ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A mother whose 4-year-old was being abducted chased the suspect down and crashed her vehicle into his car, triggering a manhunt and the arrest of the suspect, Albuquerque police said Thursday.

The young girl was playing in her yard at St. Anthony's Plaza Apartments in Albuquerque's North Valley about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday when a group of teenagers saw the kidnapping and ran to alert the girl's mother, police said.

The family called 911 and the mother jumped into her vehicle and gave chase for about seven miles, unaware the man had pushed the girl out of the silver Buick before fleeing the apartment complex, authorities said. The girl was found wandering nearby, uninjured, police said.

According to police, the mother followed the suspect and finally rammed into his car near an intersection. The suspect fled on foot, police said.

Melissa Torrez, the mother, told KOAT-TV she didn't mean to hit the suspect's car and struck it accidentally when she lost control of her car. Torrez said didn't even have time to cry when she jumped to chase the suspect.

"I don't ever want to lose my kids," said Torrez, a mother of three. Read more at the Star Tribune

By SEAN EMERY / ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

By Megan McArdle, The Daily Beast 

WE SCRIMP. We save. We plan. And we dream that when we retire—at 50 or 70 or 90—we’ll ride off into the sunset on a chariot made of our sequestered gold.

Posted by David Perez

Elizabeth, New Jersey (AP)--A homeless, hatchet-wielding hitchhiker who became an Internet hero earlier this year was arrested Thursday for allegedly beating a New Jersey lawyer to death inside his home, authorities said.

Caleb ``Kai'' McGillvary , who became known as ``Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker'' after intervening in an attack on a California utility worker, was arrested on a murder warrant at a Philadelphia bus station, according to Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow. He was being held on $3 million bail.

Earlier in the day, Romankow said McGillvary was wanted in the killing of Joseph Galfy Jr., a Clark, N.J. attorney found dead in his home on Monday.

Galfy's body was found two days after authorities said he met McGillvary in New York City. He was found wearing only his underwear and socks by police who went to his home to check on his well-being.

Statements posted on McGillvary's Facebook page following the homicide indicated the encounter was sexual in nature, Romankow said, though he declined to go into specific detail.

On his Facebook page, McGillvary's last post, dated Tuesday, asks ``what would you do?'' if you awoke in a stranger's house and found you'd been drugged and sexually assaulted. One commenter suggests hitting him with a hatchet _ and McGillvary's final comment on the post says, ``I like your idea.''

It was a hatchet that helped give McGillvary a brief taste of fame in February when he gave a rambling, profanity-laced 5-minute interview to a Fresno, Calif.television station about thwarting and unprovoked attack on a Pacific Gas & Electric employee. The interview went viral, with one version viewed more than 3.9 million times on YouTube. He later appeared on ABC's ``Jimmy Kimmel Live!''

Kimmel asked him what people were saying to him since the Feb. 1 incident. ``Hey, you're Kai, that dude with the hatchet,'' he responded.

Romankow said McGillvary, who said in his TV appearance he prefers to be called ``home-free'' instead of homeless, traded on his newfound celebrity to meet fans across the country.

Romankow said McGillvary met Galfy on Saturday in Times Square, then spent at least two nights at his home on a cul-de-sac in Clark, 20 miles west of New York .

McGillvary's movements after that included two trips to meet a fan in Asbury Park, a trip to Philadelphia and another to Glassboro in southern New Jersey. He was considered armed and dangerous before his capture.

McGillvary swiftly gained notoriety after he was interviewed in February after he intervened in an apparently unprovoked attack that led to charges including attempted murder.

McGillvary said he was riding in a car with a man who veered into the worker, got out of the car, walked up to the utility worker and allegedly said, ``I am Jesus and I am here to take you home.'' McGillvary said he then pulled a hatchet from his backpack and struck the driver in the head several times to subdue him, The Fresno Bee reported.

Last month, the driver entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, the newspaper reported.

McGillvary also goes by the names Kai Lawrence, Caleb Kai Lawrence and Kai Nicodemus, prosecutors said. A reward of $5,000 was offered for information leading to his arrest.

 

WASHINGTON -- The nation's soon-to-be former top tax official will face questions Friday about why he failed to inform Congress about the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of Tea Party groups last year -- even under direct questioning.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., stopped short of saying that Steven Miller lied to Congress, "but it seems pretty clear that he was aware of this ongoing targeting. And he didn't tell Congress."

Friday's hearing will be a fact-finding mission to "find out who was responsible for subjecting conservative groups to additional scrutiny, why they did it, and how pervasive it was," Camp said.

And Camp said the inquiries won't stop with Tea Party groups, whose applications for tax-exempt status were delayed simply by virtue of their group name. Camp also wants to know if pro-Israel groups and individual donors to conservative causes were also targeted for invasive questioning and audits.

"What struck me is there really seemed to be a culture of discrimination. This was OK with a lot of people, and this went on without anyone batting an eye," Camp told USA TODAY. "And the so-called 'fix' actually made the problem worse." Read more at USA Today

Of the many wonderfully nonsensical things the TV show “Arrested Development” has introduced us to – the mayonegg, hot ham water, each family member’s interpretation of the chicken dance – one of the most notable is the "never-nude".

On the show, which returns May 26 for a much-anticipated fourth season on Netflix, psychotherapist-turned-actor Tobias Funke suffers from the psychological condition and is pathologically afraid of being naked. He wears denim cut-offs at all times, even in the shower.

But it's not just a made-up quirk played for laughs. There really are people with a crippling fear of nudity, a condition called "gymnophobia".

“There are people who are not comfortable being naked in front of other people — and there are other people who are not comfortable looking at themselves naked,” said Martin Antony, professor of psychology at Ryerson University in Toronto, and author of “The Anti-Anxiety Workbook.  People can develop phobias – an extreme, irrational fear that negatively impacts a person’s ability to lead a normal life – of just about anything.  Read more at NBC News

By Richard Clough, The Orange County Register

Tristin Hernandez has a steady job in Irvine as a special education instructor, but he occasionally runs short on cash before his monthly paycheck arrives.

When that happens, there aren't a lot of options.

Last week, in need of a few hundred bucks to cover weekend expenses, the 26-year-old stopped by a Tustin payday lender, which offers short-term advances with annual interest rates sometimes in excess of 460 percent. Hernandez pays as much as $45 in fees for each loan, which he has been getting on and off since college.

"I'd heard that they're expensive," he said, "but if you're really in desperate need for that money, what's $45?"

Hernandez is one of nearly 2 million Californians turning to payday lenders each year as the annual market for so-called deferred deposit loans has ballooned to more than $3 billion. Orange County, in particular, has become an epicenter for payday loan growth, with 145 storefronts mostly clustered in low-income neighborhoods in Santa Ana and Anaheim. Read more at The Orange County Register

Will more cities in California file for bankruptcy?

LOS ANGELES — How bad and widespread are California cities' fiscal problems?

"Virtually ubiquitous and massive,'' says Rod Kiewiet, professor of political science at California Institute of Technology.

In April, Stockton became the fourth California city — and the nation's largest — to go into bankruptcy protection since the recession began five years ago. The move by the Central Valley city to reorganize its wrecked finances under court protection has triggered a guessing game over which hard-pressed cities might be next.

Read more at USA Today 

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KABC) -- Surveillance video from the night a Bakersfield man died, allegedly at the hands of six Kern County deputies, has triggered a federal investigation.

The video is grainy and far from conclusive, but it will soon be part of an FBI probe. It shows 33-year-old David Silva of Bakersfield being beaten by deputies. When those deputies first arrived, Silva was reportedly drunk and passed out on a street corner. What happened next was all caught on camera and witnessed by several people.

 "You have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 sheriffs. The guy was laying on the floor and eight sheriffs ran up and started beating him up with sticks. The man is dead, laying right here right now," said a 911 caller.

Another eyewitness who wanted her identity concealed said she couldn't believe it when deputies started to beat Silva.

"He's drunk. That's all he is. He's eventually going to sober up a little bit...and these [expletive] killed him," she said.

The beating took place just across the street from Kern Medical Center. That's where Silva was pronounced dead on May 8. Deputies said he fought them after they approached him about complaints that someone in the area was intoxicated. Coroner's officials have not determined the cause of Silva's death, pending toxicology and other tests.  Read more at ABC 7