St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

The expelled law school student accused of killing his dean and two others told a judge that he is sick and needs help.

At Thursday’s arraignment on three counts of capital murder, Peter Odighizuwa, 43, hid his face behind a green arrest warrant.

“I was supposed to see my doctor,” Odighizuwa said. “He was supposed to help me out. . . . I don’t have my medication.”

Police say Odighizuwa opened fire with a handgun at the Appalachian School of Law on Wednesday, a day after he was dismissed from the school for a second time.

Dean L. Anthony Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell were slain in their offices, and student Angela Dales, 33, died later at a hospital. Three other students were wounded.

Rosa Parks’ former home

named U.S. landmark

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - The former home of Rosa Parks, whose arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person in 1955 sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, has been declared a national landmark.

The apartment in the building at 620-638 Cleveland Court was recognized because of its historic and symbolic significance, according to the National Register of Historic Places.

The apartment was Parks’ home at the time she achieved national prominence for her civil rights activism, and it was also her destination at the time she was arrested, the national register noted.

Barbs traded in ex-priest’s

sex abuse trial

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A priest betrayed a boy’s trust when he grabbed his buttocks in a swimming pool 11 years ago and should be punished, a prosecutor said Thursday during closing statements at the man’s sex abuse trial.

Defense attorney Geoffrey Packard implied the abuse charge was all about money, noting the alleged victim didn’t come forward for eight years, and only after consulting an attorney, who sued.

Prosecutor Lynn Rooney said that if the victim was after money, he would have come up with a more dramatic story.

The defrocked Roman Catholic priest, John Geoghan, 66, is charged with indecent assault and battery on a person under age 14, accused of improperly touching the boy, then 10, in 1991. The maximum penalty is 10 years in prison.

Also . . .

CRASH KILLS ONE: Two military attack jets collided and crashed in the southern Arizona desert Thursday, the Air Force said. One of the pilots was killed. Base officials said the second pilot was hospitalized.

INQUEST DENIED: A Colorado county coroner on Thursday rejected a request for an inquest into the shooting death of a student who was killed as he fled the Columbine High School massacre. Daniel Rohrbough’s parents believe the 15-year-old was accidentally shot by police April 20, 1999.

TWO DEAD AFTER GAS LEAK: Two workers were killed and another was in critical condition Thursday after poisonous gas leaked from a Georgia-Pacific paper mill in Butler, Ala. Twelve others were hospitalized after the hydrogen sulfide leak Wednesday at the company’s Naheola mill near Pennington, said Choctaw County medical services director J.W. Cowan.

COP-KILLER SEEKS NEW TRIAL: Lawyers for former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal said Thursday that he will ask a federal appeals court to grant him a new trial in the 1981 slaying of a police officer. Last month, U.S. District Judge William Yohn threw out Abu-Jamal’s death sentence but upheld his 1982 murder conviction.

GAY TEEN’S SUIT SETTLED: The Titusville school district in Pennsylvania will pay $ 312,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a gay teenager who said officials did nothing to stop other students from tormenting him. Timothy Dahle, now 19, said he was pushed down a set of stairs and subjected to other physical assaults as well as name-calling and obscene jokes.

Appalachian School of Law Shootings

St. Petersburg Times (Florida)