Agent: Deaths tied to smuggling ring
SAN ANTONIO — Investigators believe that a truck driver charged in the deaths of 10 people who had been crammed inside a tractor-trailer is a member of a larger human-smuggling organization, a U.S. immigration official said Tuesday.
Some of the 29 identified survivors have told authorities that they hired smugglers who transported them across the U.S. border, loaded some of them onto trucks that took them to the tractor-trailer, and marked them with different colored tape to identify them to various smugglers who would pick them up after the tractor-trailer reached its destination.
“We’re certainly not stopping at looking at the driver,” said Shane Folden, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations office in San Antonio.
Authorities aim to “identify the different cogs, the stash houses, the other members, where the money came from,” Folden said.
The driver, James Matthew Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Fla., faces charges of illegally transporting immigrants for financial gain, resulting in death. Authorities said he drove a trailer full of migrants from south Texas before it was discovered early Sunday in the parking lot of a San Antonio Wal-Mart.
Bradley’s commercial driving privileges were suspended by Florida about three months ago, officials said Tuesday.
D.C. court blocks gun-permit limits
A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked a District of Columbia law that makes it difficult for gun owners to get concealed carry permits by requiring them to show that they have a good reason to carry a weapon.
A divided three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the law requiring people to show “good reason to fear injury” or another “proper reason” to carry a weapon infringes on Second Amendment rights. City law now requires residents to register guns kept at their homes or businesses. Anyone who wants to carry a weapon outside the home needs a separate concealed carry license.
“At the Second Amendment’s core lies the right of responsible citizens to carry firearms for personal self-defense beyond the home, subject to longstanding restrictions” such as licensing requirements, Judge Thomas Griffith wrote for the majority.
American in Syria dies aiding Kurds
ORLANDO, Fla. — A former Marine who secretly traveled to Syria to fight in the war against the Islamic State extremist group was killed this month while fighting for a Kurdish militia group, his father said Tuesday.
David Taylor, 25, a former Florida resident, had kept his plans a secret from his family until after he arrived in Syria and began training with the People’s Protection Units, Taylor’s father, David Taylor Sr., said Tuesday.
On July 16, a Kurdish militia group released a video saying Taylor was “martyred fighting ISIS’ barbarism,” using an acronym for the Islamic State.
Taylor grew up in Ocala, Fla. As a Marine, he served in Afghanistan and spent time in Jordan before being discharged last year.