MILWAUKEE (AP) - A photograph showing soldiers clowning around an empty, flag-draped casket has sparked a furor online, with people saying it’s disrespectful of veterans and those killed in action.
The Wisconsin National Guard responded Tuesday by announcing it had suspended honor guard duties of the soldier who apparently posted the photograph on Instagram.
The photograph was taken at a guard training facility in Arkansas and shows about a dozen soldiers around the casket. Several hug playfully hug, one flashes a peace sign and another is pointing off in the distance.
The caption reads, “We put the FUN in funeral — your fearless honor guard from various states.”
The photograph was posted from an account belonging to Spc. Terry Harrison. That account has since been closed. Attempts to reach Harrison were unsuccessful.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - The Wisconsin teenager who was found walking barefoot and in her pajamas two winters ago was sexually assaulted twice by her older stepbrother beginning when she was 9 years old, prosecutors said during opening statements Tuesday at her sibling’s trial.
After running away from home in Madison in February 2012, they said she was admitted to a hospital where she told doctors she had been sexually abused and starved. She had weighed just 68 pounds at one point.
The stepbrother, now 20, is accused of sexually assaulting the stepsister when he was 13 and she was 9, Assistant Dane County District Attorney Matt Moeser told jurors. He faces three felonies: first-degree sexual assault of a child without great bodily harm, second-degree sexual assault of a child, and child abuse-intentionally cause harm.
“If you believe what (she) says, he’ll be guilty,” Moeser said.
After the girl told her father and stepmother about the alleged first assault, they put her into in-patient psychiatric care, the prosecutor said. Her parents later moved her into an unfinished basement and starved her, he said.
When she mentioned something in school that led to a social worker getting involved, her parents sent her to live with her grandfather in Minnesota, Moeser said. The girl was then brought back to Madison and home-schooled, though Moeser said she didn’t receive much education. Today she is 17 years old and still in middle school, he said.
The girl’s dad was sentenced in January to five years in prison after being convicted of child abuse, child neglect and other charges for starving the girl. The stepmother received a five-year sentence last year after pleading no contest to reckless endangerment and causing mental harm to a child.
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MONROE, Mich. (AP) - A Michigan utility has welcomed a flock of visitors to the state’s biggest power plant this winter. But they aren’t all that personable.
The south-flying out-of-towners - nearly 200 bald eagles - have taken up residence at DTE Energy’s massive plant along Lake Erie, transforming 800 acres in Monroe into their cozy, cold-weather abode.
The birds have been a common sight these past few frigid months, patiently perching on tree branches and using their 6- to 7-foot wingspans to smoothly glide over the lake and swoop into the plant’s spillway to snatch gizzard shad, their food of choice.
The iconic raptors are drawn to the plant’s warm water discharge, which gives them easy access to the baitfish as well as a vast wooded area where the people-shy birds can roost in seclusion. DTE Energy has set aside the land in the back of the plant for wildlife habitat preservation and is happy to host the eagles when temperatures drop.
“People look at it as a very majestic bird,” said DTE Energy wildlife biologist Matthew Shackelford, who has been tracking eagles at the plant in Monroe, about 35 miles southwest of Detroit, for a dozen years - back when there were only a handful of them wintering there.
This year, Shackelford estimates that 180 eagles are living at the plant, which is also home to deer, ducks and a number of other kinds of birds, including red-tailed hawks, seagulls and heron.
The wintering eagles are the big draw, though, for plant workers, visiting wildlife experts and the lucky few who got a bird’s-eye view during a public tour last month. Once a year, the plant opens its doors to a few dozen members of the public. A lottery was held to select the attendees.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Wisconsin police departments would have to enlist outside investigators to probe officer-involved deaths, Milwaukee police would get money for more gunshot sensors and jail guards could strip search more inmates under a trio of bills the state Assembly passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday.
Rep. Garey Bies, R-Sister Bay, introduced the investigations measure in October in response to a number of high-profile officer-involved deaths over the last decade. Police in Kenosha killed Michael Bell in 2004; Derek Williams, a robbery suspect, died gasping for breath in a Milwaukee squad car in 2011; and a Madison officer shot and killed Paul Heenan during a sidewalk scuffle in 2012. None of the officers involved were criminally charged.
Bies said the bill is an attempt to allay concerns about the possibility of officers investigating their friends and covering up for them.
“(The bill will) give the public confidence. It’ll give the relatives of the person who died confidence. It also will give police officers more satisfaction when they are found that they did nothing wrong that they’ll have more credibility on that finding,” Bies, a former Door County sheriff’s deputy, told reporters at a news conference before the Assembly convened.
Currently, smaller Wisconsin departments often rely on outside agencies to investigate officer-involved deaths. But the state’s two biggest police departments, in Madison and Milwaukee, investigate their own officers.
The bill will allow agencies to use outside investigators from any county, including their own. The measure passed easily on a voice vote Tuesday.
Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told the Assembly she lives about a mile from where Heenan was killed. She said the shooting shook the state’s capital city.
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