Rabies Scare After Bats Invade Dorm

HOUSTON — Bats took over a university dormitory, forcing more than 200 students into hotels and worrying health officials, who now fear the students could have been exposed to rabies.

Videos posted on the Internet show students swinging a broom and a tennis racket as several bats fly about in a dormitory hallway at Texas Southern University. One student, 19-year-old Jason Smith, said he killed dozens of bats but didn’t know of anyone who was bitten.

“When we saw the video, we knew we had a problem,” said Kathy Barton, a spokeswoman for the city of Houston’s health department.

Health officials asked students who had been in Lanier Hall East to meet with them this week to determine whether any would need rabies vaccinations.

Texas Southern officials, meanwhile, are trying to rid the dorm of the bat infestation, said university spokesman Terrence Jackson. It wasn’t clear how many bats were in the building. Exterminators went to the dorm on Monday.

Rabies is a viral disease most often transmitted through a bite from an infected animal. It attacks the central nervous system and, if untreated, can lead to paralysis, difficulty swallowing and death.

- Associated Press

Basketball Players Say Assault Outside College Was Hate Crime

NEW YORK
Black players on the Manhattan Community College basketball team said this week that an unprovoked attack by a gang of White men near the school should be handled as a hate crime.

The group is calling on Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and other officials to upgrade the charges brought against three suspects from assault to a serious hate crime, according to Bonita Zelman, an attorney representing the players.

The group also wants a review of the investigation, because they say more than eight people were involved in the attack, and only three were arrested.

“This was a hate crime,” Zelman says.

A news conference was scheduled for Wednesday to release further details of the attack. A police spokesman declined to comment on the charges saying that any response will have to come after the details of the press conference were released.

Team members and their coach were confronted by a gang of White males who punched, stomped and kicked them as they walked from practice near the college last September, according to Zelman. “They hurled racial slurs at them, screaming the ‘N’ word,” she says.

- Associated Press