Police suspect LA man was lured into NYC ambush

NEW YORK (AP) — Someone wanted Brandon Lincoln Woodard dead — bad enough to apparently lure him to a midtown Manhattan block for what looked like a professional hit.

But who shot Woodard in the back of the head and why remained a mystery on Tuesday as police studied security videotape of the unidentified gunman and delved into Woodard's checkered past for clues.

The brazen slaying of the 31-year-old visitor from Los Angeles "certainly appears to have been planned," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters.

Based on the videotape, New York Police Department detectives suspect Woodard was lured into the Monday afternoon ambush shortly after he checked out of a hotel on nearby Columbus Circle, Kelly said.

The killer had arrived at least 30 minutes before the gunfire erupted in a normally safe neighborhood teeming with car and pedestrian traffic. The man, who appears to be bald and have a beard, could be seen exiting the passenger side of a parked Lincoln sedan and pacing as he waited, police said.

After Woodard got there, he checked his phone and walked back and forth as if looking for an address, police said. When the shooter approached, Woodard appeared to look back at him for a split second. He looked away again after "showing no sign of recognition," Kelly said.

A security photo — released to seek the public's help in identifying the gunman — shows him reaching into his pocket for a pistol moments before he fired a single deadly round.
Afterward, the shooter left Woodard in a pool of blood on the sidewalk, slipped into the same Lincoln sedan and was driven away. A vehicle fitting the description of the sedan was last seen going through the Midtown Tunnel.
Ballistics evidence pointed to a possible lead: The 9mm semiautomatic used to kill Woodard was the same weapon used to last month to shoot up the outside of a home in Queens where nobody was hurt. Police also recovered two phones carried by the victim.

Investigators were still trying to determine what Woodard — who checked into his hotel on Sunday after flying in from California on a one-way ticket — was doing in the city. Kelly said he has been described as a promoter but had no further details.

Kelly declined to comment on news reports that Woodard's mother ran a mortgage business in California that was mired in litigation and other troubles.

Sandra and Rodney Wellington, the mother and step-father of Woodard, released a statement Tuesday urging anyone with information on the killing to contact New York City police detectives.

"There are no words to express our shock and sadness in the face of our family's horrendous tragedy. We eagerly await justice for Brandon," the statement said.
They described him as a "gentle and generous young man," a devoted father and loving son who loved sports.
Woodard graduated from Campbell Hall High School and earned a Bachelor's degree from Loyola Marymount University, the statement said.
Authorities in Los Angeles and Las Vegas confirmed that Woodard had a history of run-ins with the law in both places.
Woodard had been due back in court on Jan. 22 following his arrest by LA County sheriff's deputies in West Hollywood in April on a felony cocaine possession charge. He had previously pleaded not guilty.
Court records show that in December 2009, Woodard pleaded no contest in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance to a misdemeanor charge of hit-and-run driving. He was sentenced to three years of probation and a day in jail. However, his probation was terminated in January 2011.

In 2008, he pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges of grand theft of property. Prosecutors said he stole items on Feb. 26, 2008, from two upscale markets — a Whole Foods Market and a Gelson's — in Beverly Hills. He was sentenced to nine days of jail and 200 hours of community service.

Woodard also was issued a misdemeanor battery summons in September 2004 after a backstage scuffle with a security officer at a concert at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

The records show Woodard failed to appear in Las Vegas Justice Court in October 2004 and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was arrested in April 2008 in Las Vegas, based on the warrant. After pleading guilty, he was given credit for time served and released.

U.S. will have a majority-minority population by 2043, Census predicts

The Census Bureau's newly released population projections predict that non-Hispanic, white Americans will cease to compose a majority of the population in 2043, two years after the total population exceeds 400 million people.

This highly symbolic shift to a "majority-minority" nation is due in large part to two factors: While the Hispanic population is expect to grow by 75 million people in the next 48 years, the white, non-Hispanic population will decrease—not just as a percentage of the nation, but in total numbers. According to the Census predictions, there will be 19 million fewer people in this category in 2060 than there are today, based on the age of the population and projected rates of reproduction.

Source: Census

But this demographic view of the country five decades from now can be misleading due to the way race and ethnicity are reported to the Census. Because Hispanic origin is reported independently of one's race, there will be an increasingly large number of people who fall into multiple categories. When one looks at predictions for the white and black population including those who count themselves as Hispanic or biracial, the picture looks very different:

White population, alone and in combination

Black population, alone and in combination
All of these data assume that the Census definition of race and ethnicity, and the cultural definition of race and ethnicity, remain unchanged through 2060.
"We're not making assumptions about how people might report their race in the future," says Census demographer Jennifer M. Ortman, who noted that the Census has changed the way it defines race and ethnicity in each decennial survey. These projections also do not account for any change in the incidence of babies born to parents of different races, something that is impossible to predict with any accuracy.

In 2056, the population is predicted to reach another milestone when the number of Americans over 65 outnumbers those under 18.

Romney earns PolitiFact’s ‘Lie of the Year’ for Jeeps made in China

Mitt Romney's claim in a campaign ad that President Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" earned PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year," the site announced on Wednesday.

"The Jeep ad was brazenly false," Angie Drobnic Holan wrote in her analysis.

The Romney campaign ran the ad in the final weeks of the campaign, drawing sharp rebukes from the automakers and public condemnation from the Obama campaign.

Romney first claimed Jeep was moving to China in a late October campaign speech in Ohio, citing "reports," which he later identified in his ad as a story by Bloomberg News.

But Chrysler immediately rejected the claim, saying the company was reviewing adding production in China, not moving production out of the United States. Chrysler also noted that the Bloomberg story was misinterpreted.

It appeared that the false interpretation was initially made by the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard, who wrote about the Bloomberg story Oct. 25. Bedard's claim was then circulated by the Drudge Report.

Democrats, including the Obama campaign, used Romney's decision to stand by the false claim against him, attacking Romney's honesty.

"After Romney's false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China, Chrysler itself has refuted Romney's lie," an announcer read in an Obama campaign ad that painted Romney as "wrong on Ohio jobs."

PolitiFact suggested Wednesday that the ad was partly responsible for Romney's loss.

"People often say that politicians don't pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election," Holan wrote.