Sheriff: Suspect in standoff found dead

Sheriff: Suspect in standoff found dead

PANAMA CITY, Fla.

A man suspected of trading wild bursts of gunfire with officers during a long standoff in the Florida Panhandle was found dead Tuesday in a gasoline-soaked apartment after an armored vehicle approached, authorities said.

“We were just blessed that we didn’t lose multiple officers and citizens today,” Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford said at a news conference in Panama City.

The sheriff wouldn’t say whether the suspect, 49-year-old Kevin Robert Holroyd, killed himself during the barrage of bullets or if he was struck by an officer’s bullet, but he said officers did hear a final, muffled shot from inside the apartment before the scene went silent.

Teen held without bail in cop’s slaying

PERRY HALL, Md.

A 16-year-old who was supposed to be on house arrest in an auto-theft case was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the death of a Maryland police officer.

After hearing about Dawnta Anthony Harris’ numerous recent run-ins with the law, a judge called him a “one-man crime wave” and ordered the teen held without bail.

More than 20 police officers were in the courtroom when Harris made his first court appearance by video. Harris has been charged as an adult in the Monday killing of Baltimore County police Officer Amy Caprio, 29, who was responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle.

New details given about old shipwreck

BOSTON

A Spanish galleon laden with gold that sank to the bottom of the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia more than 300 years ago was found three years ago with the help of an underwater autonomous vehicle operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the agency disclosed for the first time.

New details about the discovery of the San Jose were released Monday with permission from the agencies involved in the search, including the Colombian government.

The exact location of the wreck of the San Jose, often called the “holy grail of shipwrecks,” was long considered one of history’s enduring maritime mysteries.

The 62-gun, three-masted galleon, went down June 8, 1708, with 600 people on board as well as a treasure of gold, silver and emeralds during a battle with British ships in the War of Spanish Succession. The treasure is worth as much as $17 billion by modern standards.

9 protesters killed

NEW DELHI

Police opened fire Tuesday on protesters demanding the closure of a south Indian copper plant, killing nine people, officials said. Dozens more people were reportedly injured.

The violence came amid months of protests against the Sterlite copper smelting plant in the town of Tuticorin, which demonstrators say has polluted the area’s groundwater and put local fisheries at risk.

On Tuesday the demonstrations turned violent, with media reports and officials saying protesters began rampaging through the town.

Archbishop convicted

CANBERRA, Australia

An Australian archbishop on Tuesday became the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in the world convicted of covering up child sex abuse in a test case that holds to account church hierarchy that kept silent in the face of an international pedophile crisis.

Magistrate Robert Stone handed down the verdict against Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson in Newcastle Local Court after a magistrate-only trial.

Wilson, 67, had pleaded not guilty to concealing a serious crime committed by another person – the sexual abuse of children by pedophile priest James Fletcher in the 1970s.

Associated Press