Five adults were found dead inside a north Phoenix home after a shooting Thursday in a suspected family dispute, police said.
The names and ages of the three men and two women weren't immediately released. But police said the three men apparently were brothers and the dead women were the men's mother and a spouse of one of the brothers.
A woman who was able to leave the home told officers that it was a family dispute gone wrong, police spokesman Sgt. Trent Crump said.
"Our dispatcher could hear shots fired in the background while that call was coming in," Crump said. "A caller had been able to escape the home at that point, get out and start to give us information."
The caller reportedly exited the home with two children. Crump could not immediately confirm the caller's relationship to the people inside the home, but police believe it may have been a family dispute that led to the shooting.
It wasn't immediately clear how many people fired shots, but police say they weren't looking for any outstanding suspects.
Officers discovered the bodies after an hours-long barricade situation in a residential neighborhood. Witnesses at the scene said they heard the sound of muted gunshots about an hour after a standoff began.
TV footage showed several SWAT team officers breaking the glass of a back patio door to enter the home.
The SWAT team used a robot to search the house before sending in a dog and officers, Crump said.
Last week, 30-year-old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov, announced that he will become the subject of the first human head transplant ever performed. Val, who's paralyzed from waist down, says he wants his head removed from his non-functioning body and installed on another person’s able body.
He volunteered himself as a guinea pic after Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero said head transplant was possible and outlined the transplant technique he intends to follow. But now a top surgeon said Val will experience a death worse than death is he goes ahead with this...
"A Werdnig-Hoffman disease sufferer with rapidly declining health, Spiridonov is willing to take a punt on this very experimental surgery and you can't really blame him, but while he is prepared for the possibility that the body will reject his head and he will die, his fate could be considerably worse than death.”
"I would not wish this on anyone," said Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons. "I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death."
Even if the transplant succeeds which is unlikely, several medical experts say the world does not even know it will do to Val's mind.
"There’s no telling what the transplant - and all the new connections and foreign chemicals that his head and brain will have to suddenly deal with - will do to Spiridonov’s psyche. It could result in a hitherto never experienced level and quality of insanity". - the surgeon said
Probably nothing as fun as the "Rich Kids of Instagram," wealthy young adults whose lavish lifestyles are documented on a two-year-old Tumblr and Instagram account. The account's anonymous creator compiles pictures from the world's richest young Instagram users.
We took a look at the Rich Kids of Instagram earlier this year, but we're checking back in to see what they've been doing this spring. We weren't shocked to find that they've been partying it up, drinking lots of Champagne, and flying on their private jets to exotic locales.
This spring, the "Rich Kids of Instagram" took to their private jets ...
A graphic video depicting a group of South Africans setting alight a group of bound young people, initially believed to be foreigners, after dousing them in fuel, has gone viral.
Saturday's development comes on the back of a series of incidents reported by local media, and after the South African Human Rights Council, a human rights body in the country, along with other concerned parties raised an alarm on Thursday about renewed attacks on foreign migrants in the country.
They called on the South African government to condemn the attacks.
"We are still to hear top members of government condemning the current xenophobic violence," Marc Gbaffou, chairman of the African Diaspora Forum (ADF), wrote in an open letter.
"We cannot discriminate, not in this sort, not any more."
Despite the resurgence of violent attacks on foreigners migrants in South Africa, the government is yet to acknowledged that the violence may be xenophobic in nature.
The government has instead attributed the attacks to "crime" and criminal behaviour.
Local media has reported that hundreds of foreigners have, since March 30, been seeking refuge at local police stations in the city of Isipingo, south of coastal city Durban.
One woman has been shot dead after her shop was looted and another man was beaten during an anti-xenophobia march.
The latest incident occurred on Friday when a foreigner-owned shop was petrol-bombed.
This is not the first time that xenophobic attacks have erupted in South Africa. In May 2008, 62 people were killed in attacks that swept across the country.
The video , trending on the social media website Twitter since the early hours of the morning, in South Africa, Kenya and in the UK, along with the hashtag #XenophobiaSA, shows the victims surrounded by people jeering the attackers on as they are set alight
Standing in the middle of this football field that has been turned into a refugee camp overnight in Chartsworth, one cannot help but feel ashamed of being South African.
There are white and green tents dotted around housing destitute African migrant families who fled the violence meted out to them by their South African hosts.
Two weeks ago locals began attacking and looting properties owned by fellow Africans, calling them "kwerekwere", a derogatory word in South Africa for African migrants.
I did not even have to ask Memory Mahlatini, who works as a nanny, what happened to her because her story was written all over her face.
'We are scared'
Her eyes alone made me look down in shame as she explained how a group of South Africans came to her rented home last Monday evening just as they were preparing to sleep and demanded that they go back to where they came from.
Hundreds of foreigners have been forced to flee the violence in South Africa
While taunting Ms Mahlatini and her husband, electrician Innocent Chazi, the crowd were banging doors saying "shaya, shaya", which means "beat, beat" in Zulu.
Ms Mahlatini said that their four children - Melissa 11, Milton, who is eight, and three-year-old twins Modify and Mollify - began to cry.
They left the children with their South African neighbour and they fled.
Ms Mahlatini said: "We are scared and we don't know where to go."
The displaced people rely on food handouts supplied by the local community
It was getting dark as Ms Mahlatini told me this numbing tale whilst queuing for some soup and bread prepared by sympathetic locals in Chartsworth.
Elsewhere on the football field, some of the displaced are huddled around small fires to keep warm. The marquees where they sleep have been supplied by the local authorities.
The camp houses at least 1,500 people who lost everything when their properties were ransacked; they are left with what they could carry on their backs.
Properties and businesses have been looted in this latest outbreak of violence
This part of the country is particularly beautiful with green sugar cane-covered hills.
But when so many stories of pain are repeated again and again, somehow it diminishes the beauty of the Zulu kingdom.
'It is criminal'
It is believed that this latest round of xenophobic attacks comes in the wake of alleged comments by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini telling migrants to go home - although he says he was mistranslated.
He blamed the media for deliberately distorting his speech in order to sell newspapers.
President Jacob Zuma has condemned the violence and has established a team of ministers to put an end to it.
The president, like many anti-apartheid activists, was hosted by other African countries while in exile.
And there is some irony that that solidarity is not working the other way.
Dennis John, a local pastor and camp volunteer, explained why he was helping out: "It is sad because we are Africans.
"We are supposed to take care of each other. It is criminal the way we treat our own."
Jay Z recently relaunched Tidal, a $20-a-month music streaming service that some say could spell trouble for other sites like Spotify.
The launch is the latest in a string of business successes for the 45-year-old rapper, who owns a record label, talent agency, and fashion brand. His estimated net worth is $500 million.
Jay Z has found success by creating his own opportunities.
In doing so, he's gone from being a teen selling drugs on a Brooklyn street corner to a bona fide business mogul.
Before he ever was a successful rapper or businessman, Jay Z was Shawn Carter, a teen drug dealer on the streets of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. He has said drug dealing taught him how to budget, among other essential business skills. "At some point, you have to have an exit strategy, because your window is very small," he told Vanity Fair. "You’re going to get locked up or you’re going to die."
Jay Z creates his business opportunities. In the late '90s, he couldn't get a record deal, so he and Damon Dash started their own label, Roc-A-Fella Records. "It was either give up or create my own company," he told Forbes. He was later signed by Def Jam Records.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Global Citizen Festival
He keeps an incredibly diverse portfolio. His wide business interests include a nightclub (The 40/40 Club), a liquor company (Armadale Vodka), a talent agency (Roc Nation), and a partnership with Barneys New York.
Photo by Elsa/Getty Images
Growing up in the housing projects of Brooklyn, Jay Z's inspiration were professional athletes. "They were our first heroes. They came from the same places we came from," he told Men's Health magazine. "These guys get paid millions of dollars to play the game they love."
Jay-Z made his first foray into the fashion business in 1999, when he and business partner Damon Dash founded Rocawear. They later sold the urban fashion line to Iconix Brand Group for $204 million.
He understands how to surround himself with mentors who make him better. "There were a lot of things that I lived in the street that helped me in the music business," Jay-Z said to Vanity Fair. "I knew what characters not to have around me."
He's even claimed to have texted with President Obama. "I don't know if this is breaching national security," Jay-Z told radio station Hot97 in 2013. "But when he was getting elected the second time, he was like, 'Hey, you know, fourth quarter, just give me the ball.' I said, 'word.'"
When Jay-Z launched Tidal, he counted a number of famous artists as stakeholders, including Beyonce, Rihanna, Kanye West, Jack White, Arcade Fire, Usher, Nicki Minaj, Coldplay, Alicia Keys, Calvin Harris, Daft Punk, deadmau5, Jason Aldean, J. Cole and Madonna.
"When you're in a business meeting with him, his demeanor is of a calm, studious business executive rather than an artist temporarily occupying an office chair," Bernie Resnick, a lawyer who has worked with Jay-Z, told Men's Health. Here Jay-Z speaks with Nets primary owner Mikhail Prokhorov. Jay sold his minority stake in the basketball team in 2013.
Above all, there's an authenticity to Jay-Z's business dealings. "All my businesses are part of the culture, so I have to stay true to whatever I'm feeling at the time, whatever direction I'm heading in," he told Men's Health. "And hopefully, everyone follows."
Got some pics from the fire incident at the Mamman Kantagoran House, Marina, Lagos this morning. The building houses a lot of businesses. Hope the fire is put out soon. Another pic after the cut...
