Briefs

Report: Stowaway's mom says son believed her dead

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The mother of a California teenager who stowed away on a flight to Hawaii told Voice of America that her son had recently learned that she was alive after being told by his father she had died.

Speaking with VOA from a refugee camp in eastern Ethiopia, mother Ubah Mohamed Abdullahi said she felt bad that her son risked his life and that her dream is to live with her children in the United States. "I cried, felt badly and many people in the refugee camp came to me to give me support," she said.

FBI agents say surveillance video shows the 15-year-old jumping out of the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines jet on a Maui tarmac Sunday after surviving a cross-Pacific flight from San Jose, Calif. He told authorities he had argued with his father before leaving his house.

Boy in knife attacks wrote chilling note, cops say

PITTSBURGH - The Pennsylvania boy accused of stabbing more than 20 people at his high school wrote a note saying he couldn't wait to see the "helpless looks" on his victims' faces, according to a new criminal complaint filed yesterday in the case.

Alex Hribal, 16, is now charged with 21 counts of attempted homicide, up from four. One of the victims was a security guard. Police said the signed note found in Hribal's locker was dated April 6, three days before the rampage at Franklin Regional High School near Pittsburgh.

According to the criminal complaint assistant, vice principal Samuel King grabbed Hribal in the bloody hallway and took him to the floor. Hribal allegedly refused to drop the two knives he was carrying and said, "No, I am not dropping them, my work is not done, I have more people to kill," King said.

1 year in prison for 'kids for cash' scandal builder

SCRANTON, Pa. - A builder of for-profit youth detention centers was sentenced yesterday to a year in prison for his role in a notorious juvenile justice scandal in which thousands of young offenders were sent to his facilities by a judge who took money from him.

The builder, Robert Mericle, was also fined $250,000 and ordered to serve 100 hours of community service by a federal judge who increased the sentence recommended by prosecutors, citing the severity of the crime and Mericle's lies to investigators about what he knew of the judges' scheme. Mericle, the last major figure in the "kids for cash" scandal to be sentenced, apologized to the court. "I'm ashamed to be here. But I put myself here," he said.

Prosecutors said two judges in northeastern Pennsylvania accepted $2.1 million in illegal payments from Mericle. Former Luzerne County Judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella Jr. plotted to shut down the dilapidated county-run juvenile detention center in 2002 and arrange for the construction of the PA Child Care facility outside Wilkes-Barre and a second lockup in western Pennsylvania.

- Daily News wire services