Hayley Peterson

Infant mortality rates drop in Virginia

Virginia's infant mortality rate has dropped to historic lows, but it's still worse than the national average. Gov. Tim Kaine said Tuesday that the state's 2008 rate dropped to 6.7 deaths per 1,000 live births, down from 7.7 the year before. That brings the state much closer to the national average, which the CIA World Factbook projects will be 6.26 in 2009. But Virginia still lags nearly 30 states with lower rates. "We still have a long way to go," said Phil Giaramita, spokesman for Virginia's health commissioner. "In Virginia last year, more babies died in their first year of life -- over 800 infants -- than kids under 18 that died from homicide, suicide" or other related...

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New iPhone app gives commuters a crystal ball

Makers of an iPhone traffic application are dodging text-weary lawmakers by refusing user input and simply taking it instead. INRIX Traffic gathers traffic information from a network of more than one million GPS units nationwide to provide real-time maps alerting drivers of accidents, roadblocks, detours and most importantly, the current cruising speeds on nearby roads. iPhone users become part of that network of GPS informants when they download the free app and log on, said INRIX President and Chief Executive Bryan Mistele. "The application itself sends [INRIX] data -- it takes your speed anonymously," Mistele said. "That way, there is no texting or data entry required....

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Web site invigorates search for Wone's killer

On Aug. 2, 2006, emergency medical personnel responding to a 911 call found Robert Wone lying peacefully on a sofa bed in his friend's town home on the 1500 block of Swann Street Northwest. But when officers stepped closer, they saw three stab wounds to Wone's chest and a dribble of blood on the crisply folded, yet-unturned sheets underneath him. On a nearby table sat a 5-inch knife colored with blood. The three housemates, all dressed in white bathrobes when the paramedics arrived, told police they suspected an intruder had murdered their guest. Three years later, D.C. police have charged the Swann Street housemates with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and tampering with a crime...

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Banita Jacks found guilty of killing her four daughters

A D.C. Superior Court judge on Wednesday convicted Banita Jacks of killing all four of her daughters, saying she secluded, starved and abused the girls before she murdered them and lived with their bodies for several months. Judge Frederick H. Weisberg concluded that Jacks strangled her three youngest girls and killed her oldest, Brittany, by torture and maltreatment. “It was a very lonely assignment and certainly the most challenging and difficult as I’ve had in almost 32 years as a judge,” Weisberg said before delivering his verdict. Weisberg found Jacks guilty on 11 counts, including four counts of cruelty to children, four counts of felony murder and three counts...

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Banita Jacks murder case goes to the judge

A judge is considering whether Banita Jacks murdered her four daughters, after closing arguments Monday left a few ends open on both sides. Jacks is charged with killing her girls, who ranged in age from 5 to 17. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg is deciding the case and expects to deliver a ruling by Wednesday morning. Prosecutors say Jacks strangled her three youngest daughters and stabbed her eldest, then continued to live with the bodies for at least seven months. While carrying out an eviction in January 2008, officers found Jacks living with the bodies. A lack of direct evidence left both sides scrambling for theoretical arguments Monday and clouding closings with minor...

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Cold case - Sexual assault, slaying still beckon 48 years later

Marta Santa Cruz was last seen cashing a paycheck on F Street in Northwest D.C. on July 1, 1961. Three days later, a couple of teenage boys found her naked body halfway submerged in a creek 15 miles away in Springfield. Cruz was only 24. Her roommate told police what Cruz was wearing when she left the house on Columbia Road the day she disappeared: a greenish-blue two-piece dress and a sleeveless blouse. She hailed a cab around 10 a.m. Customers recalled seeing Cruz at the store on F Street where she cashed her paycheck. When she didn’t return that day, her roommate filed a missing persons report with D.C. police. It was 8 a.m. July 4 when the boys found Cruz off a dirt road near...

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D.C. Council hears just how much budget cuts will hurt

More than 100 representatives from police unions, food banks, employment programs and other nonprofits packed into a hearing room to beg D.C. Council members to reconsider Mayor Adrian Fenty's proposal to slash their share of the 2010 budget. But council members reiterated the cuts were inevitable. "By 2011, we'll have a revenue shortfall of $800 million which, unchecked, could sink the city," Council Chairman Vincent Gray said Friday. "At the end of the day even after you make your passionate plea, we're still faced with the same problem." Councilman Michael Brown said D.C.'s deficit will stretch into 2013 at the least. "Right now we are in a storm. All is not...

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Area police line up against Obama comment

Union head in Loudoun calls president's remark a 'cheap shot' Dozens of police officers contacted the National Fraternal Order of Police in Washington on Thursday to express their shock and anger over President Barack Obama's comment on national TV Wednesday night that a white cop in Cambridge, Mass., "acted stupidly" when he arrested a black Harvard professor. "I was shocked that the president even made a comment about that [arrest]. It was totally uncalled for," said Marcello Muzzatti, president of the FOP chapter in D.C. "He wasn't there. He doesn't know what happened." "Wait a minute pal, you weren't there," Ian Griffiths, president of...

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Fox News producer gets 10 years for child porn

A Fox News Channel producer was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison on federal child pornography charges. Aaron Bruns, 29, was arrested in February after authorities searched his Dupont Circle-area apartment and found his computer full of child porn. In May, Bruns pleaded guilty to the charges and was facing up to eight years in prison, according to federal guidelines, documents said. But federal Judge James Robertson on Tuesday pushed his sentence to 10 years, citing a former conviction on similar charges while Bruns was in college. Bruns was the second Washington journalist to be sentenced for possession of child pornography in less than a week. Former National Public Radio...

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Md. would rank sixth in highest-taxed states

Maryland ranks sixth on a list of states that would be hit hardest by the health care plan making its way through Congress. Wealthy Maryland residents would spend more than half their income on taxes -- nearly 56 cents of every dollar -- with the proposed health care surtax, according to the report from Washington research group Tax Foundation. Raising taxes on the rich is "the worst way possible to raise revenue," said economist Gerald Prante, who helped conduct the nonpartisan study. "It discourages labor supply and investments on the high end. [Wealthy] people are the most sensitive to taxation." If approved by Congress, the three-tiered funding plan, which would...

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Just call it a HeartBerry

Doctors are transmitting electrocardiograms, or maps of heart activity, over their BlackBerries at the two hospitals in the District to help diagnose heart attack victims more effectively. Within the next year, patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center will be able to use their own smartphones to help speed up their diagnoses, said Dr. Divya Shroff, the center's associate chief of staff for informatics. "We are dealing traditionally with a patient population that has a lot of heart attacks," said Shroff, a lead physician in developing the program. And time is precious when caring for heart attack victims, she said. "When people have a certain type of heart...

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Cold case: Man killed in Capitol Hill store trying to protect brother

Charles Cuozzo was trying to protect his kid brother when he was shot in the chest and killed by a man who robbed the family’s Capitol Hill grocery store nearly four decades ago. The hefty case file from 1968 lists droves of suspects and witnesses, but police never nabbed the killer. On a hot July afternoon in 1968, 50-year-old Charles was in the meat freezer in the rear of the store while his younger brother, Dominic, worked the cash register out front, according to police reports. At about 2:30 p.m., a man entered the grocery at 900 South Carolina Ave. SE and pulled a .32-caliber semiautomatic handgun from a brown paper bag. The suspect pointed the gun at Dominic and ordered him...

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Judge admits into trial Jacks' police interrogation video

Judge Frederick H. Weisberg ruled Wednesday that he would admit eight hours of Banita Jacks' statements to police the day she was taken into custody and charged with killing her four daughters. "It is clear to me from watching some eight hours of video that Ms. Jacks' statements were entirely voluntary and not a product of police coercion," Weisberg said in D.C. Superior Court. Jacks, 35, is charged with killing her four girls, who ranged in age from 5 to 17. Their bodies were found Jan. 9, 2008 -- seven months after they were killed -- when U.S. marshals entered her Southeast D.C. home to evict Jacks. She was immediately taken into custody and was formally charged about 12...

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Prosecutors: Jacks abused daughters

Judge allows mom's statements to police, gets trial started Prosecutors said they would call witnesses who would testify that Banita Jacks abused her four daughters before their deaths, as opening arguments got under way Wednesday afternoon in the quadruple murder trial. Jacks, 35, is charged with killing her four girls, who ranged in age from 5 to 17. Their bodies were found Jan. 9, 2008 -- seven months after they were killed -- when U.S. marshals entered her Southeast D.C. home to evict Jacks. Earlier Wednesday, Judge Frederick H. Weisberg ruled that he would admit eight hours of Jacks' statements to police the day she was taken into custody and charged with killing her...

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Jacks: Daughters were possessed by demons

Banita Jacks told investigators in a taped interview that she stopped feeding and clothing her demon-possessed daughters, who were growing weaker and throwing up in the days before their death. She did not admit guilt in the eight hours of questioning. Jacks, 35, is charged with killing her four girls, who ranged in age from 5 to 17. Their bodies were found Jan. 9, 2008 — seven months after they were killed — when U.S. marshals entered her Southeast home to evict her. She is pleading not guilty and is not planning an insanity defense. Judge Frederick H. Weisberg watched the interrogation tapes in D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday, as part of a motion from Jacks’ attorney...

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Cold case - Police seek clues in beating that left woman paralyzed

Decades after she was beaten nearly to death, Brenda Pennington howled whenever a man came near. She was paralyzed from the neck down — she couldn’t speak, feed herself or express any kind of emotion, said cousin Iona Dillard. But something about men mustered up enough fear in her to let out a shriek, Dillard recalled. Arlington police found Pennington badly beaten and unresponsive, facedown under her bed at 1632 N. Oak St. in January 1965, said Detective Kevin Norwood. “There was a lot of blunt force trauma to the head area,” Norwood said, scanning the decades-old police report. Back in ’65, the detective on the case called it “the worst beating in...

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Federal buildings vulnerable to attack, report says

A government report that found federal buildings were vulnerable to terrorist attacks because of poor security that included guards asleep on duty or distracted by erotic Web sites drew outrage from lawmakers Wednesday. "As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 ... it is outrageously unacceptable that the federal employees working in our federal buildings are still so utterly exposed to attacks by terrorists or other violent people," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., in a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. A new Government Accountability Office report said investigators smuggled bomb components past Federal Protective Service guards into 10 government...

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Red Line commuters grow more frustrated with delays

A domino effect from slowed trains between the Takoma and Fort Totten stations is prolonging Red Line delays, leaving Metro riders frustrated and wondering when their commutes will return to normal. "I'm usually 10 to 15 minutes late to work every day, and the crowds have been unbelievable," said Kim Dehaut, who commutes into the District from Shady Grove. Two weeks after the June 22 crash that killed nine people and injured more than 70, riders say delays on Metro's busiest line haven't improved and station platforms are packed. "There has not been any improvement since the crash," complained Egina Durosh at Farragut North. Metro officials have little to offer...

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D.C. teen unemployment rate skyrocketing

D.C. teens have the highest unemployment rate in the region, and with minimum wage set to rise at the end of the month, area youths will find it even harder to get hired, according to a new study. "Research suggests students that have access to job opportunities may stay off drugs longer, not get pregnant [and] not go into a criminal element," said Kristen Lopez Eastlick, senior research analyst for the institute. Teen unemployment in the District reached 23 percent at the end of June -- which is a 12 percent increase since May and almost 2.5 times the national unemployment rate, according to the study from the District's Employment Policies Institute. Since last July, the...

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Police chief denounces 'cowardly' iPhone users monitoring speed traps

Area drivers looking to outwit police speed traps and traffic cameras are using an iPhone application and other global positioning system devices that pinpoint the location of the cameras. That has irked D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier, who promised her officers would pick up their game to counteract the devices, which can also help drivers dodge sobriety checkpoints. "I think that's the whole point of this program," she told The Examiner. "It's designed to circumvent law enforcement -- law enforcement that is designed specifically to save lives." The new technology streams to iPhones and global positioning system devices, sounding off an alarm as drivers approach...

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Cold case - Man hopes cold case Web site will help bring son’s killers to justice

Lawrence King wants to keep the District’s cold cases alive. His 22-year-old son was walking home from a friend’s house late one summer evening in Northeast, when five men surrounded him and beat him, stabbing him in the neck and leaving him sprawled on the sidewalk to die. Nine years later, police have made no arrests in the death of Damion “Dirty” King. In 2005, after investigators stopped actively working the case, Lawrence King started a Web site, snitchonmurder.com, to keep unsolved cases from gathering dust in police files. King’s site began by featuring his son’s and two other cases. Now it shows newspaper clippings and police reports from...

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