Sex offender leave hospital where his baby was just born, walk nearly seven miles to meet teen for sex
CHYAHOGA COUNTY, Ohio (WJW) – Prosecutors say a desperate and dangerous convicted sex offender walked nearly seven miles hoping to meet a teen girl for sex.
Steven Prest has just been sentenced to two years in prison, and he’ll have to register as a sex offender for 25 years, according to WJW.
He began his long walk at a hospital – where his girlfriend had just given birth to their baby.
Prest was one of the first to be convicted in a big sex sting carried out by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. It happened in the summer during the weekend Cleveland hosted the MLB All-Star Game.
Video shows Prest walking and stopping at a convenience store not far from where investigators say he expected to meet a 15-year-old girl. They say he actually had been talking to an undercover officer. A team of agents put him in handcuffs.
Asst. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Carl Sullivan said, “The 6.8 miles he walked in two hours. And, he was texting during the course of that, basically giving updates to our investigator posing as the undercover.” Sullivan added, “It’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m happy we caught him.”
Detectives say one message he wrote said, “I definitely like you. Or I wouldn’t take the risks I’m already taking.”
Video from the interrogation shows Prest admitting, “There was some sex talk back and forth. We’ll do this. We’ll do that.” And, “I played along. I know. I played along.”
Sullivan added, “He had a prior history. He had been convicted of solicitation of a minor in Tennessee before.”
Investigators say cases like this show why parents need to stay alert and be aware of everyone their kids are speaking to and messaging on their phones.
Detectives have done multiple stings like this, hauling in dozens of suspects at a time. And officers believe they could do the stings even more often and still grab a lot of people trying to target kids for sex.
Of the 28 picked up in the last sting, about a third have been convicted with the other cases still pending.
Photo Credit: dailymail.co.uk
Boy forced to do 200 push-ups, then beat with wooden spoon by Franklin Co man, charges say
UNION, Mo. (KMOV.com) — A Franklin County man accused of hitting a child with a wooden spoon has been charged with child abuse.
According to the probable cause statement, a 13-year-old boy was walking on Water Tower Drive on Saturday, Oct. 26. He was seen wearing sweatpants with no shoes or shirt by a witness.
The witness told police it was 49 degrees outside with a windchill with of 42 degrees and it was lightly raining.
The witness saw the boy crying and put him in his vehicle and brought him back to his home. The witness noticed “fresh” bruises on his lower and middle back and then called police.
Police responded and said there was a circle mark in the bruising and he had a cut on his left ankle.
The boy told officers that he was forced to do push-ups as punishment by 31-year-old Dane Horine. After doing 200, Horine told him to do more. When he refused, Horine reportedly struck him a wooden spoon.
According to the probable cause statement, the boy said he was hit repeatedly with the spoon until it broke. The boy said then he was poked with the pointed edge of the spoon.
According to police, Horine also drove his electric wheelchair into the boy causing bruises and cuts on his left leg.
When confronted by police, Horine told them the boy got rug burns from doing sit-ups.
Then Horine told police he uses push-ups and sit-ups as punishment.
Officers told Horine the marks on the boy did not look like rug burns. Horine said he hit him with a spoon, but was trying to hit him in the butt when he ducked, which caused him to get hit in the back and elbow.
Horine was released Monday morning after posting his $4,900 bond.
Photo Credit: VineLink
Man Found Guilty of Killing His Disabled Sons by Driving Off Port of L.A. Dock to Collect Life Insurance
A father was found guilty Tuesday of driving his wife and two disabled sons off a dock at the Port of Los Angeles in 2015 so that he could collect life insurance money, federal prosecutors said.
A jury convicted 45-year-old Ali F. Elmezayen of Hawthorne on 14 federal felony counts including money laundering, mail and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
In a separate case, Elmezayen is still facing murder charges in the deaths of his two sons with autism, 13-year-old Elhassan and 8-year-old Abdelkrim, and an attempted murder charge for his wife, who couldn’t swim but managed to survive the crash.
During a nine-day trial, federal prosecutors portrayed Elmezayen as an abusive father and spouse who hatched a callous plot to end his money woes.
Investigators say he took out more than $7 million worth of life and accidental death insurance from eight different companies over the course of eight months.
He began buying the policies in 2012, the same year he left Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. And despite tax returns showing his income at less than $30,000 a year, he paid annual premiums in excess of $6,000, officials said.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said Elmezayen was “(d)issatisfied with his financial and family situation” and drove his loved ones off the pier “to cash in.”
The jury heard recorded audio of Elmezayen repeatedly calling insurance companies to verify the plans were active and would pay out. On some calls the defendant would allegedly impersonate his wife, in whose name some policies were obtained.
At least twice, he asked companies if they would investigate claims made within two years of buying the policy, authorities said.
On April 9, 2015 – 12 days after the two-year contestability period on the last insurance policy expired – Elmezayen plunged the family car off a commercial fishing dock at the San Pedro port.
Elmezayen was able to swim through his open driver’s side window, while his wife was pulled to safety by a nearby fisherman who tossed her a flotation device, officials said.
Elhassan and Abdelkrim, who prosecutors describe as severely autistic, were restrained in the car and drowned.
Authorities say the couple has a third son who was away at camp at the time.
In an interview with KTLA shortly after the crash, Elmezayan described the plunge as “a really bad accident” and said he’d gone to the wharf so his family could take in the view.
“I want to go back to my kids but the car (went) really deep,” he said.
Elmezayen collected more than $260,000 from insurance, using some of the cash to buy real estate in Egypt and a boat, investigators said.
Officials allege he continued to lie about how much insurance he’d purchased, and tried to get a witnesses to tell authorities he gave the money to charity.
Elmezayen has remained in custody since his arrest last November.
On Tuesday, a judge is expected to scheduled a date for his sentencing, when he’ll face up to 212 years in federal prison.
Photo Credit: ktla.com
Brooklyn pimp ‘Sugar Bear’ admits to chopping up girlfriend, but not killing her
He’s not a murderer — he just had a severed head in his freezer.
A Brooklyn pimp on trial for slaying his prostitute girlfriend and then butchering her body insists he didn’t kill the woman — he just chopped up her corpse and stashed her head in his freezer because he “didn’t want to be blamed” for her death.
A lawyer for Somorie Moses — also known as “Sugar Bear” — gave the novel defense during the opening statements of his Brooklyn Supreme Court trial for allegedly killing his gal pal Leondra Foster, then slicing her into nine pieces in 2017.
“Mr. Moses cut up her body,” Julie Clark told the Brooklyn jury. “He didn’t want to go to jail. He didn’t want to be blamed. He had no motive to kill his moneymaker.”
“He is not a nice man,” she conceded. “He is not someone you want your daughter … to date. You don’t have to like his lifestyle.”
Clark did not provide an alternate explanation for the 32-year-old Foster’s death.
Moses, 43, is charged with second-degree murder and concealment of a corpse in Foster’s Jan. 12, 2017, beating death inside his Flatbush apartment.
He allegedly threw Foster’s torso and other body parts into a garbage truck headed to a Bronx trash dump, but kept her head, hands and feet in his kitchen freezer.
Police closed in on Moses after finding the body parts at a Bronx waste transfer station, and tracing them to his apartment — where they allegedly found splattered blood and Moses’ frozen appendages.
They were found under a pile of frozen food and meats, authorities said.
He was charged with concealing the body parts 10 days after the slaying, as police continued their investigation into the grisly crime. Four days later, prosecutors charged him with her murder.
On Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Sabeeha Madni alleged Moses had searched terms like “head trauma,” “dilated pupils” and “cleaning agents” online after the killing.
Madni said he used a rip saw to cut up the body, and later texted a neighborhood pal who worked for a private trash hauler.
“I have a favor to ask,” he allegedly wrote. “I want to get rid of some garbage.”
Moses later met up with the friend while he was on his trash route and took several garbage bags from the trunk of his car and chucked them into the truck, she told the court.
“You better help me or you’re going to end up like her,” Moses allegedly warned him.
The man is now a cooperating witness in the case against Moses. Prosecutors said he is among 30 witnesses they will call at the trial, which is expected to last three weeks.
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Marijuana found in man’s nose 18 years after he smuggled it into prison
A package of marijuana has been retrieved from the nose of a man 18 years after he smuggled it into prison, in what doctors have described as the first case of its kind.
According to the team who reported on the case in the British Medical Journal, the man received the drugs wrapped in a balloon from his girlfriend who was visiting him in prison.
He placed the drugs in his right nostril in order to evade detection from guards, but was later unable to retrieve them after pushing the package deeper into the cavity.
Despite suffering chronic sinus infections and symptoms of nasal obstructions in the years following the incident, the man mistakenly believed he had ingested the drugs.
Over the next 18 years, the package developed into a rhinolith — a stone that forms around a foreign body in the nasal cavity through the slow deposition of calcium and magnesium salts.
Titled “A nose out of joint,” the report by doctors at Westmead Hospital in Sydney, Australia, said that the man only learned the truth of his sinus discomfort after seeking medical attention for what he believed was a totally unrelated issue.
“A 48-year-old man was referred to the Westmead ENT Department after a CT of the brain, originally performed for headaches, demonstrated an incidental 19x11mm calcified lesion in the right nasal cavity,” the report states.
“On questioning, the patient confirmed a long history of unilateral right nasal obstruction and recurrent sinonasal infections.”
The rhinolith was removed from the man’s nose under general anesthetic, and a subsequent study revealed that it contained a “rubber capsule containing degenerate vegetable/plant matter.”
“On follow-up and specific questioning, the patient was able to recall an incident that occurred 18 years prior, while he was incarcerated,” the report states. “He remained unaware of the package’s presence until presented with the unusual histopathology report.”
Three months following the removal of the unexpected foreign body, the man reported that his nasal discomfort had completely resolved.
The researchers believe that this is the first reported case of a “prison-acquired marijuana-based rhinolith.”
They noted that the majority of drug smuggling in prisons occurs through ingesting packages through the mouth, which are later retrieved after being passed through the gastrointestinal tract. Inserting drugs into the nasal cavity for the purposes of avoiding detection is “relatively rare,” they added.
Rhinoliths can form around a wide variety of foreign objects, such as beads or seeds, and around bodily matter, including dislodged teeth or blood clots.
They are relatively rare, accounting for around one in every 10,000 ear, nose and throat outpatient visits, according to the study.
Patients suffering from the concretions typically present with a variety of symptoms, including nasal obstruction, headaches, facial pain and discharge from the nose.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/10/31/marijuana-found-in-mans-nose-18-years-after-he-smuggled-it-into-prison/
Photo Credit: pix11.com
Starbucks fired white manager after black men arrested
PHILADELPHIA — A regional Starbucks manager fired after the high-profile arrests of two black men at one of the coffee shops in Philadelphia has filed a wrongful termination suit against the company.
Shannon Phillips accuses Starbucks of unfairly punishing white employees like her in response to the widely publicized arrests last year.
Phillips says she lost her job after objecting to the company putting another white manager on leave.
Starbucks denies Phillips’ claims and says it will defend the suit, filed Monday in federal court in New Jersey.
Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were arrested minutes after a manager called police to say they hadn’t bought anything and were refusing to leave.
The arrest prompted Starbucks officials to close stores nationwide to conduct racial bias training.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/10/31/suit-starbucks-fired-white-manager-after-black-men-arrested/
Photo Credit: pix11.com
Woman found dead with a python wrapped around her neck in a home with 140 snakes
A woman was found dead with an 8-foot python snake wrapped around her neck, according to Indiana State Police.
The snake was a reticulated python, which is native to southeast Asia and is considered to be the longest snake in the world.
The Benton County dispatch in Oxford, Indiana, received a 911 call Wednesday night after Laura Hurst, 36, was found unresponsive.
Medics arrived and attempted life-saving measures on her but were unsuccessful.
Police say there were 140 snakes at the property, and that approximately 20 of the snakes belong to Hurst. According to police, Hurst frequented the property “about twice a week.”
The home is owned by Benton County Sheriff Donald Munson, according to property records. Munson did not return a CNN call for comment Thursday afternoon.
Munson told the Lafayette Journal & Courier that Hurst’s death was a “tragic accident” and that he was “being fully cooperative with everybody.”
Indiana State Police Sgt. Kim Riley told CNN that no one lives in the home and that it had been renovated and set up specifically for the collection of snakes.
He said that Hurst was “apparently there checking on her snakes. For whatever reason, she apparently got the snake out and she was doing what people do with snakes.”
Riley said that the snake may have caused Hurst’s death and that an autopsy will be performed on Friday to provide an official cause of death.
CNN’s Tanika Gray contributed to this story.
via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/woman-found-dead-python-wrapped-211117942.html
Photo Credit: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images / Getty
High school principal fired after denying Holocaust was ‘factual’ event
A high school principal in Florida who said that he couldn’t say the Holocaust was a “factual, historical event” was fired from his school district on Wednesday, a report said.
Principal William Latson, who was head of a school in Palm Beach County, was officially canned from his job after being reassigned in July, CNN reported.
The county school board voted 5-2 to terminate Latson Wednesday after finding “just cause” that he violated ethics protocol, according to the report.
The district criticized Latson for not promptly responding to county officials as news of his comments gained nationwide attention, CNN reported.
“While his email was receiving global news coverage, Mr. Latson failed to respond to communications from his supervisors and failed to assist the District in addressing the serious disruption caused by the aforementioned email and news coverage,” the county said in a statement.
Latson made the controversial comment when responding to an email from a parent who asked about how the school teaches about the Holocaust.
“I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a district employee,” he responded.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/10/31/high-school-principal-fired-after-denying-holocaust-was-factual-event/
Photo Credit: Twitter
A level student hanged himself after throwing party at his parents’ home which left the property damaged, inquest hears
An A level student hanged himself after throwing a party at his parents’ home which left the property damaged, an inquest heard.
Luke Taylor, 16, had been allowed to host a group of 20 friends to mark his 17th birthday but his mother returned from a trip to the cinema to find the property in a mess.
The teenager offered to pay for damage to a ceiling and helped clear up the rest of the property. But 24 hours later, he was found dead outside his bedroom when his grandmother arrived at the house to drop off a birthday badge.
Police spoke to friends who attended the youngster’s party on May 5 this year and examined his mobile phone but found no issues relating as to why he would take his own life. At an inquest, a coroner said she could not be sure he intended to kill himself.
Mr Taylor – a Year 12 pupil studying history, business and economics at Cheadle sixth form college in Stockport, Greater Manchester – was described as a “polite, quiet young man who was popular with his peers and never seen without a smile on his face.”
His mother Caroline, a hospital worker at The Christie, told the Stockport hearing: “Luke’s death has been a terrible shock to me, his dad and the rest of the family. We didn’t think he was depressed about anything, we thought he had a good stable life, he had things to look forward to. We were worried something happened at the party, but there is nothing we have heard from anyone to suggest he had been.
“We just can’t understand why he’s done this. He never tried to do anything like that before. His family loved him very much, I wish I could understand what happened that day.”
Recording a narrative conclusion Stockport Coroner Alison Mutch said: ” What has come across to me is he was an incredibly nice child and incredibly popular and kind person. He was a child who nobody had any concerns about, who seemed to be perfectly happy.
“There had been a party at the home address but that party was no different to another other party held by a child of 17 and it seemed to be a little bit boisterous. But he had never been in trouble with anyone and there is absolutely nothing to suggest he had taken anything inappropriate.
“I cannot be sure he intended to take his own life.”
via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/level-student-hanged-himself-throwing-170301501.html
Photo Credit: Cavendish Press (Manchester) Ltd
Infected toe stops R. Kelly from attending his child pornography court hearing
CHICAGO — R. Kelly’s lawyer has told a federal judge that an infected toe prevented the R&B star from attending a hearing in his child pornography case in Chicago.
Kelly is detained at a jail two blocks from the courthouse and had been expected to appear at Wednesday’s status hearing.
But defense lawyer Steve Greenberg said one of Kelly’s toenails had to be removed as treatment and Kelly worried someone might trample on his toe as he was escorted to and from court.
During the five-minute hearing, Judge Harry Leinenweber said he’d rule later on motions to dismiss some charges and reconsider bond for the 52-year-old.
Kelly has pleaded not guilty to federal charges against him in Chicago and New York, where he is accused of a racketeering scheme to sexually abuse girls.
Leinenweber set Kelly’s next hearing for Feb. 13.
Photo Credit: Chicago Police Department