Wife on trial for killing husband on Canada hunt trip

The trial of an American who says she killed her husband on a hunting trip after mistaking him for a bear has begun in Canada.

Mary Beth Harshbarger fatally shot her husband Mark with a rifle during a 2006 Newfoundland hunting expedition.
Canadian prosecutors contend it was too dark for her to fire a gun safely and are trying her for criminal negligence.
Ms Harshbarger pleaded not guilty. The trial began with testimony from the couple's hunting guide.
Guide Lambert Greene testified in a Newfoundland courtroom that he and Mark Harshbarger, 42, were walking back toward his pickup truck when he heard a shot followed by a loud scream.
He said he found Mr Harshbarger lying dead on the ground, covered in blood.
"Mary Beth was hysterical," Mr Lambert testified. He said she screamed: "I shot my husband, I shot my love."
Mrs Harshbarger, 45, faces at least four years in prison if she is convicted. She was extradited to Canada from her native Pennsylvania to stand trial after losing a lengthy US court battle.

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US breakfast killing spree in Kentucky

Stanley Neace, 47, went on the killing spree in a trailer park in Jackson, rural Breathitt County, Kentucky.

He chased his wife into a neighbouring trailer where he shot her, her daughter and three witnesses, reports say.

Police say they are looking into why Neace flew into such a wild rage; there are reports he was facing eviction.

State troopers found him dead at the porch of his trailer, slumped over his own gun.

The shooting happened during an argument with his wife Sandra, 54, after she brought him some eggs for breakfast, a relative of the neighbours he killed said.

Mrs Neace's daughter Sandra Strong, 28, was also killed.


The other victims were named as neighbours Dennis Turner, 31, Teresa Fugate, 30, and Tammy Kilborn, 40.



   " Over eggs? I thought that was crazy. I mean just because his eggs weren't hot?”

 Sherri Anne Robinson Victim's relative

Ms Fugate was shot in front of her seven-year-old daughter, whom Neace spared.

"Her daughter said, 'Please, please don't shoot me,' and he said, 'All right, you can leave,' and she ran out," Ms Fugate's sister Sherri Anne Robinson told the Associated Press.

Mrs Kiborn was another neighbour who stepped out onto her porch during the commotion, reports said.

Neace apparently waited an hour for the police to arrive before turning the gun on himself, police heard the shot as they drove up to the trailer.

Other neighbours had fled in terror during the rampage.

Breathitt County is Kentucky's rural eastern region, where gun ownership is widespread.

"Over eggs? I thought that was crazy. I mean just because his eggs weren't hot?" Ms Robinson said.

But Jackson police say there may be other factors that led to the shooting and they are still investigating.

The landlord of the Mount Carmel trailer park where Neace lived told reporters he had begun the process of evicting him because he had become hostile to neighbours in recent months.

"He was unpredictable, little things would set him off," Ray Rastegar told the Associated Press.

But County Sheriff Ray Clemons said he had known Neace for some years, and he did not have a bad record.

"He was a little hot sometimes, but we never had any major problems. Nothing like this."

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Mexico drug crime is not as bad as Colombia

The remark is an apparent contradiction to comments made by his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

She said on Wednesday that the drug war in Mexico had begun to resemble the violence in Colombia 20 years ago.

But Mr Obama told a US Spanish-languange newspaper that there was no comparison between the two.

"Mexico is vast and progressive democracy, with a growing economy, and as a result you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago," he told the Los Angeles-based daily La Opinion.
'Morphing'

Mrs Clinton made her remarks after a foreign policy speech at a think tank in Washington.

Drug cartels, she said, were "showing more and more indices of insurgencies".

The traffickers were "in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America", she said.

The violence was beginning to resemble Colombia of 20 years ago when insurgent groups controlled some 40% of the country, Mrs Clinton added.

Mexico rejected Mrs Clinton's analogy.

Speaking in Mexico City, a government spokesman said the only aspect that the Mexican and Colombian conflicts share is their root cause - a high demand for drugs in the US.

More than 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon deployed the army to fight the cartels in 2006 and violence has spilled over into Central America.

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