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On Saturday, the police say, parolee Michael Morris dragged his ex-girlfriend halfway across the county – twice putting a gun to her head and threatening to execute her – before he crashed a birthday her family was holding and shot a half a dozen people, wounding some of them severely. This was in Syracuse, New York, at an Irish bar in the old Irish neighborhood known as Tipperary Hill. Twenty-two years old, out of prison in December after doing five years for a crime at 17 he committed while toting a stolen handgun. On the plus side, the bar was...

Syracuse’s Nation of Islam representative Mark Muhammad will join the city’s school board at the mayor’s request ... Muhammad’s ties to the Nation of Islam – he’s Louis Farrakhan’s local representative – that have some questioning how the group’s radical views on education and race will play into his new role. And it doesn’t appear that they will get any easy answers. A Post-Standard reporter questioned Muhammad about his affiliation with the Nation of Islam, and how the group’s beliefs, such as the needed segregation of black and white students, will guide his leadership. ... he doesn’t want the public...

Since my original article discussing how an abandoned Catholic church was being converted to a mosque in Syracuse, NY, that city has embraced the Mosque of Jesus, Son of Mary with open arms.  In April, a local publication, the Syracuse New Times, published an interview with Dr. Yusuf Soule, the executive director of the Northside Learning Center, who bought the church and rented it to a still unidentified group of Muslims.  In no news report has the group who transformed the church into a mosque been identified as anything other than a “new Islamic society.”  When asked how the plan...

Syracuse, NY -- An Ohio woman is suing Syracuse's Crowne Plaza Hotel after falling off a bar stool in the public lounge. Antoinette Allison, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, is seeking up to $1 million for her injuries after falling off the "defective" bar stool on April 14, 2011, according to her lawsuit.

A city board on Thursday gave a Muslim group the go-ahead to remove six crosses from the roof and spires of a century-old former Catholic church so the now-vacant Gothic structure can be used as a mosque. More than 200 people had signed an online petition calling on the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board to deny an application by North Side Learning Center, the church’s new owner, to remove the crosses and build a six-foot chain-link fence. …

SYRACUSE -- Syracuse's Holy Trinity has a new owner, and some major changes are coming for the former Roman Catholic church. As we first reported on Monday, the church, rectory and its old school, currently used for refugee and immigration programs, have been sold to the North Side Learning Center, a North McBride Street-based all-volunteer organization founded in 2009. Dr. Yusuf Soule, who heads up North Side Learning Center, confirms that his not for profit program has bought the campus and will lease the former church to a new Islamic society, which will name it 'Mosque of Jesus the Son...

SYRACUSE -- A series of public lectures on the future of Interstate 81 will be held this summer and spring. The speaker series bring renowned planning professionals, municipal leaders and community development experts to share their experiences and expertise. The first guest speaker will be Virginia Greiman, a veteran of Boston's Big Dig project and a leader in the field of project management. "Our community can learn a great deal from simply listening to others who have struggled with and overcome similar challenges that we now face," said Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney. "I look forward to welcoming Professor Greiman...

PITTSBURGH -- Tyler Ennis took the inbounds pass with 4.4 seconds left and dribbled up court, weaving through Pitt's defense. He had the option of shooting or passing to Trevor Cooney. The Syracuse freshman guard decided to shoot. It was the right decision. Ennis made the 35-footer at the buzzer and No. 1 Syracuse remained unbeaten with a 58-56 victory over No. 25 Pittsburgh on Wednesday night. ''I saw someone ran over to Trevor and I just had to beat one guy,'' Ennis said. ''I knew they weren't going to let Trevor get it. I just had to get some...

New York man’s home seized after he comes up $936 short on $10,813 tax tab A Syracuse man had his home seized after he paid back $9,877 in city taxes over a six-month period -- but came up $936 short. "I tried so hard. I tried so hard to make these payments," Calvin James, who found out he lost the home when he walked into City Hall on Dec. 6 with a $1,500 check, told The Syracuse Post-Standard. The property had been seized Dec. 4. The paper reported that the city launched an aggressive foreclosure campaign in 2012. The program...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Officials at the 174th Attack Wing suspended all Reaper drone flights in Central New York Tuesday after one of the unmanned aircraft crashed into Lake Ontario about 12 miles from the eastern shore during a routine training flight. A Coast Guard helicopter and search vessel were unable to recover the $4 million drone, which crashed about 1 p.m. Tuesday, and were forced to call off the search late in the afternoon because of bad weather, said Col. Greg Semmel, commander of the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard. Semmel said he did not know what...

Some people call it the “knockout game,” local news affiliates in New York prefer to call it simply a teenage “prank,” but whatever the term, Ralph Santiago is dead – one of three men who recently died or suffered permanent brain damage from what police say are unprovoked assaults. Others, however, are saying it’s not some random crime or occasional “prank,” but part of a nationwide pattern of unprovoked racial violence. The rules of the “knockout game” are typically the same no matter where it happens: Start with a group of black people. Find a white person. Punch him in...

SYRACUSE, NY - The U.S. Department of Justice wants to reopen a 33-year-old court case to ensure that minority applicants get a fair shot at jobs as Syracuse firefighters and police officers. Lawyers with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division filed papers in federal court Friday challenging the state civil service tests that prospective firefighters and police officers must take. A review by the Justice Department of entry-level exams for those jobs in Syracuse showed the exams "continue to have a statistically significant, disparate impact on African-American test-takers," the Justice Department's lawyers wrote in court papers. The Justice Department asked...

The NAACP has filed a countersuit against a black pro-life leader who exposed its pro-abortion views in an article appearing at LifeNews.com. In February, the NAACP threatened to sue LifeNews.com and Ryan Bomberger, a LifeNews blogger (left), for a column that took the civil rights organization to task over its abortion position. The NAACP is upset about a column Bomberger wrote at LifeNews titled, “NAACP: National Association for the Abortion of Colored People,” which notes the organization’s 44th Annual Image Awards. Following the piece, the NAACP sent Bomberger, the director of the Radiance Foundation, and LifeNews a threatening letter claiming...

A Syracuse, N.Y. hospital is facing $22,000 in fines due to improper handling of patients, including one "dead" patient who opened her eyes as doctors were about to remove her organs. Patient Colleen S. Burns was reportedly admitted into St. Joseph's emergency department in 2009 after overdosing on Xanax, Benadryl and a muscle relaxant. Hospital notes obtained by the Post-Standard revealed that the doctors thought she had underwent "cardiac death." After doctors consulted with the family, they agreed to withdraw life support and donate her organs. What actually happened was that Burns was in a deep coma from her overdose,...

Syracuse, NY - Doctors at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center were about to remove organs for transplant from a woman they thought was dead. Then she opened her eyes. She was alive. The state Health Department found St. Joe's care of patient Colleen S. Burns in 2009 unacceptable and a federal agency criticized the hospital for not properly investigating the cause. The hospital's mishandling of the case was part of the reason the state Health Department fined St. Joe's $22,000 last September... A series of mistakes that began shortly after Burns arrived in the emergency room suffering from a drug...

After one murder and who knows how many beatings, city officials finally admitted the Knockout Game has come to Syracuse. Absent one fact: The Knockout Game is part of an epidemic of black mob violence played hundreds of times across the country. It is documented in “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence and how the media ignore it.” But the chief of police and the mayor could not bring themselves to say it. Talking with reporters Thursday night, they said the violence was a “random … teenage” thing. One week after the fatal attack, the Syracuse...

A Syracuse man was beaten to death outside the Los Amigos Market in Syracuse Thursday night. 51-year old Michael Daniels was standing alone outside the store around 9:40 pm when he was attacked by a group of teenagers. Police say a group of three to five black males punched him repeatedly and kicked him in the head while he was on the ground. They also say the attack was unprovoked. …

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – At most workplaces, Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day comes once a year. But at the law department in Syracuse City Hall, every day is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. The emphasis is on daughters. Of the seven city lawyers hired since Mayor Stephanie Miner took office in January 2010, all but one are daughters of city employees or prominent Democratic politicians with ties to Miner. In addition to those full-time lawyers, the city corporation counsel this month hired Meghan Ryan, the 26-year-old daughter of Miner’s chief of staff, Bill Ryan, to...

FULL TITLE: Sex offender who 'killed librarian and raped her daughter, 10,' 'reassembled his ankle monitor so quickly it didn't trigger an alarm' A man charged with killing a woman and raping her 10-year-old daughter after a carjacking at a New York mall last week was able to remove his court-ordered electronic monitoring bracelet before carrying out the brutal attacks. David Renz, 29, managed to cut the device from his ankle and put it back together so quickly that it didn't prompt BI, the company in Colorado that makes the monitors, to notify court officers in Syracuse, according to Chief...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A man previously charged with having child pornography cut an electronic monitoring device off his ankle before carjacking a woman, fatally stabbing her and raping her 10-year-old daughter, authorities said. David J. Renz abducted the school librarian and her daughter as they left a gymnastics class at a mall in the Syracuse suburb of Clay, about 150 miles west of Albany, on Thursday night, state police said Friday. Renz bound both victims, raped the girl and drove a short distance to a spot where the girl escaped and was found by a passing motorist, troopers said....