Tampa, Fla., couple Tasha Johnson and Markeith Brown held their recent wedding reception at a restaurant called the Rusty Pelican. The classy, fairy tale-themed event, included a horse and carriage. The loving couple’s romantic vows were exchanged at an oceanside gazebo and the reception held in a ballroom.
The affair remained classy until around 9 p.m., when Tampa police say Brown began throwing money on the dance floor for children to pick up. the gesture angered one of his guests. When the groom and his brother asked the guest to leave, a fight broke out that escalated and spilled into the parking lot. Cops came — but it doesn’t end there. After guests left, the fight started up again in a hotel parking lot, where the groom’s 74-year-old grandmother was put in a choke hold after trying to break up the brawl.
At least one person has been arrested and one was treated in the emergency room as a result of this wedding brawl, but you might be happy to learn that Tasha and Markeith, “the money thrower,” are enjoying their honeymoon in the Bahamas right now. What’s Your Take On The Matter? Register and/or sign in and sound off!
Otis "Nickalous" Beckford and his fiance Daneicka Coley (COURTESY OF JULIET KNIGHT)
Otis Beckford, 26, was a well-respected employee who worked hard for his fiancee and baby and got along with everyone.
“You couldn’t ask for a better nephew or a son,” said Evelyn Cole of West Palm Beach, Beckford’s aunt. “He was just quiet and he never troubled anyone or got into trouble.”
Beckford, known to relatives by his Jamaican pet name, Nickalous, worked for the Reynolds, Smith & Hills and Orlando engineering firm for three years. Beckford was one of six people shot and the the only person killed in a shooting rampage on Friday by Jason Rodriquez a former employee who had been fired in 2007.
Mr. Beckford a young father to a 7 month old daughter was an AutoCAD technician who was well respected by everyone from colleagues to upper-level managers, said Mike Bernos, a company spokesman.
“This was a great young man,” Bernos said. “We’re deeply saddened at the loss.”
Born in Jamaica, Beckford moved to Orlando in search of work after being laid off from a job in West Palm Beach, relatives said. Beckford resided for a brief period with his grandmother in Palm Bay before moving to his own apartment near the Mall at Millenia in Orlando. Prior to moving to Florida, the young man lived in New York.
Mariol Bosque-Vidal was Beckford’s next-door neighbor when he attended Royal Palm Beach High School. Later, he studied at DeVry University. Like other friends and relatives, Bosque-Vidal was shocked and saddened by Beckford’s death.
“He was an amazing friend who was very funny and quiet at the same time” said Bosque-Vidal.
Beckford liked to play football and soccer, eschewed clubs and lived for his family, fiancee Daneicka Coley, 24, and their 7-month-old daughter, Danielle. His mother lives in West Palm Beach, and he has a father in Jamaica and a sister in Palm Bay.
Family members are struggling to make sense of a loss that seemed so senseless.
“He was quiet and peaceful and intelligent young man — and humble,” said his cousin Juliet Knight. “And they cut his life short.”
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A basketball pioneer since she was 17, Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman was introduced Thursday as the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks’ affiliate in the NBA Development League. The D-League team which will tip off next November, is partially owned by Donnie Nelson, the Mavericks’ president of basketball operations. Hiring Lieberman was his idea, and he’s confident young men won’t have a problem taking orders from a woman — at least, not this woman.
“She’s got the skins, the experience — she knows what she’s doing — so I certainly hope that we’re well beyond those issues,” Nelson said. “Besides, if you can’t respect authority, no matter what form or color it comes in, I don’t want you on my team.”
Lieberman made the U.S. Olympic team for the first women’s tournament, at the 1976 Montreal Games. She starred at Old Dominion and in various women’s pro leagues, then in 1986 played for the Springfield Fame of the United States Basketball League. When the WNBA started, she returned as a player, and later was a coach and general manager. She returned briefly as a player in July 2008, at age 50.
“I feel like I’m the right person for the job,” she said. “I know how these guys feel. I played in the minor leagues. I’m ultimately connected to that part of development in a player’s life.”
She’s also proud to break another gender barrier, one she hopes “could be the last barrier.”
“I kind of look at President Obama,” she said. “Everybody knows it’s historical because he’s a man of color. But at the end of the day, regardless of his race, creed, color or gender, he has to be president. Everybody knows I’m a woman, but at the end of the day, regardless of my race, creed, color or gender, I have to win basketball games.
“In 1986, my goal was not to be a girl playing in a men’s league, it was to be a player in a men’s league,” she added. “In 2010, I don’t want to be a woman who is coaching men, I want to be a coach who is coaching.”
NBA commissioner David Stern, a strong supporter of the development league and women’s basketball, called the hiring “great news for all.”
“This is wonderful for the NBA D-League,” Stern said. “A basketball pioneer and Hall of Famer continues her journey.”
While the hiring is the most notable in D-League history, it’s no publicity stunt.
Lieberman has lived in the Dallas area for 28 years and happens to live about 3 miles from the new D-League team’s gym in Frisco, a north suburb. She’s run summer camps for girls and boys since 1983, so long that she’s now teaching the children of some former pupils.
Her involvement on every level of basketball, along with the obvious marketing benefit, is part of why Nelson calls the hiring “a no-brainer.”
“What she’s done on a grass-roots level for basketball around here is second-to-none, and her experience can rival anybody’s in basketball, from Olympics to professional to being in the Hall of Fame,” Nelson said. “That, and the D-League is all about dreaming coming true, providing opportunities.”
Staying close to home is especially important to Lieberman because her son, T.J., is 15 and she wants to keep watching him play basketball.
“When I told him I was going to do this, he was so excited,” she said. “That was so different from when I came back last summer. He was like, ‘Ma, come on.’ But then the night I played, kids were blowing up his cell phone and he’s like, ‘Dude! I’m here with her! We’re making history!’”
The Mavericks will loan several players from their roster to the Frisco club and obviously will have input on other signees. Lieberman said she would like to watch Mavs coach Rick Carlisle so she can run the same drills and use similar technical terms to make the transition between the teams easier on all the players.
Longtime NBA coach Del Harris will be the team’s general manager. Former slam dunk champion Spud Webb, who is from the area, will be president of basketball operations. The team has yet to be officially named. What’s Your Take On The Matter? Register and/or sign in and sound off!
The Children’s Defense Fund issued a report called America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline. The report identifies what it calls “an urgent national crisis at the intersection of poverty and race that puts Black boys at a one in three lifetime risk of going to jail, and Latino boys at a one in six lifetime risk of the same fate.”
Judge Glenda Hatchett had plenty to say about this subject on her recent visit to the Monique Show. Not sitting down and accepting this report, Judge Hatchett tours around the country with her project entitled Parent Power Now!
Take a look above to see what she talking about. Also if you haven’t done so, take a look at The Monique Show which airs at 11:00 AM on BET. Monique uses her show as a platform to educate the African American community. For all the BET haters, this show is different and is truly inspirational.
Take Judge Hatchett’s order and spread the word the about The Monique Show.
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Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspected gunman behind a shooting rampage at Fort Hood is alive, hospitalized in stable condition and in custody, the commanding general of Fort Hood said Thursday night in contradicting his own information provided earlier on Thursday. Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was the only shooter.
The Army psychiatrist who formerly resided in the Washington area worked at the Walter Reed hospital. Hasan was promoted to major last year, according to the Congressional Record. A Pentagon source said he was recently reassigned from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington to work with soldiers at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood. He “was scheduled to be deployed and was upset about that,” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said on CNN after receiving a briefing from Army officials.
Hasan is a U.S. citizen, according to Virginia voting records, and his parents are Palestinians from the West Bank, according to his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church. He was born at Arlington Hospital Center.
Hasan, 39, had lived in Montgomery County, Md., and Arlington, Va., in addition to Roanoke and nearby Vinton, Va. He graduated from Virginia Tech and earned his medical degree at Bethesda’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, records show.
Hasan attended the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring and was “very devout,” according to Faizul Khan, a former imam at the center. Khan said Hasan attended prayers at least once a day, seven days a week, often in his Army fatigues.
Khan also said Hasan applied to an annual matrimonial seminar that matches Muslims looking for spouses. “I don’t think he ever had a match, because he had too many conditions,” Khan said.
“We never got into details of worldly affairs or politics,” the former imam said of his conversations with Hasan. “Mostly religious questions. But there was nothing extremist in his questions. He never showed any frustration. . . . He never showed any . . . wish for vengeance on anybody.”
However, a fellow Army officer who worked with Hasan told Fox News Channel that Hasan had expressed strong opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“He would make comments to other individuals about how we should not be in the war in the first place,” Col. Terry Lee told the network. “He made those comments, and he stuck strongly to his faith, but as soldiers we have a duty to follow orders from our commander in chief, and our political views are set aside.”
U.S. counterterrorism officials said it was too early to draw conclusions about the Fort Hood incident, but one senior official said he did not believe there had been any specific warnings to military installations or similar facilities about this type of attack.
Cone said Thursday evening that he did not yet have information on which units were inside the processing center at 1:30 p.m., when the shooting took place. Authorities said at first that shots were also fired at the nearby Howze Theater, but they said later that all casualties had been in the processing center.
“There were eyewitness accounts that there may have been more than one shooter,” the commander said, adding that security personnel “tracked the suspected individuals to an adjacent facility, and they were apprehended. They are soldiers.”
A Fort Hood spokesman later said the two suspects were released and that another was detained. He declined to identify them.
The base responded to the attack by locking down its gates.
Located near Killeen, Tex., Fort Hood is the U.S. military’s largest installation and the only Army post in the United States that houses two divisions. It is also the home of III Corps headquarters.
The 209,000-acre installation houses more than 92,000 people, according to the Fort Hood Fact Book. The total number of military personnel assigned is about 57,000, and there are 17,900 on-post family members. About 5,600 civilians and 9,500 contractors also work at Fort Hood, the fact book says.
The shooting took place as soldiers and family members were gathering for an annual college graduation ceremony, held to recognize those who were not able to participate in college commencement exercises because of deployments.
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