NORWALK, CA – A gang member with scenes from a liquor store murder tattooed across his chest was sentenced to 65 years to life in prison, according to reports.

Anthony Garcia was convicted of first degree murder in April in connection with the Jan. 2004 killing of John Juarez in front of Ed’s Liquor in Pico Rivera, Calif.  According to the Whittier Daily News, Garcia was sentenced on Thursday.

The case went cold until Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide detective Sgt. Kevin Lloyd came across a photo of Garcia’s tattoo, and recognized the crime scene images and details of the killing.

“I remembered in 2004, I’d been at the scene when the murder occurred in the city of Pico Rivera and so right away, it caught my attention,” Lloyd told CBS affiliate KCBS Friday of the tattoo. “The victim was standing at the corner, gets shot in the head and then falls down in the… driveway of the liquor store.”

Lloyd said the murder was a shooting against Garcia’s rival gang.

Garcia was arrested at a La Habra home in October 2008. Parker said he confessed while in the Norwalk sheriff’s station jail and was booked for murder the same day.

“All I can say is he’s very boastful and arrogant and so he was very proud of his tattoo and when he was in a position, he would talk to other people about it,” Lloyd added.

The man who drove the getaway car also confessed and faces 20 years in prison.

Detective Lloyd said in his 30 years in law enforcement, he had never seen a tattoo that depicted an entire crime scene, until this unusual case.

Source : CBS News

LITTLE RIVER, SC  – A Little River man was arrested late Friday night, but it isn’t the crime he’s now famous for – it’s his tattoo.

Robert Norton Kennedy, 51, was arrested Friday night around 10 p.m. after spitting in a man’s face in front of an Horry County Police Officer. According to a report, Kennedy was playing loud music, prompting his neighbors to call police.

When the officer arrived, Kennedy decided to spit in the victim’s face. At that time, the officer arrested him for assault and battery, and carted him off to the J. Reuben Long Detention Center.

While the crime isn’t anything of note, Kennedy’s unique tattoo has generated a lot of online buzz.

In the middle of Kennedy’s forehead reads the following:

“WITH GOD ALL THINGS”

“ARE POSSIBLE”

“GOD LOVES YOU”

“Please forgive me if I say or do anything stupid, Thank You!”

“LOVES” is written in bright red ink.

Sgt. Robert Kegler, spokesman for the Horry County Police Department, said he has received phone calls from such places as the New York Post and other news agencies based in London, England.

Websites such as The Huffington Post and The Smoking Gun have posted Kennedy’s mug shot with quips about the tattoo and the incarceration.

According to online booking records with the J. Reuben Long Detention Center, Kennedy remains incarcerated, leaving everyone to wonder if he realizes just how popular his mug shot is.

Source : WMBF News

NORTH CAROLINA – A tattoo artist operating an illegal salon in a Kinston hotel was busted last week when undercover officers raided the unlawful business during an appointment to request some Chinese body art.

Acting on a report an unlicensed tattoo artist had opened a secret salon in a hotel on U.S. 70 East, deputies with the Lenoir County Sheriff’s Office made an appointment with the suspect — 29-year-old Shelton Julian Boyd of Raleigh — to receive some Chinese body art they learned Boyd offered, said Maj. Chris Hill, chief of administrations with the sheriff’s office.

Hill said Joey Huff, director of the Lenoir County Health Department, and two of Huff’s staff first approached sheriff’s deputies on Wednesday with information of Boyd’s operation.

North Carolina law requires those wishing to tattoo to acquire a permit from their local health department.

Hill said around 5:45 p.m., an undercover officer entered the hotel room and observed Boyd tattooing another person with several people in the room waiting to be tattooed.

“Because of the number of patrons in the room, the undercover detective was asked to come back,” Hill said.

Detectives came back to the room, knocked on the door and were allowed in the room, Hill said.

Hill said in the meeting, Boyd admitted he had arrived in Kinston to do a few tattoos, but was not permitted by the health department to do so.

The deputies then proceeded to seize all of the tattooing equipment that Boyd possessed.

Another patron in the room, 17-year-old Jashaun King, of 105 S. Orion Street, Kinston, was cited for simple possession of marijuana.

Source : ENC Today

DEL CITY, OK – Two men and two women are accused of pinning down a man who has learning disabilities, tattooing the word “RAPEST” on his forehead and shocking his genitals with a stun gun before beating him unconscious with a baseball bat, police said Wednesday.

The accused told police they attacked Stetson Johnson, 18, because he tried to have sex with one of them, according to a police spokesman. Detectives found no evidence to support their claims, he said.

Johnson, of Oklahoma City, said he is acquainted with all four but has never tried to hurt any of them. He said the April 17 attack began when he was thrown to the ground and kicked in the face “dozens of times” by two men while two women took turns using a stun gun on his genitals. He said the attackers yelled obscenities at him.

“I was screaming. It was hurting,” he said. “After they kicked me in the face I said, ‘Oh my god, they’re going to kill me.’”

Two women and two men are being held without bail but have not been formally charged. Capt. Jody Suit, spokesman for the Del City Police Department, said police plan to recommend charges of assault and battery, maiming by disfigurement and kidnapping.

The attackers placed duct tape around Johnson’s hands and held him down while one tattooed the word “RAPEST” on his forehead, Johnson said. The word, apparently a misspelling of “rapist,” has since been covered with another tattoo that looks like a bar code.

The attackers also tattooed a phrase on his chest that resembles “I like little boys,” police said.

They then put Johnson in a car and transported him to Eagle Lake in Del City, where he was beaten in the arms and head with a baseball bat, causing a gash in his head that required 18 stitches to close.

Johnson said he was unconscious for about two hours before he awoke and sought help.

“When I got up I felt dizzy,” he said. Johnson said he tried to get help from motorists on a nearby highway before walking about a quarter of a mile to a mobile home park, where a resident called police.

“They found him almost dead,” Suit said.

Johnson spent a week in the hospital, including three days in the intensive care unit, for treatment of a fractured skull, broken nose and other wounds sustained in the beating.

“They almost killed me,” he said.

Police seized tattoo guns, needles, ink and a Taser gun after the suspects were taken into custody, according to a police report.

Suit says the attackers told authorities they were trying to punish Johnson after one of the women accused him of trying to have sex with her. Johnson denies that, and Suit says there’s no evidence to support it.

“To me it’s bullying. The guy has the mentality of a fifth-grader,” Suit said.

He said the four have not yet been assigned public defenders.

Johnson bears scars from the attack and said he has trouble breathing and seeing out of one eye. He also said he suffers from anxiety and has nightmares about being killed.

“Everywhere I go, I look around like, ‘What’s going to happen?’” he said. “I don’t understand why they would do something like this until I was almost dead. They deserve justice.”

He said he would like to have the tattoos removed but cannot afford it. In the meantime, he had the one on his forehead turned into a barcode, with the numerals “7″ that he hopes will bring him luck and a reference to 2010, which he said was a good year for him.

Johnson’s mother, Lucy Ford, said she and her son plan to move from their southwest Oklahoma City home.

“He feels that it’s unsafe for him here. He can’t sleep at night,” Ford said. “I just can’t believe that people would be so mean. He’s 18 years old. He has his whole life before him. And he almost lost it?”

Johnson’s sister, Crystal Cline, said the incident makes her fear for the safety of her two small children.

“People are evil these days,” Cline said.

Source : NPR

COLORADO – With the hotel room black but for the glow of a television and a comforter tucked in at her chin, Kauri Tiyme could have been sleeping.

The custodial worker at the Tech Center Marriott who’d walked in on Tiyme during noon rounds Oct. 17, 2008, quietly backed out so as not to disturb her.

Only later that day would investigators discover the cuts and gashes all over Tiyme’s body, the blood-drenched mattress, a trove of poisons and the scalpel and bloody Goldschlager bottle used to kill the 39-year-old tattoo artist.

Ex-husband Keenu Tiyme, 37, has been charged with her murder, and jurors got their first glimpse Tuesday at the bloody details of Kauri Tiyme’s death over four days in Room 9001.

Keenu Tiyme’s defense attorneys said during opening arguments that the deeply disturbed former spouses had decided on a murder-suicide pact, but that the defendant ultimately couldn’t kill himself.

They’re trying to prove that Keenu Tiyme was insane at the time of the killing, which he admits he committed.

“Depression, desperation and devotion. That’s what this case is about,” defense attorney Joyce Akhahenda said in court.

Prosecutors argued that Kauri Tiyme had wanted to live and cast doubts on the defendant’s suicidal intentions.

They said Kauri Tiyme had a new boyfriend, a new business and at one point resisted her death in the hotel room.

Source : The Denver Post

ARIZONA – An Avondale tattoo artist who prosecutors alleged traded his work for sex with a teenage girl has been sentenced to more than 7 years in prison.
Click here to find out more!

Juan Lara Jr. was sentenced Tuesday for his guilty pleas to attempted child prostitution charges. Sentences for illegal tattooing will be served concurrently.

Avondale police arrested Lara last April after police said he tattooed two 16-year-old girls, one in exchange for sex.

The 38-year-old Lara originally faced charges of sexual conduct with a minor, child prostitution, attempted child prostitution and unlawful tattooing. The most serious charges were dismissed or downgraded as part of a plea bargain.

Source : NECN

ILLINOIS  — A grand jury on Wednesday indicted Illinois tattoo artist Wade Cumberland-county-courthouse.jpgCumberland County Court. Featherston for murder, alleging that he killed his co-worker in a Vineland hotel room in April 2010.

Featherston, 25, faces one count of first-degree murder, second-degree unlawful possession of a handgun and third-degree endangering an injured person in the death of 37-year-old Robert Castello.

The two worked together at Ancient Custom Tattoo & Body Piercing, in Salem, Ill., where both of them resided.

According to statements made by Featherston’s attorney, Robert Luther, Castello and Featherston in April 2010 made the 15-hour drive to New Jersey in order to attend a private class in “micro dermal anchor” piercing at Dynasty Tattoo & Body Piercing, in Newfield.

A micro dermal anchor is a specialized type of piercing where an anchor is placed under a person’s skin that is used to attach jewelry to the surface of the skin.

After the hour-long class, Castello and Featherston returned to their room at the Ramada Inn on Vineland’s West Landis Avenue, Room 246, on April 2, 2010.

Castello was found the following day in his hotel room with injuries to his face and head.
He died as a result of the injuries, according to an autopsy report.

At some point following the confrontation between the two men, Featherston traveled to Philadelphia.

According to Luther, when officers informed Featherston of Castello’s death over the phone, he broke into tears, telling the detectives that they had fought the night before.

Featherston is currently lodged in Cumberland County Jail on $500,000 bail, full cash.

Source : NJ.com

A second man has been arrested after a double shooting at a Berkshire tattoo parlor.

Armed police were called to Fantasy Fine Line in St Mark’s Road, Maidenhead, at 1230 BST on Monday.

Two men, aged 45 and 51, were taken to hospital with leg and shoulder wounds. A 47-year-old arrested at the scene has been released on bail until May.

Police said another man was arrested in London on Tuesday and remains in police custody.
Patrols increased

Detectives have also appealed for two men who were in a white van which pulled up opposite the parlour as the shooting happened to contact them.

They believe they could be “vital” witnesses and stressed they were not suspects.

One of the men got out and removed a road sign.

Police believe up to four men were involved in the shooting.

Det Supt Rob Mason said the shooting was an isolated incident and there was no risk to the public, but he said patrols would be stepped up in the area to reassure the local community.

One of the injured men has been discharged from hospital while the other is still receiving treatment.

Source : BBC News

UNITED KINGDOM – A TATTOO artist is led away in handcuffs after being accused of illegally inking ­children as young as 12.

Alan Newbon, 62, ­allegedly ran an unlicensed shop above his home for youngsters under the age of 18 to have tattoos.

He was busted after ­a police officer noticed a 16-year-old cadet had the words “mum” and “dad” inked on his wrists.

PC Gary Gunnell said: “I thought it was strange he had them on his wrists because you’d think if you were having a sneaky one done you’d have it where no one would see it.”

The boy, who paid £35 for his tattoos, described “a queue of schoolchildren” waiting to get Newbon’s designs.

“We know of at least three other victims but we think there have been more,” said PC Gunnell.

Advertisement – article continues below »

And a neighbor said: “I’ve seen some kids who couldn’t have been much older than 12 or 13 leaving his house.”

But officers believe most of the youngsters Newbon tattooed were aged between 14 and 15.

Police raided Newbon’s studio in New Addington, Surrey, on Wednesday, finding ­business cards, inks, needles and stencils.

He claimed he was just storing equipment.

He was yesterday released on bail. The maximum fine for tattooing a person under the age of 18 is £50.

Source : Daily Mail

ORLANDO, FL – A man was arrested Monday on suspicion of attacking an Orlando tattoo artist and a customer with a sword and guitar before being struck over the head with a glass table top.

Jason Gay, 37, of Lakeland, was arrested on two counts of attempted second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

According to Orlando police, Gay entered Ace’s Tattoo Shop at 2015 S. Orange Ave., and the tattoo artist told him to look through some books while he finished with a customer.

While the artist was giving the customer a tattoo, Gay came around a corner holding a long sword in one hand and a guitar in the other and struck the artist in his shoulder with the sword and hit him in the back of his head with the guitar, according to an arrest affidavit.

Gay said he was going to kill the two men and went after the customer, who was getting a tattoo on his chest, the affidavit said. The customer then jumped off a table and defended himself, the affidavit said.

As the fight continued, the customer picked up a glass table top and hit Gay over the head, cutting him badly, the arrest affidavit stated.

Source : WTSP