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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Campbell charged with assault


Supermodel Naomi Campbell leaves the Midtown North police precinct in New York on Thursday. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
The Spokesman-Review

Naomi Campbell was charged with second-degree assault Thursday after allegedly bashing her housekeeper in the head with a phone in an altercation at her Park Avenue apartment, police said.

The 35-year-old British-born supermodel was taken into custody shortly after police went to Lenox Hill Hospital to investigate the reported assault, police said.

According to police, Campbell’s 41-year-old housekeeper received four stitches to the head. When investigating officers arrived at the hospital, the alleged victim, who wasn’t identified, said Campbell had attacked her, police said.

In a statement, a Campbell spokesman said the supermodel wasn’t responsible for any assault. “We believe this is a case of retaliation, because Naomi had fired her housekeeper earlier this morning,” said the statement.

Boston

Court rules against out-of-state gays

Massachusetts’s highest court ruled Thursday that most gay couples from other states cannot get married there, the first decision to affirm a legal limit on the landmark same-sex marriage law in the Bay State.

The Supreme Judicial Court knocked down a legal challenge to a 1913 state law that forbids a non-Massachusetts couple from getting married there if their marriage would not be recognized by their home state.

The court ruled in 2003 that it would be unconstitutional under state law to prevent gay couples who live in Massachusetts from marrying. More than 6,000 gay couples have since married there.

Washington

Cocaine smugglers used tombstones

Federal agents on Thursday said they had broken up a ring of drug smugglers who used tombstones featuring the Virgin Mary to move hundreds of pounds of cocaine into the United States from Mexico.

The Drug Enforcement Agency announced arrests of 12 people as part of an alleged conspiracy stretching from New York to Mexico City.

Four of those arrests came Thursday, one in Houston and three after an early morning raid on a warehouse in New York’s Brooklyn borough.

New York

Retired FBI agent indicted for murder

A retired FBI agent was indicted on murder charges Thursday for allegedly taking bribes from a mobster to supply him with inside information that led to four underworld slayings in Brooklyn.

R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, was arrested in a case of “confidential leaks, payoffs and death” dating back two decades, District Attorney Charles Hynes said.

DeVecchio pleaded not guilty and was released on $1 million bail. He did not speak at his arraignment. One of the two alleged mob hitmen behind the slayings was jailed without bail. The other was in Florida, awaiting extradition.