Sex Offender Dies After Arlington Police Use Taser

1-18-2010 Virginia:

ARLINGTON, Va. (WUSA) -- Right on the Metro platform at the Pentagon City metro station, a struggle took place just after 8 p.m. Sunday.

"The suspect was aggressive with the officer," said Detective Crystal Nosal with Arlington Police.

An Arlington police officer spotted 36-year-old William Randolph Bumbrey of D.C., who was wanted for larceny in connection with a local pharmacy.

"When the officer spotted him, he asked him to stop; the suspect became combative," said Nosal.

That's when the officer called for help.

"While the officer and suspect were alone, the suspect was still fighting. The officer deployed his taser, and the suspect continued to fight with the officer," said Nosal.

A second officer arrived and handcuffed the suspect. As standard procedure for taser deployment, the officers called for medics. Nosal says the suspect than began to have labored breathing. When medics transported him to the hospital, Bumbrey was pronounced dead.

Bumbrey was released from prison two years ago after being convicted of a sex offense and other crimes. Police say they recovered items on Bumbrey believed to have been stolen from the pharmacy.

One Metro passenger, Shawn Butler, believes police officers should not carry tasers: "I know he has a checkered pass, but to be tasered because of shoplifting and then die? That's crazy."

The medical examiner will determine if the taser had any affect on Bumbrey's death.

The Arlington Police Department is investigating the death of William Bumbrey.

The officer who used the taser is on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation. ..Source.. by Peggy Fox

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Man Dies After Being Tasered by Police

2-7-2010 Virginia:

ARLINGTON, Va. - There are new questions after a man died during a struggle with police at a busy Metro stop.

Officers used a Taser on the man after he wouldn't cooperate at Pentagon City.

Arlington police are investigating their first-ever police-involved death involving a Taser.

The man, identified as 36-year-old William Bumbrey, a District resident, was struck with a Taser during a struggle with police.

Sources say Bumbrey, who appears on South Carolina's sex offender registry, had stolen several items from the Rite Aid pharmacy on South Hayes Street as it closed Sunday night.

A spokeswoman says an Arlington police officer saw a man matching the suspect's description, complete with pharmacy items in hand, and ordered him to stop. Police say Bumbrey ignored the officer's orders to stop.

"The suspect became combative and fought with the officer," said Det. Crystal Nosal, an Arlington County police spokesperson.

Sources say the scuffle between the officer and Bumbrey carried over into an elevator. A second officer came in. Bumbrey was handcuffed and he then starting having breathing problems.

Bumbrey was pronounced dead at the hospital. Arlington police use the Taser-brand X-26.

We tried to contact Bumbrey's father, but we're told he was dealing with the medical examiner and other such matters. We're still awaiting word from the ME on the exact cause of death.

Both officers remain on routine paid administrative leave. ..Source.. Markham Evans

Detectives solve 1974 murder case with a DNA hit

Note that, only in the picture of this man, do they tell the real reason why he died: Malnutrition. Obviously because California sex offender residency laws forced him into homelessness.

5-28-2010 California:

SANTA ANA – Someone found the nude and grease-smeared body between a trailer and a wall next to some auto parts at a Cadillac dealership on north Bush Street early in the morning of Sept. 23, 1974.

An autopsy revealed that Frances E. Esqueda, 54, had been strangled with her own slip.

Santa Ana homicide detectives in 1974 called the slaying "a crime of opportunity," believing that Esqueda might have been accosted by chance as she walked near McLean Cadillac to her home on Cypress Avenue.

Detectives at the time could not determine if she was the victim of a robbery, and said only the killer knew if she was carrying a purse at the time she was attacked.

They questioned 25 to 30 people back in 1974, according to news accounts, but never made an arrest.

But this month, Santa Ana P.D. cold case detectives believed that after 35 years, they were finally close on the heels of Esqueda's killer.

In February, detectives Louie Martinez and Domingo Cabrera submitted items of evidence recovered from the crime scene to the Orange County Crime Lab for analysis.

Forensic scientist Heather Williams was then able to isolate foreign DNA from blood found on Esqueda's slip: apparently, she had fought for her life and had drawn blood from her killer.

That DNA was then compared with known samples in the California Attorney General's database.

In mid-May, the detectives heard they had a hit: the DNA that detectives had preserved in 1974 was matched in 2010 to an ex-convict named Gerald Gay Kifer.

Carbrera soon learned that Kifer was a known sexual predator who had been a transient most of his life, who had arrests dating back to 1963, and who had served at least two terms in prison for sexual offenses.

He also found out that Kifer had been a registered sex offender who might have been living in the Santa Ana area at the time Esqueda was accosted and murdered.

The detectives had identified their murder suspect, now they had to find him.

It didn't take long.

Official records revealed that Kifer died of unknown causes in Los Angeles County on June 11, 2007. He was about 69 years old.

That news was bittersweet for the two detectives.

"There would have been nothing more pleasurable than to slap the 'cuffs on him and bring him to justice," Martinez said.

Santa Ana police Sgt. Robert Wooding said the case was solved by a combination of the tenacity of the detectives in his office and the passion of the forensic experts with the crime lab.

"Who would have thought at the time that evidence saved so long ago could lead to the solving of a case 35 years later?" Wooding said.

On Tuesday, Martinez and Cabrera drove up to a residence in Orange to tell some of Esqueda's surviving relatives what had happened to their beloved aunt. Her two brothers, including Manuel Esqueda, for whom a school is named after in Santa Ana, are dead, but several nieces and nephews still live in Orange County.

"It was really good to hear from the detectives and to know that they had solved this case," said nephew Joe Esqueda, 71. "This gives everyone in the family peace of mind."

He said his aunt's murder happened so long ago that everyone had almost completely forgotten about it.

"My uncle and my dad never talked about it much," Joe Esqueda said. "It was too painful. We were aware that something violent had happened, but it was kept secret from us as far as the details were concerned."

He said his aunt was born in Kansas, but migrated to Orange County with the rest of her family. She was a co-owner in two little family stores with her mother.

"She was a good person, strong-willed and independent," Joe Esqueda said.

Even though the person who committed this crime has already passed on, it was still good to hear," he added.

"We know who did it, and he is in the hands of God," Joe Esqueda said. "His judgment didn't come in this world but it will certainly hit him in the next." ..Source.. by LARRY WELBORN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Sandra Cantu Murder: How Rare Are Female Child Killers?

5-12-2010 Global:

When 8-year-old Sandra Cantu of Tracy, California, disappeared in March 2009, the small community was set on edge. The family’s worst fears were confirmed when Sandra’s body was found in a suitcase in an irrigation pond not far from where she lived. She had been raped and murdered, and everyone wondered what kind of monster could do that to an innocent young girl.

As it turned out, the monster was a local Sunday school teacher, a 29-year-old mother named Melissa Huckaby whose daughter was a friend of Sandra’s. Yesterday she pled guilty to first-degree murder and faces 25 years to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The case is bizarre and sensational, but how rare is it?

The answer depends on what specific part of Huckaby’s crime you’re talking about. The fact that the child was murdered by someone she knew and trusted is not unusual at all. Because of alarmist news coverage, the general public often believes that the greatest threat to children is from strangers. In fact, the vast majority of crimes against children are committed not by convicted sex offenders or strangers, but instead by the victim's own family, church clergy, and family friends.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, "based on what we know about those who harm children, the danger to children is greater from someone they or their family knows than from a stranger."

A 2000 report by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs reported that over three-quarters of kidnappings were committed by family members or acquaintances of the child. The study also found that children abducted by strangers were harmed less frequently than those taken by acquaintances.

Children are in far more danger of being abused, kidnapped, or killed by their parents than any stranger on the street.

Nor is Huckaby’s gender particularly unusual. Depending on which study you look at, mothers kill children at least as often as fathers do.

According to a report titled “Homicide Trends in the U.S.” issued by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, of all children under age five murdered between 1976 and 2005, 31 percent were killed by fathers and 29 percent were killed by mothers.

A 2000 study conducted by Marlene Dalley, Ph.D., analyzed trends in Canadian child murders and concluded that “Both mothers and fathers kill infant children at the same frequency, though when all (victim) age groups are considered mothers and step-mothers killed more children than fathers and step-fathers.”

A 2003 study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that of 34 North Carolina newborns who were killed or left to die, at least 85 percent of them were killed by their mothers (usually through strangulation or drowning).

In fact, the risk of a person being murdered -- probably by his or her mother -- is 10 times higher during the first day of life than at any other time. This of course flies in the face of the public’s perception of women as protective nurturers, but the fact is that women murder children far more often than people realize.

The strangest aspect of the Sandra Cantu case is, of course, the sexual assault. Details of the crime, including the sexual nature of Huckaby’s assault, have been suppressed under a gag order from Superior Court Judge Linda Lofthus, so the circumstances aren't available to analyze.

Women killing or physically abusing children (their own or other people’s) is not unusual, but a mother who rapes a young girl is quite rare. Most women who molest children do not abduct or kill them, and most forcible rapes are committed by men.

This tragedy may serve to remind us that monsters come in many forms -- even a mother at a local church. ..Source.. by Benjamin Radford