Mom accused of drowning 10-day-old son in bath
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Authorities say an upstate New York woman has been charged with second-degree murder for the bathtub drowning of her 10-day-old son.
Rochester police say officers responded Monday afternoon to a report of an unresponsive child at a home and found a baby in a bathtub.
Officials say the child, named Jeremiah, was taken to Rochester General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Mitchell was arraigned on the murder charge Tuesday morning in Rochester City Court. She pleaded not guilty and was ordered held in jail without bail. The name of the public defender assigned to her case wasn’t available.
Police say Mitchell also has a 7-year-old child, who’s currently in the care of a relative.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/11/14/mom-accused-of-drowning-10-month-old-son-in-bath/
‘Who are they gonna believe you or me?’: Texas prosecutor fired after drunken Uber tirade
In what is probably Exhibit A for a one-star passenger rating, a Dallas assistant district attorney was fired after she drunkenly insulted and threatened an Uber driver, then said police officers the driver summoned would believe her side of the story and “f— you up.”
In a flash, Jody Warner’s intoxicated tirade — recorded by the driver and shared widely — made the Dallas prosecutor the latest example of someone with a very public job who was suddenly humbled after demeaning a blue-collar worker.
Warner had worked for the Dallas County district attorney’s office for the past six years as a prosecutor in the crimes against children unit.
On Friday night, she was also an intoxicated fare who summoned an Uber for a ride home from a Dallas pub.
Shaun Platt, the 26-year-old driver who showed up, told ABC News that the ride soured after Warner told him to quit using GPS to get her home and to follow her directions instead — then abruptly stopped giving them.
They argued back and forth, he said, and he had enough when she started calling him names, including “retard.” He stopped the car, ended the ride on the app and told her she needed to get out.
4 dead after California shootings; gunman tried to enter school
A gunman killed four people in a remote Northern California community on Tuesday morning, but a much bigger death toll was averted when the killer was unable to break into an elementary school.
Liangelo Ball and Teammates are Back in the USA
LiAngelo Ball and his 2 UCLA basketball teammates are finally back on U.S. soil after getting the green light to leave China … one week after they were arrested for jacking sunglasses.
TMZ Sports has video of Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley leaving LAX moments ago following a 13-hour flight out of Shanghai … the guys stay straight-faced and mostly silent as they’re hit with a barrage of questions and camera flashes from reporters.
The players had been holed up at the Hyatt Hangzhou — while some of the most powerful people in the world, from President Trump to President Xi to Jack Ma, worked on their release.
Chinese officials reportedly dropped the shoplifting charges on Tuesday and allowed the guys to return home. UCLA says the school will launch its own investigation to decide whether or not to discipline the players.
Been a hell of a week. And with reports saying they could’ve faced 10 years in Chinese prison, guessing they’re all gonna sleep pretty well tonight.
Article via: http://www.tmz.com/2017/11/14/liangelo-ball-ucla-china-arrive-usa/
Pennsylvania Dad Beat Infant Daughter To Death Because She ‘Was Fussy,’ Police Say
A Mt. Lebanon father repeatedly punched his infant daughter, killing her, because she “was fussy,” Allegheny County police alleged Monday.
Joseph Gazzam, 30, first told police that the child fell out of bed while the two napped late Sunday morning, according to a criminal complaint filed against Gazzam.
An autopsy revealed a fractured arm, brain bleeding, lacerated heart and kidney, broken ribs, bruises and hemorrhages behind 4-month-old Victoria’s eyes, according to the county medical examiner.
Police measured the distance from the edge of Gazzam’s bed to the ground – just over two feet, according to the complaint.
Gazzam is charged with homicide.
Police and paramedics initially responded to Gazzam’s Osage Road home just before 12:30 p.m. Sunday for a report of an unresponsive child, according to Lt. Andrew Schurman. Paramedics took Victoria to St. Clair Hospital, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Gazzam told police he was caring for the infant while the child’s mother was at work, according to the complaint. He said after changing and feeding Victoria, they lay down for a nap, and he fell asleep with the child tucked into the crook of his left arm.
When he awoke, he found the infant face-down on the floor, unresponsive, according to the complaint. When police asked about Victoria’s broken arm, Gazzam allegedly said he “forcefully removed her from her bassinet” earlier in the day.
Confronted with his daughter’s autopsy results, Gazzam allegedly told police that Victoria was fussy and “would not stop crying and would not fall asleep again.” He said he became angry.
“Joseph stated that he punched her twice in the head, punched her in the stomach and punched her in the back,” police wrote in the complaint.
Later, when Victoria stopped breathing and her eyes rolled back in her head, Gazzam called 911, police said.
In addition to homicide, Gazzam is also charged with reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Friday.
Affluent white student (released on $5M bail) spotted at LA Dodgers game after being charged in black man’s murder
An affluent white 18-year-old was reportedly spotted enjoying a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game with his parents, just days after being charged in a gang-related shooting of a black man.
Cameron Terrell, a Palos Verdes High School senior, was charged with murder and attempted murder in the Oct.1 fatal shooting of 21-year-old Justin Holmes, Los Angeles police said.
Terrell is accused of driving the vehicle carrying two suspects who had been arrested on suspicion of murder, according to The Daily Breeze. Police have said that Holmes wasn’t in a gang.
Terrell was released on $5 million bail, which the newspaper reported he posted on Oct. 19. The Daily Breeze also revealed the teen enjoys an affluent lifestyle that includes vacationing in Mexico and is a member of a predominately black South Los Angeles gang.
A photo of him and his parents at a World Series game at Dodger Stadium surfaced on social media days after his release, according to the paper.
Parents at Terrell’s high school were shocked that he hasn’t been suspended.
“We are here to say this child, this child-man — he’s 18 — does not belong in school with our children, with our 14-year-olds, with our 15-year-olds,” parent Sandra Valeri told KCBS-TV. “He presents a danger to them.”
However, the school’s principal says Terrell’s parents have agreed for their son to finish school at an offsite location, KTTV-TV reported.
Terrell’s arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 29.
Teen reported himself in 911 call before he was shot dead by cop on Wisconsin reservation
A teenager shot dead by a cop was revealed to be the 911 caller who reported himself as a knife-wielding male on a Wisconsin reservation, investigators said.
Jason Pero, 14, refused numerous commands to drop a butcher knife and lunged at Ashland County Sheriff’s Deputy Brock Mrdjenovich before he was fatally shot Wednesday, according to the state Department of Justice.
Pero, who was treated at the scene, later died at the hospital.
Mrdjenovich was responding to a call describing an armed, 300-pound male on Maple Street at 11:40 a.m. Investigators now say Pero made the call himself, WKOW reported.
According to the state division of criminal investigations, the teen had been despondent in the days leading up to the call.
Pero, who was raised by his grandparents Alan and Cheryl Pero, returned home from school on Wednesday with the flu.
He had been lying on the couch, watching TV while nursing a 7-Up before he got up and left. His uncle Alan Pero, who was doing laundry at the time, thought he went outside to throw up.
His family members were unsure why he was armed with a knife, saying Pero “never had one mean bone in his body.”
“He got murdered out in front of the house here,” Pero’s grandfather Alan Pero said. “He’s a boy. There’s warning shots. There’s Tasers. There’s pepper spray. You don’t go right on a 14-year-old kid and go for the kill zone.”
Mrdjenovich, who has worked for the sheriff’s office for a year, has been placed on paid administrative leave.
via: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/teen-shot-dead-reported-911-call-article-1.3631035
A former racist befriended a black man. Now they’re hosting a talk about race in Bartlesville.
It was years into their relationship before a conversation that took a young black man aback, finding out his white friend had grown up a racist. Now, the two want to get others to open up about their different experiences and backgrounds with the goal of coming together.
Tom O’Connor, a 76-year-old white man who is an admitted former racist, and David Lewis, a 27-year-old black University of Oklahoma graduate, plan to share their stories as they attempt to “unpack” institutional racism.
“We’ve both been sort of waiting for this quote-unquote national conversation for race to start, and everybody keeps avoiding the subject,” O’Connor said. “So we decided to take it upon ourselves to hold a public forum and see if we can’t spark a national conversation about race.”
A high school dropout, O’Connor said his family life growing up was plagued by alcohol and drugs. He described his poor, white neighborhood as being on the “other side of the tracks in New York City,” with violence and hatred of minorities being commonplace.
“I was a gang kid,” he said. “I believed if you were black you couldn’t come out of the projects, and if you were white you couldn’t go into the projects. We enforced that for a very long time.”
That toxic mindset stayed with him for the first 30 years of his life. It began to fade after he joined the New York Society for Ethical Culture.
O’Connor became involved in the organization’s Prison Reform Task Force and was tasked with referring people to different services offered by the city of New York.
The job introduced him to countless minorities who were denied the same services offered to white people.
“Ultimately what it came down to was they weren’t the right color,” he said. “I could see that. They were being discriminated against left and right, and suddenly I realized they’re no different than I was as a kid.
“During that period of my life, all of my attitudes — not just toward blacks, but all the people who were different than I am — changed. And they changed dramatically.”
O’Connor eventually started a market research company and moved his business to Oklahoma, where he settled down in Bartlesville and is now retired.
Lewis moved to Bartlesville in 2012 after graduating from OU and met O’Connor while attending a fundraising event at his home. He said the two hit it off instantly as they talked about life and current events.
“If you don’t know Tom, one of the things that you’ll quickly find out is he’s very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of guy,” Lewis said. “His transparency, his openness, his willingness to have a dialogue is really what attracted me to him.”
Their relationship evolved after O’Connor invited Lewis to grab a bite to eat with him and his wife. Five years later, Lewis considers him one of his closest friends.
The revelation of O’Connor’s dark past didn’t surface until last year during a conversation about the presidential election.
Learning his good friend used to be racist took Lewis aback but ended up strengthening their bond.
“You think you know someone over a course of time, but as we’ve grown closer he’s opened up about that situation,” Lewis said. “Him being able to critically think about it and say that wasn’t the right lifestyle to be living and the right way to be thinking about people, that actually drew me to him.”
One of Lewis’ biggest hopes for next week’s conversation is for people to walk away with a willingness to listen to those with different backgrounds and privileges. He said the racial dialogue happening on social media is hampered by the absence of in-person contact.
He said his goal is to sit people down face-to-face in an effort to reconcile the racial indifference affecting the nation.
“We’re not trying to bring the whole country to a Kumbaya-type moment. That’s a tall order,” Lewis said. “We’re just trying to do our part and say that at least we’re able to sit down and listen to the other. If I model that behavior for somebody else, they might do the same.”
As for O’Connor, he said he is not afraid of exposing himself by sharing his story with the world.
“That’s not difficult at all,” he said. “The truth is the truth, and I can’t change that. I was who I was, and I am who I am.”
The event is set for 7-9 p.m. Tuesday at Bartlesville’s Tri County Technology Center, 6101 Nowata Road. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
21 children injured after platform collapses at San Diego parkour gym for kids
21 children injured after platform collapses at San Diego parkour gym for kids
San Diego’s Vault PK is usually packed with bouncing and flipping children on Saturday evenings, when it hosts a “kids’ night out” for budding athletes ages 5 to 14.
This past weekend was especially packed, parents said, as people cashed in a Groupon that got three kids into the parkour facility’s open gym for just $30. The three-hour event is supervised by Vault PK staff members, so it doubles as a parents’ night out, too.
Some of the nearly 150 children present played on the obstacle course, styled similarly to those on “American Ninja Warrior,” but roughly a third had gathered on a 10-foot-by-30-foot wooden viewing platform, parent Cory Brizendine told San Diego ABC-affiliate KGTV. That’s where the pizza was being served.
“Once the majority of kids got up there, the whole platform collapsed,” he said.
The crumbling structure took a connected staircase with it, authorities and witnesses told reporters. Wood and little bodies tumbled to the ground — on top of children playing below — forming a heap of injured kids and gym equipment.
Women climb through McDonald’s drive-thru window to assault manager over McNuggets that were never ordered
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Two women exited their car to climb through a drive-thru window at a McDonald’s in Indianapolis and attacked the store manager after a disagreement over chicken McNuggets, police told PIX11 sister station WTTV.
Police officers were dispatched to the Indianapolis McDonald’s on Friday around 3 a.m., the station reports.
The store manager informed police that two women drove up to the drive-thru window saying they weren’t given the chicken McNuggets that they ordered. The manager told them they didn’t order McNuggets, and he reprinted their receipt to ensure they didn’t pay for McNuggets.
The women said they would like to purchase McNuggets, to which the manager responded by informing them they would need to drive around and re-enter the drive-thru line to place the order, police said.
They became angry and began banging their fists on the window and beeping their horn, the manager told police.
The women then climbed through the drive-thru window, knocking over the cash register and a basin of tea, and they started attacking the store manager, according to police. The store manager did not suffer any major injuries.
They then exited the store by climbing back out of the drive-thru window. The women got back into the car and fled, never receiving any McNuggets.
Video of the event was turned over to police and can be seen above.