Jessica Rinaldi / Russell family via Reuters, file

Sgt. John Russell was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing five fellow service members at a base in Iraq in 2009.

An Army sergeant was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole for the 2009 killings of five fellow service members at a combat stress clinic in Iraq.

A military judge, Army Col. David Conn, found Sgt. John Russell guilty of premeditated murder on Monday and imposed the sentence Thursday morning. The only other possible penalty for Russell would have been life in prison with the possibility of release.

Russell will be transferred within the next several days to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield said late Thursday.

The 14-year veteran from Sherman, Texas, had previously pleaded guilty to unpremeditated murder in exchange for prosecutors taking the death penalty off the table. Under the agreement, prosecutors were allowed to try to prove to an Army judge at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state that the killings were premeditated. A streamlined court-martial ended Saturday.

The shooting was one of the worst instances of soldier-on-soldier violence in the Iraq war and raised questions about the mental stresses of serving repeated tours of duty.

Killed in the 2009 shooting in Baghdad were Navy Cmdr. Charles Springle, of Wilmington, N.C., and four Army personnel: Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr., of Federalsburg, Md.; Dr. Matthew Houseal, of Amarillo, Texas; Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, of Paterson, N.J.; and Spc. Jacob D. Barton, of Lenox, Mo.

Russell's lawyers argued that he was deluded by depression and despair at the time. An Army mental health board found that Russell suffered from severe depression with psychotic features and post-combat stress.

Russell had long sought help with sleep troubles and was stammering and crying for help in the days before the shooting. His commanders were so alarmed that they disarmed him and sent him for repeated visits to mental health clinics, said attorney James Culp.

However, prosecutors argued that Russell was trying to paint himself as mentally ill in an attempt to win early retirement — just as he was facing a sexual harassment complaint that could derail his career and his benefits.

The day before the killings, psychiatrist Michael Jones told him that a mental disability retirement would require "some kind of suicidal psychotic crisis," Maj. Daniel Mazzone said during closing arguments, according to the Los Angeles Times.

But when Russell saw Jones again the next day, the psychiatrist said he had no intention of giving him "a golden ticket" out of the Army.

When Russell returned about an hour later, prosecutors say, he was looking for Jones, but wound up killing two patients, a bystander and two other mental health workers, including Navy Cmdr. Springle, who had also briefly treated Russell in the days before the shootings. Jones escaped injury by jumping out a window.

The Associated Press

Related:

• 'An evil chuckle': Survivor recalls shooting spree
• Father says Army 'broke' his son
• Doctor says soldier who killed 5 was 'psychotic'

A school bus carrying severely disabled students home from a trip to the zoo rolled over Thursday on a highway near Indianapolis, injuring a dozen people, including five children, state police said.

A truck was changing lanes on Interstate 65 near Zionsville about 2 p.m. Thursday when it cut in front of the special-needs school bus, Sgt. Rich Myers of the Indiana State Police said.

The bus driver, Audrey Kitchel, 55, of Lafayette, veered left into the grass median to avoid the collision and lost control of the bus, which rolled over and came to rest on its wheels in the median, Myers said.

All 12 passengers, seven adults and five children ranging from kindergartners to fourth-graders, were transported to Indianapolis hospitals where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, including neck and back pain, Myers said. All were wearing seat belts or other restraints.

None of the 12 was expected to be held overnight, hospital representatives said.

An inspection of the bus after the accident revealed no mechanical failures that would have contributed to this crash, Myers said.

Tippecanoe School Corp. Superintendent Scott Hanback said the bus was a Lafayette School Corp. bus carrying special-needs students from Mintonye Elementary School in southern Tippecanoe County. The students had gone to Indianapolis Zoo for a field trip.

"The bus was filled with students from the life-skills class," Hanback said, meaning they had severe and profound disabilities and multiple impairments — physical as well as developmental. At least one was in a wheelchair, he said.

All five students were elementary age, from 4 to 10 years old, Hanback said. He also said most of the seven adults were parents.

The truck that caused the crash did not stop, Myers said. The truck was described as either a white box truck or a white semitrailer, he said. The vague description of the truck made locating it difficult, Myers said.

The judge who will hear the capital murder case against accused Colorado theater gunman James Holmes said Thursday he will hold a hearing on the constitutionality of Colorado's insanity defense law in death penalty cases.

Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos Samour Jr. ruled that he will consider a defense motion that argues the statute is unconstitutional because it prevents  Holmes from calling his own mental-health experts at sentencing if he refuses to cooperate with court-appointed psychiatrists.

This decision comes just three days after Holmes' lawyers said they wanted to change his not guilty plea to not guilty by reason of insanity.

Holmes appeared in court Monday with a thick, brown beard. He sat wordlessly and stared straight ahead as his attorney, Daniel King, told the judge that the defense has a mental illness diagnosis for the 25-year-old former medical student at University of Colorado-Denver.

Prosecutors said last month that they would seek the death penalty for Holmes.

Earlier in the case, defenders had asked then-presiding Judge William Sylvester to declare Colorado's insanity defense law unconstitutional because it compels a defendant to work with court-appointed psychiatrists, which may violate one's right against self-incrimination. Prosecutors objected to these claims.

But Samour, who was assigned the case last month, ordered both sides to present arguments on the issue at a hearing next week.

Court documents read:

"The Court orders the parties to confer... on the defendant's contention that [the insanity defense law] is unconstitutional to the extent it prevents him from calling any psychiatrist or other expert witness to provide evidence of his mental condition at the sentencing hearing if he fails to cooperate with psychiatrists and other personnel conducting the Court-ordered sanity examination."

Twelve people were killed and 58 wounded on July 20, 2012, at a midnight showing of the movie “The Dark Knight Rises” in the Denver suburb of Aurora. Holmes has been charged with 166 counts of murder, attempted murder, and other offenses in connection with the massacre.

Related:

Accused Aurora theater shooter requests plea change

Slideshow: Tornadoes hit Texas

Ralph Lauer / EPA

A series of tornadoes ripped across northern Texas, killing six and injuring dozens more.

Launch slideshow

With six people already confirmed dead, rescue crews in a northern Texas town continued their search for victims Friday after a wave of 16 tornadoes crashed through the region, ripping homes to pieces and laying waste to large swaths of the area.

In Granbury, seven people were still missing after an EF4 tornado packing winds up to 200 mph destroyed a neighborhood late Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. 

Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds told reporters that the search for victims had to be expanded because "two of these people that they found were not even near their homes, so we're going to have to search the area out there."

Full coverage from NBCDFW.com

Nearly 100 damaged homes remained off limits Thursday night as crews in the hardest-hit areas continued to a search for survivors and victims.

Hundreds of people had checked in with authorities to say they had survived.

The violent twisters flattened homes, uprooted trees, tossed trailers onto cars and left hundreds homeless in morth Texas. About 100 people were injured. 

All of the dead – confirmed to all be adults — were from the Rancho Brazos neighborhood on the outskirts of Granbury where most of the homes were built in the past five years by residents themselves and the Christian charity group Habitat for Humanity. Granbury is a town of 8,000 people about 65 miles southwest of Dallas.

Officials on Thursday night released the names of the dead: Jose Tovas Alvarez, 34, Robert Whitehead, 60, Tommy Martin, 61, Marjari Davis, 82, Leo Stefanski, 83, and Glenda White, whose age wasn't known.  The identities of the missing were not made public.

“We’re going to keep on looking, we’re not going to give up until every piece of debris is turned over and we know that we’re good to go” Deeds said at a news briefing Thursday evening.

He said that 97 homes sustained damage, from slight to total destruction. Electricity and water were still out to those homes and he said it could be days before residents could return. 

“With the gas and electricity hazards we’re not going to take a chance in the area,” he said.

“It's rough, very rough. Everything's demolished," a resident told KXAS as she rushed away from the neighborhood with her arms around a child. "It was like hell."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, along with other state and local officials, will visit Granbury on Friday.

The National Weather Service in Dallas-Fort Worth said 16  tornadoes were confirmed to have ripped through north Texas.

The tornado that hit Granbury Wednesday night was rated an EF-4 by the National Weather Service, meaning that winds reached between 160 and 200 miles per hour. 

It was the first EF-4 in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area since 1994, National Weather Service spokesman Mark Fox said.

The tornadoes seemed to have caused less damage in Cleburne, where Mayor Scott Cain told KXAS. The town did “have the potential for some injuries,” Cain said.

Some witnesses have said the tornado that swept through Johnson County may have been as much as a mile wide. While that twister that hit Granbury was smaller, but it struck a more populated area, according to Fox.

People in the affected areas had a little more than the national average of 13 minutes warning before the tornadoes struck, according to the National Weather Service.

“The warning came well before the tornadoes,” Fox said. Residents of Montague County were alerted about 15 to 30 minutes before the storm struck, and in Hood County a warning was issued 25 minutes before the tornado touched down.

NBC News' John Newland and Matthew DeLuca contributed to this report.

Related:

• 6 dead, 7 missing as tornadoes rip through Texas
• Texas tornadoes destroy neighborhood built by residents, Habitat for Humanity

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 6:58 PM EDT

Amid the legislation and indignation sparked by the military's sexual abuse crisis, male rape survivors are stepping forward to remind officials that men are targeted more often than women inside a tough-guy culture that, they say, routinely deems male victims as “liars and trouble makers.”

The Pentagon estimates that last year 13,900 of the 1.2 million men on active duty endured sexual assault while 12,100 of the 203,000 women in uniform experienced the same crime — or 38 men per day versus 33 women per day. Yet the Defense Department also acknowledges “male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors.”

“As a culture, we’ve somewhat moved past the idea that a female wanted this trauma to occur, but we haven’t moved past that for male survivors,” said Brian Lewis, a rape survivor who served in the Navy. “In a lot of areas of the military, men are still viewed as having wanted it or of being homosexual. That’s not correct at all. It’s a crime of power and control.

“But also, you’re instantly viewed as a liar and a troublemaker (when a man reports a sex crime), and there’s the notion that you have abandoned your shipmates, that you took a crap all over your shipmates, that you misconstrued their horseplay,” he added.

Lewis, who was raped by a male superior officer aboard a Navy ship in 2000, spoke Thursday at a press conference introducing a bill that seeks to strip serious sex assaults from the military’s chain of command. At that event, he said: “Too often male survivors are ignored and marginalized.”

“The biggest reasons men don’t come forward (with sex assault reports) are the fear of retaliation (from fellow troops), the fear of being viewed in a weaker light, and the fact there are very few, if any, services for male survivors,” Lewis told NBC News.

Men in the spotlight
All sexual assault response coordinators within the military are instructed to provide “gender-responsive, culturally competent and recovery-oriented” resources, said Cynthia O. Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman. 

“Based on that guidance, each of the services customizes its training and implementation specific to their service,” Smith said. DOD offers a 24/7 “safe helpline” providing anonymous victim support, and its staffers “have been trained to assist male victims.”

Still, the Defense Department acknowledges it must do more to help male victims.

“A focus of our prevention efforts over the next several months is specifically geared towards male survivors and will include (learning) why male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors, and determining the unique support and assistance male survivors need,” Smith said.

The Pentagon “has reached out to organizations supporting male survivors for assistance and information to help inform our way ahead,” she added.

“I applaud that stand on behalf of male survivors,” Lewis said. “However, I would be interested in hearing what organizations they are partnering with considering there are none especially geared for male survivors of military sexual trauma.”

'Critical' part of process
At Protect Our Defenders, a leading advocacy group for male and female service members who've survived sexual assaults, president Nancy Parrish said she would welcome the chance to offer guidance to the Pentagon as it develops better programs to support male sex assault victims.

“As of yet, we have not been asked to participate in such an endeavor,” Parrish said. “For the success of the military efforts to end the ongoing epidemic of male and female military sexual assaults, it is critical that survivors are part of the process."

An annual DOD report on sexual abuse, released May 7, described separate attacks on two male soldiers who were shoved down by fellow troops then sodomized with a plastic bottle or broom handle.

Next month, a documentary called “Justice Denied” — which explores sexual assaults against men in the military — premiers at the Albuquerque Film and Media Experience.

Assaults on men have been “carefully hidden from the public and covered up,” not only by the victims themselves but also by superiors within the chain of command, contends the film’s producer and co-director Geri Lynn Weinstein-Matthews. “It’s time for men to have their voices heard. It’s time for them to stand up against these vicious attacks and against the deception of some of their commanding officers.” 

Related:

• Senators seek to reform military's 'unacceptable' sex abuse policies
• Gillibrand leads charge for protocol changes in sexual assault cases
• US military faces historic tipping point on rape epidemic
• Army sergeant assigned to sex-abuse prevention investigated for pimping, sexual assault
• Air Force's sex-abuse prevention honcho charged with sexual battery

A 31-year-old man was charged with kidnapping Thursday, a day after the mother of a snatched 4-year-old girl chased down a car and rammed it with her own.

Albuquerque police said David Jesus Hernandez ran away after the crash. According to authorities, the victim's mother did not realize he had pushed the child from his car while fleeing the apartment complex where the girl had been taken.

David Jesus Hernandez, 31, is wanted for questioning in a child kidnapping that took place Wednesday in Albuquerque.

A manhunt for Hernandez ended Thursday night when he turned himself in.

Hernandez was being held Friday on charges of kidnapping and child abuse, according to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque.

Police said they were investigating a "possible connection" between Wednesday's incident and one last week in which a 6-year-old girl was kidnapped, driven away in a car and sexually assaulted.

In the latest incident, the victim was playing in her yard about 6:30 p.m. when a man forced her into a silver Buick, police said. As he took off, some teenagers hanging around outside ran inside and alerted the child's mother, police said.

As she jumped into her own car to chase the Buick, the suspect pushed the little girl out of his vehicle. The mother didn't notice and kept going after the man.

"She was involved in a high-speed pursuit," Police Chief Ray Schultz said.

After tearing down several streets, the mother rammed the Buick to get it to stop, police said. The driver jumped out and fled on foot.

"This appears to be a complete stranger abduction," Schultz said.

The 4-year-old was found wandering near the apartment complex.

Last week's incident also involved a man driving a silver or gray car, police said.

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 2:16 PM EDT

A New York senator introduced a bill Thursday that aims to remove sex crimes from the military’s chain of command — a bid to transform an insulated culture that tends to dampen sex-assault reporting, leaving many victims feeling helpless or hopeless.

Under the Pentagon’s current justice system, less than 1 percent of accused sexual perpetrators in the military were convicted last year while during 2012 just 9.8 percent of sex-assault victims reported the incidents, according to a Department of Defense report. Many victims feel powerless because their superiors can control everything from whether a case proceeds to whether a guilty verdict is eventually overturned.

The new proposal by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., rides a rising tide of public anger over separate allegations that two service members tasked with curbing sexual misconduct within the armed forces had themselves committed sexual misconduct:

• A Fort Hood Army sergeant accused Tuesday of allegedly forcing at least one subordinate soldier into prostitution. There is suspicion that other senior non-commissioned officers were aware of these activities, but the extent of that remains unclear, a government official told NBC News;
• An Air Force officer arrested May 6 for alleged sexual battery. 

"When the officer in charge of preventing sexual assault in their ranks is himself arrested for sexual assault — clearly, the strategy we have in place is not working. Twice in just the last two weeks this has happened," Gillibrand said. 

Some service members have confided to Gillibrand, she said, that following sexual offenses committed against them, the military's current system forced them to seek permission from their perpetrators in order to take their cases to trial. 

"This is unacceptable — and is long overdue for change," Gillibrand said. 

Her push to revamp the military's machinery for the investigation and discipline of reported sexual assaults has bipartisan backing. Rep. Dan Benishek, R-Mich., said he will file a companion bill in the House. 

“Right now, too many sexual assaults in our military go unreported," Benishek said. "Many soldiers are uncomfortable reporting the details of these traumatic events. My daughter is a military veteran so I know exactly the kind of hard-working women we have in our armed forces. This situation is a travesty and we need to fix it now.

"We need to reform how the military handles sexual assault cases and make sure victims aren’t afraid to report a crime," he added. 

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was informed Tuesday about the allegations against the Fort Hood sergeant, leaving the Pentagon chief "frustrated, angered, and disappointed over these troubling allegations as well as the breakdown in discipline and standards they imply," said Cynthia Smith, a DoD spokeswoman. 

Hagel immediately directed every branch to "re-train, re-credential, and re-screen" all sexual assault prevention and response personnel and military recruiters — and he has "made it clear he has not ruled out any options for improving the military's response to sexual assault," Smith said.  

Under Gilliland's proposed legislation, any reported offense committed by a service member that’s punishable by confinement of one year or more would be handled not by branch and unit commanders — like now — but instead be funneled to independent military prosecutors. Her proposal also seeks to ensure that military commanders may not set aside a guilty finding.  

She began writing her bill — working with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. — just two days after her impassioned critique of the military's desire to retain "convening authority" in sex crimes went viral last March. She since has emerged as one of the Senate's loudest proponents for wholesale Pentagon reform on the issue, calling for a format that's more parallel to the civilian legal system. 

Related:

• Gillibrand leads Senate charge for protocol changes in military sexual assault cases
• US military faces historic tipping point on rape epidemic
• Army sergeant assigned to sex-abuse prevention being investigated for pimping, sexual assault
• Air Force's sex-abuse prevention honcho charged with sexual battery
• Obama: 'No tolerance' for military sexual assault
• 'Every American should be outraged:' Military sees sharp increase in sex assault cases

SEATTLE -- A 10-year-old Washington state boy was sentenced on Wednesday to up to 5 1/2 years in a juvenile detention facility for his role in a foiled plot to rape and kill a girl at his school and harm other children.

The boy was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, juvenile firearm possession and witness tampering in connection with a plot in February at an elementary school in Colville, in the state's northeast.

Prosecutors said he pleaded guilty last month to all charges.

Stevens County Superior Court Judge Allen Nielson sentenced the fifth-grader to a minimum of just over three years in juvenile detention and a maximum of nearly 5 1/2 years, Stevens County prosecutor Tim Rasmussen said.

An 11-year-old boy accused of joining in the plot is charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, possession of a dangerous weapon in the form of a knife at school and tampering with a witness, Rasmussen added.

The 11-year-old suspect faces a court hearing later this month.

The 10-year-old boy will serve his sentence at the Echo Glen children's juvenile center in Snoqualmie, Wash., 45 miles east of Seattle. As of Thursday he had already spent nearly 100 days in a local juvenile detention facility, Rasmussen said.

The boy told investigators he and his friend had planned to kill a former fifth-grade girlfriend because she was "rude" and "always made fun" of him and friends, according to court documents.

They plotted to entice the girl away from their elementary school, the court papers stated.

The 10-year-old had taken a Remington Model 1911 pistol that originally belonged to his grandfather from his older brother's room, according to court records.

The boys had also packed ammunition and a knife, but they were stopped on Feb. 7 shortly after they boarded a school bus, Rasmussen said.

A fourth-grade student spotted the knife and reported it to a teacher's aide, Rasmussen said. The names of six other targeted classmates were on a list the boys had, Rasmussen said.

Related:

Prosecutors: 5th-grade boys plotted to kill classmate

Ex-con accused of killing grandparents in custody

Wash. inmates help rescue boys from creek

North Texas residents took in the devastation on Thursday wreaked by a series of tornadoes that killed six and injured dozens more in what Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds described as a “nightmare” scenario.

Seven of 14 people who had previously been unaccounted for had checked in by Thursday morning, Deeds said at a press conference on Thursday. About 100 people were reported injured and as many as 250 were homeless after the swarm of twisters that ripped up trees and knocked down homes on Wednesday evening.

The six deceased were all adults, Deeds said. There have been no reports of injuries to first responders, the sheriff said.

“Everything’s running smooth, everything’s looking good,” Deeds said of recovery efforts on Thursday.

Full coverage from NBCDFW.com

Granbury, a town of 8,000 about 65 miles southwest of Dallas, was thought to be among the worst-hit areas. Images of the town revealed leveled homes, badly damaged cars, uprooted trees and downed power lines.

Nineteen buildings and 17 mobile homes were destroyed in Hood County, the sheriff’s office said in an initial damage assessment on Thursday. Seventeen more buildings showed major damage, while more than 40 showed minor damage including to windows and roofing shingles.

“It's rough, very rough. Everything's demolished," a resident told KXAS as she hurried away from the neighborhood with her arms around a child. "It was like hell."

Mike Fuentes / AP

Johnny Ortiz, left, and James South carry Miguel Morales, who was injured in a tornado, to an ambulance in Granbury, Texas, on Wednesday.

The six people who were confirmed dead were in the Rancho Brazos neighborhood on the outskirts of Granbury, Deeds said. He added that the homes there were mostly built within the past five years by Habitat for Humanity.

“I had three different storms that came through but this is the worst one,” Deeds said.

The tornadoes swept through the towns of Granbury and nearby Cleburne, causing “heavy damage,” Deeds said. The search for other people who might have gotten caught up in the storm continued with day break.

“I’ve been assured by my deputies on the scene that they’re pretty confident with the six that they found, but there was a report that two of these people that they found were not even near their homes. So we’re going to have to search the area out there,” Deeds said.

The tornado that hit Granbury was rated EF-4 by the National Weather Service in a preliminary report, meaning that winds reached between 160 and 200 miles per hour.

The tornadoes seemed to have caused less damage in Cleburne, where Mayor Scott Cain told KXAS. The town did “have the potential for some injuries,” Cain said.

The National Weather Service reported three tornadoes across Montague and Hood counties. Storm surveys to determine the extent of the damage were planned for Hood, Johnson, Montague, and Parker counties on Thursday, the weather service’s Dallas-Fort Worth office announced. At least ten tornadoes touched ground across Texas on Wednesday evening according to Mark Fox, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Some witnesses have said the tornado that swept through Johnson County may have been as much as a mile wide. While that twister that hit Granbury was smaller, it struck a more populated area and was “just as destructive,” according to Fox.

People in the affected areas had a little more than the national average of 13 minutes warning before the tornadoes struck, according to the National Weather Service.

“The warning came well before the tornadoes,” Fox said. Residents of Montague County were alerted about 15 to 30 minutes before the storm struck, and in Hood County a warning was issued 25 minutes before the tornado touched down.

Nearly forty patients were taken to Lake Granbury Medical Center and 18 discharged, with the majority of injuries including cuts, broken bones, and some head injuries. A total of eight patients were admitted to the emergency room at the Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth. Two of the patients were in critical condition as of 4 a.m. local time.

“I’ve been at LGMC for over 12 years, and we have never seen a community catastrophe with as many injuries as we did through last night,” said Kyle McCombs, chief of staff at Lake Granbury Medical Center, in a press release. “However, these are the types of disasters that our medical team continuously prepares for.”

Relocation centers have been set up Granbury Methodist and First Christian churches in Hood County.

The tornado outbreak was by far the year's deadliest, the weather service said. Prior to Wednesday night, there had been three fatal tornadoes this year, killing one person each in Georgia, Mississippi and eastern Texas.

Anita Foster of the American Red Cross, which opened two shelters in Granbury, told KXAS that 42 people had spent the night in the shelters. She added that only a quarter of people who are left homeless in such disasters typically seek shelter with the Red Cross, indicating that many more had been affected.

"We’re going to have a lot of people who are going to need some help," she said, adding, "It was a really frightening evening. It was a devastating event for our community."

The tornadoes, normal for this time of year, formed as the warm, moist air of the Texas springtime encountered an upper level storm between Wichita and Dallas, Fox said. A few thunderstorms hung over the state on Thursday but the weather system headed eastward for the most part, he said.

Severe weather was expected to sweep into some parts of the Midwest and Plains states with the potential for tornadoes heading into the weekend, the Weather Channel reported.

About 60 departures have been canceled and 70 flights diverted from Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport, spokesman David Magana told the Associated Press.

NBC News' John Newland and Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 12:39 AM EDT