Man found dead hanging from a tree inside Bronx playground
A 37-year-old man was found dead and hanging from a tree in a Bronx playground Friday morning, police said.
A local resident found the fully clothed man unconscious and unresponsive hanging from a rope in the French Charley’s Playground around 7:35 a.m. near the corner of East 204th Street and Webster Avenue, cops said. The resident called 911.
There were no other signs of trauma on the man’s body, and an emergency responder pronounced him dead at the scene, authorities said.
He has been identified, but police are waiting to release his name until family is notified.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/26/man-found-dead-hanging-from-a-tree-inside-bronx-playground/
Florida Man Attacks Mattress in a Fit of Jealous Rage After Smoking Meth, Faces Charges
An apparently hallucinating Florida man used a bedpost to attack a mattress where he thought a man was hiding.
In a Facebook post, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s office quotes the girlfriend of 37-year-old Felipe Oquendo as saying that he began acting erratically early Friday. The girlfriend told deputies Oquendo thought she was cheating on him with a man he thought he saw in the mattress at their Fort Walton Beach home.
She said Oquendo hit the mattress with a bed post, ripped it apart with his bare hands and locked the bedroom door. She was able to escape and call police.
“Oquendo told OCSO deputies he was fighting the man in the mattress, holding him down when they arrived, but the man then slipped out and left,” the post read. “He admitted he had been smoking methamphetamine.”
The suspect was booked on suspicion of domestic violence related false imprisonment and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Jail records don’t list a lawyer for him.
A teacher ran out of sick days to stay with cancer-stricken daughter, so colleagues donated 100 days
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — David Green is a history teacher and a father to a 16-month-old girl who was diagnosed with cancer.
The Mae Jemison High School teacher didn’t have any more sick days that he could take to stay with his little girl, Kinsley. His daughter is getting treatment 100 miles from home and she needs him to be there when he can.
So, fellow educators in Huntsville, Alabama, chipped in with their sick days — it added up to 100 days.
“We were blown away with the response that we received with the sick days. We were hoping to get a couple days so he could be here once a week,” Megan Green, Kinsley’s mother, told CNN. “It is a huge blessing and we can’t wait until we are in the position to give back and help others.”
Kinsley was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia six months ago and has been going through treatment since then. She still has three to four months of inpatient treatment, but will remain in treatment for the next two years.
Green gets one sick day a month and the Green family needed 40 days, so his wife decided to post on Facebook and see whether teachers were willing to help and donate one sick day.
Wilma DeYampert, an assistant principal at Lakewood Elementary, works in the same school district with Green. She saw the story on Facebook and donated two days. They are the only days she can afford, as she was diagnosed with breast cancer in February.
“I could not imagine having a child and being away from the child,” DeYampert told CNN. “So, I just thought it was the right thing to do. My mom always said, ‘You don’t have to be rich to bless someone.’”
Most teachers in the United States get one sick day a month. A lack of paid leave has devastating consequences for teachers who can’t afford to take time off for personal sickness or the birth of a child.
Low wages make it impossible for teachers to save for unpredictable situations or emergency expenses. Almost half the teaching workforce lacks access to retirement benefits.
Goldsmith Schiffman Elementary was another school where many teachers came together to help Green.
“You want to send words of encouragement, you want to do something to help, but this was a real physical way that we could help him and his family,” Anna Kachelman, a first-grade teacher, told CNN affiliate WHNT.
School admin allegedly colored in 7th grader’s haircut with marker over dress code violation
PEARLAND, Texas – An administrator at a Texas middle school is on leave after he allegedly used a marker to color in a student’s haircut design that didn’t meet the dress code.
The Berry Miller Junior High School student, Juelz Trice, told KTRK he was given two choices: accept an in-school suspension or allow the administrator to “color it in.”
The seventh-grader’s parents say they are upset that the school didn’t notify them, and that they only found out when their son got off the bus and told them what happened. His father, Dante Trice, also told the station he worries about the chemicals in the ink that went into his son’s pores where the line, in the shape of an M, had been freshly shaved.
“Punishing students for their style of hair is a discriminatory practice,” his mother told KPRC in an email. “The first paragraph of the district press release is meant to blame (her son) instead of immediately taking responsibility for the actions of the (assistant principal).”
Pearland Independent School District officials issued the following statement Wednesday:
Pearland ISD is extremely disappointed to learn of a situation that occurred at Berry Miller Junior High.
A student recently arrived at school with a haircut which violated district dress code. Pearland ISD’s dress code states: “Hair must be neat, clean and well groomed. Extreme hair styles such as carvings, mohawks, spikes, etc. are not allowed.”
A campus administrator mishandled disciplinary action by giving the student options including notifying his mother, disciplinary consequences or filling in the shape of the hair carving with a marker. This latter practice is not condoned by the district and does not align with appropriate measures for dress code violations.
The campus administrator is currently on administrative leave. Further action is forthcoming.
District administration has contacted the student’s family to express our sincerest apology and extreme disappointment in this situation, which does not fall in line with the values of Pearland ISD.
‘Freezer Mom’ Mitchelle Blair who killed 2 kids accused of throwing her feces, urine at corrections officer
DETROIT (WXYZ) — Mitchelle Blair, the Detroit mother who admitted to killing two of her children and stuffing their bodies in a freezer, was sentenced Thursday on charges for assaulting a police officer.
Officials say Blair received two sentences of 38 months to five years for two separate incidents where she allegedly assaulted an officer in 2018.
According to court reports, she put her feces and urine in a Pringles can and threw it on the face and chest of a corrections officer while they were trying to collect her food from a tray.
During the second incident, Blair was being escorted down the segregation unit hallway, when she began shouting at another prisoner.
As the officer tried to de-escalate the situation, she responded by kicking the officer in stomach and arm.
Police say she has been moved back into general population and is no longer in a segregated unit.
Mitchelle Blair has had 49 incidents since being in prison in 2015.
Rhode Island man threatened to kill Democrats, eat pro-abortion professor ‘piece by piece
A Rhode Island man threatened to eat a pro-abortion professor “piece by piece” — including his eyeballs — and vowed to kill “every Democrat in the world,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Matthew Haviland, 30, was charged with cyberstalking and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce for terrorizing a college professor in Massachusetts, who was not identified but reportedly worked at Harvard, Boston25 reported. Haviland sent the professor about 28 emails on March 10 threatening to “rip every limb” from his body, investigators said.
“I will rip every limb from your body and eat it, piece by piece [and] I will bite through your eyeballs while you’re still alive, and I will laugh while you scream,” an email read.
Other emails slammed the professor for his supposed support for abortion.
“You will be held accountable for every [expletive] baby you murdered through your horrible deception of they are not humans…You will have your face ripped off and eaten by me, personally. I will enjoy raping your body after you’re dead. And that will only be the start,” officials said another threatening message stated.
“You are Evil. Pure evil — all Democrats must be eradicated, like the Confederates before them and among their ranks,” Haviland allegedly wrote, USA Today reported. “They must be slaughtered.”
The 30-year-old sent about 12 more emails five days later to the admissions office of the professor’s university.
“[Expletive], my existence is not a blight on society. Yours is, for pushing the idea that if you are able-bodied or white or okay WITH THE [EXPLETIVE] GENDER YOU WERE BORN WITH, you are a bad person,” one of the messages stated, according to authorities. “You people are Evil, putrid, and somebody shoudl [sic] BOMB your school for spreading the idea that it’s okay to HATE people because of their race.”
Federal authorities said Haviland wrote in another email, “You should be Murdered in cold blood.”
Haviland also sent 114 voice messages at a women’s medical center earlier this month.
Haviland later admitted he made the threatening calls but was not planning to harm anyone, USA Today reported. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Couple had son of different race after clinic mixed up embryos
A couple is fighting a Connecticut fertility clinic in court after they say the facility gave them the wrong embryo — and they wound up giving birth to a baby of another race.
The husband and wife, who now live in the UK, are suing the recently shuttered CT Fertility in Trumbell and Dr. Melvin Thornton, claiming the shocking mixup has left them with “haunting uncertainties regarding their second-born son.”
The pair first visited the clinic in 2015 while struggling to conceive and froze embryos using the husband’s sperm and eggs from a donor they specifically chose, according to their suit, which was first filed in a Bridgeport court in November.
The wife then became pregnant with the couple’s first child via in vitro fertilization — and gave birth to a boy in April 2016, the suit says.
They returned to the clinic in September 2016 in the hopes of giving their son a full sibling by using the embryos stored from the previous procedure.
But when the wife gave birth to another son in August 2018, the tot didn’t resemble his older brother “whatsoever” — and had “much darker skin pigmentation than either the father, genetic mother or their first son.”
Realizing something was very wrong, they ordered DNA tests — which gave the stunning result that their youngest child is not biologically related to the dad, according to court papers.
“While their second-born son is loved and healthy in every aspect, he is not in fact their biological baby,” court papers say.
They now live with a “constant, nagging and debilitating fear” that this mystery sperm donor will realize what happened and claim custody of their kid.
They also say the situation has left the family vulnerable to “ignorant and cruel harassment” from judgmental strangers.
“They are barraged daily with questions and suspicions regarding who the child’s real father is and even whether the [sic] mother had an affair,” the suit says.
And they’re worried about the fate of the rest of the sperm they gave to the clinic.
“They have reason to believe they have lost genetic material (embryos) belonging to them, with no knowledge as to whether it has been transferred to another person, destroyed or frozen under an incorrect name,” the suit reads.
In court papers filed earlier this month, the parents described the anguish that plagues them as they continue to pursue the case, which isn’t set to go to trial until September 2021.
“They are left with potential life-long haunting uncertainties regarding their second born son, and unknowns about what happened to their genetic material and where their genetic material ended up,” court papers said.
“Whose genetic material was transferred to the plaintiff? Is the child’s biological father a carrier of some sort of disease? What is the genetic makeup and background of the baby? Will someone one day attempt to make claim to the custody of their child?”
Lawyers for Thornton and CT Fertility didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The couple’s attorney declined to comment.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/25/couple-had-son-of-different-race-after-clinic-mixed-up-embryos-suit/
Woman accused of raping child, posting video on social media
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Tennessee woman is accused of raping a 4-year-old boy and posting videos of the sex act on social media.
News outlets report Memphis police arrested 24-year-old Tamara Marion on Tuesday and charged her with child rape and sexual exploitation of a minor.
A police affidavit says Marion is seen performing sex acts with the child in two videos shared on social media.
According to officers, the first video showed a woman push a small child to the ground, remove his pants and perform a sex act on him. The second reportedly showed the child attempting to engage in a different act on the same adult female.
The relationship between Marion and the child was not released.
The Memphis Police Department said it began investigating after officers received a complaint on April 22 about the videos.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Marion has an attorney.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/04/25/woman-accused-of-raping-child-posting-video-on-social-media/
FL Mom accused of beating son with spiked, metal meat tenderizer for not doing homework
MIAMI, Fla. (WFOR) — A Miami mother is charged with aggravated child abuse for hitting her 9-year-old son with a spiked, metal meat tenderizer when she got angry because he didn’t do some homework, according to police.
Martha Ciguenas, 44, appeared in bond court Tuesday.
According to the police report, Ciguenas’ son told her on April 4 that “he had additional homework, while he was out of school during Spring Break.” She became “irate” and threw a water bottle at him twice, and her cellphone, but missed.
“The defendant then grabbed a glass candle holder and struck him on his head twice,” the report states. “Then she went to the kitchen and grabbed a metal meat tenderizer and “struck him once in the head, causing lacerations.”
Police say she continued to yell and screamed at him to clean his room and as he walked towards his room, she “struck him a second time with the meat tenderizer on his left arm below his bicep causing spike marks/indentations (from the meat tenderizer) which bled.”
The boy was examined by the Child Protection Team (CPT), which concluded the injuries were consistent with child physical abuse, according to the police report.
“When the defendant was shown the pictures of the victim’s injuries, the defendant admitted that she caused the injuries when she threw the meat tenderizer, and other objects, but denied striking him intentionally.”
Bond was set Tuesday at $5,000 with a stay away order, meaning she must stay at least 500 feet away from where he lives and goes to school.
The case is now moving to dependency court to determine custody, visitation and contact rights because Ciguenas is a widow.
Man repeatedly stabs teen, steals his headphones in the Bronx
FORDHAM HEIGHTS, the Bronx — A man repeatedly stabbed a teen and stole his headphones in a Bronx attack, police said.
The 19-year-old victim was in front of an apartment building on Morris Avenue when a man walked up, displayed a knife and demanded the victim’s property, officials said. When the teen refused, the knife-wielding attacker stabbed him several times in the torso.
The attacker took the teen’s headphone and fled in an unknown direction.
Emergency medical services rushed the teen to Saint Barnabas Hospital.
Police have asked for help identifying the attacker. He’s in his late teens to early twenties. The man was last seen wearing a blue cap, blue jacket and dark pants.
Submit tips to police by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), visiting http://www.nypdcrimestoppers.com, or texting 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. Spanish-speaking callers are asked to dial 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
via: https://pix11.com/2019/04/23/man-repeatedly-stabs-teen-steals-his-headphones-in-the-bronx/