Maryland Prep School Student Admits to Killing Mother in Argument Over Grades

TOWSON, Md. — A Maryland teenager calmly admitted in court Monday that he beat his mother to death with a baseball bat after an argument over his grades at a prestigious private school.

Lewin C. Powell III, 16, wore a dark suit and showed no emotion as he answered questions from Baltimore County Circuit Judge Kathleen G. Cox about whether he understood the significance of his guilty plea to first-degree murder.

Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence with the possibility of parole when he is sentenced April 3. Powell's attorneys plan to ask for all but 15 years of the sentence to be suspended and to have their client sent to the Patuxent Institute, a maximum-security psychiatric facility with a program for young offenders.

Powell did not stir when a prosecutor read a statement of facts that detailed the prolonged attack on his mother and a similar beating of his father, who survived.

"He's always taken responsibility for what he's done," Shanell Kathleen Harleston, one of Powell's attorneys, said after the hearing. "He never wanted to prolong it."

Powell killed his mother, Donna R. Campbell-Powell, in May after an argument about his grades at McDonogh School, a prestigious private school in Owings Mill where he was a sophomore. But Harleston said the initial subject of the dispute with his mother was immaterial.

"This is a lifetime of problems that he's been dealing with that suddenly came to a head," Harleston said. "This particular day was the first time he had ever argued back. ... He just snapped that day."

Harleston would not specify what led to Powell's emotional difficulties, but the teen told police after he was arrested that his parents had pushed him too hard and he couldn't take it anymore, according to a statement of facts read in court Monday by Assistant State's Attorney Charles R. Gayle.

Harleston said Powell was not abused by his parents.

In exchange for Powell's guilty plea, prosecutors dropped all other charges, including a count of attempted murder for the attack on his father, who suffered two skull fractures when his son beat him with the same aluminum bat.

State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger said after the hearing that he did not believe Patuxent was an appropriate placement for Powell. Prosecutors will argue that Powell should serve his sentence in a state prison.

If he receives a life sentence, Powell could be eligible for parole after 12 years with good behavior. Parole for an offender serving a life sentence in Maryland requires the approval of the governor, which hasn't happened since 1994.

The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell lived with his parents in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the Baltimore suburb of Towson. He had no history of violent behavior and took honors-level classes at McDonogh, where annual tuition exceeds $20,000.

Powell's father, Lewin C. Powell Jr., arrived at the hearing about 15 minutes after it began. As Gayle read the statement of facts, the elder Powell buried his head in his hands. He declined to speak to reporters after the hearing.

Harleston said she planned to call about a half-dozen witnesses to testify on the son's behalf at his sentencing. Prosecutors intend to call Powell's father, but Harleston said the elder Powell does not wish to testify against his son.

According to the statement of facts, Powell's mother picked him up from his school bus stop on the afternoon of May 13 and told him she had received a call from McDonogh about his academic performance. The two began to argue and, after they got home, Powell began punching his mother.

At one point, she tried to run outside, but he stopped her at the front door and punched her again repeatedly until she was in what he described as a "daze." He then decided to kill her and moved her near a back door, then grabbed his baseball bat. When he started hitting her with the bat, she was reaching up in an attempt to get out the back door.

Powell then hid his mother's body in a garage and cleaned the house. His father got home late that night and went to sleep on a sofa. Early the next morning, Powell began beating his father in the head with the bat. The elder Powell talked his son out of killing him and told him he would withdraw money from his bank account to help the boy escape.

In the meantime, two of Campbell-Powell's co-workers came to the house to check on her and called 911 when no one answered the door. When police arrived, Powell and his father were in the back yard.

"Thank God you're here," the elder Powell told police. "My son killed my wife."

Nigeria police hold 'robber' goat

Police in Nigeria are holding a goat handed to them by a vigilante group, which said it was a car thief who had used witchcraft to change shape.

A police spokesman in Kwara State has been quoted as saying that the "armed robbery suspect" would remain in custody until investigations were over.

But another police spokesman told the BBC the goat was being held in case its owner claimed it.

The belief in witchcraft and the power to change shapes is common in Nigeria.

Police reform activists have condemned the "arrest", saying it highlights the low education levels of many Nigerian police officers.

Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper has a picture of the goat and reports that police paraded it in front of journalists in the Kwara state capital Ilorin on Thursday.

But this was denied by national police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu.

"The vigilante group arrested the goat and took it to the police, then they told the media."

The next morning journalists turned up demanding to see the goat, he said.

"But of course goats can't commit crime."

Incompetent

The BBC's Andrew Walker in Abuja says communities often rely on ill-educated and badly prepared vigilante squads to fill the gaps where the police will not patrol at night.

Innocent Chukwuma of the justice reform group the Cleen Foundation, told the BBC that many Nigerian police officers were poorly educated.

"There are officers who don't even have a secondary school education, and the police have a big job to do in finding these people and getting rid of them."

He said in the past political leaders had allowed the police to be filled with incompetent and in some cases criminal officers so they could be easily bought to protect their own criminal activities.

Police have also been unable to stop vigilante squads from lynching suspects before they could investigate, he said.

New Zealand reptile becomes dad at 111 years old

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A captive reptile in New Zealand has unexpectedly become a father at the ripe old age of 111 after receiving treatment for a cancer that made him hostile toward prospective mates.

The centenarian tuatara, named Henry, was thought well past the mating game until he was caught canoodling with a female named Mildred last March — a consummation that resulted in 11 babies being hatched on Monday.

Tuatara are indigenous New Zealand creatures that resemble lizards but descend from a distinct lineage of reptile that walked the earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago, zoologists say.

An endangered species, the hatchlings born at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery will provide a badly needed boost to the tuatara's genetic diversity, said the gallery's tuatara curator, Lindsay Hazley.

Henry was at least 70 years old when he arrived at the museum, "a grumpy old man" who attacked other reptiles, including females, until a cancerous tumor was removed from his genitals in 2002, said Hazley.

"I went off the idea he was good for breeding," Hazley told The Associated Press, but once the tumor was removed, "he was no longer aggressive."

The museum now has 72 of the reptiles after 42 hatchings in the past two years.

Hazley hopes to use Henry regularly in the breeding program that is helping expand tuatara numbers after they had been savaged by predators.

Tuatara are estimated to number about 50,000, most of them living in predator-free sanctuaries, including offshore islands.

A male Tuatara takes 70 years to fully mature but reaches sexual maturity about age 20.

While there's no scientific data on the life span of the ancient reptiles, "they go beyond 100 well and truly," Hazley said. "They can be around for 150 to 250 years."

Deaf Karaoke Live - The Ultimate Version

Johan Lippowitz (real name David Armand) performs his mime version of Natalie Imbruglia's 'Torn'.
Yes, we all know that he does the guitar slide wrong. Get over it. It's still really funny.

Stab victim 'continued masturbating'

Stab victim 'continued masturbating'


A Brisbane woman stabbed a male friend twice in the shower after he refused to stop masturbating in front of her children.

Defence lawyers for Kylie Louise Wilson, 28, said the mother of two "lost it" when her friend of six years, Daniel Peter Blair, went on a masturbation marathon on April 6 last year.

Brisbane's District Court this morning heard Mr Blair had showed up at Wilson's unit at Birkdale unit, in Redland Shire, where he took amphetamines before having a shower.

Whilst in the bathroom, Mr Blair, 32, began pleasuring himself, before moving to Wilson's bedroom, where he rolled around naked on her bed and continued his lewd conduct.

He returned to the bathroom for more and was busted by Wilson, who was attempting to bath her three-and-a-half year-old daughter.

The court heard Mr Blair refused her repeated requests to stop, prompting her to fetch a knife from the kitchen which she used to stab him twice in the left shoulder.

Crown prosecutors said Mr Blair paused only to put on his shorts and flee outside to wait for police to arrive, but was again overcome by the urge.

"Despite his injury, it seems (Mr Blair) continued to masturbate while in the garage," the prosecutor said.

Police took him to hospital where he received treatment for the minor stab wounds.

Wilson pleaded guilty to one count each of unlawful wounding and wilful damage.

Her defence barrister, Mark Johnson, said Wilson regarded Mr Blair as a "tolerably decent person" when he was not using drugs, but had become "extremely protective" of her daughter under the circumstances.

"He was in and out and round about, doing this sort of thing all over the house, " Mr Johnson said.

"She just lost it, to put it crudely."

Senior Judge Gilbert Trafford Walker accepted the Crown's submission that Wilson had been subjected to "grossly offensive conduct ... which in a moral sense amounts to extreme provocation."

He sentenced her to nine months' jail but ordered that she be immediately released on parole.

Hey Hey Boo Boo...lets go seal a picnik basket!!!

so i have found this new obsession....it's called Picnik.com and it's a picture editing program online....and needless to say...its addicting!!!


here's a few ones i've done





my baby cousin henry...


i love this picture too

this is my aunt Ucy....also known as watusi jenkins...

family! i loved how this turned out i wanna make this into a large print!


this is called pop-up art apparently...


i tried to make just my hair purple...

thought i would let him know who he is...