Violent crime increases again

Washington

Violent crime increases again

Violent crime nationwide increased for the second consecutive year in 2006, and murders reached their highest levels in a decade, according to the FBI's annual crime report, released Monday.

Murder rose by nearly 2 percent last year and robbery increased 7 percent as violence re-emerged as a central issue in several large cities after more than a decade of decline.

The 17,034 murders last year still do not come close to the 24,703 killings in 1991.

The overall rate of violent crime — 473.5 per 100,000 people — also rose for the second straight year, although that rate represented the third-lowest total in the past two decades.

The report showed that property-theft offenses — including car thefts — dropped 2 percent, hitting their lowest level since 1987.

An estimated 1.4 million violent crimes — murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults — occurred in 2006.

Dover, Del.

University student charged in shooting

A Delaware State University freshman was arrested in his dorm Monday and charged with attempted first-degree murder in a shooting that wounded two students from the District of Columbia.

Hours before classes resumed at the Dover campus, Loyer D. Braden, 18, of East Orange, N.J., was arrested and charged in Friday's shooting of Shalita Middleton and Nathaniel Pugh III, both 17.

Braden was charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and a weapons violation, according to police.

New York

Home fires leave seven dead

A fire blamed on an electrical problem tore through a wood-frame house in Brooklyn early Monday, killing three people, authorities said.

A 16-year-old boy who was rescued was hospitalized in serious but stable condition. The three people who died were found in a third-floor attic, which had no smoke-detecting device.

Officials in Laurinburg, N.C., were also investigating a fire in a mobile home that left four siblings dead.

The fire late Sunday started in the stove area of the kitchen, officials said. It killed three boys aged 12, 9 and 3, and their 9-year-old sister.

The children's mother said she was not home at the time because she was dropping off her boyfriend, authorities said.

Columbia, S.C.

Ex-teacher accused of sex with teen

A former teacher was charged with having sex with a teenage boy, the third teacher in the same county accused of such crimes in the past 1 ½ years, authorities said Monday.

Karen Robbins, 49, was arrested over the weekend and charged with three counts each of criminal sexual conduct with a minor and committing a lewd act on a child. The sex occurred with a 15-year-old in her car and twice at her home in 2005, according to arrest warrants.

Robbins was a private-school teacher at the time, and officials said the accusations did not involve one of her students.

She was released on a $90,000 bail.

Huntsville, Texas

Inmates recaptured after manhunt

Two inmates working in a prison garden wrested guns from two guards Monday, exchanged gunfire with other officers and stole a pickup, running over and killing one of the guards as she tried to stop them, prison officials said.

One inmate was captured within an hour, soon after police say the pair committed a carjacking. The other was caught a few hours later, after a manhunt that included a police helicopter, bloodhounds and Stetson-hatted lawmen on horseback.

John Ray Falk, 40, the first inmate caught, has been serving a life sentence for murder in 1986. Jerry Martin, 37, serving a 50-year attempted-murder sentence since 1997, was found hiding in a tree, having stripped to his boxer shorts in a futile attempt to prevent dogs from detecting his scent, officials said.

Minneapolis

Prosecutor told Craig to get lawyer

The prosecutor who brought charges against Sen. Larry Craig in an airport sex sting says he told the Idaho senator he should hire an attorney, according to court papers filed Monday.

Prosecutor Christopher Renz, in a motion opposing Craig's request to withdraw his guilty plea, wrote he spent considerable time in a July 17 conversation telling the Idaho senator how the legal process would work if he chose to plead guilty.

"The defendant told Mr. Renz that he felt he was in a difficult situation as the result of the public office he held, in response to which Mr. Renz said that he appreciated that difficulty and for that reason the defendant should consult with an attorney," Renz wrote.

Craig, R-Idaho, did not, and eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. He has since said he was panicked into admitting to a crime he did not commit. A Hennepin County judge is set to consider Craig's request Wednesday.

Also

Weather: A tropical depression formed in the open Atlantic late Monday and was expected to develop into Tropical Storm Karen sometime today. Tropical Storm Jerry, which formed Sunday, broke up Monday night.

Las Vegas: Charles Cashmore, the final man jailed in the O.J. Simpson armed-robbery case, posted bail and was expected to be freed today or Wednesday.

Sentenced: Angelica Alvarez, 27, who admitted strangling her four young children in an Indiana basement, was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole for each child's death.

Polygamy trial: Jurors in St. George, Utah, said Monday they were deadlocked on one of two charges in the case against Warren Jeffs, the leader of a polygamous sect who is accused of sex crimes in the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl to an older cousin. The judge advised jurors to look at their instructions and keep talking.

Seattle Times news services