Firefighters took three days to find body of obsessive hoarder buried under 3ft of rubbish

An inquest heard they were called out to a blaze at Linda Parkes’ home and found every room filled with rubbish
Firefighters took three days to find an obsessive hoarder, whose body was buried beneath 3ft of debris.

An inquest heard they were called out to a blaze at 59-year-old Linda Parkes’ home and found every room filled with rubbish.

Along with police officers they had to squeeze through gaps in the waste and crawl over bags of human excrement, rotting food and rodent droppings to get to Linda.

Her appalling living conditions prompted the coroner to call for councils to get powers to enter the homes of obsessive hoarders.

David Paul, the station manager, told the Derby hearing: “Access to the building was very restricted. We had to crawl through the top of the doorways to get in the rooms.

“The living room was a solid mess, you’d just be crawling and your back would be touching the ceiling. In the kitchen, the mass was about 5ft deep.

"There was rubbish bags, human excrement in carrier bags, rotting food and rodent droppings.”
The fire last January started in the kitchen of Linda’s Derby home after waste near the oven fell on to a lighted hob.

A postmortem showed she died of smoke inhalation.

Recording a verdict of death by misadventure, the coroner said: “Local authorities should have the power to enter a house if they... believe hoarding is going on, that poses a fire risk.”

Zimmerman police video in Trayvon case raises questions

Forensic experts say newly released video by police of the man who shot Trayvon Martin raises more questions than it answers — but that's not stopping droves of amateur sleuths on TV, Twitter and Facebook from scrutinizing it anyway.
"I think the public should not draw any conclusions from this at all," said Grant Fredericks, a former police officer who headed the forensic video unit for the Vancouver Police Department.

The video should be just a fraction of the evidence available to police as they investigate George Zimmerman's claim that he shot and killed Trayvon, 17, after the teenager allegedly punched the neighborhood watch volunteer in the nose and slammed his head against the ground, Fredericks said.
The Feb. 26 shooting in Sanford, Fla., has brought national attention because Trayvon's family claims Zimmerman killed the unarmed youth after racially stereotyping him. Trayvon was black. Police say Zimmerman is white; his family says he is Hispanic.
Zimmerman's brother, Robert Zimmerman Jr., told CNN Thursday that reports his brother was chasing the teen are "absolutely false" and that he "was not patrolling the neighborhood. He was going to a store, Target."

Robert Zimmerman said the voice heard screaming on 911 tapes is that of his brother, who acted to save his own life. He said George Zimmerman "was very disappointed that none of the neighbors had come out" to help him. He said his brother would have been dead "if he had not acted decisively and instantaneously.''
The police security camera video shows Zimmerman exiting a patrol car and entering the Sanford Police Department about 35 minutes after the shooting. Images of Zimmerman's head and face reveal no obvious cuts or gashes, but at one point, a police officer inspects the back of his head. Zimmerman's lawyer, Craig Sonner, told NBC's Today the video supports his client's story because the officer may have been looking at an injury.

The public weighed in on social media sites. Many expressed disbelief at Zimmerman's claim that he fired in self-defense, and pointed to the grainy video as proof.
Trayvon's family and supporters say Zimmerman's lack of apparent injury in the video shows he lied about the teen attacking him.
Forensic video expert David Notowitz, founder of the National Center for Audio and Video Forensics, says much work remains before investigators can draw evidence from the video. "Right now, people are jumping to frantic conclusions," he said.

Teen dies after horror gang rape

A UKRAINIAN teenager has died three weeks after being set on fire in a gang rape attack by youths that shocked the nation and raised doubts about the competence of police.
Oksana Makar, 18, was raped by three men in their early 20s, strangled with a cord, burned and left for dead in an attack in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv, investigators said.

She was found by a passer-by after she was dumped by her attackers at an abandoned construction site. She was taken to hospital in a critical condition with burns over 55 per cent of her body, requiring the amputation of one of her arms.

She died overnight of her injuries in a specialist hospital in the eastern city of Donetsk where she had been taken after her rescue, the clinic said.

Her heart stopped beating after she suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage and she died despite three attempts to resuscitate her, the chief doctor of the Donetsk Burns centre, Emil Fistal, said.

He said the fact she was able to survive for three weeks since the attack, which occurred on March 9 or 10 according to various sources, had only been possible due to intense treatment and therapy.

"Imagine. She was strangled and they (the attackers) thought she had died. So they burned her. She was lying there 10 hours in the freezing cold and inhaled the by-products of the burning," Dr Fistal said.

President Viktor Yanukovych sent condolences to her relatives while Prime Minister Mykola Azarov vowed that the attackers would be punished "without compromise".

"Millions of Ukrainians believed that Oksana would survive and prayed for her, offering blood, buying medicine," Mr Azarov said.

The case has caused a public outcry in Ukraine, exposing incompetence by the law-enforcement authorities and the extent of social problems in industrial cities such as Mykolayiv, which are riddled with drugs and AIDS.

Ukrainian media had alleged that the suspected attackers - two of whom were initially allowed to go free - are the sons of parents with strong connections to leading local officials.

The mother of one suspect used to be the head of a district in the Mykolayiv region, the regional interior ministry confirmed, prompting allegations the authorities had been trying to keep a lid on the whole affair.

Meanwhile, Makar's mother controversially posted a harrowing video of Oksana in hospital on YouTube where she raises up the bloodied stump of her arm and, apparently barely able to speak, says she feels "awful".

In another disturbing video that was leaked to Ukrainian media, one of the suspects is allegedly shown calmly relating to investigators how the three successively raped Oksana and then killed her when she started threatening to call police.

All three men have now been charged with premeditated rape and murder.

Authorities say several officials from the police and local prosecutors were fired and reprimanded for initially letting the suspects go free.

2 college students killed in Miss. over weekend

STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant is expressing his sorrow at the deaths of two college students in the state over the weekend.

John Sanderson

Late Saturday, 21-year-old John Sanderson of Madison, Miss., was shot to death in a Mississippi State University dormitory, though the killing appears to be isolated. Three male suspects fled the building in a blue Crown Victoria.

Early Sunday, a 19-year-old freshman at Jackson State University died from being shot in the face and killed at an off-campus apartment pool party. Police identified the victim as Nolan Ryan Henderson III of Atlanta. Police have no motive or suspects.

Bryant said in a statement Sunday that he and his wife Deborah were "saddened to learn that Mississippi lost two college students this weekend." He said he's spoken with university leaders and instructed the state public safety commissioner to assist in the investigations.