What happened to the mother of these children? Is JOHN BAXTER a single or custodial father? Notice that the woman who was arrested is NOT related to the kids.
So much back story that is not being told here....
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140529/A_NEWS/140529863
Two arrests in child abuse probe
By The Record
May 29, 2014 12:00 AM
STOCKTON - A man and a woman were arrested Tuesday in south Stockton after a child-abuse investigation also turned up evidence of prostitution, authorities said.
The investigation began when an emergency room nurse contacted the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office on Monday to report a severe case of child abuse involving a 10-year-old boy, officials said. On Tuesday, detectives from the Sheriff's Office learned the victim's 8-year-old brother had also been abused, authorities said.
Investigators served a search warrant in the 2800 block of South El Dorado Street, where they uncovered evidence of pimping and prostitution, said Deputy Les Garcia, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.
John Baxter, 31, the father of the two boys, was arrested on suspicion of child abuse, child endangerment, pimping and pandering, and conspiracy, authorities said. Ashley Johnson, 25, who is not related to the child-abuse victims, was arrested on suspicion of pimping and pandering and conspiracy, officials said.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Dad charged with abusing 14-month-old son; baby has fractures in both legs (York County, Pennsylvania)
Dad is identified as PETER MOORE.
http://fox43.com/2014/05/28/york-county-father-charged-with-child-abuse/#axzz33KkT3pQW
York County father charged with child abuse
3 days ago
by Howard Sheppard Content Manager
A York County man is behind bars charged with abuse of his 14 month old son. Charges were filed against Peter Moore, 39, of Etters, on May 15 following an investigation that began in March.
Police were alerted on March 8 by authorities about a child at Hershey Medical Center with fractures in both legs.
Moore and the child’s mother had brought the child there for treatment. Moore faces a felony charge of Aggravated Assault and a lesser charge of Endangering Welfare of Children. Following a preliminary hearing on May 20, he was sent to York County Prison in lieu of $5,000 bail.
http://fox43.com/2014/05/28/york-county-father-charged-with-child-abuse/#axzz33KkT3pQW
York County father charged with child abuse
3 days ago
by Howard Sheppard Content Manager
A York County man is behind bars charged with abuse of his 14 month old son. Charges were filed against Peter Moore, 39, of Etters, on May 15 following an investigation that began in March.
Police were alerted on March 8 by authorities about a child at Hershey Medical Center with fractures in both legs.
Moore and the child’s mother had brought the child there for treatment. Moore faces a felony charge of Aggravated Assault and a lesser charge of Endangering Welfare of Children. Following a preliminary hearing on May 20, he was sent to York County Prison in lieu of $5,000 bail.
Dad gets 5 years in prison for death of 6-month-old son (Ottawa, Illinois)
Classic killer daddy coddling. Dad is identified as RAYMOND JAMES JR.
http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/father-gets-prison-in-son-s-death/article_35a5c08c-298d-5336-bdc1-ddb6970fa858.html
Father, 21, gets prison in son's death
May 30, 2014 3:33 pm • Greg Stanmar
OTTAWA — The father accused of involuntary manslaughter in the death of his infant son in Streator was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.
Raymond James Jr., 21, living in Ottawa when he was arrested, could have been sentenced to 12 years in prison under a blind plea entered last month in front of LaSalle County Chief Judge H. Chris Ryan.
The extended sentence range for the Class 2 felony is three to 14 years in prison.
Raymond James III, six months old, was taken to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria on Aug. 30, 2012, where he died the next day. The father was charged in April of this year after toxicology tests and interviews with medical personnel.
In exchange for the blind plea, a charge of aggravated battery to a child was dismissed.
Fisher told authorities he found the child unresponsive in their Otter Creek apartment in Streator. He initially said he dropped the child but First Assistant State’s Attorney Greg Sticka told Ryan he was prepared to present expert testimony that the internal head injuries could not have been caused by a fall.
Sticka said the injuries were consistent with violent shaking, commonly referred to as shaken baby syndrome.
The child lived with his father and mother, Jasmine Scott, at the time of his death.
Fisher has been jailed in lieu of $7,500 cash since his arrest. He will be credited for time served.
http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/father-gets-prison-in-son-s-death/article_35a5c08c-298d-5336-bdc1-ddb6970fa858.html
Father, 21, gets prison in son's death
May 30, 2014 3:33 pm • Greg Stanmar
OTTAWA — The father accused of involuntary manslaughter in the death of his infant son in Streator was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.
Raymond James Jr., 21, living in Ottawa when he was arrested, could have been sentenced to 12 years in prison under a blind plea entered last month in front of LaSalle County Chief Judge H. Chris Ryan.
The extended sentence range for the Class 2 felony is three to 14 years in prison.
Raymond James III, six months old, was taken to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria on Aug. 30, 2012, where he died the next day. The father was charged in April of this year after toxicology tests and interviews with medical personnel.
In exchange for the blind plea, a charge of aggravated battery to a child was dismissed.
Fisher told authorities he found the child unresponsive in their Otter Creek apartment in Streator. He initially said he dropped the child but First Assistant State’s Attorney Greg Sticka told Ryan he was prepared to present expert testimony that the internal head injuries could not have been caused by a fall.
Sticka said the injuries were consistent with violent shaking, commonly referred to as shaken baby syndrome.
The child lived with his father and mother, Jasmine Scott, at the time of his death.
Fisher has been jailed in lieu of $7,500 cash since his arrest. He will be credited for time served.
Dad on trial for death of 7-month-old daughter (Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada)
Once again, a dad who was "caregiving" while Mom was at work. He gets "frustrated" and goes off on the baby--and can't even be bothered to do anything about it until Mom gets home.
Dad is identified as MICHAEL BEAKLEY.
http://www.theprovince.com/health/Shaken+baby+injuries+akin+over+testifies+doctor/9893301/story.html
Shaken baby had injuries akin to be run over by a car, testifies B.C. doctor
By Cam Fortems, Kamloops This Week
May 30, 2014
Shaken baby had injuries akin to be run over by a car, testifies B.C. doctor
KAMLOOPS — Injuries to a seven-month-old baby’s brain were so severe that they’re typically seen in children who have been run over by a vehicle or fallen from a second-storey window, a doctor has testified.
Pediatric specialist Dr. Margaret Colbourne said injuries in Hunter Beakley’s eyes showed she’d been violently shaken.
“There’s nothing else that would have caused this except shaking,” Colbourne said. My diagnosis was abusive head trauma,” Colbourne told B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday.
Colbourne, who is also the medical director of the child-protection service unit at BC Children’s Hospital, was testifying in the trial of Hunter’s father, Michael Beakley.
He is charged with aggravated assault and criminal negligence causing bodily harm.
B.C. Supreme Court heard Hunter was a full-term baby who was meeting all her growth and development milestones.
It was an ophthalmologist’s report that solidified what every other doctor suspected when they examined Hunter, who began having seizures.
Injuries in her eyes were “secondary to shaken-baby syndrome,” the pediatric ophthalmologist wrote after examining the baby while she was undergoing brain surgery at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver on Feb. 15, 2012.
Beakley’s former spouse, Cassandra Gunn, has described her daughter as an extremely fussy baby who often could not be consoled.
Gunn testified she went to work on the afternoon of Valentine’s Day 2012, leaving Hunter with Beakley and the couple’s other daughter.
When she arrived home after work that evening, Beakley asked her to look at Hunter. Gunn described her daughter’s skin as pale, her eyes pulled to the right side and she was making involuntary motions with her arms.
Paramedics noted Hunter was not moving normally on her left side.
She was first taken to Royal Inland Hospital, then transported by air early the next morning to BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.
Colbourne outlined reports from emergency doctors and a pediatrician in Kamloops, as well as records from anesthesiologists, neurosurgeons and ophthalmologists from Vancouver.
All noted there were no outward signs of trauma to the baby, in particular no cracks, swelling or other evidence of blows to her skull.
But bleeding in her head and subsequent swelling caused Hunter’s brain to shift from the centre.
When surgery to reduce swelling and determine a cause of seizures was completed, the brain swelling continued so doctors could not immediately replace a portion of her skull that was removed.
Surgeons also observed an earlier trauma to the brain they determined occurred anywhere from a few days to a few weeks before Feb. 14, 2014.
In cross-examination, defence lawyer Bob McRoberts asked Colbourne if the Valentine’s Day injury could have occurred earlier in the day or on Feb. 13, the day on which Gunn described Hunter as “inconsolable” and “not right.”
“The degree of bleeding and swelling in her head, she would have appeared more abnormal than that,” Colbourne said.
But she couldn’t rule out the injury happened earlier.
“It’s conceivable this injury could have happened sometime in the day, during February 14th.”
Colbourne said milder brain injury is misdiagnosed by general physicians about 30 per cent of the time as flu-like symptoms, such as what Hunter had in previous weeks.
McRoberts also noted the lack of rib injury often seen in infants who are grabbed and shaken violently.
Colbourne testified the “huge, huge” hemorrhaging of blood seen in Hunter’s eyeball rarely occurs except during violent acceleration and deceleration of the head.
Doctors did extensive blood work and other testing to rule out causes.
By Feb. 29, 2012, two weeks after Hunter was admitted to hospital, “we didn’t need to do anymore investigation,” Colbourne said.
Dad is identified as MICHAEL BEAKLEY.
http://www.theprovince.com/health/Shaken+baby+injuries+akin+over+testifies+doctor/9893301/story.html
Shaken baby had injuries akin to be run over by a car, testifies B.C. doctor
By Cam Fortems, Kamloops This Week
May 30, 2014
Shaken baby had injuries akin to be run over by a car, testifies B.C. doctor
KAMLOOPS — Injuries to a seven-month-old baby’s brain were so severe that they’re typically seen in children who have been run over by a vehicle or fallen from a second-storey window, a doctor has testified.
Pediatric specialist Dr. Margaret Colbourne said injuries in Hunter Beakley’s eyes showed she’d been violently shaken.
“There’s nothing else that would have caused this except shaking,” Colbourne said. My diagnosis was abusive head trauma,” Colbourne told B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday.
Colbourne, who is also the medical director of the child-protection service unit at BC Children’s Hospital, was testifying in the trial of Hunter’s father, Michael Beakley.
He is charged with aggravated assault and criminal negligence causing bodily harm.
B.C. Supreme Court heard Hunter was a full-term baby who was meeting all her growth and development milestones.
It was an ophthalmologist’s report that solidified what every other doctor suspected when they examined Hunter, who began having seizures.
Injuries in her eyes were “secondary to shaken-baby syndrome,” the pediatric ophthalmologist wrote after examining the baby while she was undergoing brain surgery at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver on Feb. 15, 2012.
Beakley’s former spouse, Cassandra Gunn, has described her daughter as an extremely fussy baby who often could not be consoled.
Gunn testified she went to work on the afternoon of Valentine’s Day 2012, leaving Hunter with Beakley and the couple’s other daughter.
When she arrived home after work that evening, Beakley asked her to look at Hunter. Gunn described her daughter’s skin as pale, her eyes pulled to the right side and she was making involuntary motions with her arms.
Paramedics noted Hunter was not moving normally on her left side.
She was first taken to Royal Inland Hospital, then transported by air early the next morning to BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.
Colbourne outlined reports from emergency doctors and a pediatrician in Kamloops, as well as records from anesthesiologists, neurosurgeons and ophthalmologists from Vancouver.
All noted there were no outward signs of trauma to the baby, in particular no cracks, swelling or other evidence of blows to her skull.
But bleeding in her head and subsequent swelling caused Hunter’s brain to shift from the centre.
When surgery to reduce swelling and determine a cause of seizures was completed, the brain swelling continued so doctors could not immediately replace a portion of her skull that was removed.
Surgeons also observed an earlier trauma to the brain they determined occurred anywhere from a few days to a few weeks before Feb. 14, 2014.
In cross-examination, defence lawyer Bob McRoberts asked Colbourne if the Valentine’s Day injury could have occurred earlier in the day or on Feb. 13, the day on which Gunn described Hunter as “inconsolable” and “not right.”
“The degree of bleeding and swelling in her head, she would have appeared more abnormal than that,” Colbourne said.
But she couldn’t rule out the injury happened earlier.
“It’s conceivable this injury could have happened sometime in the day, during February 14th.”
Colbourne said milder brain injury is misdiagnosed by general physicians about 30 per cent of the time as flu-like symptoms, such as what Hunter had in previous weeks.
McRoberts also noted the lack of rib injury often seen in infants who are grabbed and shaken violently.
Colbourne testified the “huge, huge” hemorrhaging of blood seen in Hunter’s eyeball rarely occurs except during violent acceleration and deceleration of the head.
Doctors did extensive blood work and other testing to rule out causes.
By Feb. 29, 2012, two weeks after Hunter was admitted to hospital, “we didn’t need to do anymore investigation,” Colbourne said.
Dad pleads no contest to assaulting 15-year-old son; dad ordered to stay away unless family court "orders visitation contact" (Long Beach, California)
Not even a slap on the wrist. Dad SALIM MICHAEL KHOURY wastes the tax payers money on useless classes. Even the 10-year ban from seeing the assault victim, his son, means nothing since it can be overturned by family court at any time. And probably will be given that this is California. Meaning a kid who is just weeks away from being a legal adult can be forced to spend time with an violent abuser. Sickening.
http://www.presstelegram.com/general-news/20140529/long-beach-father-pleads-no-contest-to-assaulting-son
Long Beach father pleads no contest to assaulting son
By Beatriz Valenzuela, Press-Telegram
Posted: 05/29/14, 3:36 PM PDT | A Long Beach man accused of assaulting his so pleaded no contest to child abuse charges Wednesday and was ordered to stay away from the teen for the next decade, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday.
Salim Michael Khoury, 57, was immediately sentenced by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jessie I. Rodriguez to five years of formal probation.
Under the terms of the negotiated plea agreement, Khoury also is required to attend parenting and anger management classes for one year and perform 120 days of Caltrans service.
Khoury was also ordered to stay away from his 15-year-old son for 10 years unless a family court orders visitation contact.
Authorities say Khoury beat up his son after a family disagreement on Feb. 10. The extent of his injuries at the time of the attack were not disclosed.
http://www.presstelegram.com/general-news/20140529/long-beach-father-pleads-no-contest-to-assaulting-son
Long Beach father pleads no contest to assaulting son
By Beatriz Valenzuela, Press-Telegram
Posted: 05/29/14, 3:36 PM PDT | A Long Beach man accused of assaulting his so pleaded no contest to child abuse charges Wednesday and was ordered to stay away from the teen for the next decade, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday.
Salim Michael Khoury, 57, was immediately sentenced by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jessie I. Rodriguez to five years of formal probation.
Under the terms of the negotiated plea agreement, Khoury also is required to attend parenting and anger management classes for one year and perform 120 days of Caltrans service.
Khoury was also ordered to stay away from his 15-year-old son for 10 years unless a family court orders visitation contact.
Authorities say Khoury beat up his son after a family disagreement on Feb. 10. The extent of his injuries at the time of the attack were not disclosed.
Daughter says dad sexually abused her for years (Chesapeake, Virginia)
Dad is identified as DAVID SELLERS.
http://wavy.com/2014/05/30/daughter-says-father-abused-her-for-years/
Daughter says father abused her for years
By Jason Marks
Updated: Friday, May 30, 2014, 10:26 am
Published: Friday, May 30, 2014, 12:06 am
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) – Just days after a volunteer coach at a catholic school in Norfolk was arrested for sexually abusing a child, a woman told police he did the same thing to her. That woman told 10 On Your Side she is his daughter.
“It is devastating to have to go through it,“ 29-year-old Catherine Sellers, said. “You don’t even realize the impact that you go through growing up and dealing with that pain.”
Sellers told 10 On Your Side her darkest secrets, secrets she’s lived with since she was a little girl, growing up in Chesapeake. Her father, David Sellers, was arrested Wednesday by Norfolk Police. Detectives say he sexually abused a child for more than two years.
“I lost it,” Sellers said about her reaction to the arrest. “I went insane, because I knew that all my worries this whole time had come true.“
Those concerns come from a woman who said she was abused by the same man. Catherine said the abuse happened inside her Chesapeake home, starting when she was only 2 years old and lasting until she was 10. She now lives in New York.
“It bothers me that he hasn’t been punished for what he has done, and he’s been able to commit that to other people,“ Sellers added.
At the time of David Sellers’ recent arrest, he was working as a volunteer coach at Christ the King Catholic School. Police say the abuse did not involve any students nor did it happen at the school.
“[He's] the devil,” Seller said. “The devil does things like that.“
Catherine said she can’t forgive her father and hasn’t spoken to him in three years. She has filed a report with Chesapeake police, which she hopes will even out the score. A detective will meet with her, and if there is enough evidence, David Sellers could face more charges.
“He never needs to see the light of day,” she said.
Sellers remains in the Norfolk City Jail without bond. He’s due back in court on June 11.
http://wavy.com/2014/05/30/daughter-says-father-abused-her-for-years/
Daughter says father abused her for years
By Jason Marks
Updated: Friday, May 30, 2014, 10:26 am
Published: Friday, May 30, 2014, 12:06 am
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) – Just days after a volunteer coach at a catholic school in Norfolk was arrested for sexually abusing a child, a woman told police he did the same thing to her. That woman told 10 On Your Side she is his daughter.
“It is devastating to have to go through it,“ 29-year-old Catherine Sellers, said. “You don’t even realize the impact that you go through growing up and dealing with that pain.”
Sellers told 10 On Your Side her darkest secrets, secrets she’s lived with since she was a little girl, growing up in Chesapeake. Her father, David Sellers, was arrested Wednesday by Norfolk Police. Detectives say he sexually abused a child for more than two years.
“I lost it,” Sellers said about her reaction to the arrest. “I went insane, because I knew that all my worries this whole time had come true.“
Those concerns come from a woman who said she was abused by the same man. Catherine said the abuse happened inside her Chesapeake home, starting when she was only 2 years old and lasting until she was 10. She now lives in New York.
“It bothers me that he hasn’t been punished for what he has done, and he’s been able to commit that to other people,“ Sellers added.
At the time of David Sellers’ recent arrest, he was working as a volunteer coach at Christ the King Catholic School. Police say the abuse did not involve any students nor did it happen at the school.
“[He's] the devil,” Seller said. “The devil does things like that.“
Catherine said she can’t forgive her father and hasn’t spoken to him in three years. She has filed a report with Chesapeake police, which she hopes will even out the score. A detective will meet with her, and if there is enough evidence, David Sellers could face more charges.
“He never needs to see the light of day,” she said.
Sellers remains in the Norfolk City Jail without bond. He’s due back in court on June 11.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Dad charged in death of 5-week-old son; waited 27 hours after baby injured to call authorities (Putnam County, West Viriginia)
The last paragraph says it all. Dad ROBERT "JEREMY" SMITH should not have been allowed around children at all. And CERTAINLY not as a caretaker.
Why did he have"access" to this baby for so long without direct contact (as opposed to phone contact) with the mother? Was it a custody/visitation situation?
http://www.wsaz.com/news/wvnews/headlines/Father-Charged-in-Sons-Death-Sobs-During-Court-Hearing-261095591.html
Father Charged in Son's Death Sobs During Court Hearing
Updated: Thu 11:50 AM, May 29, 2014
By: Anna Baxter
PUTNAM COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- The father charged in connection with his 5-week-old son's death sobbed during a court hearing on Thursday.
Robert "Jeremy" Smith is charged with child abuse resulting in death.
Smith was scheduled to be in court Thursday for his preliminary hearing in Putnam County, but he waived his case to the grand jury.
However, before the hearing ended, Smith's attorney told the magistrate there was no need to lower Smith's bond because he's being held in isolation in jail. Right now, Smith's bond is set for $500,000.
Smith's son, Madden Smith, was found dead in a car in Kanawha City last week. Smith was also in the car with a self inflicted injury.
According to the criminal complaint, at first, Smith told police he dropped the baby, but later admitted to shaking Madden.
Police say Smith said he was watching his son in Hurricane when he heard him crying. The complaint says he went to pick up the boy, but Madden fell floor and was gasping for air.
Smith told police he didn't feel a pulse so he wrapped Madden in a blanket, but didn't call 911 for 27 hours. Smith told police he was scared he would get in trouble, according to the complaint.
Police say Madden died at the home in Hurricane and Smith later drove him to Charleston.
Police say Smith talked to the baby's mother during that time, but never mentioned what happened to their son. Police say Smith also slept during that time.
Police say when they found Madden in the car, he felt malleable to the touch, more so than the typical soft skulls of infants his age, and he had an apparent abrasion on his forehead.
According to the criminal complaint, Madden appeared to have suffered multiple skull fractures.
Also, after Thursday's hearing police took DNA samples from Smith as part of their investigation.
Smith's family attended his court hearing Thursday.
Madden's family wrote in his obituary "Madden may have only lived 47 short days, be he touched the lives of many people!!!"
The family also writes "The only peace we have is knowing Madden has life more abundantly in heaven with Jesus! We will see Madden again soon!" The family held a service Wednesday to honor Madden's life.
Charleston Police say Smith had previously faced two separate child neglect charges, one in Putnam County and one in Kanawha County, and both were dismissed. They say he'd also been convicted of domestic battery in Charleston in 2007.
Why did he have"access" to this baby for so long without direct contact (as opposed to phone contact) with the mother? Was it a custody/visitation situation?
http://www.wsaz.com/news/wvnews/headlines/Father-Charged-in-Sons-Death-Sobs-During-Court-Hearing-261095591.html
Father Charged in Son's Death Sobs During Court Hearing
Updated: Thu 11:50 AM, May 29, 2014
By: Anna Baxter
PUTNAM COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- The father charged in connection with his 5-week-old son's death sobbed during a court hearing on Thursday.
Robert "Jeremy" Smith is charged with child abuse resulting in death.
Smith was scheduled to be in court Thursday for his preliminary hearing in Putnam County, but he waived his case to the grand jury.
However, before the hearing ended, Smith's attorney told the magistrate there was no need to lower Smith's bond because he's being held in isolation in jail. Right now, Smith's bond is set for $500,000.
Smith's son, Madden Smith, was found dead in a car in Kanawha City last week. Smith was also in the car with a self inflicted injury.
According to the criminal complaint, at first, Smith told police he dropped the baby, but later admitted to shaking Madden.
Police say Smith said he was watching his son in Hurricane when he heard him crying. The complaint says he went to pick up the boy, but Madden fell floor and was gasping for air.
Smith told police he didn't feel a pulse so he wrapped Madden in a blanket, but didn't call 911 for 27 hours. Smith told police he was scared he would get in trouble, according to the complaint.
Police say Madden died at the home in Hurricane and Smith later drove him to Charleston.
Police say Smith talked to the baby's mother during that time, but never mentioned what happened to their son. Police say Smith also slept during that time.
Police say when they found Madden in the car, he felt malleable to the touch, more so than the typical soft skulls of infants his age, and he had an apparent abrasion on his forehead.
According to the criminal complaint, Madden appeared to have suffered multiple skull fractures.
Also, after Thursday's hearing police took DNA samples from Smith as part of their investigation.
Smith's family attended his court hearing Thursday.
Madden's family wrote in his obituary "Madden may have only lived 47 short days, be he touched the lives of many people!!!"
The family also writes "The only peace we have is knowing Madden has life more abundantly in heaven with Jesus! We will see Madden again soon!" The family held a service Wednesday to honor Madden's life.
Charleston Police say Smith had previously faced two separate child neglect charges, one in Putnam County and one in Kanawha County, and both were dismissed. They say he'd also been convicted of domestic battery in Charleston in 2007.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Hearing set for dad accused of abusing 11-week-old daughter (Brighton, Michigan)
Disgusting that fathers like Josh Powell get supervised visitation--despite the fact that he was "suspected" in the disappearance (murder) of the mother of their children. Recently we were told that he sexually abused his sons before he managed to murder them during his so-called supervised visitation.
This mom gets supervised--even though she wasn't even home when Daddy went off on the baby. But she is blamed for the actions of another anyway. And may be charged with neglect, with the only reason being--according to this article--that she repeated Daddy's cover story to the authorities. Bit of a double standard?
Meanwhile, for now at least, dad JOSHUA QUINCY BURNS no longer has visitation. But it appears he did previously.
Daddy coddling at its finest.
http://www.livingstondaily.com/article/20140528/NEWS01/305280013/Hearing-set-for-dad-accused-of-abusing-infant-daughter
Hearing set for dad accused of abusing infant daughter
Brighton man denied request to visit child
May 28, 2014 2:32 AM
Written by Lisa Roose-Church
Daily Press & Argus
A Brighton father accused of abusing his then-11-week-old daughter asked Tuesday for a preliminary exam in the case.
The hearing, set for June 10 in Livingston County District Court, will determine if there is probable cause to send Joshua Quincy Burns to Circuit Court for trial on a charge of second-degree child abuse.
Authorities allege Burns’ daughter suffered “abusive head trauma not consistent” with the parents’ explanation of her injury. A University of Michigan Medical Center physician told authorities that she believes the child is at further risk of physical harm or death if left in the home, according to court records.
According to court records, there is “no clear source” for the infant’s trauma except a March 15 incident when she was in her father’s care at the family’s Fifth Street home.
Court records show the infant’s mother was at a hair appointment and she called her husband, who said he took his hands off his daughter for a brief moment while holding her on his lap.
Burns’ wife told authorities that her husband claimed their daughter “lurched forward” and he caught her on her face. She said when she arrived home that she saw a fingerprint on her daughter’s face and redness around the infant’s eye, court records show.
Burns told authorities a similar story, but the U-M doctor told authorities that the alleged fall — covering a “very short distance with no contact with a hard surface” — was inconsistent with the infant’s intracranial and ophthalmologist injuries.
The doctor noted that any bruising on an infant who is preambulatory is “highly suspect for physical abuse,” according to court records.
The infant, now 4 months old, has been placed in the custody of the Department of Human Services pending the outcome of an abuse/neglect case filed against both Burns and his wife. The neglect/abuse case is set for trial in July.
Burns’ wife has supervised visitation with her daughter, but Burns’ visitation rights have been suspended, according to court records.
His attorney asked the judge Tuesday to allow him to visit with his daughter, but Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Rose opposed the request.
Rose said Burns was home alone with his daughter when the injuries allegedly occurred and as a result, the infant has suffered bleeding on her brain.
“She will have ongoing brain trauma,” Rose said.
The judge denied the defense’s request.
This mom gets supervised--even though she wasn't even home when Daddy went off on the baby. But she is blamed for the actions of another anyway. And may be charged with neglect, with the only reason being--according to this article--that she repeated Daddy's cover story to the authorities. Bit of a double standard?
Meanwhile, for now at least, dad JOSHUA QUINCY BURNS no longer has visitation. But it appears he did previously.
Daddy coddling at its finest.
http://www.livingstondaily.com/article/20140528/NEWS01/305280013/Hearing-set-for-dad-accused-of-abusing-infant-daughter
Hearing set for dad accused of abusing infant daughter
Brighton man denied request to visit child
May 28, 2014 2:32 AM
Written by Lisa Roose-Church
Daily Press & Argus
A Brighton father accused of abusing his then-11-week-old daughter asked Tuesday for a preliminary exam in the case.
The hearing, set for June 10 in Livingston County District Court, will determine if there is probable cause to send Joshua Quincy Burns to Circuit Court for trial on a charge of second-degree child abuse.
Authorities allege Burns’ daughter suffered “abusive head trauma not consistent” with the parents’ explanation of her injury. A University of Michigan Medical Center physician told authorities that she believes the child is at further risk of physical harm or death if left in the home, according to court records.
According to court records, there is “no clear source” for the infant’s trauma except a March 15 incident when she was in her father’s care at the family’s Fifth Street home.
Court records show the infant’s mother was at a hair appointment and she called her husband, who said he took his hands off his daughter for a brief moment while holding her on his lap.
Burns’ wife told authorities that her husband claimed their daughter “lurched forward” and he caught her on her face. She said when she arrived home that she saw a fingerprint on her daughter’s face and redness around the infant’s eye, court records show.
Burns told authorities a similar story, but the U-M doctor told authorities that the alleged fall — covering a “very short distance with no contact with a hard surface” — was inconsistent with the infant’s intracranial and ophthalmologist injuries.
The doctor noted that any bruising on an infant who is preambulatory is “highly suspect for physical abuse,” according to court records.
The infant, now 4 months old, has been placed in the custody of the Department of Human Services pending the outcome of an abuse/neglect case filed against both Burns and his wife. The neglect/abuse case is set for trial in July.
Burns’ wife has supervised visitation with her daughter, but Burns’ visitation rights have been suspended, according to court records.
His attorney asked the judge Tuesday to allow him to visit with his daughter, but Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Rose opposed the request.
Rose said Burns was home alone with his daughter when the injuries allegedly occurred and as a result, the infant has suffered bleeding on her brain.
“She will have ongoing brain trauma,” Rose said.
The judge denied the defense’s request.
Dad bashes head of 2-year-old son against floor; may be charged with attempted murder (Windhoek, Namibia)
UNNAMED DAD had the sads....as if that excuses this kind of crime against a baby.
http://www.namibian.com.na/indexx.php?id=13289&page_type=story_detail&category_id=1
- NATIONAL | 2014-05-27
Man attempts to kill two-year-old son
Theresia Tjihenuna, Ndanki Kahiurika
A TWO-YEAR-OLD Windhoek boy survived after his head was bashed against the floor by his father who later attempted to commit suicide on Friday, police said yesterday.
Windhoek City Police superintendent Gerry Shikesho and police spokesman Inspector Stephen Nuuyi both confirmed the incident yesterday.
Nuuyi said the toddler was rushed to Medi-clinic, but was discharged, and is in a stable condition.
The unidentified 34-year-old father, who is believed to be on treatment for depression, was taken to the Windhoek Central Hospital where he was admitted.
“He was rushed to the Windhoek Central Hospital where he had an emergency head operation to save his life,” said Nuuyi, adding that the man was still detained in hospital and that his condition was unknown by late yesterday.
“The child has been discharged and police have opened a case of attempted murder against the father,” Nuuyi said.
Police said the man attacked the toddler in a fit of rage over unexplained reasons at the family home in Olympia’s Jan Becker Street around noon.
A G4S officer, Mungeli Engelbert, said he was on patrol in the area when a resident, who had heard the commotion called him to the house.
Engelbert said when he got to the house, he saw the mother of the child carrying the baby into a VW Golf and she drove out of the property. She told Engelbert to call the police as she rushed to toddler the hospital. Englebert said he saw the man moving about in the house and when he tried to open the doors, they were locked and the windows closed. He called an ambulance and they had to break a window to gain entry.
“We found the man sitting in the corner of the kitchen with a huge open wound on his head and saw more blood stains on the walls and floors,” Englebert said, adding that they then took the man to the hospital.
A police source, who declined to be named, said the man also tried to strangle his mother-in-law and stabbed his fiancée in the back, before attempting to commit suicide by cutting his wrists, and repeatedly hammering a nail into his own head.
Although a control officer at the City Police said the woman and her mother were receiving treatment at the Roman Catholic Hospital, the hospital said they had no records of such patients.
Nuuyi said police investigations into the case continues.
In another incident between 09h00 and 16h00 on Friday, a 47-year-old man at Farm Goededag near Windhoek committed suicide after stabbing his female co-worker in the chest six times. The victim, 42-year-old Apolonia Maritshane died of her injuries on the spot.
“He stabbed her and slit her throat with an unknown sharp object before walking two kilometres from the crime scene to where he hanged himself from a tree with a wire,” said Nuuyi. The man has been identified as Johannes Ditshabue.
The nature of the relationship between the two has not been established but police say the two were both workers at the farm.
A 38-year-old man at Otjomuise was punched to death by a security guard at a bar on Thursday afternoon.
Nuuyi said the man died after the guard punched him on the left side of the head. The deceased, whose name has not been provided, allegedly got into an argument with the security guard after he refused to be searched on entry into the bar.
The security guard apparently ran away from the scene following the incident and is still at large. Police investigations continue.
http://www.namibian.com.na/indexx.php?id=13289&page_type=story_detail&category_id=1
- NATIONAL | 2014-05-27
Man attempts to kill two-year-old son
Theresia Tjihenuna, Ndanki Kahiurika
A TWO-YEAR-OLD Windhoek boy survived after his head was bashed against the floor by his father who later attempted to commit suicide on Friday, police said yesterday.
Windhoek City Police superintendent Gerry Shikesho and police spokesman Inspector Stephen Nuuyi both confirmed the incident yesterday.
Nuuyi said the toddler was rushed to Medi-clinic, but was discharged, and is in a stable condition.
The unidentified 34-year-old father, who is believed to be on treatment for depression, was taken to the Windhoek Central Hospital where he was admitted.
“He was rushed to the Windhoek Central Hospital where he had an emergency head operation to save his life,” said Nuuyi, adding that the man was still detained in hospital and that his condition was unknown by late yesterday.
“The child has been discharged and police have opened a case of attempted murder against the father,” Nuuyi said.
Police said the man attacked the toddler in a fit of rage over unexplained reasons at the family home in Olympia’s Jan Becker Street around noon.
A G4S officer, Mungeli Engelbert, said he was on patrol in the area when a resident, who had heard the commotion called him to the house.
Engelbert said when he got to the house, he saw the mother of the child carrying the baby into a VW Golf and she drove out of the property. She told Engelbert to call the police as she rushed to toddler the hospital. Englebert said he saw the man moving about in the house and when he tried to open the doors, they were locked and the windows closed. He called an ambulance and they had to break a window to gain entry.
“We found the man sitting in the corner of the kitchen with a huge open wound on his head and saw more blood stains on the walls and floors,” Englebert said, adding that they then took the man to the hospital.
A police source, who declined to be named, said the man also tried to strangle his mother-in-law and stabbed his fiancée in the back, before attempting to commit suicide by cutting his wrists, and repeatedly hammering a nail into his own head.
Although a control officer at the City Police said the woman and her mother were receiving treatment at the Roman Catholic Hospital, the hospital said they had no records of such patients.
Nuuyi said police investigations into the case continues.
In another incident between 09h00 and 16h00 on Friday, a 47-year-old man at Farm Goededag near Windhoek committed suicide after stabbing his female co-worker in the chest six times. The victim, 42-year-old Apolonia Maritshane died of her injuries on the spot.
“He stabbed her and slit her throat with an unknown sharp object before walking two kilometres from the crime scene to where he hanged himself from a tree with a wire,” said Nuuyi. The man has been identified as Johannes Ditshabue.
The nature of the relationship between the two has not been established but police say the two were both workers at the farm.
A 38-year-old man at Otjomuise was punched to death by a security guard at a bar on Thursday afternoon.
Nuuyi said the man died after the guard punched him on the left side of the head. The deceased, whose name has not been provided, allegedly got into an argument with the security guard after he refused to be searched on entry into the bar.
The security guard apparently ran away from the scene following the incident and is still at large. Police investigations continue.
Dad charged with keeping family captive, torturing them for up to 16 years (South Africa)
UNNAMED DAD
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/father-charged-with-a-decade-of-torture/story-e6frg6so-1226935168001
Father charged with a decade of torture
The Australian
May 29, 2014 12:00AM
A South African businessman has been accused of keeping his family captive and abusing them for more than a decade.
His five children, aged between two and 16, were allegedly tortured with electric cables and burned with a blow torch. The man’s wife told police her husband, 36, also regularly stripped her naked, then handcuffed and assaulted her.
Police told a court east of Johannesburg yesterday a doctor’s report showed the 16-year-old daughter was sexually active, but had never left the house.
Police are investigating claims that the man, described as a successful Afrikaans businessman, kept his family captive for as many as 16 years.
The court ordered the man not be named to protect the children.
Neighbours in the mining town of Springs, east of Johannesburg, told Beeld newspaper they never knew the well-dressed husband and wife had children.
The neighbours called the police after the man’s 11-year-old son escaped last week.
The accused took his son back from the neighbours, held his head under water in his swimming pool, beat him and then hid the wounded boy in the ceiling when police arrived, according to police investigator Rudi Jansen.
Police took four children from the house, but the accused said the 11-year old had run away. He then secretly took the boy to relatives in a neighbouring province.
After a few days, the wife broke down and told authorities where the child was, and about years of abuse at her husband’s hands. The children are being kept in a safe place, separate from their mother, while police investigate charges against her.
The court roll showed charges of assault and child abuse against the man, but police said charges of attempted murder would follow.
The man was remanded in custody until next Wednesday.
AFP
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/father-charged-with-a-decade-of-torture/story-e6frg6so-1226935168001
Father charged with a decade of torture
The Australian
May 29, 2014 12:00AM
A South African businessman has been accused of keeping his family captive and abusing them for more than a decade.
His five children, aged between two and 16, were allegedly tortured with electric cables and burned with a blow torch. The man’s wife told police her husband, 36, also regularly stripped her naked, then handcuffed and assaulted her.
Police told a court east of Johannesburg yesterday a doctor’s report showed the 16-year-old daughter was sexually active, but had never left the house.
Police are investigating claims that the man, described as a successful Afrikaans businessman, kept his family captive for as many as 16 years.
The court ordered the man not be named to protect the children.
Neighbours in the mining town of Springs, east of Johannesburg, told Beeld newspaper they never knew the well-dressed husband and wife had children.
The neighbours called the police after the man’s 11-year-old son escaped last week.
The accused took his son back from the neighbours, held his head under water in his swimming pool, beat him and then hid the wounded boy in the ceiling when police arrived, according to police investigator Rudi Jansen.
Police took four children from the house, but the accused said the 11-year old had run away. He then secretly took the boy to relatives in a neighbouring province.
After a few days, the wife broke down and told authorities where the child was, and about years of abuse at her husband’s hands. The children are being kept in a safe place, separate from their mother, while police investigate charges against her.
The court roll showed charges of assault and child abuse against the man, but police said charges of attempted murder would follow.
The man was remanded in custody until next Wednesday.
AFP
Dad who murdered 2-year-old daughter by throwing her off bridge during his visitation gets life in prison (Freehold, New Jersey)
Good riddance to dad ARTHUR MORGAN III, a father who NEVER should have been allowed access to this little girl. This is the fall-out of the fathers rights movement, that every sperm donor slime ball must have his "rights" no matter who gets killed.
http://www.wltx.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/28/father-sentenced-throwing-daughter-in-stream/9670985/
Man Who Tossed Daughter to Her Death Gets Life
Kathleen Hopkins, The Asbury Park (N.J.) Press
12:29 p.m. EDT May 28, 2014
FREEHOLD, N.J. — A judge on Wednesday ordered Arthur E. Morgan III to spend the rest of his life in prison, with no chance of being released on parole, for cutting his baby daughter's life short at age 2½ by tossing her into a stream to die in 2011.
State law dictated that Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mellaci impose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole on Morgan for the murder of Tierra Morgan-Glover because the victim was a child — a factor that that would have qualified Morgan for execution before New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007. Speaking to Morgan, Mellaci said if New Jersey still had the death penalty, "you would be candidate No. 1."
But the fact that the child was Morgan's own daughter made the crime that much more unspeakable. And the way he accomplished the killing made it seem even more horrific — he strapped the child into her pink-flowered car seat, tethered a five-pound metal car jack to the seat, threw the contraption into a stream in Shark River Park in Wall and left the crying child to die in the murky water as he drove away to a liquor store.
Before the sentence, Morgan argued he had been unfairly portrayed in the media and by the court.
Mellaci was not moved, calling this one the saddest cases he has ever been involved in. "There are no mitigating factors here," Mellaci said.
Morgan, 29, who was homeless at the time of the murder but whose last known address was in Eatontown, stood trial before Mellaci earlier this year.
The jury convicted Morgan of the intentional murder of Tierra, who lived with her mother in Lakehurst, dismissing defense attorneys' arguments that the defendant's judgment was clouded, and that he simply placed his child in the stream to "let God decide her fate.''
The jury also convicted Morgan of child endangerment and interfering with the baby's custody by failing to return her to her mother on Nov. 21, 2011, the day she was murdered.
Morgan flashed a smile when the jury foreman announced the panel's verdict on April 3. And, he winked at prosecutors as he was being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, donning one of the typically flashy suits he wore to court each day during the trial.
But on Wednesday, Morgan, a man who was said to have spent much of his earnings on Prada and Gucci clothing and accessories while he was living in his 1995 Cadillac Deville, was instead clad in a jail uniform as he stood before Mellaci to learn his fate.
During his trial, his attorneys, Deputy Public Defender Jeffrey Coghlan and Deputy Assistant Public Defender Ryan Moriarty, unsuccessfully tried to convince the jury that Morgan was distraught over how Tierra's mother was raising the child and that he simply placed Tierra in a stream in Shark River Park in Wall to let God decide her fate.
In arguing that Morgan should be convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter rather than murder, the defense attorneys suggested Morgan wasn't thinking clearly because he was beleaguered by his own homelessness, lack of sleep and loss of a job.
But First Assistant Prosecutor Marc LeMieux and Assistant Prosecutor Jordan Williams argued that Morgan planned the crime, pawning items beforehand and making arrangements to escape to California. They portrayed Morgan as a narcissistic, manipulative and controlling man who killed his daughter to get back at her mother, Imani Benton, for breaking off an engagement.
In stark contrast to the defense attorneys' portrayal of Morgan as a man worried about his baby, the prosecutors pointed out that Morgan bought expensive, designer clothing for himself rather than providing a home for the daughter he claimed to have so much concern for.
Morgan picked up Tierra from her mother on the afternoon of Nov. 21, 2011, saying he was going to take the girl to see "Happy Feet II," a film about dancing penguins. Instead, he brought her to Shark River Park, strapped her into her car seat, tethered the metal car jack to the seat and tossed the contraption from a bridge about 17 feet below into the stream.
He later would tell authorities that Tierra was still crying when he turned and walked away, leaving her in the stream to die.
Teenagers found Tierra's body in the stream, still strapped in the car seat, the following day, after Benton reported her daughter missing when Morgan failed to bring her home the night before. The child was wearing her bright pink pea coat that her mother dressed her in the day before.
As Tierra was taking her last breaths, Morgan met up with a friend, went to a liquor store and had some drinks before escaping to San Diego, where he was captured on Nov. 29, 2011, following a nationwide manhunt.
Being questioned by investigators following his capture, Morgan told them he had tethered the car jack to Tierra's car seat to weigh her down "like a ball and chain.''
Testimony at the trial included Benton's account of a letter Morgan had written to her from the San Diego jail after his capture in which he suggested the case be turned into a television movie.
"We're famous, infamous," Benton testified that Morgan had written in the letter. "Don't just let anyone play me in the TV movie.''
http://www.wltx.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/28/father-sentenced-throwing-daughter-in-stream/9670985/
Man Who Tossed Daughter to Her Death Gets Life
Kathleen Hopkins, The Asbury Park (N.J.) Press
12:29 p.m. EDT May 28, 2014
FREEHOLD, N.J. — A judge on Wednesday ordered Arthur E. Morgan III to spend the rest of his life in prison, with no chance of being released on parole, for cutting his baby daughter's life short at age 2½ by tossing her into a stream to die in 2011.
State law dictated that Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mellaci impose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole on Morgan for the murder of Tierra Morgan-Glover because the victim was a child — a factor that that would have qualified Morgan for execution before New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007. Speaking to Morgan, Mellaci said if New Jersey still had the death penalty, "you would be candidate No. 1."
But the fact that the child was Morgan's own daughter made the crime that much more unspeakable. And the way he accomplished the killing made it seem even more horrific — he strapped the child into her pink-flowered car seat, tethered a five-pound metal car jack to the seat, threw the contraption into a stream in Shark River Park in Wall and left the crying child to die in the murky water as he drove away to a liquor store.
Before the sentence, Morgan argued he had been unfairly portrayed in the media and by the court.
Mellaci was not moved, calling this one the saddest cases he has ever been involved in. "There are no mitigating factors here," Mellaci said.
Morgan, 29, who was homeless at the time of the murder but whose last known address was in Eatontown, stood trial before Mellaci earlier this year.
The jury convicted Morgan of the intentional murder of Tierra, who lived with her mother in Lakehurst, dismissing defense attorneys' arguments that the defendant's judgment was clouded, and that he simply placed his child in the stream to "let God decide her fate.''
The jury also convicted Morgan of child endangerment and interfering with the baby's custody by failing to return her to her mother on Nov. 21, 2011, the day she was murdered.
Morgan flashed a smile when the jury foreman announced the panel's verdict on April 3. And, he winked at prosecutors as he was being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, donning one of the typically flashy suits he wore to court each day during the trial.
But on Wednesday, Morgan, a man who was said to have spent much of his earnings on Prada and Gucci clothing and accessories while he was living in his 1995 Cadillac Deville, was instead clad in a jail uniform as he stood before Mellaci to learn his fate.
During his trial, his attorneys, Deputy Public Defender Jeffrey Coghlan and Deputy Assistant Public Defender Ryan Moriarty, unsuccessfully tried to convince the jury that Morgan was distraught over how Tierra's mother was raising the child and that he simply placed Tierra in a stream in Shark River Park in Wall to let God decide her fate.
In arguing that Morgan should be convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter rather than murder, the defense attorneys suggested Morgan wasn't thinking clearly because he was beleaguered by his own homelessness, lack of sleep and loss of a job.
But First Assistant Prosecutor Marc LeMieux and Assistant Prosecutor Jordan Williams argued that Morgan planned the crime, pawning items beforehand and making arrangements to escape to California. They portrayed Morgan as a narcissistic, manipulative and controlling man who killed his daughter to get back at her mother, Imani Benton, for breaking off an engagement.
In stark contrast to the defense attorneys' portrayal of Morgan as a man worried about his baby, the prosecutors pointed out that Morgan bought expensive, designer clothing for himself rather than providing a home for the daughter he claimed to have so much concern for.
Morgan picked up Tierra from her mother on the afternoon of Nov. 21, 2011, saying he was going to take the girl to see "Happy Feet II," a film about dancing penguins. Instead, he brought her to Shark River Park, strapped her into her car seat, tethered the metal car jack to the seat and tossed the contraption from a bridge about 17 feet below into the stream.
He later would tell authorities that Tierra was still crying when he turned and walked away, leaving her in the stream to die.
Teenagers found Tierra's body in the stream, still strapped in the car seat, the following day, after Benton reported her daughter missing when Morgan failed to bring her home the night before. The child was wearing her bright pink pea coat that her mother dressed her in the day before.
As Tierra was taking her last breaths, Morgan met up with a friend, went to a liquor store and had some drinks before escaping to San Diego, where he was captured on Nov. 29, 2011, following a nationwide manhunt.
Being questioned by investigators following his capture, Morgan told them he had tethered the car jack to Tierra's car seat to weigh her down "like a ball and chain.''
Testimony at the trial included Benton's account of a letter Morgan had written to her from the San Diego jail after his capture in which he suggested the case be turned into a television movie.
"We're famous, infamous," Benton testified that Morgan had written in the letter. "Don't just let anyone play me in the TV movie.''
Dad slashes 14-year-old son, murders his mother over "marital infidelity" (Brooklyn, New York)
Actually, as far as I can tell, there is no evidence that Mom was cheating (not that this is a legitimate reason to kill somebody.) In reality, it seems dad HASAN "SAMMY' RUGOVA was a mean, abusive, stupid, and lazy drunk.
http://nypost.com/2014/05/20/man-killed-wife-slashed-son-because-of-marital-infidelity-cops/
Man killed wife, slashed son because of ‘marital infidelity’: cops
By Larry Celona, Kevin Sheehan, Lorena Mongelli, Natasha Velez and Bruce Golding
May 20, 2014 | 1:03pm . A early-morning fight over “marital infidelity” led a Brooklyn man to fatally stab his wife in the neck — and also slash their teenage son — just hours after the wife opened a new pizzeria named after her husband, police sources and a relative said Tuesday.
The crazed hubby then stabbed himself in the gut in what law-enforcement sources described as an attempted murder-suicide about 2:20 a.m.
A source said the deadly violence in Bay Ridge was sparked by “marital infidelity,” but it was unclear who was cheating on whom.
Neighbors identified the slain woman as Gyltene “Julie” Rugova, 46, and her husband as Hasan “Sammy” Rugova, 52, who works as the super at their apartment building at 101 Marine Ave.
The Albanian-born couple has four children, including 14-year-old Ibrahim, who got cut on his forearm during the bloodshed and called 911.
Julie was already dead when EMTs arrived at the scene. Sammy and Ibrahim were both taken to Lutheran Hospital, where they’re in stable condition.
No charges have yet been filed.
Cousin Florent Ismajli, 27, said he spoke with Ibrahim in the hospital, where the teen described seeing his father grab a knife and attack his mother during an argument inside their living room.
“He struggled with his father to get him to stop and that’s when the father started stabbing himself,” Ismajli said.
“Ibrahim got cut trying to stop the father from stabbing himself.”
Once the father collapsed, Ibrahim “got some towels and tried to put them on his mother and father to stop the bleeding,” and phoned older brother Idriz, known as “Drizzy,” 19, who was parking his car outside, Ismajli said.
Ibrahim then called 911 and woke sister Melissa, 12. “She was the closest of the kids to her mother…Melissa wouldn’t got anywhere without her mother — that’s how tight they were,” Ismajli said.
“She was just here in the hospital going crazy. She was crying, screaming, yelling.”
The fourth sibling, college student Miranda, 17, was staying at an uncle’s house.
Ismajli, whose mom is Julie’s sister, described his uncle as an abusive drunk.
“He was always drinking and acting up, making stupid comments. I’ve seen it at every family function I’ve been to,” he said.
Whenever Julie tried to get her husband to behave, “he would just call her ‘bitch’ and keep drinking,” Ismajli added.
On Monday, Julie and Drizzy opened a new business they called “Sammy’s Pizzeria” at the former Benny’s Pizza Place at 91st Street and Fourth Avenue, which the family bought three weeks ago, he said.
“She worked like a dog all day there,” Ismajli said.
“The pizzeria was for the older son and the mom. Sammy, he was just going to be the name, he wasn’t going to work there.”
Sally Amro, 12, said she and the couple’s youngest child, Melissa, also 12, handed out fliers promoting the place over the weekend.
“We were excited to eat there,” Sally said. “We were all going to get food there and have so much fun, but now she’s going to be scarred for life.”
Tenants in the family’s building said Sammy, who also worked as a doorman on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was often heard screaming at his wife.
Ismajli, whose mom is Julie’s sister, said Sammy “was always drinking and acting up, making stupid comments.”
Whenever Julie tried to get her husband to behave, “he would just call her ‘bitch’ and keep drinking,” Ismajli added.
“It was like fireworks in there. There was always something happening,” one woman said.
Julie’s pal Mimoza Ggikolli, who lives across the street, broke down in tears when she learned of the slaying.
Ggikolli said Julie, who worked as a housekeeper, was “such a hard worker,” but said of Sammy: “Nobody respects him because he’s always drunk.”
“God is going to punish him with life in jail because he left four kids on the street,” she said.
http://nypost.com/2014/05/20/man-killed-wife-slashed-son-because-of-marital-infidelity-cops/
Man killed wife, slashed son because of ‘marital infidelity’: cops
By Larry Celona, Kevin Sheehan, Lorena Mongelli, Natasha Velez and Bruce Golding
May 20, 2014 | 1:03pm . A early-morning fight over “marital infidelity” led a Brooklyn man to fatally stab his wife in the neck — and also slash their teenage son — just hours after the wife opened a new pizzeria named after her husband, police sources and a relative said Tuesday.
The crazed hubby then stabbed himself in the gut in what law-enforcement sources described as an attempted murder-suicide about 2:20 a.m.
A source said the deadly violence in Bay Ridge was sparked by “marital infidelity,” but it was unclear who was cheating on whom.
Neighbors identified the slain woman as Gyltene “Julie” Rugova, 46, and her husband as Hasan “Sammy” Rugova, 52, who works as the super at their apartment building at 101 Marine Ave.
The Albanian-born couple has four children, including 14-year-old Ibrahim, who got cut on his forearm during the bloodshed and called 911.
Julie was already dead when EMTs arrived at the scene. Sammy and Ibrahim were both taken to Lutheran Hospital, where they’re in stable condition.
No charges have yet been filed.
Cousin Florent Ismajli, 27, said he spoke with Ibrahim in the hospital, where the teen described seeing his father grab a knife and attack his mother during an argument inside their living room.
“He struggled with his father to get him to stop and that’s when the father started stabbing himself,” Ismajli said.
“Ibrahim got cut trying to stop the father from stabbing himself.”
Once the father collapsed, Ibrahim “got some towels and tried to put them on his mother and father to stop the bleeding,” and phoned older brother Idriz, known as “Drizzy,” 19, who was parking his car outside, Ismajli said.
Ibrahim then called 911 and woke sister Melissa, 12. “She was the closest of the kids to her mother…Melissa wouldn’t got anywhere without her mother — that’s how tight they were,” Ismajli said.
“She was just here in the hospital going crazy. She was crying, screaming, yelling.”
The fourth sibling, college student Miranda, 17, was staying at an uncle’s house.
Ismajli, whose mom is Julie’s sister, described his uncle as an abusive drunk.
“He was always drinking and acting up, making stupid comments. I’ve seen it at every family function I’ve been to,” he said.
Whenever Julie tried to get her husband to behave, “he would just call her ‘bitch’ and keep drinking,” Ismajli added.
On Monday, Julie and Drizzy opened a new business they called “Sammy’s Pizzeria” at the former Benny’s Pizza Place at 91st Street and Fourth Avenue, which the family bought three weeks ago, he said.
“She worked like a dog all day there,” Ismajli said.
“The pizzeria was for the older son and the mom. Sammy, he was just going to be the name, he wasn’t going to work there.”
Sally Amro, 12, said she and the couple’s youngest child, Melissa, also 12, handed out fliers promoting the place over the weekend.
“We were excited to eat there,” Sally said. “We were all going to get food there and have so much fun, but now she’s going to be scarred for life.”
Tenants in the family’s building said Sammy, who also worked as a doorman on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was often heard screaming at his wife.
Ismajli, whose mom is Julie’s sister, said Sammy “was always drinking and acting up, making stupid comments.”
Whenever Julie tried to get her husband to behave, “he would just call her ‘bitch’ and keep drinking,” Ismajli added.
“It was like fireworks in there. There was always something happening,” one woman said.
Julie’s pal Mimoza Ggikolli, who lives across the street, broke down in tears when she learned of the slaying.
Ggikolli said Julie, who worked as a housekeeper, was “such a hard worker,” but said of Sammy: “Nobody respects him because he’s always drunk.”
“God is going to punish him with life in jail because he left four kids on the street,” she said.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Dad turns himself in for murder of 2-year-old daughter (Johannesburg, South Africa)
UNNAMED DAD
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Dad-hands-himself-in-for-daughters-murder-20140526
Dad hands himself in for daughter's murder
2014-05-26 19:32
Johannesburg - A 33-year-old man who allegedly killed his 2-year-old daughter handed himself over to police on Monday, Limpopo police said.
"It is alleged the suspect went to his 23-year-old girlfriend's house at Madibeng village in Bolobedu on Sunday night, [and] an argument allegedly ensued between him and his girlfriend's 42-year-old father," said police spokesperson Hangwani Mulaudzi.
He said the man took out a knife and allegedly stabbed his girlfriend and her father several times.
"The two fled the scene with stab wounds, leaving the 2-year-old in the house, the suspect then vented his anger on his daughter by allegedly crashing her against the wall before setting the house alight with the little girl inside," said Mulaudzi.
He said the girl suffered serious burn wounds and was pronounced dead on arrival at Ga-Kgapane Hospital.
Provincial police commissioner Lieutenant General Fannie Masemola said the trend of people venting their anger on innocent children had to end.
"This disturbing trend of people venting their anger on innocent children has to end, this is the third child we have lost in two weeks," said Masemola.
He said he would have used all the resources at his disposal to arrest the man, if he had not handed himself over to police.
The two adults who were stabbed were taken to hospital and are recovering.
- SAPA
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Dad-hands-himself-in-for-daughters-murder-20140526
Dad hands himself in for daughter's murder
2014-05-26 19:32
Johannesburg - A 33-year-old man who allegedly killed his 2-year-old daughter handed himself over to police on Monday, Limpopo police said.
"It is alleged the suspect went to his 23-year-old girlfriend's house at Madibeng village in Bolobedu on Sunday night, [and] an argument allegedly ensued between him and his girlfriend's 42-year-old father," said police spokesperson Hangwani Mulaudzi.
He said the man took out a knife and allegedly stabbed his girlfriend and her father several times.
"The two fled the scene with stab wounds, leaving the 2-year-old in the house, the suspect then vented his anger on his daughter by allegedly crashing her against the wall before setting the house alight with the little girl inside," said Mulaudzi.
He said the girl suffered serious burn wounds and was pronounced dead on arrival at Ga-Kgapane Hospital.
Provincial police commissioner Lieutenant General Fannie Masemola said the trend of people venting their anger on innocent children had to end.
"This disturbing trend of people venting their anger on innocent children has to end, this is the third child we have lost in two weeks," said Masemola.
He said he would have used all the resources at his disposal to arrest the man, if he had not handed himself over to police.
The two adults who were stabbed were taken to hospital and are recovering.
- SAPA
Dad who claims his 3-year-old daughter initiated sex gets 12 years (Appleton, Wisconsin)
UNNAMED DAD: Another useless carbuncle on the arse of humanity.
http://www.kaaltv.com/article/stories/S3449364.shtml?cat=10151
Man Who Claimed His 3-Year Old Daughter Initiated Sex Gets 12 Years
Created: 05/24/2014 3:01 PM
KAALtv.com
APPLETON, Wis. (AP) - An Appleton man who claimed his 3-year-old daughter initiated sexual contact will likely spend the next 12 years behind bars.
Outagamie County prosecutors recommended a stronger sentence of 25 years in prison for the 39-year-old man. Assistant District Attorney Peter Hahn says the man blames the mother of the child and even the victim and needs to be "locked up for a long time."
Judge Mitchell Metropulos told the man he needs long-term treatment when he sentenced him in court this week. The Post-Crescent Media (http://bit.ly/1odjgrO ) says the defendant earlier pleaded no contest to first-degree child sexual assault, a felony punishable by up to 60 years in prison.
The defendant asked the judge to order mental health treatment as part of his sentence.
http://www.kaaltv.com/article/stories/S3449364.shtml?cat=10151
Man Who Claimed His 3-Year Old Daughter Initiated Sex Gets 12 Years
Created: 05/24/2014 3:01 PM
KAALtv.com
APPLETON, Wis. (AP) - An Appleton man who claimed his 3-year-old daughter initiated sexual contact will likely spend the next 12 years behind bars.
Outagamie County prosecutors recommended a stronger sentence of 25 years in prison for the 39-year-old man. Assistant District Attorney Peter Hahn says the man blames the mother of the child and even the victim and needs to be "locked up for a long time."
Judge Mitchell Metropulos told the man he needs long-term treatment when he sentenced him in court this week. The Post-Crescent Media (http://bit.ly/1odjgrO ) says the defendant earlier pleaded no contest to first-degree child sexual assault, a felony punishable by up to 60 years in prison.
The defendant asked the judge to order mental health treatment as part of his sentence.
Dad sexually abused two sons before murdering them during supervised visitation; mom has been "missing" since 2009 (Utah)
These newest revelations about killer dad JOSH POWELL don't surprise me in the slightest. This piece of sh** got away with everything. The police investigation was a sham from start to finish, and Powell was coddled every step of the way.
Never heard until now that he was also an unemployed deadbeat who nonetheless STILL ORDERED around and terrorized the breadwinner mom. Wow, Powell was a more useless oxygen sucker than even I knew.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2640959/Josh-Powell-sexually-abused-two-sons-mother-vanished-butchered-boys-hatchet.html
Revealed: Josh Powell 'sexually abused his two sons' before their mother vanished and he butchered the boys with a hatchet
Charlie and Braden Powell's maternal grandparents said the boys refused to sleep in pajamas because their dad used to sleep naked with them
One of John Powell's kids drew a picture showing a child and adult with the words, 'Don't play with me!' T
he boys moved in with Chuck and Judy Cox, Susan Powell's parents, two years after her 2009 disappearance
One of their sons was also diagnosed with malnutrition after Josh withheld food from him, saying he was 'just going to poop it out'
Susan's body has never been found and Josh killed himself and his sons in 2012 after attacking them with a hatchet and blowing up their home
By Snejana Farberov and Lydia Warren
Published: 15:25 EST, 27 May 2014 | Updated: 15:55 EST, 27 May 2014
Josh Powell's two young sons suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their father before he killed them with a hatchet and blew up their home in 2012, according to a new tell-all book.
Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris, the authors of 'If I Can’t Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children,' claim that they uncovered evidence proving that John and Susan Powell’s children, 7-year-old Charlie and 5-year-old Braden, were molested while living with their father and paternal grandfather.
The boys’ maternal grandparents, Chuck and Judy Cox, first noticed that something was amiss with their grandkids when Charlie and Braden moved into their Utah home in 2011, two years after their mother's disappearance.
The book, based on interviews with the couple’s family and friends, claims that one night, the siblings refused to put on their pajamas while getting ready for bedtime, according to Radar Online.
'Who told you it’s okay to be naked?' Mr Cox asked the boys, to which they allegedly replied, 'Our daddy!'
After talking to Charlie, the grandfather learned that he and his brother slept naked in bed with John Powell, who also slept in the nude.
One of the brothers later drew a picture for Chuck Cox showing what appears to be a child next to an adult, accompanied by the chilling words, 'Don’t play with me!'
The book, which is out in stores today, suggests that there is also a possibility that Braden was molested by Josh's father, Steve, who was later charged with voyeurism for taking pictures of young girls who lived next door to him.
When the boys were taken from the custody of their father, Braden was diagnosed with a fungal skin infection; one way to contract this infection is through sexual contact, the authors said.
Charlie and Braden's maternal grandparents also noted that the kids started getting violent with one another.
One night when the two were taking a bath together, Mr Cox walked in on Charlie holding his brother's head underwater.
The man later recalled that a few more seconds and the toddler likely would have suffocated.
Olson and Morris' book contains other disturbing allegations surrounding the Powell family drama, inclding claims that the father starved Braden to the point of malnutrition and possibly poisoned his wife, Susan, before she vanished in 2009.
While 29-year-old Susan Powell's body has never been found, her husband was long suspected of having a role in her disappearance. Then in February 2012, he attacked his sons with a hatchet and blew them - and himself - up in his Washington state home.
Speaking to authors Olsen and Morris for their book, 'If I Can't Have You', the couple's friends have given a terrifying insight into the Powell household.
They claim that Josh Powell, who was unemployed, controlled the family's finances - ordering his broker wife only to buy the cheapest groceries and refusing to feed the children three meals a day.
'Susan had to research what was on sale at what store,' Michele Oreno told the authors. 'Then she had to come home and put it into the computer, what she spent on every item.
'[Josh] was really ticked off because the week before she had spent two cents more on a can of peas than he found at another store... It got so he wouldn’t give her money for food or anything.'
Susan even called friends to ask if she could sneak hot dogs from them because the boys were so hungry, friends said.
Then, when Charlie Powell was a year old, a doctor diagnosed him with malnutrition, the book said.
'He gets one meal a day at day care. That's all he needs,' Josh told Susan, according to friend Rachel Marini. 'You’re not wasting my food on him because he’s just going to poop it out!'
Friends added that they started to suspect him of poisoning his wife in October 2009, two months before she vanished.
She began to feel nauseous so wondered if she was pregnant before miscarrying, friends said.
'He made a lot of organic products for her to drink, a lot of thick yogurt stuff and fermented drinks with kefir,' friend Amber Hardman explained.
Susan's body was never found, although the search still continues.
Josh has claimed that his wife was at home when he took his sons, Charlie and Braden, on a winter camping trip in Utah's West Desert.
In February 2012, 36-year-old Josh Powell took his two sons into his home from a state supervisor, attacked them with a hatchet and then blew up the family home, killing all three.
Police documents from May 2012 reveal that Utah officials believe that Josh killed his wife and that his brother Michael helped dispose of her body. Michael killed himself in February 2013.
Never heard until now that he was also an unemployed deadbeat who nonetheless STILL ORDERED around and terrorized the breadwinner mom. Wow, Powell was a more useless oxygen sucker than even I knew.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2640959/Josh-Powell-sexually-abused-two-sons-mother-vanished-butchered-boys-hatchet.html
Revealed: Josh Powell 'sexually abused his two sons' before their mother vanished and he butchered the boys with a hatchet
Charlie and Braden Powell's maternal grandparents said the boys refused to sleep in pajamas because their dad used to sleep naked with them
One of John Powell's kids drew a picture showing a child and adult with the words, 'Don't play with me!' T
he boys moved in with Chuck and Judy Cox, Susan Powell's parents, two years after her 2009 disappearance
One of their sons was also diagnosed with malnutrition after Josh withheld food from him, saying he was 'just going to poop it out'
Susan's body has never been found and Josh killed himself and his sons in 2012 after attacking them with a hatchet and blowing up their home
By Snejana Farberov and Lydia Warren
Published: 15:25 EST, 27 May 2014 | Updated: 15:55 EST, 27 May 2014
Josh Powell's two young sons suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their father before he killed them with a hatchet and blew up their home in 2012, according to a new tell-all book.
Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris, the authors of 'If I Can’t Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children,' claim that they uncovered evidence proving that John and Susan Powell’s children, 7-year-old Charlie and 5-year-old Braden, were molested while living with their father and paternal grandfather.
The boys’ maternal grandparents, Chuck and Judy Cox, first noticed that something was amiss with their grandkids when Charlie and Braden moved into their Utah home in 2011, two years after their mother's disappearance.
The book, based on interviews with the couple’s family and friends, claims that one night, the siblings refused to put on their pajamas while getting ready for bedtime, according to Radar Online.
'Who told you it’s okay to be naked?' Mr Cox asked the boys, to which they allegedly replied, 'Our daddy!'
After talking to Charlie, the grandfather learned that he and his brother slept naked in bed with John Powell, who also slept in the nude.
One of the brothers later drew a picture for Chuck Cox showing what appears to be a child next to an adult, accompanied by the chilling words, 'Don’t play with me!'
The book, which is out in stores today, suggests that there is also a possibility that Braden was molested by Josh's father, Steve, who was later charged with voyeurism for taking pictures of young girls who lived next door to him.
When the boys were taken from the custody of their father, Braden was diagnosed with a fungal skin infection; one way to contract this infection is through sexual contact, the authors said.
Charlie and Braden's maternal grandparents also noted that the kids started getting violent with one another.
One night when the two were taking a bath together, Mr Cox walked in on Charlie holding his brother's head underwater.
The man later recalled that a few more seconds and the toddler likely would have suffocated.
Olson and Morris' book contains other disturbing allegations surrounding the Powell family drama, inclding claims that the father starved Braden to the point of malnutrition and possibly poisoned his wife, Susan, before she vanished in 2009.
While 29-year-old Susan Powell's body has never been found, her husband was long suspected of having a role in her disappearance. Then in February 2012, he attacked his sons with a hatchet and blew them - and himself - up in his Washington state home.
Speaking to authors Olsen and Morris for their book, 'If I Can't Have You', the couple's friends have given a terrifying insight into the Powell household.
They claim that Josh Powell, who was unemployed, controlled the family's finances - ordering his broker wife only to buy the cheapest groceries and refusing to feed the children three meals a day.
'Susan had to research what was on sale at what store,' Michele Oreno told the authors. 'Then she had to come home and put it into the computer, what she spent on every item.
'[Josh] was really ticked off because the week before she had spent two cents more on a can of peas than he found at another store... It got so he wouldn’t give her money for food or anything.'
Susan even called friends to ask if she could sneak hot dogs from them because the boys were so hungry, friends said.
Then, when Charlie Powell was a year old, a doctor diagnosed him with malnutrition, the book said.
'He gets one meal a day at day care. That's all he needs,' Josh told Susan, according to friend Rachel Marini. 'You’re not wasting my food on him because he’s just going to poop it out!'
Friends added that they started to suspect him of poisoning his wife in October 2009, two months before she vanished.
She began to feel nauseous so wondered if she was pregnant before miscarrying, friends said.
'He made a lot of organic products for her to drink, a lot of thick yogurt stuff and fermented drinks with kefir,' friend Amber Hardman explained.
Susan's body was never found, although the search still continues.
Josh has claimed that his wife was at home when he took his sons, Charlie and Braden, on a winter camping trip in Utah's West Desert.
In February 2012, 36-year-old Josh Powell took his two sons into his home from a state supervisor, attacked them with a hatchet and then blew up the family home, killing all three.
Police documents from May 2012 reveal that Utah officials believe that Josh killed his wife and that his brother Michael helped dispose of her body. Michael killed himself in February 2013.
Dad uses "fathers rights" arguments to defend his murder of Mom in front of 5-year-old daughter (Woburn, Massachusetts)
In recent days, a fair number of commentators have called attention to spree killer Elliot Rogers and his links to men's rights groups, who have now crowned him as their new hero. You know, the charming fellows that demand women give them sex on demand. Because they're men, damn it, and they deserve it!!!! Never mind that they're all pathetic (but latently dangerous) losers.
Lost in the media coverage has been the equally entitled killer @sshole and father, JARED REMY, who uses standard fathers rights arguments to defend his murder of the mother of his 5-year-old daughter IN FRONT OF HER NO LESS. She "threatened" me with "my child"!!! He whines. It's all about my rights as a father!!! That's why I killed her!
Once again, the same entitled lying bullsh**--and tied to yet another brutal murder. Chalk up another one for the fathers rights terrorists.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/27/yvonne-abraham-remy-plea-was-maddeningly-defiant/GsPCe1NgcvBb7UAvIksT4K/story.html?rss_id=Top-GNP
Jared Remy’s plea was maddeningly defiant
By Yvonne Abraham | Globe Staff
May 27, 2014
WOBURN -- What a bizarre mix of contrition and blame-shifting we saw in Middlesex Superior Court Tuesday. What a spectacle of the depths to which people can sink. What a vividly detailed map of the wasteland brutality leaves behind.
Standing in that low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit courtroom, Jared Remy called Jennifer Martel -- the woman he murdered with gruesome force as their almost-five-year-old daughter was nearby -- an “angel.”
He’s the one at fault for killing her, he said. No share of the blame should go to his parents, whom his lawyer said had been unfairly maligned, held partly responsible by some for not doing more to rein in a violent son who had for years been spiralling blatantly out of control.
“Blame me for this, not my family,” Remy said in his statement to the court. “They thought of Jen as their fourth kid…They all loved each other…I’m the bad apple. If you ask my family, they’d rather have me dead instead of her.”
What Jared Remy did today is rare, and remarkable: Pleading guilty to first degree murder, guaranteeing he would spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. He could have taken his chances with a jury. And though those chances were slim – there were multiple witnesses to the mind-bending violence of that August night – he might have argued drugs or mental illness were mitigating factors.
But in addition to accepting responsibility, Jared Remy also brushed some of it aside.
For a man surrendering to fate, he was maddeningly defiant. He said he murdered Martel after she took up a knife, and violated a clear rule he said he had set.
“I told Jen she could leave,” he said. “Just don’t threaten me with my child...I don’t think it’s right when women use their kids against their fathers.”
But Jen Martel did threaten to use their child against him, Remy said, “so I killed her.”
It was a chilling, appalling, this matter of fact assertion of cause and effect. His twisted invocation of his rights as a father -- he mentioned it once on the stand, and again in his statement -- mocked all of the lofty talk of accepting responsibility that preceded it. Even as he sat in handcuffs and leg chains, admitting he had done something unspeakably awful, he was blaming his victim.
Jared Remy didn’t get it then. And he doesn’t get it now.
The events of that night were laid out by the prosecutor in sickening detail. Remy attacked Martel with enough force to kill her many times over. He stabbed her repeatedly, at one point using two hands to plunge a knife into her. He was ready to attack anyone who tried to save her. When she clung, improbably, to life, he beat her, knocking her unconscious. Then, satisfied he had killed her, he wrapped her face in his tank top, like a shroud.
If you are guilty of that level of insane violence, you don’t get to say your victim did anything to make it happen. Ever.
Afterwards, Remy’s attorney Ed Ryan said he hadn’t meant to shift blame, that he was accepting full responsibility. He said Remy was remorseful, but blocked by his limitations and his depression medication from expressing emotion.
We certainly saw plenty of his limitations today. Remy seemed confused by the judge’s question about whether he really wanted to change his plea. He read his final statement haltingly, and without feeling, except for the part where he upbraided two unidentified people for using Martel to make themselves look better. More blame-shifting.
In some ways, it’s over now. Attorneys on both sides will move on. So will the crush of media attention. Remy will be in prison until his dying day. The world is better for that. Watching him shuffle out of the courtroom, you couldn’t help rewinding the tape, longing for it to have happened sooner: Before he came back to the apartment that night; before Martel changed her relationship status to “complicated” on Facebook a little earlier; before he terrorized her two days previous; before they’d ever met.
But for all of the misery he has caused, the brute who pleaded guilty Tuesday has at least spared those who loved Martel a little pain.
Just a little.
The most moving words of this gut-wrenching day came from Kristina Hill, Martel’s dear friend and neighbor, and a witness to her murder. As she spoke, her curly haired son, not yet two, slept soundly in his stroller, his body slumped forward, his tiny hands clutching a blue sippy-cup.
Martel was going to be that little boy’s godmother, Hill said.
“I don’t know if I touched her in the same way she touched me, but she was my best friend,” Hill said. She spoke of the doubt and sense of guilt that plagues her every free moment. She wondered whether Jen understood the dire warnings from her loved ones, whether she felt alone, whether she was in terrible pain at the end, whether Hill herself had done enough to keep her best friend safe.
“I wonder if she knows I failed her,” Hill said, crying hard now.
Dozens of people have surely been asking themselves that question for the last nine months – family, friends, police officers and prosecutors. We’ll never know whether any of those people doing more would have saved Martel’s life.
But only one person really controlled her fate, and that was the man who sat in that courtroom Tuesday. Jared Remy can blame steroids or Martel’s threats or any number of mitigating factors. But it was all him.
Those who loved Jennifer Martel should know that. They should know they are as blameless in her murder as Hill’s little boy, who slept through all of the gruesomeness in the courtroom, waking just as Remy was led away.
And as Hill wheeled him out, the little boy who would have been Jennifer Martel’s godson looked up at his mother, a picture of innocence, his face full of love.
It’s the love we all start with, the love that Jared Remy stole from his daughter, and Jennifer Martel took to her grave.
Lost in the media coverage has been the equally entitled killer @sshole and father, JARED REMY, who uses standard fathers rights arguments to defend his murder of the mother of his 5-year-old daughter IN FRONT OF HER NO LESS. She "threatened" me with "my child"!!! He whines. It's all about my rights as a father!!! That's why I killed her!
Once again, the same entitled lying bullsh**--and tied to yet another brutal murder. Chalk up another one for the fathers rights terrorists.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/27/yvonne-abraham-remy-plea-was-maddeningly-defiant/GsPCe1NgcvBb7UAvIksT4K/story.html?rss_id=Top-GNP
Jared Remy’s plea was maddeningly defiant
By Yvonne Abraham | Globe Staff
May 27, 2014
WOBURN -- What a bizarre mix of contrition and blame-shifting we saw in Middlesex Superior Court Tuesday. What a spectacle of the depths to which people can sink. What a vividly detailed map of the wasteland brutality leaves behind.
Standing in that low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit courtroom, Jared Remy called Jennifer Martel -- the woman he murdered with gruesome force as their almost-five-year-old daughter was nearby -- an “angel.”
He’s the one at fault for killing her, he said. No share of the blame should go to his parents, whom his lawyer said had been unfairly maligned, held partly responsible by some for not doing more to rein in a violent son who had for years been spiralling blatantly out of control.
“Blame me for this, not my family,” Remy said in his statement to the court. “They thought of Jen as their fourth kid…They all loved each other…I’m the bad apple. If you ask my family, they’d rather have me dead instead of her.”
What Jared Remy did today is rare, and remarkable: Pleading guilty to first degree murder, guaranteeing he would spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. He could have taken his chances with a jury. And though those chances were slim – there were multiple witnesses to the mind-bending violence of that August night – he might have argued drugs or mental illness were mitigating factors.
But in addition to accepting responsibility, Jared Remy also brushed some of it aside.
For a man surrendering to fate, he was maddeningly defiant. He said he murdered Martel after she took up a knife, and violated a clear rule he said he had set.
“I told Jen she could leave,” he said. “Just don’t threaten me with my child...I don’t think it’s right when women use their kids against their fathers.”
But Jen Martel did threaten to use their child against him, Remy said, “so I killed her.”
It was a chilling, appalling, this matter of fact assertion of cause and effect. His twisted invocation of his rights as a father -- he mentioned it once on the stand, and again in his statement -- mocked all of the lofty talk of accepting responsibility that preceded it. Even as he sat in handcuffs and leg chains, admitting he had done something unspeakably awful, he was blaming his victim.
Jared Remy didn’t get it then. And he doesn’t get it now.
The events of that night were laid out by the prosecutor in sickening detail. Remy attacked Martel with enough force to kill her many times over. He stabbed her repeatedly, at one point using two hands to plunge a knife into her. He was ready to attack anyone who tried to save her. When she clung, improbably, to life, he beat her, knocking her unconscious. Then, satisfied he had killed her, he wrapped her face in his tank top, like a shroud.
If you are guilty of that level of insane violence, you don’t get to say your victim did anything to make it happen. Ever.
Afterwards, Remy’s attorney Ed Ryan said he hadn’t meant to shift blame, that he was accepting full responsibility. He said Remy was remorseful, but blocked by his limitations and his depression medication from expressing emotion.
We certainly saw plenty of his limitations today. Remy seemed confused by the judge’s question about whether he really wanted to change his plea. He read his final statement haltingly, and without feeling, except for the part where he upbraided two unidentified people for using Martel to make themselves look better. More blame-shifting.
In some ways, it’s over now. Attorneys on both sides will move on. So will the crush of media attention. Remy will be in prison until his dying day. The world is better for that. Watching him shuffle out of the courtroom, you couldn’t help rewinding the tape, longing for it to have happened sooner: Before he came back to the apartment that night; before Martel changed her relationship status to “complicated” on Facebook a little earlier; before he terrorized her two days previous; before they’d ever met.
But for all of the misery he has caused, the brute who pleaded guilty Tuesday has at least spared those who loved Martel a little pain.
Just a little.
The most moving words of this gut-wrenching day came from Kristina Hill, Martel’s dear friend and neighbor, and a witness to her murder. As she spoke, her curly haired son, not yet two, slept soundly in his stroller, his body slumped forward, his tiny hands clutching a blue sippy-cup.
Martel was going to be that little boy’s godmother, Hill said.
“I don’t know if I touched her in the same way she touched me, but she was my best friend,” Hill said. She spoke of the doubt and sense of guilt that plagues her every free moment. She wondered whether Jen understood the dire warnings from her loved ones, whether she felt alone, whether she was in terrible pain at the end, whether Hill herself had done enough to keep her best friend safe.
“I wonder if she knows I failed her,” Hill said, crying hard now.
Dozens of people have surely been asking themselves that question for the last nine months – family, friends, police officers and prosecutors. We’ll never know whether any of those people doing more would have saved Martel’s life.
But only one person really controlled her fate, and that was the man who sat in that courtroom Tuesday. Jared Remy can blame steroids or Martel’s threats or any number of mitigating factors. But it was all him.
Those who loved Jennifer Martel should know that. They should know they are as blameless in her murder as Hill’s little boy, who slept through all of the gruesomeness in the courtroom, waking just as Remy was led away.
And as Hill wheeled him out, the little boy who would have been Jennifer Martel’s godson looked up at his mother, a picture of innocence, his face full of love.
It’s the love we all start with, the love that Jared Remy stole from his daughter, and Jennifer Martel took to her grave.
Dad charged with battery for shoving 6-year-old daughter to the ground for dropped french fries; dad was already on probation for assaulting girl's mother (Douglasville, Georgia)
And with his history of domestic violence, Dad ERIC DWOE BUTLER was allowed access to this child why?
http://www.douglascountysentinel.com/news/article_8b5da13a-e5de-11e3-a6e9-001a4bcf6878.html
Police: Father pushed child over spilled fries
Posted: Monday, May 26, 2014 4:36 pm | Updated: 4:38 pm, Tue May 27, 2014.
Amanda Thomas / Staff Writer
Posted on May 26, 2014
A Douglasville father is facing abuse and battery charges after apparently pushing his 6-year-old daughter to the ground after she dropped some McDonald's french fries.
Eric Dwoe Butler, 32, was charged with battery under the Family Violence Act and first-degree cruelty to children. Butler told Magistrate Judge Barbara Caldwell that he is already on probation for aggravated assault against the child's mother.
http://www.douglascountysentinel.com/news/article_8b5da13a-e5de-11e3-a6e9-001a4bcf6878.html
Police: Father pushed child over spilled fries
Posted: Monday, May 26, 2014 4:36 pm | Updated: 4:38 pm, Tue May 27, 2014.
Amanda Thomas / Staff Writer
Posted on May 26, 2014
A Douglasville father is facing abuse and battery charges after apparently pushing his 6-year-old daughter to the ground after she dropped some McDonald's french fries.
Eric Dwoe Butler, 32, was charged with battery under the Family Violence Act and first-degree cruelty to children. Butler told Magistrate Judge Barbara Caldwell that he is already on probation for aggravated assault against the child's mother.
Racist dad beats 14-year-old daughter for choosing black dance partner (Houston, Texas)
Dad is identified as AARON ARANDA.
http://news92fm.com/441022/hpd-dad-beats-daughter-for-choosing-black-dance-partner/
HPD: Racist Dad Beats Daughter for Choosing Black Dance Partner
May 27, 2014
By News 92 FM
(HOUSTON) — A Houston father is charged after police say he beat his daughter for choosing a black dance partner. According to court documents, it happened April 11 at a home on Woodlark in Houston.
Aaron Aranza’s 14-year-old daughter was about to have her quinceanera, and a group of people was at his mother’s home for a dance practice.
The traditional dance calls for multiple female and male dance partners (damas and chambelanes). Aranza’s daughter reportedly chose a 15-year-old African-American boy as her dance partner.
The girl told police she was outside with all the dancers when her father came outside and said the party was canceled. Aranza allegedly asked his daughter, “Are you serious? You really want that [N-word] to be your chambelane?”
That’s when Aranza started pushing the boy and said, “I don’t care that you are a kid,” court documents state.
According to an affidavit, Aranza then took his daughter inside and beat her with a belt. He also dragged her outside, hitting one of her arms on a coffee table.
Aranza is charged with injury to a child.
http://news92fm.com/441022/hpd-dad-beats-daughter-for-choosing-black-dance-partner/
HPD: Racist Dad Beats Daughter for Choosing Black Dance Partner
May 27, 2014
By News 92 FM
(HOUSTON) — A Houston father is charged after police say he beat his daughter for choosing a black dance partner. According to court documents, it happened April 11 at a home on Woodlark in Houston.
Aaron Aranza’s 14-year-old daughter was about to have her quinceanera, and a group of people was at his mother’s home for a dance practice.
The traditional dance calls for multiple female and male dance partners (damas and chambelanes). Aranza’s daughter reportedly chose a 15-year-old African-American boy as her dance partner.
The girl told police she was outside with all the dancers when her father came outside and said the party was canceled. Aranza allegedly asked his daughter, “Are you serious? You really want that [N-word] to be your chambelane?”
That’s when Aranza started pushing the boy and said, “I don’t care that you are a kid,” court documents state.
According to an affidavit, Aranza then took his daughter inside and beat her with a belt. He also dragged her outside, hitting one of her arms on a coffee table.
Aranza is charged with injury to a child.
Dad to be retried for 2008 killing of 4-month-old son (Troy, New York)
Dad is identified as ADRIAN THOMAS. Another case where CPS f***ed up and has continued to f*** up.
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-child-s-death-Retrial-begins-Tuesday-at-5506166.php
A child's death: Retrial begins Tuesday at father's trial
By Bob Gardinier
Updated 11:47 am, Tuesday, May 27, 2014
TROY - Jury selection will begin Tuesday in the retrial of Adrian Thomas, the man accused of killing his 4-month-old son Matthew six years ago.
Thomas was convicted in 2009 of second-degree murder after jurors decided he threw his son, Matthew, on a bed on three separate days in September 2008, causing severe head injuries that led to brain swelling and death.
The defense in the first trial insisted the baby died of sepsis, a blood infection brought on by a bout of pneumonia.
A midlevel appellate court upheld the conviction but the state Court of Appeals ordered a new trial, citing heavy-handed tactics used by investigators, who interrogated Thomas for almost nine hours. The interrogation was videotaped.
That video will not be shown to jurors at the new trial.
Earlier this month, Rensselaer County Judge Andrew Ceresia sided with the defense and ordered the press to leave the courtroom before a pretrial hearing in the case.
Ceresia ruled that reporting of the medical testimony from Rensselaer County Child Protective Services officials that was to be heard would "substantially prejudice" the defense in the eyes of the potential jury pool.
Defense attorneys Steve Coffey and Arthur Frost filed motions to exclude the press and Ceresia has sealed all pretrial evidence from the public.
Assistant District Attorney Kelly Egan argued for the court to remain open, saying the potential jury pool was not small. "And, a lot of publicity has been promoted by the defendant himself," Egan said.
A lawyer for the Hearst Corp., which owns the Times Union, tried but failed to convince Ceresia to reverse his decision.
"I am arguing that there are unique circumstances in this case that allows me to make this ruling," Ceresia told the attorney.
Pretrial motions filed in the first trial showed child abuse investigators twice probed allegations of abuse at the family's home in the Cedar Park Apartments on 21st Street. In one instance, there was a report that a child was "severely disciplined." But officials said no children were removed from the home after either incident.
A medical mix-up early on in the case caused the defense attorney, Jerome Frost, the since-retired public defender, to call for all charges to be dropped.
At the time, the defense asked Albany Medical Center Hospital for records of the deceased child, and were given paperwork for Matthew's identical twin brother, Malachai. Frost argued that prosecutors had a problem with their case if they could not determine which child had died.
The hospital stated that the baby's mother either intentionally or mistakenly began to refer to each infant by the other's name, contrary to birth certificates. The hospital has said records show that even its pediatric clinicians sometimes mixed up the twins.
Matthew remained the victim's name and the hospital successfully sought to have the judge seal their records, which outlined how the mistake was made and how it was remedied, from the defense and the public.
Thomas, 31, remains in the Rensselaer County Jail.
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-child-s-death-Retrial-begins-Tuesday-at-5506166.php
A child's death: Retrial begins Tuesday at father's trial
By Bob Gardinier
Updated 11:47 am, Tuesday, May 27, 2014
TROY - Jury selection will begin Tuesday in the retrial of Adrian Thomas, the man accused of killing his 4-month-old son Matthew six years ago.
Thomas was convicted in 2009 of second-degree murder after jurors decided he threw his son, Matthew, on a bed on three separate days in September 2008, causing severe head injuries that led to brain swelling and death.
The defense in the first trial insisted the baby died of sepsis, a blood infection brought on by a bout of pneumonia.
A midlevel appellate court upheld the conviction but the state Court of Appeals ordered a new trial, citing heavy-handed tactics used by investigators, who interrogated Thomas for almost nine hours. The interrogation was videotaped.
That video will not be shown to jurors at the new trial.
Earlier this month, Rensselaer County Judge Andrew Ceresia sided with the defense and ordered the press to leave the courtroom before a pretrial hearing in the case.
Ceresia ruled that reporting of the medical testimony from Rensselaer County Child Protective Services officials that was to be heard would "substantially prejudice" the defense in the eyes of the potential jury pool.
Defense attorneys Steve Coffey and Arthur Frost filed motions to exclude the press and Ceresia has sealed all pretrial evidence from the public.
Assistant District Attorney Kelly Egan argued for the court to remain open, saying the potential jury pool was not small. "And, a lot of publicity has been promoted by the defendant himself," Egan said.
A lawyer for the Hearst Corp., which owns the Times Union, tried but failed to convince Ceresia to reverse his decision.
"I am arguing that there are unique circumstances in this case that allows me to make this ruling," Ceresia told the attorney.
Pretrial motions filed in the first trial showed child abuse investigators twice probed allegations of abuse at the family's home in the Cedar Park Apartments on 21st Street. In one instance, there was a report that a child was "severely disciplined." But officials said no children were removed from the home after either incident.
A medical mix-up early on in the case caused the defense attorney, Jerome Frost, the since-retired public defender, to call for all charges to be dropped.
At the time, the defense asked Albany Medical Center Hospital for records of the deceased child, and were given paperwork for Matthew's identical twin brother, Malachai. Frost argued that prosecutors had a problem with their case if they could not determine which child had died.
The hospital stated that the baby's mother either intentionally or mistakenly began to refer to each infant by the other's name, contrary to birth certificates. The hospital has said records show that even its pediatric clinicians sometimes mixed up the twins.
Matthew remained the victim's name and the hospital successfully sought to have the judge seal their records, which outlined how the mistake was made and how it was remedied, from the defense and the public.
Thomas, 31, remains in the Rensselaer County Jail.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Dad assaults 12-year-old son for not wanting to check out boat (Siouz Falls, South Dakota)
Dad is identified as EDGARDO ERASMO PICCHIETTI.
http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2014/05/20/father-brother-arrested-beating-year-old/9326501/
Father, brother arrested for beating of 12-year-old
John Hult, 11:25 a.m. CDT May 20, 2014
A father and son were charged with child abuse and assault on Monday after reportedly beating and choking a 12-year-old boy.
Police spokesman Sam Clemens said the victim called police from his home on the 3000 block of E. Hayes Place at 10: 30 a.m. to report that he was being beaten by his father, 66-year-old Edgardo Erasmo Picchietti.
Pichietti told police he had wanted the boy to come along to the lake to check out his boat, Clemens said, but that the boy didn’t want to go and he had punished him by hitting him on the legs with a ruler.
The boy’s 18-year-old brother, Austin Lee Shepard, also became upset with the younger boy for not listening to the father and choked him, Clemens said.
Shepard was arrested on one count of aggravated assault. Picchietti was charged with abuse or cruelty to a minor.
http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2014/05/20/father-brother-arrested-beating-year-old/9326501/
Father, brother arrested for beating of 12-year-old
John Hult, 11:25 a.m. CDT May 20, 2014
A father and son were charged with child abuse and assault on Monday after reportedly beating and choking a 12-year-old boy.
Police spokesman Sam Clemens said the victim called police from his home on the 3000 block of E. Hayes Place at 10: 30 a.m. to report that he was being beaten by his father, 66-year-old Edgardo Erasmo Picchietti.
Pichietti told police he had wanted the boy to come along to the lake to check out his boat, Clemens said, but that the boy didn’t want to go and he had punished him by hitting him on the legs with a ruler.
The boy’s 18-year-old brother, Austin Lee Shepard, also became upset with the younger boy for not listening to the father and choked him, Clemens said.
Shepard was arrested on one count of aggravated assault. Picchietti was charged with abuse or cruelty to a minor.
Dad on trial for fatal stabbing of 2-year-old son (Durban, South Africa)
Dad is identified as SIMPHIWE NGETSHU.
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/baby-killed-father-tailored-evidence-1.1691830#.U4Oz39fD9Yc
Baby killed: Father ‘tailored evidence’
May 21 2014 at 03:20pm
By NOELENE BARBEAU
Durban - An Inanda father accused of fatally stabbing his 2-year-old son was on Tuesday described by the State as an “exceptionally clever witness” who had tailored his evidence according to the testimony of other witnesses.
Simphiwe Ngetshu, 34, had told the Durban Regional Court that on August 23 last year that at 2.30pm he had been walking in Ryde Place, Durban North, carrying his son, Smangaliso Nhlengetwa, on his shoulders when they were approached by three men.
He said his child was taken into the bushes while he was being robbed. When he went to look for his son, he found him crying and bleeding from the left side of his chest.
Ngetshu had pleaded not guilty to murder and defeating the course of justice by making a false police statement.
Prosecutor Krishen Shah called for a conviction as there had been overwhelming evidence against the accused.
Ngetshu said he had walked for 20 to 30 minutes to his part-time employer’s house, who had lived close to where he said they were attacked, for help.
He claimed he had unsuccessfully tried to stop passing motorists for assistance.
Shah referred to the testimony of Dr Grant Bekker, a general practitioner, who declared the boy dead. He said the child’s body was cold and rigor mortis had already set in. He estimated Smangaliso had been dead for at least six hours.
“This is one tragic incident. No one saw Smangaliso’s father as a suspect until police had taken him home that night and he opened his mouth,” Shah said, referring to Ngetshu’s confession to police, which he claimed he was coerced into making. Ngetshu had confessed he was possessed by evil spirits, driving him to commit the crime.
Shah argued that from the evidence, Ngetshu showed no emotion or any urgency in getting his child to the hospital for treatment, despite two stab-wounds to the chest.
Ngetshu had tried to stop passing motorists, but did not stop for help at other houses, shops and a pharmacy en route to his part-time employer’s house, he said.
Shah referred to Ngetshu being an “exceptionally clever witness”, tailoring evidence. For example, forensic pathologist, Dr Threnesan Naidoo, said there were no tears or holes in the child’s sweater or T-shirt in the area he had been wounded.
Naidoo had concluded that the boy was either not wearing the clothes at the time or they were pulled up. He felt it was more likely the former because there was minimal blood and the sleeve of the boy’s T-shirt was worn inside out - not a natural way of wearing a T-shirt.
In his evidence-in-chief, Ngetshu said when he ran into the bushes to find his son, he noticed the child’s T-shirt was inside out.
His lawyer, Hycenth Mlotshwa, argued that Bekker had only estimated the time of death and that Naidoo had testified that rigor mortis set in quicker in a child than in an adult. Mlotshwa argued that Ngetshu did not stop at other houses because no one was home. His part-time employer testified to Ngetshu looking very shocked and wanting to be taken to the hospital.
“The State’s evidence that the accused was responsible for his son’s death is not sufficient for a conviction,” he said.
Judgment is expected later this week.
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/baby-killed-father-tailored-evidence-1.1691830#.U4Oz39fD9Yc
Baby killed: Father ‘tailored evidence’
May 21 2014 at 03:20pm
By NOELENE BARBEAU
Durban - An Inanda father accused of fatally stabbing his 2-year-old son was on Tuesday described by the State as an “exceptionally clever witness” who had tailored his evidence according to the testimony of other witnesses.
Simphiwe Ngetshu, 34, had told the Durban Regional Court that on August 23 last year that at 2.30pm he had been walking in Ryde Place, Durban North, carrying his son, Smangaliso Nhlengetwa, on his shoulders when they were approached by three men.
He said his child was taken into the bushes while he was being robbed. When he went to look for his son, he found him crying and bleeding from the left side of his chest.
Ngetshu had pleaded not guilty to murder and defeating the course of justice by making a false police statement.
Prosecutor Krishen Shah called for a conviction as there had been overwhelming evidence against the accused.
Ngetshu said he had walked for 20 to 30 minutes to his part-time employer’s house, who had lived close to where he said they were attacked, for help.
He claimed he had unsuccessfully tried to stop passing motorists for assistance.
Shah referred to the testimony of Dr Grant Bekker, a general practitioner, who declared the boy dead. He said the child’s body was cold and rigor mortis had already set in. He estimated Smangaliso had been dead for at least six hours.
“This is one tragic incident. No one saw Smangaliso’s father as a suspect until police had taken him home that night and he opened his mouth,” Shah said, referring to Ngetshu’s confession to police, which he claimed he was coerced into making. Ngetshu had confessed he was possessed by evil spirits, driving him to commit the crime.
Shah argued that from the evidence, Ngetshu showed no emotion or any urgency in getting his child to the hospital for treatment, despite two stab-wounds to the chest.
Ngetshu had tried to stop passing motorists, but did not stop for help at other houses, shops and a pharmacy en route to his part-time employer’s house, he said.
Shah referred to Ngetshu being an “exceptionally clever witness”, tailoring evidence. For example, forensic pathologist, Dr Threnesan Naidoo, said there were no tears or holes in the child’s sweater or T-shirt in the area he had been wounded.
Naidoo had concluded that the boy was either not wearing the clothes at the time or they were pulled up. He felt it was more likely the former because there was minimal blood and the sleeve of the boy’s T-shirt was worn inside out - not a natural way of wearing a T-shirt.
In his evidence-in-chief, Ngetshu said when he ran into the bushes to find his son, he noticed the child’s T-shirt was inside out.
His lawyer, Hycenth Mlotshwa, argued that Bekker had only estimated the time of death and that Naidoo had testified that rigor mortis set in quicker in a child than in an adult. Mlotshwa argued that Ngetshu did not stop at other houses because no one was home. His part-time employer testified to Ngetshu looking very shocked and wanting to be taken to the hospital.
“The State’s evidence that the accused was responsible for his son’s death is not sufficient for a conviction,” he said.
Judgment is expected later this week.
Dad kills 3-year-old daughter, wounds her mother in murder-suicide (Ector County, Texas)
UNNAMED DAD. Notice how the headline uses the passive tense, effectively hiding who the agent was.
http://www.oaoa.com/news/crime_justice/article_9474efaa-e460-11e3-8e7a-001a4bcf6878.html
Toddler killed in apparent murder-suicide
An apparent murder-suicide claimed the lives of two people: a toddler and her father, who apparently shot the girl then turned the gun on himself. Before he died, he seriously injured the toddler's mother too.
BY LINDSAY WEAVER
Posted on May 25, 2014
An apparent murder-suicide claimed the lives of a toddler and the alleged gunman, the young girl's father, late Saturday night in south Ector County.
No names have been released by the Ector County Sheriff's Office, which sent a news release about the shooting around 5 p.m. Sunday.
Sheriff's are reporting that a man believed to be in his 40s, and father to the toddler girl, killed the toddler then shot her mother before turning the gun on himself. The call of an "ambulance run/shooting victims" came in at 11:57 p.m. Saturday night.
This apparently occurred at a residence in the 12000 block of South Beryl Avenue in south Ector County, about six miles west of south highway 385.
The woman remains in serious condition at Medical Center Hospital. Autopsies are pending, according to the sheriff's office.
The family was living in a blue trailer a half-mile down South Beryl Avenue, according to neighbors who were out walking and enjoying family time on Sunday evening. The blue trailer sits adjacent to another and a camper on a dirt lot. Next-door, their neighbors’ two large dogs roamed around barking at those who got too close to the yard.
Berenisa Galindo, 19, was hosting a cook-out late Saturday when they heard sirens getting closer and closer to the neighborhood that she describes as quiet.
“Nothing ever happens out here,” she said.
The blue trailer sits about 500 yards from where Galindo lives with her husband and own baby daughter; and no one at their home heard gunshots that night.
At least 10 law enforcement and emergency vehicles pulled into the neighborhood, begging the curiosity of the entire block which consists of two houses and about eight trailers in the country setting.
Galindo said the next-door neighbor of the family saw body bags being carried out from the home around 5 a.m. Sunday and that police canines were scouring the area as well.
While she didn’t know the family – she had never even seen them in fact – the tragedy still shook up the small community.
“It’s really sad. They had a 3-year-old. Crazy,” Galindo said, pointing to her young daughter.
No further details are expected to be released at this time, Sgt. Gary Duesler said in the release.
http://www.oaoa.com/news/crime_justice/article_9474efaa-e460-11e3-8e7a-001a4bcf6878.html
Toddler killed in apparent murder-suicide
An apparent murder-suicide claimed the lives of two people: a toddler and her father, who apparently shot the girl then turned the gun on himself. Before he died, he seriously injured the toddler's mother too.
BY LINDSAY WEAVER
Posted on May 25, 2014
An apparent murder-suicide claimed the lives of a toddler and the alleged gunman, the young girl's father, late Saturday night in south Ector County.
No names have been released by the Ector County Sheriff's Office, which sent a news release about the shooting around 5 p.m. Sunday.
Sheriff's are reporting that a man believed to be in his 40s, and father to the toddler girl, killed the toddler then shot her mother before turning the gun on himself. The call of an "ambulance run/shooting victims" came in at 11:57 p.m. Saturday night.
This apparently occurred at a residence in the 12000 block of South Beryl Avenue in south Ector County, about six miles west of south highway 385.
The woman remains in serious condition at Medical Center Hospital. Autopsies are pending, according to the sheriff's office.
The family was living in a blue trailer a half-mile down South Beryl Avenue, according to neighbors who were out walking and enjoying family time on Sunday evening. The blue trailer sits adjacent to another and a camper on a dirt lot. Next-door, their neighbors’ two large dogs roamed around barking at those who got too close to the yard.
Berenisa Galindo, 19, was hosting a cook-out late Saturday when they heard sirens getting closer and closer to the neighborhood that she describes as quiet.
“Nothing ever happens out here,” she said.
The blue trailer sits about 500 yards from where Galindo lives with her husband and own baby daughter; and no one at their home heard gunshots that night.
At least 10 law enforcement and emergency vehicles pulled into the neighborhood, begging the curiosity of the entire block which consists of two houses and about eight trailers in the country setting.
Galindo said the next-door neighbor of the family saw body bags being carried out from the home around 5 a.m. Sunday and that police canines were scouring the area as well.
While she didn’t know the family – she had never even seen them in fact – the tragedy still shook up the small community.
“It’s really sad. They had a 3-year-old. Crazy,” Galindo said, pointing to her young daughter.
No further details are expected to be released at this time, Sgt. Gary Duesler said in the release.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Dad beats to death 11-year-old daughter for copying homework (Hangzhou, China)
The usual BS we're fed about killer dads. Dad YE HUNG TIED UP his daughter, FORCED HER KNEEL, then BEAT HER TILL SHE STOPPED BREATHING. Yet we're assured he really "loved his kids very much." I'm tired of this crap.
http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/2621/20140525/father-beats-daughter-copying-homework.htm
Father Beats Daughter for Copying Homework
May 25, 2014 06:32 AM EDT | Christl Leong
A girl in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province was beaten to death by her father for copying her classmate's homework.
Chou, the 11-year old girl, was tied up by her father, Ye Hung, forced her to kneel and proceeded to beat her.
After physically abusing his own daughter, Ye went out to calm himself. When he came back, he discovered that his daughter had stopped breathing.
Chou was immediately rushed to a local hospital. However, the doctors were not able to save her. She died 12 hours later from a heart attack.
Doctors discovered that Chou had sustained bruises on her neck and back. According to Times of India, medical reports indicate that Chou had suffered from asphyxiation for as long as 5 minutes.
A spokesman for the local authorities said that while in the hospital, Ye had been remorseful for what he had done. He prayed and begged for the gods to heal his daughter so she would get better.
The father's actions may have been brought about by his strong belief in being a good student.
"He loved kids very much but also believed they must do well at school, which means not copying anyone's homework. That kind of cheating made him mad," Park Jen said about his cousin, Ye.
Chou's case marks the most recent incident of domestic child abuse in China.
In Shanxi, a 6-year-old boy had his eyes gouged out. His aunt was suspected of committing the crime. However, it was reported that she had committed suicide a few days later.
Similarly, a 10-year-old boy in Guangdong was allegedly beaten by his stepmother. Photos of the aftermath of the savage beating had outraged Chinese citizens after they went viral on Chinese social media sites. Netizens who saw the photos immediately clamored for the implementation of stricter laws to discourage domestic child abuse.
http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/2621/20140525/father-beats-daughter-copying-homework.htm
Father Beats Daughter for Copying Homework
May 25, 2014 06:32 AM EDT | Christl Leong
A girl in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province was beaten to death by her father for copying her classmate's homework.
Chou, the 11-year old girl, was tied up by her father, Ye Hung, forced her to kneel and proceeded to beat her.
After physically abusing his own daughter, Ye went out to calm himself. When he came back, he discovered that his daughter had stopped breathing.
Chou was immediately rushed to a local hospital. However, the doctors were not able to save her. She died 12 hours later from a heart attack.
Doctors discovered that Chou had sustained bruises on her neck and back. According to Times of India, medical reports indicate that Chou had suffered from asphyxiation for as long as 5 minutes.
A spokesman for the local authorities said that while in the hospital, Ye had been remorseful for what he had done. He prayed and begged for the gods to heal his daughter so she would get better.
The father's actions may have been brought about by his strong belief in being a good student.
"He loved kids very much but also believed they must do well at school, which means not copying anyone's homework. That kind of cheating made him mad," Park Jen said about his cousin, Ye.
Chou's case marks the most recent incident of domestic child abuse in China.
In Shanxi, a 6-year-old boy had his eyes gouged out. His aunt was suspected of committing the crime. However, it was reported that she had committed suicide a few days later.
Similarly, a 10-year-old boy in Guangdong was allegedly beaten by his stepmother. Photos of the aftermath of the savage beating had outraged Chinese citizens after they went viral on Chinese social media sites. Netizens who saw the photos immediately clamored for the implementation of stricter laws to discourage domestic child abuse.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Update on dad convicted of killing 7-year-old son during court-ordered summer visitation (Worcester, Massachusetts)
No tears of grief for dad LESLIE G. SCHULER, who just HAD to have "his rights"....
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/23/worcester-man-who-beat-his-son-death-father-day-found-hanged-walpole-state-prison-cell-death-not-suspicious-officials-say/q3twN1N8628m1d6rLylhrK/story.html
Worcester man who beat son to death found hanged in prison
By John R. Ellement | Globe staff
May 23, 2014
Leslie G. Schuler had pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of his son in Worcester Superior Court this month.
Rick Cinclair/Telegram & Gazette/AP
A man who admitted to murdering his 7-year-old son on Father’s Day in 2009 was found hanged in his cell early Friday at the state prison in Walpole, the state Department of Correction said.
Leslie G. Schuler was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years following his guilty plea to second-degree murder in Worcester Superior Court this month, said the Correction Department and the Worcester district attorney’s office.
Schuler was in a cell by himself in the maximum-security prison when he was discovered at about 4:30 a.m., Correction Department spokesman Darren Duarte said in an e-mail.
The prison, formally known as MCI-Cedar Junction, is a facility where men who are newly committed to state prison spend their first few months behind bars before being transferred to other prisons across the state, according to the Correction Department website.
A spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey, whose office is investigating Schuler’s death, said the Worcester man was discovered in his cell by a correction officer making routine rounds.
“His death does not appear to be suspicious at this time,’’ spokesman David Traub said.
The state medical examiner’s office will determine a cause of death and decide whether Schuler, 41, committed suicide, officials said.
According to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, a Worcester prosecutor said in court May 6 that the child, Nathaniel Turner, was taken off attention deficit medication in 2009 by his father, who began physically disciplining him, including spanking him.
The boy had been raised by his grandmother in Alabama until Schuler obtained a court order allowing him to spend the summer with him in Worcester, the Telegram reported.
The physical violence against the child escalated, and on Father’s Day in 2009, Schuler became enraged when his son vomited on a Father’s Day card. Schuler grabbed the child by the neck, struck him in the face, pushed him into a wall, and poked him in the stomach, the Telegram said.
When the child vomited a second time, Schuler knocked him off a chair, causing the child to hit his head on the floor, according to court records.
The boy was unresponsive the next day and was taken to St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, where he died two days later, the Telegram reported. Schuler was arrested in 2009 and had been in custody since then, the newspaper said.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/23/worcester-man-who-beat-his-son-death-father-day-found-hanged-walpole-state-prison-cell-death-not-suspicious-officials-say/q3twN1N8628m1d6rLylhrK/story.html
Worcester man who beat son to death found hanged in prison
By John R. Ellement | Globe staff
May 23, 2014
Leslie G. Schuler had pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of his son in Worcester Superior Court this month.
Rick Cinclair/Telegram & Gazette/AP
A man who admitted to murdering his 7-year-old son on Father’s Day in 2009 was found hanged in his cell early Friday at the state prison in Walpole, the state Department of Correction said.
Leslie G. Schuler was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years following his guilty plea to second-degree murder in Worcester Superior Court this month, said the Correction Department and the Worcester district attorney’s office.
Schuler was in a cell by himself in the maximum-security prison when he was discovered at about 4:30 a.m., Correction Department spokesman Darren Duarte said in an e-mail.
The prison, formally known as MCI-Cedar Junction, is a facility where men who are newly committed to state prison spend their first few months behind bars before being transferred to other prisons across the state, according to the Correction Department website.
A spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey, whose office is investigating Schuler’s death, said the Worcester man was discovered in his cell by a correction officer making routine rounds.
“His death does not appear to be suspicious at this time,’’ spokesman David Traub said.
The state medical examiner’s office will determine a cause of death and decide whether Schuler, 41, committed suicide, officials said.
According to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, a Worcester prosecutor said in court May 6 that the child, Nathaniel Turner, was taken off attention deficit medication in 2009 by his father, who began physically disciplining him, including spanking him.
The boy had been raised by his grandmother in Alabama until Schuler obtained a court order allowing him to spend the summer with him in Worcester, the Telegram reported.
The physical violence against the child escalated, and on Father’s Day in 2009, Schuler became enraged when his son vomited on a Father’s Day card. Schuler grabbed the child by the neck, struck him in the face, pushed him into a wall, and poked him in the stomach, the Telegram said.
When the child vomited a second time, Schuler knocked him off a chair, causing the child to hit his head on the floor, according to court records.
The boy was unresponsive the next day and was taken to St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, where he died two days later, the Telegram reported. Schuler was arrested in 2009 and had been in custody since then, the newspaper said.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Recently separated dad charged in death of 5-week-old son; didn't tell anybody baby was dead for 27 hours (Putnam County, West Virginia)
The article doesn't say anything about Dad's past history of abuse, but this scenario is very typical of a controlling abuser. These guys are the most dangerous right after the break up of their relationship or marriage, because they are losing control over their victim(s). This is when women and children are the most likely to be killed. Even if Dad had no (known) history of child abuse, it is not uncommon for these guys to harm or even kill the kids as a way to "punish" Mom. Murder-suicide is a frequent result.
Dad is identified as ROBERT JEREMY SMITH.
http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140522/GZ01/140529728/1419
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Father charged in death of 5-week-old son
By Rusty Marks, Staff writer
A Hurricane man has been charged in the death of a baby found dead Wednesday in the back seat of a car in Kanawha City.
Robert Jeremy Smith, 33, of Shank Avenue in Hurricane, was arraigned by video this morning in Kanawha County Magistrate Court. He is charged with death of a child by a parent as a result of child abuse. Charges were filed in Putnam County, but Smith was arrested in Kanawha County.
According to a criminal complaint, Smith had been caring for his 5-week-old son, Madden A. Smith, at his Shank Avenue home. The infant died on Tuesday.
According to the criminal complaint, Smith first told police he picked the boy up and accidentally dropped him, but later said he had shaken the infant. According to the criminal complaint, Smith realized Madden was dead within minutes, but didn't tell anyone for more than 27 hours because "he was afraid he would get into trouble."
Madden's body was found in the back seat of a red Toyota Corolla at 3815 Venable Ave. on Wednesday afternoon. Robert Smith was also there, with his throat cut. Police said he apparently attempted to take his own life.
Charleston Police Department Chief of Detectives Lt. Steve Cooper said Robert Smith had been living in Kanawha City, but recently moved to the Hurricane address. Smith and his wife, Jennifer, had apparently separated recently, Cooper said.
According to the criminal complaint, Smith allegedly told officers who responded to the scene that, "The baby is dead; I killed the baby."
According to the criminal complaint, Madden had apparent abrasions on his forehead when examined by paramedics, and appeared to have suffered multiple skull fractures.
Robert Smith was being held Thursday in Western Regional Jail in lieu of a $500,000 bail. According to the Regional Jail Authority website, Smith is 6 foot 3 inches tall and weighs 270 pounds.
In 2013, Robert and Jennifer Smith faced misdemeanor charges of child neglect creating risk of bodily injury or death. Those charges were later dismissed.
The couple had let their 12-year-old child watch over four other children -- ages 10 years, 5 years, 4 years and 3 months -- while they were away, according to a criminal complaint filed in that case. Police said the 12-year-old wasn’t old enough to watch over the baby.
Dad is identified as ROBERT JEREMY SMITH.
http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140522/GZ01/140529728/1419
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Father charged in death of 5-week-old son
By Rusty Marks, Staff writer
A Hurricane man has been charged in the death of a baby found dead Wednesday in the back seat of a car in Kanawha City.
Robert Jeremy Smith, 33, of Shank Avenue in Hurricane, was arraigned by video this morning in Kanawha County Magistrate Court. He is charged with death of a child by a parent as a result of child abuse. Charges were filed in Putnam County, but Smith was arrested in Kanawha County.
According to a criminal complaint, Smith had been caring for his 5-week-old son, Madden A. Smith, at his Shank Avenue home. The infant died on Tuesday.
According to the criminal complaint, Smith first told police he picked the boy up and accidentally dropped him, but later said he had shaken the infant. According to the criminal complaint, Smith realized Madden was dead within minutes, but didn't tell anyone for more than 27 hours because "he was afraid he would get into trouble."
Madden's body was found in the back seat of a red Toyota Corolla at 3815 Venable Ave. on Wednesday afternoon. Robert Smith was also there, with his throat cut. Police said he apparently attempted to take his own life.
Charleston Police Department Chief of Detectives Lt. Steve Cooper said Robert Smith had been living in Kanawha City, but recently moved to the Hurricane address. Smith and his wife, Jennifer, had apparently separated recently, Cooper said.
According to the criminal complaint, Smith allegedly told officers who responded to the scene that, "The baby is dead; I killed the baby."
According to the criminal complaint, Madden had apparent abrasions on his forehead when examined by paramedics, and appeared to have suffered multiple skull fractures.
Robert Smith was being held Thursday in Western Regional Jail in lieu of a $500,000 bail. According to the Regional Jail Authority website, Smith is 6 foot 3 inches tall and weighs 270 pounds.
In 2013, Robert and Jennifer Smith faced misdemeanor charges of child neglect creating risk of bodily injury or death. Those charges were later dismissed.
The couple had let their 12-year-old child watch over four other children -- ages 10 years, 5 years, 4 years and 3 months -- while they were away, according to a criminal complaint filed in that case. Police said the 12-year-old wasn’t old enough to watch over the baby.
Dad charged with child abuse for beating 13-year-old son with extension cord (Louisville, Kentucky)
Dad is identified as ALVIN ROBERTSON. No mention of a mother in the home.
http://m.wave3.com/#!/newsDetail/25589158
Police: Father hit child with extension cord
By Charles Gazaway
Updated: 05/22/2014 12:07 pm EDT
LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) – A man has been charged with child abuse for hitting a young teen with an extension cord.
Alvin Robertson, 37, was arrested May 21. His arrest report says the assault happened May 13 when Robertson hit his 13 year old approximately 15 times about the body. Robertson believed the teen had taken property that belonged to him.
The teen suffered severe bruising and whelps to the hands, arms, legs and side and was treated at Kosair Children's Hospital for treatment.
Robertson is being held at Louisville Metro Corrections on a charge of assault-child abuse.
http://m.wave3.com/#!/newsDetail/25589158
Police: Father hit child with extension cord
By Charles Gazaway
Updated: 05/22/2014 12:07 pm EDT
LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) – A man has been charged with child abuse for hitting a young teen with an extension cord.
Alvin Robertson, 37, was arrested May 21. His arrest report says the assault happened May 13 when Robertson hit his 13 year old approximately 15 times about the body. Robertson believed the teen had taken property that belonged to him.
The teen suffered severe bruising and whelps to the hands, arms, legs and side and was treated at Kosair Children's Hospital for treatment.
Robertson is being held at Louisville Metro Corrections on a charge of assault-child abuse.
Baby found dead in bed with father (Jonesboro, Arkansas)
UNNAMED DAD
http://m.kait8.com/#!/newsDetail/25590300
Police investigating baby's death
Updated: 05/22/2014 1:43 pm EDT
JONESBORO, AR (KAIT) – The body of a Jonesboro infant has been sent to the state crime lab after it was discovered dead in bed with his father.
Shortly after 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jonesboro police and rescue crews were dispatched to a home in the 300-block of Bridge Street.
A witness told officers he had just pulled into the driveway to return an air tank when he heard a woman inside the home screaming.
The man ran into the home and saw the woman trying to awaken the 40-year-old father who was asleep on the bed with the infant.
The witness said the baby was not breathing.
According to the initial police report, the man ran outside and yelled for help.
A neighbor ran to the house and also found the baby unresponsive.
The neighbor reportedly told police the baby had "white stuff" coming from his mouth.
The man said he tried to clear the baby's airway with his fingers, then performed CPR until paramedics arrived.
The baby was taken to the St. Bernards emergency room.
Hospital workers said the baby's eyes were dilated when he arrived. They added he was "never responsive" at the hospital.
The baby's 24-year-old mother told detectives she had placed her son in bed with his father before she and her sister went to a friend's house.
She said the child's father was still asleep when she returned a short time later and found the baby unresponsive.
The father reportedly told police he was awakened by the mother's screams.
The baby's body has been sent to the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory in Little Rock to determine cause of death.
http://m.kait8.com/#!/newsDetail/25590300
Police investigating baby's death
Updated: 05/22/2014 1:43 pm EDT
JONESBORO, AR (KAIT) – The body of a Jonesboro infant has been sent to the state crime lab after it was discovered dead in bed with his father.
Shortly after 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jonesboro police and rescue crews were dispatched to a home in the 300-block of Bridge Street.
A witness told officers he had just pulled into the driveway to return an air tank when he heard a woman inside the home screaming.
The man ran into the home and saw the woman trying to awaken the 40-year-old father who was asleep on the bed with the infant.
The witness said the baby was not breathing.
According to the initial police report, the man ran outside and yelled for help.
A neighbor ran to the house and also found the baby unresponsive.
The neighbor reportedly told police the baby had "white stuff" coming from his mouth.
The man said he tried to clear the baby's airway with his fingers, then performed CPR until paramedics arrived.
The baby was taken to the St. Bernards emergency room.
Hospital workers said the baby's eyes were dilated when he arrived. They added he was "never responsive" at the hospital.
The baby's 24-year-old mother told detectives she had placed her son in bed with his father before she and her sister went to a friend's house.
She said the child's father was still asleep when she returned a short time later and found the baby unresponsive.
The father reportedly told police he was awakened by the mother's screams.
The baby's body has been sent to the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory in Little Rock to determine cause of death.
Custodial dad accused of felony murder in death of 2-year-old son; boy killed less than a month after dad granted custody (Kalamazoo, Michigan)
Just because Mom has issues doesn't mean the father should have custody.
Dad is identified as BRIAN KEITH ROBERTS.
http://woodtv.com/2014/05/22/kalamazoo-resident-arrested-in-toddler-death/
Father accused of toddler’s murder
By Ken Kolker
Updated: Thursday, May 22, 2014, 11:31 pm
Published: Thursday, May 22, 2014, 3:20 pm
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WOOD) – At just 2 years old, Nehemiah Dodd was taken away from his mother and sent to live with his dad. Less than a month later, Nehemiah was dead.
The Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office Thursday issued charges of felony murder and first-degree child abuse for Nehemiah’s father, named as Brian Keith Roberts in court records. Roberts, 40, was arrested by KDPS detectives.
Nehemiah’s mother Angelena Dodd described her son as “happy all the time.”
“Smiles. Never really knew anything was wrong with him. Bright. A beautiful kid. He was a blessing,” she said. “He was a blessing.”
But she squandered that blessing. The state permanently removed Nehemiah and his older brother from Dodd after she was arrested in on Aug. 9, 2013 driving a stolen car with crack cocaine, and with the boys as passengers.
“I had some issues in my life, but I don’t think with all my issues in my life … this should be the outcome,” she said.
Kalamazoo Family Circuit Court ordered the oldest son to live with other relatives because nobody knew who his father was.
On Dec. 6, Nehemiah was sent to live with his father.
“A month of him being with him, he dies,” Dodd said.
Nehemiah was found unconscious and not breathing in the 400 block of W. Frank St. on Dec. 31, 2013, police said. Responding officers tried to revive the boy, and he was taken to Bronson Methodist Hospital.
Nehemiah died on Jan. 2.
The prosecutor’s office filed the charges against Roberts after detectives investigated the situation at the home where Nehemiah was found and results from an autopsy on the toddler’s body became available.
Dodd was told Nehemiah died of a blow to the head. “I don’t think my child could make somebody even go off the deep end like that, so I don’t know why he did what he did,” Dodd said.
“I don’t know. I’m looking for answers myself. I couldn’t see Nehemiah doing anything to be dead.”
A woman whose family had tried to help Dodd and her sons questions the court’s custody ruling.
“You always hope that when a child is pulled away from a parent that they’re being placed in a better situation,” family friend Karen Hokenson said. “Any time a child is abused and killed at the hand of a parent, there’s no way to understand it.”
Roberts is being held in the Kalamazoo County Jail on a $250,000 bond.
In the meantime, the Office of Child Ombudsman, a state watchdog agency, has opened up an investigation into how the Department of Human Services handled Nehemiah’s case.
Dad is identified as BRIAN KEITH ROBERTS.
http://woodtv.com/2014/05/22/kalamazoo-resident-arrested-in-toddler-death/
Father accused of toddler’s murder
By Ken Kolker
Updated: Thursday, May 22, 2014, 11:31 pm
Published: Thursday, May 22, 2014, 3:20 pm
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WOOD) – At just 2 years old, Nehemiah Dodd was taken away from his mother and sent to live with his dad. Less than a month later, Nehemiah was dead.
The Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office Thursday issued charges of felony murder and first-degree child abuse for Nehemiah’s father, named as Brian Keith Roberts in court records. Roberts, 40, was arrested by KDPS detectives.
Nehemiah’s mother Angelena Dodd described her son as “happy all the time.”
“Smiles. Never really knew anything was wrong with him. Bright. A beautiful kid. He was a blessing,” she said. “He was a blessing.”
But she squandered that blessing. The state permanently removed Nehemiah and his older brother from Dodd after she was arrested in on Aug. 9, 2013 driving a stolen car with crack cocaine, and with the boys as passengers.
“I had some issues in my life, but I don’t think with all my issues in my life … this should be the outcome,” she said.
Kalamazoo Family Circuit Court ordered the oldest son to live with other relatives because nobody knew who his father was.
On Dec. 6, Nehemiah was sent to live with his father.
“A month of him being with him, he dies,” Dodd said.
Nehemiah was found unconscious and not breathing in the 400 block of W. Frank St. on Dec. 31, 2013, police said. Responding officers tried to revive the boy, and he was taken to Bronson Methodist Hospital.
Nehemiah died on Jan. 2.
The prosecutor’s office filed the charges against Roberts after detectives investigated the situation at the home where Nehemiah was found and results from an autopsy on the toddler’s body became available.
Dodd was told Nehemiah died of a blow to the head. “I don’t think my child could make somebody even go off the deep end like that, so I don’t know why he did what he did,” Dodd said.
“I don’t know. I’m looking for answers myself. I couldn’t see Nehemiah doing anything to be dead.”
A woman whose family had tried to help Dodd and her sons questions the court’s custody ruling.
“You always hope that when a child is pulled away from a parent that they’re being placed in a better situation,” family friend Karen Hokenson said. “Any time a child is abused and killed at the hand of a parent, there’s no way to understand it.”
Roberts is being held in the Kalamazoo County Jail on a $250,000 bond.
In the meantime, the Office of Child Ombudsman, a state watchdog agency, has opened up an investigation into how the Department of Human Services handled Nehemiah’s case.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Dad convicted of killing 12-year-old daughter gets 60 days in jail (Quebec, Canada)
Classic daddy coddling. Notice that there are more words of praise for the child killer than for the victim. Disgusting, but all too common.
Dad is identified as MOUSSA SIDIME.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/05/21/quebec_man_who_killed_daughter_with_slap_gets_60_days_in_jail.html
Quebec man who killed daughter with slap gets 60 days in jail
A Quebec man who slapped his teenage daughter so hard she died has been sentenced to 60 days in jail.
Nouténé Nouténé, 13, was cleaning the floors in the family’s apartment near Montreal when she was slapped by her father talking back to him. She later died as a result of the slap.
By: Allan Woods Quebec Bureau, Published on Wed May 21 2014
MONTREAL—It was a slap that had been reverberating for nearly four years.
A 74-year-old man who unintentionally killed his 13-year-old daughter when he slapped her over a dispute about chores has been sentenced to 60 days in prison — far less than the two-years-less-a-day sentence sought by the Crown.
Judge Richard Marleau said he considered the obvious remorse of Moussa Sidimé, who pled guilty to manslaughter charges last year, as well as his lack of a criminal record in calculating the sentence in the October 2010 death of Nouténé Sidimé.
“For a Muslim, you believe that what has happened is the will of God . . . . Whatever would have come out today would have been what God wanted — as with the passing of our sister, said Aissatou Sidimé-Blanton, who travelled from Texas to be at Wednesday’s sentencing.
“We love her dearly, we didn’t want her to go, but it was what God wanted at that time. This is one of those freak accidents that, as he has said, if he could take it back, he would take it back.”
Nouténé was cleaning the floors in the family’s apartment in Longueuil, south of Montreal, when she was reprimanded by her father for missing dirt under a carpet in the kitchen.
At a February sentencing hearing, Sidimé said that he had returned to the living room when he heard Nouténé speak back to him. He told the court he struck her on the face twice and once again on her backside. Five minutes later he heard a noise and found his daughter unconscious on the floor.
Sidimé called 9-1-1 and tried to resuscitate her, but the girl died in hospital several days after the Oct. 6, 2010 incident. An initial charge of aggravated assault was then upgraded to manslaughter.
An autopsy later concluded that the force of the blows likely caused her neck to twist in such a way that she ruptured an artery, cutting off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain.
Nouténé was remembered by friends as a popular girl and gifted artist who hoped one day to become a lawyer. But the Sidimé clan also came to the defence of the father of seven children, saying that he was a normally upstanding figure and an important presence in the family.
Crown prosecutor Julie Laborde told reporters after the sentencing that the judge felt there had been a strong enough message sent by the charges against the retired architect, who will be able to serve his term consecutively meaning that he can check in and out on weekends.
One of the man’s older daughters, Odilla, testified at her father’s sentencing hearing that Sidimé had become “a changed man” after the death.
“He was always, to me, very confident. He always had a presence about him. That has now dimmed somewhat,” she told the court, according to a February report in Montreal’s The Gazette.
“There is a hole in my family. There is a hole in my heart. I know that my father would never wish that on his family or on his wife.”
An online petition asking for leniency in the case described him as pillar of his Guinea-Canadian community who studied at Université Laval in Quebec City and worked with a Canadian architecture firm before taking a job in the Ivory Coast with the African Development Bank.
After retiring, he returned his family to Canada, in order to provide a better life, education and opportunities for his three youngest children.
Dad is identified as MOUSSA SIDIME.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/05/21/quebec_man_who_killed_daughter_with_slap_gets_60_days_in_jail.html
Quebec man who killed daughter with slap gets 60 days in jail
A Quebec man who slapped his teenage daughter so hard she died has been sentenced to 60 days in jail.
Nouténé Nouténé, 13, was cleaning the floors in the family’s apartment near Montreal when she was slapped by her father talking back to him. She later died as a result of the slap.
By: Allan Woods Quebec Bureau, Published on Wed May 21 2014
MONTREAL—It was a slap that had been reverberating for nearly four years.
A 74-year-old man who unintentionally killed his 13-year-old daughter when he slapped her over a dispute about chores has been sentenced to 60 days in prison — far less than the two-years-less-a-day sentence sought by the Crown.
Judge Richard Marleau said he considered the obvious remorse of Moussa Sidimé, who pled guilty to manslaughter charges last year, as well as his lack of a criminal record in calculating the sentence in the October 2010 death of Nouténé Sidimé.
“For a Muslim, you believe that what has happened is the will of God . . . . Whatever would have come out today would have been what God wanted — as with the passing of our sister, said Aissatou Sidimé-Blanton, who travelled from Texas to be at Wednesday’s sentencing.
“We love her dearly, we didn’t want her to go, but it was what God wanted at that time. This is one of those freak accidents that, as he has said, if he could take it back, he would take it back.”
Nouténé was cleaning the floors in the family’s apartment in Longueuil, south of Montreal, when she was reprimanded by her father for missing dirt under a carpet in the kitchen.
At a February sentencing hearing, Sidimé said that he had returned to the living room when he heard Nouténé speak back to him. He told the court he struck her on the face twice and once again on her backside. Five minutes later he heard a noise and found his daughter unconscious on the floor.
Sidimé called 9-1-1 and tried to resuscitate her, but the girl died in hospital several days after the Oct. 6, 2010 incident. An initial charge of aggravated assault was then upgraded to manslaughter.
An autopsy later concluded that the force of the blows likely caused her neck to twist in such a way that she ruptured an artery, cutting off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain.
Nouténé was remembered by friends as a popular girl and gifted artist who hoped one day to become a lawyer. But the Sidimé clan also came to the defence of the father of seven children, saying that he was a normally upstanding figure and an important presence in the family.
Crown prosecutor Julie Laborde told reporters after the sentencing that the judge felt there had been a strong enough message sent by the charges against the retired architect, who will be able to serve his term consecutively meaning that he can check in and out on weekends.
One of the man’s older daughters, Odilla, testified at her father’s sentencing hearing that Sidimé had become “a changed man” after the death.
“He was always, to me, very confident. He always had a presence about him. That has now dimmed somewhat,” she told the court, according to a February report in Montreal’s The Gazette.
“There is a hole in my family. There is a hole in my heart. I know that my father would never wish that on his family or on his wife.”
An online petition asking for leniency in the case described him as pillar of his Guinea-Canadian community who studied at Université Laval in Quebec City and worked with a Canadian architecture firm before taking a job in the Ivory Coast with the African Development Bank.
After retiring, he returned his family to Canada, in order to provide a better life, education and opportunities for his three youngest children.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Dad on trial for homicide in beating death of 8-week-old daughter (Butte, Montana)
Dad is identified as MATTHEW JOHN BLAZ. If this was an accident caused by a neighborhood child, then why did Daddy delay treatment for six hours?
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/butte-father-beat-baby-daughter-to-death-prosecutors-say/article_58c724f7-cae7-5b0c-8d63-6bd31b6486f9.html
Butte father beat baby daughter to death, prosecutors say
Matthew John Blaz, 32, is charged with felony deliberate homicide in the death of his 8-week-old daughter, Mattisyn Jolene Blaz.
May 19, 2014 11:26 am • By ANGELA BRANDT Montana Standard
BUTTE — Prosecutors say a Butte man brutally beat his 58-day-old baby to death. The infant suffered for six hours before receiving any care.
“She could no longer coo. She could no longer smile,” said Butte-Silver Bow deputy county attorney Samm Cox said in opening statements.
Matthew John Blaz, 32, faces a charge of deliberate homicide for his daughter’s killing. Blaz is accused of violent attacking his baby, Mattisyn Jolene Blaz, causing brain trauma and ultimately her death on Aug. 16, 2013.
Attorneys representing Blaz contend that a neighborhood boy dropped the baby and caused the fatal injuries. He has insisted his innocence since day one, they argue.
Prosecutors say an investigation launched after the baby’s death, which was originally reported as an accidental fall, found the infant died of abusive head trauma.
Prosecutors called the dispatcher who received the 911 call that day as their first witness at 2:20 p.m.
Charging documents say Blaz was in sole custody of his daughter at the time of her death. Authorities believe the assault took place about 4 p.m. at Blaz’s home, 2017 S. Arizona St.
Later that day, Blaz was with the baby and her mother in a car at a local business parking lot when they called 911 to report the child wasn’t breathing. The couple was apparently trying to take the child to the hospital, authorities said.
Blaz spent 110 days in jail prior to posting $50,000 bond in January.
If convicted of deliberate homicide, Blaz could spend the rest of his life in prison.
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/butte-father-beat-baby-daughter-to-death-prosecutors-say/article_58c724f7-cae7-5b0c-8d63-6bd31b6486f9.html
Butte father beat baby daughter to death, prosecutors say
Matthew John Blaz, 32, is charged with felony deliberate homicide in the death of his 8-week-old daughter, Mattisyn Jolene Blaz.
May 19, 2014 11:26 am • By ANGELA BRANDT Montana Standard
BUTTE — Prosecutors say a Butte man brutally beat his 58-day-old baby to death. The infant suffered for six hours before receiving any care.
“She could no longer coo. She could no longer smile,” said Butte-Silver Bow deputy county attorney Samm Cox said in opening statements.
Matthew John Blaz, 32, faces a charge of deliberate homicide for his daughter’s killing. Blaz is accused of violent attacking his baby, Mattisyn Jolene Blaz, causing brain trauma and ultimately her death on Aug. 16, 2013.
Attorneys representing Blaz contend that a neighborhood boy dropped the baby and caused the fatal injuries. He has insisted his innocence since day one, they argue.
Prosecutors say an investigation launched after the baby’s death, which was originally reported as an accidental fall, found the infant died of abusive head trauma.
Prosecutors called the dispatcher who received the 911 call that day as their first witness at 2:20 p.m.
Charging documents say Blaz was in sole custody of his daughter at the time of her death. Authorities believe the assault took place about 4 p.m. at Blaz’s home, 2017 S. Arizona St.
Later that day, Blaz was with the baby and her mother in a car at a local business parking lot when they called 911 to report the child wasn’t breathing. The couple was apparently trying to take the child to the hospital, authorities said.
Blaz spent 110 days in jail prior to posting $50,000 bond in January.
If convicted of deliberate homicide, Blaz could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Dad charged with manslaughter in death of 3-year-old son during court-ordered visitation (Prince George County, Maryland)
We've posted on this case before. Earlier articles merely stated that the death took place during a visit. Now we see that the visit was in fact COURT-ORDERED. Who was responsible for sending this toddler into the home of his killer?
http://thegrio.com/2014/05/20/father-charged-in-3-year-old-sons-death-from-drug-overdose/
Father charged in 3-year-old son’s death from drug overdose
by Carrie Healey | May 20, 2014 at 11:20 AM
A Maryland father is facing manslaughter and first-degree child abuse charges after authorities say he gave his three-year-old son a fatal combination of drugs, including cocaine.
Prince Georges County police say Thomas E. Holland took the toddler to United Medical Center in Southeast Washington in January, where the boy was pronounced dead.
A toxicology report concluded the child’s cause of death was linked to toxic levels of drugs, including cocaine, acetaminophen and codeine, reports NBC Washington.
“Those results are showing there was such a concentration of [the] four drugs that our detectives and medical examiners believe there is no chance this child could have accidentally ingested them,” Lt. William Alexander, a spokesman for Prince George’s County Police, told the Washington Post.
The boy’s death occurred shortly after Holland had a court-ordered visit with him.
The Washington Post reports the boy’s mother had been seeking unpaid child support from Holland and that the 38-year-old denied being his father and did not attend the child’s funeral.
“It’s the most horrific and the most terrible thing I’ve ever experienced,” the boy’s great-grandfather Maurice Gaither told NBC.
http://thegrio.com/2014/05/20/father-charged-in-3-year-old-sons-death-from-drug-overdose/
Father charged in 3-year-old son’s death from drug overdose
by Carrie Healey | May 20, 2014 at 11:20 AM
A Maryland father is facing manslaughter and first-degree child abuse charges after authorities say he gave his three-year-old son a fatal combination of drugs, including cocaine.
Prince Georges County police say Thomas E. Holland took the toddler to United Medical Center in Southeast Washington in January, where the boy was pronounced dead.
A toxicology report concluded the child’s cause of death was linked to toxic levels of drugs, including cocaine, acetaminophen and codeine, reports NBC Washington.
“Those results are showing there was such a concentration of [the] four drugs that our detectives and medical examiners believe there is no chance this child could have accidentally ingested them,” Lt. William Alexander, a spokesman for Prince George’s County Police, told the Washington Post.
The boy’s death occurred shortly after Holland had a court-ordered visit with him.
The Washington Post reports the boy’s mother had been seeking unpaid child support from Holland and that the 38-year-old denied being his father and did not attend the child’s funeral.
“It’s the most horrific and the most terrible thing I’ve ever experienced,” the boy’s great-grandfather Maurice Gaither told NBC.
Dad indicted in beating death of 5-month-old son (Mount Vernon, Ohio)
More on dad MICHAEL WINGETT. According to an earlier article posted here, Daddy is also charged with phoning in bomb threats. Thoroughly charming fellow, I'm sure.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/26817fb134874c06ae0219f2819940cd/OH--Baby-Beaten-Charges
Grand jury indicts central Ohio father, 24, in beating death of 5-month-old son
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 20, 2014 - 6:44 am EDT
MOUNT VERNON, Ohio — A grand jury in central Ohio has indicted a 24-year-old father in the violent beating death of his 5-month-old son.
The Knox County prosecutor's office said Monday that Michael Wingett was indicted on murder and other charges in the death last week of his 5-month-old son Allan Conway at the family's home in Fredericktown.
An autopsy found that the baby's injuries included blunt force trauma to the head and torso, new and healing rib fractures, bruised lungs and internal bleeding.
County Prosecutor John Thatcher said the force used to cause the child's injuries was similar to what he would have suffered in a serious car crash.
If convicted, Wingett could face life in prison. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney yet.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/26817fb134874c06ae0219f2819940cd/OH--Baby-Beaten-Charges
Grand jury indicts central Ohio father, 24, in beating death of 5-month-old son
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 20, 2014 - 6:44 am EDT
MOUNT VERNON, Ohio — A grand jury in central Ohio has indicted a 24-year-old father in the violent beating death of his 5-month-old son.
The Knox County prosecutor's office said Monday that Michael Wingett was indicted on murder and other charges in the death last week of his 5-month-old son Allan Conway at the family's home in Fredericktown.
An autopsy found that the baby's injuries included blunt force trauma to the head and torso, new and healing rib fractures, bruised lungs and internal bleeding.
County Prosecutor John Thatcher said the force used to cause the child's injuries was similar to what he would have suffered in a serious car crash.
If convicted, Wingett could face life in prison. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney yet.
Dad charged with killing 5-month-old son, calling in bomb threat to children's services after they removed 5-year-old daughter from home (Knox County, Ohio)
Sounds like a LOT of denial...
Dad is identified as MICHAEL WINGETT.
http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2014/05/19/knox-county-murder-charges-filed-kids-death.html
Family Defends Father Charged With Shaking Baby To Death
Monday May 19, 2014 4:54 PM
UPDATED: Monday May 19, 2014 11:53 PM
FREDERICKTOWN, Ohio - The family of a father accused of shaking his baby to death comes to his defense.
They say there is no way he is responsible for the child's death. His fiancée says she's not only mourning the loss of her son, but her daughter and fiancé too.
Prosecutors say Michael Wingett shook the five month old to death.
Before Wingett was ever charged, the Knox County prosecutor says he called in a bomb threat to children services, after they removed his 5-year-old daughter from, what they called, an unsafe home.
Wingett was arrested on inducing panic earlier in the week. On Monday, he was charged with murder.
"Right now I can't feel nothing. Ever since my son has passed. I cannot feel nothing at all," said mother, Gail Conway.
In a matter of one week, Gail Conway said she lost everything. Her 5-month-old son died, her 5-year-old daughter was taken from her by children services, and her fiancé was locked up in jail.
"Right now my tear ducts are completely dry," said Conway.
Gail Conway and her aunt say they want to set the record straight about accusations against 24-year-old Michael Wingett.
"Me and him don't have a bone in our body to hurt children, at all. When we start getting angry like we do, we have someone else take them. And we all know not to shake babies," said Conway.
"Nobody would hurt that child," said Gail Conway's aunt, Sabrina Conway, who believes the child died of natural causes.
"He was grabbed, towards the hip, at the waist, and then shaken," said Knox County Prosecutor, John Thatcher.
After watching Wingett's interview with deputies and reading the autopsy report, Thatcher said he is confident the baby's father shook the 5-month-old to death.
"The child died of, what's been described to me as, if the child had been unrestrained in a car crash and if the airbag had deployed and hit the child in the head. That's the kind of force it would take to sever the tendons and ligaments in the neck," said Thatcher.
A baby boy, described by the family as a "precious little child."
"We love the kid to death and it broke every body's heart in this house when he passed away," said Sabrina Conway.
Wingett is now in jail on charges of murder, felonious assault, endangering children and inducing panic, for the bomb threat.
Dad is identified as MICHAEL WINGETT.
http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2014/05/19/knox-county-murder-charges-filed-kids-death.html
Family Defends Father Charged With Shaking Baby To Death
Monday May 19, 2014 4:54 PM
UPDATED: Monday May 19, 2014 11:53 PM
FREDERICKTOWN, Ohio - The family of a father accused of shaking his baby to death comes to his defense.
They say there is no way he is responsible for the child's death. His fiancée says she's not only mourning the loss of her son, but her daughter and fiancé too.
Prosecutors say Michael Wingett shook the five month old to death.
Before Wingett was ever charged, the Knox County prosecutor says he called in a bomb threat to children services, after they removed his 5-year-old daughter from, what they called, an unsafe home.
Wingett was arrested on inducing panic earlier in the week. On Monday, he was charged with murder.
"Right now I can't feel nothing. Ever since my son has passed. I cannot feel nothing at all," said mother, Gail Conway.
In a matter of one week, Gail Conway said she lost everything. Her 5-month-old son died, her 5-year-old daughter was taken from her by children services, and her fiancé was locked up in jail.
"Right now my tear ducts are completely dry," said Conway.
Gail Conway and her aunt say they want to set the record straight about accusations against 24-year-old Michael Wingett.
"Me and him don't have a bone in our body to hurt children, at all. When we start getting angry like we do, we have someone else take them. And we all know not to shake babies," said Conway.
"Nobody would hurt that child," said Gail Conway's aunt, Sabrina Conway, who believes the child died of natural causes.
"He was grabbed, towards the hip, at the waist, and then shaken," said Knox County Prosecutor, John Thatcher.
After watching Wingett's interview with deputies and reading the autopsy report, Thatcher said he is confident the baby's father shook the 5-month-old to death.
"The child died of, what's been described to me as, if the child had been unrestrained in a car crash and if the airbag had deployed and hit the child in the head. That's the kind of force it would take to sever the tendons and ligaments in the neck," said Thatcher.
A baby boy, described by the family as a "precious little child."
"We love the kid to death and it broke every body's heart in this house when he passed away," said Sabrina Conway.
Wingett is now in jail on charges of murder, felonious assault, endangering children and inducing panic, for the bomb threat.
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