Florida father becomes so upset at son watching him play video games, he smothers him.
SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) — Deputies say a 270 lb. Sarasota father played a video game and at the same time used his body weight to smother his 6-year-old son.
Sarasota County Sheriff’s Deputies say the dead boy’s 7-year-old sibling watched the horrific Christmas Eve incident unfold.
The sibling reported seeing the father, James “Rick” Dearman, 31, smother the boy on the couch, as Dearman played a video game with his live-in girlfriend.
Deputies responded to a home in Englewood at about 10:10 p.m. They arrived to find paramedics performing CPR on a 6-year-old boy in the living room. One of the deputies said he saw a bruise on the boy’s back.
The 6-year-old boy was transported to Englewood Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Detectives later interviewed Dearman’s girlfriend, Ashley Cole, who said that she and Dearman live together at the home. Cole told detectives that at 7:30 p.m., the couple told the two children to go to bed. The children sleep on the floor with blankets in a separate bedroom.
Cole said the children would not go to sleep and ran around the bedroom. She said that Dearman got up from the couch and forced both children to stand facing the wall. Cole said that the 6-year-old boy was caught watching her and Dearman play video games. Dearman then became angry and put the boy on the couch.
Cole said Dearman forced the boy to lie on his side on the couch with his face against the rear couch cushions. She said Dearman then pinned the boy against the couch using his bodyweight. The boy was screaming that he could not breath and was trying to free himself.
Detectives say Dearman ignored the boy’s pleas and he and Cole continued to play video games.
After 5 minutes, the boy became motionless. Dearman and Cole then went to the garage to smoke a cigarette and left the boy on the couch.
Ten minutes later, the pair returned from the garage and saw the boy lying on the couch. Cole saw that the boy’s lips were blue and he was not breathing. Cole ran into the garage to pray, according to an arrest affidavit.
Dearman called 911 and attempted to perform CPR until paramedics came.
Detectives later interviewed the dead child’s sibling, who witnessed the alleged abuse. When asked about the victim, the sibling responded, “When dad squished him, he got dead,” according to the affidavit.
The sibling demonstrated to detectives how the victim was pinned in the couch and said the victim was crying and needed to use the restroom, but was denied by Dearman.
Dearman was arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse. On Thursday afternoon the charge was changed to Aggravated Manslaughter of a Child. Dearman is being held without bond in the Sarasota County Jail.
The medical examiner is conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of death of the child.
The case has left its mark on the sheriff’s office staff.
“There’s not a detective or anybody who isn’t pretty upset about this and finds it egregious and malicious, the treatment of a six-year-old child,” said Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office Captain John Walsh.
via: http://wfla.com/2015/12/31/deputies-270-lb-sarasota-father-played-video-game-smothered-son-6-at-same-time/
Dutch driving instructors can trade lessons for sex beginning Jan. 1.
(CNN)It brings a whole new meaning to the expression “going Dutch.”
Government ministers in the Netherlands have confirmed that it is legal for driving instructors to offer lessons in exchange for sex.
Prostitution is legal and regulated in the country, where sex workers are considered “self-employed” and can openly advertise in newspapers and online.
The Dutch government tackled the issue head on after Gert-Jan Segers, of the socially conservative opposition party ChristenUnie (Christian Union), tabled a question in parliament in November.
Segers described such transactions as “illegal prostitution” and called for them to be banned. He argued that student drivers would not have the requisite escort license, and so would not be declaring any sexual acts for tax purposes.
But Melanie Schultz van Haegen, the country’s minister of infrastructure and the environment, and Security and Justice Minister Ard van der Steur said that while the practice — widely dubbed “ride for a ride” — may be “undesirable,” it is not against the law, provided both parties are over 18 and the instructor suggests it.
They said that if the transaction were reversed, with students proposing “personal services” in return for lessons, then this would be unlawful.
“It’s not about offering sexual activities for payment, but offering a driving lesson,” the two ministers said in a letter sent to parliament on December 8.
“It is important that the initiative lies with the driving instructor, and focuses on offering lessons, with the payment provided in sexual acts.
“When a sexual act is offered as a commercial business, that is prostitution.”
Sentina van der Meer, a press officer for the Ministry of Security and Justice, told CNN: “It is important to know that it is not known as a common phenomenon.”
However, little data is publicly available, and a recent investigation by Rotterdam police into so-called “sex exchanges” has not been published.
via: http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/europe/driving-lessons-sex-netherlands/
Woman claims her body brews alcohol, has DUI charge dismissed – suffers from “auto-brewery syndrome”
That’s what happened to an upstate New York woman when she blew a blood alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. Just before Christmas in Hamburg, New York, a judge dismissed the charges after being presented with evidence the woman suffers from “auto-brewery syndrome.”
“I had never heard of auto-brewery syndrome before this case,” attorney Joseph Marusak told CNN on the condition his client’s identity remain anonymous. “But I knew something was amiss when the hospital police took the woman to wanted to release her immediately because she wasn’t exhibiting any symptoms.”
“That prompts me to get on the Internet and see if there is any sort of explanation for a weird reading,” adds Marusak. “Up pops auto-brewery syndrome and away we go.”
“I’m in touch with about 30 people who believe they have this same syndrome, about 10 of them are diagnosed with it,” said Panola College Dean of Nursing Barbara Cordell, who has studied the syndrome for years. “They can function at alcohol levels such as 0.30 and 0.40 when the average person would be comatose or dying. Part of the mystery of this syndrome is how they can have these extremely high levels and still be walking around and talking.”
Extremely rare condition
Also known as gut-fermentation syndrome, this rare medical condition can occur when abnormal amounts of gastrointestinal yeast convert common food carbohydrates into ethanol. The process is believed to take place in the small bowel, and is vastly different from the normal gut fermentation in the large bowel that gives our bodies energy.
First described in 1912 as “germ carbohydrate fermentation,” it was studied in the 1930s and ’40s as a contributing factor to vitamin deficiencies and irritable bowel syndrome. Cases involving the yeast Candida albicans and Candida krusei have popped up in Japan, and in 2013 Cordell documented the case of a 61-year-old man who had frequent bouts of unexplained drunkenness for years before being diagnosed with an intestinal overabundance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewer’s yeast, the same yeast used to make beer.
It was a beautiful fall afternoon in 2014 when Marusak’s client met her husband at a restaurant for food and drinks. She consumed “four drinks between noon and 6 p.m.” says Marusak, “less than one drink an hour. We hired a local pharmacologist who said that a woman of her size and weight having four drinks in that period of time should be between 0.01 and 0.05 blood alcohol levels.” That would be beneath the legally impaired level of 0.08 BAC in New York state.
And here’s the “crazy thing,” says Marusak. “Her husband drives to meet friends and she is driving home. She gets a flat close to home but doesn’t want to change the tire so keeps on driving. Another driver sees her struggling with the car and calls it in as an accident. So if she hadn’t had that flat tire, she’d not know to this day that she has this condition.”
Because she blew a blood alcohol level of nearly 0.40, police procedure is to take the accused to a hospital, as that level is considered extremely life-threatening.
Instead of allowing his wife to be released as the hospital recommended based on her lack of drunken symptoms, the husband asked for tests to be run. Sure enough, Marusak says, the results showed a blood alcohol level of 0.30, hours and hours after her last drink. That prompted Marusak to do his own sleuthing.
“I hired two physician assistants and a person trained in Breathalyzers to watch her and take blood alcohol levels over a 12-hour period and had it run at the same lab used by the prosecution,” said Marusak. “Without any drinks, her blood level was double the legal limit at 9:15 a.m., triple the limit at 6 p.m. and more than four times the legal limit at 8:30 p.m., which correlates with the same time of day that the police pulled her over.”
Even more strange, says Marusak, is the fact that the woman exhibited no signs of the levels until she reached a blood alcohol level of between 0.30 and 0.40.
“That’s when she started to feel a bit wobbly on her feet.” Marusak explains that by pointing to the world of alcoholism, where the bodies of “functioning alcoholics” adapt to the high levels of booze in their blood.
Even though the Hamburg judge dismissed the case against his client, Marusak says it’s not over yet.
“I’ve heard the DA’s office says they plan to appeal. I’ll know more by the middle of January.”
Assistant Erie County District Attorney Christopher Belling confirmed a review of the judge’s decision is underway but declined to comment further.
In the meantime, Marusak’s client is treating her condition with anti-fungal medications and a yeast-free diet with absolutely no sugar, no alcohol and very low carbs. While that works for some, Cordell says, others relapse or find little relief.
via: http://fox2now.com/2016/01/01/woman-claims-her-body-brews-alcohol-has-dui-charge-dismissed/