Tosh.0 Production Assistant Mistakenly Killed by L.A. Sheriff Deputy

Monday night, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department mistakenly shot and killed a production assistant for Tosh.0 after mistaking the 30-year-old for a stabbing suspect.

According to the Los Angeles Times, John Winkler went to a neighbor's apartment Monday night to try to help three people who were being held captive at knife point. Responding police shot Winkler when he ran from the apartment with one of the victims. From the Sheriff Department's statement:

As deputies continued attempts to contact the people in the apartment, the apartment door suddenly opened and a male victim came rushing out. He was covered in blood and bleeding profusely from the neck. Simultaneously, Victim Winkler ran out of the door, lunging at the back of the fleeing victim. Both ran directly at the deputies. Winkler was similar to the description of the suspect and was wearing a black shirt. Believing Winkler was the assailant and the assault was ongoing and he would attack the entry team; three deputies fired their duty weapons at him.

Winkler was shot once and died later that night at a local hospital.

One of Winkler's friends spoke to the Los Angeles Times after the shooting. "It's just a really sad story," Devin Richardson said, adding that Winkler had just moved to L.A. six months ago from Washington state to pursue a career as a producer. "He basically went to help some neighbors and ends up getting shot."

The suspect, 27-year-old, Alexander McDonald, was eventually arrested and charged with one count of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and one count of torture.

VIA Gawker

SXSW DUI Killer Driver, Is 21 Years Old, Father of 6 and On His Way to Perform

The 21-year-old drunk driver who plowed his car into a group of South by Southwest revelers had been scheduled to perform a rap concert at the festival later that night.

Police say Rashad Charjuan Owens had previous DUI offenses and now faces capital murder and aggravated assault charges for killing two people and injuring 23 others when he rammed his car past two wooden barriers and into a large group of people.

Court records show Owens was arrested in 2011 in Alaska for driving under the influence, leaving the scene of an accident, and a probation violation. That same year he was also charged with criminal trespass in an unrelated offense.

According to court records, at the time of the crash there was an active warrant out for his arrest in Alaska for failure to appear.

Austin police chief Art Acevedo said the state is filing capital murder charges—which allow prosecutors to ask for the death penalty—because Owens intentionally plowed into the crowd. One of the first people hit, musician Scott Jakota, said Ow

ens "gunned" the car at him.

According to reports, the aspiring rapper, who reportedly has six children, was trying to evade police, who were trying to conduct some sort of a sobriety check.

VIA GAWKER

Man Asks Ex-Wife to Stay On As His Housekeeper

A British millionaire who divorced his ex-wife and moved his new girlfriend into the house while she was still living there couldn't understand why she became "so aggressive" when he asked if she would work as his housekeeper.

The couple, whose names were withheld from British press because it was a private family court matter, were married in the late 1970s and divorced in the 90s.

Despite officially divorcing, the two continued to live in the same home until about five years ago, when the man moved his new girlfriend and her 12-year-old daughter into the house.

At that point, the man apparently asked his fifty-something ex-wife if she would continue living in the house in a new role — his housekeeper.

According to reports, "he could not come to terms with why she, through her lawyers, had become so aggressive."

On Wednesday, a judge ruled she was entitled to about $8 million — half of her ex-husbands estate.

The judge ruled that there was "no distinction" between the couple's life before and after the divorce and that she should receive more than £6 million.

Via gawker

Gawker Issues Response To Quentin Tarantino’s Hateful Eight Lawsuit

Earlier today, my FilmDrunkian overlord Vince brought us the news that Quentin Tarantino is suing Gawker Media and its “predatory journalism” because the website Defamer linked to another site called AnonFile that allowed people to download the entire script for the now-shelved Western, The Hateful Eight. In case you’re late to the party, Tarantino gave an exclusive hissy fit to Deadline last week after one of the six people that he gave a copy of the script to leaked it to an agent, who then started showing it to actors and actresses who might fit the descriptions of the supporting characters.

Ultimately, Tarantino decided that this betrayal – committed by either Michael Madsen or Bruce Dern, but we’ll apparently never know the truth – was too much, and he said that he’d either just rewrite the screenplay as a book, or he’d come back to The Hateful Eight at another time, once he calmed down and stopped being the only person who sees this as a bad thing. In the meantime, Tarantino’s lawyer is pressing hard at Gawker and Defamer for “contributory copyright infringement,” and naturally the website is calling BS on all of this.

Defamer covers what people in Hollywood are talking about. Thanks to Tarantino’s shrewd publicity strategy, the leak of The Hateful Eight—and the content of the script—had been widely dissected online and was a topic of heated conversation among Defamer readers. News of the fact that it existed on the internet advanced a story that Tarantino himself had launched, and our publication of the link was a routine and unremarkable component of our job: making people aware of news and information about which they are curious.

Contributory infringement is a legal theory that has traditionally been deployed against file-sharing sites and search engines—venues that explicitly exist as directories to copyrighted content. Gawker and Defamer are news sites, and our publication of the link was clearly connected to our goal of informing readers about things they care about. As far as I can tell (but I’m no lawyer!), no claim of contributory infringement has prevailed in the U.S. over a news story. We’ll be fighting this one. (Via Gawker)

Quentin Tarantino is mad......and suing Gawker

Gawker’s being sued by Quentin Tarantino for leaking a copy of his script for The Hateful Eight. Ain’t no legal complaint like a Tarantino legal complaint because a Tarantino legal complaint has BITE:

Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s right to make a buck. This time they’ve gone too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally. Their headline boasts, ‘Here is the leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script’ — here, not someplace else, but ‘here’ on the Gawker website. The article then contains multiple direct links for downloading the entire screenplay through a conveniently anonymous URL by simply clicking button-links on the Gawker page, and brazenly encourages Gawker visitors to read the screenplay illegally with an invitation to ‘enjoy’ it. There was nothing newsworthy or journalistic about Gawker Media facilitating and encouraging the public’s violation of Plaintiff’s copyright in the screenplay, and its conduct will not shield Gawker Media from liability for their unlawful activity.

The real victim in all of this, of course, is those of us who really love Tarantino movies and know that The Hateful Eight will never see the light of day now.

Via pajiba

Short Film About Smartphone Overuse Is Smart, Poignant, Depressing

Quintuple threat (actress/comedian/musician/tap dancer/awesome person) Charlene deGuzman stars in I Forgot My Phone — a short film she wrote about life in these modern, soul-sucking, smartphone-saturated times.

Written by/Starring Charlene deGuzman Directed by Miles Crawford With (in order of appearance) Jacob Womack Nick Luciano Ani Baker Sabrina London Sean London Garrett Hanson Alana Dietze Oleana Taalman-Koch Reshma Gajjar David Brown Mark Schroeder Yak Manrique Ele Woods Cynthia Kao Josh Kaplan Dylan Booth Vigus Zach Fairless Zac Oyama Nick Rasmussen Tom Fox Paul James Smoke Season Kevin Daniels J Lee Brittany Geronimo Matt Geronimo Farley Crawford Frank Natale Tracie Thoms Jason E.