Atlanta Mom Charged With Murder After Allegedly Putting Her 2 Young Sons in Hot Oven
Two Atlanta toddlers were found dead late Friday night and the mother of the children has been charged with murder, according to local new media
According to an arrest warrant obtained by Atlanta station WXIA and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, investigators believe the mother, 24-year-old Lamora Williams, killed the children “by placing them in an oven and turning it on.”
Officers were called out to the Oakland City West End Apartments on Friday night where two children, 1-year-old Jakarter Penn and 2-year-old Keyounte Penn, were found dead.
Police said the two little boys had obvious injuries including burn marks on their bodies, possibly from the stove.
Neighbors said police removed the stove and oven from the apartment.
A third child, 3 years old, was found alive in the apartment.
According to preliminary information, Williams said she left her three kids with her sister, and when she came home she found the two boys unresponsive. After gathering evidence and speaking with neighbors, investigators said they do not believe Williams left them with a caregiver.
Neighbors didn’t buy Williams’ story, telling Atlanta station WGCL that Williams had left the children home alone before. They held a vigil on Saturday night in honor of the two little boys.
A friend of the suspect told the Journal-Constitution that Williams had a month earlier quit her job because she couldn’t find a babysitter.
The friend said Williams called her on Friday evening, saying she “couldn’t do it anymore.”
Williams then told her friend the boys were dead.
Police are still investigating and the cause of death is unknown at this time. Williams will appear in court on Monday.
Defendant Tortured Gabriel Fernandez to Death Because He Thought Child Was Gay, Prosecutor Alleges
A man who is accused of torturing his girlfriend’s 8-year-old son to death killed the child because he thought the boy was gay, a Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office prosecutor said during opening statements Monday.
Isauro Aguirre’s defense attorney said his client admits to causing the injuries on Gabriel Fernandez’s body, but that it only happened because Aguirre exploded in rage after Gabriel told his mom to leave her boyfriend.
Aguirre, 32, is charged with murder with a special circumstance of torture.
Prosecutor Jon Hatami detailed the acts allegedly committed by the Aguirre and the boy’s mother, Pearl Fernandez, who also faces trial.
Hatami explained that the Palmdale couple beat Gabriel, bit him, burned him with cigarettes, whipped him, shot him with a B.B. gun, starved him, fed him cat litter, and kept him gagged and bound in this cubby until he was found on May 22, 2013. The couple called first responders to treat Gabriel, but that was only in an attempt to mislead, the prosecutor said.
“They didn’t call 911 to help Gabriel. They called 911 to cover up what they did,” Hatami said. “The defendant lied on the 911 call.”
The boy was hospitalized and died two days later. During his opening statements, Hatami showed the jury photos of the boy after he had been beaten.
The prosecutor said that Aguirre made Gabriel dress up in girls’ clothes and go to school. He added that Aguirre just didn’t like Gabriel and thought the boy was gay, and that was his motivation for his treatment of the child.
“Gabriel’s last vision was that man over there standing over Gabriel, beating him to death,” Hatami said.
Six-foot-2-inch Aguirre weighed 270 pounds at the time of the death, the prosecutor said, comparing his size to that of Gabriel, who was 59 pounds and 4 feet 1 inch tall.
“The evidence will show that the defendant is nothing more than a bully,” Hatami said. “He was a security guard who intentionally tortured and abused a helpless and innocent little boy.”
Defense attorney John Allan said that Aguirre had a hard time handling stressful and chaotic situations.
“He is guilty of murder, but the special circumstance alleged, that he intended kill Gabriel with the infliction of torture, is not true,” Allan said.
“Despite the horrific abuse, Isauro never intended for Gabriel to die,” he said.
Hatami showed the jury text messages between Aguirre and the boy’s mother and said they prove the couple conspired together to torture and kill Gabriel. The texts also show that the couple tried to conceal their actions against the boy in order to prevent anyone knowing that they were harming him, according to Hatami.
Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedic James Cermak testified Monday said he couldn’t believe what he saw when he responded to the 911 call of Gabriel in cardiac arrest at the couple’s Palmdale apartment.
“It was just unbelievable amount of trauma on his body,” Cermak said.
The trial against Aguirre is expected to last about eight weeks, and the boy’s mother will be tried separately.
Four Los Angeles County social workers who were assigned to Gabriel’s case also face charges in connection with the death.
via: http://ktla.com/2017/10/16/attorneys-make-opening-statements-in-gabriel-fernandez-torture-case/
Airport worker filmed ‘opening passenger bags’ and stealing contents
Abdullah Hayee Mayeh was arrested October 12 following video footage that circulated showing him opening airplane passenger’s bags in the luggage compartment of a Jetstar flight and stealing the contents inside.
The 27-year-old airport worker was caught on CCTV “opening passenger bags and helping himself to contents,” the Mirror reported.
Once the video started circulating online, Jetstar became aware of the incident and launched a full investigation into the thefts.
“Jetstar is aware of a video circulating online and we are taking the matter very seriously,” the airline said in a statement to news.com.au.
“We have launched an immediate investigation and will work with Airports of Thailand, our ground handler BAGS and our local security company to ensure the security of our customers’ property on-board our flights,” the statement continued.
Mayeh, who was employed by BAGS, a company that provides baggage services for nearly 100 airlines in Thailand, was arrested later at Phuket International Airport in Thailand.
Upon his arrest, Mayeh made a full confession and turned over a stolen Bluetooth, the Phuket Gazette reports. The authorties are reportedly trying to match any stolen item with the passenger from whom it was taken.
Inmates escape jail for a few hours to visit girlfriends, smoke weed then walked back to the jail
HUGO, Okla. — An Oklahoma sheriff says two inmates briefly escaped to visit their girlfriends and smoke marijuana and then walked back to the jail.
Choctaw County Sheriff Terry Park tells The Oklahoman that inmates Harley Davidson and Rakeem Lennox waited for jail staff to leave the area near their room about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. He says the men then entered the booking room to steal a laundry room door key and fled.
The sheriff says they returned to the county jail on foot after midnight and could face additional charges.
He says both men were in jail for drug possession.
http://nypost.com/2017/10/14/inmates-escape-jail-for-a-few-hours-to-visit-girlfriends-smoke-weed/
White student tells Black student ‘You are my slave’ in school’s ‘Civil War Day’ has mom furious
KENNESAW, Ga. — A new battle line has formed in the national debate over Civil War flags and symbols — this time at a Georgia school not far from a mountaintop where Confederate soldiers fired their cannons at Union troops more than a century ago.
The school near Kennesaw Mountain last month invited fifth-graders to dress up as characters from the Civil War.
A white student, dressed as a plantation owner, said to a 10-year-old black classmate, “You are my slave,” said the black child’s parent, Corrie Davis.
“What I want them to understand is the pain it caused my son,” Davis said of her child, who did not dress up that day. “This is bringing them back to a time when people were murdered, when people died, when people owned people.”
Davis recorded an emotional video in which she explains how she was affected by what happened to her son. It has attracted about 70,000 views on Facebook. The distraught mother said she met with school officials, but was dismayed when they refused to promise that they would never conduct a class in that way again. The issue could come to a head in a couple of weeks, when Davis plans to bring it up at a regularly scheduled school board meeting.
“No student was required to dress in period attire and any student that did so was not instructed, nor required, to dress in any specific attire,” school system spokesman John Stafford said in a brief statement. Cobb County school officials haven’t said whether the annual Civil War Day will continue next year at Big Shanty Intermediate School.
However, the note sent home to parents before the event said “it creates a more realistic simulation when dressing in Civil War clothing.”
Its suggestions included overalls — which Davis believes could have been meant to represent the clothing worn by slaves — and dark pants and white button-down shirts. White button-down shirts have become synonymous with demonstrators protesting the removal of Confederate statues in recent months. They were worn, for example, by some of the white nationalists who staged a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to violent clashes in August.
Communities around the country have removed Confederate monuments under pressure from those who say they honor a regime that enslaved African-Americans. The debate over such symbols intensified after a self-proclaimed white supremacist who had posed in a photo with the Confederate battle flag fatally shot nine black parishioners in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. And it has shown little signs of waning since the Charlottesville clashes that left one woman dead.
“BE CREATIVE and use your resources to ensure that your costume is as accurate as possible,” the Georgia school’s note informed parents. It included a small picture of a man in Civil War dress with what appears to be one of several flags used by the Confederate States of America.
“If they’re requiring that the costume be as accurate as possible … some kid is going to come to school dressed as a plantation owner,” Davis said in her video. “My son is going to be looked upon as a slave at the school.”
The best way to help students learn about difficult historical events such as the Civil War is to create an environment in which they can talk about them and learn different perspectives, said Andy Mink, a former Virginia teacher and now vice president of education programs at the National Humanities Center, a nonprofit organization that works to strengthen teaching.
“I think the best reason to teach history is to teach empathy,” said Mink, who works with schools nationwide on teaching strategies.
“The question we have to ask is whether or not dressing in a particular outfit is really achieving a learning outcome of some kind.”
Davis said she doesn’t object to learning about the Civil War. “I’m simply saying the way in which you are going about teaching this standard is offensive,” she said.
Earlier this month, students in Georgia’s largest school system, Gwinnett County, were asked in a class studying the rise of Nazism to come up with ideas for mascots that might have been used as propaganda for the Nazi party. Gwinnett County schools spokeswoman Sloan Roach said it wasn’t appropriate, and that the matter was being addressed with the teacher.
“We don’t want to do things in our classrooms that would intentionally provide traumatic experiences for young people,” said Sandra Schmidt, associate professor of social studies education at Teachers College at Columbia University.
Schmidt said educators have been aware of the possible pitfalls of student role-playing exercises since the late 1960s’ “Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes” experiment, in which Iowa teacher Jane Elliott designated blue-eyed students as superior to brown-eyed peers.
“She quickly realized how out of hand it got,” Schmidt said.
Davis said she won’t back down in her effort to stop the dress-up aspect of the school’s Civil War Day. She said she doesn’t want other students going through what her son did.
“What they can do is say, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore,’” Davis said. “It is mind-boggling to me that no one will say that.”
via: http://nypost.com/2017/10/13/you-are-my-slave-elementary-school-civil-war-day-has-mom-furious/
New Jersey Teacher Tells Class to ‘Speak American,’ Says Troops Aren’t Fighting for ‘Right to Speak Spanish’
A 25-second video clip recorded inside a classroom at New Jersey’s Cliffside Park High School has struck up a controversy on social media, according to KTLA sister station WPIX in New York.
“…men and women are fighting. They are not fighting for your right to speak Spanish. They are fighting for your right to speak American,” a teacher can be heard saying to her class.
Students in Cliffside Park, a diverse community with a large number of Spanish-speaking students, immediately reacted to the comment. At least one even walked out.
“You’re being racist,” that student can be heard saying on the video. “I know how to speak English.”
On Facebook, some former alumni are calling for the board of education to investigate the “discriminatory” behavior and the “belittling” of a bilingual student.
Meanwhile, others are defending the teacher, who has been identified on social media, as a “great person” and a “wonderful teacher.”
Some commenters said that English should be spoken in a class that is taught in English out of respect for the teacher.
Outside the high school on Friday, a student who was in the classroom said the teacher asked students whispering in Spanish to stop several times before making that comment.
“This school is not a negative school,” said Carmen Benitez, a senior at Cliffside Park. “You know there are a lot of different cultures in our school. There’s a lot of teachers who respect us.”
But others called for the teacher’s resignation.
“It’s really disrespectful,” said Alana Lopez, a freshman. “That’s not right. You don’t do that.”
WPIX has reached out to the Cliffside Park superintendent for comment, but calls weren’t immediately returned.
Students said the principal called an assembly Friday to discuss the incident. Some brought flags to school with them to represent their culture. Other students are planning a walk-out for Monday morning.
“You go to school to learn, you don’t go to feel attacked by someone you believe is an educator,” said Marvin Moreno, an alum.
His younger sister still attends the school.
Students said those who walked out of the teacher’s classroom in response to her comment were not reprimanded. The teacher in the video was substituting for a junior- and senior-level math class, but students say she teaches English at the high school.
JFK Airport guard forced to watch colleagues have sex on security cameras
A former security guard at Kennedy Airport was forced to watch her coworkers have sex and subjected to constant sexual harassment because she rejected her boss’s advances, a new lawsuit alleges.
LaDonna Powell, 32, worked for the company now known as Allied Universal Security Services at JFK from 2012 to 2016.
Powell says she was “presented with a choice: have sex with male supervisors and get ahead, or refuse and be relentlessly harassed and retaliated against,” her Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit alleges.
Because Powell refused, she endured “harrowing” torment, she claims in the suit, which was filed Tuesday.
That torment included being “repeatedly forced to stand by as her supervisors watched her colleagues have sex in security booths via closed circuit television cameras,” according to court papers.
She was also “present while her supervisors watched videos of female security guards performing oral sex on male supervisors” and would ask about her sexual prowess, court papers state.
Once, in late 2014, a boss called Powell into his office and allegedly said “How much further do you want to go (at Allied)? … There are things you can do to get where you want to go.”
His “clear implication to Ms. Powell was that she could engage in sex acts to advance her career,” the suit states.
A supervisor from the Port Authority — which contracts with Allied to provide security at JFK — was there during the meeting, the Powell alleges.
Another time, the same Allied supervisor said “Since everyone already thinks we had sex, let’s bend you over the table,” the documents claim.
The same man also “brushed up against Ms. Powell’s body when walking past her and made unnecessary contact with her,” according to the lawsuit.
When Powell tried to report the harassment — and an allegation that a female colleague was raped by two coworkers after a work event — her complaints fell on deaf ears, she contends.
Powell, who is black, also alleges that white supervisors routinely used the N-word in the office in front of her.
She says she was often denied meal and bathroom breaks when she worked as a security officer “to the point where, on multiple occasions, she had to urinate in a cup in the middle of her shift.”
Powell claims she made multiple complaints to Allied supervisors and the Port Authority about the alleged racial and sex discrimination at JFK.
She believes she was fired in May 2016 as retaliation and is seeking unspecified damages.
“We have just received the lawsuit and are reviewing it,” Allied said in a statement, saying that “per policy we do not comment publicly on pending litigation.”
Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman declined to comment on the suit, but said the matter was referred to the agency’s inspector general.
Pharmacist reportedly drugged woman on Tinder date
A Florida man who works as a hospital pharmacist was arrested Saturday and charged with sexual battery after he reportedly drugged his Tinder date.
According to a police affidavit, Robert Woods, 27, met the woman on the dating app Tinder and the pair agreed to meet at a bar in downtown Tampa, Fox 35 reported.
The woman reportedly had one beer at the restaurant before Woods suggested they leave and go to his apartment, where he claimed his friends were having a party.
When they arrived, there was reportedly no party. But the pair stayed at the apartment and started to play a drinking game, which led to the victim taking a shot of what she allegedly thought was Absinth liquor.
The woman told police that she later went out to the balcony to have a cigarette before waking up in Woods’ bed the following morning, Fox 35 reported.
Woods reportedly told the woman that they had had sex and when she said she couldn’t remember it, he told her “that’s okay.” The pair reportedly then had sex a second time but the affidavit said the victim was still not sober from whatever she had drank the night before.
The woman went to the hospital the following morning, Fox 35 reported.
She said she’d found two spots on the left side of her neck where it looked like she’d been injected with something, the Tampa Bay Times reported. She also allegedly found scrapes and bruises on her body that had not previously been there.
She reportedly messaged Woods later asking him what he had given her, to which he replied, “Are you alive?” She responded saying, “barely alive.”
After that, Woods reportedly didn’t answer and allegedly deleted the woman from his Tinder account.
Woods is being held at the Hillsborough County Jail on a $250,000 bail, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/10/10/pharmacist-reportedly-drugged-woman-on-tinder-date/
Here’s What Black Model in ‘Racist’ Dove Ad Thinks of It
From a very young age, I’ve been told, “You’re so pretty … for a dark-skinned girl.” I am a Nigerian woman, born in London and raised in Atlanta. I’ve grown up very aware of society’s opinion that dark-skinned people, especially women, would look better if our skin were lighter.
I know that the beauty industry has fueled this opinion with its long history of presenting lighter, mixed-race or white models as the beauty standard. Historically, and in many countries still today, darker models are even used to demonstrate a product’s skin-lightening qualities to help women reach this standard.
This repressive narrative is one I have seen affect women from many different communities I’ve been a part of. And this is why, when Dove offered me the chance to be the face of a new body wash campaign, I jumped.
Having the opportunity to represent my dark-skinned sisters in a global beauty brand felt like the perfect way for me to remind the world that we are here, we are beautiful, and more importantly, we are valued.
Then one morning, I woke up to a message from a friend asking if the woman in a post he’d seen was really me. I went online and discovered I had become the unwitting poster child for racist advertising. No lie.
If you Google “racist ad” right now, a picture of my face is the first result. I had been excited to be a part of the commercial and promote the strength and beauty of my race, so for it to be met with widespread outrage was upsetting.
Calls were being made to boycott Dove products, and friends from all over the world were checking on me to see if I was OK. I was overwhelmed by just how controversial the ad had become.
If I had even the slightest inclination that I would be portrayed as inferior, or as the “before” in a before and after shot, I would have been the first to say an emphatic “no”. I would have (un)happily walked right off set and out of the door. That is something that goes against everything I stand for.
However, the experience I had with the Dove team was positive. I had an amazing time on set. All of the women in the shoot understood the concept and overarching objective – to use our differences to highlight the fact that all skin deserves gentleness.
I remember all of us being excited at the idea of wearing nude T-shirts and turning into one another. We weren’t sure how the final edit was going to look, nor which of us would actually be featured in it, but everyone seemed to be in great spirits during filming, including me.
Then the first Facebook ad was released: a 13-second video clip featuring me, a white woman, and an Asian woman removing our nude tops and changing into each other. I loved it. My friends and family loved it. People congratulated me for being the first to appear, for looking fabulous, and for representing Black Girl Magic. I was proud.
Then, the full, 30-second TV commercial was released in the US, and I was over the moon again. There were seven of us in the full version, different races and ages, each of us answering the same question: “If your skin were a wash label, what would it say?”
Again, I was the first model to appear in the ad, describing my skin as “20% dry, 80% glowing”, and appearing again at the end. I loved it, and everyone around me seemed to as well. I think the full TV edit does a much better job of making the campaign’s message loud and clear.
There is definitely something to be said here about how advertisers need to look beyond the surface and consider the impact their images may have, specifically when it comes to marginalized groups of women. It is important to examine whether your content shows that your consumer’s voice is not only heard, but also valued.
I can see how the snapshots that are circulating the web have been misinterpreted, considering the fact that Dove has faced a backlash in the past for the exact same issue. There is a lack of trust here, and I feel the public was justified in their initial outrage. Having said that, I can also see that a lot has been left out. The narrative has been written without giving consumers context on which to base an informed opinion.
While I agree with Dove’s response to unequivocally apologize for any offense caused, they could have also defended their creative vision, and their choice to include me, an unequivocally dark-skinned black woman, as a face of their campaign. I am not just some silent victim of a mistaken beauty campaign. I am strong, I am beautiful, and I will not be erased.
via: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/10/i-am-woman-racist-dove-ad-not-a-victim
Real Housewives of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes clapped back at a heckler – stating she hopes her Uber driver rapes her.
“Real Housewives of Atlanta” star NeNe Leakes clapped back at a heckler during a stand-up comedy show at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, wishing sexual assault upon the woman in question. Now some fans are saying she crossed the line.
“I ain’t even gonna tell you about the goddamn Uber driver. I hope he rape yo’ a-tonight when he take you home, b—h,” Leakes retorted. “And steal yo’ funky Hello Kitty, b—h.”
It’s unclear what the heckler said to Leakes to prompt her outrage. A Facebook user who shared video from the incident stated that the woman in question may have been booing Leakes’ performance.
The reality star, who returned to Bravo after three seasons away from “Real Housewives,”issued an apology on Facebook. She claimed that she didn’t intend for her words to “cut deep.”
“I truly regret and apologize for what I said from the stage in Oakland over the weekend. Sometimes words can cut deep and hurt when you have no intentions of them doing so,” she wrote.
“As a woman and someone who has survived abuse, I regret the words that I used. I made a mistake and I should have known better. I hope people accept my deepest and sincerest apologies. I am sorry.”
This isn’t the first time loose lips have gotten Leakes into trouble in recent weeks. The 49-year-old recently found herself in the midst of an ugly, public feud with “Real Housewives of Atlanta” co-star Kim Zolciak and her 20-year-old daughter, Brielle Biermann.On October 6, after a Snapchat video shot by Biermann featuring what appeared to be a cockroach in Leakes’ house surfaced, the former “The New Normal” star responded in an expletive-filled Instagram rant.
“We don’t have roaches! If you found 1, u brought it with u or it fell outta yo funky p—y!” she said, calling Biermann and her mother “racist trash.”
The post has since been deleted.
Zolciak wasted no time responding, stating that it was “so sad and offensive” that Leakes would “stoop so low.”
“Everyone in my life knows that I am far from racist and unfortunately NeNe Leakes has tried for the last 10 years to paint that picture because that’s her last resort. (It’s convenient that I’m not racist when we are getting along.)” she wrote.
The Daily News reached out to Leakes’ representation for comment, but did not hear back.