A 23-year-old man and his friend have been arrested in connection with the gruesome killing of his mother, whose body was cut up with a power saw and scattered in bags throughout their New York City neighborhood, law enforcement officials tell NBC 4 New York.

Both men have admitted to chopping up the body and using a shopping cart to dump the parts along the curb in the Bronx, but each is pointing the finger at the other for killing the mother, 45-year-old Tania Byrd, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

The initial charges do not include murder. Bahsid McLean, 23, and William Harris, 26, are both charged with unlawful dissection of a human body, among other charges. They were in custody and lawyer information was not immediately available.

Law enforcement officials tell NBC 4 New York that the two men tell different stories. The son says he left the apartment he shared with his mother at about 3 a.m. Monday to go to the ATM. When he returned, he has told investigators, his friend had stabbed Byrd to death and threatened to kill him and his 6-year-old brother if he didn't help get rid of the body.

His friend, meanwhile, has told investigators that the son told him he killed his mother and showed him a photograph of her, dead, asking for his friend's help in disposing of her corpse.

The two suspects agree that they went to a Bronx hardware store to purchase supplies for the job, including a power saw and gloves. Investigators say there are bloodstains at the apartment and that it appears someone tried to clean up the mess with bleach.

An empty power saw box was also found there. The saw was found at the apartment of the friend's girlfriend, officials said.

Law enforcement officials say the pair cut up the body on Monday night and dumped it around 9:30 p.m. Surveillance camera video shows the son in the apartment building lobby, leaving the elevator with numerous bags, and then video outside the building shows two men wheeling away a shopping cart.

Officials say a man walking his dog along 158th Street early Tuesday morning came upon a plastic bag of what he thought were books. As he moved to open the bag, he noticed a vehicle circling the block and became nervous, so he took the bag around the corner and looked inside, finding two hands and a shoulder.

He sent his son to call police and continued walking the dog. About two blocks away on Eagle Avenue he and the dog came upon a suitcase, and the dog sat down next to it. The man opened the suitcase and found a woman's torso, wearing a bra, according to law enforcement officials.

Responding police found a plastic bag further down Eagle Avenue that contained a leg and a foot, and then nearby on Cauldwell Avenue, they found a black suitcase with a leg and the woman's head.

People who knew Byrd were stunned by the grisly killing.

"Every time you see her, she would have a smile on her face," said neighbor Chastity Agosto. "How could a son do that to his mother?

Parts of San Diego heard a mysterious boom on Wednesday afternoon, according to officials.

Multiple people throughout the county heard the sound around 10 a.m.

Police received calls of the strange sound and an official with Naval Base Coronado said they heard it as well, but it was not from training on the island.

It is unsure at this time what made the noise.

Check back for updates on this story.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's unusual decision to release hundreds of "low-risk" undocumented immigrants from detention may be a straightforward move to cut costs in anticipation of the massive spending reductions scheduled to hit the federal government Friday.

It may also be part of a broader political maneuver by President Barack Obama's administration to force lawmakers to find a way to avert the automatic downsizing.

Whatever the case, one thing seems clear: the action has angered Republicans. That won't make it much easier for the president to achieve one of his top second-term goals: reforming the nation's immigration laws.

The White House says it didn't have any say in the releases and didn't see them coming. That seemed reasonable to Gregory Chen, director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington.

"I'd be surprised (if the White House were involved), because if anything, this has a detrimental effect on pushing forward with immigration reform," Chen said.

He added: "It will create some controversy about the immigration issue, and controversy always makes it hard."

Obama wants Congress to pass a law that gives undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, as long as they meet stringent requirements. Republicans and some Democrats want assurances that border security won't be weakened. The president met with Republican senators on the issue Tuesday, just as news of the ICE releases was breaking. The Republicans said the meeting went well.

Around that time, ICE announced that it had started releasing several hundred illegal immigrants from detention centers around the country as a way to deal with the looming automatic budget cuts, known as the sequester. All of those released were put on some sort of supervision until their deportation cases are completed, an ICE spokeswoman said.

Now GOP leaders are furious at ICE, and Obama. They say the releases threaten national security and could be used as a way to "scare" the public about the impending budget cuts, known as a sequester, and give in to groups pushing the administration to soften its detention policies.

There are more than 30,000 immigrants held in public and privately owned detention centers at any one time, the result of a rapid expansion of detentions and deportations under the Obama administration.

The total number of people detained by ICE annually has about doubled since 2001 to more than 400,000. Most have been picked up by police after being stopped for relatively trivial matters, like traffic violations, although there are also many who've been convicted of serious crimes. The result is a huge backlog in immigration courts and a crowding of detention centers, where it costs the government, depending on the source, between $122 and $160 a day per detainee.

Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, accused the president of using the threat of a sequester to pursue a "de facto catch-and-release policy" that was already in the works.

Immigrant rights groups, meanwhile, applauded the move as proof that it made good economic sense to stop detaining low-risk undocumented immigrants who haven't been found guilty of a crime.

Doris Meissner, who headed the Immigration and Naturalization Service under former President Bill Clinton, told the Washington Post that it wasn't clear what ICE's motivation was: scare tactic, policy move or both.

Chen, of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the releases made sense, even if the timing didn't.

"From our viewpoint, a lot of these people shouldn't be in detention anyway," he said. "So, why would ICE have chosen to do it now? Maybe they've finally confronted the budgetary problem, and they need to start making some clear decision."

The 35-year-old man who killed two Santa Cruz, Calif., police officers before being killed himself on Tuesday was angry, distraught and likely stole the service weapons off  police after he shot them dead and stole their car.

That's what Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak said Wednesday at a news conference was a key part of his agency's investigation into why Jeremy Goulet had three weapons — and body armor — when he was found dead after a gun battle with police.

Two of those weapons, Wowak said, likely belonged to Det. Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker and Det. Elizabeth Butler, who were both killed about 3:30 p.m. as they were following up on a sexual assault allegation against Goulet in the 800 block of North Branciforte Avenue. They died at Goulet's doorstep. Wowak said Wednesday that both officers had been "disarmed."

Still, Wowak said the matter needed to be investigated. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that Goulet owned a .40-caliber semi-automatic Sig Sauer and a Baretta and another gun that wasn't identified.

Wowak also said that after Goulet killed the two officers, he then stole Baker's car and hid in the neighborhood while a massive dragnet that included the FBI, the sheriff's department, as well as Capitola, Watsonville and Scotts Valley police departments and the California Highway Patrol searched for him.

They found Goulet on Doyle Street. That's where teams of officers shot and killed him in hail of gunfire.

The in-the-line-of-duty police deaths are the first for the city of Santa Cruz.

"They were just doing their jobs," Wowak said. "They had done this thousands of times. There should be no second guessing what they had been doing."

Wowak described Goulet, a barista at a harbor coffee shop who had been recently fired over sexual assault allegations, as "destructive in nature," "unhappy in life" and either "suicidal or homicidal." He also said Goulet had been arrested twice in the last week for being drunk in public.

His father, Ronald Goulet, told the Associated Press that his son had numerous run-ins with the law.

Indeed, Jeremy Goulet was found guilty in 2008 of peeping at a woman while she showered in Portland, Ore., and also was convicted of carrying a gun without a permit.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported he was arrested last week for disorderly conduct, and was fired Saturday from his job as a barista at a harbor coffee shop. 

Goulet apparently broke into a co-worker's house on Friday and made inappropriate sexual advances toward her, according to a coffee shop employee who spoke to the paper. He was fired from the coffee shop on Saturday, the newspaper reported.

The female barista filed a police report and talked to police as late as Tuesday afternoon. That may have been what sent investigators back to Goulet's residence Tuesday.

Goulet used to live in Berkeley with his twin brother for about a year, according to a former neighbor, Alicia Morrison. She said she used to housesit for the brothers who would sometimes get into "pretty violent fights."

"I had no idea he would be gun violent, even violent in general," she said. "I thought he was just a peeper, just a little peeper creeper, not an actual violent person."

Goulet also once worked at Cole Coffee in Oakland, where the owner said he was fired after six months for not following company policies.

Because of the tragedy, all Santa Cruz police officers were off work Wednesday. The city was protected by the sheriff's office and the CHP. Churches opened their doors, schools flew their flags t half staff and countless people stopped by City Hall to place flowers and candles at a growing memorial for the slain officers.

Baker had been with the department for 28 years and leaves behind a wife, Kelly, two daughters, Gilian and Ashley, and a son, Adam, who works for the department as a community service officer. 

Butler leaves her partner, Peter, and two young sons. She had carved out a niche in sexual assaults, Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel said. She grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she earned a degree in community studies.

The city was trying to do its best in the wake of such grief.

As police spokesman Zach Friend said: "There is nothing good about this morning. We lost our dear friends yesterday. We lost two community heroes."

 NBC Bay Area's Jodi Hernandez contributed to this report.

A CALTRANS workers performed CPR on an infant on Monday and was able to save the child's life.

The organization thanked maintenance worker Joe Thomas on Twitter Tuesday morning saying, "Great job Joe!"

The car had stopped along state Route 54 Monday, prompting Thomas to help the baby.

Check back for updates on this story.

San Diegans declared dead, when they’re really alive.

Some San Diegans are being mistakenly "killed" by the Social Security Administration and the errors have a real impact on the people who are very much "alive.”

Mark Pinney, 58, was born and raised in San Diego.

He says he lived a pretty ordinary life, until the extraordinary happened in September 2010 at a Pine Valley Albertsons.

His bank card was denied.

So he went to his Union Bank to get it sorted out.

“When I went into the service people they told me that I was deceased, but I said, ‘you know here I am,” Pinney said.

The bank representative told Pinney he couldn't reopen his account until he could prove he was alive. He went to the Social Security Administration's Office, where he spoke with an employee.

“He wasn't surprised,” Pinney said, “He was very professional about it, joked about it a little and said this happens occasionally.”

Of the approximately 2.8 million death reports the Social Security Administration receives per year, as many as 28,000 are incorrectly entered into its Death Master File, which contains the Social Security numbers, names, birth dates, death dates, zip codes and last-known residences of more than 89 million deceased Americans.

According to the website, Ancestry.com, which relies on information from Social Security, Pinney had been declared dead on November 21, 2007.

“When that started happening, when I was ‘dead’, there was a lot of joking, ‘Hey you look pretty good for a dead guy or you don't smell so bad for a dead guy!’” Pinney said.

He can laugh about it now, but there were some serious consequences.

Because he was listed as dead, Pinney stopped receiving his disability checks, his only source of income.

“What I had to do from there was get a note from my doctor, send a current picture and have notary republic say I was alive basically,” said Pinney.

In a June 2008 evaluation of the database the U.S. Inspector General said, "Erroneous death entries can lead to benefit termination, cause severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals, and result in the publication of living individuals' [personal identifying information] in the [Death Master File]."

Social Security told Pinney it would resolve his problem and get him off the death list.

Six weeks later, he started receiving his disability checks again. He hasn't had any problems since.

But, he never received confirmation he was taken off the death list.

NBC 7 Investigates was the one who told him, he was still listed as "dead" according to the November 2011 list.

He says he was never told by the Social Security Office, how his name got there in the first place.

NBC 7 asked the Social Security Administration why Mark Pinney was still on their "death list."

By email they said, "By law we cannot provide you with specific case information. As stated, we have reviewed our records and the information on our end is correct. If an individual needs our assistance please provide us with their contact information and we will reach out to them."

Pinney said he doesn’t plan to take further action, since he hasn't had any problems since 2010.
 

After a two-month investigation, officials have arrested three suspects in connection with a San Diego County burglary spree that began last December.

Erik Watte, 26, Henry Zermeno, 22, and an unnamed 17-year-old juvenile suspect were all arrested for their suspected involvement in a burglary ring spanning at least 14 cases ranging from mail theft to commercial and residential burglaries in San Diego and Riverside counties.

Officials say a two-month joint investigation by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service into the suspected burglary ring turned up stolen property, drugs, cash and several guns at a residence in North County’s Rainbow area.

On Tuesday, Fallbrook detectives and U.S. Postal inspectors served a search warrant at home in the 2200 block of Huffstatler Road. Investigators say this is the primary residence of Watte and Zermeno, two of the main suspects allegedly involved in the burglary ring.

The juvenile suspect was also taken into custody prior to Tuesday’s warrant service. Officials say he was in a stolen vehicle at the time of his arrest. He was booked into Juvenile Hall on suspicion of auto theft, conspiracy and residential burglary.

Watte and Zermeno were booked into Vista Jail on possession of stolen property, burglary and narcotics-related charges.

The investigation into this burglary ring is ongoing. Anyone with information that may lead to additional arrests in this case is asked to contact the Sheriff’s Department at (858) 565-5200 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.
 

An 18-year-old man has been sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to felony animal cruelty.

Robin Sangil was convicted of beating three husky puppies to death in a row. Two of the puppies died and another was seriously injured.

He purchased two puppies and went to the same breeder for a new puppy by saying it was for family members. A third puppy was also given to him.

“One puppy was paralyzed after being slammed into a wall,” said Deputy District Attorney Cherie Somerville.

She said Sangil also aided in drowning another puppy and a third puppy sustained several broken bones.

The incidents happened over a two-month period last year.

A group from the local chapter of Animal Protection and Rescue League gathered outside the court protesting Sangil’s actions.

The judge ordered Sangil to take anger management classes and as a term of probation, he is not allowed to own or possess an animal for three years.

A 25-year-old man sustained a serious head injury after a suspect allegedly attacked him with a crowbar at a local gas station.

The violent attack happened Saturday just before 3 a.m. at the Express Gas station located at 5109 Imperial Ave. in San Diego’s Valencia Park area.

The suspect – later arrested and identified by police as Clare Lyly Neighbour, 56 -- had driven into the gas station and told the station clerk he needed gas but had no money. The clerk refused him gas.

Just then, another car drove into the gas station occupied by a man and woman.

The man – identified as Carlos Ramirez, 25 -- began pumping gas when Neighbour walked up to the woman wielding a crowbar. Neighbour demanded money, but the woman refused.

Police say that’s when Neighbour walked up to Ramirez and asked him for money. Again, his request was ignored.

Neighbour then allegedly hit Ramirez about 25 times in the head with the crowbar before fleeing the gas station, officials said.

Ramirez sustained a serious head injury and was transported to a local hospital. The woman was not injured in the crowbar attack.

Neighbour fled the scene following the attack and police were not able to immediately locate him.
He was later arrested Monday afternoon in Huntington Beach, Calif., officials said.

Huntington Beach police turned Neighbour over to San Diego police that same day, and he was booked into San Diego Central Jail on attempted murder and robbery charges.

He appeared in court Wednesday afternoon and pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In court, Deputy District Attorney Chris Moon gave a brief update on Ramirez’s condition stemming from the gas station attack.

“As a result of that attack, the victim nearly died. He suffered a brain hemorrhage [and] fractures in his skull. He lost consciousness as well. And, it’s unclear what the prognosis will be going forward,” said Moon.

Investigators say Neighbouris a transient, who appears to be living out of his truck. He has no direct ties to San Diego.

His bail has been set at $1.5 million. He's scheduled to appear in court again on Mar. 8.
 

The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) has named their new superintendent, less than 24 hours after Superintendent Bill Kowba announced his resignation.

At a meeting Wednesday night, the school district announced that the new SDUSD superintendent will be Cindy Marten, the current principal of Central Elementary School in City Heights.

Kowba will step down effective June 30, 2013 -- the day that signals the end of his three-year contract.

Marten, an educator for the past 25 years, has worked at Central Elementary School since 2002.

At the meeting, Marten spoke of her new position with the district, saying: "This is an incredible honor and I sort of don't believe it."

"I believe in the hope and promise of public education in America," she added.

Read Superintendent Kowba's letter of resignation.

San Diego Unified Board of Education president John Lee Evans released a statement Wednesday night about Marten’s new position.

His statement read, in part:

“In our selection of a new Superintendent we first want a leader who is prepared to carry out the San Diego community based school reform model, Vision 2020, adopted by the board. What does this mean? We want a leader whose primary focus will be on raising achievement levels for all students in our district. We want someone who will focus on our return to schools that will meet the unique needs of each neighborhood. We want someone who will focus on effective teaching by providing support to teachers with meaningful evaluations that improve instruction. We want a servant leader who will demonstrate strong leadership and work collaboratively with district staff and the communities. We want a leader who will be tirelessly focused on the needs of children and will expect all adults to do the same.

We want an educator who is a visionary leader. We want someone who has respect from stakeholder groups with differing opinions. We want a leader who can assertively take San Diego Unified to the goals of Vision 2020.

We have found such a person in our own district. Cindy Marten has been an educator for 25 years. She started in the Poway School District and then came to San Diego to work at one of our most challenging schools in City Heights where she has been for 10 years. She started off as a teacher and then became the principal. Central Elementary serves 850 at-risk youth of which 99% live in poverty and 85% of the students are English Learners. She has delivered on the promise of a high quality neighborhood school in spite of all its challenges. She believes that a child should not have to leave his or her neighborhood for a quality education. She has worked hard for 10 years with a team of close to 100 staff members to make this dream a reality through their motto and driving vision they call “The Central Way: Work hard. Be kind. Dream big. No excuses.”

Ms. Marten has demonstrated that she can produce all of the results that we are looking for in Vision 2020 by collaborating closely with her staff. The Board is unanimous in its support of Ms. Marten and we are sure that in the coming months our teachers, our staff, our students and our community will unite behind Ms. Marten’s leadership.”

Check back for updates on this developing story.

The Escondido Country Club, which has been in business for the past 46 years, will close up shop on Apr. 1, club owners announced Wednesday night.

Owners held a meeting with members to discuss the imminent closure of the club located at 1800 W. Country Club Ln. Owners said they would waive member dues and golfing fees for the month of March, but officially close the doors on Apr. 1.

According to owners, the country club is losing upwards of $35,000 per month and, at this point, the business simply can’t stay afloat.

Club representative Michael Schlesinger said the toughest part of closing the doors would be saying goodbye to their 135 current members and 40 employees.

“Regrettably, years of prior mismanagement, subsequent decay and a tough economy led to this end,” Schlesinger added.

The country club has endured its share of financial woes over the past year. The property was placed into bankruptcy in May 2012. The 110-acre club foreclosed in December 2012.

According to owners, club membership has declined from 500 to 135 members in recent years. Those dwindling membership numbers, combined with the recession and swelling operational costs, ultimately led to financial hardship.

For now, owners said they will continue with basic property upkeep as options for the club are explored. Currently, no development proposals exist for the land.

In a rare display of emotion, Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel teared up on Wednesday, less than a day after two of his officers were killed in the line of duty - the first such occurrence in city history.

He described the awful predicament of being an agency in  mourning, and one investigating just how and why Jeremy Goulet, 35, would have killed two officers who showed up at his North Branciforte Avenue home on Tuesday about 3:30 p.m. on his doorstep. The officers killed were: Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker, who had been with the department 28 years, and Det. Elizabeth Butler, who had been with the department for ten.

"We have never experienced this before," Vogel said. "There's  absolutely no words for me to adequately stand here before you and describe  what my department's been going through since yesterday afternoon."

Baker had a "tenacious appetite to find the truth," Vogel said, adding that he was once Baker's partner.

"He was my most skilled investigator, Vogel added. "I consider Butch not only to be my coworker but he was also my  mentor, and my friend," Vogel said.

He said Baker acted as a mentor to young officers throughout his career, and that many of those people had surpassed him in rank.

Baker, a 1979 graduate of Bellarmine Preparatory School in San Jose, leaves behind a wife, Kelly, two daughters, Gillian and Ashley, and a son, Adam, who was a community service officer for the police department.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that Baker worked at UC Santa Cruz with Executive Vice Chancellor Alison Galloway, a noted forensic anthropologist, on several notable cases including the still-unsolved case of Pogonip Jane, a woman whose remains were found in Santa Cruz's largest greenbelt in 1994.

Butler was a Los Angeles native and graduated from Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance in 1992. She then attended UC Santa Cruz and earned a degree in community studies and ended up staying in the beach side city, where she lived with her partner, Peter, and two young boys ages 5 and 1.

She wrote her senior thesis on her experiences working with young Latinos, according to UC Santa Cruz's website. She attended the Evergreen Police Academy in San Jose in 2003 before joining the Santa Cruz police.

Vogel said she had developed a niche in the area of sexual assault, and was very experienced investigating those cases. "That's the type of case that she was investigating yesterday when  this tragedy happened," he said.

Before that, she had worked as a patrol officer, hostage negotiator, and an agent assigned to the Santa Cruz County drug task force.

The two had no reason to believe that Goulet would have been so distraught and homicidal when they approached his house after a former coffee shop employee alleged that he had sexually assaulted her, according to Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak.

"They had done this thousands of times," he said at a news conference on Wednesday. "They were just doing their jobs."

None of the 94 sworn Santa Cruz police officers were at work on Wednesday; the city gave them time to grieve. "We've asked them to take the time they need to repair their  agency and develop the internal strength to come back and continue to serve  you as they have the past 150 years," Sheriff Wowak said. 

Sheriff's deputies and the California Highway Patrol were protecting the city. The officers are expected to return to work on Thursday.
 

Related stories:

Santa Cruz Cop Killer May Have Stolen Police Guns

Santa Cruz Suspect's Dad: He Was a Ticking Time Bomb

Shootout Caught on Tape

"Darkest Day" For Santa Cruz, Two Officers Killed

Two Santa Cruz Police Officers Killed

 

New Mexico was red hot, especially in the second half when the Lobos shot 60% from the floor.
The Aztecs had a miserable night from beyond the arc, hitting on only 4 of 23 attempts. Their overall shooting percentage was just 36% for the game.

New Mexico's big men combined for 41 points. Alex Kirk, the 7 footer was 3-for-3 on three pointers.
Australian forward Cameron Bairstow added 16. Kendall Williams,  who had 46-points Saturday at Colorado State was held to just eight.

Jamaal Franklin led San Diego State with 16-points.

After losing to New Mexico, the Aztecs cannot win the Mountain West regular season title. They are now three and a half games behind the Lobos with two to play. State closes out the season with a home game against Air Force on Wednesday then on the road Saturday at Boise State. 
 

A new bill that would change an antiquated California rape law is moving up in Sacramento after lawmakers unanimously voted on Tuesday to take the first step to close a loophole in the legislation.

Senate Bill 59 would alter an 1872 law that does not protect unmarried victims of unwanted sex if the attacker impersonates the victim’s boyfriend or girlfriend.

Under California Penal Code Section 261, it is a felony to impersonate someone’s spouse during a rape.

"There’s a number of statutes that are a century old that are absurd by standards now, but we don’t know it until some things come to light," said Rhys Williams, press secretary for Sen. pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who helped coauthor the proposed bill.

"You realize that this is one area of many thousands of pages of California statutes that needs updating."

In the 2009 court case The People v. Julio Morales, the defendant was accused of having sexual intercourse with a sleeping woman who was under the impression that Morales was her boyfriend.

California’s 2nd District Court of Appeals threw out the case in January, saying that Morales could not be charged with rape because the victim was not married.

Sen. Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) began co-authoring the bill in January with 12 other senators, including Steinberg.

The Senate Public Safety Committee voted 6-0 Tuesday to advance SB59. Williams said the bill’s importance was evident as it was the first bill heard at the session.

The bill is now headed to the California Senate Appropriations Committee before it goes to the Senate Floor for approval.

The bill would become effective if it passes the State Assembly, which Williams expects to happen in April or May.

Once passed, the bill would bring Morales’ case, which spurred the bill’s writing, back to court.

"The judge said there are other grounds this case could be tried on that are stronger to get the appropriate verdict," Williams said.

"But since the U.S. Constitution doesn’t work retroactively, it would not apply to previous incarnations of this bill," he added.

Williams said that SB59 will have fiscal considerations after it passes the Appropriations Committee given that it would expand potential felonies.

The bill will broaden the law and apply to other forms of sexual interaction, beyond the standard definition of rape, Williams said.

A 23-year-old man was charged with murder and his friend arrested on lesser charges in connection with the gruesome killing of his mother, whose body was cut up with a power saw and scattered in bags throughout their Bronx neighborhood, law enforcement officials tell NBC 4 New York.

Both men have admitted to chopping up the body and using a shopping cart to dump the parts along the curb in Morrisania, but each is pointing the finger at the other for killing the mother, 45-year-old Tania Byrd, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Bahsid McLean, 23, has been charged with second-degree murder, police said. He and William Harris, 26, are both charged with unlawful dissection of a human body, among other charges. They were in custody and lawyer information was not immediately available.

Law enforcement officials tell NBC 4 New York that McLean has photos of himself cutting up the body.

Officials say the two men tell different stories. The son says he left the apartment he shared with his mother at about 3 a.m. Monday to go to the ATM. When he returned, he has told investigators, his friend had stabbed Byrd to death and threatened to kill him and his 6-year-old brother if he didn't help get rid of the body.

His friend, meanwhile, has told investigators that the son told him he killed his mother, and showed him a photograph of her, dead, asking for his friend's help in disposing of her corpse.

The two suspects agree that they went to a Bronx hardware store to purchase supplies for the job, including a power saw and gloves. Investigators say there are bloodstains at the apartment, and that it appears someone tried to clean up the mess with bleach.

An empty power saw box was also found there. The saw was found at the apartment of the friend's girlfriend, officials said.

Law enforcement officials say the pair cut up the body on Monday night and dumped it around 9:30 p.m. Surveillance camera video shows the son in the apartment building lobby, leaving the elevator with numerous bags, and then video outside the building shows two men wheeling away a shopping cart.

Officials say a man walking his dog along 158th Street in Morrisania early Tuesday morning came upon a plastic bag of what he thought were books. As he moved to open the bag, he noticed a vehicle circling the block and became nervous, so he took the bag around the corner and looked inside, finding two hands and a shoulder.

He sent his son to call police and continued walking the dog. About two blocks away on Eagle Avenue he and the dog came upon a suitcase, and the dog sat down next to it. The man opened the suitcase and found a woman's torso, wearing a bra, according to law enforcement officials.

Responding police found a plastic bag further down Eagle Avenue that contained a leg and a foot, and then nearby on Cauldwell Avenue, they found a black suitcase with a leg and the woman's head.

People who knew Byrd were stunned about the grisly killing.

"Every time you see her, she would have a smile on her face," said neighbor Chastity Agosto. "How could a son do that to his mother?

A highly-anticipated pedestrian underpass in Encinitas officially opened to the public Wednesday afternoon.

The new pedestrian crossing near the train tracks off South Coast Highway 101 near Santa Fe Drive is designed to provide safer and easier access to Swami’s Beach, representatives from SANDAG said.

The $5.9 million project is the first of four grade-separated crossings planned in the City of Encinitas. SANDAG says the crossings should help improve safety and coastal access along the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo (LOSSAN) rail corridor.

Funding and planning for the project was coordinated by SANDAG, with the City of Encinitas and Caltrans also providing funding for the project.

On Wednesday, a special ribbon-cutting ceremony was held to celebrate the opening of the underpass. Local dignitaries – including Encinitas Mayor Teresa Arballo Barth and SANDAG Chair Jack Dale – gathered on South Coast Highway 101 to officially open the underpass to the public.

“This new rail bridge and pedestrian undercrossing provide a convenient and safe way for pedestrians and cyclists to get from one side of the railroad to the other to access coastal recreational areas, cultural resources, historic Downtown Encinitas and our beautiful Coast Highway 101 corridor,” Mayor Barth said at the ceremony.

For information about the new pedestrian crossings in Encinitas, click here.

Working from home is OK with Yahoo -- just not while working at Yahoo. Understand?

One of the original tech titans, Yahoo is now seen as a cumbersome, sluggish, lumbering behemoth, and new CEO Marissa Mayer is looking for ways to shake things up. And shake it up she did, when her company issued new instructions last week informing employees who work remotely to start showing up at the office -- or look for a new job.

The decree has since touched off a "firestorm" of protest, with workers within the industry -- which is used to flexibility, as all one needs to work is a computer and an Internet connection -- blasting Mayer for inflexibility, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

A Yahoo spokesperson said that the order is not a "broad industry view," just "what is right for Yahoo right now," the newspaper reported. Mayer herself has not offered comment.

Many industries beyond the Silicon Valley computer world allow employees to do work from places other than the office, but experts appear not necessarily in agreement that an office or remotely is the best forum from which to squeeze the most from employees.

Three San Diegans died from influenza recently, according to the County Health and Human Services Agency.

Total flu deaths for this season are now at 43.

The three newly reported deaths ranged from age 82-86. All of the victims also had underlying conditions.

More than 4,500 cases have been reported in San Diego County this season. The Center for Disease Control recommends getting a flu vaccination to prevent disease.