Apartment Choice

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) - Phoenix police are investigating after a transgender teen was apparently assaulted by up to 20 people at a west Valley apartment complex .  Dakota Kern says she was invited to a pool party at the complex near 35th and Dunlap avenues on August 16. The 18-year-old, who has identified as a woman for five years, says she knew some people at the pool, others were strangers.    Soon after, Kern says, people began shouting gay slurs so she and two friends started to leave the pool area.  As she was walking away, she says a man yelled “get it, get it” and a group of up to 20 people attacked her. [RELATED: Police arrest juvenile in attack on transgender 18-year-old] “Then one of the guys, he ends up grabbing me by my head, grabbing me by my hair and then he hit me a few times,” says Kern.  The encounter was captured on cell phone video and circulated on social media, Kern says, by one of her attackers. The footage shows Kern being shoved to the ground and kicked ...

On Aug. 9, 2007, Lansing police discovered the beaten body of 46-year-old Debra Renfors in her apartment in the 1000 block of North Washington Street . Renfors was the third woman to be bludgeoned to death in the city in two weeks, and a grim reality was beginning to set in. Det. Sgt. Joey Dionise confronted Captain Ray Hall , giving voice to a fear that had been bubbling for days. “Captain,” Dionise said, ”We have a serial killer. Years later, Hall still remembers the “sinking feeling” that accompanied that moment. Ten years ago this month, Lansing was in the grip of a killer who preyed on single women, using whatever was convenient to murder them, and, in some instances, sexually assaulting them. Before police caught him, he had killed five women in just over four weeks. A sixth woman would survive. Matthew Emmanuel Macon , then 27, was eventually convicted of two of the murders, and the assault of the surviving victim. When detectives got Macon in an interview room, it would take ...