The festive mood of Austin, Texas’s South By Southwest Festival has been destroyed after a drunk driver drove into a crowd of concertgoers.
The driver also struck a moped outside the concert venue and killed the couple riding it. The car then struck 23 people outside The Mohawk nightclub, with five critically injured.
Police say the suspect has to be subdued with a taser after ramming a van and then trying to flee on foot.
Officials said that the driver, who was obviously drunk, would face two counts of capital murder charges and at least 23 counts of aggravated assault. Should any of the five critically injured concertgoers die from their wounds, additional murder charges will be added to the indictment.
The section of Red River Street near the incident has been closed and the club canceled all events. No word on whether they will open tonight for any concerts or events.
An anti-Christian group threatened to sue the grieving mother of a young man killed in an accident because she placed a cross at the accident site.
AnnMarie Devaney set up the cross after her son, a Christian, was killed when a car struck him as he crossed a street in Lake Elsinore. The memorial included a 5 foot tall cross because her son was a devoted Christian.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Association threatened to sue unless the cross was removed. The letter from the anti-Christianists was sent to the grieving mother a week after a judge backed the group’s suit to stop a veterans memorial in the city that would have a cross on it.
Community members rallied around the family and wanted to deliver a message to the anti-Christianists that their bigotry and intolerance would not be tolerated in their town. Residents created crosses of their own and placed them at the site of the accident saying that the only cross the anti-Christianists demanded removed was the cross of the dead man’s family.
“We did it like a homeschool project to teach (our children) about tolerance and not to be afraid of expressing what you believe,” Holly Alteneder said to the local Press-Enterprise newspaper.
North Korea is preparing to execute 33 people for being Christians.
The official charge from the government is “attempting to overthrow the government.” In reality, the group was working with a South Korean Baptist missionary to set up underground churches.
Missionary Kim Jung-wook has been jailed and tortured for a year because of his attempts to start underground churches in North Korea. He was presented at a press conference last week where he apologized for his “anti-state crimes” and appealed for his release.
He was also forced to say that South Korea Intelligence services had provided him with information and equipment. The South Korean government said they had no involvement with Kim Jung-wook.
North Korean officials say the 33 people involved with Kim Jung-wook were planning to build a church on the site of a massive statue of North Korea’s founder after they overthrew the government.
Kim Jong-un has been on a murderous rampage including members of his government. His top deputy disappeared last week and some people have speculated that the North Korean leader has killed him.
The extreme cold weather of the polar vortex has claimed a young victim.
A 6-year-old Bemidji, Minnesota girl is dead after being exposed to the frigid temperatures of that northern community.
The girl was found lying in front of an apartment building, fully dressed in gloves, a coat and hat, but it wasn’t enough for her to be able to survive in the elements. The temperature was 20 below zero with a wind chill passing 40 below.
Emergency personnel pronounced her dead at the scene. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s office is performing an autopsy.
Neighbors say the girl lived in the apartments with her mother and 3-year-old sibling. Police say the girl’s mother was not there the night before the girl’s body was found and they do not know why the girl was outside.
While no arrests have been made, police say that could change pending the outcome of the autopsy.
An surprise terror attack on a school just before dawn has left at least 29 children dead.
Nigerian military spokesman said Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram targeted the school before dawn so they could kill as many children as possible before they realized they were under attack.
A teacher in the school told reporters that the terrorists set fire to a boy’s dormitory and then stood by any window that did not have bars in front of it to slit the throats of any student who tried to escape the flames.
Spokesman Abdullahi Bego said he could not tell why the school was left unprotected by government troops and that the state’s Governor would ask the federal government why they were not there. Students and teachers quickly abandoned another school in the state after military troops withdrew their protection Monday.
Arvella Schuller, who founded Crystal Cathedral Ministries with her husband Robert Schuler, has died at the age of 84.
Schuller’s family says that she suffered a brief illness last week but everyone was shocked that she passed away from the illness. She was known as the “first lady” of Crystal Cathedral Ministries and a staunch supporter and encourager of her husband, Reverend Robert Schuller.
Schuller was the driving force behind the internationally known “Hour of Power” television program. She developed the program as a live, local broadcast but saw the potential for the program to impact lives around the world. She initiated the changes that turned the program into a worldwide beacon for Christ.
Broadcaster Ed Arnold, who was a volunteer announcer for Hour of Power in the 1970s, said that Arvella Schuller was the “brains behind the church.” He said that Reverend Schuller would lay out a vision he felt God giving him and Arvella would do all she could to make that vision comes to pass.
She is survived by her husband and five children.
The H1N1 virus, which killed over 14,000 people in a 2009 global pandemic, has returned with a vengeance in the 2013-14 flu season.
The Centers for Disease Control says that for the first time since that 2009 outbreak, H1N1 has been killing victims at an epidemic level.
The CDC says that the death toll is only a fraction of the 2009 outbreak but that levels are significantly higher than previous years. With six weeks to go in the flu season, some states have seen more than a nine-fold increase in deaths. California has 243 deaths this year compared to 26 at this time last year.
Some California hospitals have been so overrun with flu patients that they have set up triage units in their parking lots to keep infected patients away from potentially immunosuppressed patients in the main hospital building.
Many Californians rushed to get flu shots after a woman who worked for Sacramento’s ABC TV affiliate died from H1N1 within four days of feeling ill.
The CDC also says that surveillance reports in Virginia and Maryland show a wide outbreak of H1N1 but they along with the District of Columbia do not record deaths from the flu.
Duke University Medical Center reported a disturbing trend in that most hospitalized flu patients were younger, an average age of 28.5, and had more significant complications than in previous H1N1 outbreaks.
A Pennsylvania couple that believes in divine healing is facing 20 years in prison today after pleading no contest to a third-degree murder charge after a second child died from pneumonia.
Herbert and Catherine Schaible are being sentenced today for the death of their 8-month-old son Brandon.
The couple had been on probation for ten years after the death of another child due to pneumonia. A part of the probation for the conviction on involuntary manslaughter was an order that they seek medical attention for any one of their children who fall ill in spite of their religious faith.
The Schaibles belong to a small Pentecostal church in Philadelphia where the church’s pastor said the deaths of the child were due to a spiritual lack in the couple’s lives. The pastor said none of the church’s families will seek medical care.
Lawyers for the couple say that their religious beliefs will be prominently brought up at the sentencing.
The couple has seven surviving children.
Jamie Coots, who was the star of the National Geographic Channel reality TV show “Snake Salvation,” has died after being bitten by a snake during a weekend service.
Coots was bitten by a rattlesnake during a service Saturday night in Middlesboro, Kentucky. Emergency personnel arrived at the church from a 911 call but Coots had left the church and gone home. Police and medical crews arrived at the pastor’s home around 9 p.m. and urged him to accept treatment but he refused. A return visit by paramedics an hour later found the pastor dead.
His son Cody told FoxNews that his father had been bitten eight times before by rattlesnakes but never had such a severe reaction.
“In following Pastor Coots,” National Geographic channel said in a statement, “we were constantly struck by his devout religious convictions despite the health and legal peril he often faced. Those risks were always worth it to him and his congregants as a means to demonstrate their unwavering faith.”
Snake handling is illegal in most states including Kentucky.
The lethal combination of heroin and fentanyl that had been making its move along the East Coast has now killed at least 80 people in the last few weeks.
The tainted heroin has now drawn a bulletin from the Drug Enforcement Association to local authorities for “killer heroin.” Fentanyl is considered 80 times stronger than morphine and is used for people in extreme pain such as cancer patients.
Police in Vermont have released information that pure fentanyl is being sold as heroin in their state.
Ellen Unterwald of the Center for Substance Abuse Research at Temple University said the dealers sell the drug as creating a “super high” but don’t mention the fentanyl. Unterwald said just a small amount of the drug can be lethal by stopping the victim’s breathing.
New York City police released information that the heroin that killed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was not a tainted batch of heroin but pure drug.
