Author Archives: Denise Simon

Another Illegal and an Unimaginable Triple Murder

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Ft. Myers, Florida: Family member charged in ‘extremely violent’ triple homicide

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday that Brian Omar Hyde has been charged in the deaths of Dorla Pitts, 37, her daughter Starlette Pitts, 17, and Michael Kelly, Jr., 19.

Deputies were called to the home in the 3507 21st Street SW shortly before noon Tuesday. It all started when Dorla Pitts walked in on the scene while she was on the phone with her husband. Her scream was the last thing Dorrien Pitts heard. He then called a family friend who went to the home and discovered the bodies.

– VIDEO: Watch the full LCSO press conference

The 18-month-old daughter of Starlette and Michael was found unharmed. Detectives are not sharing details on whether the child was near the bodies.

Hyde, 19, is charged with three counts of second-degree murder and faces a charge in the death of Starlette Pitts’ unborn child. He was arrested Tuesday for driving without a license. At the time of his arrest, he had blood on his body and clothes, according to LCSO.

– DOWNLOAD: Brian Omar Hyde arrest report

Michael’s mother, Sherri Flemming, said Hyde is Starlette’s cousin and Dorla’s nephew who had been staying at the home after recently moving here from Belize. According to LCSO, Hyde is in the country illegally and is awaiting a court hearing as an illegal immigrant, having crossed the Texas border earlier this year.

Lt. Matt Sands said it was an “extremely violent scene, even for us. All homicide scenes are normally violent, but this scene was what we considered unimaginable.”

He said there is evidence all the victims tried to defend themselves.

At the same time deputies were working the Lehigh scene, Fort Myers Police received a call for a reckless driver. Hyde was pulled over in a white Range Rover for driving on the opposite side of the road, at which time he was arrested for driving with no license. The Range Rover was registered to the Lehigh address, as were two other sets of keys Hyde had with him. Detectives say a bloody palm print found at the scene matched Hyde’s.

LCSO is still investigating a motive.

Investigators are not releasing specific details on the murder weapon, only stating that the victims were hit several times with a sharp object.

FAMILY LEFT TO PICK UP THE PIECES

Michael’s mother, Sherri Flemming, said Thursday that when she met Brian Hyde, she felt something was off, but accepted him because he is Starlette’s cousin. She said the young couple took him in because they were good, caring people.

“This could happen to anybody, so be careful who you bring into your house. It could be your own family member,” Flemming said.

She said Hyde was made to feel like family by Starlette and Michael, who invited him to his family’s gatherings, but Flemming said she felt uncomfortable when Hyde came around.

While it helps to know how they died, it’s the why that leaves Flemming emotional. “They was innocent people, how could you do this?”

Michael’s sister, Derquiasha Henderson, said they were just picking out baby names for the new baby. “We were just doing all of that, we were supposed to hang out.”

She said now they’ll have to show the surviving 18-month-old, found unharmed in a bedroom, how much her parents loved her.

“I can picture her trying to go to her mom and my brother and wake them up, because that’s the type of baby she is. She love her parents, she loved them and they loved her,” Henderson said.

The surviving grandparents from both families are in the process of figuring out how to care for the little girl, and say what they need most right now is time to heal.

WHO IS BRIAN HYDE?

Authorities in Brian Hyde’s native country of Belize say he is no stranger to them.

Hyde was recently wanted in connection to a recent robbery of a cell phone store there before fleeing the country.

Hyde first came to the U.S. in January, illegally entering through Texas, according to investigators.

– VIDEO: Who is Brian Hyde?

Since then, Hyde had been staying with his relatives, the Pitts, in Lehigh Acres.

According to Belize media outlets, Hyde was also arrested in November of last year for assaulting a police officer, a charge he later disputed.

Other reports show Hyde and two other men were suspects in a double murder case dating back to October 2013. He was only charged with a lesser crime of “handling stolen goods.”

A newspaper reporter said Hyde comes from a known “criminal” family.

His uncle, Russell Hyde, was considered a suspect in the brutal murders of two Belize nationals in May. Both men were found decapitated and dismembered.

To date, Russell Hyde has not been charged with their murders.

According to sources in Belize, police do not have the technology to analyze DNA and other forensic evidence like the U.S. does, which may be one reason they had such a hard time connecting Russell Hyde to those deaths.

As for Brian Hyde, he remains in Lee County Jail and faces trial here.

Attorney Michael Raheb said if Hyde is found not guilty, he’ll face an immigration judge and most likely be deported.

But if found guilty, “then he may be serving life in prison, in which case the whole point of deportation becomes moot because he won’t be released from Florida state prison,” Raheb said.

Officials at the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have not yet responded to NBC2’s requests for comment.

ISIS Uses Chemical Weapons in Iraq

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EDGARTOWN, Massachusetts (AP) — The United States is investigating whether the Islamic State used chemical weapons, the White House said Thursday, following allegations that IS militants deployed chemical weapons against Kurdish forces in northern Iraq.

 

Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said the U.S. is taking the allegations “very seriously” and seeking more information about what happened. He noted that IS had been accused of using such weapons before.

“We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further stress that any use of chemicals or biological material as a weapon is completely inconsistent with international standards and norms regarding such capabilities,” Baskey said in a statement.

Earlier Thursday, Kurdish officials said their forces, known as peshmerga, were attacked the day before near the town of Makhmour, not far from Irbil. Germany’s military has been training the Kurds in the area, and the German Defense Ministry said some 60 Kurdish fighters had suffered breathing difficulties from the attack — a telltale sign of chemical weapons use. But neither Germany nor the Kurds specified which type of chemical weapons may have been used.

Confirmation of chemical weapons use by IS would mark a dramatic turn in the U.S.-led effort to rout the extremist group from the roughly one-third of Iraq and Syria that it controls.

Although the U.S. and its coalition partners are mounting airstrikes against the Islamic State, they are relying on local forces like the Kurds, the Iraqi military and others to do the fighting on the ground. Already, those forces have struggled to match the might of the well-funded and heavily armed extremist group.

At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the U.S. was speaking with the Kurds who had made the allegations to gather more information. She said that if reports of chemical weapons are true, they would further prove that what IS calls warfare is really “just systematic attacks on civilians who don’t accord to their particularly perverse world view.”

“I think we will have to again move forward on these allegations, get whatever evidence we can,” Power said.

She added that as a result of earlier chemical weapons use by the Syrian government, the U.S. and its partners now have advanced forensic systems to analyze chemical weapons attacks. She said anyone responsible should be held accountable.

Similar reports of chemical weapons use by IS had surfaced in July. But it’s unclear exactly where the extremist group may have obtained any chemical weapons.

Following a chemical weapon attack on a suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus in 2014 that killed hundreds of civilians, the U.S. and Russia mounted a diplomatic effort that resulted in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government agreeing to the destruction or removal of its chemical weapons stockpiles. But there have been numerous reports of chemical weapons use in Syria since then — especially chlorine-filled barrel bombs. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the global chemical weapons watchdog, has been investigating possible undeclared chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria.

Word of the White House’s probe into possible chemical weapons use by IS came as President Barack Obama was vacationing with his family in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Also on Thursday, IS militants claimed responsibility for a truck bombing at a Baghdad market that killed 67 people in one of the deadliest single attacks there since the Iraq War.

Further details can be found here.

U.S. Flag Raised in Cuba Today by John Kerry and Envoy

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The weekend before Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Cuba with an envoy to raise the U.S. flag at the re-opening of the embassy in Havana, 60 Cubans were arrested in what is more repression. Arrested were Cuban Ladies in White and yet Barack Obama on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard had nothing to say and John Kerry was mute of the matter himself.

John Kerry leads delegation to Cuba for flag raising at U.S. Embassy

WaPo: The United States plans to raise the Stars and Stripes at its embassy in Havana Friday morning, kicking off a day of symbolism and carefully balanced outreach to both Cuba’s communist government and its restive population.

Two U.S. government aircraft are scheduled to depart Washington at dawn to carry Secretary of State John F. Kerry and dozens of others on the 2   1/2 hour flight to the island. In addition to a 20-person official delegation of officials and members of Congress, selected Cuban-Americans, entrepreneurs and a large media contingent will be aboard, along with the three retired Marines who last lowered the flag when relations were severed more than 54 years ago.

Speeches are to follow the raising of the banner outside the seven-story embassy building, built in the early 1950s on the Malecón, Havana’s sweeping waterfront boulevard. The U.S. Army’s Brass Quintet will play both country’s anthems.

President Obama’s inaugural poet, Richard Blanco, whose family left Cuba shortly before he was born in 1968, will read “Matters of the Sea,” a poem he has written for the occasion.

The embassy has been open for nearly a month, following the official July 20 re-establishment of U.S.-Cuba relations. But the flag has been kept under wraps for the arrival of Kerry, the highest U.S. government official to set foot in Cuba since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president .

After the ceremony, Kerry will meet privately with Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Havana. Ortega was instrumental, along with Pope Francis, in the success of nearly two years of secret bilateral negotiations that led to this day. Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced plans to restore relations last December.

In a carbon copy of last month’s official opening of the Cuban Embassy here, Kerry will meet with Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez at his ministry, and the two will then hold a joint news conference.

Later in the afternoon, a separate U.S. flag will be raised at the oppulent estate in western Havana that is the once and future residence of the U.S. ambassador, currently occupied by Charge d’Affairs Jeffrey DeLaurentis. Members of Cuban civil society — including political dissidents — ave been invited to that ceremony and to a reception with Kerry will host.

In an interview Wednesday with CNN Espanol, Kerry rejected criticism Cuban government opponents were not asked to attend the morning events at the embassy.

“We just disagree with that. We’re going to meet,” he said. The embassy ceremony, “is a government-to-government moment. We’re opening an embassy. It’s not open to everybody in the country. And later we’ll have an opportunity where there is a broader perspective to be able to meet with … a broad cross-section of Cuban civil society, including dissidents,” he said.

While many dissidents support the U.S-Cuba opening, many also oppose it, charging that the administration is helping the Castro government stay in power while getting little in return. Since the restoration of relations was announced, the number of opposition demonstrations has sharply increased, along with government detention of dissidents.

“The truth is that this will not be the complete and total change everybody wants overnight. It’s going to take a little bit of time,” Kerry told CNN. “But I am convinced … President Obama is convinced, that by being there, we will be able to do more to help the Cuban people,” he said. “Their concerns, their issues, their hopes, their dreams will be better represented more directly to our government with accountability in that process.”

Human rights, Kerry said, is “at the top of our agenda in terms of the first things that we will be focused on in our direct engagement with the Cuban government,” including his Friday talks with Rodriguez.

In a Thursday letter to Kerry, the organization Reporters Without Borders USA noted that Cuba ranks 169 of 180 countries on its press freedom index. “Cuba’s information monopoly and censorship practices do not apply only to local media,” it said, “foreign journalists are also subject to restrictions, receiving accreditation only selectively” and “deported” when they displease “the current regime.”

Despite the restoration of relations, the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba remains in place. Obama has called for Congress to lift it, along with remaining restrictions on U.S. travel to the island, but lawmakers have resisted.

The eight members of Congress in Kerry’s official delegation include Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); and Democratic Reps. Karen Bass (Calif.), Steve Cohen (Tenn.), Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Jim McGovern (Mass.).

The embargo continues to be a rallying point for the Cuban government. In an article published in Granma, the official Cuban Communist party paper, on the occasion of his 89th birthday Thursday, revolutionary leader and former president Fidel Castro criticized the United States for everything from dropping an atomic bomb on Japan near the end of World War II, to setting the stage for global economic crisis by amassing most of the world’s gold supply.

That crisis, Castro said, had battered Cuba’s economy, even as it is “owed compensation equivalent to damages, which have reached many millions of dollars” as a result of the U.S. sanctions.

 

Smoke Coming From the Hillary Server Fire is Worse

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Strip the security clearance from this woman. There are many calling for this exact action and the State Department will not comment if she in fact still has it. At least during this investigation, her clearance should be suspended.

Posted on this site was a timeline and factual information when it comes to the Hillary Servergate affair. A few hours have passed and there of course is more to report.

More factual intrigue is listed below and it is not in any real date order given what and how information is being obtained. This comes as the FBI begins the data and material investigations.

1. Barack Obama drafted and signed a lengthy Executive Order #13526 spelling out the comprehensive conditions of all classified and top secret information. The Democrats and those supporting the Hillary camp in Severgate can NO longer claim restrictive laws are passed AFTER her term as Secretary of State. Further and quite important, Hillary was ONE of 20 who were designate with authority to apply classified codes to documents making it all the more curious on how she can claim ignorance in top secret or restricted documents.

2, It is now confirmed, the second server in question which held the material involved in Servergate, located in New Jersey and seized by the FBI was stripped of data. The FBI does in fact have the skills to rebuild and retrace all administrative actions in the server.

3, Now another at the core of this investigation is Huma Abedin who was and is Hillary’s personal confidant and aide de camp. To date, she has not signed nor turned over as order by Judge Sullivan the certification under penalty of perjury or the email materials which hovers in the range of 7000 communication transmissions.

4. As discussed before, not only was there 3 thumb drives of the Hillary email transaction surrendered to the FBI and 3 servers, but the FBI will likely need to obtain or gain a search warrant for 3 additional communication devices held by Hillary, those being her Blackberry, her iPhone and her iPad.

5. When it comes to the SIGINT or geo-spatial top secret email in question, it appears it was relating to a drone image of terror groups in Pakistan. This speaks to sources and methods such that the top secret designations would have originated with the original transmission of the critic (critical communications).

6. Platte River was NOT an approved facility to house or support classified material. Outside vendors are to be approved in the case of top secret material that have hardened rooms preventing espionage or eavesdropping.

7. There will be more Hillary personnel caught up in the investigation snare and those likely will include Mike Morrell, Deputy Director of the CIA; Phillippe Reines, Hillary’s gatekeeper; Jeremy Bash, former Chief of Staff for Leon Panetta; Andrew Shapiro, Hillary’s Policy Advisor; and several others now at Beacon Global Strategies, Hillary’s personnel policy think tank.

8. The contracted server company, Platte River is now raising deeper questions due in part to a lawsuit and investigation from November 2014. The lawsuit document is found here. They stole phone numbers and metadata from White House military advisors.

The Internet company used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her private server was sued for stealing dozens of phone lines including some which were used by the White House.

Platte River Networks is said to have illegally accessed the master database for all US phone numbers.

It also seized 390 lines in a move that created chaos across the US government.

Among the phone numbers which the company took – which all suddenly stopped working – were lines for White House military support desks, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, a lawsuit claims.

Others were the main numbers for major financial institutions, hospitals and the help desk number for T2 Communications, the telecom firm which owned them.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of T2 claims that the mess took 11 days to fix and demands that Platte River pay up $360,000 in compensation.

More to come for sure…..stay tuned.

 

Now Veterans Can Grade VA Facilities

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Listen To A VA Employee And A Veteran Break Down On The Phone Over Access To Care, the full story is here.

The plight of veterans when it comes to the Veterans Administration continues and no one is really taking any action to clean up the mess while vets actually die waiting for an appointment for medical services.

Some disabled veterans go hungry and can’t afford basic resources for themselves because the disability rating they have been given by the VA isn’t high enough for them. They have to seek assistance from somewhere like these Georgia VA disability lawyers to help them get the disability rating they deserve. Few veterans are treated with the respect they deserve but now there are new platforms to make things better for them.

Now a new ratings platform has been launched to help vets navigate and even grade each facility, a new tool that is desperately needed. The Secretary of the VA ignores reports and the Congress has worked diligently to install cures and solutions that the VA is loathe to accept.

Washington ~ Stars and Stripes: More than 35,000 veterans have had their health care delayed by a Department of Veterans Affairs computer program that automatically put them in limbo — many for years. Yet the VA says it lacks the authority to override the system.

According to documents leaked to the Huffington Post, the veterans — most of whom served in Iraq and Afghanistan — were erroneously put onto a “pending” list for failing to fill out a means test. But combat veterans are not required to fill out means tests to receive health care.

About 16,000 of the cases have been pending for more than five years, according to the Huffington Post. Under VA rules, combat veterans are eligible for five years of free health care after discharge, but the period begins the day of discharge. But VA spokeswoman Walinda West said combat veterans who are granted Veterans Health Administration benefits received them for life.

The VA has known about the problem since at least April, according to the Huffington Post. As of Wednesday, staffers were calling and mailing notices to affected veterans, telling them to fill out paperwork to agree to copays – which appears to duplicate paperwork they have already filled out — in order to enroll in the program.

VA website

New VAratings.com Healthcare Site Allows U.S. Veterans to Rate & Review VA Facilities Nationwide

Charleston, SC: VetFriends.com – the largest Website reuniting U.S. military veterans – has launched a nationwide online database of VA Hospitals with ratings and reviews at https://www.VAratings.com. The goal of the site is to allow veterans to share their experiences, rate their local VA hospitals and clinics and to help improve and provide awareness to Veterans Affairs facilities nationwide.

U.S. veterans and military personnel are the foundation of what has made America the symbol of freedom and opportunity that we enjoy today. The VetFriends.com Veteran Healthcare Resource Center is a free resource for all veterans and their families.

VAratings.com powered by VetFriends.com provides a free ratings/review system with a directory of all VA Hospitals, Outpatient Clinics, Veteran Centers, National Cemeteries and Intake Centers. The rating system consists of a 5 star rating process with questions about a veteran’s visit that deal with: Department, Ease of scheduling, Wait times, Treatment quality, Staff’s quality of care and more. A comment section is also available where veterans can add more information and others visitors can respond directly to posts.

VAratings.com was created to provide objective reviews of services provided by the VA from U.S. veterans and their families. It is important for veterans to know that their VA facility has the highest quality of care and expertise. VAratings.com is an ideal platform for information to be exchanged, questions asked and unbiased reviews are posted.

Each month a topic will be spotlighted in our awareness campaign featuring a specific health issue. The topic covered will coincide with the national awareness months such as Breast Cancer Awareness in October and American Diabetes Month in November. Additional resources include information on how veterans can obtain VA Benefits, along with a library of VA forms. Furthermore, health topics and articles address illnesses, new treatments and discoveries, along with healthy lifestyle tips plus a variety of others.

VetFriends.com offers additional services such as: search over 1,900,000 members to make contact with old service friends and relatives; information on how to obtain your own or a relative’s military records and medals; message boards; military veteran job boards; upload past and present photos; military jokes; search and post reunions, military pride merchandise and more.

VetFriends.com encourages all Companies, and all Americans to honor and support our U.S. veterans and active military of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard — All heroes of our nation.

Founded in 2000 by a U.S. military veteran, thousands of people have been reconnected through VetFriends.com, spanning from World War II through to Operation Desert Storm and the present. For further information and/or interview opportunities please contact VAratings.com at: (843) 606-2578(843) 606-2578