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New York Post
a day ago
- Sport
- New York Post
Pelicans exec makes Zion Williamson stance clear after bombshell rape allegations
The rape allegations against Zion Williamson are not affecting the Pelicans' plans for his future with the organization. While new executive vice president of basketball operations Joe Dumars said he had been 'advised not to venture into any of his legal issues' in an interview with The Times-Picayune, he made it clear the team intends to build around its former No. 1 overall pick. 'I've had really good conversations with Zion,' Dumars, the former Pistons title-winning executive, said Wednesday. 'We've had lunch. Dinner. Watched playoff games together. We've done it all. I've had some real, honest conversations with him. Some real direct and honest conversations. 'We're going to go forward with Zion. He's going to continue to be a focal point here as we go forward.' 4 Zion Williamson during a March 2025 game. NBAE via Getty Images Williamson's standing with the franchise came into question following the bombshell rape allegations made against him in a lawsuit filed last week by woman claiming to be his ex-girlfriend. The woman, identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, alleges the forward raped her twice in 2020 and 'continued to abuse, rape, assault and batter plaintiff' until their relationship ended in 2023. On Sept. 23, 2020, the woman alleges Williamson 'pinned Plaintiff down on the bed with her hands behind her back and raped her' after she refused to have sex with him. Williamson is also alleged to have called her 'stuck up' and a 'b—h.' Roughly one month later on Oct. 10, amid a discussion about Doe possibly visiting a friend, Williamson is alleged to have 'picked her up, threw her down to the ground, and pinned her shoulders down so she could not move,' and then 'violently raped Plaintiff in multiple ways.' 4 The Pelicans recently hired Joe Dumars as their executive VP of basketball operations. AP The woman is seeking between $18 million to $50 million, according to ESPN. Williamson denied the allegations, and his legal counsel said they planned to file counterclaims and 'seek significant damages for this defamatory lawsuit.' 'We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and we unequivocally deny them. The allegations contained in the complaint are categorically false and reckless,' Williamson's legal counsel told The Post in late May. 'This is the plaintiff's third set of attorneys. This appears to be an attempt to exploit a professional athlete driven by a financial motive rather than any legitimate grievance.' 4 Williamson represented the Pelicans at the NBA Draft Lottery. NBAE via Getty Images While Dumars did not comment on the lawsuit, Pelicans owner Gayle Benson addressed the topic Tuesday but did not offer much. 'You know, lawsuits are lawsuits,' Benson said, according to The Times-Picayune. 'You really can't … You don't know. I mean people can sue you for anything. There's no reason you can be innocent or not. It's just something that people do, unfortunately.' Before this lawsuit emerged, the Pelicans reportedly had been open to moving anyone on the roster in their attempt to build a winner after missing the playoffs for the fourth time in Williamson's six seasons. 4 Zion Williamson missed 52 games last season. Getty Images Dumars, though, said that sending Williamson to the NBA Draft Lottery in May — before the lawsuit's unveiling — showed the team's commitment to him. The Pelicans will pick seventh in the upcoming draft. 'I sent him to the lottery for a reason,' Dumars told the publication. 'I want him to start focusing on the responsibilities of being the best player here and the focal point. There are some responsibilities that come with that. Go represent your organization.' Any revival in New Orleans will need Williamson to be healthy and productive, the former having been a major issue since he landed with the franchise after starring at Duke. Though Williamson has averaged 24.7 points and 6.6 rebounds in his career, he's appeared in 60 or more games just twice in six seasons. Williamson, 24, played in just 30 games this past season and missed the entire 2021-22 season due to a foot injury. He's appeared in just 214 games. 'We've had some real direct conversations with him about that,' Dumars said, per the outlet. 'Expectations. Accountability. That's our plan going forward with Zion.'
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
New Orleans jail escapee was caught with help from an anonymous tip; 2 inmates still on the run
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — As police continue to scour Louisiana for the two remaining New Orleans jail escapees on the run, one fugitive was captured on Monday with the help of an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen. Lenton Vanburen Jr., 26, was found Monday evening sitting on a bench near a department store in Baton Rouge – approximately 78 miles (125 kilometers) from the jail he and nine others escaped from earlier this month, police said. Authorities also said Monday that five people were arrested for assisting Vanburen following the audacious jail escape through a hole behind a toilet. Three of those people share the same last name as Vanburen, including Lenton Vanburen Sr. All five were charged with accessory after the fact — a crime that involves harboring, concealing or aiding a felon who is avoiding arrest, trial, conviction or punishment — which is punishable by up to five years in prison. On Monday, two other escapees were arrested in Walker County, Texas. Details about their capture were not available. Still on the lam are Derrick Groves and Antoine Massey. Groves, 27, was convicted on two charges of second-degree murder and two charges of attempted second-degree murder last year for his role in the 2018 Mardi Gras Day shootings of two men. He also faces a charge of battery against a correctional facility employee, court records show. Massey, 33, has a lengthy criminal history. In March, he was booked on charges of motor vehicle theft and domestic abuse battery involving strangulation. He is also wanted by St. Tammany Parish authorities on suspicion of kidnapping and rape, law enforcement officials told The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. Authorities have urged the public to call police with any information that may lead to the capture of Groves and Massey, and are offering $20,000 in rewards for tips leading to their arrest. The bold New Orleans jailbreak occurred nearly two weeks ago, when the inmates yanked open a faulty cell door inside a jail, squeezed through a hole behind a toilet, scaled a barbed-wire fence and fled into the cover of darkness. Authorities didn't learn of the escape until a morning headcount, hours after the 10 men bolted for freedom. Graffiti was left on the wall at the scene of the crime, a message that read 'To Easy LoL,' with an arrow pointing to the gap where the toilet once was. City and state officials have pointed to multiple security lapses in the jail. Conditions had been deteriorating in the jail in the months before the escape, with unsupervised inmates smoking marijuana 'without fear of consequences' and fashioning weapons out of brooms, mops and buckets, according to a new report released Tuesday by an independent watchdog monitoring a 2013 federal consent decree that was intended to reform the jail. The monitor urged Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to reestablish a high-security unit in the jail, noting the unrelenting violence among inmates that's made the facility 'not reasonably safe and secure.' Hutson, a progressive reformer, had abandoned the practice of housing certain inmates in a high-security setting after taking office in 2022. 'Many of the inmate-on-inmate assaults occur because staff allow inmates out of their cells and leave them unsupervised, or inmates are able to manipulate the locks on their cells to open them,' the monitors wrote in the report, which was written before this month's escape. ——- Associated Press writer Jim Mustian in New York contributed to this report.
Winnipeg Free Press
27-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
New Orleans jail escapee was caught with help from an anonymous tip; 2 inmates still on the run
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — As police continue to scour Louisiana for the two remaining New Orleans jail escapees on the run, one fugitive was captured on Monday with the help of an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen. Lenton Vanburen Jr., 26, was found Monday evening sitting on a bench near a department store in Baton Rouge – approximately 78 miles (125 kilometers) from the jail he and nine others escaped from earlier this month, police said. Authorities also said Monday that five people were arrested for assisting Vanburen following the audacious jail escape through a hole behind a toilet. Three of those people share the same last name as Vanburen, including Lenton Vanburen Sr. All five were charged with accessory after the fact — a crime that involves harboring, concealing or aiding a felon who is avoiding arrest, trial, conviction or punishment — which is punishable by up to five years in prison. On Monday, two other escapees were arrested in Walker County, Texas. Details about their capture were not available. Still on the lam are Derrick Groves and Antoine Massey. Groves, 27, was convicted on two charges of second-degree murder and two charges of attempted second-degree murder last year for his role in the 2018 Mardi Gras Day shootings of two men. He also faces a charge of battery against a correctional facility employee, court records show. Massey, 33, has a lengthy criminal history. In March, he was booked on charges of motor vehicle theft and domestic abuse battery involving strangulation. He is also wanted by St. Tammany Parish authorities on suspicion of kidnapping and rape, law enforcement officials told The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. Authorities have urged the public to call police with any information that may lead to the capture of Groves and Massey, and are offering $20,000 in rewards for tips leading to their arrest. The bold New Orleans jailbreak occurred nearly two weeks ago, when the inmates yanked open a faulty cell door inside a jail, squeezed through a hole behind a toilet, scaled a barbed-wire fence and fled into the cover of darkness. Authorities didn't learn of the escape until a morning headcount, hours after the 10 men bolted for freedom. Graffiti was left on the wall at the scene of the crime, a message that read 'To Easy LoL,' with an arrow pointing to the gap where the toilet once was. City and state officials have pointed to multiple security lapses in the jail. Conditions had been deteriorating in the jail in the months before the escape, with unsupervised inmates smoking marijuana 'without fear of consequences' and fashioning weapons out of brooms, mops and buckets, according to a new report released Tuesday by an independent watchdog monitoring a 2013 federal consent decree that was intended to reform the jail. The monitor urged Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to reestablish a high-security unit in the jail, noting the unrelenting violence among inmates that's made the facility 'not reasonably safe and secure.' Hutson, a progressive reformer, had abandoned the practice of housing certain inmates in a high-security setting after taking office in 2022. 'Many of the inmate-on-inmate assaults occur because staff allow inmates out of their cells and leave them unsupervised, or inmates are able to manipulate the locks on their cells to open them,' the monitors wrote in the report, which was written before this month's escape. ——- Associated Press writer Jim Mustian in New York contributed to this report.
USA Today
21-05-2025
- USA Today
New Orleans jail escape: Maps and videos show how it happened
New Orleans jail escape: Maps and videos show how it happened The New Orleans jailbreak, now in its sixth day, has led to a massive manhunt while throwing a spotlight on procedural errors that led to the May 16 escape. Of the 10 inmates who fled early that morning, five have been recaptured as of May 21 and are being held at the maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary. While state and local investigators continue to probe how the escape occurred, the incident has led Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to suspend her re-election campaign, according to a May 20 social media post. How did the escape happen? The inmates escaped early in the morning of May 16 by going through a hole in the wall behind a toilet in one cell, then fleeing from the building through a loading dock door. There were several phrases and doodles marked on the wall above the hole including "To easy lol", " I'm We innocent" and "Catch us when you can". They then moved along a secure perimeter road between the Orleans Parish Jail and a building under construction. After scaling a fence, they crossed Interstate 10 and fled into a nearby neighborhood. Jailbreak update 5 nabbed, 5 to go: Manhunt for escaped New Orleans inmates reaches 6th day Authorities were alerted to their escape hours later after they were discovered the men missing from an 8:30 a.m. headcount. A jail employee - 33-year old Sterling Williams - was arrested in connection with the escape. Two women have been arrested for helping the fugitives. Williams, a maintenance worker, told agents he turned the water off in the cell where the inmates escaped from. His bond is currently set at $1.1 million according to Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill. How many inmates escaped in New Orleans? How many have been caught? What are their charges? Of the 10 inmates who escaped, five have been apprehended as of May 21. Here's a list of their current status and charges, according to The Times-Picayune: The five escaped inmates who are still at-large are: Lenton Vanburen, 26 Charges: Second-degree murder in a November 2021 homicide in New Orleans East, where a victim was shot to death. Pled not guilty. Status, Escaped, at-large. Derrick Groves, 27 Charges: Convicted of second-degree murder in a 2018 Mardi Gras Day killing of two men. Status: Escaped, at-large. Leo Tate, 31 Charges: Second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder in a 7th Ward double shooting in 2018, which killed 19-year-old Alexis Banks and sent a 16-year-old to the hospital. Accepted a plea deal in which murder-related charges were dismissed, and he was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 10 years behind bars. Status: Escaped, at-large. Antoine Massey, 32 Charges: Motor vehicle theft and domestic abuse battery involving strangulation. Wanted by St. Tammany Parish authorities on suspicion of kidnapping and rape. A judge issued a protective order in Orleans Parish and Massey hadn't entered a plea. Status: Escaped, at-large. Jermaine Donald, 42 Charges: Most recently charged with second-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a felon. Pled not guilty. Status: Escaped, at-large. New Orleans jail employee arrested in connection with inmate escape Sterling Williams was arrested and charged with helping 10 inmates break free from a New Orleans jail, authorities said. The Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office is offering a monetary reward for information regarding the remaining suspects. Tips can be submitted anonymously through Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111 or online at Read more: Two women arrested for helping fugitives as manhunt in New Orleans escape reaches 6th day Contributing: Chris Powers
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Nottoway dishonored my enslaved ancestors. Why I still hated to see it destroyed.
With its 200 windows and 165 doors fashioned by enslaved craftsmen and put in place with enslaved labor, Louisiana's Nottoway Plantation was the South's largest antebellum mansion, or 'big house.' It was also a place that tour guides infamously sold a romanticized and sanitized version of plantation life about, and for generations, those who ran the plantation hosted weddings, graduations and school field trips where Black schoolchildren and their parents often felt diminished and alienated. As The Associated Press has noted, Nottoway 'makes no mention of enslaved former inhabitants on its website.' A fire on Thursday that destroyed Nottoway's big house led to a predictable response. Some Black people posted selfies presumably taken at Nottoway that showed the burning house behind them. People shared memes that added the images of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, uncharacteristically grinning, to photos of the mansion on fire. Other memes showed Black people enjoying an outdoor cookout with the burning house in the background. 'We're very devastated, we're upset, we're sad,' Dan Dyess, a co-owner with his wife of the plantation resort, told The Times-Picayune | The Advocate. 'We put a lot of time, effort and money to developing this property.' Still, after the fire, some voices wryly expressed that all such sites should burn. Simultaneously, some white people wistfully mourned an irreplaceable architectural gem and moment in American — read Southern — grandeur and responded to the celebrations of the fire as an assault on their 'heritage,' the same way many responded in 2017 to the removal of Confederate monuments downriver in New Orleans. I'm not mourning in the same way that those embracing myths of the 'Lost Cause' and the idea of 'moonlight and magnolias' are, but I'm mourning the loss of another opportunity to teach about the history of enslavement. Our material history, including at places such as Nottoway, has messages for us. There are bricks where our ancestors' fingerprints remain, spiritual caches, crystals and sometimes lone cowrie shells reflecting traditional African beliefs. There are signs there of Islamic practices and practices of the early Black church. Even a rat's nest found in Charleston, South Carolina, had much to tell us about the past. It wasn't just a rat's nest; it had been fashioned from the pages from a 19th century speller. In the darkness, hidden from the enslavers' prying eyes, we were learning to read. The destruction of Nottoway isn't a trending story for me. I am a historical interpreter — not a re-enactor — and such places have been the focus of my research. I even wrote my award-winning memoir, 'The Cooking Gene,' tracing my ancestry from Africa to America, from enslavement to emancipation, using the story of African American food combined with the battle over how our history gets told and who gets to tell it. Many plantations, homes and living history sites are tied to colonial and antebellum slavery, both South and North. They have never been cheap to maintain or preserve, hence the need to bring in crowds that spend big. Sanitizing the brutality of slavery and promoting their properties as wedding venues is a way for those who operate such places to increase revenue. But their general refusal to confront the truth of history and balance their messaging, their willingness to bury the experiences of our ancestors underneath white supremacist propaganda, helps explain the glee many felt at Nottoway's destruction. I found it disheartening while doing research for 'The Cooking Gene' that one of my ancestors, Harry Townsend, who was sold as a child from North Carolina through Virginia to Alabama, had a bill of sale and a value for his body on the death of his slaveholder. He had run for freedom, and there was even a receipt for his return by a 'slave catcher.' But there's no record of my ancestor's grave, and most of land where he was enslaved is now underneath a mall. Places such as Nottoway that glorify the buildings that enslaved people built but ignore the pain and suffering those enslaved people experienced contribute to another kind of erasure. The New York Post quotes Dyess as saying, 'My wife and I had nothing to do with slavery but we recognize the wrongness of it. 'We are trying to make this a better place. We don't have any interest in left wing radical stuff. We we need to move forward on a positive note here and we are not going to dwell on past racial injustice.' If this fire was a message, it was a wake-up call. There are no perfect answers here. Nottoway could have gone the way of Whitney Plantation, also in Louisiana, which is a museum dedicated to helping visitors understand who the enslaved people were. I've been privileged to cook at Whitney Plantation, which is staffed by brilliant Black interpreters. Nottoway also could have been more like Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina, where my elder and teacher Joseph McGill raises awareness about chattel slavery. It could have been more like Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, where, as a consultant and scholar in residence, I learned from generations of people behind the site's African American programming. Coming to terms with what these plantations have meant is a process that takes time and generational commitment. Plantations and sites related to slavery have to have foot traffic and human and financial investment to preserve the evidence of African and African American labor, craft and resistance. Still, they shouldn't exist as mere resorts. We must stand in solidarity with museums (especially Black independent sites), genealogists, scholars, preservationists and descendants who do this recovery work. Their efforts to perform acts of sincere redemption and reconciliation are crucial. We can contribute to a more inclusive and accurate representation of our shared history by supporting such initiatives. This crossroads is the sacred ground where people of many backgrounds can and must meet. I can't think of a more critical time to speak the truth and acknowledge the humanity of enslaved Africans and Indigenous Americans and the flow of immigrants and others without whom we would not exist. This article was originally published on
