Student Left In DEA jail to Get $4.1 Million

By Dave Summers, R. Stickney and Greg Bledsoe, NBC San Diego

The U.S. government will pay $4.1 million to avoid a lawsuit against federal agents who forgot about a UC San Diego student left in a holding cell for days without food or water.
Daniel Chong spent five days in a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) holding cell in April 2012.
Taken into custody on a DEA raid, Chong was left in a windowless room without food and water. He was forced to drink his own urine hoping it would help him stay alive.
Chong's attorney, who along with his client threatened a lawsuit against the DEA, announced the $4.1 million settlement Tuesday.

“What happened to Daniel Chong should not happen to any human being,” attorney Gene Iredale said.
Iredale said it was a San Diego Police Department officer by the name of Darin Reis who told Chong on that first day that someone would be right back to get him.
The officer was part of a DEA task force made up of local, state and federal law enforcement.
"It was an accident, a really really bad horrible accident," Chong said Tuesday regarding the officer's alleged mistake.

The UC San Diego student was at a friend’s house in University City celebrating 4/20, a day many marijuana users set aside to smoke, when agents came inside and raided the residence.
Chong was then taken to the DEA office in Kearny Mesa.
“I had to do what I had to do to survive,” Chong told NBC 7 after the incident. “It’s so inconceivable. You keep doubting they would forget you."
When he was eventually found, Chong was incoherent and suffering from kidney failure. He was rushed to the hospital where he spent three days in the ICU.
More than a year later the DEA that put him there is paying the price. Defense attorney Gretchen Von Helms, who is not representing Chong, previously estimated the settlement could be in the $2-3 million range.

"You break it down into the pain and suffering and how horrible this could have been for the family. They didn't know where he was, all the anguish the family went through and the young man went through,” Von Helms said.
Eventually Chong was discovered and the DEA issued a formal apology.
Since then, Chong has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and is being treated by a doctor who normally treats veterans who have returned from battle.

Juror: Zimmerman 'Got Away With Murder' But Had To Be Acquitted

Pool via EPA

George Zimmerman listens as the verdict is announced July 13 in Sanford, Fla.

By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News

A member of the jury that acquitted George Zimmerman said Thursday she thinks Zimmerman "got away with murder" but that jurors had no choice in finding him not guilty under the law.
In an interview Thursday with ABC News, the woman identified as Juror B29 during the trial discussed the deliberations that led to the acquittal of Zimmerman on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges on July 13 in the shooting death last year of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman said he shot Martin in self defense.

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The juror, whom the network identified as Puerto Rican, was the only minority member on the six-woman jury.

The jurors' names remain sealed, but the woman allowed ABC to show her face and identify her by the name Maddy. She is a nursing assistant and the mother of eight children.
The woman said the evidence didn't prove murder, "Even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty."
"We had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence," she said. Juror B29 said she initially held out for convicting Zimmerman of second-degree murder, but after nine hours of deliberations, she came to the conclusion that wasn't enough proof under Florida law."I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end," she said.

George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with," she said. But "the law couldn't prove it."The woman told ABC News that she still isn't sure she made the right call, saying, "I felt like I let a lot of people down" — especially Martin's parents.  "It's hard for me to sleep, it's hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin's death," she said. "And as I carry him on my back, I'm hurting as much (as) Trayvon's Martin's mother, because there's no way that any mother should feel that pain."

In a statement late Thursday, Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, said:
"It is devastating for my family to hear the comments from juror B29, comments which we already knew in our hearts to be true. That George Zimmerman literally got away with murder. This new information challenges our nation once again to do everything we can to make sure that this never happens to another child."

Attempts by NBC News to reach Zimmerman attorney Mark O'Mara for comment were not successful.
Only one other juror has spoken out publicly about the verdict. Juror B37 said in an interview earlier this month on CNN that only three jurors thought Zimmerman should be acquitted when deliberations began and that all of them cried when they were over.
She said Martin "played a huge role" in his own death and said "he could have walked away and gone home."
Four of the other jurors — all but the woman who spoke to ABC News on Thursday — later issued a statement saying Juror B37's remarks didn't represent their views.

FBI Adds First Woman To List Of Most Wanted Terrorists

Anonymous / New Jersey State Police via AP

This is an undated picture provided by the New Jersey State Police showing Assata Shakur, the former Joanne Chesimard, added Thursday to the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists.

By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News

The FBI put a woman on its list of most wanted terrorists for the first time Thursday — a 1970s black radical who authorities say shot a New Jersey trooper, made a daring daylight escape from prison and fled to Cuba.
The agency and the state also doubled the bounty for her capture to $2 million.
The announcement was the latest turn in the 40-year saga of Joanne Chesimard — also known as Assata Shakur — who was part of the Black Liberation Army and became one of the most notorious fugitives in New Jersey history.
“While we cannot right the wrongs of the past, we can and will continue to pursue justice no matter how long it takes,” said Aaron Ford, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark office.

In a direct appeal to Chesimard, he said: “Give yourself up, come to America and face justice.”
Chesimard was found guilty of murder in the killing of Trooper Werner Foerster, who was shot dead on May 2, 1973, after stopping her and two associates. The trooper was finished off with his own gun, and the FBI says Chesimard’s gun was found at his side.
She was convicted in 1977 and sent to prison, but she broke out two years later with the help of accomplices from the BLA and the Weather Underground, a left-wing radical organization.
Chesimard lived in safehouses before fleeing to Cuba, where she took the Shakur name and was shielded from the United States by the communist government of Fidel Castro.
She is now 65.
Authorities took note Thursday of the 40th anniversary of the trooper’s killing and said Chesimard’s capture would close a wound for New Jersey state police and prove that they will not give up when one of their own is slain.
Asked whether authorities were encouraging bounty hunters in Cuba, New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa said: “I’m not going to get into exact means. What we’re saying is there’s now $2 million for her safe return to New Jersey that’s available.”
In Cuba, Chesimard has mostly disappeared from the public eye. Her story gained prominence again in 1998, when Pope John Paul II made a visit there.
There a television reporter found Chesimard, who claimed she was the victim of a racist prosecution. The governor of New Jersey was furious, and the state police wrote to the pope to ask him to put pressure on Castro to return Chesimard.
But frosty relations between the United States and Cuba have frustrated American efforts to get her back ever since.
Ford said Chesimard “remains an inspiration to the radical, left-wing, anti-government, black separatist movement.” He said there was no specific new threat that led the bureau to add her to the list.
“Some of those people, and the people that espouse those ideas, are still in this country,” he said. “So we’d be naïve not to think that there’s some communication between her and the people she used to run around with.”
Chesimard, who is the step-aunt of late rapper Tupac Shakur, is the 46th person added to the list of most wanted terrorists since President George W. Bush established it after the Sept. 11 attacks. Osama bin Laden was on the list until he was killed in 2011.