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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Police said Monday they believe a former Olympic athlete killed his neurosurgeon wife before jumping to his death from a 10th-story dormitory window. Investigators identified the man as Robert Howard, a University of Arkansas medical student who competed in track and field in the 1996 and 2000 Olympics, said medical school police Capt. Bryan Patterson. "Nobody that I know of had any kind of a hint that there were any kind of problems at all, let alone problems to that degree," said Dick Booth, an assistant coach at Arkansas who helped Howard prepare for the...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Four US marines were killed in Al-Anbar province, the US military revealed. "Four US marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed on the 21st of June in the Al-Anbar province conducting security and stability operations," a spokesman said Monday. Earlier, a witness said he saw four US soldiers shot in the western city of Ramadi Monday. He said he thought the soldiers were killed. The Marines never reveal details about how their troops are killed. Al-Anbar province, west of Baghdad, is a hotbed of the insurgency against the US-led occupation of Iraq. The deaths...

Tacoma police chief shoots wife, kills himself By LEWIS KAMB, PHUONG CAT LE, ANGELA GALLOWAY and RUTH TEICHROEB SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS GIG HARBOR - Tacoma's police chief shot his wife and then himself in the parking lot of a strip mall Saturday afternoon while the couple's two young children were nearby. David Brame died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma about 6 p.m. His wife Crystal was in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. On Friday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Crystal Brame, 35, had obtained a temporary restraining order in February against her husband. In subsequent court...

Town warier after girl's slaying Arkansas victim met abductor through Internet, police say 12/15/2002 By SUZI PARKER / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News HOLLAND, Ark. - Holland is about as far from being a big city as you can get. Eight miles from Conway and 60 from Little Rock, it is a community of 80 people surrounded by pastures and cows. It's the kind of place where neighbors look out for one another and few people lock their doors. But now it's a town reeling from what many residents would have considered a big-city crime: the slaying...

ALLIANCE -- Leroy Zeigler spoke softly and calmly about his daughter, Andrea Zeigler Floyd, who was shot and killed near an Army base about a week ago. He remembered her raising goats for 4-H. He remembered her as a standout athlete at Marlington High School. And he remembered her kind gestures. Like when she became a surrogate mother. “If she’d do that for those people she didn’t even know,” Zeigler said at his home in Columbiana County’s Knox Township, “you could imagine what she’d do for the people she knew.” Zeigler Floyd, 29, formerly of Alliance, was among four women...

Man kills four kids and himself in Merced murder-suicide Four Merced children are dead after what police believe was a murder suicide. Just after 7 a.m. Tuesday, a man went to the home of his ex-wife at Lecco and Piedmont Streets in Northeast Merced, where he allegedly shot his own child, three other children in the home and himself. Merced County Sheriff's Deputies say the man's ex-wife, Christine McFadden, came back from a morning walk to find her ex-husband and her five-year-old daughter lying dead on the floor. McFadden went to a neighbor's house to call police, then returned...