COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

Shot dead on January 24 at an
illegal cockfight in Sunnyside, Washington,
Jesus Brambila, 29, of Yakima,
was apparently one of about a dozen armed
robbers, including his three brothers, who
tied up and beat around 20 other attendees,
Yakima County sheriff’s investigators said
on January 30. Brambila was killed, theorized
detective Robert Weedin, when
another robber’s shotgun discharged accidentally.
Several similar robberies had
occurred locally during the preceding 60
days, Weedin said, giving no further
details. The probe of Brambila’s death
apparently was not linked to the January 31
arrest of 39 people, mostly Philippine
Canadians, and confiscation of 72 cocks
plus cockfighting gear at Burnaby, British
Columbia, four hours north by car.

Vancouver SPCA spokesperson Brian
N e l s o n said that case, only the second
cockfighting bust in B.C. in 20 years,
resulted from routine police response to a
domestic disturbance call.
The FBI is investigating possible
organized crime involvement in the
January 24 murder of Brooklyn sausagemaker
and wholesaler Antonio Salzarullo
at his plant in Tinton Falls, New Jersey,
Monmouth County prosecutor John Kaye
told media two days later. Salzarullo, 60,
died of both a cut throat and a shooting.
Rick Eldridge, so cruel according
to his father-in-law Dan Brown in a
statement to Brian Cofer of the A r k a n s a s
D e m o c r a t – G a z e t te that he “would make
that Saddam Hussein look like a good ol’
boy,” isolated his sons James Neal a n d
Jesse Ethan, 14 and 15, by pulling them
out of school, barred visitors including
Brown, and taught them to hunt. On
January 24, James Neal and Jesse Ethan
were charged as adults for allegedly shooting
Eldridge dead on the family front porch
that morning. Their mother, S o n j a
Eldridge, turned them in. She and her two
daughters were reportedly unharmed.
Raymond Lee Mills, 29, of
Hamilton, Ohio, drew six years in prison
on January 28 for shotgunning N a t h a n
Mays, 16, on September 6 after drinking
12 beers, then allegedly mistaking Mays
for a squirrel. The sentence was the maximum
for involuntary manslaughter. Mays
had impregnated Mills’ 16-year-old stepdaughter.
Mills reportedly had prior convictions
since 1992 on drug charges plus
resisting arrest and attempted vandalism