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| Suspect In Murders Of Jennifer Hudson's Mom, Brother In Custody: Report Posted: 25 Oct 2008 09:50 AM PDT Singer/actress' nephew is still considered missing.
Although Chicago police had yet to officially confirm, police sources tell the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune that a suspect in the double-homicide of Jennifer Hudson's mother and brother has been taken into custody. Earlier Friday (October 24), Chicago police told MTV News they had responded to a call shortly before 3 p.m. at a South Side residence belonging to Hudson's mother, Darnell Hudson Donerson, where they found both Donerson and Hudson's older brother, Jason, who had been shot and killed. Donerson was 57 years old; Jason was 29. Chicago Police Deputy Chief Joseph Patterson told reporters in a press conference that neighbors reported hearing shots between 8 and 9 a.m. Friday. Patterson said a family member found the body of Donerson in the living room Friday afternoon and left the house to call police. When authorities arrived, they found Jason Hudson in a bedroom. Patterson said there was no sign of forced entry, and police were unsure if anything was missing from the house. Chicago police told MTV News that William Balfour was a suspect in the double-homicide, which may have arisen from a domestic situtation; the Sun Times reported that Balfour is the suspect who was taken into custody. Balfour, 27, was out on parole from the Illinois River Correctional Center on attempted murder, carjacking and stolen-property charges, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. He was sentenced to serve seven years in 1999. He's 5-foot-5 and weighs 147 pounds. Police called him "armed and dangerous." A Corrections rep said that Balfour was paroled in 2006; he was set to be discharged from that parole in May 2009. Balfour was romantically involved with the singer/actress' sister Julia, who identified Balfour as her husband on her MySpace page. Balfour had been living at the residence and shared vehicle registration with Julia. Julia's 7-year-old son, Julian King, was declared missing in the aftermath of the shooting. According to the Amber Alert issued for King, he is wearing a brown, striped polo shirt and khaki pants. He is 4 feet, 11 inches tall, weighs 130 pounds and has brown eyes and black hair. Despite reports that a suspect is in custody, Chicago police stressed to MTV News that King is still considered missing. According to public records, the home is owned by Hudson's mother, but both Jennifer and Jason have been listed as residents for the second apartment. A neighbor, Vanessa Stanton, told ABC News, "Jason was a good person. His mom was too." The Tribune reported that Hudson is not injured, according to her bodyguard. ABC News reported that Hudson was traveling to Chicago from Tampa, Florida. Her representative had no comment yet. Related Artists | |
| 50 Cent Talks About Performing For Vets At BRAVE Concert Posted: 23 Oct 2008 11:30 PM PDT 'These guys are tougher than the tough guys from my neighborhood,' MC says of crowd at New York show.
NEW YORK — Backstage at the Nokia Theatre, about 30 minutes before he took the stage at "A Night for Vets: An MTV Concert for the BRAVE," 50 Cent was in the middle of lacing up his combat boots, when all of a sudden he stopped, adjusted his cap, leaned back in his chair and recalled what it was like to perform for U.S. troops in Iraq in 2004. "It was intense, man. There was an intensity there," he said, eyes moving toward the ceiling. "A lot of [soldiers] write these death notes before they go on missions, they write these notes that they want their loved ones to read. ... They're in this environment where death is everywhere."
Clearly, the event made a lasting impression on him — so strong that he's carried the memories of the soldiers he met that day with him ever since. "A lot of the people I met [in Mosul] had been there since my first record came out — they'd been there since '03 — and you could tell, man. There was an intensity there," he said. "It was eye-opening. It was like, 'You think you've had a tough time? ... These people have a tough time.' They're in this environment that's more intense than anything you could imagine." Which is why, when he was approached earlier this month to appear at the BRAVE concert — which, in addition as serving as a "thank you" to the men and women serving in our armed forces, also aimed to raise awareness of the MTV's BRAVE petition for veterans' rights — 50 said yes without thinking twice. Not only because he's met the troops himself, but because he's become quite aware of the difficulties those troops have faced when returning home.
"I don't think there's any way you can understand it unless you've been there and seen it," he said. "When they come back and realize that everyone went on with their lives, you know? People went to work, did their thing, and the troops come home and it's tough for them to realize it, man. They have it tough, and that's part of the reason I did 'Home of the Brave' [the 2006 film in which 50 played an vet returning home from Iraq], to try and tell that story to people." And with that, 50 is called to the stage. But as he meets fellow G-Unit members Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo in the hallway, MTV News manages to get in one more question: He's played before all sorts of crowds, all over the world — what's it like to perform for an audience of vets? "They've got an energy. You gotta come hard, you know? These guys are tougher than the tough guys from my neighborhood, 'cause they went over there willingly," he laughed. "I know I wouldn't want to put myself in that position. There are some tough guys in the crowd out there tonight." Don't miss "A Night for Vets: An MTV Concert for the BRAVE," presented by MTV's Choose or Lose campaign and CNN to support veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The show features performances by 50 Cent, Ludacris, Kanye West, Linkin Park, Hinder, Saving Abel and more, and airs Friday at 8 p.m. ET on MTV. Related Videos Related Photos Related Artists | |
| Anderson Cooper, 50 Cent, Eve, Hinder, More Backstage At BRAVE Concert Posted: 24 Oct 2008 05:00 AM PDT 'Tambourine' rapper talks World Series, while G-Unit hang with gold medalist LaShawn Merritt.
NEW YORK — The action might have been on the stage at Thursday night's "A Night for Vets: An MTV Concert for the BRAVE," as 50 Cent, Ludacris, Kanye West and Linkin Park paid tribute to the troops, but behind the scenes at the Nokia Theatre, there was no shortage of activity either. Media stars, musicians and even Olympic gold-medalists provided the show behind the show, mingling in the venue's two VIP green rooms — not to mention the "TRL" studios upstairs, where even more folks were packed away — watching the concert live on flat-screen TVs, cracking jokes, exchanging digits and posing for photos. Early on in the evening, 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo held court outside their dressing room, with an army of assistants, photographers and label workers nearby. After a few minutes of hanging out, Fif kicked the door to the room shut so that he could put on his camouflage pants in peace. He emerged a minute later (pants on), telling an associate that he was excited for the night's performance, "because I can reach the troops, and I don't have to go back to Iraq to do it."
Later, after finishing their performance, the entire G-Unit clique posed for photos with sprinter LaShawn Merritt, who won two gold medals in the Beijing Olympics (and, yes, he was wearing them backstage). After the photo op, 50 went back into his room to change, and Banks — decked out in a massive Pelle Pelle jacket — checked out Hinder's set, nodding in time to the pounding drum beat. Across the hallway, as Hinder were screaming through their set, Ludacris was having a tough time of things. Not only was he visibly limping (as is generally the case when your left foot is immobilized in a giant cast), but the walls of the venue were preventing him from getting cell phone reception. "I only got one bar down here, man," he said to a security guard, before limping into an open area to try his luck again. On the other side of the theater, in a bizarrely Moroccan-themed VIP area, Eve reclined on a couch while having her hair styled and talking to a friend about the World Series. And though she's a Philly girl, she didn't exactly sound like she had been paying attention to recent events.
"I'm not really watching it. I know the Phillies are in it, but who are they playing?" she asked the room, which included comedian Jeffrey Ross and CNN's Anderson Cooper. "Who? The Tampa Bay Rays? OK, now I know what to say if people ask me." Eve was escorted to the stage, leaving Cooper to check out Angels & Airwaves' performance on a flat-screen, and Ross and comedian Whoopi Goldberg to exchange pleasantries and pose for a few pics. Upstairs in the "TRL" studios, things weren't nearly as jovial. Sure O.A.R. seemed content in their dressing room, but the real drama was between rival rock acts Hinder and Saving Abel. No one seemed to be able to say just what the beef was about, but several headset-wearing members of the MTV production team were whispering about it. It bears mention that though the two bands shared adjacent dressing rooms, no one came to blows (though the guys in Hinder did request some Sprite, which, given their hard-partying personae, was a bit of a disappointment). Perhaps, in keeping with the spirit of things, both sides decided to quash their beef for one night only. Don't miss "A Night for Vets: An MTV Concert for the BRAVE," presented by MTV's Choose or Lose campaign and CNN to support veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The show features performances by 50 Cent, Ludacris, Kanye West, Linkin Park, Hinder, Saving Abel and more, and airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on MTV. Related Videos Related Photos Related Artists | |
| Young Veterans Tell Their Stories, Support BRAVE Petition Posted: 24 Oct 2008 05:00 AM PDT '[The government doesn't] care about you if you're not on contract,' one veteran says at 'A Night for Vets' concert.
NEW YORK — Jeans Cruz sits in a chair at the Nokia Theatre as M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" blares through the speakers of the venue's PA system. He's an unassuming, stylishly dressed guy who smiles at passersby when his eyes meet theirs. You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but Cruz — who has been out of the service for more than three years — was the man who pulled Saddam Hussein from the dark, narrow hole he'd been hiding in beneath a two-room mud shack on a sheep farm in Iraq. "When we found the hole, it was covered by what looked like a cinder block, but it was actually made of foam," Cruz recalls, thinking back to December 13, 2003. "I was ordered to toss a flash grenade down into the hole, but I didn't want to. But it was my job — I had to do what I was told." Looking down into the dark abyss, Cruz — who spent close to two years in Iraq — had no idea what was at the bottom. He feared there would be explosives, and worried the flash grenade — designed to daze and deafen a suspect — would ignite them, killing him and his unit. "I threw it down there and kissed my ass goodbye," he says. "Then I went down into the hole, and the smell was horrible; there was a hole in the floor he had been using for a bathroom. Saddam had been down there for two straight weeks. When I got down there, he was holding an AK-47, so we handcuffed him and brought him to the surface." When he returned home from service, he was heralded as a hero. But these days, he's hampered by debt, including medical costs. As more young veterans pour into the venue for the taping of "A Night for Vets: An MTV Concert for the BRAVE" (which airs Friday, October 24 on MTV at 8 p.m. ET), the 27-year-old Bronx native gets up from his chair and grabs his cane; the former Army scout broke several bones in his foot while serving in Iraq but didn't seek medical attention for the fractures until he returned to the States, where he learned he'd need a number of surgeries to correct bones that had healed naturally but defectively.
His slight limp is the only visible wound Cruz sustained during his service, and it's perhaps the least of his worries. Like many young veterans, the soldier suffers from severe, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, and since his return from Iraq after being honorably discharged in 2004, Cruz has been having nightmares. He hears voices in his head, suffers from hallucinations and occasionally catches the smell of dried blood in his nostrils. Mental-health counselors have characterized him as depressed and anxious; he was discharged shortly after reenlisting because of a "personality disorder," and was diagnosed by a Department of Veterans Affairs psychologist as suffering from PTSD. "There are lots of guys suffering from the same thing, but there is no cure," Cruz says. "But a lot of soldiers think they don't need medical attention, because they're hard-headed." BRAVE, the Bill of Rights for American Veterans — a petition presented by MTV and several veterans' organizations that calls on the government to support vets' issues and enact positive legislative changes — was created for men like Cruz who have been denied disability benefits by Veterans Affairs (they claim he has not proven that he saw combat in Iraq, despite his combat awards). When he returned from duty, he was burdened with thousands of dollars of debt, was forced to move in with his parents and had trouble finding employment. "The government needs to help veterans with their financial difficulties and help them find housing and work," Cruz says. "They need to make sure we have medical benefits from the get-go, so you have them when you get back. They need to prepare veterans and make them aware of what they'll need to do before they get back, because when I came back to New York, I was running around on my own, trying to figure it all out." The soldiers MTV News spoke with Thursday — some of them clad in their military-issue fatigues — echoed Cruz's sentiments. Young veterans returning from combat are often left out in the cold and made to feel like castoffs by the government they worked so hard to protect. Hector Delgado, 29, from Patchogue, New York, served in the Marines until 2003, when he was injured in a vehicle accident. "Being over there seemed surreal at first," he said. "But after a while, you become desensitized to the constant threat you face."
Delgado was crushed beneath a tank that had flipped over, and is now wheelchair-bound. "I worked convoy security, and I suffered crushing injuries from the waist down," he said. "I severed nerves in my legs, and my pelvis is in pieces." These days, Delgado serves as an outreach worker for the Department of Veteran Affairs and visits military bases to publicize the counseling services available to soldiers. He feels there's much more the government can do to honor the service its soldiers so heroically provide. "The government should make the process of attaining benefits and services easier, because it can be a rather bureaucratic process," he said. "They need to step up job placement for returning vets and make it easier for them to get an education. Everyone has a difficult time getting their GI Bill; it usually takes six months, so you end up laying the money out first for college. Some people can't wait that long, or can't front that bill. They make it sound easier than it is." Ashley Robertson, a 21-year-old Air Force vet from Georgia who returned four months ago from Qatar, said she thinks veterans should receive more pay from the government, because "it's definitely a long work day. You're working 14 hours a day, six days a week." Her next tour's set for August 2009. "I think [the BRAVE petition] is awesome, because a lot of times, I don't feel we get the respect we deserve, so it's good to come together for something like this," she said. "Still, I feel the government should provide us with better health care, a better quality of living. I came back to so many bills, and my house was just a mess. The government also needs to take care of our mental and financial well-being." Air Force veteran Jerry McDougal, 27, from Alabama, spoke about the constant fears he faced while stationed in Baghdad; he returned to the states from his third tour in June, after a six-month deployment. "It's real," he said, of being in the thick of a combat zone. "One day, you wake up and everything's fine. Ten minutes later, you hear sirens, people shouting, 'Incoming!' and you hear rockets coming in, and a mortar goes off 50 feet in front of you. It's real over there." McDougal thinks that the government should take better care of soldiers' families while they're deployed, and increase pay for soldiers still serving, because "some of the stuff we do, if we did it on the outside, we'd be making $90,000 a year." He also thinks the government should maintain the same level of benefits for soldiers, regardless of whether a veteran is still active or retired. McDougal also advocates programs to help returning vets reacclimatize to civilian life, and would like the government to create more jobs specifically for veterans. Louis Torres, 30, from the Bronx, New York, agrees. The Army vet, who's served time in Kuwait and Iraq since 2003, said it's hard for soldiers to return to the States after spending so much time in combat zones. "It was a different world over there, and you had to learn a new culture," he said. "And, while you wanted combat, once it hits you in the face, it's like, 'Damn, I have to do this for real.' You practice so much that, when you get to the real stage, you still get butterflies in your stomach, all the time." Torres, who came under heavy fire in 2004 near the Tigris River as part of a convoy traveling from base to base, also contends the government could be doing more to support our troops. "We need more money as reservists because when we come back here, we're not paid very well," he said. "They don't care about you if you're not on contract. Once you leave, they should help you find a job, and they cut your benefits. It's sort of like moving out of your parents' house ... the good times are over." McDougal said he's urging everyone to sign the BRAVE petition and that he had a blast at "A Night for Vets." "We really appreciate MTV looking out for us, and I know the guys that are still over there appreciate it too," he said. Don't miss "A Night for Vets: An MTV Concert for the BRAVE," presented by MTV's Choose or Lose campaign and CNN to support veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The show features performances by 50 Cent, Ludacris, Kanye West, Hinder, Saving Abel and more, and airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on MTV. Related Videos Related Photos | |
| Ting Tings Make Everything <i>Really</i> Shiny For 'That's Not My Name' Video Posted: 24 Oct 2008 01:56 AM PDT Song is 'about feeling frustrated,' Katie White says.
An iTunes commercial, a VMA Video of the Year nod and half a million songs sold is not a bad way to kick off your first single as a band. But for the Ting Tings — British duo Katie White and Jules De Martino — all of this was a happy accident. In fact, the hit that made this all possible, "Shut Up and Let Me Go," wasn't even the band's first choice as a single. "We were gonna release 'That's Not My Name' [in the U.S.] first," De Martino explained. "But we did a festival, South By Southwest in Texas, and the Apple guys pounced on the band and used 'Shut Up and Let Me Go' for an advert. And so it really put the single back because that advert was played internationally as well, and it just started getting aired, and I think we got recognized from that advert at that point, especially in the States." Now "That's Not My Name" is getting its chance to shine, with an equally shiny video. The Tings have reteamed with the directing duo Alex and Liane, who helmed the VMA-nominated "Shut Up and Let Me Go" video. The directors are banking the visual effects on a reflective material called Scotchlite. "That's actually an obsession of Alex and Liane — they like to use a lot of Scotch tape in everything," White said. "But you can only see it when the light's pointing at it, so it just catches the camera really well." The result makes for a striking real-time effect. At the band's nighttime video shoot — in the desert 40 minutes north of Los Angeles — everything from the set to the wardrobe was accented with the material. On camera, anything with Scotchlite popped out on screen, creating a silhouette around whatever it was on. Throw in about 50 extras cheerleading, jumping rope, drumming and sign-spinning all around the band, and you've got a pretty crazy spectacle. While the band definitely stands out in the video, the song is actually about the opposite. "We wrote this song when we were going through a bit of a horrible time," White explained. "We've been in a band before this one, and with more members, and have been signed and dropped without even getting an album out, and we felt really frustrated and unconfident at the time. The song's not literally about going for a night out and someone forgetting your name. It's just about feeling invisible and prejudged, and people making their minds up about you and what they think of you isn't really true. It's a bit of a 'screw you' song, about feeling frustrated." From that experience with their previous band, Dear Eskiimo, White and De Martino learned to take their career at their own pace. So instead of using the momentum from "Shut Up and Let Me Go" to churn out a slew of singles, the band would rather take it one step at a time. "I think we try to avoid just being a big marketed pop thing that was suddenly arrived in everybody's lives in the U.K.," White said. "So we started releasing our own records and then releasing singles to build up, and I think we'd like to do the same in the States. Rather than just suddenly being paid to be in everybody's faces, we'd rather just let in grow naturally." Related Videos Related Artists | |
| Jennifer Hudson's Mother, Brother Murdered Posted: 24 Oct 2008 05:44 AM PDT Hudson's 7-year-old nephew reported missing; police have identified suspect.
Jennifer Hudson's mother and brother died of fatal gunshot wounds Friday (October 24), police have confirmed to MTV News. A Chicago police representative said the singer's mother, Darnell Hudson Donerson, and older brother, Jason, were killed. Donerson was 57 years old; Jason was 29. Officers received a call shortly before 3 p.m. Friday, the representative said, and upon arriving at the residence, 7019 South Yale Avenue, found the two victims. The incident has been declared a double homicide; police emphasized that this may be a domestic situation. Julian King, Hudson's young nephew, who had been living at the residence, has been reported missing. Chicago police confirmed to MTV News that the child may be in the company of identified suspect William Balfour, an African-American male in his late 20s, who is considered armed and dangerous. Balfour is out on parole from the Illinois River Correctional Center on attempted murder, carjacking and stolen-property charges, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. He was sentenced to serve seven years in 1999. He's 5-foot-5 and weighs 147 pounds. A Corrections rep said that Balfour was paroled in 2006; he was set to be discharged from that parole in May 2009. According to the Amber Alert issued for King, he is wearing a brown, striped polo shirt and khaki pants. He is 4 feet, 11 inches tall, weighs 130 pounds and has brown eyes and black hair. Balfour had been living at the residence, according to public records, and may have had a romantic relationship with Hudson's sister Julia, as vehicles are co-registered to both of them. Police said Balfour is believed to be driving either a white Chevrolet Suburban, 1994 model, with the license plate X584859, or a green Chrysler Concord, with the license plate 332K823. According to public records, the home is owned by Hudson's mother, but both Jennifer and Jason have been listed as residents for the second apartment. A neighbor, Vanessa Stanton, told ABC News, "Jason was a good person. His mom was too." Chicago Police Deputy Chief Joseph Patterson told reporters at the scene in a press conference that neighbors reported hearing shots between 8 and 9 a.m. Friday morning. Patterson said a family member called police upon finding the body of Hudson's mother on the living-room floor, and when authorities arrived, they found the body of Hudson's brother in a bedroom. There were no signs of forced entry, and police are unsure if anything is missing from the house. "We have some promising leads right now," Patterson said, "but it's very preliminary." The Tribune reported that Hudson is not injured, according to her bodyguard. ABC News reported that Hudson was traveling to Chicago from Tampa, Florida. [This story was originally published at 6:34 pm E.T. on 10.24.08] Related Artists | |
| 'Gossip Girl' Star Kelly Rutherford Can't Reveal Who Dies, But She Will Say Who Doesn't Posted: 24 Oct 2008 02:07 AM PDT Jessica Szohr says she got in trouble for leaking the news that there'd be a funeral soon.
NEW YORK — "Gossip Girl" has certainly been living up to its name this fall, as the show's racy plotlines and its castmembers' offscreen lives generate more buzz than Serena's fictional exploits about town. So when MTV News caught up with co-stars Jessica Szohr and Kelly Rutherford, we had to know what to expect for the rest of this already drama-filled season. "Everyone keeps asking, and I feel like any secret I give, I can give the whole season away," said Szohr, who plays Vanessa on the CW drama. "I got in trouble the other day for saying something." She is, of course, referring to an interview she recently did with TVGuide.com, in which she accidentally spilled the beans that there would be "a funeral" on the show this season. Still, we couldn't help asking her to reveal who'd be dying. "That's what I got in trouble for! I don't know!" she exclaimed. "Maybe both [a guy and a girl]!" (In the MTV Newsroom blog, Szohr does open up about "Gossip Girl" novelist Cecily von Ziegesar's comment to MTV News that Vanessa was "the one character they ruined" in the book-to-TV adaptation.) Rutherford (who plays Lily van der Woodsen) had a bit more info for us on this upcoming funeral, saying that the death of this character will definitely leave fans in tears. "I can't say who; I just found out!" she said. "I just found out myself. They were going to do it at the end of last season, [but] they decided to wait. ... It's kind of sad. I'm sad!" Rutherford at least revealed that her onscreen daughter, Serena (Blake Lively), won't meet her end anytime soon. "No! God, I hope not! No!" she said. In real-life "Gossip Girl" news, Szohr said that Taylor Momsen (Jenny), who had been hospitalized for a severe throat infection over the weekend, is recovering well. "I know that she is home and better and good, and that's all I am concerned about," she said. Related Videos |
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