved in it."

Bernice and Martin Luther King III both declined to be interviewed for this story, but issued a statement Saturday through attorney Jock Smith.

"We love our brother, yet we cannot ignore our responsibility to ensure that the corporation we are all shareholders and directors of, is properly managed," the statement said.

"Our right to obtain corporate documents that we have personally requested in the past few years, and more recently in the lawsuit that we have filed, have been continuously ignored," it added. "Duty obligates us to preserve and protect the corporation and the legacy from arbitrary, singular, and seemingly self-serving decision-making."

Dexter King did not respond to an interview request placed through The King Center.

In their joint statement, his siblings also expressed their disapproval of Dexter King's public comments regarding the case.

"We invite our brother to refrain from using the media to air his grievances with the lawsuit," the statement added. "Instead of avoiding being served, we hope that he will respond to the lawsuit, to the court, and to us with answers."

A dispute involving that center in 2005 showed some chinks in the King children's armor. Bernice and Martin Luther King III took sides against the others when they opposed the sale of the center.

They argued the deal would compromise the center's independent voice. Their mother, Coretta Scott King, founded the center shortly after her husband's death in 1968, and it needed more than $11 million in repairs.

Before the issue could be resolved, Coretta Scott King died in January 2006 of complications from a stroke and ovarian cancer at age 78. As her children worked to get her affairs in order, Martin Luther King III said the siblings were forced to talk more.

"In the past, there could be times when we didn't talk, but now, that can't be the case," he said in a December 2006 interview with The Associated Press. "We have never been at odds, per se. We have disagreed on issues."

In the year after their mother's death, the eldest, Yolanda, held the family together. Then she died in May 2007 from a heart attack at age 52 in Malibu, Calif., where she and Dexter lived and were pursuing entertainment careers.

Dexter has since drifted further from his older siblings. He was conspicuously absent from the King holiday celebration in January and the 40th anniversary of his father's assassination in April.

The split is difficult for all three grieving siblings, said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, another King lieutenant and family friend. He said they had their differences even when their mother was alive.

"They talk; they just don't communicate," Lowery said. Yolanda King often served as a bridge between the other three, he said. "That bridge is no longer there."

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