Another week to live: Ohio delays execution after officials can't find inmate's usable vein in chilling botched attempt
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 12:05 PM on 16th September 2009
Stay of execution: Romell Broom, 53, in an undated photo, has been granted another week to live after officials were unable to give him a lethal injection yesterday
An Ohio death row inmate has been given another week to live after he was granted an astonishing last-minute reprieve because officials could not find a usable vein to give him a lethal injection.
Technicians spent two hours searching for a vein as Romell Broom, 53, awaited execution.
The team had started working on Broom in a nearby holding cell at about 2 p.m., four hours after his execution was originally scheduled. That initial delay was due to a final federal appeals request.
After about an hour, Broom tried to help. He turned onto his left side, slid rubber tubing up his left arm, began moving the arm up and down and flexed and closed his fingers.
The execution team was able to access a vein, but it collapsed when technicians tried to insert saline fluid.
Broom turned onto his back and covered his face with both hands. His torso heaved up and down and his feet shook. He wiped his eyes and was handed a roll of toilet paper, which he used to wipe his brow.
The team tried to insert shunts through veins in Broom's legs, causing him to appear to grimace. A member of the execution team patted him on the back.
Broom, who did not have any witnesses present, requested that one of his attorneys, Adele Shank, come to the witness area. She asked to speak with Broom but was told that once the process started, it's protocol that attorneys can't have contact with their client.
No Ohio governor has issued a simliar last-minute reprieve since the state resumed executions in 1999.
Now legal challenges could further delay Broom's return to the death chamber, one scholar said.
Richard Dieter, director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said he knows of only one inmate who was subjected to more than one execution.
A first attempt to execute Willie Francis in 1946 by electrocution in Louisiana did not work. He was returned to death row for nearly a year while the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether a second electrocution would be unconstitutional.
Dieter said he expects legal challenges will mean Broom will not face execution again in a week's time.
'I think this is going to be challenged, whether under our standards of decency subjecting someone to multiple executions is cruel and unusual... whether this is in effect experimenting on human beings, whether or not they're sure what works in Ohio,' he said.
Broom was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton after abducting her in Cleveland in September 1984 as she walked home from a Friday night football game with two friends.
Prisons director Terry Collins said the execution team eventually told him they didn't believe Broom's veins would hold if the execution reached the point when the lethal drugs would be administered.
Collins said he contacted the governor at about 4 p.m. to let him know about the difficulties and request a reprieve.
A medical evaluation Monday had determined that veins in Broom's right arm appeared accessible. Collins said that before Broom's next scheduled execution, the team would try to determine how to resolve the problem encountered yesterday.
About an hour into yesterday's execution effort, a lawyer for Broom, Tim Sweeney, sent an e-mail and fax to Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer asking him to end the procedure.
Sweeney said continuing the effort would deny Broom his constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment and violate Ohio law that requires lethal injection to be quick and painless.
Collins said the difficulty in the process 'absolutely, positively' does not shake his faith in the state's lethal injection procedure.
The problems prompted the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio to ask state officials to immediately halt executions.
'Ohio's execution system is fundamentally flawed. If the state is going to take a person's life, they must ensure that it is done as humanely as possible,' ACLU Ohio counsel Carrie Davis said.
'With three botched executions in as many years, it's clear that the state must stop and review the system entirely before another person is put to death.'
Florida has also experienced problems with lethal injection.
Daughter nursed dying mum in arms
AAP
September 16, 2009 06:15pm
A TEENAGE girl has told a Brisbane court of the horror of nursing her dying mother after she'd been stabbed.
Sheena Barber today told the Queensland Supreme Court she was 16 when her stepfather and mother became involved in a violent argument at their Gold Coast Koala Park home on February 24 last year.
It ended with Leah McMahon, 35, lying bleeding on the family's front lawn. Attempts to save her failed.
Tyrone Peter McMahon, 41, on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to murder.
Ms Barber told the court the couple had been drinking and arguing that evening, before things escalated when McMahon held a kitchen knife to his wife's throat.
She said she came up behind her stepfather and took the knife before trying to hide all the knives in the kitchen.
But Mr McMahon took one from her, telling her he wanted to "do it" to himself, not her mother, the court heard.
Ms Barber said that later her mother left the house on foot before Mr McMahon drove after her, promising he just wanted to talk and would not hurt her.
But the court heard he returned to the house with his bleeding wife, telling his daughter-in-law that he had cut her.
Ms Barber became emotional as she described holding her bleeding mother and trying to stop the blood with a towel.
"There was a lot of blood ... enough blood was coming out fast enough to leak down my body as well," she said.
The court heard that at the time Mr McMahon had said he would kill himself if his wife died.
Ms Barber said that while her stepfather had been drinking before the alleged murder, he was not "legless".
The case continues
U.S. College Student Allegedly Kills Burglar with Samurai Sword
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
BALTIMORE — A Johns Hopkins University student armed with a samurai sword killed a suspected burglar in a garage behind his off-campus home early Tuesday, hours after someone broke in and stole electronics.
Some shocked neighbors said they heard bloodcurdling screams in an area just blocks from the university. Police held the student, a junior chemistry major who turns 21 on Sunday, for several hours, but no charges were filed by early afternoon, said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
Around 1:20 a.m., the student heard noises behind the home and noticed a door to the garage was open, Guglielmi said. He grabbed the sword and confronted the intruder — identified by police as Donald D. Rice, 49, a habitual offender who had just been released from jail.
Rice was crouching beneath a counter, police said. The student asked him what he was doing and threatened to call police.
"When he said that, the suspect lunged at him, kind of forced the kid against the wall, and he struck him with the sword," Guglielmi said.
Rice's left hand was nearly severed — Guglielmi described it as "hanging on by a thread" — and he suffered a severe cut to the upper body. He died at the scene.
On Monday, two laptops and a Sony PlayStation were stolen from the student's home, which he shares with three other students, but police were not sure whether Rice was responsible, Guglielmi said.
There was a pool of blood Tuesday morning in the brick courtyard between the back porch of the home and the garage. The courtyard was strewn with debris, including what looked like broken glass.
Guglielmi did not know why the student kept a sword. He said he may have had some martial arts training, but was not an expert.
Rice's criminal history includes more than two dozen arrests for burglary, breaking and entering and auto theft. According to court records, he was charged in 2007 after he pulled a gun on a police officer, though prosecutors placed those charges on hold because the officer was on military leave.
Rice was convicted in 2008 of unauthorized removal of property and sentenced to 18 months. He was released Saturday from the Baltimore County Detention Center.
Several nearby residents said the community has experienced a rash of petty crimes in recent months, including home, garage and vehicle break-ins. Many homes have bars on windows and stickers advertising alarm systems.
Michael Hughes, 43, said he was getting ready for bed when he heard the screams.
"There was fear in the voice. I could tell someone was scared," Hughes said.
Hughes called 911, and several police cars arrived while he was on the phone. Campus security officers and an off-duty city officer who were in the area responding to a suspicious person report also heard the screams.
The diverse neighborhood includes a mix of students, professors and families, said Hughes, who lives with his wife and young children and works for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is on another campus across town.
"There seems to be a noticeable increase in crime in the neighborhood," Hughes said. "I am concerned for my family's safety."
Kenny Eaton, 20, a junior political science major at Hopkins who lives nearby, said there was some tension between students and lower-income residents of nearby communities. The private Johns Hopkins is known for its health and science research and has about 4,600 undergraduates on its main campus.
"You take kids who are paying $50,000 a year (in tuition) and then put them out in a very dangerous city environment, it's almost like a clash of civilizations," he said.
Three young men, including one in a Hopkins T-shirt, were sitting on the front porch of the home Tuesday morning. A police officer was standing in the doorway, and a single police car was parked nearby. The men refused to talk to an Associated Press reporter.
Susan Boswell, the dean of student life at Hopkins, said in a statement that she was "relieved to report that the student was not harmed," but she also advised other students not to follow the swordsman's example.
"If you ever suspect that there is a prowler in your residence or on your property, call 911 immediately," Boswell said. "Experts advise that you do not attempt to confront the intruder, but rather secure yourself in a locked area until police arrive."
As in most states, self-defense in Maryland is defined by common law rather than by statute. People who confront intruders inside their homes have a greater degree of latitude to use force, and prosecutors consider whether to file charges in such incidents on a case-by-case basis.
"One can genuinely and reasonably be in fear of one's own safety even if the burglar is unarmed," said Andrew D. Levy, a Baltimore defense attorney and an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. "But nonetheless, it would be something that a good prosecutor would consider."
FBI storm lab technician's flat and take him away in handcuffs over Yale grad student's murder
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 12:40 PM on 16th September 2009
Police and FBI agents stormed the flat of a Yale lab technician yesterday, leading him away in handcuffs to be questioned over the murder of a graduate student whose body was found stuffed in a wall cavity on the day of her wedding.
Neighbours cheered as Raymond Clark III was taken into custody. Police insisted he was simply a 'person of interest' as they searched for DNA and other physical evidence to link him to the slaying of Annie Le, 24.
No charges against him have been filed. Authorities said he would be released once they have found evidence they need from him and his flat.
Clark, in the backseat of the car wearing a white T-shirt, is taken away as neighbours look on
Clark shares the apartment with his girlfriend, Jennifer Hromadka, whom he is engaged to marry in December 2011, according to the couple's wedding website.
'He seemed like a normal guy to me, no big deal,' said Ivan Hernandez, 22, who lives directly above Clark and would often see him sitting on a bench outside their apartment building and smoking. 'I thought he was nice, actually.'
Yesterday it was reported that an unnamed spurned lab technician may have murdered Annie after becoming obsessed with her.
Tragedy: Annie Le, pictured here in an undated image from high school, was found murdered on her wedding day
Speculation was rife in U.S. media that the man had failed a lie detector test and was discovered with defensive wounds on his body.
It was not clear today if Clark was the technician involved. He works in the same lab as Ms Le, though it was unclear how long he had worked there for.
Annie Le's body was found stuffed behind a wall in a campus research building Sunday, the day she was to be married. She had been missing for five days.
New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said police were hoping to compare DNA taken from Clark's hair, fingernails and saliva to more than 150 pieces of evidence collected from the crime scene.
That evidence may also be compared at a state lab with DNA samples given voluntarily from other people with access to the crime scene.
Police have collected more than 700 hours of videotape during the probe and sifted through computer records documenting who entered what parts of the research building where Le was found dead.
Investigators began staking out Clark's home Monday, a day after they discovered Le's body hidden in a basement wall of a facility at Yale's medical school that housed research animals. She vanished September 8.
Neither Clark, his girlfriend, nor Clark's parents returned repeated telephone calls yesterday.
Clark moved to Middletown from New Haven six months ago, where he shared an apartment with his girlfriend and three cats, according to former neighbour Taylor Goodwin, 16.
Authorities had been tightlipped since Le was reported missing last week. Police say they have ruled out her fiancee, a Columbia University graduate student, as a suspect but have provided little additional information.
Yale university students held a candlelight vigil for Ms Le on Monday night
Police search for evidence inside a trash container as they examine the scene where Ms Le's body was found on Monday
Officials had promised yesterday to release an autopsy report that would shed light on exactly how Le died. But then prosecutors blocked release of the results out of concern that it could hinder the investigation.
Investigators usually have reasons for keeping information secret during a criminal probe, said David Zlotnick, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island.
Secrecy helps police confront possible suspects with little-known evidence about a crime and makes it harder them to fabricate a cover story.
The Le family issued a statement yesterday through a family friend, the Rev. Dennis Smith, that thanked friends and the Yale community for their support during their grieving. The family also asked for privacy.
Man 'urged girlfriend to killed herself'
AAP
September 16, 2009 02:37pm
A DRUG-addicted teenage girl killed herself at the instruction of her older boyfriend whom she idolised, a court has been told.
Alexander George O'Sachy, 31, has pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court in Brisbane to aiding in the suicide of his 15-year-old girlfriend in September 2008.
The court heard the girl - who cannot be named - hanged herself in a downstairs granny flat at the couple's Wishart home after an argument about money in which Mr O'Sachy told her to kill herself.
Later, Mr O'Sachy found her hanging in a garage area and, the court heard, called out to his brother: "Oh, she's necked herself."
Police and paramedics were called but she could not be revived.
Prosecutor Michael Lehane said witnesses would testify the pair argued frequently and Mr O'Sachy had told an ex-girlfriend that he told the girl to kill herself all the time but that he hadn't meant it.
Mr Lehane said the continued urges to suicide made the girl more vulnerable to the idea.
Mr O'Sachy also told the ex-girlfriend he may have had a suicide pact with the girl but could not remember for sure, he said.
Mr O'Sachy's brother Daniel, who lived with his son and the pair, said he had heard the couple fighting that day and had earlier seen the girl mixing morphine tablets.
"They had a fight that afternoon and that's when he said to 'go kill yourself'," he said.
Daniel said the couple would often be involved in loud, violent arguments but that the girl "idolised" his brother.
He also testified he had helped bandage the girl's hands after she had self-harmed several months before the hanging.
Hitler's secret family: How researchers tracked down 39 living relatives of Nazi dictator
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 12:34 PM on 15th September 2009
Thirty-nine living relatives of Adolf Hitler have been discovered by Belgian researchers after they claim to have decoded the Nazi dictator's DNA.
Analysing forgotten cigarette butts in a small village in Lower Austria, a used paper napkin in a New York fast food restaurant and the seals of letters sent over 30 years ago from northern France, Marc Vermeeren and Jean-Paul Mulders say they have traced all known living relatives of the Fuehrer for the first time.
As well as three living in America, whose existence has been reported on before, they also claim to have tracked down 36 others who still live in the wooded area of Austria where Hitler was born.
Childless: Adolf Hitler with his mistress Eva Braun who he married less than 40 hours before they both committed suicide
Although the researchers claim to have carried out an extensive investigation, their information has not been independently verified.
They have also been somewhat sketchy on the details of their methods.
However, Vermeeren, a Belgian customs official, and Mulders a journalist, say three great-grandchildren of Hitler’s father Alois live on Long Island, outside New York, under the false name Stuart-Houston.
They are descendants who left Germany to escape the Nazis.
Louis and Brian Stuart-Houston share a little wooden house in East Patchogue, where they work as gardeners, while Alexander is a retired psychologist who helps veterans of another war - Vietnam.
The Belgians said they watched them for seven days and night, following 60-year-old Alexander to a fast-food restaurant where he disposed of a paper napkin after eating fried chicken which they retrieved and later matched up with 'DNA of Hitler that we keep in a sealed, armoured chest,' according to Mulders.
The cigarette butts came from Hitler relatives in Austria, they said, but did not elaborate on the alleged DNA found on the stamps from France nor how they came into their possession.
'The American relatives have agreed not to have children to extinguish the saga of Hitler and stop living in fear, but have promised to publish a book before they die,' said Mulders, who works for Belgian newspaper Het Laaste Nieuws.
Marc Vermeeren, 51, said the Hitler relatives living in lower Austria try to hide their lineage by changing their names to Hüttler, Hietler, Hiedler or Hütler - regular names that 'litter the Austrian telephone directory'.
'All Hüttler living in the Waldviertel region are distant descendants of Hitler, although many of them do not even know, as it was their parents or grandparents who changed the name and never told them,' said Vermeeren.
'None of the descendants has a resemblance to Adolf.'
Home: Thirty-six of Hitler's relatives have been tracked down to the Waldviertel area if Austria where the dictator was born
Hitler died childless.
He married his mistress Eva Braun in the Berlin Bunker in April 1945 as the Red Army closed in on the city; less than 40 hours later the pair of them committed suicide together.
The Hitler relatives who still inhabit the small villages and hillsides of the Waldviertel in Austria have kept the secret of their lineage for years.
The Belgian researchers have not released details of who they are or exactly where they live - out of shame, but possibly also out health fears.
One author who has researched the family tree is German author Ralf Jahn who claims mental illness was rife among the Hitler tribe.
The Führer was terrified when he lived that this dark secret would emerge and went to great lengths to keep it hidden.
His cousin was exterminated in a death camp because she suffered from schizophrenia.
Jahn, who is German, says: 'It is not surprising that Hitler went to such lengths to hide his past.
'The man who dreamt of a new master race was himself descended from a family of peasants.
'With the exception of his father, none of them had travelled outside of a 30-mile area in the Austrian Waldviertel – and their genealogies are littered with inmarriages and hereditary disease.'
Zoo elephant 'threw stone at woman'
Agence France-Presse
September 16, 2009 01:55pm
SOUTH Korean police, in one of their more heavyweight cases, are investigating whether a zoo elephant threw a stone at a woman visitor.
The woman, known as Ms Kim, told police she was visiting the zoo at the Children's Grand Park in southeast Seoul on Monday when she noticed an elephant picking up a stone with its trunk.
After she turned away from 35-year-old Taesani, she was hit on the back of her head by a large stone, several newspapers reported.
She reported the incident to police in Gwangjin district who began an investigation.
They found that the scene of the alleged assault was out of range of security cameras.
"Though Ms Kim believes the elephant threw a stone at her, it's hard to conclude that the elephant attacked her since there are neither witnesses nor evidence,'' Dong-A Ilbo newspaper quoted a police source as saying.
Uncovered: The world's only colour pictures of Germans' World War Two surrender... taken by a clerk hiding behind a tree
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:50 AM on 16th September 2009
The only colour photographs of the German surrender of World War Two have emerged 64 years after being taken by a lowly clerk who hid behind a tree.
Crafty Ronald Playforth covertly captured one of the most historic events of the 20th century after sneaking into a clump of trees overlooking the scene of the surrender.
With his camera, he snapped Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery greeting the highest ranking officers of the remains of Hitler's Third Reich outside his HQ tent.
War is over: This distant colour snapshot from behind a hedge records the moment the German high command came to surrender to Montgomery in the spring sunshine on Lunerburg Heath on May 3, 1945 signalling the end of the war
Although defeated and just days after the Fuhrer's suicide, the never seen before photos show the German officers looking immaculate yet menacing in their long overcoats and jackboots.
Until now the only images of the momentous occasion in existance are the official black and white ones held by the Imperial War Museum.
Mr Playforth kept hold of his pictures along with a handwritten speech Montgomery wrote in March 1945 to rouse British soldiers ahead of a final push into Germany.
The historic items have remained in Mr Playforth's family ever since but have now been made public for the first time as they are being sold at auction.
Andrew Aldridge, of Henry Aldridge Auctioneers of Devizes, Wilts, said: 'Playforth knew he was about to witness one of the most important events of the 20th century.
'He was of too low a rank to be present so he crept into the trees and bushes on the perimetre of the HQ tent and took four photographs using colour slides.
'As far as we know these are the only colour photographs to capture this historic event, all the others are black and white.
'Being in colour they add a third dimension to the event and bring it alive.'
In 1944 Ronald Playforth was a staff sergeant major and became Montgomery's clerk and was at his side from D-Day until the end of the war.
In May 1945 he was stationed at Montgomery's HQ at Luneburg Heath, near Hamburg, when the Nazi high command arrived to sign the papers for the surrender of the German armies in Europe.
Under cover: Ronald Playforth secretly took four unique colour slide pictures as the Nazi officers, who at well over 6ft tall, all towered over their adversaries as they agreed terms
SSM Playforth made himself scarce and darted into the woods just 30 yards from the men.
His pictures show Admiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg, the most senior member of the delegation, General Eberhard Kinzel, chief of staff of the north west Germany army, and Major Friedl, a 6ft 6ins Gestapo chief.
They depict the Nazis being received by Montgomery, who was wearing his customary black beret and army uniform, before they entered the tent to sign the surrender forms.
The day before Montgomery had laid down the terms of unconditional surrender to the same delegation at the same place.
Black and white: The surrender at Luneburg Heath, the historic moment when leaders of the German forces in northwest Europe surrended to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery
When the Germans tried to negotiate, he reportedly gave them a 'tongue lashing' about the bombing of Coventry and the horrors of Belsen.
The delegation reported back to their HQ and Admiral Karl Doenitz - Hitler's successor - and were given permission to sign the surrender papers, which they did the next day, May 4.
When it was all over Montgomery is said to have leaned back and said simply: 'That concludes the surrender.' Two of the German delegation - Kinzel and Friedeburg - committed suicide weeks later by taking cyanide while Friedl died in a car accident.
After the war SSM Playforth left the army and worked in local government before working in a managerial role at ICI.
He died 15 years ago aged in his 70s.
The four photographs and the handwritten speech were handed down through his family.
Part of the rousing speech, published in Soldier Magazine in 1945, read: 'By no possible conceivable chance can Germany win this war. Victory for the Allies, absolute and definite victory, is certain.
'We are fighting on German soil and we have entered the ring for tha last round, there is no time limit for this round, we shall continue until our opponent has had enough.' It was handed by Montgomery to SSM Playforth who kept hold of it after typing it out.
Mr Aldridge said: 'We are expecting a lot of interest in these items, from private collectors to military museums.'
The estimate for both lots is between £1,000 to £1,500 each and the auction takes place on Saturday.
Three primary school pupils arrested after 'copycat sex attack on boys'
By Julie Moult
Last updated at 7:53 PM on 15th September 2009
Attack: Hengrove Park in Bristol where the assault allegedly took place
Three young brothers launched a sickening sexual assault on two boys inspired by the horrific attack of children in Doncaster, the father of one of the victims claimed yesterday.
The siblings, aged eight, 11 and 12, and another 12 year-old friend are said to have threatened to kill three 10 year-olds and mutilate their genitals unless they obeyed their demands.
Two of the terrified primary school pupils were allegedly forced to perform a sex attack on the other boy, who was ordered to strip naked.
The naked child was allegedly then covered in dog excrement and the gang’s victims were also made to drink urine during the ordeal which apparently took place in a park in Bristol in broad daylight.
It comes just weeks after two brothers aged ten and 11 from Edlington near Doncaster, South Yorkshire were convicted of the worst child on child attack since the murder of Jamie Bulger.
Despite their young age, they already had a fearsome reputation in their community when they battered their young victims aged nine and 11 with bricks until the point where one pleaded to be left to die. Thankfully both survived the nightmare in April.
As in this latest attack which is said to have taken place in Hengrove Park, the perpetrators allegedly forced the boys to abuse each other.
Yesterday, the devastated father of one of the ten year-olds said he believed it was a copycat crime.
The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the children, said: ‘My lad was happy, now he's is withdrawn.
‘What's happened is unforgivable. I think it's a copycat attack - these lads read about that Doncaster case.
The two eldest brothers and their friend were arrested by police on suspicion of sexual assault. The eight year-old is too young to face prosecution.
It is suspected the alleged attack stems from a ‘turf war’ between three communities bordering the park with the boys coming from rival areas.
Historically, there have been tensions between youths from the deprived estates of Knowle West and Hartcliffe and teenagers from Hengrove.
A 2005 survey revealed that the number of offenders per 1,000 population is three times higher in Hengrove than in any other ward in the city.
It also found that there are more domestic violence incidents and children on the Child Protection Register than any other area of Bristol.
A major redevelopment of the 200 acre park, which lies three miles south of the city centre appeared to have largely stamped out the problems in recent months.
Local Liberal Democrat councillor Jos (corr) Clark said: ‘I have been a councillor for six years in Hengrove and this is the most serious incident of its kind I have encountered .
‘It’s absolutely disgusting but thankfully incidents like this are very rare.
‘There have been issues over ‘ownership’ of the park because it borders several areas, some of which are extremely deprived.
‘It would tend to be young teenagers that would clash.
‘But the council worked hard to tackle these issues and employed dedicated youth workers to monitor the park. This seemed to have solved the problems.’
But yesterday residents told of ongoing problems with youths in the park.
Dog walker Jenny Terry, 32, said: ‘I'll only use the park in the daylight but it seems that even that isn't safe anymore.
‘The park lends itself to this sort of antisocial behaviour due to the number of secluded wooded areas.
'There are often youngsters hanging around here late at night.'
A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said they would be doing all they could to protect the identity of the victims.
He said: 'We can confirm that three youths, aged 11, 12, and 12, have been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault and have been bailed pending further enquiries.
'A fourth youth was detained but then released. Three boys of primary school age were allegedly assaulted.
‘The park would have been very busy on Saturday afternoon and we are asking for witnesses to come forward to help with our enquiries.'
The spokesman added: ‘This incident doesn't warrant comparison with a recent incident in Doncaster.
‘In this case the victims have suffered no physical injuries. Nevertheless, they and their families are understandably shaken and distressed.
'Oh my God, you're alive': Father's joy after the army tells him his son was killed - but he wasn't
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 11:56 AM on 16th September 2009
The worst news... then the best: An American soldier in Afghanistan (file photo). A soldier's family has spoken of their joy after they were told their son had been killed - but he wasn't
A father has spoken of his joy after the U.S. Army told him his soldier son had been killed in Afghanistan when he wasn't.
The family of Sgt Jesse Jasper mourned his death for four hours before the blunder was revealed by his girlfriend.
The 26-year-old soldier called his father from Afghanistan to prove it after hearing about the mix-up.
'Dad what's going on?' Jesse Jasper asked.
'I said, 'Oh my God you're alive, I love you, I love you, I love you, you're alive,'' Ray Jasper, 49, of Niagara Falls, said today.
The nightmare started about 2 p.m. Sunday when Mr Jasper, while on a family camping trip, got an urgent message from a family liaison from his son's unit in the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
When he reached the liaison - the wife of a soldier deployed with Jasper's son - she told him she had a 'red line message' that she needed to read to him verbatim.
'She said, 'I'm sorry to inform you that on Sept. 12, that Sgt. Judin and Sgt. Jesse Jasper were killed in Afghanistan,'' Mr Jasper said.
'My wife was talking to me at the time and I said, 'say that again,' and she said the same thing over again. I couldn't do any more. I hit the floor.'
Mr Jasper knew the military's policy is to notify families in person when a soldier has been killed.
However since the family had been away all weekend, he assumed the military had phoned after finding no one home.
The Jaspers were given a number to call for details but decided they would not dial it until after making the trip home and assembling other family members.
As family and friends gathered, others posted condolence messages on Facebook.
That was when Sgt Jasper's girlfriend in North Carolina saw the postings. Horrified, she called his parents.
'She was screaming to me, 'He's not dead! He's not dead!'' Mr Jasper said. 'I said, 'How do you know this?' She said, 'I just got off the phone with him.''
Their son called soon after.
Now the Army unit is reviewing how it delivers such tragic