"Fla. apartment worker fired after mistaking tenant’s body for mannequin" Associated Press April 05, 2014
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A front desk clerk at an apartment complex was fired this week after mistaking the body of a tenant for a mannequin and throwing it in a trash bin.
Police said Nancy Yates, 96, hoisted herself over a balcony of her 16th floor apartment. She fell onto the parking lot. Officials found a suicide note.
Ronald Benjamin, 61, told police he saw the body in the parking lot of the St. Petersburg apartment building when he walked outside to smoke a cigarette early Wednesday and assumed someone put a mannequin there as part of an April Fools’ Day prank, the Tampa Tribune reported.
‘‘He is no longer with us,’’ said the office manager at Peterborough apartments.
When his co-worker arrived around 6 a.m., she told Benjamin she saw a body in the parking lot. But he maintained it was a mannequin. Later he asked a newspaper carrier and her son to help him put the mannequin in the trash.
A maintenance worker saw the body in the bin around 8 a.m., and police were called.
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"Fla. woman convicted of killing teenage children" Associated Press May 16, 2014
TAMPA — A 53-year-old former military linguist and longtime Army officer’s wife was convicted Thursday of first-degree murder, with jurors rejecting the argument that she was legally insane when she shot and killed her 13-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter more than three years ago.
Julie Schenecker wiped her nose and eyes, then the bailiffs handcuffed her as the verdict was read after just over an hour of deliberations. She was sentenced to two life terms to be served at the same time.
Schenecker killed her daughter, Calyx, and son, Beau, in January 2011 while her Army officer husband, Colonel Parker Schenecker, was on a 10-day deployment to the Middle East. The couple has since divorced.
A ten-day deployment?
Before the judge sentenced her, Schenecker took responsibility for what she had done.
Through tears she said, ‘‘I know I shot my son and daughter. I don’t know why. But I have time to try to understand that.’’
If she had been acquitted by reason of insanity, she would be committed to a mental hospital until doctors and a judge agree that she is no longer a danger to herself or others.
Earlier, prosecutors said Schenecker wrote in her journal that she wanted to kill herself and wanted to be cremated with her children, their ashes mixed together.
All six mental health experts who testified said Schenecker was mentally ill, but three experts called by prosecutors said she was legally sane when she shot her children.
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Related: Fun and Fatalities in Florida
