A Massachusetts man tried to open an airliner’s emergency door on a cross-country flight from Los Angeles to Boston and then tried to stab a flight attendant in the neck with a broken metal spoon, federal prosecutors alleged. Francisco Severo Torres, 33, of Leominster, Massachusetts, was arrested when the plane arrived in Boston and charged with interference and attempted interference with flight crew members and attendants using a dangerous weapon, federal prosecutors said. He was detained pending a hearing scheduled for Thursday. The plane was about 45 minutes from Boston when the crew received an alarm that a side door on the aircraft was disarmed, according to court documents. One flight attendant noticed the door’s locking handle had been moved. Another flight attendant had noticed that Torres was seen near the door and believed he had moved the handle. The crew told the captain that he was a threat and the plane should be landed as soon as possible, authorities said. Then Torres approached two flight attendants, according to the court documents. One of the flight attendants felt the metal object in Torres' hand hit him on his shirt collar and tie three times. Torres told investigators that he went into the airplane’s bathroom and broke a spoon in half to make a weapon, prosecutors said in the documents. They say he told authorities he wanted to open the door so that he could jump out of the plane. Investigators said Torres admitted knowing that if he opened the door many people would die. Authorities did not say where Torres got the spoon, but TSA rules allow airline passengers to bring metal utensils except knives onto planes. United Airlines said no one was injured. If convicted of the charges against him, Torres could face life in prison.
MAURICE RIVER TOWNSHIP — A 42-year-old man faces murder charges in the November death of an inmate at Bayside State Prison.
Authorities charged Bruce Duette with the murder of Martin Sanchez, 41, Cumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae said Wednesday.
According to the statement, Duette was also an inmate at Bayside at the time of Sanchez’s death.
On Nov. 21, Sanchez was found unresponsive in his cell with apparent trauma to his head and face, according to the Prosecutor’s Office. He was pronounced dead shortly after.
The prosecution plans to request Duette be kept in custody while awaiting trial.
The statement did not indicate a motive, and Webb-McRae declined to offer any further details than were included in the statement, including on what charges Duette had originally been in prison.
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MAURICE RIVER TOWNSHIP — A 41-year-old inmate at Bayside State Prison was found dead in his …
“I don’t speak about defendant’s prior charges in my press releases as I have an ethical obligation not to create public condemnation surrounding defendants,” she said.
State prison records show multiple charges against Duette, including aggravated manslaughter from March 2005 and one count of conspiracy to commit homicide from July of the same year. The charges were filed in Mercer County.
Details of those charges were released by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office in 2013, when Duette was identified as a member of a subset of the Bloods gang, accused in 2013 of conspiring to commit a drive-by shooting in Trenton in 2005. According to that release, he was in the process of getting a Thompson machine gun when the shooting began July 27, 2005. No one was hit in that case.
He had previously been indicted in 2010 in another violent episode between alleged gang members in which three people were killed.
Records show Duette to be eligible for parole in 2030.
The New Jersey Department of Corrections and the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office investigated the death.
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