How would you like to be the commander for the unit this guy belongs to?:
A U.S. Army sergeant stationed at Fort Bliss wore a military uniform bearing his name while allegedly selling methamphetamine to an undercover federal agent in El Paso earlier this year, court documents state.
Sgt. Derek Calderon, 25, who posted a video of himself with a stack of hundred dollar bills on social media, was arrested in connection with the meth trafficking scheme, according to the documents.
Calderon was indicted in a South Florida federal court on June 30 on one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more and two counts of possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more, according to the indictment. He is facing life in prison on all three charges. [El Paso Times]
You can read more at the link, but my favorite part of the article is that not only did this guy conduct a drug deal in uniform, but then he posted the money he received after the deal on Instagram for everyone to see.
Via a reader tip comes this unusual murder story involving two Korean businessman in California. Was it a suicide or murder, that is what a jury had to decide:
Beong Kwun Cho becomes emotional while testifying at his trial. Cho said Yeon Woo Lee wanted to die but wanted to spare his family of the social stigma and trauma of suicide. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Cho’s two daughters grew up considering Lee an uncle, he said. Their families vacationed together. The two men did business together.
Then a few months ago, Lee asked Cho for a favour he wasn’t sure he could do, even for his closest friend, he told the detective.
Lee’s motel business in Korea was foundering. His marriage was falling apart. Lee told Cho he wanted to die, but didn’t want to burden his family with the trauma and social stigma that comes with suicide, Cho said.
Lee tried to hire people he’d met at nearby casinos to kill him and make it look like a random crime, Cho said, but they demanded payment ahead of time and he didn’t trust them to go through with it. Ultimately, he turned to his best friend.
“He said there is no other way – this is the only way,” he told Trapp.
His friend orchestrated the entire scenario, Cho told police. It was Lee who procured the gun and a box of ammunition. Lee drove around scouting out possible sites, choosing a couple spots near bodies of water because he was superstitious. Lee arranged for them to go to a gun range together for target practice, and took Cho to a Wal-Mart where he bought black knit gloves and size 13 shoes – props to make his death look like a robbery.
Lee then chose the date for the deed, Cho said: his wife’s birthday. It would be his last gift.
After dinner that night, they each drove their cars to the first spot Lee had picked out, between Anaheim Lake and a basin, only to find that there were crews working there late into the night. They drove to a second location nearby, a quiet stretch of Miraloma Avenue.
Lee flattened the tyre, ransacked the glove compartment of his rental car and smoked a final cigarette. He handed Cho the revolver wrapped in a T-shirt before dropping to his knees with his back to his friend, Cho said.
“Keep talking to me so that I won’t know when I’m being shot. And while I’m talking … shoot me in the middle of our conversation,” his friend implored, Cho told the detective. [Sydney Morning Herald]
As it turns out the jury agreed with Cho that this was not murder and convicted him of voluntary manslaughter:
A man who shot his friend of more than three decades in the back of his head in an industrial area of east Anaheim is guilty of voluntary manslaughter, not murder, an Orange County jury found Thursday.
Beong Kwun Cho, 56, admitted to police that he shot his friend, Yeon Woo Lee, and left him abandoned on the side of a road near a basin along Miraloma Avenue. But Cho insisted it was at the request of Lee, who wanted to die but didn’t want to burden his family with the social stigma and trauma associated with suicide. [LA Times]
This just goes to show that sickos can come in any rank if the allegations are true:
Shaw Air Force Base’s former vice commander, who was relieved of duty earlier this year, faces criminal charges, including for child pornography.
Base officials report Col. William Jones was charged with possession of child pornography and obstruction of justice June 29, according to a news release. Jones serves as the Ninth Air Force deputy chief of safety.
He took over as the 20th Fighter Wing vice commander at the base in April 2014 but was relieved of duty in February for loss of confidence, according to The Sumter Item.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled Aug. 8 to “conduct an inquiry into the matter,” the release stated. [Myrtle Beach Online]
The teen had been kicked out of the beauty store when she was caught shoplifting with another girl.
A 13-year-old Missouri girl suspected of shooting and critically wounding a Korean couple in their 70s has surrendered to police.
The teen had shot the parents of the owner of King’s Beauty Supply in Bellefontaine Neighbors on Tuesday after she and another juvenile had been booted from the store earlier in the day for stealing, the Post-Dispatch reported.
When the girls returned to the shop, the couple called police, who found the girls in a nearby parking lot.
One girl was taken into custody on a previous juvenile warrant and the other was released with a warning with the couple’s approval, according to Detective Shawn Applegate.
The couple recovered the stolen items, believed to be hair extensions, and the shoplifting was not reported.
However, the girl who was given the warning returned again to the store and shot the couple, cops said. She came into the store, and “then less than a minute later came running out, swinging in her right hand a revolver as she ran,” a witness told authorities, according to the Post-Dispatch. [New York Daily News]
You can read more at the link, but all the best to the family and friends of the victims.
This photo, taken on July 19, 2016, shows a pistol and bullets that the Busan Police Agency has confiscated from a high-ranking member of a major yakuza group known as Kudo-kai. The member smuggled himself into South Korea in January 2015 before being apprehended by police on July 7. The Kudo-kai crime syndicate is based in Kitakyushu, Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture.(Yonhap)
This is a pretty big bust of street racers in the Seoul area:
Seoul police announced Thursday that they have rounded up 73 people involved in racing their luxury cars on public roads during the wee hours of the night.
From May 2015 to May of this year, police found 73 people who participated in 22-kilometer (13.6-mile) races from the Jangam Station in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, to the Songchu three-way intersection and back.
The racers were grouped into twos and threes by the horsepower of their cars, and as many as 10 to 15 such groups participated in the midnight race from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., according to police.
The participants drove at about 60 kilometers-per-hour until they hit the Sapaesan Tunnel, a 4-kilometer-long four-lane tunnel, where they reached speeds of 200 to 324 kilometers per hour. The speed limit in the tunnel is 100 kilometers per hour.
Some motor service center owners helped racers tweak the electronic control unit of their cars in order to allow extreme speeding. Police said some of them received roughly 3 million won ($2,649) per car.
Among the 73 drivers booked by police, only one was a woman.
All 73 face the charge of violating the Road Traffic Act and five have been arrested for being chief organizers of the races. Six men were found to have raced at least 100 times since May of last year. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Considering the age of consent in South Korea the only way these two could be charged with a crime is if these teenagers were coerced into the relationships. Considering the position of authority of a police officer you would think this would be coercive:
Two policemen in Busan resigned after it was found they had sex with high school students they were in charge of monitoring, but they faced no punishment and even received their severance pay.
One policeman surnamed Kim, 33, had sex with a 17-year-old high school student he was supposed to look after and guide, inside a car after school on June 4.
The case came to light as the student reported what had happend to the school nurse, who then alerted a female officer who was managing students at another school, who then passed the case to Busan Saha Police Station.
The Saha Police Station’s section chief verified and confirmed the facts with Kim and the school, however, closed the case without reporting to higher authorities by advising Kim to resign.
Kim handed in his notice the next day, on June 9, saying he had “decided to continue his parents’ business.” He received no punishment and received his severance pay.
When the case belatedly erupted over social media on Friday, the section chief denied having had any knowledge of the incident prior to Kim’s resignation.
A 31-year-old police officer at Busan Yeonje Police Station also had a sexual relationship with a high school student he was supervising. The teenager reportedly contemplated taking her life after the incident. Whether the two had sex more than once is yet to be confirmed.
The case was discovered by a teenagers’ welfare organization that had had a consultation session with the student. When the organization attempted to verify the case with Jeong, he filed for resignation from his post on May 17, claiming that being a police officer did not “fit his aptitude.” [Korea Herald]
Here is a general safety note to everyone, do not let strange people into your apartment that you just met in the elevator:
The 36-year-old sex offender arrested last Saturday for allegedly murdering a 60-year-old woman in Gaepo-dong, southern Seoul, did not know his victim as he claimed.
Police now say he stalked a complete stranger, sneaked into her house to rape her and then killed her so he wouldn’t get caught.
After his arrest on June 18, the suspect, surnamed Kim, claimed he met the victim while working at a real estate agency and had known her for about a month. He told police he asked her to lend him money and murdered her when she refused.
But investigators found no record of calls or texts between the two.
Under questioning, Kim changed his story. According to police, Kim saw the victim in a parking lot on June 14, two days before the murder. Security camera footage caught him in the same parking lot as the victim.
He tailed her as she drove to her residence because he wanted to develop a “good relationship” with her, Kim said, according to police. He followed her into the apartment building elevator and introduced himself as an insurance salesman, a profession he had started to study.
He asked to come inside her apartment to tell her about policies and she agreed. When she punched the code into the security keypad of her apartment, he noted the combination of numbers. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but this guy was out on parole after being jailed for 10 years for a prior sexual assault and was forced to wear an ankle bracelet. However, it broke and no one was tracking him when he committed the crime.
Here is a strange story of a Korean movie director who broke a promise to an actress to not release a topless scene in the movie and now is facing a sexual violence crime for not keeping that promise:
Kwak Hyun-hwa, left, and Lee Soo-sung
Prosecutors have indicted film director Lee Soo-sung for allegedly releasing a “director’s cut” of an adult movie without agreeing with the actress who was nude in it.
The Seoul Central District Court has charged Lee with infringing the sexual violence crime punishment laws and making a false charge in his counter-accusation against Kwak Hyun-hwa, the actress.
Kwak, who starred in Lee’s movie “House With a Good View” in 2012, did not want to be part of any nude scene. Lee persuaded her that he would consider cutting out such scenes when editing the film and insisted she go topless, to which she agreed. [Korea Times]
