USA Today - 09.08.2019

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A suspect described as “pure evil”

and “full of anger” killed four people

and injured two in a stabbing and

armed robbery rampage over two

hours Wednesday in Southern Califor-

nia, police said.

“We know this guy was full of anger

and he harmed a lot of people tonight,”

Garden Grove Police Lt. Carl Whitney

said at a news conference.

The unidentified 33-year-old man

was arrested at a 7-Eleven store in

Santa Ana where he had disarmed and

killed a security guard.

Police had tracked his silver Mercedes

to the convenience store’s parking lot af-

ter discovering two stabbing victims at

the suspect’s apartment building.

All victims and the suspect are His-

panic, Whitney said.

The two-hour crime spree played

out over the neighboring cities of Gar-

den Grove and Santa Ana, southeast of

Los Angeles.

Whitney said the suspect also

robbed a bakery, check-cashing busi-

nessand an insurance business,

Police initially responded to a bur-

glary at an apartment complex where

the suspect lived, but found no one in-

jured. Officers then got a call from in-

side the same complex where two

stabbing victims were found. Whitney

said one died on a balcony and the oth-

er at a hospital.

As the carnage unfolded, another

person was injured at a service station

when the suspect almost cut off a

man’s nose and an employee at a near-

by Subway restaurant was stabbed to

death. Along the way, the suspect also

robbed a bakery.

The owner, who asked not to be

identified, told KCAL-TV that she was

charging her cellphone at about 4 p.m.

when the man drove up and apparent-

ly mistook her for a customer.

“He went directly to the register and

tried to open the register ... he showed

me a gun,” she said. “He took all the

money and fled.”

“I think I was very lucky because he

thought I was a customer, not the own-

er,” she said.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Police stand watch at the scene of a stabbing in Garden Grove, Calif., on

Wednesday. A man killed four people and wounded two in a string of

robberies before he was arrested, police say.ALEX GALLARDO/AP

Stabbing suspect

called ‘pure evil’

4 killed, 2 wounded

in California rampage

Doug Stanglin

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – President Donald
Trump said he may commute the pris-
on sentence of Rod Blagojevich, the
former Illinois governor convicted of
federal corruption charges that includ-
ed efforts to sell Barack Obama’s old
U.S. Senate seat.
Noting that Blagojevich was once a
gueston his television program “The
Apprentice,” Trump said aboard Air
Force One late Wednesday, “I think he
was treated very, very
unfairly, just as others
were.”
Blagojevich, who en-
tered federal prison in
2012, is in the middle of
a 14-year sentence after
being convicted on fed-
eral charges of using his
powers as governor to extract cam-
paign money and other political fa-
vors.
In 2015, a federal appeals court
threw out some of the charges related
to Blagojevich’s attempts to sell an ap-
pointment to the Senate job that Oba-
ma vacated after he won the 2008
presidential election. The appeals
court left the other charges intact.
Trump suggested he might com-
mute Blagojevich’s sentence in May
2018.
A month later, Blagojevich filed pa-
perwork with the Justice Department
formally requesting a commutation.
“I am thinking very seriously about
commuting his sentence so that he can
go home to his family after seven
years,” Trump said Wednesday.
After a trip to Dayton, Ohio, and El
Paso, Texas, Trump cast the prospec-
tive commutation of Blagojevich as a
bipartisan gesture.
“A man who is a Democrat, not a Re-
publican,” Trump said, “who I don’t
know very well, but he was on ‘The Ap-
prentice’ for a couple of weeks.”

Trump may

commute

Blagojevich’s

sentence

David Jackson
USA TODAY

Blagojevich

GOP freezes Twitter spending

after McConnell account locked

The Republican Party, the Trump

campaign and other GOP organiza-

tions said they are freezing their

spending on Twitter to protest the

platform’s treatment of Senate Major-

ity Leader Mitch McConnell.

Twitter temporarily locked McCon-

nell’s campaign account Wednesday

after it shared a video in which some

protesters spoke of violence outside

his Kentucky home, where he’s recov-

ering from a shoulder fracture.

The social media platform said in a

statement that users were locked out

because of a tweet “that violated our

violent threats policy, specifically

threats involving physical safety.”

The account was active Thursday

but no longer contained the tweet.

The Courier Journal reported one

protester said McConnell should have

broken his neck; another spoke of vio-

lence when responding to a reference

about a hypothetical McConnell voo-

doo doll.

Puerto Rico has had 3 governors

in a week, considers its 4th

A day after Puerto Rico got its third

governor in less than a week following

angry street protests, top officials from

new leader Wanda Vázquez’s own par-

ty talked openly Thursday about their

desire to see a fourth take over the po-

sition.

Senate President Thomas Rivera

Schatz,who played a key role in the

successful court challenge to the

swearing-in of Pedro Pierluisi after

Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned, public-

ly backed Resident Commissioner Jen-

niffer González – Puerto Rico’s repre-

sentative to Congress – to become gov-

ernor. Party allies fell in line.

For González to become governor,

she would have to be nominated to the

open secretary of state position and

confirmed. Then Vázquez would have

to resign. The new governor said she

did not intend to step down despite

saying she didn’t want the job.

“It’s time that people and not poli-

ticians become the priority,” González

said.

From wire reports

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