Deaf Woman's Body Found in Drum in NYC

Watch Video: Turnto10.com - Providence woman's body found in drum in NYC.



NEW YORK CITY - A young woman from Providence was the victim of a gruesome murder in New York City.



The body of 19-year-old Francis Alfonso Pellerano was found in a 55-gallon drum inside a Harlem apartment over the weekend.



"I always knew that something was going to happen to her. I wasn't sleeping at night," the victim's father, Manuel Alfonso, told NBC 10 News through a translator.



Pellerano was Deaf and could not speak. She was a student at the Rhode Island School for the Deaf on and off for about five years, until she left the school late last year.

Family members said she went to New York with a young man she met on Facebook. He is also Deaf.



Media outlets in New York reported that Pellerano may have been planning to leave the boyfriend. Pellerano's body was found in the barrel by the boyfriend's grandmother, who smelled a foul odor.



There have been no arrests. The boyfriend is under psychiatric care in a New York hospital.



"I want justice because I know he's not crazy. He cleaned all the blood after he killed her," Alfonso said.



The Rhode Island School for the Deaf is planning a memorial for Pellerano. SOURCE: http://www.turnto10.com/story/21552695/providence-womans-body-found-in-drum

Single Bullet Kills Deaf Man

DURBAN - Single bullet kills Deaf man. Deaf couple Navin and Jessica Ragbeer, both aged 37, had known each other since their school days and no one was surprised when they married 12 years ago. They were inseparable, said Premmie Tholsi, Jessica’s mother.



But in the early hours of Thursday their loving marriage came to a tragic end at their Phoenix home when Navin was shot and killed by an intruder.



With blood oozing from his wound and paramedics still to arrive, Jessica prayed fervently for Navin as he lay helpless and dying on their veranda floor, but help came too late. “Why, why him?” asked Jessica.



Tholsi related her grief-stricken daughter’s anguish when the Sunday Tribune called at the family’s home. Jessica is a teacher at the St Martin’s School for the Deaf, physically and mentally challenged in Port Shepstone.



Navin was an administrative worker at the VN Naik School for the Deaf in Newlands. Three intruders surprised the Ragbeers, who live with Tholsi in her modest home, just as Navin was about to drive Jessica to Durban station to catch a bus to work. All the intruders took were a flat-screen TV and Jessica’s handbag with her cellphone and a small amount of cash.



Police spokesman Captain Thulani Zwane confirmed that Navin was pronounced dead at the home in Phoenix after sustaining a single gunshot wound to the chest. Read more: http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/single-bullet-kills-deaf-man-1.1437894#.UMUWx3qS-So



Source: iol.co.za

Deaf Bronx Murder Suspect Wants His Confession Video Tossed

NEW YORK CITY (NewYork Post) - EXCLUSIVE - Deaf Bronx Murder Suspect Wants His Confession Video Tossed. Here's a video clip of murder suspect...



Justice is blind, but that’s no help if you’re deaf. A suspect in a Bronx murder is trying to get his videotaped confession tossed because he says he was misunderstood and confused by a sign-language interpreter.



Following a tip, cold-case investigators nabbed Gabriel Thompson, 48, in 2010 — 25 years after he allegedly stabbed and killed a man who was having an affair with Thompson’s live-in girlfriend.



Prosecutors say Thompson confessed to the murder, but he claims the cop who interpreted his answers during an interrogation ignored his request for a lawyer and misconstrued him.



Thompson says it was also not clear to him that the person asking questions during the session was actually a prosecutor trying to gather evidence to charge him with the murder of Miguel Lopez.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/cop_missed_the_signs_deaf_slay_suspect_BNmhB2ejJ6i6QwZHxTjDiN#ixzz266F4smzi



Video source New York Post

Man Found Innocent of Killing Deaf 15-Year-Old Girlfriend in 1981

Man found innocent of killing Deaf 15-year-old girlfriend in 1981.

BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. - Gary Albert, pudgier than his 1981 yearbook showed him and wearing glasses, walked out of the Bridgeview courthouse Monday night a free man, acquitted of the cold case murder of his pregnant, 15-year-old Deaf girlfriend.



Jurors who heard five days of evidence against Albert, who 30 years ago was an 18-year-old Deaf student at Hinsdale South High School, decided in less than an hour that he did not kill Dawn Niles as prosecutors had charged. “Mr. Albert, you are free to go,” Judge Joan M. O’Brien told the 49-year-old, and once the American Sign Language interpreter relayed her words, Albert looked up at the ceiling. His mother uttered “Oh dear God” and burst into tears... Read more: http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/8993448-418/man-found-innocent-of-killing-deaf-15-year-old-girlfriend-in-1981.html



Related article in 2011/06 - Trial of Deaf man in girlfriend's fatal stabbing may involve up to 3 sign-language interpreters. Read Full Article:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-deaf-murder-20110612,0,3253788.story