Detroit

Newspaper investigating columnist’s inaccuracies

An assistant managing editor and a group of reporters at the Detroit Free Press will conduct an investigation prompted by errors in a column by best-selling author Mitch Albom, the newspaper’s managing editor said.

Albom apologized to readers Thursday for reporting that former Michigan State players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson attended last weekend’s Michigan State-North Carolina NCAA basketball game.

He’d written the players “sat in the stands, in their MSU clothing, and rooted on their alma mater.” Neither player was at the game.

Albom said he wrote the column before the game took place, as if the events already had happened, based on what the players had told him they planned to do. The paper said the players’ plans changed after they were interviewed.

The column had to be filed Friday afternoon — a day before the game — but appeared in the paper Sunday, Albom said. The paper said the section in which the column appeared was printed before the game.

Delaware

Witness: Gunman emotional before crime

For hours before an outburst of gunfire that killed two people in two states, Allison Lamont Norman was broken down in tears of anguish, a witness said.

“He fell on the floor and said ‘Help me, help me,”‘ Teresa DeShields, mother of his girlfriend, Kisha, said Friday. “He just lay there, moaning and groaning.”

Norman, 22, was charged with murder after the series of shootings Thursday that killed two people and wounded four others along a 13-mile stretch from Laurel to Salisbury, Md. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a handgun when he was caught, police said.

DeShields said that while Norman cried on the living room floor of her Laurel apartment, he talked of wanting to kill his mother and a man he said molested him and his half brother as a child.

Norman’s half brother, Shane DeShields, a distant relative of Teresa DeShields, was sentenced to life in prison in October for robbing and killing a 17-year-old. Testimony during his trial showed he had been raped at age 7.

Ohio

Family hopes highway shootings trial goes fast

After his grandmother was killed in a string of highway shootings in Ohio, 7-year-old Max Knisley worried that the gunman could be lurking around any corner.

Even after suspect Charles McCoy Jr. was arrested, the child wondered: “Did they get the gun, too?”

Now that McCoy’s trial is under way, the Knisley family is hoping for a swift end to a case that terrorized drivers around central Ohio between October 2003 and February 2004.

“We don’t want to put them back through the whole ordeal again,” Brent Knisley said of his children, Max and 11-year-old Loren. He said so many reporters called after his mother was killed that he had to get friends to manage the interview requests.

McCoy, 29, has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity to aggravated murder and assault in 12 shootings — including the fatal shooting of 62-year-old Gail Knisley. He could face the death penalty if convicted of aggravated murder.

Jury selection began Friday, and the trial is expected to last until mid-May.

Nebraska

First test tube gorilla not bonding with baby

The world’s first test tube gorilla is not bonding with her new daughter, zoo officials said Saturday.

Timu, a 9-year-old Western lowland gorilla, took care of her newborn for a few hours after Friday’s birth, but then lost interest, said Dr. Lee Simmons, director of the Henry Doorly Zoo.

Timu was hand-raised, which makes it hard for her to bond with her offspring, Simmons said.

The baby will be hand-raised and given to a surrogate gorilla mother in hopes that Timu will learn from watching that relationship and will be a better mother when she has another baby, Simmons said.

Timu also failed to bond with her first baby, Bambino, who was born at the Omaha zoo in August 2003. That baby also had to be hand-raised.

The surrogate mother is expected to be Rosie, the gorilla who gave birth to Timu in 1996 through in vitro fertilization, Simmons said.

Like many gorilla species, the Western lowland gorilla is endangered, Simmons said. Assisted reproduction is used in an effort to sustain their numbers and keep them genetically healthy, Simmons said.

California

Witnesses unpredictable in Michael Jackson case

They may not be as unpredictable as Michael Jackson, but witnesses in the singer’s child molestation case have surprised lawyers on both sides with unexpected testimony.

Flight attendant Cynthia Bell had been expected to testify this past week that Jackson shared wine with his young accuser on an airplane trip — but she said no such thing.

Bell testified she served Jackson wine in a Diet Coke can but did not see the boy drink from it.

Prosecutors also thought Jesus Salas, the pop star’s former house manager, would say he served wine to Jackson and several boys. But on the witness stand, Salas suddenly remembered he also had brought soda for the boys.

Jackson, 46, is on trial on charges of molesting a 13-year-old boy at his Neverland ranch in 2003, and one of the counts alleges he plied his accuser with alcohol.