Page 28 - Florida Sentinel 8-9-19

National
This 9-Year-Old Has Built More Than 30 Mobile Games
Complaint Accuses Officer Who Shot Black Man Of Blocking Aid
Attorneys for the family of a black man shot and killed by a former police officer in Louisiana have obtained a 2014 complaint accusing the officer of obstructing medical help for a dying victim of a shooting.
News outlets report attor- neys for relatives of Alton Sterling unveiled the com- plaint Monday. Former offi- cer Blane Salamoni fatally shot Sterling outside a Baton Rouge convenience store in 2016.
BLANE SALAMONI
In 2014, an Emergency Management Services em-
ployee stated Salamoni told first responders the patient was already dead. The com- plaint says the patient was observed breathing. Para- medics rendered aid until the patient died.
Last week , Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul apologized to Sterling's family and said Salamoni shouldn't have been hired. The department announced a settlement reversing Salam- oni's firing, allowing him to resign instead.
The 9-year-old is building a hide and seek game, using a free programming application called Scratch 2.
Scratch 2 allows users to cre- ate games, animations, and sto- ries online or offline. So far, Basil has used it to generate more than 30 mobile games.
Today's game involves a bat he has programmed to hide. The player gets a point every time he catches the bat when it emerges from its hiding place.
"I learned how to build games at a boot camp. Now, I build to keep me busy when I am bored," Basil told reporters.
In March, his father signed him up for a five-day boot camp for children aged 5 to 15.
The camp, organized by Codefest International, was put in place to give children like Basil access to emerging tech- nologies like robotics and virtual reality.
Growing up, Basil used to play a lot of mobile games says his father, Basil Okpara Sr.
"I bought him a tablet when he was 4 years old because I saw that he was always grabbing phones to play games with. He played Candy Crush and Temple Run a lot," the father told re- porters.
But Basil's interest in creat- ing his games grew at age 7 after he got scolded for spending all of his time playing.
"There was this day he was on the tablet, as usual, he was so carried away with the game he
Basil Okpara, Jr. is tapping away on his laptop keyboard.
was playing that I got upset with him," his father said.
"Out of annoyance, I said to him, 'you are always playing games, can't you think about building your own games so oth- ers can play yours too?' I was angry when I said it, and I did not know he took it seriously," he added.
Since then, Basil actively showed interest in learning how to make his own games, prompt- ing his parents to buy him a lap- top and register him to learn the first steps of building games.
Basil, who wants to be a sci- entist in the future, titles his games based on what they are about.
The games are still in their raw form and can currently only be accessed on computers that have Scratch 2 installed.
But according to his father one of them, titled Frog attack, will be available to the public on Google play store in August.
Passenger Calls 911 From Inside Luggage Compartment Of Moving Bus, Driver Arrested
A bus driver was arrested for allegedly locking one of her passengers in the luggage compartment of their Boston-bound coach on Sun- day, authorities said.
The Peter Pan bus driver, 49-year-old Wendy Helena Alberty, was booked on sus- picion of unlawful restraint, reckless endangerment and breach of peace, Connecticut state police said.
The victim called 911 at about 4 p.m. from inside the luggage compartment while the bus was on Interstate 84, headed toward Boston, offi- cials said. The call was tracked to the bus and it was
WENDY HELENA ALBERTY
pulled over in Union, Con- necticut.
The driver who was oper-
ating the bus when it was pulled over, identified by po- lice as a male, opened the lug- gage compartments and they found the woman inside, ac- cording to a report written by Trooper Robert Hunter.
"The female victim was asked if she needed medical attention to which she re- fused," Hunter wrote. "She further stated that she had been purposefully locked in- side by a female driver while attempting to retrieve items from her bag. The female driver was still on the bus as a passenger and was identified as the accused Wendy Al- berty."
Walmart Has No Plans To Curb Gun And Ammo Sales After Mass Shooting
“Our focus has always been on being a responsible seller of firearms,” company spokesman Randy Har- grove told Bloomberg.com on Sunday. “We go beyond federal law requiring all cus- tomers to pass a background check before purchasing any firearm.”
He noted that in 2015, Walmart stopped selling mil- itary-style semi-automatic ri- fles and removed from its website air guns and toys that resemble assault weapons. This comes in the wake of the
two deadly mass shootings over the weekend in El Paso, Tex., at a Walmart store, the other in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio. A combined total of 31 were killed.
Hargrove said there are no plans to change the retail giant’s security practice fol- lowing the shooting. The company has raised the age for purchasing weapons from 18 to 21. It does not, however, release data on gun sales.
“There’s not been any di- rective to any stores around
the country to change any policy,” he said. “We’re fo- cused on supporting our as- sociates, customers and the entire El Paso community.”
Employees at the Walmart store in El Paso are given “ac- tive shooter” training four times a year in association with Texas State University, Hargrove said. In the train- ing, workers are taught to avoid, deny entry and as a last resort physically defend themselves in the event they encounter an armed as- sailant, Hargrove said.
PAGE 22-A FLORIDA SENTINEL-BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019