• 7 missing children found 'unharmed' and 'in good spirits' with estranged dad

    By John Newland, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Seven children who were reported missing Saturday from their Fresno, Calif., home were found with their estranged father Thursday, police said.

    "The children were unharmed and were all in good spirits," a Fresno Police Department spokesman said early Friday.

    Police said they had left the kids in the custody of their father, Xa Yang, in Sacramento, while an investigation is conducted. Sacramento is about 170 miles north of Fresno.

    On Thursday, police said Yang had previously not had contact with the children for more than three years.

    They lived with their mother and stepfather, who left them alone Saturday evening and went grocery shopping, police said. When the couple returned to their apartment complex, all seven children were gone, as were their belongings.

    Police said then that there were no serious concerns about the children's safety.

    The FBI Task Force for Violent Crimes Against Children was called in to assist, however, and its agents found Yang and the four boys and three girls, ages 12, 11, 10, 8, 7, 6 and 5.

    The children were thought all along to have been with their father, police said, but they did not know where he lived. 

    The Fresno police spokesman said he did not have information about the parents' custodial rights or why the children were left with their father instead of being returned to their mother.

    "Fresno and Sacramento PD will investigate further to determine if a crime was committed," he added.

    Related:

    Cops believe estranged father took 7 missing California kids

  • Cops believe estranged father took 7 missing California kids

    Fresno Police Department

    Five of the seven children missing from Fresno, Calif.

    By John Newland, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Police believe the seven children who vanished from their Fresno, Calif., home on Saturday were taken by their estranged father.

    Ranging in age from 5 to 12, the kids were left at home while their mother and stepfather went to a grocery store, according to the Fresno Police Department.

    Police believe that their biological father "picked up all of the children." He was identified as Xa Yang and is thought to live in Sacramento, about 170 miles north of Fresno.

    Neither authorities nor the children's mother had been able to contact the father, who had not been involved in the children's lives "for at least three years," according to a police statement.

    Because the seven children, along with their belongings, were removed from an apartment complex in the early evening without any
    apparent commotion, investigators do not suspect foul play.

    There was no immediate concern for the children's safety, police said.

    While they have not issued an "Amber Alert," which are normally issued in suspected abductions, police are seeking the
    public's help.

    Anyone with information can call Detective Josh Mendizabal at (559) 621-2499 or (559) 621-7000.

  • Cops: Fingernail DNA helps catch woman's killer 28 years later

    View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com.

    By Lisa Fernandez, NBCBayArea.com

    Twenty-eight years after a strangled Santa Clara County woman's body was found tossed into a supermarket Dumpster, a Fresno man was charged Monday in a case that broke because of the DNA under the woman's fingernails.

    Mountain View police spokesman Sean Thompson said that investigators used a match on the state's DNA database to identify Daniel Garcia, now 53, as the alleged killer of Saba Girmai.

    After an investigation, Garcia was arrested on Friday, and is now in custody without bail.

    "We never forget about unsolved murder cases and continuously seek out new technology and new leads to help us solve them," Mountain View Police Department Chief Scott S.G. Vermeer said in a statement. "Hopefully this will help bring some closure to Ms. Girmai's family."

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    Deputy District Attorney Ted Kajani added: "No matter how long ago someone was murdered, we don't forget about them."


    The charge stems from Jan. 18, 1985, when a passerby found the body in the Dumpster near Bailey Park Plaza and Safeway shopping center in Mountain View, and reported it to police.

    Eventually the body was identified as 21-year old Girmai, who was known to frequent the San Jose area. During the next three decades, the investigation was frequently revisited but no significant leads were developed, police said.

    On Jan. 12, 2010, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Crime Laboratory developed a DNA profile from the victim's fingernails.

    Prosecutors say the resulting profile matched a convicted offender: Garcia, who had never previously been linked to Girmai.

    In 2011, MVPD and the newly created D.A.'s Cold Case Unit began to re-investigate the case. That led to Garcia's arrest last week.

  • Gunman kills 2, wounds 2 at chicken processing plant in Fresno, Calif.

    Fresno authorities said that one person is dead and four others are wounded, including the suspected gunman, in a workplace shooting at a food service company.

     

    By NBC News and wire services

    A gunman on Tuesday killed two people and wounded two others at a chicken processing plant in Fresno, Calif., before turning the gun on himself, authorities said.


    The suspect, a co-worker of the victims, was found outside the plant with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer told reporters. He died a few hours later.

    Police initially reported one death, but a second victim later died, the local coroner stated.

    The names of the victims were not immediately released.

    The suspect was identified as Lawrence Jones, 42. He has an "extensive criminal history," Dyer added.

    Jones reported for work before dawn and his coworkers noticed that he "did not appear to be himself," Dyer said. Jones was at the meat processing plant for more than three hours before opening fire with a handgun, Dyer said. 

    Dyer initially said the plant is called Apple Valley Farms, but city of Fresno spokesman Michael Lukens later said the business recently changed its name to Valley Protein. The facility processes poultry, he said. 

    KSEE 24

    First aid responders treat a person at the scene of the shooting in Fresno, Calif., Tuesday morning.

    Fresno, a city with a population of about 500,000, is located 160 miles southeast of San Francisco and is surrounded by farmland in the San Joaquin Valley. 

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • India murder suspect apparently kills wife, 2 kids, self in California


    By Jim Gold, NBC News

    A man wanted for murder in India apparently killed his wife and two of their children and wounded a third before committing suicide Saturday morning at his Selma, Calif., home, officials say.

    Avtar Singh, 47, called Selma police around 6:15 a.m. and told them that he had killed members of his family and was going to kill himself, the Fresno County Sheriff's Office said.

    Selma police sought aid from Fresno County sheriff's officials because Singh reportedly had military experience in his native India, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said in a prepared statement obtained by NBC station KSEE of Fresno.

    Sheriff's officials tried to contact Singh verbally and by phone, but he did not respond, Mims said.

    Fresno County Sheriff's Office

    Avtar Singh

    When a sheriff's SWAT team entered the home after first examining it with a robot, members found the bodies of Singh, his wife and two children, ages 3 and 15, Mims said. A wounded teen was also found in the home, she said.

    The teen was taken to a hospital and is in critical condition with life-threatening wounds, Mims said.

    A motive was not immediately clear.

    An Indian army major in the 1990s, Singh is accused in the March 1996 killing of human rights lawyer Jaleel Andrabi in the Kashmiri city of Srinagar.

    Watch US News crime videos on msnbc.com

    Avtar Singh on March 8, 1996, allegedly arrested Andrabi, whose body was recovered March 27, 1996, from the Jehlulm River near Srinagar, according to Indian reports of the case.

    Andrabi had been shot in the head and his eyes were gouged out, the Fresno Bee reported.

    See the story at NBC station KSEE of Fresno

    In Srinagar on Thursday, a court granted Afaq Ahmad, chief prosecuting officer, five more days to prepare an error-free charge sheet and English translation to be submitted to the Ministry of External Affairs so Singh could be extradited, the South Asian News Agency reported.

    The ministry earlier sent back the charge sheet, claiming it was neither clear nor legible and that it contained errors, SANA reported.

    Andrabi's family has claimed the government for years has delayed prosecuting the case.

    Singh had contended he was made a scapegoat in Andrabi’s murder case and that his battalion was nowhere near the place where Andrabi was kidnapped at the height of an anti-India uprising, SANA reported.

    On Feb. 20, 2011, Singh was arrested and then freed from the Fresno County jail, after he got bail in a domestic violence case registered against him by his wife. Although his fingerprints led police to contact Interpol, the agency said he did not have to be held, SANA reported.

    In Selma, a city of 23,000 in California’s agriculturally oriented Central Valley, Singh ran Jay Truck Lines, according to U.S. Department of Transportation records. The interstate trucking company specialized in refrigerated trucks for hauling produce and other products, records indicate.

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