Former Texas official arrested in probe of prosecutors' slayings

A photograph is displayed at a memorial service for Kaufman County district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia in Sunnyvale, Texas April 4, 2013. REUTERS/Mike Stone

By Lisa Maria Garza

KAUFMAN, Texas (Reuters) - A former justice of the peace inKaufman County, Texas, whose home was searched as part of the probe into the killings of the local district attorney, his wife and a prosecutor, has been arrested on suspicion of threatening violence, officials said on Saturday.

Eric L. Williams, 46, was arrested on Friday on charges of making a "terroristic" threat, which generally involves a threat to commit violence, according to the Kaufman County jail website. Kaufman County is just east of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

It was not immediately clear whether the alleged threat had any connection to the slayings, which along with the March slaying of the Colorado prisons chief raised concerns about public officials being targeted by criminal elements.

Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were found shot to death on March 30 at their home near Forney, 22 miles from Dallas, two months after Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was gunned down execution-style. McLelland had publicly vowed to capture Hasse's killer.

The pace of the investigation into those deaths appeared to quicken on Saturday after local media reported that FBI agents and Texas Rangers had searched several storage units in the town of Seagoville as part of the probe into the slayings. The Dallas Morning News reported that a car had been found in one of the units.

It was not immediately clear who the units belonged to. The New York Times quoted an unnamed law enforcement official as saying the search was "possibly very significant". An FBI spokeswoman did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the developments.

Asked about the progress of the probe into the killings, Kaufman County Sheriff's spokesman Lieutenant Justin Lewis told Reuters late on Saturday: "Nobody has been charged at this time."

SEARCH WARRANT

Williams, who a jail official confirmed was being held on $3 million bail, has not been named as a suspect in the slayings. He lost his position as justice of the peace in Kaufman County after being convicted last year of theft, according to local media reports.

His attorney, David Sergi, said in a statement on Friday that his client "has cooperated with law enforcement and vigorously denies any and all allegations", according to local news station KXAS-TV, an NBC affiliate.

Sergi did not return calls on Saturday.

Kyle Bradford, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers, said authorities served a search warrant at Williams' home on Friday.

Richard Mohundro, who lives next door to Williams' house in Kaufman County, said he watched from his porch as police poured into the neighborhood on Friday afternoon. "There were cops everywhere and I thought, 'Oh my God'," he said.

Officers were there until around midnight and took out bins filled with documents and computers, Mohundro said.

After the slayings of Hasse and the McLellands, investigators had tested Williams for gun residue and they examined his cell phone, but they did not name him as a suspect, according to the New York Times.

The theft conviction against Williams last year centered on his removal of computer monitors from a public building, according to a report on the trial from The Forney Post newspaper. Hasse prosecuted the case, according to the paper.

The arrest of Williams marked at least the third time investigators in the case have taken a person into custody over an alleged threat, and came as Texas authorities were seeking to double an existing $200,000 reward to find the killers.

The Texas Rangers arrested a man on April 4 accused of using Facebook to threaten violence against an assistant district attorney. Two days earlier, authorities arrested another man suspected of making a telephone threat against a county official on a tip line set up for the case.

(Additional reporting Marice Richter and Lisa Maria Garza in Texas and Chris Francescani in New York,; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Vicki Allen, Cynthia Johnston and Pravin Char)

Police: Hostage-taker gave no signs of compromise

This Thursday, April 11, 2013 photo shows a home damaged during a hostage standoff in Suwanee, Ga. A man held four Gwinnett County firefighters hostage for hours before they where freed when police officers stormed the house Wednesday. Authorities said the firefighters encountered an armed man who demanded that his cable and power be turned back on at the house, which was in foreclosure. (AP Photo/Kate Brumback)

A Gwinnett County Police Department crime scene investigator carries a handful of used stun grenades Thursday afternoon, April 11, 2013, outside the Suwanee, Ga., house where Lauren Brown held firefighters hostage the night before. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal Constitution, Ben Gray) GWINNETT OUT MARIETTA OUT

SUWANEE, Ga. (AP) — As a gunman held four firefighters hostage in his Georgia home, police tried to buy time and create a rapport by meeting his initial demands. But when his requests became unreasonable and negotiations seemed to go nowhere, police said, officers stormed the house and killed him after he fired on them.

Authorities on Thursday provided new details on Wednesday's hostage-taking north of Atlanta, including how the suspect — 55-year-old Lauren Brown — lured firefighters to his home.

Meanwhile, some who knew Brown said he'd suffered from disabling medical problems and was struggling financially, and that he had lived across the street from his ex-wife.

Gwinnett County Police Chief Charles Walters said Brown called 911 complaining of chest pains Wednesday afternoon, and fiveGwinnett County firefighters arrived at 3:48 p.m., believing it was a routine call. Brown was lying in bed and appeared to be suffering from a condition that left him unable to move. But when they approached the bed to help him, he pulled out a handgun, Walters said.

Brown told his hostages he had spent weeks planning the ambush and targeted firefighters rather than police officers so he wouldn't be shot, Walters said. Investigators found half a dozen guns in his house.

One of Brown's first demands was to move the fire truck and ambulance from in front of his house, and he released one firefighter to accomplish that, police said.

Next he asked that power be restored to his house, which was in foreclosure; that his cellphone be reactivated; and that his cable and Internet service be turned back on. Police checked and learned that those services had all been deactivated due to non-payment. They worked with the utilities and companies to get them turned back on.

Then Brown asked for a meal to be brought in from a fast-food seafood restaurant for him and his hostages. But he had also asked about an hour earlier for police to bring tools and wood and to board up the windows and doors of his house from the outside.

"That was the one we couldn't realistically meet," Gwinnett police Cpl. Jake Smith said, adding that they didn't want to fortify Brown inside with the hostages.

Instead, a SWAT officer carrying the food approached the house in Suwanee, about 35 miles northeast of Atlanta.

Other SWAT members set off a stun blast to distract Brown and stormed the house. Police said Brown opened fire on the first officer as he entered the bedroom. The man was hit in the left arm by one of the shots, but managed to return fire, killing Brown. Before Brown fired, police told him to drop his weapon, Walters said.

Thursday, it wasn't immediately clear why Brown had lashed out. Brown had separated from his wife years earlier, but he had lived across the street from her, her new husband and Brown's two children, according to neighbors and people who knew the family.

"We knew he wasn't quite normal, but this is a real shock," said David Books, a former colleague of Brown's and a friend until they had a falling out years ago. He said he never noticed any signs that Brown could be violent.

Books said Brown's mother eventually bought the house across from her son's ex-wife so Brown could afford to live there.

"Having been a father myself, I can understand his desire to be as close to his children as possible, but given the acrimony between him and his wife — regardless of who might have been at fault — it looked to me like a situation that was going to turn out not to be very healthy," he said.

Brown's family issued a statement Friday evening through the Gwinnett County police asking that the media "respect our privacy so that we can process the events and begin the healing process."

"The family would like to express its appreciation to the Gwinnett County Police and Fire Department for all they did to bring this situation to resolution and for their support of our family," the statement said. "We are very grateful that no one else was killed during the standoff."

Brown had worked for IBM, but described himself as disabled when he filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, according to court documents. He reported that he owed more than $100,000 to Home Depot, banks and credit card companies. The records suggest Brown was tapping into his retirement savings to make ends meet. A series of tax liens had been placed on his home, which slipped into foreclosure in recent months.

Brown worked long hours as a system engineer at IBM in the 1990s, Books said. Brown told his colleagues that he developed fibromyalgia, a chronic condition characterized by widespread pain, and left work on a medical retirement. He later started working again.

"For a while, he was in so much pain that he couldn't even think about working," Books said.

He was arrested and booked into the Gwinnett County jail in 2010 after he failed to appear in court on a charge of striking an unmanned vehicle.

On Thursday, exposed wooden beams could be seen through a gaping hole in the side of the house and debris littered the yard. Public records indicate the red brick house with white siding has been bank-owned since mid-November.

A day earlier, fire officials did not believe there was any danger in responding to the initial call that seemed routine and they dispatched the usual one engine and one ambulance to the house.

After the hostage-taking was reported, dozens of police and rescue vehicles surrounded the home and a negotiator was keeping in touch with the gunman, police said.

Firefighters were able to use their radios to let the dispatch center know what was going on and that's how negotiators communicated with Brown initially, Walters said. Once they got his cellphone service turned back on, they were able to speak to him by phone.

By the end of the 3½ -hour standoff, though, police were convinced that even if they met Brown's demands, he had no intention of releasing his hostages, Walters said.

This was the second time in recent months that firefighters have been targeted.

On Dec. 24, a man in upstate New York set his house ablaze and shot and killed two firefighters as they arrived, then himself. Two other firefighters and a police officer were wounded.

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Henry reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Johnny Clark and Phillip Lucas contributed to this report.

AP source: Immigration bill could exclude many

Ajna, 28, of Washington, an artist who goes by only her first name and is of Ethiopian and Eritrean descent, poses for a portrait at the end of the "Rally for Citizenship" on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday, April 10, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A promised path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally may leave out hundreds of thousands of them.

Bipartisan Senate legislation would make legalization and ultimately citizenship available only to those who arrived in theU.S. before Dec. 31, 2011, according to a Senate aide with knowledge of the proposals. Anyone who came after that date would be subject to deportation.

The bill, expected to be introduced next week, also would require applicants to document that they were in the country before the cutoff date, have a clean criminal record and show enough employment or financial stability that they're likely to stay off welfare, said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposals had not been made public.

Although illegal immigration to the U.S. has been dropping, tens of thousands of people still arrive annually, so the cutoff date alone could exclude a large number of people. The aide said hundreds of thousands could be excluded overall. That came as a disappointment to immigrant rights groups that had been hoping that anyone here as of the date of enactment of the bill could be able to become eligible for citizenship.

"The goal is to deal with the 11 million folks who are here without status, and the wider road that we can create for them to get on that path that they can ultimately get residency and citizenship, the better," Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, said Friday. "A cutoff date that lops off all of 2012 and whatever part of 2013, that's going to be at least a couple hundred thousand people. It's not ideal."

But Republicans in the eight-member immigration negotiating group have sought strict criteria on legal enforcement and border security as the price for their support for a path to citizenship, which is still opposed by some as amnesty. The aide said that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who's working to sell the plan to the right, pushed Democrats in the group for an even earlier cutoff date, while the Democrats proposed Jan. 1, 2013. The date negotiators settled on was a compromise but also an outcome Rubio can tout to conservatives.

Indeed Rubio's chief of staff, Cesar Conda, took to Twitter this week to describe the bill as tough on illegal immigration.

"Freezes illegal population. No special pathway. No amnesty," Conda wrote. "Registration for provisional status will not be open-ended and there will be a physical presence requirement barring recent arrivals."

Rubio is to appear on all five network and cable talk shows this Sunday — as well as Univision and Telemundo — to discuss the legislation. Negotiators are aiming to introduce the bill on Tuesday. Details on the criminal record requirement were still being finalized, but anyone with a felony conviction was likely to be ineligible, the aide said.

It's impossible to know exactly how many immigrants have arrived illegally in the U.S. since Dec. 31, 2011, because such statistics aren't collected and the numbers that have been developed aren't that recent, according to Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. One study found that some 384,000 immigrants entered illegally in 2009.

Despite their concerns over the cutoff date, immigration advocates emphasized they intend to evaluate the bill in totality and still expect to find much to like. Kelley and others also pointed out that the last time the U.S. enacted a major legalization program — with legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 that legalized close to 3 million people — it included a cutoff date of four years prior to enactment. So by comparison, the proposal in the expected new bill looks good.

Advocates also will be looking to see how much will be charged to immigrants here illegally in fees and fines before they can become citizens and what other requirements are imposed, such as English proficiency.

The legislation would put millions here illegally on a 13-year path to citizenship, while also toughening border security requirements, mandating that all employers check the legal status of workers, and allowing tens of thousands of new high- and low-skilled workers into the country with new visa programs. The legislation is expected to include a new emphasis on merit-based immigration over family ties.

Also Friday agriculture growers and the United Farm Workers gave their formal approval to a hard-fought deal finalizing one of the new visa programs, for agriculture workers. Tom Nassif, president of the Western Growers Association, said the deal would allow up to 337,000 workers into the country through 2021 to labor in the nation's fields and farms. After 2021, the agriculture secretary would set numbers of visas.

The deal also establishes minimum wage rates across different agriculture occupations and allows farm workers already in the country illegally to obtain permanent resident green cards in as little as three years, as long as they work 150 days a year in agriculture, Nassif said. "I think both sides believe that we truly made history today. There was jubilation," he said.

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Follow Erica Werner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericawerner

Sheriff Arpaio: Explosive device 1 of many threats

PHOENIX (AP) — Authorities are investigating what was reported to be an explosive deviceaddressed to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America," known for his strict treatment of jail inmates and cracking down on illegal immigration.

The package intercepted in Flagstaff late Thursday was addressed to Arpaio at his downtown Phoenix office, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said. It appeared suspicious, so it was X-rayed, and an improvised device was detected. A bomb squad team neutralized the device with a water cannon, said U.S. Postal Inspection Service spokesman Keith Moore.

Moore said laboratory testing will determine whether the contents of the package actually would have exploded.

"I cannot say it was definitely an explosive," Moore said. "It was something that had the characteristics of an explosive device."

Postal Inspector Patricia Armstrong said authorities were alerted by a "very astute" carrier who observed "something suspicious" about the package when the carrier emptied a parcel locker in a rural part of Coconino County, outside Flagstaff city limits.

Armstrong didn't elaborate on what raised suspicion, but Tom Mangan, a spokesman in Phoenix for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said initial reports indicated that the package was a box that might have been damaged in transit and leaked gunpowder.

Authorities in Flagstaff, which is about 140 miles north of Phoenix, said they are pursuing leads in the case.

Arpaio said the mailing of an explosive device addressed to him comes with his line of work. He cited the recent killings of a West Virginia sheriff, Colorado's corrections director and two prosecutors in Texas.

"That's the nature of the business," he said. "I'm getting many threats. This isn't the first time."

Following the killing of a West Virginia sheriff last week, Arpaio said elected law enforcement officials across the nation seem to be targeted.

Numerous threats against Arpaio, a hero to many conservatives on immigration, prompted the need for a security detail for the lawman also known for dressing jail inmates in pink underwear and making them sleep in tents in the heat of the Arizona desert.

A campaign to recall Arpaio began just weeks after he started his sixth term in January.

Critics contend that Arpaio should be ousted because his office failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crimes cases, allegedly racially profiled Latinos in its trademark immigration patrols and has cost the county $25 million in legal settlements over treatment in county jails.

Arpaio has denied that his deputies racially profiled Latinos in traffic patrols targeting illegal immigration. His office has moved to clear up the sex-crime cases and moved to prevent the problem from happening again, he said.

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China WHO chief: Beijing H7N9 case not surprising

Associated Press/Andy Wong - The head of the World Health Organization’s office in China Michael O' Leary speaks to journalists outside the WHO office in Beijing Sunday, April 14, 2013. O'Leary said Sunday that it wasn’t surprising that a new strain of bird flu that has sickened dozens in eastern China has spread to the capital. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this photo taken on Saturday, April 13, 2013, security guards clear out a stall belonging to the parents of a seven-year-old H7N9 bird flu patient as people sit outside the family's home in Gucheng village on the outskirt of Beijing. The World Health Organization’s chief said Sunday that it wasn’t surprising that a new strain of bird flu that has sickened dozens in eastern China has spread to the capital. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

Nurses collect patients' blood samples at a specialized fever clinic inside the Ditan Hospital, where a Chinese girl is being treated for the H7N9 strain of bird flu, in Beijing Sunday, April 14, 2013. A World Health Organization official said Sunday that it wasn't surprising that a new strain of bird flu has spread to China's capital after sickening dozens in the eastern part of the country. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

BEIJING (AP) — A World Health Organization official said Sunday that it wasn't surprising that a new strain of bird flu has spread toChina's capital after sickening dozens in the eastern part of the country.

Up until Saturday when Beijing officials reported the capital's first case of H7N9, all cases had been in Shanghai and other eastern China areas. On Sunday, the first two cases were reported in central Henan province, which is next to Beijing.

It's not the case that everyone confirmed infected with H7N9 was "clustered in one small area with the same source of exposure," said Michael O'Leary, head of WHO's office in China. "So we've been expecting new cases to occur ... Furthermore, we still expect that there will be other cases."

A 7-year-old girl was Beijing's first confirmed case of H7N9, which has now sickened 51 people, of whom 11 died.

Health officials believe the virus that was first spotted in humans last month is spreading through direct contact with infected fowl.

O'Leary said "the good news" was that there was still no evidence that humans had passed on the virus to other humans.

"As far as we know, all the cases are individually infected in a sporadic and not connected way," he said, adding that the source of infection is still being investigated.

The girl, whose parents are in the live poultry trade, was admitted to a hospital Thursday with symptoms of fever, sore throat, coughing and headache, the Beijing Health Bureau said.

O'Leary said early treatment can be effective, as demonstrated by the girl who was recovering in hospital and in stable condition.

In the only other reported cases outside of eastern China, health officials in Henan province announced that tests on two men Thursday revealed they had the virus.

They said a 34-year-old restaurant chef who had displayed flu symptoms for about a week was in critical condition in hospital, while a 65-year-old farmer who was in frequent contact with poultry was in stable condition after receiving treatment.

They said 19 people who had been in close contact with the two men had not shown any flu symptoms.

China has been more open in its response to the new virus than it was a decade ago with an outbreak of SARS, when authorities were highly criticized for not releasing information.