2003
May 9, In Tyler, Texas, Deanna LaJune Laney (38) bludgeoned to death her 2 sons Joshua ( and Luke (6). A toddler was in critical condition. In 2004 a jury found Laney legally insane.

2004
May 9, Brenda Fassie (39), South Africa's first black pop star, who gave a voice to disenfranchised blacks at the height of apartheid, died of complications from an asthma attack.


2005
May 9, Actress Renee Zellweger married country music star Kenny Chesney on the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands. The marriage was annulled just months later.


2005
May 9, Eight-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias were found stabbed to death in Zion, Ill.; Laura's father, Jerry Hobbs III, was later charged with killing the girls.

2007
May 9, Authorities said Somali security forces are seizing and even burning Muslim women's veils in Mogadishu to stop Islamist insurgents disguising themselves for attacks.


2008
May 9, In Balla, India, 5 armed men killed Sunita (21), 22-weeks pregnant, and her boyfriend, Jasbir Singh (22). They were beaten, dragged into waiting cars, driven away and strangled. Their bodies, half-stripped, were laid out on the dirt outside Sunita's father's house for all to see, a sign that the family's "honor" had been restored by her cold-blooded murder. At the small police post in Balla, a constable later admitted the case was unlikely to ever reach prosecution, with the village putting enormous pressure on the police, and especially Jasbir's family, to quietly drop the case.


2010
May 9, In Germany Angela Merkel's center-right coalition lost control of Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, in an election that also erased its majority in the upper house of parliament, making the country harder to run. The defeat followed a stumbling start for Merkel's new national coalition government, which took power in October.



2011
May 9, Lidia Gueiler (b.1921), former Bolivian president and the second woman to lead a Latin American nation, died. She served as president of Bolivia when she held the post for about eight months in 1979-80 between coup d'etats.


2012
May 9, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth unveiled the government’s agenda in her annual Queen‘s Speech.


2012
May 9, In Syria bullets flying across the Syrian border into Lebanon killed a 70-year-old woman and wounded her daughter. A roadside bomb struck a Syrian military truck, wounding 6 soldiers just seconds after a convoy carrying the head of the UN observer mission passed by.


2012
May 9, In Yemen a girl (13) was raped as she headed to a bakery. She was kidnapped and taken into a car whose owner has been identified. She was brutally raped by the suspects who then deformed her face using sharp tools. Protesters later called for the arrest of 7 escaped suspects.


2013
May 9, In southern California Pamela Marie Devitt (63) was fatally mauled by a pack of pit bulls while walking near her home near Palmdale. Authorities were still searching for the dogs as darkness fell. On May 30 Alex Jackson (29), the owner of the dogs, was charged with murder. On Oct 4, 2014, Jackson was sentenced to 15 years to life. The dogs had guarded his pot-growing operation.