A 12-year-old boy in Pixley, California has been arrested in the connection of the shooting death of his grandmother.

The boy, whose name was not disclosed because of his age, was booked into Tulare County Juvenile Hall, Sgt. Chris Douglass said. The victim was identified as Shirley Bowles, 76.

Deputies were called to the 16000 block of East Wright Street about 10:50 a.m. Bowles was found shot in the “upper body,” deputies reported.

Though alive and responsive at first, officials said, Bowles died after being transported to an area hospital. An autopsy will be performed today, Douglass said.

The type of weapon used in the shooting was not disclosed.

A Kansas City, Missouri woman testifying in a trial about the death of her daughter admitted that the child’s injuries were life threatening, but she refused to get her medical attention anyway.

Testifying in her husband’s first-degree murder trial, Michelle Johnson said she watched Harrell Johnson kick little Erica Green in the head and later helped him dump the girl’s decapitated body in a wooded area of Kansas City.

A police officer found Erica’s naked, headless naked body in April 2001. Lacking an identity, she was known only as “Precious Doe” until 2005, when a community activist received a tip Harrell Johnson’s grandfather in Muskogee, Okla., where the couple lived.

Harrell Johnson’s trial began Monday in Jackson County Circuit Court, and prosecutors completed their presentation Tuesday with Michelle Johnson’s testimony and a videotaped confession by the 29-year-old defendant.

The defense also rested, without calling any witnesses, and closing arguments are expected Wednesday. The defense admits that Harrell Johnson kicked the girl, but contends that the act was not premeditated, as required for a first-degree murder conviction.

Nebraska might want to rethink its “safe haven” law. This case marks the 17th child abandoned since the law went into effect just 3 months ago.

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services said the girl is from Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the Missouri River from Omaha. She was left at Creighton University Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon, and her case was reported to Iowa authorities.

[The law] was meant to protect the lives of infants by letting a parent leave them at any state-licensed hospital without fear of prosecution, but the law doesn’t set any age limit.

The law’s legal protections might not apply since the girl is not from Nebraska, said Todd Landry, director of the department’s division of Children and Family Services.

“We have made a formal report of the abandonment to the Iowa child abuse hotline,” Landry said in a statement. “We are working with the Iowa Department of Human Services to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.”

A 29-year-old has been charged with restraining a teenage girl’s hand during a flight from San Diego to Denver. Did he think nobody would notice?

[Ezra James] Wallace was in a window seat on the plane, and the sisters were in the row’s other two seats, according to the affidavit. Before the plane took off, Wallace took pictures of the teen seated in the aisle seat. She covered her face to try to block the photos. During the flight, Wallace grabbed the hands of her sister in the middle seat, and bound them tightly with athletic tape.

He then attempted to bind the other girl’s hands, the affidavit said, but a flight attendant intervened and moved the girls to another row.

Wallace said he drank about a half-pint of vodka prior to the incident, the affidavit said.

The stepbrother of an 11-year-old girl in upstate New York has been charged with her strangulation death. Before her murder, the girl was starved and lived in a garbage filled house that also contained over 100 cats.

Alan Jones, 27, was indicted on a second-degree murder charge in the death of Erin Maxwell on Aug. 29. The girl died a day after she was found unconscious in her bedroom with a green cord around her neck, one end caught on a nail in a window frame.

Lindsey Maxwell, 35, the girl’s father, and Lynn Maxwell, 53, her stepmother, were each charged with six counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

“Erin was being raised in a home with over 100 cats, as well as caged poultry. The home reeked of animal urine. There was animal feces over 18 inches deep in one of the rooms,” State Police Capt. Mark Lincoln said.

Investigators found that Erin was given “minimal amounts of food” and routinely locked every night in a small bedroom. She weighed only 65 pounds, Lincoln said.