Woman injured in police shooting says cops let boyfriend die

WAUKEGAN, Ill. (AP) — A Black woman who was shot by police last week in suburban Chicago said Tuesday that officers did nothing more than cover her boyfriend with a blanket after he was shot and left him on the ground to die.

Tafara Williams, 20, spoked to reporters during a Zoom call from her hospital bed as she described the Oct. 20 shooting in Waukegan that killed 19-year-old Marcellis Stinnette.

“They allowed him to die,” Williams said. “They wanted us to bleed out on the ground.”

In detailing what happened for the first time, Williams said she was simply sitting in her car in front of her home with Stinnette smoking a cigarette because she did not want to smoke near her child. She said a white officer pulled up and started to question her, telling Stinnette, who is Black, that she knew him from when he was in jail.

She said after she and Stinnette both raised their hands to show the officer that they were unarmed, she pulled away slowly. She said the officer did not follow her but that a short time later another officer was “waiting for us.”

“There was a crash, I lost control, the officer was shooting at us,” she said, crying. “I was screaming, ‘I don’t have a gun,’ (but) he kept shooting… I kept asking him why he was shooting.”

5th former eBay employee pleads guilty in harassment scheme

BOSTON (AP) — A former supervisor of security operations for eBay Inc.’s European and Asian offices pleaded guilty Tuesday to his role in a cyberstalking campaign that included having live spiders and other disturbing deliveries sent to a Massachusetts couple who published an online newsletter critical of the online auction site.

Philip Cooke, 55, of San Jose, California, a former police captain, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses, according to a statement from federal prosecutors in Boston. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 24. Each charge carries a maximum of five years in prison.

His attorney declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press.

He is the fifth former eBay employee out of seven charged in the case to plead guilty.

The harassment campaign targeting the Natick couple started in August 2019 and included three distinct parts, prosecutors said.