Arthur Basaldua pleaded guilty this week in New Iberia to attempted murder of Valerie King of Breaux Bridge and Eddie Mackenzie of Youngsville, and to state drug charges from 2004. Sentencing is scheduled June 3.On Wednesday, a federal judge is to sentence Basaldua and eight others indicted with him last year on drug charges. Prosecutors said they were linked to the Cuatro Flats gang of east Los Angeles.He was the first of 5 to plead guilty; the others were convicted Jan. 29.Basaldua admitted one count of continuing criminal enterprise, which carries a minimum 20-year sentence.
''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an...
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