Man, 19, fatally stabbed at aunt's home

January 2, 2008

A 19-year-old Brockton man was fatally stabbed at his aunt's home early yesterday, police and the victim's family said. Markeen Starks, a 2005 Brockton High School graduate, was found with several stab wounds when police responded to a call to an address on Skinner Street. He was pronounced dead at an area hospital. Police had not arrested any suspects last night. His stepgrandmother, Valerie Starks, said he was a responsible man who went by the nickname "Boog" and was the oldest of three boys. "He was a great kid, he really was," she said. "He had a future ahead of him." She said Starks planned to study music and wanted to become a singer. She said she had no idea what happened.

Police arrested an 18-year-old Barnstable man yesterday after he exploded two homemade bombs in a Shaw's supermarket parking lot, authorities said. Andrew Spalt was charged with possession of an explosive device after confessing to creating and exploding two bombs made from liter soda bottles, an acid-type liquid, and aluminum foil, said Police Lieutenant William Packer. A third device was detonated by police. No injuries or property damage were reported, Packer said. Barnstable police responded at 6:15 p.m. to the call from a witness who reported explosions in the parking lot.

A snowplow struck a woman last night on Nashua Road, police said. Billerica Police Lieutenant Richard Rohnstock said the department was called near 10 p.m. about a pedestrian accident near Dudley Road. A woman in her 20s had been hit by a plow owned by Patriot Landscaping Co., police said. The driver stopped and identified himself, said Rohnstock, reading from a prepared statement. The victim was taken to Lahey Clinic in Burlington, then transferred to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. No other details were provided.

New Year's Eve marked the end of an era in northern New Hampshire. Wausau Paper's Groveton mill is closing, putting 303 people out of work. A new state report predicts that in addition to the jobs lost at Wausau, another 233 jobs throughout Coos County will dissolve in 2008. "This closing, coupled with prior mill closures in Berlin and Groveton in 2006, means that only one mill remains at Gorham Cascade," the report states, adding that the owner of that mill "has offered no long-term guarantees for the Cascade plant and its 300 employees, and continuing pressures from around the globe could signal the end of the 150-year reign of paper in Coos County." (AP)

New Hampshire has averaged 19 homicides a year for nearly four decades, and 2007 was right on track. There were 19 homicides in the state in 2007, with one particularly deadly day last summer. On July 2, Michael Woodbury, 31, of Maine walked into a North Conway store and shot and killed the store manager and two customers. Later that day, in an unrelated case, police found the body of Patricia Holmes, 62, in her Manchester apartment. Her boyfriend had shot her to death and killed himself. And in May, Franconia police Corporal Bruce McKay was shot to death by a young man who was then killed by a passerby. McKay was the second police officer within six months to be killed in the line of duty. (AP)

A judge has ruled that a jailhouse confession that was broadcast on TV will be allowed in the trial of a 22-year-old man charged in last April's killing of a Franco-American singer in Augusta. Justice Donald Marden ruled Monday that Mathiew Loisel's interview with a WGME-TV reporter, in which he admitted to fatally shooting Jean-Paul Poulain, would be allowed as evidence at his trial. The interview was broadcast several times the day Loisel was arrested. Marden also ruled that Poulain's alleged deathbed identification of Loisel as the shooter, and of 19-year-old Corey Swift as the accomplice, was also admissible. Loisel and Swift are charged with murder and robbery. (AP)