Ex-con accused of killing 4 in 'Mayberry'
MOUNT AIRY, N.C. -- A soured love affair might have led an ex-convict to gun down four men in the town that inspired the idyllic community of Mayberry on the 1960s TV series "The Andy Griffith Show," police said Monday.
Marcos Chavez Gonzalez, 29, was charged with four counts of murder in the slayings late Sunday outside a television store in Mount Airy, about 100 miles north of Charlotte.
The four were shot with a high-powered assault rifle outside Wood's TV, in the shadow of a water tower that says "Welcome to Mount Airy" and has a picture of Griffith and Opie, his son on the show.
Police do not believe the shootings were random.
Hospital fined for wrong-site surgeries
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Rhode Island's largest hospital was fined $150,000 and ordered to take the extraordinary step of installing video cameras in all its operating rooms after it had its fifth wrong-site surgery since 2007, state health officials said Monday.
Rhode Island Hospital, the teaching hospital for Brown University's Alpert Medical School, was fined a second time for wrong-site surgeries, state health director David Gifford said. The hospital also was fined $50,000 after brain surgeons operated on the wrong part of the heads of three patients in 2007. Gifford said his department has issued only two fines -- both to Rhode Island Hospital.
Kerik discharged from jail psych unit
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik is not in need of psychiatric care and has been discharged from the mental-care unit at the jail where he's awaiting trial, a top jail doctor said.
Kerik "poses no risk to himself or others due to any psychiatric illness," Dr. Robert Mahler said in a letter to the federal judge handling Kerik's corruption case.
Kerik is scheduled to go on trial Nov. 9 for allegedly accepting co-op renovations in exchange for recommending a company that sought city business. He has pleaded not guilty.
Soldier arrested over explosives
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- An Army Special Forces soldier was arrested Monday after a pair of hunters found about 100 pounds of explosives outside his home near Fort Campbell.
Timothy Ryan Richards was charged with possessing two unregistered guns, and Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Eric Kehn said he expects Richards will face more charges related to the explosives.
A sworn statement said agents found about 100 pounds of explosives -- including C-4, a plastic explosive commonly used by the military. The material was sealed in watertight containers and partially buried near his home outside of Clarksville, near the sprawling Army post on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line.
Meanwhile, Fort Bragg officials say a civilian killed in an explosion at the North Carolina Army post was scavenging for scrap metal when he stepped on a round and it exploded.
Officials identified the man killed Friday as 47-year-old Ronnie Blue, of Hamlet.
The Associated Press
