A boy who says he was imitating body-slamming pro wrestlers when he killed a little girl at age 12 was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a judge refused to reduce his first-degree murder conviction.
Tears rolled down Lionel Tate's cheeks as the boy, now 14, was led away in handcuffs and leg shackles Friday to begin serving the sentence, which was mandatory under a tough-on-crime Florida law enacted in the mid-1990s.
Tate becomes one of the youngest defendants in the US ever to be sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The prosecutor himself suggested the sentence was too harsh, but he also noted that the boy's lawyer and his mother had repeatedly rejected a plea bargain that would have meant only three years in a juvenile prison.
In imposing sentence, Judge Joel Lazarus called the slaying of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick "cold, callous and indescribably cruel."
Tate was found guilty Jan. 25 of beating Tiffany to death at his home. Tiffany suffered a fractured skull, a lacerated liver and more than 30 other injuries on July 28, 1999, from being punched, kicked, stomped and thrown.
During the trial, the defense argued that the 76kg boy did not mean to kill the 21kg girl and thought he could body-slam people and they would walk away unhurt, just like his wrestling idols on television.
On Friday, the judge rejected a defense request to throw out Tate's conviction or reduce it to second-degree murder or manslaughter, saying: "The evidence of Lionel Tate's guilt is clear, obvious and indisputable."
The judge also questioned the defense argument that Tate was imitating pro wrestlers. "It is inconceivable that such injuries could be caused by roughhousing or horseplay or by replicating wrestling moves," he said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS