Jarod Lance Bancroft,Curtis Stewart Bickle appeared before Brisbane Magistrates Court today on charges including assault occasioning bodily harm

Jarod Lance Bancroft, 36, and Curtis Stewart Bickle, 29, appeared before Brisbane Magistrates Court today on charges including assault occasioning bodily harm while armed, and threatening violence. The court was told the pair were wearing balaclavas and carrying hand guns when they approached a man outside his Corinda home, in Brisbane's west, about 9.10pm (AEST) on Wednesday. Police prosecutor Senior Sergeant Brian Cazzulino said Mr Bancroft, Mr Bickle and the man were all known to each other through the illicit drug trade. Mr Bancroft's seven-year-old daughter and his former partner were residing with the man. The court was told the pair ordered the man back inside his house and when he refused Mr Bickle fired a shot into the air and held a gun to the man's temple. After forcing him inside, Mr Bancroft pushed his young daughter aside before herding his former partner, the man and another woman into a room, the court was told. It was alleged one of the offenders then forced a hand gun inside the mouth of one of the women, smacking her in the teeth. One of the women then allegedly grabbed a lamp and smashed it into the back of Mr Bickle's head. The male victim then struggled with one of the attackers over a loaded hand gun and a shot was fired into the ground before the attackers left. The female victims allegedly identified the attackers through their eyes, physical build and "having known them for so long". No motive was given for the attack which Snr Sgt Cazzulino labelled a copycat of the Channel Nine drama Underbelly, based on the Melbourne gangland war. "It really read as if it was an episode of Underbelly and police are concerned it was a copycat situation," he said.
Mr Bickle's defence lawyer Mark Houghton described the reference to the drama as "inflammatory", though magistrate Wally Ehrich said he'd never watched the show. Mr Houghton criticised what he said was a lack of evidence against his client, questioning the victim's ability to identify the attacker under a balaclava. In addition, Mr Bickle had no visible injuries which might have been caused by being struck by a lamp. Mr Bancroft's lawyer Nick Dore labelled the suggestion his client would shove his young daughter as "ludicrous".
He also said Mr Bancroft had provided police with an alibi - he was watching DVDs and eating pizza with another person at the time of the attack.
Mr Ehrich denied both men bail and remanded them in custody to reappear for mention on July 7.

Terry Lamont Smith approached wearing a ski mask and began a fight with the victim. Smith’s mask came off during the struggle,

Terry Lamont Smith, 24, has prior felony convictions for burglary, grand larceny and distribution of crack. On Dec. 16, 2006, police responded to a shooting at the Tiger Mart located at 1208 E. Main St., Dillon. They found the victim lying on the floor with a single gunshot wound to the right side of his chest.
Witnesses told police the victim was vacuuming a woman’s car when Smith approached wearing a ski mask and began a fight with the victim. When Smith’s mask came off during the struggle, the victim recognized Smith. Smith then shot the victim and fled the scene.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rose Mary Parham of the Florence office prosecuted the case as part of Project CeaseFire, an initiative of the U.S. Attorneys Office that seeks to aggressively prosecute gun-related crimes.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also investigated this case.

Jorge Zaragoza retrieved a handgun and shot his wife, hitting her in the neck, then turned the gun on himself.

The Stockton Police Department reported that around 9 p.m., the Zaragozas were arguing at their home in the 200 block of Horton Avenue when Jorge Zaragoza retrieved a handgun and shot his wife, hitting her in the neck, then turned the gun on himself.Gabriela Zaragoza, 47, is recovering at San Joaquin General Hospital. Her husband, Jorge Zaragoza, died at the scene.Jorge and Gabriela Zaragoza's son, George, 23, said he heard his parents arguing in the backyard and ran outside when he heard his sister begin to scream.He made it outside in time to see his father shoot his mother and then raise the gun to his own head. George Zaragoza tried to wrest the gun from his father's hands, he said, but was too late."Before I could do anything, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger," he said.George Zaragoza said his father had always been a hot-tempered man but had lately fallen into a dark depression.A welder by trade, Jorge Zaragoza had been sidelined with a back injury. And Jorge, who had always taken pride in his appearance and his health, recently lost an eye after someone hit him with a glass bottle, his son said.
George Zaragoza said even as his mother lay in a hospital bed, she had already turned her mind to the well-being of her children. And she had sympathy for her husband, he said."She still loved him," George Zaragoza said.

Michael Dosunmu, Billy Cox, Jesse James, James Smarrt Ford and Adam Regis are just some of the names of young black men who have lost their lives

Michael Dosunmu, Billy Cox, Jesse James, James Smarrt Ford and Adam Regis are just some of the names of young black men who have lost their lives to the wave of escalating gun and knife crime in the UK. And in many cases, their attackers have also been young black men. Most of us who have seen these headlines have been shocked and concerned. For one woman the issue of gun violence became frighteningly real. But Manchester resident Erinma Bell’s brush with cold blooded gunmen was an experience that turned her into a crusader, determined to take on ruthless criminals. In December 1999, Bell from the city’s Moss Side area was returning home from a works Christmas party with her husband and a friend.
The happy talkative group were on their way to a house party to continue the festivities when Erinma noticed a group of men hanging around in an alleyway near where the party was taking place. “Even though it happened in December 1999, it’s as though it happened yesterday,” Bell recalls. “Every time I hear of another shooting, it brings back the memories, the sounds, the sights, the smell of the gun.
“As we were going to the party, I noticed three people in an alleyway. It was quite dark and after midnight. I just didn’t like the look of them. Call it women’s intuition, I just knew that something wasn’t right.”
She suspected that one of them was carrying a gun and she told her husband so. But she dismissed her fears and told her not to be so suspicious.
Not long after, the group got in the car to protect themselves from a sudden downpour of rain. But as they got in the car, Bell was still troubled. “We must have been inside the car a good ten or fifteen minutes but I hadn’t noticed that the three men had moved from the alleyway,” she remembered.
“After the rain had stopped, we got out of the car and I suddenly realised that the three men were stood outside of the door of the house we were supposed to be going into.” What happened next changed her life forever. “There were six of us in our group. The first of the two couples went into the house. Then as my friend was about to step in, one of the suspicious looking men tapped him on the shoulder.
“He took off his hood to look at this stranger and as he did this, all three of them opened fire and started shooting him. I was that shocked I stood still. I couldn’t move. “I went through a whole load of emotions and the one thought I remember going through my mind was ‘Is this really happening? Are they shooting guns? What’s happening here, what’s going on? Why are they doing this?’
“I remember my husband picked me up and ran across the road to guide me to safety. But then the reality of the situation hit me, it was our friend that they were shooting.
“I began shouting and screaming at them ‘Why are you doing this? You’re going to kill him! I’m going to call the police’. When I started running towards them, I didn’t think ‘I’m going to be brave’. I think it was just the adrenalin pumping and ethically it was the right thing to do. “It must be an instinctive thing to do because you want to stop them from hurting your friend. The shocking thing was that when they finished, they just calmly walked off. They didn’t run , they didn’t push anybody out of the way, they just walked off.” Thankfully, her friend (whose identity Bell wants to protect) survived the near fatal shooting. But her initial shock at what had just taken place followed by relief that he was still alive gave way to anger. “We administered first aid to him on the spot which helped to save his life. But we had to wait 45 minutes for the ambulance to come. “I’m still angry about that because I made that 999 call whilst they were still shooting. When they took him to hospital, they counted eleven bullet wounds, so it’s a miracle that he survived.
“That’s when gun crime became a reality in my life. Before then, it was something that I read about in the papers, or heard on the news. I can never forget the screams, the shouting, the mayhem. It was absolutely awful. “When you go home you relive all of that you have nightmares and it wasn’t even me that got shot so you can imagine what he was going through.” Following the incident, she decided that the best way to deal with her nightmares was to do something that would ensure that what she witnessed would never happen again in her neighbourhood. She needed a channel for her anger. Three years later, in 2002, she was instrumental in the creation of CARISMA (Community Alliance for Renewal, Inner South Manchester Area). The group was born out of Bell meeting with local people in Moss Side and the neighbouring Longsight area, who had enough of the area’s reputation as a haven for drugs, gangs and street violence. CARISMA’s statement of purpose is ‘creating life chances for young people in the community.’ And since it’s creation, the organisation has had quite an impact. It initiated an event called Peace Week. Now in it’s sixth year, Peace Week is a series of events that attracts thousands of people from all over the city for a series of events aimed at expressing the desire of local people for peace. The success of Peace Week has led to the creation of Peace FM. Initially a community radio station, operating on a month long restricted service licence, it was last month granted a five year licence by Ofcom, giving the community a permanent voice on the airwaves.
Bell was one of the individuals recently profiled in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s book ‘Britain’s Everyday Heroes’ in which he celebrates the ability of ordinary people to make a difference to their communities.
The Prime Minister praised Bell for her ability to channel her anger into helping her community. But the road to CARISMA’s success was not an easy one as Bell recalls. “Soon after the shooting, I started to try and get something done about the problem of gun crime in the area. And then my son was stopped in the street and questioned by some guys. He was asked ‘What are your parents saying to the police?’ and was told ‘Tell them not to speak to the police’ and that’s when I really started to fear. “It was like they were threatening me through my children and my children were not part of this. So I was going through all these emotions. But I was determined to do something and I said to everyone ‘I have a higher force that protects me’.
“I was brought up in the neighbourhood and I was not going to be run out from the neighbourhood. I did the drastic thing of sending my children abroad to be safe and away from the environment. It was a hard decision to make because I love my children but in the end I had to think about their future and their life.” CARISMA has gone from strength to strength. However, you won’t catch Bell resting on her laurels or being complacent. She is as passionate as ever about the need for an organisation like CARISMA. “We have young people today who feel the need to walk around with a deadly weapon. And that is definitely one of the things we have to communicate to our young people, that you don’t need to communicate using a deadly weapon. “Mistakes happen but if you shoot the wrong person, that person you have mistaken can’t come back. How many times are you going to say sorry when you realise you’ve got the wrong person? “These people need to understand that when you shoot someone, that bullet doesn’t stop at the body of the person you’ve aimed the gun at.
“It travels through the mother, the father, their brothers and sisters, their children. It keeps going throughout the whole of that person’s family. None of us has the right to take away a person’s life. “Life is a gift and we need to advocate to our young people that life is a gift to be grateful for. We who live in this society have to change it for the better instead of sitting on the fence and letting it happen.”

13-year-old boy is in custody after firing a weapon

13-year-old boy is in custody after firing a weapon at the Annual Annie Malone May Day Parade in downtown St. Louis.The parade drew thousands of spectators who lined the streets to honor Annie Malone, a civic leader who helped St. Louis orphans in the early 1900s.Police say the 13-year-old boy's weapon was recovered after the shooting Sunday. No one was hurt in the incident.

Phoenix 3-year-old died from injuries sustained during an accidental shooting Monday afternoon.

Phoenix 3-year-old died from injuries sustained during an accidental shooting Monday afternoon.Authorities on the scene said they think the boy shot himself in the head.It's unclear at this point how the boy got a hold of the gun or who owns the weapon. The boy was visiting friends at a home near Interstate 17 and Greenway on Monday afternoon with his Mom and two brothers, according to police.He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in downtown Phoenix where he was pronounced dead.Police blocked off a section of the neighborhood during the investigation.

Colin Gunn has been at the heart of organised crime in Nottingham

Colin Gunn has been at the heart of organised crime in Nottingham for a long time.
Despite a ban on the media revealing his identity, few people had not heard his name in connection with gun crime in the city.He was one of three men jailed for life last June (2007) for conspiracy to murder John and John Stirland in Trusthorpe, Lincolnshire, in August 2004.He has been linked to the raid on the jeweller's shop in Arnold which led to the shooting of Marian Bates and the subsequent disappearance of the suspected gunman James Brodie.He allegedly paid hitman John McSally to shoot gang associate Patrick Marshall outside the Park Tavern pub in Bulwell in February 2004.Rumours on the Bestwood Estate also linked him and his associates to the shootings of David Draycott and John Shippam. No one has ever been charged with either murder.And now he has been found guilty of plotting to corrupt Notts police officers.Gunn denied all the allegations against him but was convicted of conspiracy to murder the Stirlands and a plot to corrupt police after two trials.He is likely to spend much of the rest of his life behind bars.

Anjum Nawaz, Mohammed Imtiaz Malik, pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life

Niwaz, 25, from Grindleton Road, Blackburn; Anjum Nawaz, 24, from Columbia Place, Sheffield and Mohammed Imtiaz Malik, 25, from Montague Street, Blackburn pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. Today, all three men appeared before The Honourable Mrs Justice Rafferty at Manchester Crown Court for sentencing. Niwaz was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Nawaz received ten years and Malik was sentenced to eight years. This follows a major police investigation into a shooting which happened in the early hours of the morning on 18 June 2007 when two gunshots were fired through the windows of a house on Whalley New Road, Blackburn. It happened at 4.25am, when a 20-year-old student was woken by a disturbance outside his home. As he went to investigate, two gun shots were fired at the house, which narrowly missed his head and showered him and his 13-year-old brother with glass.
Both brothers were left shaken by the ordeal and police enquiries soon revealed that the family living at the address were not the intended targets. The shots had been intended for two men living next door. The attack was the culmination of a dispute between two rival groups of Asian men which had happened the day before outside an address on Wensley Road, Blackburn.
A robust and thorough police investigation was soon underway involving police in South Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. In the hours that followed the shooting police arrested Niwaz in Darwen and recovered a Cherokee Jeep nearby. Niwaz had bought the Jeep only hours before the attack for £450. It was then used as a getaway vehicle as the offenders fled the scene. Following protracted enquiries with many different agencies, two further suspects were arrested and subsequent enquiries resulted in police recovering a double barrel shotgun and balaclavas which are believed to have been used in the attack.
Detective Inspector Andy Hulme who was in charge of the investigation said: “This sentence demonstrates our commitment to protecting members of the public from serious and organised crime.

"SHOT" IN THE "HEAD" AND "DUMPED"

Four people believed to be Americans were "SHOT" IN THE "HEAD" AND "DUMPED" in a notorious drug-smuggling area in northern Mexico near the California border, Mexican police said on Monday.Police in the beach town of Rosarito, across the border from San Diego, said they discovered the bodies of three men and a woman on Sunday in an abandoned car in a remote patch of scrubland near the Pacific coast.Police concluded the victims were U.S. citizens because the vehicle had California license plates, the men appeared to be "BLACK," the woman was "WHITE" and a U.S. driver’s license was found in the car, the spokesman said.Murders have jumped in Mexico this year, the bulk of them linked to a war between rival drug cartels and security forces that has killed some 1,300 people across Mexico since January. But it is unusual for foreigners to be the victims.

Police seized an AK47, ammunition and drugs Monday in a raid at an Oshtemo Township apartment.

Courtesy of the Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team
The Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team found crack cocaine, powder cocaine and an AK47 assault rifle Monday during a raid of an apartment in Oshtemo Township, police said.Police seized an AK47, ammunition and drugs Monday in a raid at an Oshtemo Township apartment. Two teenagers were arrested.
Police found 16 grams of crack cocaine, 56 grams of powder cocaine, the assault rifle and a loaded ammunition magazine after serving a search warrant at about 6 p.m. at Seville Apartments, located off South Drake Road, according to a KVET news release.Two men, ages 17 and 18, who lived at the apartment, were arrested by police following the search, police said. Their names were not released.Police said the 17-year-old was arrested on charges of possession with intent to deliver crack cocaine and felony use of a firearm. The other man was arrested on an outstanding warrant.