DENVER: A man who was convicted of pointing a gun at Burger King drive-thru worker who wouldn’t accept drugs for payment and later shooting at other people elsewhere the same night has been sentenced to 143 years in prison.
Prosecutors who announced the sentence Thursday said the drive-thru incident was the beginning of a series of crimes Eugene Robertson carried out in the Denver suburb of Aurora on Oct. 17, 2022. No one was wounded.
In April, a jury found Robertson guilty of 17 crimes, including eight counts of attempted murder. The sentences for many of the crimes were stacked on top of each other, leading to a long sentence. Robertson had faced a maximum sentence of more than 400 years when he was sentenced Aug. 9.
“I hope this century-long prison sentence serves as a warning that my prosecutors and I will not tolerate violent crime in our community,” 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner said in a statement.
After Robertson pointed the gun at the drive-thru worker, prosecutors said he walked into a convenience store across the street and pointed a gun at the head of a clerk. When Robertson saw there was a surveillance video camera system there, he shot at the screen and left, then shot toward two people outside in the parking lot, Kellner’s office said.
The Sentinel Colorado in Aurora previously reported that a witness at the convenience store store told police there seemed to be “something off” about Robertson and that he was “talking about God” and carrying a Bible with a purple cover.
Later that night, a woman who was friends with Robertson called 911 to report that he had fired shots after she refused to open the door of her apartment, where she was with several people, prosecutors said.
Police spotted Robertson at the woman’s apartment complex. He hid behind some bushes before being arrested, prosecutors said.
Man who pulled gun after Burger King worker wouldn’t take drugs for payment gets 143 years in prison
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Man who pulled gun after Burger King worker wouldn’t take drugs for payment gets 143 years in prison
- In April, a jury found Robertson guilty of 17 crimes, including eight counts of attempted murder
- The sentences for many of the crimes were stacked on top of each other, leading to a long sentence
Italian cooking and its rituals get UN designation as world heritage
- UNESCO added the rituals surrounding Italian food preparation and consumption to its list of the world’s traditional practices and expressions
ROME: Italian food is known and loved around the world for its fresh ingredients and palate-pleasing tastes, but on Wednesday, the UN’s cultural agency gave foodies another reason to celebrate their pizza, pasta and tiramisu by listing Italian cooking as part of the world’s “intangible” cultural heritage.
UNESCO added the rituals surrounding Italian food preparation and consumption to its list of the world’s traditional practices and expressions. It’s a designation celebrated alongside the more well-known UNESCO list of world heritage sites, on which Italy is well represented with locations like the Rome’s Colosseum and the ancient city of Pompeii.
The citation didn’t mention specific dishes, recipes or regional specialties, but highlighted the cultural importance Italians place on the rituals of cooking and eating: the Sunday family lunch, the tradition of grandmothers teaching grandchildren how to fold tortellini dough just so, even the act of coming together to share a meal.
“Cooking is a gesture of love, a way in which we tell something about ourselves to others and how we take care of others,” said Pier Luigi Petrillo, a member of the Italian UNESCO campaign and professor of comparative law at Rome’s La Sapienza University.
“This tradition of being at the table, of stopping for a while at lunch, a bit longer at dinner, and even longer for big occasions, it’s not very common around the world,” he said.
Premier Giorgia Meloni celebrated the designation, which she said honored Italians and their national identity.
“Because for us Italians, cuisine is not just food or a collection of recipes. It is much more: it is culture, tradition, work, wealth,” she said in a statement.
It’s by no means the first time a country’s cuisine has been recognized as a cultural expression: In 2010, UNESCO listed the “gastrnomic meal of the French” as part of the world’s intangible heritage, highlighting the French custom of celebrating important moments with food.
Other national cuisines and cultural practices surrounding them have also been added in recent years: the “cider culture” of Spain’s Asturian region, the Ceebu Jen culinary tradition of Senegal, the traditional way of making cheese in Minas Gerais, Brazil.
UNESCO meets every year to consider adding new cultural practices or expressions onto its lists of so-called “intangible heritage.” There are three types: One is a representative list, another is a list of practices that are in “urgent” need of safeguarding and the third is a list of good safeguarding practices.
This year, the committee meeting in New Delhi considered 53 nominations for the representative list, which already had 788 items. Other nominees included the Swiss yodelling, the handloom weaving technique used to make Bangladesh’s Tangail sarees, and Chile’s family circuses.
In its submission, Italy emphasized the “sustainability and biocultural diversity” of its food. Its campaign noted how Italy’s simple cuisine valued seasonality, fresh produce and limiting waste, while its variety highlighted its regional culinary differences and influences from migrants and others.
“For me, Italian cuisine is the best, top of the range. Number one. Nothing comes close,” said Francesco Lenzi, a pasta maker at Rome’s Osteria da Fortunata restaurant, near the Piazza Navona. “There are people who say ‘No, spaghetti comes from China.’ Okay, fine, but here we have turned noodles into a global phenomenon. Today, wherever you go in the world, everyone knows the word spaghetti. Everyone knows pizza.”
Lenzi credited his passion to his grandmother, the “queen of this big house by the sea” in Camogli, a small village on the Ligurian coast where he grew up. “I remember that on Sundays she would make ravioli with a rolling pin.”
“This stayed with me for many years,” he said in the restaurant’s kitchen.
Mirella Pozzoli, a tourist visiting Rome’s Pantheon from the Lombardy region in northern Italy, said the mere act of dining together was special to Italians:
“Sitting at the table with family or friends is something that we Italians cherish and care about deeply. It’s a tradition of conviviality that you won’t find anywhere else in the world.”
Italy already has 13 other cultural items on the UNESCO intangible list, including Sicilian puppet theater, Cremona’s violin craftsmanship and the practice moving of livestock along seasonal migratory routes known as transhumance.
Italy appeared in two previous food-related listings: a 2013 citation for the “Mediterranean diet” that included Italy and half a dozen other countries, and the 2017 recognition of Naples’ pizza makers.
Petrillo, the Italian campaign member, said after 2017, the number of accredited schools to train Neapolitan pizza makers increased by more than 400 percent.
“After the UNESCO recognition, there were significant economic effects, both on tourism and and the sales of products and on education and training,” he said.
