Girl Allegedly Murdered By Total Stranger Over Facebook Posts

ARNHEM, The Netherlands (Reuters) - A 15-year-old Dutch boy was sentenced to a year in juvenile detention on Monday for stabbing to death a girl whose Facebook posts reportedly led to a contract for her killing.

The case, known in the Netherlands as the "Facebook murder", caused widespread debate about the role of social media in violent crime.

The court said the boy did not know the victim and had murdered her "at the request or instructions of others".

Dutch media reported that the 15-year-old victim, named in court documents as Winsie, had argued for weeks with two friends on the social networking site before they allegedly asked the defendant, who was 14 at the time, to kill her.

He was offered a 1,000 euro payment, the media reported.

"I am not happy with one year for my daughter's life," her father said outside the courthouse. "But that's what the law book says. We were powerless and so were the authorities."

(Reporting by Svebor Kranjc in Arnhem and Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, editing by Diana Abdallah)

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Cops: Tourist Beaten With Hammer In The Head By Stranger

NEW YORK -- An unemployed man in a business suit abruptly pulled out a hammer and beat a Spanish tourist eating lunch with his girlfriend in the park around City Hall until bystanders wrestled the hammer away, prosecutors said.

John Yoos, his head shaved and wearing his navy blue suit, said nothing Tuesday as a prosecutor described the bizarre, unprovoked attack on a man who had no connection to Yoos beyond sitting next to him on a park bench.

"This is a completely random act of brutal violence on a total stranger," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Allison Altmann said.

Yoos, who was arraigned on an attempted-murder charge, is being held without bail and is due back in court on Friday. Despite the strange allegations, prosecutors and Yoos' lawyer aren't seeking a psychiatric evaluation for him.

Altmann said the tourist, Hugo Alejandre, was on a bench in City Hall Park on Monday when Yoos stood up and started hitting him in the head with the hammer's claw end.

"He did it over and over again," she said.

After Alejandre fell to the ground, Yoos whacked him in the back and hit his girlfriend when she tried to help him, the prosecutor said. Bystanders intervened and pried the hammer away, she said.

Alejandre, of Barcelona, was treated at a hospital for a spinal fracture, deep gashes to his face and cuts on his chest and arms. He declined to comment as he left the Manhattan district attorney's office on Tuesday.

Yoos, 43, was arrested nearby, and police collected the bloody hammer plus a 5-inch-long steak knife from his jacket, prosecutors said.

"I hit him approximately 10 times with the hammer, at least once in the head," Yoos told an officer, according to a court complaint.

Alyssa Gamliel, Yoos' lawyer, told a judge that Yoos has lived in New York for two years. He had been arrested once before, in Hawaii in 2008, in a case that involved failing to pay a fine, she said. The details of that case were unclear.

The New York allegations more likely should reflect an assault charge, rather than an attempted murder charge, Gamliel said, noting that Alejandre was released from a hospital within a day.

She said she wasn't planning to seek a psychiatric exam for her client, at least for now.

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