Nation in brief: Police scuffle with protesters
White-helmeted District of Columbia police briefly scuffled with protesters Saturday during a demonstration outside the World Bank, but no one was seriously injured or arrested, officials and protesters said.
The confrontation came after violence erupted Friday night during a protest in Washington’s upscale Georgetown district. Objects were thrown at store windows, newspaper boxes were overturned and a police officer was pushed from a scooter, authorities said. Saturday was quieter.
About 500 demonstrators marched from Franklin Square, near the White House, to World Bank headquarters a few blocks away. The protesters, a mix of students, community activists and black-clad anarchists, denounced the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which are holding meetings this weekend.
The event was peaceful except for a tense moment in Edward R. Murrow Park, across from the bank, where the march ended. As delegates arrived for the meetings mid-afternoon, several anarchists charged the police line, according to officials and two demonstrators. Baton-wielding police raced in, shoving protesters and snatching signs.
FORT MYERS, Fla.
Prison playing cards lead to killing arrest
A prison card game dealt police the tip they needed to arrest a man in a killing that occurred nearly three years ago, authorities said Saturday.
In July, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement gave nearly 93,000 state inmates playing cards that highlight 104 of the state’s most troubling unsolved homicide and missing-persons cases.
On Friday, police arrested Derrick L. Hamilton after an inmate tipped them off about the November 2004 killing of James Foote, who was found dead with a gunshot wound to his chest in a Fort Myers parking lot. Foote’s picture and the details of his death were featured on a card bearing the seven of clubs.
An inmate at a Lake City prison told authorities Hamilton had bragged about killing Foote, WINK-TV in Fort Myers reported.
Hamilton was charged with felony murder, Fort Myers police Sgt. Abdul Salaam said.
DENNIS TOWNSHIP, N.J.
Boy, 7, suspended for gun drawing
A second-grader’s drawing of a stick figure shooting a gun earned him a one-day school suspension.
Kyle Walker, 7, was suspended last week for violating Dennis Township Primary School’s zero-tolerance policy on guns, the boy’s mother, Shirley McDevitt, told the Press of Atlantic City.
Kyle gave the picture to another child on the school bus, and that child’s parents complained about it to school officials, McDevitt said. Her son told her the drawing was of a water gun, she said.
A photocopy of the picture provided by McDevitt showed two stick figures with one pointing a crude-looking gun at the other, the newspaper said. What appeared to be the word “me” was written above the shooter, with another name scribbled above the other figure.