. a phone call thal killed. you seen it a thousand times. somebody behind the wheel more interested in their cell phone than what is on their road ahead. >> but this teenager ran a stop sign and ruined another family's

life. a father killed instantly. is the driver paying the price for it? yes. 500 bucks. that's it. a fine. as matt jablow reports, the victim's wife is outraged by the jury's verdict and they're calling for a change in the law. >> he was a family man. he would do anything for his family. >> reporter: in one horrible instant, rhonda callahan lost her husband. >> my husband was killed instantly. by the grace of god i'm still here today. >> reporter: it happened back on may 15th of last year right around 8:30 in the morning. that's when prosecutors say the 18-year-old blew a stop sign while talking on a cell phone here at the intersection of 301 and old central avenue in bowie. her car slammed into the 1934 chevy street rod that rhonda callahan was riding in with her husband of 30 years >> i lost my husband. i lost my best friend in this. >> reporter: her husband was pronounced at the scene while she was hospitalized for a

month. >> i've gone through 14 surgeries. >> reporter: brittany was charged with vehicular manslaughter in large part because she was talking on the cell phone at the time of the crash. today they found her not guilty of vehicular manslaughter but fined her $500 for negotiate driving. >> this is an insult. >> reporter: the state's attorney says prosecutors could not prove that she was grossly negligent as the law requires. they're calling for a change in state law to make it easier to convict people who cause accidents while talking on their phones. >> it's not fair. >> reporter: not surprisingly, rhonda callahd her two daughters would also like to see stricter penalties for drivers caught talking on their phones saying no family should ever have to endure the pain they've known for the past year and a half. >> i miss him. it's been hard. it's been very hard. >> reporter: matt jablow, 9news

now. >> in addition to the $500 fine, brittany also had one point put on her license. when reached by phone tonight, her father told 9news that his daughter would not be commenting about this case. new at 11:00 tonight, dc police are trying to catch a suspect in a sex assault. take a look. this is the sketch of the man they're looking for. officers say on saturday afternoon a man attacked a 17-year-old girl in the 900-block of perry place northeast. he was last seen driving a burgundy cadillac. if you have information, call dc crime solvers at 1-800-673-3777. she has been tortured with threats of violence for more than a year now and how a teenage bullying victim is afraid it could happen all over again. in fact, fear has ripped this young woman's life so hard it took almost a full year for her to come forward and tell her story to 9news now. well, tonight our ken molestina sat down with the 14-year-old and her mom and it's a story

you'll see only on 9th. >> it was here that the alleged bullying began in june of 2010. >> she was threatening me that she was going to jump me. >> reporter: she asked we didn't identify her says it happened daily. sometimes several times a day. how did it make you feel? >> scared. >> reporter: her mother soon find out and summed up her reaction with a four letter word. >> fear. >> reporter: she was left radeled that her daughter had become victimized by a bully. she immediately filed a report with the school. she even went a far as getting a juvenile peace order against her daughter's bully. the problem seemed to be fixed until the last day of school when according to the mother and daughter the bully came back. >> the staff was aware she was in the building. my daughter saw her there in the building. and no one called the police. no one notified me as a parent. >> reporter: angered by what had happened, she pulled her daughter out of prince george's

county public schools and instead enrolled her in a private school. the teen's mother says her daughter's grades have dropped there due to the trauma left by her bullying experience and now she's being forced to pull her out of that school as well. the teen is a 9th grader. the only problem, the bully is at the school she would be transferred to. the victim's mother says there is no chance she's letting her daughter come to school here. >> if i place her in another county school, how are they going to keep her safe there. >> reporter: in her desperate measures to keep her daughter safe, she drafted a handwritten contract where the teen promised she wouldn't try to hurt herself or others as a result of the bullying. >> because there have been so many children that have been being bullied and felt they had no place to turn and no one to talk to and they committed suicide. >> reporter: the teen has even written a letter to president obama asking him for help. she just wants her fear to go away and has a wish of her bully.

>> if she would stop bullying kids. >> reporter: i'm ken molestina, 9news now. >> and 9news made repeated phone call to prince george's county public school officials today, but nobody called us back. bizarre details involving the death of a young girl in gaithersburg. david hang was paid to marry the mother of 12-year-old jessica ny again nyugen as part of an immigration scam. you can see the grief on the faces of the family where hang sobbed and said he was innocent. but evidence proves otherwise. his cell phone placed him in the area. footprints and a sheet were found at the crime scene. >> we were able to get dna off the sheet. we were able to make an impression of the boot print. >> what troubles me is you can

have somebody as cold and heartless that could kill a child. >> hang was angry with the nguyen family and the couple was going through a divorce. he was a bus driver and called off sick the afternoon of the murder. new evidence tonight against another step-dad. this time in the murder of a young montgomery county boy. surveillance tape from a gas station in clarksburg puts curtis lopez and 11-year-old william mcquain just a few feet from where they found the beaten body and a few minutes before the child was killed. the boy's picture in the news sure did look familiar. she remembered little william stopping by the gas station before. not with the step-dad that time but on a fishing trip with his big brother. >> and he kind of got a cute look and he looked and he was walking around the floor. and i said to him what are you looking for, babe. and he told me some kind of candy he was looking for.

>> well, william's body was found six days after his mother was found murdered in the family's germantown apartment. curtis lopez is charged in that crime as well. and a freak accident in dc killed a man today. police say benjamin mufti died after a tree branch simply fell off the tree and hit him in the head. it happened along the 3200-block of adamsville road in northwest this morning. neighbors say he was walking along to work when the long tree limb snapped off and hit him in the head. they found him and tried to revive him but it was too late. >> his father just died. and i can't imagine what his mother is going through. he's an only child. >> very sad. the 35-year-old was a personal trainer. he was also an athlete and shortly after mutfi died, the department of public works got out there and expected the tree and police say they found it to be safe.

the sidewalk was opened back up. a montgomery county jury can start deliberating tomorrow in the trial of a teacher accused of abusing her students. she was a teacher in silver spring until her arrest in january. she is accused of choking, scratching and punching several children. burke took the stand today and testified about school policies. before court adjourned for the day, the defense also called two parra educators who the stand who said they never saw burke inappropriately touch a child or even yell at the kids in her class. controlled chaos. that is what dozens of local hospitals are hoping to achieve with a new system that keeps track of patients during a disaster. today the district and prince george's montgomery calvert, st. mary's and charles county all took part in a drill to test the new tools. hundreds of mock patients flooded into hospitals to simulate the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

crews then used the devices to track the patients as they are triaged to the disaster scene to which hospital they were going to. >> the handheld units will be put on every ambulance in the region. >> we need to know what is coming, where to distribute the patience and time does save lives. >> it will be in throughout the region and has been paid for by a $5 million federal grant. the mayor of dc has ordered the dc police force and other city agencies to not help capture or deport illegal immigrants. they signed the order today declaring the dc government is not in the immigration business. >> we want to make sure we create a set of conditions in the city where people feel like they can work with, cooperate with the law enforcement officials. >> it means that people can trust the police more. that they can come to them with major problems in their lives without fear of being questioned

about their immigration. >> now police point out the fingerprints of felony suspects including immigrants are still submitted to a federal data base for all law enforcement agencies to view. dc officials tell us the number of undocumented people in the district could run as high as 30,000. tonight some needy families could go hungry. if more donations to a local food pantry don't start coming in soon. organizers say they have seen a 50% increase in demand almost overnight and they simply cannot keep up. they're closed right now until december 1st hoping to restock. each month the pantry serves 400 people. it's heart-breaking to have to turn away the hungry. >> it's not a holiday need. there is people that don't have food to feed their families every day. and it's not just people that are in poverty. it's the working poor. people that still hold down two jobs but they can't afford to pay their bills.

and if we can help provide food for them so they can use the money to pay utility bills or pay for a prescription or pay for gas so they can go to work, that's why we're here. >> so what do they need? stuff that doesn't go bad. things like peanut butter and jelly, boxed macaroni and cheese. any other canned or non-perishable money you can give. you can go to our website and click on top stories to get to the site. not quite done with showers just yet and the wind is picking up. by 5:00, still some left overclouds. win deez. temps in the 50s. by 7:00 partly cloudy. windy. by 9:00 temperatures 54-60. still windy. we'll see if we're done with thunderstorms and look ahead to the weekend. we have to make decisions. >> he had to do what he had to do. >> still ahead tonight, outrage over the killing of dozens of

exotic animals. disturbing images of a slaughter some say could have been avoided. that is coming up. ♪ [ jerry ] attention shoppers. your groceries are the size of idaho but the interest rate on your checking is small potatoes. earn more at capital one bank. get new high yield free checking.

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anger tonight as police who set their slaughter of 49 exotic animals was needed. they were trying to protect human life. the animals had been set free by their owner who is a recently released convict who then committed suicide. >> lions, tigers, bears ended up rooming the rural area -- roaming the rural area. it's a horrible story. >> reporter: they allow these private animal parks but the owner had a troubled history. just released from prison on firearm and machine guns. he set the animal free before killing himself. we should warn you that this ends with the mass burial of 49 animals and the pictures are awful. this is cell phone video of a bear that was set free. neighbors saw many of the animals roaming the area and called 911. >> we have major big problems. >> reporter: 56. three mountain lions, 18 tigers, 17 lions among them close by and

easily seen. >> a wolf come from the fence that the bears in and comes up to the fence and then just pops right through the fence. >> it was not like a nightmare. it was like noah's ark. >> reporter: it grew dark quickly. the sheriff said shoot to kill if necessary. >> we cannot have animals running loose in this county. >> reporter: and so they were killed. their bodies piling up in obscene images as the sheriff said there was often no choice as with one 300-pound tiger. >> we did get one of the vets close enough unbelievably so within 10-15 yards. got a training lieser in it and -- train kwa lieser in it. this thing went crazy. it headed away to us and our officers put it down. >> reporter: the animals have been buried in a mass grave. the owner of the exotic yard terry thompson had numerous run ins with police and had just served a year in prison. he left no suicide note. in all of the word, there is

estimated to be only 2400 bengal tigers. 18 died. >> thank you for that. if you think the news have been a bit depressing lately, you're not going to get much argument here. all this death and destruction makes us sad too. but derek says there is one demise we can actually celebrate. >> i'm talking about the death of the killer one liner in our presidential debate. the zincer that can define a candidate for good and for ill. remember how they leveled jack quail with jack kennedy. you're no jack kennedy. and we can't leave out the ronald reagan classic from 1980, ask yourself are you better off now than you were four years ago. it was great stuff. but where did it all go? eight gop presidential debates so far, and none of these guys

can whip up a good political zincer. apparently not. and it may not matter if they could with so many debates and so many hour of air time. zincer, zappers, one liners, candidates have to defend their idea, imagine that. and rise or fall in the polls based on their ability to do so. just ask this guy. even better news, people are tuning in for this. last night's debate had five and a half million viewers and the networks have taken notice. in '08 they scheduled three republican debates. this time around there are 22 of them. now some say it's just because these debates are reminding voters of, i don't know, a competition on reality tv. sort of survivor for politicians. let's be real. who cares why it is. more americans are watching, listening, wanting new answers to an old zinger of a question where is the beef. >> good stuff, derek. okay. we could use some good stuff

after today. >> we're getting there. >> okay. >> we're getting there. >> okay. we're going to be improving overnight. you can't eliminate the shower over night. delmarva may be a different story. could see big storms there. let's start with temperatures. it's kind of eerily mild outside. 70 at andrews. 69 at national. this is the warmest its been all day. 66 in gaithersburg. even 61 up in hagerstown and 55 in cumberland. so pretty warm air. and that is kind of a sign of the potential anyway of severe weather. all right. we'll zoom in. we have two storms. one in the midwest. this is going to just kind of sit and spin for a while and make life miserable for ohio and much of the midwest. but eventually it will drive some dryer air in here and it won't bother us. the next storm is now pulling away from the coastline. there is a warm front, though, that is dangerously close to the metro area. we showed you this at 7:00. it's running right through southern maryland back into virginia and so this is the area the delmarva, that's the area we're concerned. it can still have some big thunderstorms in the next

3-4 hours. so we'll keep you posted and you can see all of the showers down to the south. we do have a flood warning out in loudoun county. there was some flooding down in leesburg. flood warning for some of the streams until about 3:45 this morning. but just light activity from la plata back up to 95 as you go through dc. here is the deal. grab the sunglasses tomorrow. we may start out with clouds but we'll get sunshine. a light jacket a good idea as well. windy on thursday. cooler thursday and friday. the cooler of the two days, though, will be friday. not crazy cool tomorrow. mostly cloudy, windy and mild tomorrow night. have to keep the chance of a shower. winds southwest 15-25. gusty. tomorrow morning becoming partly cloudy. windy and mild. 50s to around 60s. winds southwest 50-65 and gusty. by afternoon partly cloudy. not crazy cool. have to keep the chains of a sprinkle or -- chance of a

sprinkle or shower in. high temperatures 50-65. winds still southeast at 15-25 and rather gusty. day planner 50s to start. windy. 56-61 by noon and 61-65 by evening. got a couple of drops there but chances are few and far between. just a spring of will chance here in the -- sprinkle of chance here in the metro. saturday cool and 60. a great day, though, for the walk now on autism speaks for the mall. 10:00. see you all there at 9:00. nice on sunday too. sunshine and 62. next week a little milder. 70 on tuesday and 75 on wednesday. three in a row. >> okay. top, were you around when they had sunny versus billy? >> yes. i was afraid i was. >> this isn't quite that. >> not quite. >> sort of. >> there has been a lot of somebody versus somebody in redskin's history. and it started once again. rex grossman has the ax. beck finally has the chance.

see why the coach had the backup a chance. could they keep post season dreams alive. that is coming up next in sports.

the washington redskins have 11 turnovers. all 11 of them are credited to

rex grossman. it's been his mo throughout his nine-year pro career and unfortunately it came to a head last sunday against philly. so now the john beck era begins. how long that will be is yet to be determined. mike shanahan announced today that beck would be the starter sunday when the skins travel to face carolina. beck says he worked the off season with super bowl quarterbacks erin rogers and brew breeze in hopes that his time to leave this team would eventually come. it's here. here is more from mike shanahan on his decisions. >> you have to go with your gut. like i said, we have two guys we can win with but i want to give john an opportunity to see what he can do. >> there has been a lot of hard work that's gone into this and you never know when your opportunity is going to come and you always have to stay ready. i've tried to did that. and i just want to go out there and perform my best. >> the grossman-beck debacle

proves one thing. no quarterback is safe. only to take it back from him a few weeks later. if anything, this gives the attention of the rest -- if anything, this gets the attention of the rest of the team that your job is not secure. >> i think it's a very loud message to the rest of of the guy on offense get your stuff together. we need guys to make plays and it's not later. it's now. >> all right. to baseball. the world series officially under way with game one in the books thanks to the national league winning the all star game. the series kicks off in st. louis. first lady and mrs. biden at the game tonight to cheer on the games. the rangers versus the cardinals. top of the 5th down by two. napoli with a two-run homer. that ties the game at 2. base hit to bring in david breeze. the cards hold on to win game 1, 3-2. dc united hosting the portland

timbers. in the 89th minute they get the score but he's not very happy about it because it doesn't count. the referee's ruled that he was off sides. so the game ends in a draw and dc united fails to make the post season for the fourth straight year. all right. high schoolers, time to vote for our high school game of the week. among the choices this week a match up of the undefeated westfield at oakton. glenn park at largo. cast your vote dc.highschoolsports.net. the winning game will lead our highlights fridays toyota game night report. finally see the cheerleaders at the high school football. >> oh. >> all doing back handspring. she forgets to jump. >> yes. >> you kind of have to -- >> that's just -- >> jump backwards. that's how i look like when i do that. >> she couldn't do this. rather than get hurt, she just fell backwards. >> made it look like an accident. >> we'll be right back.

at bank of america, we're lending and investing in the people and communities who call greater washington, d.c. home. from supporting an organization that helps new citizens find their way... to proudly supporting our washington redskins... and partnering with a school that brings academic excellence to the anacostia community. because the more we do in greater washington, d.c., the more we help make opportunity possible.

so earlier tonight the w hotel hosted a great charity event for the children's national center. among the acts, the dance king alex furdol. let's say he rocked the house down. take a look. ♪ music playing >> that little dude has some moves. >> derek, were you giving him lessons? >> he got everything he knows from me. [ laughing ] >> that is 9news for tonight. good night, everybody. see you tomorrow.

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