The 18-year-old daughter of Taunton’s mayor has disappeared from an Ohio rehab facility and may be presenting herself under an alias.
“Ted and I are devastated and extremely worried about her safety and well being,” Shaunna O’Connell posted on her Facebook page Wednesday afternoon.
“We are working with the facility, police and missing persons to find her as soon as possible to bring her home. We are praying for Riley’s safe return. Please keep Riley in your thoughts and prayers,” the one-time GOP state rep added.
O’Connell said that her daughter, Riley O’Connell, went missing the night before from the Evoke Wellness, a facility in Ohio that according to its website offers “medical detox and residential treatment programs. She was last seen wearing red shorts, a white tank top and no shoes, according to a wanted poster shared by the mayor.
Riley O’Connell is 18 years old, 130 pounds, 5-foot-5, with long blonde hair with red tips and may be going by the aliases “Tiffany Rose” or “Tiffany Silva.” She is also traveling without “vital medication.”
Current Swampscott resident Kemal “Kemo” Mrndzic, 51, has been indicted in a scheme to cover up his past as a prison guard during the brutal Bosnian War in the 1990s in order to become a U.S. citizen, the feds allege.
The Bosnian War, in which the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from Soviet Yugoslavia, erupted in the Spring of 1992 and didn’t end until late 1995. The sectarian war pitted three main groups against each other: the Orthodox Christian Bosnian Serbs, the Roman Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims, which the charging document says were referred to as “Bosniaks.”
“War crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and breaches of the Geneva Conventions were found to have been committed on a broad scale during the conflict,” the document summarizes. “Those crimes included the detention, persecution, torture, and murder of civilians based on their religion and ethnicity.”
Mrndzic is accused of lying about his past as a supervisor of the Celebici Prison Camp — where he served with at least several men who were subsequently convicted of wartime atrocities at the camp — in order to come to the U.S. to begin a new life. He was first admitted into the U.S. under refugee status in 1999 and became a naturalized citizen a decade later.
“This prosecution demonstrates that the Department of Justice and our law enforcement partners will spare no effort in detecting and prosecuting those who engage in wartime persecution and then cross our borders to conceal their history,” Acting U.S. Attorney Josha Levy said in a statement. “Emigrating to the United States is a privilege and if you conceal your criminal conduct to deceive your way into this country, you will ultimately be detected.”
The FBI’s Boston field office has announced that they arrested a Worcester couple they say participated in the Capitol riot in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. That bring’s the office’s number of arrests for the incident to 24.
Long Duong, who the feds say also goes by Jimmy Hoang Duong, 54; and Julie Miller, also known as Hong Ngo, 51, were arrested Thursday.
The pair first entered the U.S. Capitol building through the Senate Fire Door just before 3 p.m. that day, the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleges, and then immediately entered the Senate Parliamentarian’s office where Miller allegedly “filmed the destruction that had already occurred” there.
Miller allegedly sat in a desk chair in the ruined office as Duong took photos before they were pushed out of the office by police after around five minutes.
