Possible hate crime

Possible hate crime

NEW YORK — A black professor discovered a hangman’s noose on her office door at Teachers College at Columbia University on Tuesday, and police said they were investigating the case as a possible hate crime.

Teachers College President Susan H. Fuhrman sent an e-mail to the college’s 5,000 students and 150 faculty members explaining why police were on campus.

“The Teachers College community and I deplore this hateful act, which violates every Teachers College and societal norm,” the statement said.

The school has not identified the professor, but students said she teaches a class on racial justice.

Child killed in fall

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. — A 4-year-old girl was killed Tuesday when she slipped off the edge of the Grand Canyon and fell several hundred feet.

The girl’s father immediately scrambled down the cliffs and started CPR with the help of a park ranger who rappelled into the canyon, National Park Service spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge said.

The child’s body was 400 to 500 feet below the rim, Oltrogge said. The area where she fell is a combination of sheer drops of 30 to 50 feet, then slopes leading to more drop-offs. The girl is from Arizona, but her name and hometown weren’t immediately released.

Last 3 bodies found

WHITE PASS, Wash. — Searchers combing through wreckage Tuesday found the last three victims among 10 killed when their plane crashed in Washington’s rugged central Cascade Range on their way home from a skydiving event.

Bodies of seven of the 10 people aboard were found Monday. Recovery crews found the rest on Tuesday, said Nisha Marvel, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation’s aviation division.

“It’s rough rugged terrain, and it took about 35 volunteers to comb that recovery area today to find the remaining passengers,” Marvel said.

The debris at the remote crash site indicated that the Cessna Caravan 208 went down in a steep nosedive, Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin told a news conference at a command center.

The plane left Star, Idaho, near Boise, on Sunday evening en route to Shelton, Wash., northwest of Olympia, but did not arrive. It had been returning from a skydiving meet in Idaho when it disappeared.

Homicide trial continues

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A husband testified Tuesday he believed his wife had given birth and never suspected the baby she showed him had been crudely cut from another woman’s womb.

Kevin Montgomery said he didn’t find it odd that his wife, Lisa, told him she had delivered the baby at a birthing center and needed to be picked up at a nearby fast-food restaurant Topeka, Kan.

“I knew she didn’t like hospitals and doctors,” Kevin Montgomery said.

His wife is accused of killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, and carving her baby from the womb on Dec. 16, 2004.

Kevin Montgomery, who denied any participation in the slaying, said he and his wife took the baby to a diner, a bank, the courthouse and the convenience store where Lisa worked. She was arrested the next day while showing off a baby in her hometown of Melvern, Kan.

Also Tuesday, each of the couple’s ex-spouses testified that Lisa Montgomery had announced other fake pregnancies to family and friends in the years leading up to Stinnett’s slaying.

Lisa Montgomery’s former husband, Carl Bowman, testified that she was unable to have children after undergoing a tubal ligation in 1990. He said her doctor recommended she undergo the procedure after their fourth child was born more than two months premature.

Cardinal threatened

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s top Roman Catholic cardinal, who is accused in a U.S. lawsuit of protecting an alleged pedophile priest, said he has received threats and will ask the government for additional security.

Norberto Rivera said he feels “always at risk” in an interview broadcast by the Televisa network, after several protesters kicked, pounded and reportedly spat at his car outside Mexico City’s cathedral after his weekly Mass.

It was unclear why the protesters attacked the car, and Rivera has not said who is behind death threats against him. Church officials have suggested that Sunday’s confrontation may have involved supporters of Ebrard’s Democratic Revolution Party, which party officials deny.

Associated Press