NATION IN BRIEF: Tornado kills mother and her newborn

The tornado that struck Murfreesboro, Tenn., on Friday “sounded like seven freight trains and 22 vacuum cleaners all going at the same time,” resident Eric Funkhouser said Saturday. Immediately afterward, Funkhouser said, he ran out the door to find his neighbor lying in his front yard, covered with blood. “He kept saying that his wife and baby were out there with him and he had to find them,” Funkhouser said. A short time later, neighbors found John Bryant’s wife, Kori, dead in the gravel driveway and 9-week-old Olivia dead in her car seat. John Bryant was in the hospital Saturday with a broken back. The twister, which killed a total of three people, destroyed 42 homes and damaged another 140 in Murfreesboro, 30 miles south of Nashville.

Best friend’s mom suspect in death

Police in Tracy, Calif., said Saturday they have arrested a Sunday school teacher on suspicion of kidnapping and killing an 8-year-old girl whose body was found in a suitcase dumped in an irrigation pond. Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested late Friday about five hours after she drove herself to the local police station at the request of officers. She was being held without bail in connection with the death of Sandra Cantu, police said. Sandra’s relatives said Saturday that Huckaby was the mother of Sandra’s best friend. Sandra disappeared on March 27.

1 dies after car hits churchgoers

A retired priest drove into a group of churchgoers after a Good Friday service, killing an elderly woman and injuring four people in Forest Hills, Pa., the church’s pastor said. The Rev. John W. Skirtich, pastor of St. Maurice Church, said during services Friday night that Madeline Romell, 89, had died of her injuries five hours after the crash. Injuries to the four others were not life-threatening. A parishioner who helped tend the injured said the priest told her the car accelerated by itself. “He’s in shock,” she said. “He’s just devastated.”

Retired officer fires at police, kills self

Police in West Babylon, N.Y., say a retired New York City police officer shot himself to death on his front lawn Saturday after firing at an off-duty officer he thought was having an affair with his wife. Police say Cecil Ramsay, 51, fired several shots into a car carrying his wife, NYPD officer Belfort Dady, and a friend, NYPD Officer Edwin Shittick. Shittick was shot in the hand.

14 kids, $530,000 in child support

A Flint, Mich., man fathered 14 children with different women and owes more than $530,000 in unpaid child support, Michigan authorities say. The Flint Journal reports Thomas Frazier, 42, was jailed Thursday. Court records say he owes six years of support payments. Frazier says he thinks he fathered only three of the children and that it’s unrealistic for authorities to expect him to pay child support that was $3,000 a month at one point.