Nigerian president orders crackdown on gangs after 150 killed in conflict-hit north
Tinubu visited Benue state, the site of the recent deadly attacks, seeking to calm tensions and promise justice for the victims. 'We will restore peace, rebuild, and bring the perpetrators to justice. You are not alone.' the Nigerian leader said on X.
Assailants stormed Benue state's Yelewata community from Friday night till Saturday morning, opening fire on villagers who were asleep and setting their homes ablaze, survivors and the local farmers union said. Many of those killed were sheltering in a local market after fleeing violence in other parts of the state.
Authorities in Benue state blamed herdsmen for the attack, a type of violence frequently seen in northern Nigeria's decadeslong pastoral conflict.
Opposition leaders and critics have accused Tinubu of a delayed response to the killings, noting his office issued a statement over 24 hours after the attack. His visit to the state occurred five days later.
The Nigerian leader traveled to Makurdi, Benue State's capital, where he visited a hospital to see those injured in the attack and met with local leaders to discuss how to end the killings. He did not visit the Yelewata community.
He also appeared to reprimand the police for not making any arrest yet more than four days after the killings.
'How come no arrest has been made? I expect there should be an arrest of those criminals,' Tinubu asked as he addressed senior police officers during a gathering in Benue.
Analysts blame Nigeria's worsening security crisis on a lack of political will to go after criminals and ensure justice for victims.
'In the end, the result is the same: No justice, no accountability, and no closure for the victims and their communities," said Senator Iroegbu, a security analyst based in Nigeria's capital Abuja. 'Until this changes, impunity will remain the norm, and such tragedies will continue to occur.'
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Follow AP's Africa coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
Dyepkazah Shibayan, The Associated Press
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Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Kansans should be ashamed of the failures that contributed to the death of 5-year-old Zoey Felix
Shawn Stauffer, 16, lights a candle at a vigil for the child victims of murder organized by his step-mother, Ali, in October 2023 in downtown Topeka. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) Now that her killer has been sentenced to life in prison, what is there left to say about the death of Zoey Felix? We must do more. The 5-year-old Topeka girl was raped and murdered at a Topeka homeless encampment in October 2023. Her killer was Mickel Cherry, then 25, a family acquaintance she called 'uncle.' Cherry, who confessed to police and later struck a plea deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty, was given 50 years in prison July 15 by a Shawnee County district judge. From the start, the case has been gut-wrenching. It's also been difficult for me to write about, because the suffering of children gets to me in the way other tragedies don't. When I was a young reporter I covered deaths involving children, and they always left me shaken. Some were deliberately killed, others died in house fires or car wrecks. My reaction got so bad that I couldn't pass one of those ubiquitous 'Prevent Child Abuse' billboards without shedding tears. With the Zoey Felix case, it's not just the horrific way in which she died, but the revelations about the multiple failures by the people and agencies Zoey should have depended on for help that get to me. There was, according to court filings, the unstable and violent family life, a home where there was no water or electricity, a mother who abused substances, and a father who eventually brought Zoey to live in a homeless encampment in a wooded area in southeast Topeka. The family had declined requests from child protective services for help, and the state did not press the issue. About the only kindness she experienced in her short life was from neighbors, who worried about her roaming the streets at all hours and sometimes provided her with food and clothing. Perhaps most damning of all were multiple investigations by the Kansas Department for Children and Families into Zoey's welfare, none of which resulted in removing her from the environment. According to a filing by Cherry's defense counsel, DCF determined that Zoey had only a slightly higher than average risk of being hurt or suffering other lasting 'negative effects.' In September 2023, the department sent investigators out seven times, but they were unable to locate the family and the case was closed. Zoey was killed Oct. 2. 'Had the agencies responsible for Z.F.'s safety taken action by communicating, verifying information, and pursuing protective custody, her trajectory could have been different,' wrote Peter Conley, a deputy defender in the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit, in a memorandum to the court asking for concurrent, instead of consecutive, 25-year sentences. 'She would not have been forced to live in a tent in the woods, nor left in the care of a traumatized person (Cherry) unfit to care for her.' Her death, Conley argued, was avoidable. While Cherry bears the ultimate responsibility for his actions, Conley said, he did not create the systems that failed him — and Zoey — in similar ways. Conley described Cherry as a 'developmentally delayed' individual who grew up in a physically and emotionally abusive home and who did not receive the help he needed from Texas child services. He had been passed to 17 foster homes, been in two psychiatric hospitals, had no high school degree, and had been diagnosed as a child with retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable genetic eye disease. 'Mickel could have and should have had interventions such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy,' according to the court filing. 'Medicaid would have covered this expense. He should have also been receiving more regular counseling and psychiatric visits given his traumatic childhood and the number of adverse childhood events he experienced.' Conley argued the trauma and failures experienced by both Mickel and Zoey were similar. 'Mickel has lived an extraordinarily difficult life where he was first abused by his parents and then by the system in place to protect children like him,' he said in the filing. 'The same system in Kansas allowed Z.F. to fall through the cracks to allow her to be in a position of being babysat by a developmentally delayed homeless man from Texas.' Zoey's death resulted in a statewide conversation about child victims of violent crime. In October 2023, I attended a candlelight vigil in downtown Topeka in memory of murdered children. At that time, one-third of all homicide victims for the year — 10 in all — had been children. There was a clamor in the wake of Zoey's murder about improving the state's child protective services, whose administrative errors resulted in the girl not getting the help she needed. Recently, I asked the Kansas Department for Children and Families whether there had been any meaningful reforms since 2023. 'The safety and well-being of every child under the care of the Kansas Department for Children and Families is the top priority of the agency,' Jenalea Randall, DCF's director of public and government affairs, wrote in an email. 'Unfortunately, Zoey Felix's story reflects systemic challenges and the need for resources to help families that go beyond any one agency — such as assisting the homeless population.' After Zoey's death in 2023, the DCF undertook an internal review resulting in policy revisions to provide guidance to child protection specialists and supervisors on when to contact law enforcement in cases when the well-being of a child may be at risk and the family cannot be located. 'During the 2024 Kansas Legislative session, the agency worked to pass HB 2628, which ensures the public receives timely information about tragic cases such as this one,' the email said. That measure, aimed to allow the release of information about individual cases where there is pressing legislative and public interest, became law in 2024. 'DCF also sponsored legislation during the session that would have made it easier for families like Zoey's to access additional services, decreasing the likelihood of this situation happening again,' she wrote. 'Unfortunately, the Kansas Legislature did not take up those measures.' This month, Randall said, DCF began contacting families every day of the week, including weekends and holidays, when there was a report from law enforcement that a child could be a victim of abuse or neglect. 'DCF continues to look for ways to increase transparency and better support families, especially those who are homeless,' she said. Progress had been made, she asserted, and the department remains committed to working with other agencies and partners to 'strengthen the state's safety net and ensure all Kansas families get the assistance they need.' But is any of this meaningful reform? It's good public relations, I suppose, but declaring goals and intent is short of providing evidence of meaningful change. Kansas families aren't getting the assistance they need. It only takes a walk around most Kansas towns to realize the state's safety net is fraying badly. From the woman sitting on the curb outside the local Walmart panhandling to buy food to the homeless individuals, mostly men, moving their camps ever deeper into remote areas to avoid the bulldozing of tent camps too near trails and parks, there's ample evidence that people are hurting. There were 534 individuals experiencing homelessness in Topeka as of January 2025, according to local government reports. That's an increase of more than 100 over the 2023 figures. Of the most recent count, nearly 1 in 5 were under the age of 18. Being unhoused places children in particular immediate peril and may have lasting physical and psychological effects. The number of homeless students in Topeka and Shawnee County schools is estimated to be between 750 and 1,000, far higher than the January 2025 'Point in Time' homeless count. There are, to be sure, services offered in Topeka and across Kansas for students and families experiencing homelessness. Some of those initiatives are new, including a 'one-stop' multi-agency resource center called 'Let's Help' at 245 S.W. MacVicar Ave. But such initiatives require homeless individuals be amenable to help. Unfortunately for Zoey, her family could not or would not seek the help they needed, and the state's child protective services failed to act when she needed them most. Nothing will bring Zoey back. There is little to say about the manner of Zoey's death that has not already been documented in news reports or court filings. The public wouldn't have learned her name had she not been the victim in a capital murder case. It disturbs me now — just like looking at that billboard long ago — that her name is forever linked to collective societal failure for which she paid the ultimate price. But the dead are beyond our help. To honor Zoey's memory, we must aid the living. Our communities — the services they provide, their appearance, the joy and the suffering that occurs in their homes and on their streets or at tent camps hidden away from public view — are ultimately expressions of our collective values. Too often our desire is to look away, to ignore the failures of compassion in our midst, to close our eyes to the unhappiness around us. If Zoey's death has moved you, then give your time and your money to those agencies in the community fighting hunger, homelessness and neglect. And the next time you encounter a situation in which a child in your presence is in need of help, do not turn away. Be like the neighbors in Zoey's block. Provide food or water or clothes if you can do so safely. Summon the help from any of the agencies available, including DCF. Call the police if there is reason to believe the child is in immediate danger. Do this in Zoey's memory. The tragedy is not just the way in which Zoey Felix died, but in the years denied her. Those years will now presumably be spent in prison by Cherry, who received consecutive sentences for the rape and murder and will serve at least 50 years before he is eligible for parole. His eye disease will, according to the memorandum filed by his defense attorneys, progress. He will probably go blind during his incarceration. It is not justice. It is simply an unhappy fact in the jumble of unhappy facts of an unhappy life. As his defense attorneys said in their court filing, Cherry never stood a chance. Neither did Zoey. But the living children in need among us do. Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Fox News
12 hours ago
- Fox News
Father of vindicated Karen Read warns concerned Americans 'the next Karen Read could be you' in new interview
Karen Read's father, Bill Read, opened up about his family's experience throughout her three-and-a-half-year legal saga in a candid new podcast interview. His 45-year-old daughter faced murder and other charges in the Jan. 29, 2022, death of her then-boyfriend, John O'Keefe, a Boston cop whom prosecutors alleged she mowed down with a Lexus SUV and left to die in a blizzard. The defense argued that she had never struck him, police had conducted a faulty investigation, and someone else had killed him. After a mistrial, jurors the second time around found her not guilty of all homicide-related charges and found her guilty of driving under the influence of liquor. Speaking with Billy Bush on his live show, "Hot Mics with Billy Bush," the elder Read said he believes his daughter had been the target of a corrupt investigation from the start and that she wouldn't have put up such a fight if she had had something to hide. "I can tell you, as a parent, no parent, no loved one, no significant other in this life should go through what my wife and I and our daughter have gone through these three and a half years, so I say to everyone out there, take back your government," Read said. "If you don't like what your leaders are doing in the criminal justice system, get them out. Take back your government, because the next Karen Read could be you." The younger Read and O'Keefe spent the night of Jan. 28, 2022, drinking in Canton, Massachusetts. They went to two bars before driving to an after party at the home of another Boston cop named Brian Albert. Prosecutors and the defense disagree about what had happened after they had gotten there just after midnight. At around 6 a.m., Read and two friends returned to the address to find O'Keefe dead on the front lawn under a dusting of snow. Police initially charged her with drunken driving manslaughter and fleeing the scene, but prosecutors later secured an indictment for the more serious charge of second-degree murder. Jurors ultimately cleared her of all of those allegations but agreed that she had drunk alcohol before getting behind the wheel. "We're very close. She is very candid. She's very truthful, and had she hurt John O'Keefe, she told me, she said, Dad, 'If I thought I hurt him, I'd own up to it. . . . But I did not strike him,'" the elder Read told Bush. "And I believed her." If you don't like what your leaders are doing in the criminal justice system, get them out. Take back your government, because the next Karen Read could be you. Plus, he said, the state's case was unconvincing and weak. "When you just look at the evidence, the wounds to the body, the lack of damage to the car, and then couple that with the physics, the science, the medical testimony..." he said. He took particular issue with the autopsy photos, and he said that's what had prompted her to reach out to attorney Alan Jackson, the Los Angeles lawyer who added a jolt to her legal team at trial. "Karen Read is the engine, the transmission in this bus. She's the fifth attorney," her father said. Imagine waking up every day in your 70s for 3 1/2 years knowing the people elected to serve you and assigned to protect you are trying to put your daughter in prison for life for something she did not do. That was Bill Read's reality. Read, who went up to every sidebar with her lawyers at trial, already had a prominent Boston-area attorney, David Yannetti, when she brought in Jackson and Elizabeth "Liza" Little. For her second trial, she also added New York's Robert Alessi. Bush also asked Read about his own relationship with O'Keefe. Could he have seen him as a son-in-law if things got that far? "I can't say that," he said, adding, "I liked the man." GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE TRUE CRIME HUB They really bonded over sports, he said. "I saw John O'Keefe as really an athlete," he said. "You could see his style throwing the football with him. You could see he had it in his blood." He also said that his daughter can't have kids of her own but crafted a bond with O'Keefe's niece and nephew, whom he had adopted after their parents died. SIGN UP TO GET TRUE CRIME NEWSLETTER "Karen was never going to be able to biologically have children, and I'm not sure that she would be necessarily one that would willingly embrace children. But those two children, she saw as an opportunity to provide a female presence in their life," he said. O'Keefe's niece testified against his daughter at trial and is a plaintiff in the family's wrongful death lawsuit against her. But jurors still found too many holes in the state's case. "Imagine waking up every day in your 70s for 3 ½ years knowing the people elected to serve you and assigned to protect you are trying to put your daughter in prison for life for something she did not do," Bush told Fox News Digital. "That was Bill Read's reality." Read received a year of probation for the drunken driving conviction. She is still facing a wrongful death lawsuit from O'Keefe's family, which her civil defense team asked the court to dismiss earlier this month. The case prompted the residents of Canton, Massachusetts, to demand an independent audit into their local police department, which found no evidence of a "conspiracy to frame" Read but faulted local police for a series of mistakes, including failure to photograph the victim's body before it was moved, failing to lock down the crime scene and conducting witness interviews outside of headquarters. State police also launched an internal probe into the lead homicide detective, Michael Proctor, who was fired for sharing confidential information with civilians outside of law enforcement and drinking on the job. He is appealing his dismissal. There was also a federal grand jury empaneled in the case, and one of the jurors pleaded guilty to leaking secret information earlier this week.
CNN
12 hours ago
- CNN
The long road Idaho prosecutors sought to spare the families of Bryan Kohberger's victims by avoiding a death penalty trial
When the men who murdered Carmen Gayheart were sentenced to death in 1995, her sister, Maria David, thought it might be 12 or 14 years before they were executed. She waited 31. Life went on. David got married and had two boys. The family left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, she said, because it was too hard to live there with all the memories of Carmen, herself a mother of two and an aspiring nurse. But 'for every good thing in my life, there was a sad shadow hanging over,' David said – because of what happened to Carmen, and the long wait for the executions. David would open the mailbox and find an envelope from the attorney general's office, informing her that her sister's killers had filed another appeal. Another envelope would follow with the state's response, then another with the court's opinion. Later, another envelope. Another appeal. For three decades, she worked to see the executions carried out, calling state officials and her victim's advocate, writing letters and attending hearings for the inmates' appeals so they would know Carmen's family had not forgotten. 'I devoted a lot of time to that. I feel like I put my family second a lot,' David told CNN. 'I think a lot of times I did put the kids in front of the TV more to get online and read something or to write a letter or, you know, just immerse myself in that, more so than my own life.' David's experience is not uncommon for the loved ones of victims in capital cases. Her story illustrates the long road Idaho prosecutors say they wanted to spare the families of four University of Idaho students killed in November 2022 by agreeing to a plea deal that would see the confessed killer avoid a possible death sentence. Instead, Bryan Kohberger will be sentenced this week to life in prison without parole, and he'll forfeit his right to appeal. The agreement received mixed reactions from the families of Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen. The fathers of Goncalves and Kernodle expressed anger, criticizing prosecutors for not adequately consulting the families before agreeing to the deal. 'We'll never see this as justice,' Steve Goncalves told CNN's Jim Sciutto. Others voiced acceptance, saying they were relieved to avoid a drawn-out trial and the possibility of a yearslong appeals process. The Chapin family's 'initial response was, 'an eye for an eye,'' Ethan's mother told NBC's 'Today.' 'But we've spent a ton of time talking about it with prosecutors, and for us, we always felt like this was a better deal.' This split highlights how the death penalty – and the possibility of it – affects victims' loved ones, often referred to as survivors or co-victims, in deeply personal ways. They are not a monolithic group; resolution can mean something different to each person. 'Every co-victim of murder is different in what their needs are and are going to be different in how they see those needs being met and are going to be different in how they see justice being served,' said Scott Vollum, a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth who has studied violence, the death penalty and its effect on co-victims. To try and determine if the death penalty helps or provides closure to co-victims writ large, he said, is a 'conclusion that denies some people the validity of how they feel.' Had Kohberger gone to trial, there was no guarantee he would have been sentenced to death. If he were, it likely would have been years, even decades, before an execution – and even that would not be certain. For victims' families, a death sentence is not the end of a journey but the beginning of one. While some may find solace in the end, for many – even those who support the execution – the intervening years of appeals and uncertainty often reopen old wounds. 'It was difficult,' David told CNN several weeks after witnessing the execution of one of the men who killed her sister. 'It was a long road, hard road, sad road. Infuriating at times, because you just don't realize how long it's going to take.' 'You just don't realize 31 years is going to happen.' Death penalty cases take a long time to conclude because of the finality of execution. Once put to death, an inmate can no longer appeal to remedy any errors in their case. The appeals process following a death sentence is meant to be thorough, ensuring the defendant is truly guilty and deserving of the ultimate punishment, which is legal under federal law and in 27 states, though governors in four of those states have suspended executions. That means victims' families often wait years to see an execution. As of 2024, an inmate spent an average of 269 months – more than 22 years – on death row awaiting execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. 'Many victims in death penalty cases describe getting victimized by the system,' said Samuel Newton, a law professor at the University of Idaho. He likened this appellate process to an 'emotional juggernaut' for survivors. 'We're talking eight, nine, 10, 12 legal proceedings that will take decades to resolve,' he told CNN. Roger Turner waited two decades to see the man who killed his father, Henry Lee Turner, put to death. Even 10 years would have been too long, he said. 'That's additional suffering that does not need to happen.' Turner had long ago forgiven the killer, citing his Christian faith. But he struggled with the case's repeated resurfacing, which forced Turner to relive the ordeal of his father's murder and the night in 2005 when his dad – a kind man who would lend a hand to anyone in need, including his killer – didn't meet him as expected. 'I'd kind of forget about him for a little while,' Turner said of the killer, 'and then, boom. It would come up in the news. It was always there.' 'I know that I can go on with my life,' he told CNN after witnessing the execution in June. 'But that still doesn't change the fact that I had to carry that burden for 20 years, in my mind and on my shoulders.' An execution – or even a death sentence – is not a foregone conclusion, even in high-profile, notorious cases like the one in Idaho. Anthony Montalto would have willingly waited and endured many appeals to see the man who murdered his daughter in the 2018 Parkland shooting executed, he said. Though the shooter pleaded guilty to murdering Gina – whom her father fondly remembers for her smile, her personality and her desire to help others – and 16 students and staff, the jury did not unanimously recommend the death penalty, resulting in a sentence of life without parole. 'Given the trade-off … I would have accepted that,' Montalto told CNN of the lengthy appeals process. 'When you lose a child, you think about her every day. There's no day that will ever be truly happy again after you have your daughter murdered.' Even when imposed, a death sentence may not be carried out. Convictions or death sentences can be overturned during appeals, and some defendants may be spared from execution. A governor, for instance, might grant clemency, pause executions in their state or clear death row altogether. A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of more than 9,700 death sentences found that fewer than one in six death sentences will lead to an execution. Additionally, at least 200 people since 1973 have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death before later being exonerated, according to DPIC – underscoring the importance of a thorough appeals process. And it's always possible a defendant will die of other causes before entering the execution chamber. One of Carmen Gayheart's two killers died in prison two years ago 'without accountability,' David, her sister, said. 'That was really a sucker punch.' After enduring all this, survivors may have the opportunity to witness an execution. But resolution is subjective, and whether the execution brings peace or comfort to a victim's loved one will vary from person to person. The idea of 'closure,' however, is one Vollum believes is 'somewhat of a myth.' 'That word, 'closure,' even amongst co-victims, often gets rejected,' he said, even by those who desire an execution. 'Closure,' he believes, is an idea imposed on co-victims by politicians and policymakers, who have promised an execution will 'be a magical point of closure.' But the loss of a loved one is never over, he said. Instead, co-victims will refer to an execution as the start of 'a new chapter,' or something that helps them 'turn a page, and maybe move on to a different stage in life.' Not everyone feels that way. Some co-victims oppose executions, perhaps wanting the killer to live with their crimes, or hoping to later seek answers from the perpetrator, he said. Others who witness an execution, he said, may leave the death chamber dissatisfied, either because they don't feel resolution or because they feel the process focused on the offender rather than the victims. 'I think a lot of people are promised that this will somehow bring them some kind of catharsis or some kind of healing,' he said, 'and I think to some degree that's false hope for individuals who are experiencing a loss that isn't so easily remedied by another act of violence.' 'That's not to say,' he added, 'that there aren't co-victims that feel better having seen the offender that killed their loved one executed, whether seeing it directly or knowing that it happened.' Maria David is one of them. Before the execution of her sister's surviving killer last month, she was skeptical it would bring her relief. But after she and 16 family members gathered to witness the execution, she felt differently. It wasn't immediate, she said. But a couple of hours later, she and her family visited Carmen's grave, lighting candles in the dark. She felt a sense of peace. The next day, she looked out the window and saw a rainbow – a sign, she said, from Carmen. 'I do feel differently than I thought I would,' she said. 'I felt like, prior to that, it was just closing the legal chapter and that, of course, I'm never going to get over what happened to her.' 'But I do feel calm. I feel better. They're dead now,' she said. 'There is not another piece of paperwork that is going to come here regarding either one of them. That is a blessing in and of itself. And I do feel like I'm going to be more on a healing journey than anything else – focus more on myself, taking care of myself better and my family.' CNN's Elizabeth Wolfe, Julia Vargas Jones and Norma Galeana contributed to this report. Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Florida city Maria David left following her sister's death. Her family moved away from Fort Lauderdale.
