YORKTOWN, Va. — A Chicago man who quickly accelerated in a sport utility vehicle with a cable around his neck decapitated himself after a domestic dispute in Yorktown, authorities said Tuesday.
York-Poquoson Sheriff Danny Diggs said a deputy responding to a call of a domestic disturbance Tuesday was taking a statement from the man’s ex-wife when another deputy driving by noticed an SUV pulling a utility trailer that was on fire. Authorities say the man started the fire.
A firefighter noticed a cable around the man’s neck that was attached to a tree. When deputies tried to get the man to exit the SUV, he accelerated and was pulled from the vehicle and decapitated, they say. The SUV kept going for about 150 yards.
Diggs said he arrived to a grisly scene, adding the cable was of the type that could be used to hoist an automobile engine.
“Nobody has ever heard of anything like this,” Diggs said. “It’s a really bizarre incident.”
Diggs said the man and his ex-wife had quarreled over the man’s living arrangements.
“He was looking to relocate from Chicago to this area, and he wanted her to do more than she was willing to do,” Diggs said.
The sheriff said he was unsure how long the couple had been divorced. He said they have two school-age children who were not at home at the time.
Diggs said officials aren’t releasing the man’s name because they don’t publicly identify suicide victims. However, officials said the man was 46 and from Chicago.
Blast at Wyo. oil production site kills 3 workers
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Authorities won’t be able positively to identify the three workers killed in an oilfield explosion in eastern Wyoming until autopsies are performed on them, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The blast occurred Monday at an oil production site on a private ranch, about 40 miles northeast of Casper.
It came as the men worked on a fuel line supplying a heater treatment facility that separates oil from water as the substances are pumped from the ground, said Dennis Neill, spokesman for Samson Resources Co. in Tulsa, Okla.
The blast sparked a 10-acre fire before it was brought under control.
The names of the men killed have not yet been released. The workers were employed by contractors that Samson had hired to bring an oil well back into production at the site, Neill said. The well wasn’t involved in the explosion or the fire on the Hornbuckle Ranch.
“Obviously we’re very concerned about the family and friends in this situation,” Neill said.
Tina Wells, spokeswoman for Samson, issued a statement Tuesday saying that the bodies of the men would be taken to Colorado for autopsy and positive identification. She said she didn’t know how long it would take to identify them.
“It takes an autopsy to get a positive identification in this case,” Wells said. “And the authorities will not release any notification to you of who the victims might be until they have very definitive, positive identification.”
Wells said the men worked for two local construction companies, identified as Wild West Construction and Double D Welding and Fabrication. Officials with the companies and Converse County Coroner Ross Gorman could not immediately be reached Tuesday for comment.
Wikileaks site comes under attack
LONDON — The Wikileaks website crashed Tuesday in an apparent cyberattack after the accelerated publication of tens of thousands of once-secret State Department cables by the anti-secrecy organization raised new concerns about the exposure of confidential U.S. embassy sources.
“WikiLeaks.org is presently under attack,” the group said on Twitter late Tuesday. One hour later, the site and the cables posted there were inaccessible.
Wikileaks updated its Twitter account to say that it was “still under a cyberattack” and directed followers to search for cables on a mirror site or a separate search system, cablegatesearch. net.
The apparent cyberattack comes after current and former American officials said the recently released cables — and concerns over the protection of sources — are creating a fresh source of diplomatic setbacks and embarrassment for the Obama administration.
The Associated Press reviewed more than 2,000 of the cables recently released by WikiLeaks. They contained the identities of more than 90 sources who had sought protection and whose names the cable authors had asked to protect.
Officials said the disclosure in the past week of more than 125,000 sensitive documents by WikiLeaks, far more than it had earlier published, further endangered informants and jeopardized U.S. foreign policy goals. The officials would not comment on the authenticity of the leaked documents but said the rate and method of the new releases, including about 50,000 in one day alone, presented new complications.
“The United States strongly condemns any illegal disclosure of classified information,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. “In addition to damaging our diplomatic efforts, it puts individuals’ security at risk, threatens our national security and undermines our effort to work with countries to solve shared problems. We remain concerned about these illegal disclosures and about concerns and risks to individuals.
August ‘11 is America’s deadliest month in long Afghan war
KABUL, Afghanistan — August has become the deadliest month yet for U.S. forces in the nearly 10-year-old war in Afghanistan, increasing pressure on the Obama administration to bring troops home sooner rather than later.
The 66 U.S. service members killed this month eclipses the previous record of 65 killed in July 2010, according to an Associated Press tally. Nearly half the August deaths occurred when insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter Aug. 6, killing 30 American troops, mostly elite Navy SEALs.
Violence is being reported across Afghanistan despite the U.S.-led coalition’s drive to rout insurgents from their strongholds in the south.
Though American military officials predicted high casualties this summer as the Taliban try to come back after recent offensives, the grim milestone increases pressure on the Obama administration to withdraw U.S. forces quickly.
The military has begun to implement President Barack Obama’s order to withdraw the 33,000 extra troops he dispatched to the war. He ordered 10,000 out this year and another 23,000 withdrawn by the summer of 2012, leaving about 68,000 U.S. troops on the ground. Although major combat units are not expected to start leaving until late fall, two National Guard regiments comprising about 1,00 0 soldiers started going home last month.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has set the end of 2014 as the target date for Afghan police and soldiers to take the lead in protecting and defending the country, leaving international combat forces to go home or take on more support roles.