Man accused of killing mom who was ‘driving him crazy’ asked co-workers to take pictures of him at work for an alibi
ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. – John Ralph asked his co-workers to take pictures of him at work because, according to police, “if anything happened to his mother he would need an alibi.”
Something had happened to his mother: Ralph, 51, allegedly murdered her that same day. A caretaker discovered the body of Edith Betty Ralph, 76, Saturday at the Tennessee home mother and son shared.
The younger Ralph was arrested later that night at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, less than an hour before he was scheduled to depart for Amsterdam, the Johnson City Press reports.
He has been charged with first-degree murder in his mother’s death, ABC News reports.
“Ralph lived with his mother and had … made numerous statements to friends and family that his mother was driving him crazy,” according to a statement from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia. “The night of Mrs. Ralph’s murder, John (asked) co-workers to take pictures of him at work saying that if anything happened to his mother he would need an alibi.”
The woman’s body had several gunshot wounds and severe head trauma.
“We quickly found evidence that led us to suspect John Ralph,” says the Carter County sheriff in Tennessee.
The sheriff’s office then learned Ralph had purchased a plane ticket and promptly got in touch with US Customs and Border Protection and the US Marshal’s Service. He is jailed in Georgia, awaiting extradition to Tennessee.
Cardi B Responds To Fan Who Said She Isn’t A Good Role Model
Article via HufingtonPost
The rapper said she feels trapped and “sad” about the position she’s in.
Don’t tell Cardi B that she can’t speak her mind.
The rapper had words for a fan on Twitter Saturday after the follower said that Cardi B wasn’t a good role model. The comments were in response to Cardi tweeting “I’m just nasty like that.”
“I love you ALOT but I don’t agree with the messages you’ve been sending us young girls,” the fan tweeted at the rapper. “So many of us look at you as a role model and that should send a very loud message.”
Cardi B thoughtfully responded to the criticism in a tweet.
“For these past two years I been watching what I say and I haven’t been myself. I been feeling [trapped] and sad cause it’s not ME but everybody tell me to be it for me to be this ‘role model’ and guess what? People still spit my past right in my face so for now imma be my old self again,” she said.
The rapper’s honest tweet earned praise from many of her followers.
Recently, the rapper apologized for past comments on a recently resurfaced, years-old Instagram Live clip in which she admitted to drugging and robbing men when she worked as a stripper.
The comments immediately caused an intense backlash against the 26-year-old entertainer.
Cardi B said it was something she “needed to do to make a living” at the time and said that she had “a past that I can’t change we all do.”
“I never claim to be perfect or come from a perfect world [with] a perfect past,” she wrote. “I always speak my truth I always own my shit.”
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She lived for 99 years with organs in all the wrong places and never knew it
On an early spring day in 2018, the faint smell of formaldehyde floating in the air, 26-year-old medical student Warren Nielsen and four of his classmates prepped a cadaver in the chilly dissection lab at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
Similar groups of five gathered around bodies on the other 15 tables in the anatomy class, all eager to explore the mysteries of the human body they had seen only in textbooks.
The cadaver assigned to Nielsen’s team was a 99-year-old woman who had died of natural causes. Her name was Rose Marie Bentley, but the students didn’t know that then. To honor and respect the privacy of those who offer their bodies to science, no further details are given medical students about the person who had once inhabited the body lying on the silvery slab before them.
But as the students and their professors were soon to find out, Bentley was special, so special she deserved her own unique spot in medical literature and history books.
The reason? A condition called situs inversus with levocardia, in which most vital organs are reversed — almost like a mirror inside the body. That, along with a host of other weird but wonderful abnormalities, made Bentley a sort of medical unicorn.
“I think the odds of finding another person like her may be as remote as one in 50 million,” said assistant professor Cameron Walker, who teaches the Foundations of Clinical Anatomy class at Oregon Health and Science University. “I don’t think any of us will ever forget it, honestly.”
‘This is totally backwards’
On this March day, the assignment was to open the body’s chest cavity to examine the heart. It wasn’t long before Nielsen’s group began to question their fledgling medical knowledge.
“Her heart was missing a large vein that’s normally on the right side,” Nielsen said.
Bewildered, he and his team called the professors over and asked: “Where’s the interior vena cava? Are we missing it? Are we crazy?”
“And they kind of rolled their eyes,” Nielsen said, “Like, ‘how can these students miss this big vessel?’ And they come over and that’s when the hubbub starts. They’re like ‘Oh, my God, this is totally backwards!’ “
A typical body has a large vein called the vena cava that follows the right side of the vertebral column, curving under the liver and emptying deoxygenated blood into the heart.
Bentley’s vein was on the left, and instead of terminating directly into the heart, which is typical, “her vein continued through her diaphragm, along the thoracic vertebrae, up and around and over the aortic arch and then emptied into the right side of her heart,” Walker said.
“Normally speaking, none of us have a vessel that does that directly,” he added.
That wasn’t the only irregularity Walker and his students found in Bentley’s body.
Numerous veins that typically drain the liver and other parts of the chest cavity were either missing or sprouting from an unusual spot. Her right lung had only two lobes, instead of the standard three, while the right atrium of her heart was twice normal size.
“And instead of having a stomach on the left, which is normal, her stomach was on the right,” Walker said. “Her liver, which normally occurs predominantly on the right, was predominantly on the left. Her spleen was on the right side instead of its normal occurrence on the left. And then the rest of her digestive tract, the ascending colon, was inverted as well.”
The mutations in situs inversus with levocardia occur early, Walker explained, possibly between 30 and 45 days into the
The condition occurs in only 1 out of 22,000 babies and is invariably associated with severe congenital heart disease. Because of the heart defects, only 5% to 13% live past the age of 5; case reports mention one 13-year-old boy and a 73-year-old who at the time was the second-longest survivor.
But Bentley was an anomaly, one of the few born with the condition that didn’t have heart defects, Walker said.
“That is almost certainly the factor that contributed most to her long life,” he said.
And that, along with all her other exceedingly rare anatomical abnormalities, is what makes Bentley 1 in 50 million, Walker estimated.
‘Mom would have been so tickled’
Rose Marie Phelps was born in 1918 in Waldport, a small town on the Oregon coast. The youngest child of four, “she was babied,” said daughter Patti Helmig, who at 78 is the oldest of her five children. “She would admit she was spoiled.”
A hairdresser by trade, Bentley was always fascinated by science, Helmig remembered, and she believes her mother would have made a fine nurse if she had been given the opportunity to train.
“She volunteered during World War II for one of the nurse’s aid corps,” Helmig said. “And she was thrilled when someone reached out to her about doing a study on smallpox survivors, which she had as a child.”
Despite chronic heartburn (which would have been explained by her unusual gastric anatomy), Bentley never showed any negative effects from her flip-flopped innards, said 76-year-old Ginger Robbins, the third of Bentley’s children.
“We had no reason to believe there was anything like that wrong,” Robbins said. “She was always very healthy. She was always doing something, taking us to Campfire Girls, fishing, swimming. She was an excellent swimmer.”
The only clue anything might be unusual came when Bentley’s appendix was removed, said 66-year-old Louise Allee, the fourth-born child and youngest of the daughters.
“The surgeon made a note that her appendix wasn’t in the right spot when they took it out,” Allee said, “but never said anything to us. Nobody said a thing when they took her gallbladder out and did a hysterectomy, either.”
The decision to become a body donor began with Jim Bentley, Rose Marie’s husband, but she too “thought it was the greatest thing,” Allee remembers.
“There was a poem that my dad found, and it was all about donating your parts,” she said. “You know, ‘give my eyes to a man who has never seen the sunrise’ and the like. He kept showing us the poem. It was really important to them.”
The poem, written by Robert Test, opens with the line: “Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby’s face, or love in the eyes of a woman,” and ends with “If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.”
The couple’s beliefs about donation made an impact. All three daughters plan to donate their bodies for research.
im Bentley kept his promise and donated his body when he died of pneumonia more than a dozen years before his wife’s death. His daughters know that he would have loved to have known about his wife’s peculiar insides so he could have teased her about it.
“He also would have been tickled they could teach medical students something so different and really make some great use of her body,” Allee said.
And what would Bentley have said about being a one in 50 million kind of gal?
“She would’ve just thought it was funny,” Robbins said.
Allee agreed: “She would have had a big smile on her face.”
Man Arrested in Road-Rage Shooting That Left 10-Year-Old Girl Dead in Phoenix
The announcement Friday of an arrest in the fatal Phoenix road rage shooting of a 10-year-old girl in her family’s driveway was of little comfort to her grieving parents.
Taniesha and Dharquintium Brown, who was also wounded, said they were thankful someone was in custody but that nothing would bring back their daughter, Summerbell. Her death started because of something “senseless,” they said.
“I hope that he suffers as much as we do,” Taniesha Brown said as she stood outside her home, steps away from their car, which had several bullet holes. “Not only did he ruin our lives, he ruined his life as well. He’s going to have to live with this the rest of his life — if he has a conscience.”
Police arrested Joshua Gonzalez after receiving a tip from the public. Gonzalez, 20, has an “extended criminal history” involving violent crime, said Police Chief Jeri Williams, who declined to disclose details.
Williams credited tips from the public with helping investigators.
“Our investigators were able to really close this case because the community members stepped up,” she said.
Gonzalez was arrested about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the family’s home.
The couple said they were on their way home Wednesday evening after picking their children up from the Boys & Girls Club when they noticed another driver closely behind them. When they pulled into the driveway, Dharquintium Brown went to confront the suspect. Taniesha Brown said she made eye contact with the driver and that’s when the shooting started.
She saw her husband was bleeding profusely and then looked in the backseat. Their 12-year-old daughter was not injured but Summerbell, who had been sleeping, clearly was.
“All I heard was her gasp out of her sleep. She was just shaking and she was trying to breathe,” Taniesha Brown said. “Then she fell over and that’s when I noticed the bullet hole in her back. She was just gasping for air.”
Paramedics tried to resuscitate her.
“They pronounced her dead at the hospital but I knew she had died right in front of my eyes,” Dharquintium Brown said.
Police have said the suspect believed the family’s car had cut him off.
After the killing, authorities made surveillance video public showing the suspect driving a white pickup truck while following the family’s vehicle.
Police found the pickup truck Thursday with its wheels changed and obtained a search warrant that led to the discovery of a handgun in a garage. Forensic evidence linked the gun to Summerbell’s killing, police spokesman Vincent Lewis said.
Taniesha Brown believes that Gonzalez altered the car’s appearance because he panicked at finding out there were children in the car.
The family planned to hold a vigil Friday night in front of their home. Summerbell, who also went by Summer, was a fifth-grader who loved dancing, singing and gymnastics. She loved school and made the honor roll every quarter, according to her mother.
“She was a wonderful, wonderful baby,” Taniesha Brown said.
At his initial court appearance Friday, Gonzalez was ordered held on a $1 million cash-only bond. He is facing one count of first-degree murder, three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of tampering or destroying evidence.
Clare Schum, his court-appointed attorney, did not comment when reached by telephone.
Florida Man Arrested in Jail’s Parking Lot for Allegedly Breaking Into Cars 15 Minutes After Release
Casey Michael Lewis was a free man for about 15 minutes, not even leaving the grounds of the jail where he’d been locked up before being arrested again.
The 37-year-old had just been released Thursday from the St. Lucie County Detention Facility in Fort Pierce, Florida, where he’d been held on grand theft charges, according to an arrest affidavit.
The affidavit says after he was released, Lewis then began walking around the jail’s parking lot “acting suspicious and checking vehicle doors.”
Surveillance video showed Lewis looking into cars and opening the door of a silver vehicle, according to the affidavit. The report says Lewis entered the vehicle from the driver’s side and sat in the car for about two and a half minutes. He then exited the vehicle and walked around the length of the lot, checking vehicles along the way by either looking into the windows or lifting door handles to see whether they were unsecured, the affidavit said.
While Lewis was in the parking lot, he was approached by an officer. He told the officer he was “waiting for his girlfriend,” according to the affidavit.
The arresting officer said in the affidavit that when Lewis was approached, questioned and finally arrested he gave the officer a brown paper bag with items from a vehicle. The items included an iPhone 7, four packs of cigarettes, a lighter, one Visa bank debit card, a Florida driver’s license and $547 in cash.
Lewis was arrested on charges of burglary, grand larceny and possession of stolen property and taken back inside the jail.
CNN reached out to an attorney who represented Lewis in a previous case but got no immediate response. It could not be determined whether Lewis was being represented by that attorney or another lawyer in the latest case.
Maria Entner, a spokeswoman for the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, said Lewis was released — again — the same day, but this time deputies made sure a person was there to pick him up.
‘Suspicious’ Fires Hit 3 Historically Black Churches in Louisiana in Less Than 2 Weeks
For three historically black churches in the heart of south central Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole country, Sunday services will not be the same.
The churches in rural St. Landry Parish — about 30 miles north of Lafayette — have burned since March 26 in what officials have described as “suspicious circumstances.”
“There is clearly something happening in this community,” State Fire Marshal H. Browning said in a statement this week.
Standing outside the charred remains of the Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas — which burned on Tuesday — Pastor Harry Richard said he looked forward to meeting elsewhere with his congregation on Sunday.
“Quite naturally, something like would shake us up,” he told CNN affiliate KLFY.
“I’m very concerned but I’m very optimistic because of our faith in God and, no matter what happens, I feel like this is his plan,” Richard said. “He ‘s going to bring me through this.”
The first fire occurred March 26 at St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre. Greater Union burned on Tuesday and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, also in Opelousas, suffered a fire on Thursday.
“We believe these three fires are suspicious,” Browning said. “We are falling short of talking about what caused the fires, falling short of saying they are related, however cognizant that there is a problem and no coincidence that there are three fires.”
Officials were also investigating a fourth, smaller fire last Sunday at the predominantly white Vivian United Pentecostal Church in Caddo Parish more than 200 miles north of St. Landry. The blaze was intentionally set.
Gov. John Bel Edwards this week appealed for the public’s help in determining the cause of the fires.
“Our churches are sacred, central parts of our communities and everyone should feel safe in their place of worship, ” he said in a statement. “We do not know the cause of these fires in St. Landry and Caddo parishes, but my heart goes out to each of the congregations and all of those who call these churches home.”
Browning said the remains of the three historically black churches in St. Landry Parish are considered crime scenes, and the FBI and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting in the investigations.
“It’s imperative that the citizens of this community be part of our effort to figure out what it is,” he said.
St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz said authorities were “doing everything we can” to protect churches and determine the cause of the fires.
“You got to have a certain degree of anger because there’s no reason for this,” Deacon Earnest Hines of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas told CNN affiliate WBRZ.
“You know the history of our country. During the civil rights struggle, they had all these incidents that would happen and sometimes that happens again,” he said.
Richard told CNN affiliate KATC Greater Union Baptist Church embodied more than 100 years of history.
“Our parents, grandparents went here,” he said. “Buried in the back there, some of them are.”
Upscale eatery boss treated her like property, forcing her to call him “boss man,’’ sleep in the pool shed and even unclog the family’s toilet: Nanny Lawsuit
A manager at the tony Upper East Side eatery Scarpetta treated his kid’s nanny like a slave — forcing her to call him “boss man,’’ sleep in the pool shed and even unclog the family’s toilet, a new lawsuit alleges.
Cindy Carter lived in “modern-day indentured servitude’’ and was “treated like property” by assistant manager James Ragonese and his wife, Nicole, according to the Brooklyn federal-court suit.
“It hurt so bad I cried,’’ Carter told The Post. “I didn’t know what to do.’’
The 44-year-old was paid a pittance — about $300 a week while toiling 71 to 120 hours weekly between March 2016 and this past February, when she was fired, according to the complaint and her lawyer, Justin Marino.
While James Ragonese works at the high-end eatery — which features such dishes as Wagyu strip with truffled spinach — Carter “was typically offered only leftovers,’’ the suit says.
She also “was prohibited from cooking food when Defendants’ were home (because, as Nicole Ragonese stated, “Caribbean food is disgusting”),” the papers state.
Meanwhile, Carter was required “to perform duties completely unrelated to being a nanny, such as plunging a toilet,” the suit says.
The nanny “spent her entire day either taking care of Defendants’ child (cleaning, feeding, monitoring, entertaining, etc.), cleaning the house, weeding the lawn and flower beds, watering the lawn during the Summer (as Defendants did not have a sprinkler system), doing laundry, or otherwise responding to Defendants’ every whim,” the 16-page document states.
Carter first lived in the family’s attic and then in the basement of their home in Williston Park, LI, she says.
The family moved to a new home in Port Washington in October 2018, where Carter was given a bedroom on the second floor — though the lawsuit claims they began constructing yet another basement room just for her.
When her bosses went to the Hamptons to have fun in the summer, she was taken along — only to be stashed in an unventilated storage room where pool chemicals were kept, she says.
“Nicole Ragonese said she could ‘leave the door open,’ ” the suit reads.
The Ragoneses’s lawyer, Dustin Levine, said Carter’s lawsuit is in retaliation for the couple having her arrested for keying their car. She’s now facing misconduct charges for the incident.
“I think they’re completely exaggerated and unfounded,” Levine said of the lawsuit’s claims, adding that his clients paid for Carter’s hotel stay after her arrest because they didn’t want her to be homeless.
“She lived in their home, they treated her as family.”
Carter’s lawyer, Marino, said that before his client’s arrest, Carter had called the police herself after a male Ragonese relative allegedly made inappropriate comments to her.
Carter — who is currently in a homeless shelter — is suing for alleged violations of state and federal wage provisions and noncompliance with notice/record-keeping requirements, among other things.
She’s requesting various damages, plus an award of unpaid wages for overtime with interest.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/07/upscale-eatery-boss-treated-me-like-property-nanny-lawsuit/
Woman drove her six children to their deaths as her wife looked up how much they would suffer, a jury says
As a drunk Jennifer Hart drove her six adopted children in their family SUV, her wife, Sarah, sat in the passenger seat looking up different ways to end a life.
The SUV carrying the Hart family would drive off a 100-foot Pacific coast cliff on that day in March last year — a tragedy police say took all eight lives and sparked questions about abuse and homicide.
As the car was in motion, Sarah was busy with the searches:
“How easily can I overdose on over the counter medications?”
“Can 500mg of Benadryl kill a 125lb woman?”
“How long does it take to die from hypothermia while drowning in a car?”
One of her last searches was for a no-kill dog shelter.
They intended to kill their 6 children, jury finds
The horrifying details emerged Thursday after a coroner’s jury unanimously ruled that Jennifer and Sarah Hart intended to die along with their six adopted children: Markis, 19, Jeremiah and Abigail, both 14, Devonte, 15, Hannah, 16, and Ciera, 12.
At first, it seemed unfathomable the parents would drive their children from their home in Woodland, Washington, to their deaths in Mendocino County, California. Their social media pages included photos of beaming children holding “love is always beautiful” signs.
In some photos, they had on matching T-shirts and wide grins.
As the national spotlight on the story grew, more details emerged that the children desperately sought help from neighbors. Allegations surfaced that their parents abused and starved the six adopted children.
Driver got intoxicated to build her courage
The coroner’s inquest gave more insight into what led Jennifer and Sarah to end the lives of all eight Harts.
When authorities entered the Hart home, it seemed neat, orderly and newly remodeled, said investigator Jake Slates from the California Highway Patrol. But while Jennifer and Sarah’s were decorated, Slates said, the children’s rooms were bare.
Investigators noted that their luggage was left behind, and the family did not take their toothbrushes before leaving for two days.
“In my opinion, Sarah and Jennifer succumbed to a lot of pressure,” said Lt. Shannon Barney of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. “They got to the point where they made a conscious decision to end their lives and take their children with them.”
As Jennifer drove down the US 101 highway, she had five beers in her system, enough to make it difficult for her to function, according to Slates. Witnesses told police that Jennifer rarely drank.
The theory is that she drank to build up her courage, Slates said.
“My feeling is based on talking to witnesses that they felt if they couldn’t have those kids, no one was going to have those kids,” Slates said.
Kids sought help in the middle of the night
Days before the family died in the crash, Child Protective Services in Washington requested a welfare check on the family. But no one answered the door on March 26; the family was already gone.
Calls to the police began just two years after the Harts became parents, while they were living in Minnesota. They were first called in 2008 when one child told an adult that Jennifer struck the child in the arm, but the state closed the case claiming the child fell.
After another call in 2011, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to domestic assault after admitting to police she bruised her child by spanking her over the edge of a bathtub.
After the family moved to Woodland, Washington, the children started going to their neighbor, Bruce DeKalb, for help and food in the middle of the night.
According to a case report, the children also complained of racist behavior.
Witnesses told California Highway Patrol that the children were “extremely disciplined, almost to the point of being robotic,” walking single-file to the bedroom and being told when to go to the bathroom, Slates said.
On March 23, DeKalb called CPS to check on the family. The next day, they packed up their SUV and began their drive from Washington to California.
Questions remain on abuse oversight
At first, only Jennifer, Sarah and three children were identified.
Jennifer was intoxicated, and Sarah and two of the children tested positive for diphenhydramine, an active ingredient in Benadryl.
Ciera’s body was found on a beach north of the cliff two weeks later. Parts of a foot in a shoe were found on a beach that May, but investigators could not identify the remains as a Hart child until January this year, when a DNA sample proved it was Hannah.
Devonte is still missing and, while they believe he perished with his brothers and sisters, authorities are hoping the public can provide information to prove them wrong.
Jennifer and Sarah cannot be questioned or stand trial for what happened on that California cliff. The inquest is closed, and their death certificates now list suicide while the children’s list homicide.
What can change now, Mendocino County Sheriff-Coroner Thomas Allman told reporters, is the federal oversight of abuse. Five states were involved with the adoptions and abuse allegations of the children.
“Where are the systematic failures that possibly could have prevented this?” Allman said. “We do not have a national database for child abuse allegations.”
This, Allman said, should be an “enlightening moment” for lawmakers.
Naked woman found in daycare claims she is owner’s wife, tries to fire employees
STAFFORD COUNTY, Va. — A 23-year-old woman is behind bars after breaking into a Stafford daycare and being found completely naked.
Early Thursday morning, Sgt. Aubrey with the Stafford Sheriff’s Office responded to the Kids on the Move Learning Center in Stafford. Upon arrival, officers said they found a woman dressed in black standing inside the building with a fork in each hand.
After she was taken into custody, the suspect told the sergeant he was making a mistake and she was the daycare owner’s wife.
Shortly after, Sgt. Aubry spoke with an employee who said she did not recognize the suspect.
The employee said she had arrived at the building and began turning lights on when she was suddenly confronted by a naked woman in the doorway of one of the classrooms. The suspect then told the employee she was trespassing and tried to fire her.
The Sheriff’s Office later determined the suspect was not affiliated in any way with the daycare.
Heaven Conner, 23, of Spotsylvania was recognized her from an incident earlier that morning.
Conner had been walking down Route 1 and was reported as a suspicious person. She told the sergeant she was coming from Rappahannock Regional Jail.
Conner was incarcerated on a secured bond at Rappahannock Regional Jail on charges of unauthorized entry and indecent exposure.
Family finds hidden camera livestreaming from their Airbnb
CORK, Ireland – After arriving at their Airbnb in Cork, Ireland, a family from New Zealand made an unsettling discovery: a hidden camera, livestreaming from the living room.
Nealie and Andrew Barker were in the midst of a 14-month trip around Europe when they arrived at the Airbnb property with their four children and niece.
Once the family had unpacked, Andrew Barker, who works in IT security, scanned the house’s Wi-Fi network.
The scan unearthed a camera, and subsequently a live feed. From the angle of the video, the family tracked down the camera, concealed in what appeared to be a smoke alarm or carbon monoxide detector.
“It was such a shock. It was just a really horrible feeling,” Nealie Barker said.
She called Airbnb to report the camera.
“They had no advice for us over the phone,” she said. “The girl just said that if you cancel within 14 days, you won’t get your money back.”
Next, Andrew Barker called the owner of the property. When confronted with the family’s discovery, Nealie Barker said, the host hung up. Later, he called back, insisting the camera in the living room was the only one in the house.
“We didn’t feel relieved by that,” she said, adding that the host refused to confirm whether he was recording the livestream, or capturing audio.
The family relocated to a nearby hotel and called Airbnb the following day.
“They still didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the issue. They were treating it like a canceled booking,” Nealie Barker said.
Ultimately, Airbnb’s trust and safety team promised to conduct an investigation, and it temporarily suspended the listing.
According to Nealie Barker, Airbnb did not contact the family again. After she got through to them two weeks later, the company told her that the host had been “exonerated,” and the listing reinstated.
It was only after she posted about the incident on Facebook and local New Zealand news stations reported her experience that the host was permanently banned, she said.
In a statement, Airbnb told CNN: “The safety and privacy of our community — both online and offline — is our priority. Airbnb policies strictly prohibit hidden cameras in listings and we take reports of any violations extremely seriously. We have permanently removed this bad actor from our platform.”
“Our original handling of this incident did not meet the high standards we set for ourselves, and we have apologized to the family and fully refunded their stay. There have been over half a billion guest arrivals in Airbnb listings to date and negative incidents are incredibly rare.”
Aoife Mullen, communications manager for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, told CNN that the commission was “aware of the issue,” adding, “we will be seeking further information from Airbnb on the matter.”
The Barker family is currently in Budapest, where, Nealie Barker said, “We’re staying in an Airbnb right now.”
“We’ve become much more cautious now,” she said, advising other travelers to learn how to scan networks for hidden cameras. “We think people need to realize that the travel market is largely unregulated and if you would take issue with being filmed, then you need to take all steps properly.”
via: https://pix11.com/2019/04/07/family-finds-hidden-camera-livestreaming-from-their-airbnb-in-ireland/