Briefly
New York City
Colonial-era blacks reburied in Manhattan
In a ceremony both somber and celebratory, the remains of 419 colonial-era blacks were reburied Saturday at a Manhattan site just a short distance from a former slave market.
Most of the remains were placed into seven oversized wooden crypts, with flowers piled atop and around each one. A Yoruba priest gave them a final blessing before the crypts were lowered into the ground.
The remains had been uncovered in 1991 during construction of a federal office tower in lower Manhattan.
Under pressure from the community, the government abandoned the work and began examining what they had found. The site turned out to be a 5-acre burial ground that had been closed in 1794 and long forgotten. It was the final resting place for an estimated 20,000 people of African descent.
Florida
Court rules state illegally kept children
The state illegally kept two children from their father for more than a year, according to an appeals court decision that harshly criticized the Florida Department of Children & Families.
The children were returned to their father’s custody in April after a court battle detailed in the opinion released Wednesday by the 2nd District Court of Appeal.
The identities of the family members were not released.
The child welfare agency has been under scrutiny for a series of troubling cases, including the disappearance of a 5-year-old foster child for 15 months before officials realized she was gone. She remains missing.
Baltimore
Couple use break from Iraq to marry
Adrian Dupree, stationed with U.S. troops in Baghdad, made a solemn vow to his fiancee, Mieasha Pompey.
“When I get home from leave, we’ll get married,” he promised during daily calls. “We’ll plan it for one week from the day I get home.”
Dupree kept that pledge this weekend in a brief ceremony before 120 family members and friends.
The 24-year-old Army reservist was part of the first contingent of U.S. troops to touch down Sept. 26 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport for 15 days of rest and relaxation, part of the military’s largest home leave program since the Vietnam War.
California
Body-parts seller gets 20 years in prison
A crematorium owner who removed heads, knees, spines and other parts from dozens of bodies and sold them to medical researchers was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Judge Rodney Walker gave Michael Francis Brown, 44, the maximum punishment Friday under an agreement in which he pleaded guilty to 66 counts of embezzlement and mutilating grave remains. More than 200 other counts were dropped.
Prosecutors said the former owner of Pacific Care Crematorium in Lake Elsinore, southeast of Los Angeles, removed parts from bodies intended for cremation, selling them to research companies through his business, Biotech Anatomical.
The sales between 2000 and 2001 brought Brown at least $435,000, prosecutor Karen Gorham said.
Two other workers at the crematorium who pleaded guilty to unlawfully mutilating a body face up to one year in jail.