Tag: ohio

“Get The Hell Out Of There” – Ohio’s Apocalyptic Chemical Disaster Rages On

While the US government is dispensing millions of dollars in resources to treat balloons as an existential crisis, a small town in Ohio finds itself engulfed in what actually looks like the apocalypse. Perhaps by design, all of the drama surrounding violations of US airspace by Chinese spy initiatives has done well to keep what is becoming one of the worst environmental disasters in recent memory from getting any headlines.

The chaos began early last week when a train of more than 100 cars derailed in East Palestine, Ohio near the state’s border with Pennsylvania with roughly 5,000 residents. The accident launched fifty of those hundred freight cars from the tracks. Twenty of the freight cars on the train were carrying hazardous materials, ten of which were detailed. While the accident had no fatalities, of those ten cars, five contained pressurized vinyl chloride, a highly flammable carcinogenic gas.

In order to address the volatile scenario around the crash site, the Ohio Emergency Management Agency executed its plan of venting the toxic gas with a controlled burn in order to evade an uncontrolled explosion which presented the risk of catastrophic damage. “Within the last two hours, a drastic temperature change has taken place in a rail car, and there is now the potential of a catastrophic tanker failure which could cause an explosion with the potential of deadly shrapnel traveling up to a mile,” Gov. Mike DeWine warned in statement explaining the decision to take action to avert widespread devastation.

However, that operation sent large plumes of smoke containing vinyl chloride, phosgene, hydrogen chloride, and other gases into the air as the flames from the controlled burn raged on for days. Phosgene in particular is a highly toxic gas that can cause vomiting and respiratory trouble. The toxicity of phosgene gas is so potent that it was previously used as a chemical weapon during the First World War.

The hazardous airborne chemicals prompted officials to issue mandatory evacuation and shelter-in-place orders within a one-mile radius of where the train derailed. Those orders forced nearly 2,000 residents of East Palestine out of there homes. Despite the public safety risk in proximity to the crash site, over 500 people within the parameters of the evacuation order refused to leave their homes. However, those orders were lifted on February 8th, allowing residents to return to the area adjacent to the disaster.

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The High School ‘Asshole’ Who Became a Blackface-Wearing Neo-Nazi Homeschool Dad

When Logan Lawrence was unmasked last week as the co-founder of a neo-Nazi homeschooling network, some of his friends and former classmates said the news immediately rang true.

Lawrence, 36, who grew up in Upper Sandusky and until recently worked for his family’s insurance company, left a litany of signs of his racist beliefs over the years. He mocked Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on his middle school intercom, had an obsession with WWII history in high school, and, later, dressed in racist garb at a local bar.

In now-deleted photos posted to the Facebook page of the Shotzy’s Bar and Grill restaurant in Upper Sandusky, which is owned by the sister of Logan’s best man at his wedding, Logan was photographed at multiple Halloween parties in blackface and other racist costumes. VICE News has confirmed with multiple people that it was Logan in the pictures. A representative of Shotzy’s Bar and Grill did not respond to a request for comment on the pictures.

One person who was at Logan’s wedding and at the parties where Logan wore these costumes, said she was not surprised at last week’s revelations.

“Logan has always been an asshole and the people who know him aren’t shocked,” she told VICE News.

Logan and his wife Katja Lawrence were unmasked last week as the operators of a neo-Nazi homeschool network, known as Dissident Homeschool on Telegram, by the anti-fascist researchers at the Anonymous Comrades Collective. The Telegram group has thousands of members, and shares classroom resources infused with Adolf Hitler quotes, antisemitic themes and white supremacist ideologies. Last year, Katja Lawrence said on a podcast that the reason she started the group was because she was “having a rough time finding Nazi-approved school material for [her] homeschool children.”

Now, Lawrence,  who worked as a web designer for years and designed the local sheriff’s website and the website of Shotzy’s Bar and Grill, shares examples of how her family embraces Nazi ideology, including baking a Fuhrer cake for Hitler’s birthday and a recording of her children shouting “sieg heil.”

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Inside a US Neo-Nazi Homeschool Network With Thousands of Members

Earlier this month, while the rest of the country was celebrating the achievements of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., parents and children in the “Dissident Homeschool” network opened a lesson plan and were greeted with the words: “As Adolf Hitler wrote…”

The contents of the MLK lesson plan would be shocking for almost anyone, but for members of the 2,400-member “Dissident Homeschool” Telegram channel, this was a regular Monday at school. 

“It is up to us to ensure our children know him for the deceitful, dishonest, riot-inciting negro he actually was,” the administrator of the network’s Telegram channel wrote, alongside a downloadable lesson plan for elementary school children. ”He is the face of a movement which ethnically cleansed whites out of urban areas and precipitated the anti-white regime that we are now fighting to free ourselves from.”

Since the group began in October 2021 it has openly embraced Nazi ideology and promoted white supremacy, while proudly discouraging parents from letting their white children play with or have any contact with people of any other race. Admins and members use racist, homophobic, and antisemitic slurs without shame, and quote Hitler and other Nazi leaders daily in a channel open to the public. 

VICE News joined the group simply by clicking on a link, though the list of members was not publicly visible.

What’s even more disturbing, however, is that the couple who run the channel are not only teaching parents how to indoctrinate their children into this fascist ideology, they’re also encouraging them to meet up in real life and join even more radical groups, which could further reinforce their beliefs and potentially push them toward violent action.

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DNA Used to Uncover 70s Serial Killer Who Raped and Strangled College Student in Ohio

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph T. Deters announced the indictment of Ralph Howell for the rape and murder of Cheryl Thompson in 1978.

Howell was killed in an automobile accident in 1985.

Howell was posthumously indicted for one count of Aggravated Murder, and one count of Rape.

On March 24, 1978, Cheryl Thompson went missing after leaving her home to meet her boyfriend at a bar in Oakley.

On April 8, 1978, Thompson’s body was discovered along the bank of the Little Miami River by an Ohio Department of Natural Resources officer. Thompson’s cause of death was asphyxia caused by strangulation. It was also determined Thompson had been raped.

Physical evidence was collected from Thompson’s body and stored at the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office. However, due to the forensic limitations of the time, the investigation quickly went cold. Loveland police officers and agents at the Bureau of Criminal Investigations never stopped investigating.

This year, the DNA sample taken from Thompson’s body was sent to a third-party genealogy company in hopes of developing a suspect. The results narrowed this DNA sample to a specific family tree. Ralph Howell was included in these results.

Further investigation showed Howell was arrested in 1983 for abduction. In that incident, Howell picked a woman up on the side of the road and offered to drive her home. Once in the vehicle, Howell placed a rope around the victim’s neck and began to strangle her. He told her he wanted to have sex with her. The victim was able to fight Howell off and escape from the vehicle.

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Ohio Supreme Court Suspends Democrat Judge Over ‘Unprecedented’ Behavior

The Ohio Supreme Court has indefinitely suspended a local judge, citing “unprecedented misconduct” that includes falsifying court documents, issuing illegitimate arrest warrants, and donning inappropriate attire in court.

Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.

The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion (pdf). “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”

Justices agreed with the court’s three-panel Board of Professional Conduct’s assessment that Carr “ruled her courtroom in a reckless and cavalier manner, unrestrained by the law or the court’s rules, without any measure of probity or even common courtesy,” and that she “conducted business in a manner befitting a game show host rather than a judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court.”

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Ohio Voters to Decide If Non-US Citizens Can Vote in Local Elections

Ohio voters are heading to the polls to decide if non-U.S. citizens can vote in state or local elections.

If passed, Issue 2 would change the Ohio Constitution. It proposes that only adult U.S. citizens who legally reside and are registered to vote in Ohio for at least 30 days can cast a ballot in future state and local elections.

The current Ohio Constitution states that “every citizen of the United States, of the age of eighteen years and has been registered to vote for thirty days is entitled to vote at all elections.”

The state constitution does not say that noncitizens cannot vote.

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from casting ballots in federal elections.

A 1917 ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court determined that the state constitution’s home rule, which gives cities control over their local issues, provided municipalities permission to expand voting rights in city elections.

Issue 2 would ensure that a city’s home rule does not circumvent the law that only adult U.S. citizens can cast ballots.

Supporters of Issue 2 believe the amendment will uphold the integrity of citizenship if it becomes law, while opponents claim it is an effort to “restrict voting access.”

At the forefront of Issue 2 is the village of Yellow Springs, which is located east of Dayton in southwest Ohio.

In 2019, village officials passed a referendum allowing residents who were not U.S. citizens to vote in local elections. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose ordered the Greene County Board of Elections not to accept voter registration forms from noncitizens.

The referendum violated the U.S. and Ohio Constitutions, LaRose said. In a press release, he added, “Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any weirder, the village of Yellow Springs forces me, as Ohio’s chief elections officer, to restate the obvious – only U.S. citizens may vote.”

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Ohio GOP House candidate has misrepresented military service

Campaigning for a northwestern Ohio congressional seat, Republican J.R. Majewski presents himself as an Air Force combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, once describing “tough” conditions including a lack of running water that forced him to go more than 40 days without a shower.

Military documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request tell a different story.

They indicate Majewski never deployed to Afghanistan but instead completed a six-month stint helping to load planes at an air base in Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally that is a safe distance from the fighting.

Majewski’s account of his time in the military is just one aspect of his biography that is suspect. His post-military career has been defined by exaggerations, conspiracy theories, talk of violent action against the U.S. government and occasional financial duress.

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New Video Shows Cops Casually Walk Into Unarmed Man’s Home, Wake Him Up, Execute Him

Last week, TFTP reported on disturbing body camera footage out of Columbus, Ohio, released as part of a push for transparency in the city. The footage showed police enter the apartment of 20-year-old Donovan Lewis who was undressed, in bed, and was attempting to raise his hands when he received a fatal, taxpayer-funded 9mm round to the chest.

The video went underreported in the media for several days and now, new video has been released showing the complete and callous disregard for life by officer Ricky Anderson as he casually executed Lewis in his own bed.

Despite the warrant for his arrest, Lewis was innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, he was denied that right.

For some reason, Columbus police thought it was a good idea to serve an arrest warrant at 2:30 a.m. at Lewis’ apartment. Footage shows multiple officers outside Lewis’ door knocking for several minutes before one of the man’s roommates opens the door. Moments later, officers would open the door to Lewis’ bedroom and execute him.

“We need to get rid of middle of the night arrest warrants unless there’s a dangerous emergent circumstance,” said the family’s attorney, Rex Elliot. “We need to have police officers who are trained to come into these communities that understand these communities.”

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An 8-Year-Old Ohio Girl’s Lemonade Stand Was Shut Down By Police After Nearby Food Festival Complained

An eight year old girl had her lemonade stand shutdown by police after a nearby food festival filed a complaint about her.

The police officer who had to shut her down felt so bad that he gave her the $20 necessary to get a permit.

Asa Baker was selling lemonade outside her father’s business when the Alliance, Ohio Rib and Food Festival called the police to complain.

“Well, they were really sad that they had to shut me down but they gave me $20 to try and pay for it,” Baker told local station WJW-TV.

Katrina Moore, Asa’s mother, told the station that the police officer did the right thing — even though he didn’t want to do it.

“I could definitely tell he did not want to shut her down, but, I mean, you get a call, he has to do it. He definitely did the right thing, you know, in the situation he was put in,” the mother said. “Later that day, I made a (social media) post in appreciation for the officer that gave her the money for shutting it down. You know, as unfortunate as it was, I still was very grateful that he was at least able to give her $20.”

“I understand the rules, I understand why she got shut down. It’s just a sad, sad situation,” Moore told the station.

Kyle Clark, Asa’s Dad, said that he did not know that children need a permit to operate a lemonade stand.

“We looked it up and it was pretty much anywhere in Ohio. You have to have a license and I’ve never heard of that,” Clark said.

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Cops Dump Over 90 Rounds Into Fleeing Man Over Stop for ‘Traffic Equipment Violation’

Before he was filled with taxpayer funded bullets on Monday, Jayland Walker, 25, was a standout wrestler at Buchtel High School, where he graduated in 2015. According to his family he worked for Amazon then took a job driving for DoorDash and was set to get married. All of this is over now, however, after multiple officers decided to dump more than a dozen rounds each into Walkers body after he fled a traffic stop for a simple violation.

Walker’s family says their son was engaged to his fiancé, Jaymeisha Beasley, who was tragically struck by a hit and run driver last month who has yet to be found. The families of the couple are now jointly grieving their tragic losses, according to the Akron Beacon Journal.

According to Bobby DiCello, the lead attorney for the Walker family, prior to fleeing the traffic stop on Monday night, Walker had no criminal record.

“Jayland, not one time in his life, and you can search this city, this state and this country— never offended or bothered a soul. And how these events took place leaves us with many, many questions,” said DiCello at a press conference on Thursday. “Our job, by doing this press conference, is to remind the police department for the city of Akron that we are here for accountability.”

According to police, an officer attempted to pull over Walker around 12:30 a.m. on Monday for a “traffic equipment violation” but for some reason he refused to stop. A chase ensued and would last four and a half minutes. Video from traffic cameras show that in this short time, the single cruiser following Walker multiplied into a whopping 10 cruisers.

Police would claim that Walker fired a gun from his vehicle during the pursuit. Captain Dave Laughlin, of the Akron Police Department, told the press that officers didn’t see a weapon but heard a gunshot or multiple gunshots from the car on the entrance ramp of Route 8.

Police claim Walker then came to a stop before exiting the vehicle and fleeing on foot. That’s when he was surrounded by cops and executed.

“Actions by the suspect caused the officers to perceive he posed a deadly threat to them. In response to this threat, officers discharged their firearms, striking the suspect,” the police statement said.

Police claim to have found a gun in Walker’s vehicle but have made no mention as to whether or not he was armed when 8 officers all began shooting him like a firing squad. According to photos obtained by the attorneys, after Walker was filled with holes, police then handcuffed his dead body and waited for the medical examiner to arrive to pronounce him deceased.

“We know that no police officer ever wants to discharge their service weapon in the line of duty,” the mayor and chief said in a joint statement. “And anytime they must, it’s a dark day for our city, for the families of those involved, as well as for the officers.”

Clearly, however, this was not the case. Officer who don’t want to fire their weapons won’t dump 90 rounds into a person who was likely unarmed.

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