Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/512454
ByAndrewTaylor The Associated Press WASHINGTON President Barack Obama's request for police body cameras and new community po- licing initiatives would be partially funded under leg- islation advanced Thursday by Republicans controlling the House. Lawmakers also moved to slash legal aid for the poor. The actions follow vio- lence sparked by the recent deaths of black men at the hands of law enforcement in Baltimore, South Carolina and Ferguson, Missouri, that focused attention on police conduct and distrust between minority commu- nities and the officers as- signed to protect them. Most of the $50 million fund to improve police- community relations next year would go to grants to states to assess and im- prove their justice systems. The amount is about one- third of what Obama asked for in February, according to a panel Democratic aide. Some $15 million would go to help local police depart- ments buy body cameras that would record interac- tions with the public, half of Obama's request. Thursday's legislation covers the budget year be- ginning in October. The bill is caught in an ongoing battle over agency budgets between the GOP- controlled House and Sen- ate and Obama and his Democratic allies. Tight spending "caps" imposed under so-called sequestra- tion are forcing Republi- cans to, on average, freeze domestic agency budgets at current levels. But they've evaded a freeze on the mil- itary by using war accounts as a special resource to give the Pentagon a 7 percent, $38 billion increase. CONGRESS Ho us e pa rt ly funds police camera initiative By Cain Burdeau The Associated Press NEW ORLEANS A woman fatally shot two young chil- dren and then killed herself with a gunshot to the head inside an SUV parked in a desolate industrial zone of New Orleans on Thursday, police said. The grim discovery was made just hours after po- lice issued an alert that they were trying to find a woman who had told her mother she was suicidal, had a gun and might harm her 3- and 5-year-old chil- dren. Detective Juan Barnes, a police spokesman, said the bodies have not been pos- itively identified as those of Michelle McCullum and her children, but the dark blue 2014 Nissan Murano matched the description of her car and license plate. McCullum's family de- clined to talk to The Asso- ciated Press, asking for pri- vacy. A 59-year-old neigh- bor, Rick Mathieu, de- scribed the deaths as an unforeseen and inexplica- ble tragedy of a dedicated mother and hard-working woman — someone he'd watched grow up on their quiet and charming street in Treme, an old African- American neighborhood adjacent to the French Quarter. "Her and her husband were having a few mari- tal problems, nothing se- rious," he said. "We didn't know how serious it was with her, you know." He described McCullum as an A student who worked hard and "gave her shirt off her back to help others, that's how she was." He said Caden, the 5-year-old boy, and Cylie, the 3-year-old girl, were fantastic children. "They'd play right here and I watched them to make sure nothing go down," he said. "I police this block." He said Caden was "a lit- tle genius" who "could sit there and hold a conversa- tion with an adult, he was that smart." "That little boy could dance. He was into sports, playing football, basket- ball. He'd say: 'Look at my muscle,'" Mathieu recalled fondly. Cylie, he said, "was just coming into her own." NEW ORLEANS Woman, 2 kids found dead inside car By Geoff Mulvihill and Michael Kunzelman The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA Brandon Bostian was obsessed with trains while growing up, talked about them con- stantly and wanted to be an engineer or a conductor. "He would go on vaca- tion and bring back sub- way maps," Stefanie Mc- Gee, a friend from Tennes- see, recalled Thursday. "He would go places with his family and he would talk about the trains instead of the places." Bostian's teenage dreams would come true. But now, at 32, the Amtrak engineer finds himself at the very center of the investigation into the nation's deadliest train wreck in nearly six years. He was at the controls of a train that investigators say barreled into a curve in Philadelphia on Tues- day night at more than 100 mph, or twice the speed limit. Eight people were killed in the derailment and more than 200 injured. Investigators want to know why the train was going so fast. But Bos- tian refused to talk to po- lice on Wednesday, author- ities said. And investigators with the National Trans- portation Safety Board said they would give him a day or two to recover from the shock of the accident before talking to him. Separately, the Philadel- phia district attorney's of- fice said it is investigating and will decide whether to bring charges. Bostian's lawyer, Rob- ert Goggin, told ABC News that his client suffered a concussion in the crash and has "absolutely no rec- ollection whatsoever of the events." Goggin also said Bostian had not been us- ing his cellphone, drink- ing or using drugs. As the death toll climbed on Thursday with the dis- covery of what was be- lieved to be the last body in one of the mangled rail- cars, Mayor Michael Nut- ter again appeared to cast blame on Bostian, ques- tioning why the train was going so fast. "I don't think that any commonsense, rational person would think that it was OK to travel at that level of speed knowing that there was a pretty signifi- cant restriction on how fast you could go through that turn," Nutter said. Officials believe they have now accounted for all 243 passengers and crew members who were thought to have been aboard, Nut- ter said. Forty-three remained hospitalized Thursday, ac- cording to the mayor. Tem- ple University Hospital said it had six patients in criti- cal condition, all of whom were expected to pull through. Amtrak, meanwhile, said limited train service between Philadelphia and New York should resume on Monday, with full ser- vice by Tuesday. Amtrak carries 11.6 million passen- gers a year along the North- east Corridor, which runs between Washington and Boston. Bostian graduated from the University of Missouri- Columbia with a bache- lor's in business adminis- tration and management in 2006, the university said. He became an Amtrak en- gineer in December 2010, four years after landing a job as a conductor, accord- ing to his LinkedIn profile. He lives in the Forest Hills section of Queens, in New York City. Old friends and college classmates described him in glowing terms. "I have nothing but good things to say about Bran- don," said Will Gust, who belonged to the Acacia fra- ternity with Bostian at the University of Missouri. "He is a very conscientious per- son, one of the most up- standing individuals that I know, just a really good quality person." McGee, the friend who is now the city clerk in Bosti- an's hometown of Bartlett, a suburb of Memphis, said: "He always wanted to be a train engineer, a train con- ductor." On an online forum for train enthusiasts called trainorders.com, a user who signed at least two of his posts with "Brandon Bostian" or simply "Bran- don" commented on a wide range of industry issues, including safety. A couple of posts under the handle "bwb6df" lamented that railroads hadn't been fast enough to adopt "positive train control," GSP-guided technology that can pre- vent trains from going over the speed limit. "They have had nearly a hundred years of opportu- nity to implement SOME sort of system to mitigate human error, but with a few notable exceptions have failed to do so," the writer posted in 2011. It is unclear whether the author of the train-safety posts was, in fact, Bos- tian. In a message posted Wednesday, the site's ad- ministrator refused to re- lease any information, cit- ing privacy reasons. Amtrak has equipped most of its heavily used Northeast Corridor with positive train control, but it was not in operation along the section where the acci- dent happened. However, on Thursday, Amtrak CEO Joseph H. Boardman vowed that the technology will be installed along the entire Northeast Corridor by the end of 2015, the deadline set by Con- gress. PHILADELPHIA DERAILMENT Amtrak engineer obsessed with trains as teen DAVIDSWANSON—THEPHILADELPHIAINQUIRERVIAAP Investigators examine the scene of a deadly train wreck on Wednesday in Philadelphia. For ads starting May 30 or earlier! 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