Popeyes worker accused of attacking patron who wanted refund
COLUMBIA, Tenn. — A Popeyes worker recorded throwing a woman onto the pavement outside a restaurant in Tennessee has been charged with felony aggravated assault.
News outlets report 29-year-old Deriance Ra’Shaiel Hughes was arrested Friday. The woman’s attorney, Rocky McElhaney, tells The Tennessean that his 55-year-old client remains hospitalized with a shattered elbow, six broken ribs and a broken leg. He declined to publicly identify her until authorities do so.
Video shows people wearing Popeyes uniforms racing after her as the woman leaves the restaurant in Columbia last week. One person punches her, and then Hughes is seen grabbing her from behind, raising her into the air and throwing her onto the parking lot. Another uniformed person is seen cheering.
McElhaney said his client just wanted a refund after being double-billed for her meal of chicken tenders, corn and apple pies.
She called the manager, who told her to come back to the restaurant with documentation in order to get a refund, McElhaney said.
“When she got there she was treated with hostility and anger from the manager,” McElhaney said. “There were words back and forth.”
A separate video circulating on social media shows a heated exchange between the woman and an employee behind the counter. Another man can be heard telling the woman, who is white, “You are in the wrong place saying the n-word.”
McElhaney said the woman denies using a racial slur, but said “my client was called an ugly broke-down cracker.”
Neither video posted online appears to have captured any racial slurs.
“If she said something she should not have said in retaliation and the heat of the moment, we do not condone that and she regrets that, but it does not give someone the right to break somebody’s body almost in half,” McElhaney said.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/11/13/popeyes-worker-accused-of-attacking-patron-who-wanted-refund/
Photo Credit: pix11.com
A caretaker told police a 4-year-old fell out a window. Then, doctors found burn marks and homemade stitches
After police found 4-year-old Zya Singleton badly injured, her caretaker told them that the girl had fallen out a second-floor window while playing with a cat.
But doctors examining the child after the October 30 incident quickly found inconsistencies with that story, officials with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said this week.
Medical examiners found evidence of “bite marks, open wounds” on Zya’s “face and scalp, cigarette and other larger burns to her left arm and thigh, puncture wounds and signs of malnourishment,” prosecutors said Tuesday in a news release.
“It became clear very soon after doctors were able to try and stabilize her that this was a case of long-term child abuse, not a fall out of a window,” Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Chesley Lightsey said Tuesday during a news conference.
Zya Singleton was pronounced dead on November 3.
Now, Samilya Brown, her 38-year-old caretaker, is charged with murder, endangering the welfare of a child and other related charges in what District Attorney Larry Krasner called a “horrific, heartbreaking case of abuse, neglect, and murder of an innocent, defenseless child.”
Brown’s attorney with The Defender Association of Philadelphia did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Burns, broken bones and homemade stitches
Zya died from complications including sepsis related to homemade attempts to treat some of her injuries, Lightsey said.
When police first arrived at the home on October 30, Zya was in the second-floor bathroom being put in cold water, Lightsey said. She was then taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and then to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for treatment.
Zya was missing almost the entire part of her lip up through her nose, the result of an injury that had never been treated by a doctor, Lightsey said. She also had homemade stitches in her mouth and on her head, where she had open wounds, the prosecutor said.
In addition, Zya had burns over significant parts of her body that hadn’t been treated, and she had broken bones in her arms that appeared to be from some kind of restraint, Lightsey explained.
Zya’s biological mother had voluntarily given the girl to Brown because she was unable to care for the child, and Zya had been living with Brown for about two years, Lightsey said. Four other children, ranging in age from 2 to 13, have since been removed from Brown’s home and sent to live with their biological fathers, the prosecutor said.
Zya’s biological mother, Jasmine Singleton, told CNN affiliate KYW that she saw Zya after being told she was in the hospital.
“You can’t prepare no mom for what I walked in that room and saw. My baby’s face was destroyed, all she had was eyes and a head that was taped up with burns on her body. I walked into the room and walked out,” Singleton said.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Students’ lunches were thrown away over a $15 debt. Now the school is apologizing
A school in Minnesota is apologizing after students who owed lunch balances had their hot meals thrown away.
About 40 students at Richfield High School had their lunches taken away Monday and replaced with cold lunches before school leadership intervened, Richfield Public Schools told CNN on Wednesday. The students had a lunch balance of $15 or more.
“We deeply regret our actions today and the embarrassment that it caused several of our students. We have met with some of the students involved and apologized to them,” the district said in a Facebook post on Monday.
Cafeteria workers gave students a cold lunch in place of a hot lunch, which is the existing practice at the school, the statement said.
Superintendent Steven Unowsky told TV station KARE that if a student already has a lunch on their tray, they should be allowed to eat it.
“A hot lunch should never be taken from a child,” he told KARE. “One of the things that we can do as adults is model failure with grace. We absolutely failed in this situation and our team is working to try and rectify the mistakes that we’ve made.”
Senior Diamond Johnson was at lunch when she saw a cafeteria worker throwing away lunches. She said it happened at least 10 times before she started recording a video, which she shared with CNN.
“It was happening right after one another. It was in front of everybody, so the whole thing was embarrassing to the students,” Johnson told CNN.
Johnson said the way it works at the school is that students wait in line, pick out their food and then punch in their student number before paying.
“The lunch lady that was standing at the computer took the took their food off their trays with her bare hands and put it in a bowl,” Johnson said. “They later threw it away, and then the students had to get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
Johnson said she shared the video on social media because she wanted to bring awareness to the issue and get helps for the kids who can’t afford a hot meal.
“I just wanted everybody to come together and come up with or try to come up with a solution for this problem,” she said.
The district said it has $19,669 in outstanding lunch account balances, which includes a deficit carried over from last year.
Richfield Public Schools has a fund set up for people to help cover unpaid lunch accounts. The district said it had received more than $3,600 as of Wednesday afternoon.
Photo Credit: pix11.com
A baby doll is at the center of controversy at a Saint Louis grocery store. Black baby doll is named Lazy Baby – however there are white dolls with same name
“It was disappointing for me because I know the power of language. Words matter,” said Pastor Traci Blackmon about her reaction when she saw black dolls named ‘Lazy Baby.’
Traci saw the dolls at the Ladue Crossing Schnucks at Interstate 170 and Ladue Road.
“Historically, in the effort to denigrate black people, words like ‘lazy,’ ‘shuffling,’ words that refer to a lack of intelligence of black people, have been used,” Blackmon said.
Blackmon, who is the Pastor at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Blackjack, posted a Facebook Live about the dolls.
She says a store worker brought her a white ‘Lazy Baby’ doll as well.
Fox 2/News 11 found both black and white ‘Lazy Baby’ dolls at different Schnucks stores.
Blackmon says the fact that there are black and white ‘Lazy Baby’ dolls does not take away her concern.
“Having white dolls there with black dolls means that it’s not a conscious decision. It is still an issue,” she said. “I don’t think that Schnucks was intentionally making a racist statement. I want to be clear about that. What I do want to point out is that it shows a lack of diversity in the people who are in charge of making such decisions.”
Erica Van Ross, the Vice President of Communications for Schnucks, says she understands Blackmon’s viewpoint, especially as a black woman herself.
“We ordered both white and brown versions of this doll,” Van Ross said.
But Van Ross says she is not nearly as concerned because there are both black and white ‘Lazy Baby’ dolls for sale at Schnucks stores.
“Had this been a doll that only came as a brown doll or had we only ordered a brown doll, I certainly would have some immense concerns but that’s not the case,” Van Ross said.
Blackmon says this issue is about sensitivity and she would like of the dolls pulled from store shelves.
Van Ross says the Ladue Crossing store chose to pull all of its ‘Lazy Baby’ dolls but Schnucks is not pulling the dolls company-wide.
“We ordered both versions of this doll. There is a white version, there is a brown version, there is no intent there,” she said.
Van Ross says Schnucks stores are working to make sure the black and white dolls are side by side on displays.
“They get to choose what they do with their business and I get to choose whether or not I support their business,” Blackmon said.
The box that the doll comes in says the dolls are made by the Uneeda Doll Company and are manufactured in China.
Fox 2/News 11 reached out to the company for comment and we are waiting to hear back.
via: https://fox2now.com/2019/11/12/controversy-erupts-over-lazy-baby-dolls-sold-at-schnucks-stores/
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Homeless man hurls bucket of hot diarrhea at woman near Hollywood Walk of Fame
A homeless man dumped a bucket of “hot” diarrhea on a Los Angeles woman near the Hollywood Walk of Fame — an unprovoked attack that’s left her with PTSD, she said this week.
Heidi Van Tassel said she was about to drive home from a Thai restaurant near the famed tourist area in April when the alleged assailant, Jere Blessings, dragged her out of her vehicle, news station NBC4 reported.
He pulled her into the middle of the street, where he dumped a bucket of feces over her head, she said.
“It was diarrhea. Hot liquid,” Van Tassel told NBC4. “I was soaked, and it was coming off my eyelashes and into my eyes.”
Referring to the amount of feces used in the attack, paramedics who treated her said that it “looked like the man was saving it up for a month,” according to Van Tassel.
She said she was rushed to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, where she was tested for infectious diseases, NBC4 reported.
“It’s so traumatic,” Van Tassel told the news station. “The PTSD that I’m dealing with is beyond anything that I’ve ever felt. There needs to be some kind of help for the victims of these crimes.”
Blessings — who was described as a transient who suffers from mental illness — was arrested on battery charges and jailed, the outlet reported.
He was sent by a judge to a residential facility for people with mental health issues, but was released in August, which concerns Van Tassel, according to the news station.
“What’s the next thing he’s going to do to somebody?” she said. “If he would’ve had a knife, for sure he would’ve stabbed me.”
Photo Credit: nypost.com
A 2-year-old girl in a stroller was killed by a falling air conditioning unit in Toronto
A 2-year-old girl was killed Monday in Toronto when an air conditioning unit fell from an 8th floor window and landed on the child’s stroller.
Police say the mother, who was pushing the stroller, was unharmed.
Paramedics rushed the child to the hospital where she was later pronounced dead due to her injuries.
Toronto Community Housing, which manages the building, said in a statement, “Our thoughts are with the family at this difficult time and we offer them our sincere condolences.”
The public housing agency urges its tenants to install window air conditioners according to proper safety standards, and to place over balconies, whenever possible.
“Improperly installed window air conditioners are a serious safety hazard to you and your family, and can fall onto other people,” the Toronto Community Housing website warns. It says on its website that residents may be held liable for improperly installed window air conditioners.
The housing provider said that it is reviewing the incident and will take “appropriate action once the facts are known.”
Toronto police told CNN they will not be pursuing a criminal investigation of the accident.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Teen receives double lung transplant after vaping-related illness
Doctors at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit performed what they believe is the United States’ first double lung transplant on a patient whose lungs were damaged after vaping, according to the hospital.
The male patient, who turned 17 while recovering at the hospital, wants to remain anonymous for now, but was described as a high school athlete who likes to sail, play video games and hang out with friends.
He was admitted to the hospital on September 5 with what looked like pneumonia. The transplant took place on October 15. The procedure was successful and doctors said he is doing “very well” and his recovery is “excellent.”
“It is a senseless disease process,” Dr. Hassan Nemeh, the thoracic surgeon on the transplant team, said at a press conference Tuesday. Nemeh is the surgical director of thoracic organ transplant at Henry Ford Hospital. “Our teenage patient would have faced certain death if it weren’t for the lung transplant.”
Nemeh said the extensive damage he saw in the boy’s lungs was like “nothing I have ever seen before,” in the nearly 20 years he has been doing transplant work. “This is an evil I haven’t faced before.”
A letter from the boy’s family, read during the press conference, said: “Our family could never have imagined being at the center of the largest adolescent public health crisis to face our country in decades. Within a very short period of time our lives have been forever changed.”
The boy has a good prognosis, but his recovery was described by doctors as a long and “rough” one that will take months. Now off a ventilator, the boy has had to work with a physical therapy team to walk again and regain his strength.
The number of vaping-related injuries has climbed to at least 2,051 as of November 5, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, states have reported 40 deaths.
“We believe we are seeing the tip of the iceberg, said Dr. Lisa Allenspach, the medical director of the Henry Ford lung transplant program. “Making sure that our teens understand the danger of vaping is of paramount importance.”
The CDC has been working closely with local health departments and the US Food and Drug Administration to pinpoint what exactly is causing these severe vaping-related illnesses. It doesn’t appear that any one product is to blame, although many cases seem to be linked to products bought “off the street” or from other “informal sources,” such as a family or friend, rather than from a vaping store, according to the CDC.
The doctors in this case declined to say how long the teen had been vaping, nor did they say what vaping products he had been using.
THC has been present in most of the samples of vaping products that the FDA has tested so far, and most of the patients who have gotten sick said they had used THC products in the past.
On Friday, the CDC said Vitamin E acetate, an additive sometimes used in THC and other vaping products, may be to blame for the national outbreak, but said additional factors may be to blame.
The CDC also is trying to figure out what the risk factors may be, if there are any, among those who have gotten sick.
In the wake of these injuries, some states and cities have placed limits on sales of vaping products. Many of these actions are now being challenged in court. Some stores, including Walgreens and Walmart, have stopped selling vaping products.
In September, President Donald Trump promised to take action. His administration has looked at a possible flavor ban, but so far nothing has happened.
Until the public health investigation is complete, public health departments are saying to refrain from vaping.
Dr. Nicholas Yeldo, the anesthesiologist on the teen’s transplant team, hopes this case will serve as a reminder about exactly how serious these vaping illnesses are.
“Without the heroic measures that were taken in this case, this young patient would have died, there is no doubt about it. So I beg of you, this was not just the unlucky one,” Yeldo said. “This is happening way, way too much for us to turn our heads to this.”
via: https://pix11.com/2019/11/12/teen-receives-double-lung-transplant-after-vaping-related-illness/
Photo Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
A black man was put in handcuffs after a police officer stopped him on a train platform because he was eating
Police detained and cited a black man in California after an officer stopped him on a Bay Area Rapid Transit platform because he was eating a sandwich.
BART police said that Steve Foster, of Concord, broke state law by eating on the platform at the Pleasant Hill Station in Walnut Creek on November 4, KTVU reported.
His detainment prompted eat-in protests across the BART system on Saturday, where passengers filmed themselves eating on platforms to support Foster, according to ABC7.
Foster, who goes by the name Bill Gluckman on Facebook, posted footage of the incident that his girlfriend filmed.
In the clip, a BART police officer, identified as D. McCormick, can be seen holding on to Foster’s backpack before calling for backup and escorting him off the platform. McCormick told Foster he was being detained for resisting arrest.
Foster’s girlfriend can be heard questioning the officer’s decision and telling him that signs in the area say food is prohibited on the BART trains, not on the platforms. Officers later told her that food was prohibited on all BART property, including platforms.
Foster told KTVU that he was frustrated by the incident.
“I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before. I’ve definitely had run-ins with the police before, but that was by far the pettiest,” Foster said, describing the detainment as “childish.”
‘I was singled out because I was black’
McCormick told Foster’s girlfriend that he was initially looking for an intoxicated woman when he saw Foster eating and stopped him instead.
Foster told KTVU that he regularly eats his breakfast while waiting for the BART to take him to his job in San Francisco.
He said he wanted the officer who stopped him to be disciplined.
“I think he really needs to know that he can’t approach people the way he did or talk to people the way he did just because he has a badge,” Foster told KTVU. “I think I was singled out because I was black, to be honest.”
BART said in a tweet that it was investigating the incident. In another tweet, it said Foster was not arrested but “cited for eating which is a violation of state law.”
“No matter how you feel about eating on BART, the officer saw someone eating and asked him to stop, when he didn’t he was given a citation,” it said.
The transit organization told KTVU that Foster was “not cooperative.”
“The individual was not cooperative and was refusing to provide his name, which is needed for a citation and is why the engagement lasted as long as it did,” a BART representative told the outlet.
Foster faces a $250 fine and 48 hours of community service, but he told KTVU he planned to fight the citation and was considering suing.
Foster and BART did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/black-man-put-handcuffs-police-170516695.html
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T.I.’s daughter, Deyjah Harris, unfollows him after ‘hymen check’ outrage
T.I. has lost at least one Instagram follower in the wake of his “hymen check” kerfuffle: his daughter.
Deyjah Harris has unfollowed her dad on Instagram, reports E! News, following comments about annual gynecologist appointments to “check her hymen.” The so-called virginity test has been both debunked and denounced by medical professionals.
Harris, 18, has yet to publicly address the rapper’s shocking interview — although she did “like” several tweets which referred to T.I. as “possessive” and “controlling” after the “Ladies Like Us” podcast aired.
It’s unclear exactly when she unfollowed the 39-year-old rapper, but Harris is also no longer following T.I.’s wife, Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, or her stepsister Zonnique Pullins, as pointed out by Hollywood Unlocked.
During the podcast episode, which has since been deleted, the “Whatever You Like” rapper boasted that he knows his daughter is still a virgin because her hymen is still “intact.”
“We have yearly trips to the gynecologist to check her hymen,” he said. “As of her 18th birthday, her hymen is still intact.”
The backlash from both fans and celebrities was swift, with many calling the rapper out for the outdated practice, which the World Health Organization has called “a violation of the human rights of girls and women” and “has no scientific validity.” WHO also said the so-called “two-finger” test can be “detrimental to women’s and girls’ physical, psychological and social well-being.”
While T.I. has yet to address his comments, “Ladies Like Us” hosts Nazanin Mandi and Nadia Moham have since apologized for laughing at his “uncomfortable” remarks and removed the podcast episode.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/11/11/t-i-s-daughter-unfollows-him-after-hymen-check-outrage/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
‘Who cares what anybody else says?’ Alicia Keys applauds son for rainbow nail polish
Alicia Keys is urging fans to pursue “less labels, more expressions” after her son voiced an insecurity about his rainbow nail polish.
In an Instagram video shared over the weekend, Keys recounted to followers how her younger son, 4-year-old Genesis, had been excited to join her at the nail salon, where he decided he wanted each finger to be pained a different color like a rainbow.
“After she painted his nails, he looked at me and said, ‘Mommy, I don’t want this on my nails,'” Keys recalled. “And I was like, ‘Why? You were so sure you were good.'”
“People are not going to like it,” she recalled her son saying.
“Can you believe this?” Keys asked viewers. “He’s four years old. Four. And he already understands the concept that someone’s going to judge him because he chose a rainbow color on his nails.”
The singer kept things positive with her son, applauding his creative idea and telling him others would do the same.
“You had this idea, stick with it,” she told him. “You chose it, you liked it, you do it. Who cares what anybody else says? Plus, you know, a lot of guys paint their nails. It’s not, like, some strange thing that you only do.”
Keys said the experience got her thinking about “how completely judged we are all the time.” She became frustrated that people often get held back from being able to explore both “masculine and feminine energies.”
“It gets concerning to me that we can’t just explore these different sides of ourselves,” she added. “Even for me, myself, I often explore the masculine energy that’s inside of me. It’s very natural to me. That’s how I feel… For my boys, (it’s) similar: if they want to express the feminine energy that’s inside of them, there’s all these judgements and all these rules and stereotypes and vibes, and it’s really frustrating to me.”
Article via USAToday