Man found guilty in death of 5 year-old Indian-American child
Darpan News Desk IANS, 16 Jan, 2023 12:59 PM
New York, Jan 16 (IANS) A 35 year-old man from the US has been found guilty of manslaughter in connection with the slaying of five year-old Mya Patel in 2021.
Mya was playing in her hotel room in Monkhouse Drive, Shreveport, in March 2021 when a bullet discharged from Joseph Lee Smith's gun missed the target and struck her, media reports said.
The court heard last week that Smith got into an altercation with another man in the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel, which was owned and operated at that time by Vimal and Snehal Patel, who lived with Mya and a younger sibling, the Shreveport Times reported.
The bullet discharged from a 9-mm handgun when Smith used it to strike the other man. It missed the man but went into the apartment and struck Mya in the head before grazing her mother, the Times reported.
Mya was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she battled for three days before being declared dead on March 23.
When Smith returns to the court on February 27, he faces a prison term of up to 40 years at hard labour for the manslaughter conviction.
He also faces up to 10 years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000 for the aggravated battery conviction and up to 40 years in prison and/or a fine of up to $100,000 for the obstruction conviction.
The Biden administration has kept in place travel restrictions that have severely curtailed international trips to the U.S., citing the spread of the delta variant of the virus. Under the rules, non-U.S. residents who have been to China, the European Schengen area, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa and India in the prior 14 days are prohibited from entering the U.S.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last week warned the Delta variant of the virus is so contagious, vaccinated people who do get infected could be just as big a risk to others as people who aren't vaccinated.
The new requirement, which will be phased in over several weeks in August and September, is the most aggressive step the city has taken yet to curb a surge in cases caused by the delta variant.
The findings have the potential to upend past thinking about how the disease is spread. Previously, vaccinated people who got infected were thought to have low levels of virus and to be unlikely to pass it to others. But the new data shows that is not the case with the delta variant.
President Joe Biden is calling on states and local governments to join those that are already handing out dollars for shots. New York, the nation's biggest city, started doling out $100 awards on Friday.
