Stylist: Man with gunman’s name spoke of concert attack

Stylist: Man with gunman’s name spoke of concert attack

LAS VEGAS

A hairstylist said a client with the same last name as the Las Vegas shooter spoke in the months before the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history about a concert venue being susceptible to attack, according to documents released by police Wednesday.

Las Vegas police released about 2,100 pages of police reports, witness statements and dispatch records after losing court battles to keep them secret. Witness names were blacked out, so their accounts could not be verified, and police and FBI officials said they would not comment on the newly released information.

The documents did not immediately yield answers to the key unanswered question more than seven months after the Oct. 1 attack that is still under investigation: a motive.

Video shows man with road rage using sledgehammer

PHILADELPHIA

A road-rage suspect seen on surveillance video hitting a man with a sledgehammer after smashing the windows out of a vehicle is being sought by Philadelphia police.

Video of the parking lot attack was posted online by the police department Wednesday. It shows the assailant exiting his pickup truck with a sledgehammer and busting out the driver’s side window of an SUV.

A passenger in the SUV then opens his door and falls out as the driver tries to speed away. The attacker hits the passenger with the sledgehammer as he limps off to get back in the SUV. The man with the sledgehammer then smashes the SUV’s rear window as it drives off.

Police are still trying to identify the attacker and the victims.

Mexican Mafia busted over crimes in LA jails

LOS ANGELES

Leaders of the notorious Mexican Mafia “gang of gangs” were charged Wednesday with running a government-like operation to control drug trafficking from inside Los Angeles County jails that included ordering violence against those who didn’t obey.

The U.S. attorney’s office charged 83 people in sweeping racketeering conspiracies that alleged they ran drugs and carried out violent assaults and murders.

Prosecutors said the gang – an organization of imprisoned Latino street gang leaders who control operations inside and outside California prisons and jails – was able to control smuggling, drug sales and extortion inside the nation’s largest jail system.

Train plows into truck stuck on tracks in Italy; 2 are dead

ROMe

A regional train plowed into a big-rig truck stopped on the tracks outside the northern Italian city of Turin late Wednesday, killing at least two people and injuring 18 others, authorities said.

The Italian news agency ANSA said the first fatality was the engineer of the train, which smashed into the truck near the town of Caluso at 11:20 p.m. on a run from Turin to the suburb of Ivrea.

Later, one of two critically injured people who were flown by helicopter to a hospital died, ANSA said.

One of the less seriously injured was reported to be a crew member, while the others were passengers. Ambulance dispatches said a total of 18 people were injured, most of them not critically.

The truck driver escaped injury, ANSA said.

The Rfi regional railroad said the railway barrier had lowered properly before the train’s approach but for reasons unknown the truck smashed through the barrier and ended up on the tracks.

Associated Press