A 19-year-old woman who thought she was going to a party was instead driven to a rural wooded area and abandoned in minus 13.30°C weather in a long-planned attack by three friends angry with her over an insurance claim, police said on Thursday.
The victim was wearing only a dress and one shoe, having lost the other in a struggle as she was dragged from the car, Lieutenant Frank Cannella of the North Bergen police said. A motorist soon stopped and let the victim use a cell phone but refused to give her a lift.
The victim used the phone to call one of the women who abandoned her, Cannella said. She spent more than an hour in the freezing cold before flagging down another motorist, who took her to a hospital, he said.
The North Bergen woman, whom police did not identify, may need surgery after suffering frostbite to both feet on Jan. 16 in Alpine, a town on the Hudson River about 29km north of New York City, Cannella said.
“These actions were so profound that it leads you to believe there was a tremendous indifference to human life,” Cannella said.
Maria Contreras-Luciano, 22, Amber Crespo, 20, and Dyanne Velasquez, 21, face kidnapping, assault and conspiracy charges. Crespo is also charged with making terroristic threats.
The suspects wanted revenge after the 19-year-old sued Crespo’s auto insurance carrier after a car accident, Cannella said.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
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Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also