This Day in Crime History: FEBRUARY 29, 1996 : A PREGNANT TEENAGER IS SHOT WHILE RIDING THE BUS TO SCHOOL

After boarding a school bus on the morning of February 29, Malik Nettles shoots the bus driver and then fires five bullets into 15-year-old Kyunia Taylor, a freshman from Beaumont High School in St. Louis, Missouri. Taylor was later pronounced dead at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

The motivation for the shooting became clear when the dying girl had an emergency cesarean section to deliver a three-month premature baby daughter at the hospital. The child, named Diamond, lived for 23 days before dying. Prior to the shooting, Taylor and her mother had met with the father and next-door neighbor, 30-year-old Mark Boyd, about the pregnancy; Taylor decided against an abortion.

Boyd, the father of two other children with another woman, was not pleased with Taylor’s decision and hired Malik Nettles, 23, to kill both her and the unborn child. Apparently, Boyd was concerned that the child would be retarded because Taylor attended special education courses as a result of her severely limited vision. He paid Nettles about $4,000 to carry out the attack.

Prosecutors were disappointed when jurors convicted Boyd of only second-degree murder and recommended the minimum sentence. Still, St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy J. Wilson said that the crime was “evil incarnate,” and gave Boyd the harshest sentence available to him—26 years in prison. “My mother used to say that stealing from the poor box at church is the worst evil,” Wilson told Boyd. “This is worse.”

Malik Nettles’ first trial ended in a hung jury, largely due to the fact that two men confessed to the murder and then later recanted. At the second trial, Nettles was convicted and received six consecutive life sentences. Nettles’s sentencing judge called him heartless and dangerous. “It is my intent, Mr. Nettles, that you spend the rest of your natural life in the Missouri Department of Corrections. You are too dangerous to be in the community,” he told the killer.

Article Details:

February 29, 1996 : A pregnant teenager is shot while riding the bus to school

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  February 29, 1996 : A pregnant teenager is shot while riding the bus to school

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-pregnant-teenager-is-shot-while-riding-the-bus-to-school

• Access Date

  February 28, 2016

• Publisher

  A+E Networks

Bit of South Africa History in pictures: O.R. Tambo International Airport (Jan Smuts) & the Palmietfontein Airport

The airport was founded in 1952 as "Jan Smuts Airport", two years after his death, near the town of Kempton Park on the East Rand. 

It displaced the "Palmietfontein International Airport", which had handled European flights since 1945. Palmietfontein Airport was a wartime air force base which was converted to a temporary airport to serve Johannesburg whilst the new airport, Jan Smuts Airport (now OR Tambo International Airport), was being built. The airport serving Johannesburg at the time, Rand Airport, was unable to accommodate the size of aircraft to be operated on a new service to Britain. In 1948, South African Airways moved its terminal to Palmietfontein Airport.

Several historical flights terminated at Palmietfontein Airport. A Qantas Airways Avro Lancastrian completed an unprecedented flight from Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport in Australia to Palmietfontein, landing on 20 November 1948 at 15h15, and having been in the air a total of 41 hours and 52 minutes at an average speed of 210 mph (180 kn; 340 km/h). En-route stops were made at Perth, Cocos Islands and Mauritius. The objective, to establish viable air links between South Africa and Australia, had been accomplished. 

It was used as a test airport for the Concorde during the 1970s, to determine how the aircraft would perform while taking off and landing at high altitude.^[2] During the 1980s, many countries stopped trading with South Africa because of the United Nation sanctions imposed against South Africa in the struggle against apartheid, and many international airlines had to stop flying to the airport. These sanctions also resulted in South African Airways being refused rights to fly over most African countries, and in addition to this the risk of flying over some African countries was emphasised by the shooting down of two passenger aircraft over Rhodesia (Air Rhodesia Flight 825 and 827),^[3]forcing them to fly around the "bulge" of Africa. This required specially-modified aircraft like the Boeing 747-SP. Following the ending of apartheid, the airport's name, and that of other international airports in South Africa, were changed and these restrictions were lifted.

The airport overtook Cairo International Airport in 1996 as the busiest airport in Africa^[4] and is the fourth-busiest airport in the Africa–Middle East region after Dubai International Airport, Doha International Airport and Abu Dhabi International Airport. In fiscal year 2010, the airport handled 8.82 million departing passengers.^[5]

On 26 November 2006, the airport became the first in Africa to host the Airbus A380.^[6] The aircraft landed in Johannesburg on its way to Sydney via the South Pole on a test flight.

The airport was renamed Johannesburg International Airport in 1994 when the newly reformed South African government implemented a national policy of not naming airports after politicians. The policy was however reversed later, and the airport renamed again on 27 October 2006 after Oliver Tambo, a former President of the African National Congress.^[1]

Taken from: O. R. Tambo International Airport From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._R._Tambo_International_Airport 

References

1. Jump up ^ "OR Tambo now official". News24. 27 October 2006. Archived from the original on 5 November 2006. Retrieved 27 October 2006.
2. Jump up ^ TIMELINE −70s. Concorde Sst (21 January 1976).
3. Jump up ^ "Details p of Air Rhodesia Flight RH825". Viscount Disasters. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
4. Jump up ^ Busiest Airports in Africa [Archive] – PPRuNe Forums. Pprune.org.
5. Jump up ^ Airports Company South Africa Annual Report – Part I
6. Jump up ^ Oliver R Tambo (Johannesburg) International Airport (JNB/FAJS). Airport Technology (15 June 2011).

This Day in Crime History: FEBRUARY 26, 2012 : FLORIDA TEEN TRAYVON MARTIN IS SHOT AND KILLED

On this day in 2012, Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen walking home from a trip to a convenience store, is fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer patrolling the townhouse community of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman later claimed to have shot the unarmed 17-year-old out of self-defense during a physical altercation.

After police initially opted not to arrest Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother is Hispanic, the case sparked protests and ignited national debates about racial profiling and self-defense laws. Zimmerman later was charged with second-degree murder; following a high-profile trial that riveted America, he was acquitted of the charges against him.

On February 26, Martin, a Miami high school student, was in Sanford visiting his father. Dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, the teen was on his way back to the home of his father’s fiancée, after buying a bag of Skittles and a bottle of juice, when he was spotted by Zimmerman, a 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator who was captain of the neighborhood patrol at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, which recently had experienced a series of break-ins and burglaries. Zimmerman called the non-emergency line of the Sanford police to report that Martin looked suspicious then ignored a police dispatcher’s advice not to follow the young man. Moments later, gunfire rang out. When officers arrived, Martin was dead at the scene. Zimmerman, who had a bloody nose and cuts on the back of his head, was questioned then released. There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, and police chose not to arrest Zimmerman, who claimed to have acted in self-defense.

After Martin’s parents raised concerns about the police investigation into the death of their son, who had no criminal record, the case gained national attention. Protest rallies were held in cities nationwide, including New York City, where on March 21 hundreds of people gathered for the Million Hoodie March and demanded justice for Martin, who many believed Zimmerman had profiled as suspicious and threatening simply because the teen was black. Two days later, President Barack Obama said of the shooting: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” In addition to raising a national debate about race relations, the shooting drew attention to Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, which allows people to use lethal force if they fear for their safety and does not require them to retreat from a dangerous situation, even when it’s possible to do so.

On April 11, 2012, following weeks of demonstrations, a special prosecutor appointed by Florida’s governor charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty and the case went to trial in June 2013. In court, the prosecution portrayed Zimmerman as a wannabe cop who had profiled Martin as a criminal, chased him down and fought him. Prosecutors also tried to poke holes in Zimmerman’s self-defense claim by pointing to inconsistencies in his statements to the police. Defense attorneys for Zimmerman, who did not take the stand, contended he only shot Martin after the teen attacked him.On July 13, after deliberating for 16 hours over two days, a jury of six women found Zimmerman not guilty.

In November 2013, the city of Sanford announced new rules forbidding volunteers in its neighborhood watch program from carrying guns and pursuing suspects.

Article Details:

February 26, 2012 : Florida teen Trayvon Martin is shot and killed

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2013

• Title

  February 26, 2012 : Florida teen Trayvon Martin is shot and killed

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/florida-teen-trayvon-martin-is-shot-and-killed

• Access Date

  February 26, 2016

• Publisher

  A+E Networks