Midday Roundup: Police search for motive in Mass. stabbing rampage

Senseless attack. Police in a small city south of Boston are trying to figure out what caused a 28-year-old man to go on a stabbing rampage that left two people dead. Arthur Darosa started his attack outside a home in Taunton, Mass. After crashing his car, he ran inside a house and stabbed two women. One of the victims, who was 80 years old, later died at the hospital. Darosa then jumped into another car and drove to the nearby Silver City Galleria mall, where he crashed the vehicle through the front of a Macy’s department store. After attacking several people there, he ran through the mall to a Bertucci’s restaurant, where he stabbed four more people. A 56-year-old man who had been eating at the restaurant later died. An off-duty sheriff’s deputy eventually brought Darosa’s rampage to an end when he shot and killed him. Darosa’s father said he suffered from psychiatric issues but had refused to take medication. He had recently been hospitalized for suicidal thoughts.

Another restroom fight. The superintendent of the Fort Worth Independent School District, the nation’s sixth largest, is resisting calls for his resignation after he implemented a new policy for transgender students without the school board’s approval. Last month, Superintendent Kent Scribner told the district’s teachers to “acknowledge the gender identity that each student consistently and uniformly asserts” and allow students to use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick added his voice to the rally of parents who gathered at last night’s school board meeting to protest the policy and call for Scribner’s resignation. But the superintendent’s supporters countered by thanking him for standing up for the rights of all students. Attorney General Ken Paxton warned the policy could violate the Texas Education Code’s mandate for parental notification. Board President Jacinto “Cinto” Ramos issued a statement of support for Scribner, saying the district would protect the rights of “ALL students.”

Up for debate? Liberal activists are again trying to overturn bans on homosexual clergy and same-sex marriage in the United Methodist Church. The denomination is holding its general conference this week in Portland, Ore. Pastors who performed same-sex weddings have remained in the church, and some have come out as gay themselves in advance of the meeting, which started Tuesday. John Lomperis of United Methodist Action said the church’s long-standing policy is biblical: “We believe that God’s best is either celibacy and singleness or faithfulness in marriage between one man and one woman, and so our official policies say that we do not let clergy perform same-sex unions or be sexually active outside of a man-woman marriage themselves.” Lomperis is a delegate to the general conference, which meets every four years.

No deal. A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the planned merger of two office products giants—Staples and Office Depot. The deal, worth $6.3 billion, would harm buyers, the judge ruled in siding with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). But U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wasn’t worried about the average consumer. His concern was for big businesses who likely would have had to pay more for their pens, notepads, and three-ring binders had the merger gone through. The FTC met its “burden of showing that there is a reasonable probability that the proposed merger will substantially impair competition in the sale and distribution of consumable office supplies to large business-to-business customers,” Sullivan wrote. Stocks of both companies tumbled this morning.

WORLD Radio’s Steve Coleman contributed to this report.