A Buffalo man who was arrested after his estranged wife uploaded a video of her being savagely beaten to Facebook in a plea for help, immediately killed his wife after being released without bail in connection of three. The mother of three was murdered in front of her children, sparking fresh outrage over the state’s no-cash bail policies.
Adam Bennefield, 45, who has a prior conviction for kidnapping another ex at gunpoint, is being charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of his 30-year-old wife, Keaira Bennefield.
According to the New York Post, Keaira Bennefield was gunned down while taking her young children — whose ages range from 6 months to 9 years-old — to school on the morning of October 5. The mother of three was ambushed on a road and subsequently shot dead in front of her young children, police said.
Adam Bennefield allegedly carried out the killing just one day after his release from custody in connection with a domestic violence incident. He was released without bail despite savagely beating his now-deceased ex-wife in a disturbing video that the victim uploaded to Facebook as a cry for help.
The accused killer could be seen punching, kicking and stomping on the victim, who begged him to stop. Adam Bennefield was arrested a few days later the video was posted. He was slapped with misdemeanor charges and served an order of protection, which evidently, he immediately violated in carrying out the murder, police said.
He is now facing a litany of charges, including first-degree murder, in connection with the killing.
Adam Bennefield has been arraigned on murder in the second degree, criminal contempt and endangering the welfare of a child. He has been remanded without bail. Bennefield is accused of killing his estranged wife, Keaira Hudson. He then led police on a weeklong manhunt. pic.twitter.com/QYFWAEKVqa
— Marlee Tuskes (@MarleeTuskesTV) October 21, 2022
The public has expressed outrage and asked if anything more could have been done, as Bennefield’s violent behavior was well known to law enforcement.
On September 28 when Keaira called 911 to say she’d been punched by Bennefield in her home, the Buffalo News reported. Cheektowaga Police responded to the domestic violence call and obtained an arrest warrant for Bennefield for harassment. Cops told her to notify them if her estranged husband returned to the home.
Fearing for her safety, the victim posted the video to Facebook later that night. “This is what this man dose [sic] to me but i’m always treated like i’m the abuser!” Keaira Bennefield wrote in the post.
The lengthy video (nearly 8-minutes long) allegedly showed Bennefield tackling his wife, pinning her down and savagely punching her repeatedly, the New York Post reported. He was arrested days later after Keira showed the footage to law enforcement.
Despite the disturbing nature of the attack, prosecutors slapped Adam Bennefield with misdemeanor charges including third-degree assault, fourth-degree criminal mischief, second-degree menacing and second-degree unlawful imprisonment.
He was arraigned in Cheektowaga Town Court on October 4, but was released due to a New York law that prevented the judge from from setting bail due to the low-level of the charges, Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn said.
“There was zero evidence for anything higher than that,” Flynn said of the misdemeanor charges. “The charges were correctly charged. The judge had no choice but to release this person.”
The law — which was enacted by the Democrat-controlled state legislature and upheld Governor Hochul — also prevented the judge from considering his previous armed kidnapping charge in setting bail. New York is one of the few states in the nation that prevents judges from considering the “dangerousness” of accused criminals when determining bail and release agreements.
Following her estranged husband’s release, Keira Bennefield was reportedly in such fear for her life that she wore a bulletproof vest on the morning she was murdered. As she was driving her kids to school, Adam Bennefield allegedly crashed into the car before gunning his ex-wife down with a shotgun.
He then fled the scene and was later apprehended after a week-long manhunt. He has been held without bail since his October 21 arraignment and faces life in prison if convicted.
New York’s lax cash bail laws, which have led to numerous instances of recently released felons committing homicide, have become a major topic leading up to the state’s razor close gubernatorial race. Republican challenger Lee Zeldin (R-NY) has vowed to amend the state’s bail reform laws if elected.
Hochul has at times criticized the state’s “bail reform” laws, though she has yet to call for any policy changes. The New York governor recently framed public outcry over rising crime as an altered perception due to media coverage.
NY Man Released Without Bail After Savagely Beating Ex-Wife Immediately Kills Her Upon Release | National File
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Mike Pence Joins Think Tank to Help ‘Lead the Conservative Movement Into the Future’
Former Vice President Mike Pence will join the Heritage Foundation, where he will advise on public policy issues and help propel the conservative movement forward, the think tank said in a statement. “I am profoundly honored to join them as a distinguished visiting fellow to advance conservative policies that will benefit every American,” Pence said on Twitter. Heritage stated that Pence will advise its experts on public policy issues, deliver a series of speeches, and help the think tank “lead the conservative movement into the future.” Pence will also contribute a monthly column for The Daily Signal, the organization’s multimedia news outlet. “I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working with the all-star team at Heritage as we continue to take the case for a strong national defense, free markets and traditional values to policymakers across the Nation and to every American who cherishes our Heritage of Freedom,” Pence …
LAA’s Braynard Calls on Stark County, OH to Reject ‘Black Box’ Voting Equipment Contract
Today, Look Ahead America Executive Director Matt Braynard urged the public, particularly in Ohio, to warn the Board of Elections of Stark County, Ohio, not to move ahead with their $6 million dollar purchase of Dominion Voting Equipment.
Said Braynard, “It is unconscionable for any free election to be run on “black box” voting equipment where both the software and hardware are proprietary and the code that runs them is not available for public inspection. And any elected official who thinks it is acceptable to purchase voting equipment is as qualified to have their job as a mechanic who thinks it is acceptable to put water in your Chevy’s gas tank.
“Over and over again after the 2020 General Election, executives from companies that sold black box voting equipment told government officials who asked questions about how their machines operated that they could not answer because the software was a ‘proprietary’ company secret.
A PDF version of this statement can be found here.
A Note To Readers About This Week
It has been just slightly more than three months since I resigned from The Intercept to return to independent journalism. These last three months have been intense and, even more so, exhilarating — largely due to the incredible and gratifying support from readers, for which I am deeply thankful. But the intensity of the last three months is also due to …
Former CBP Commissioner: Biden’s Border Strategy Is ‘Release, Protect, Reward’
WASHINGTON—Former Acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan left his role at noon on Jan. 20. He had been in the position since early July 2019. During the final months of the Obama administration, Morgan also served as the Border Patrol chief. Morgan spoke to The Epoch Times about the flurry of border security-related executive orders and memos issued by President Joe Biden and his Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These include temporarily suspending deportations of illegal aliens, reversing President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from terror-prone countries, halting border wall construction, stopping the addition of asylum-seekers to the Migrant Protection Protocol program, preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and releasing a sweeping immigration package to Congress that includes amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. The Epoch Times: As a critic of Biden’s actions on immigration, which one do you see as most detrimental so far? …
January 30, 2021
The Nation Speaks
The Nation Speaks
Critical Race Theory, Cancel Culture & the Chinese Communist Party: Where is it all heading? Immigration, Crime & Justice in the Biden Administration.
LAA’s Braynard Discusses H.R.1 on OAN
LAA Executive Director joined Dan Ball last night to talk about the problems with H.R. 1, where he discusses problems with this legislation you haven’t heard anywhere else.
LAA ED Braynard Calls on DOJ, FBI To Drop Charges Against Non-Violent Capitol Protestors
Today, LAA Executive Director Matt Braynard sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Wilkinson and FBI Director Wray asking them to drop the charges against non-violent protestors from the January 6th rally at the U.S. Capitol.
“There is no excuse for violence or destruction of property, and I support the prosecution of those individuals who engaged in such activity,” said Matt Braynard. “However, I do not support the Biden Administration using those few bad apples as an excuse to persecute the peaceful Trump supporters who entered the Capitol with selective prosecutions based on their political beliefs.
“Many of the protesters who entered the Capitol reasonably believed they had permission. As videos show, police officers opened the protective fencing around the Capitol and stood aside as crowds entered the building. While some of these men and women should have known better, the majority of them were political neophytes who simply viewed this as an extension of the peaceful protest. They had no intention to destroy property or harm anyone. They may have been naive, but were not acting maliciously. Whatever the crimes, they do not deserve jail time and financial ruin due to legal costs for such a minor offense.
“I have a message to the non-violent protestors who entered the capitol: DON’T DO THAT AGAIN.
“Believe me, I understand your frustration over the 2020 general election. What I am asking you and anyone else who is angry about what happened is to channel that anger into productive, legal activism to help us save our country. Help me. Help me and the other volunteers at Look Ahead America to advocate for reforms in your home state to ensure voter integrity. Help me to register, educate, and turn out to vote disaffected patriots just like yourself. Together, we can make the American Dream their dream— and your dream— again.”
VIDEO: The Reddit Revolution, GameStop and Melvin Capital
A remarkable series of events culminated in at least one major Wall Street hedge fund on the verge of insolvency and widespread anxiety and even panic from the titans of the financial system. It was all initiated on a sub-group of Reddit known for its heterodox interest in stock markets, video games, and vaguely populist politics.
Purposely targeting the stock of a company that had long been written off by Wall Street and which short sellers had decided to ravage — the video game retailer GameStop — these small investors, many apparently working class or debt-ridden, banded together to drive up the stock price of that company into the stratosphere, abruptly leaving the hedge fund short-sellers with billions of dollars in losses.
Although it may be more complex than this once all the facts are all known, this is being treated — by those excited by it and those aghast — as a type of populist uprising, a David v. Goliath tale in which ordinary people united to brilliantly beat Wall Street at its own game, thereby transferring plutocratic wealth back to the public. Oligarchs and their media spokespeople spent all day on CNBC and other pro-Wall-Street outlets expressing outrage and demanding government intervention to protect them from what they regard as this grave injustice.
And the sub-Reddit has now been banned by at least one platform, on the highly suspicious ground that it was due to “hate speech” and not the use of this group to sabotage Wall Street billionaires (what a remarkable coincidence of timing that this sub-Reddit’s “hate speech” suddenly crossed a line exactly as hedge fund managers were demanding their heads; the page continues, however, to appear on Reddit itself).
In the video below, I discuss what happened and what the implications are. One note about the video: though I do discuss the amorphous and trans-ideological politics driving both the Reddit uprising and the reaction to it, that topic in particular merits much more consideration. Liberal journalists and pundits love to mock the idea that “economic anxiety” drives anything remotely adjacent to right-wing populism — the primary drivers are racism and other types of bigotry, they insist in unison — yet all one has to do is spend any non-trivial amount of time in that sub-Reddit to see genuine and significant levels of rational economic anger often quite untethered, even hostile, to left-liberal cultural pieties and political niceties. Given their recent noble success, everyone now wants to claim these Redditors as their own, but their politics, like many people’s, defy the clean left-right dichotomy on which the professional media and punditry classes depend, the only prism through which they can understand the world.
This is one of the most interesting and potentially significant events — not just financially but culturally and politically — to happen in some time, and I try here to explain the key components and highlight some of the most consequential implications [note that this video was filmed late last night before the banning of the sub-Reddit by Discord on obviously specious grounds and, far worse, the corrupted banning this morning by major trading platforms, including RobinHood, of any attempts to buy GameStop and other targeted stocks while still allowing them to be sold: the ultimate expression of what should be illegal market manipulation to protect hedge funds]: