Florida man stabbed his wife to death and kept her body in their living room for 10 days
CNN/Meredith) — A Miami Beach man has confessed to stabbing his wife to death and leaving her body to decompose in their living room for 10 days.
Police arrested Russel Allen Ewing, 53, after neighbors reported a foul odor coming from the apartment.
Ewing opened the door naked while holding a knife, which may have been the murder weapon.
In an interview after his arrest, Ewing said he was arguing with his wife over finances as he was taking kitchen knives out of his bag.
When he turned around to face her, he accidentally stabbed her in the abdomen, according to his statement.
He covered the body with a blanket because he was afraid, he said.4 Ways to Explore Food Culture on the Island of Hawaii.The island of Hawaii has an amazing food culture that is worth exploring during your visit.Ad By The Hawaiian IslandsSee More
The victim had been dead for 10 days when police responded.
Ewing has been charged with second degree murder and is currently being held without bond.
Photo Credit: Miami-Dade County Corrections via CNN Wire
McDonald’s insensitive ‘Bloody Sundae’ ad sparks outrage
This McDonald’s ice cream sundae was not a happy meal for the Irish.
In Portugal, advertisements for a Halloween-themed “Sundae Bloody Sundae” dessert sparked social media outrage, according to the BBC. The reason: Bloody Sunday, also known as the Bogside Massacre, was a violent 1972 incident during the Troubles in Northern Ireland when British soldiers opened fire on unarmed Catholic protesters at a civil rights march, killing 13 and wounding 15 others.
The ads show cups of vanilla soft-serve topped with an unknown red sauce, resembling blood.
“Portugal is cancelled,” writes one Irish Twitter user, whose post earned 3,400 likes and nearly 450 retweets.
“[McDonald’s] culturally stone deaf,” replied a user named Maurice Leahy.
“Is this for real?” wrote another.
Kate Nash, whose brother William was among the people killed that day, told the BBC she was aware of the advertisement.
“I have to say, it is not that offensive to me,” she told the BBC. “This is in Portugal and highly unlikely that people there have sat down with the intention to offend about the events here in Ireland … Perhaps just in their innocence that they have settled on this slogan, without making any connection to Bloody Sunday.”
A McDonald’s spokesperson says all of the ads have been removed from its locations in Portugal.
“The campaign was intended as a celebration of Halloween, not as an insensitive reference to any historical event or to upset or insult anyone in any way,” the rep tells BBC.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/10/31/mcdonalds-insensitive-bloody-sundae-ad-sparks-outrage/
Photo Credit: twitter
Mouth cancer rates reach record high: Is oral sex to blame?
Oral cancer rates “have more than doubled in a generation,” according to a new awareness campaign by the Brit-based nonprofit Oral Health Foundation.
Over the past 20 years, mouth cancer diagnoses have skyrocketed 135 percent in the UK. In 2018 alone, seven people died every day from the disease out of a total 8,337 patients in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
US rates are comparable: According to the Oral Cancer Foundation, there are about 54,000 Americans diagnosed with oral or oropharyngeal cancer (including the larynx) every year, with at least one patient dying per hour every day, causing approximately 13,500 deaths per year.
The hygiene advocacy group warned people to be aware of the causes of mouth cancer — primarily the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), drinking alcohol and smoking.
Dr. Nigel Carter, chief executive of the OHF, told the Daily Mail, “While most cancers are on the decrease, cases of mouth cancer continue to rise at an alarming rate.”
He added that HPV is considered an “emerging risk factor” compared to “traditional” causes like smoking and boozing. According to their report, HPV causes an estimated 73 percent of oropharyngeal mouth cancers.
It’s not the first time the STI has been linked to cancer in a high-profile way.
Actor Michael Douglas, 75, infamously blamed his throat cancer diagnosis on his fondness for oral intercourse. (Though the actor and husband of Catherine Zeta-Jones, 50, later backpedaled on that claim.) HPV can cause other cancers related to sex acts as well, such as with “Desperate Housewives” actress Marcia Cross, 57, who became an awareness advocate after being diagnosed with anal cancer.
Beyond sex, having more than 10 alcoholic drinks per week causes approximately 33 percent of diagnoses, the OHF reports. Smoking is tied to about 17 percent of cases, while increasing your individual risk of disease by 91 percent.
In the US, the five-year survival rate for cancer in the oral cavity is about 57 percent. Those who live through it could have to do so without a tongue or jaw.
Carter called mouth cancer a “devastating” disease: “It changes how somebody speaks, it makes eating and drinking more difficult and often changes a person’s physical appearance.”
via: https://nypost.com/2019/11/01/mouth-cancer-rates-reach-record-high-is-oral-sex-to-blame/
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
Razor blades found in Ohio trick-or-treaters’ Halloween candy and Connecticut man arrested after razor blades were discovered in the candy bags
Razor blades were found in trick-or-treaters’ Halloween candy in one Ohio town, leaving one woman injured, according to reports.
“We have received reports of objects being found in candy bars from [Thursday] evening. As of now, the objects are reported to be metal and similar to razor blades. These reports are from the Pleasant Run area,” the Colerain Township Police Department said Friday, WLWT reported.
Sgt. Scott Owen said two people who were trick-or-treating together on Halloween made the reports — and authorities were trying to figure out where the candy came from.
A woman was cut by a razor blade discovered in her child’s candy, while another parent reported finding the blade apparently hidden inside the package of a candy bar that had been tampered with, the news outlet reported.
One incident involved a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and the other involved a Kit Kat.
“We learned later that the two people that found razor blades know one another, they had trick-or-treated together, and made the rounds through the neighborhood,” said Owen, according to WLWT.
“They said the same thing — they have no idea where it possibly could have come from because they were on, like, five or six streets,” Owen said. “They’re large streets with a lot of houses on them.”
Residents were stunned by the incidents.
“I was totally shocked. I was surprised. I just moved here a year ago. Everybody is really neighborly around here,” Avid Mims told WLWT.
Meanwhile, a man was busted in Connecticut on Halloween after razor blades were discovered in the candy bags of at least two trick-or-treaters.
Jason Racz, 37, was arrested and charged with risk of injury to a minor, reckless endangerment and interfering with a police officer in connection to the incident, NBC News reported.
“Racz explained that the razor blades were accidentally spilled or put into the candy bowl he used to hand out candy from,” police said, adding that the suspect “provided no explanation as to how the razor blades were handed out to the children along with the candy.”
Racz was ordered held on $250,000 bond.
In a separate Halloween-related incident in Connecticut, the Waterford Police Department said two youngsters received a package of THC-laced gummy candies among their Halloween candy.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/11/01/razor-blades-found-in-ohio-trick-or-treaters-halloween-candy/
Photo Credit: Waterbury Police
Toddler hospitalized after eating anti-psychotic drugs mixed in with Halloween candy
An Australia mom believed her 3-year-old daughter “was going to die” after eating anti-psychotic drugs mixed in with her Halloween candy, according to a new report.
Little Abbey Robe was sickened while trick-or-treating with her three siblings Thursday night in Melbourne, 7 News reported.
Mom Tara noticed the toddler had fallen behind and was coughing, so she rifled through her candy stash — and found that the “lollies” she was eating were actually pills with writing on them in a plastic bag.
“When she went into the ambulance, that’s when I couldn’t wake her up,” Tara recalled. “I thought she was going to die. They were pills and I didn’t know what. It could have been nasty.”
Abbey is believed to have ingested Seroquel, a medication used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
She spent the night in Sunshine Hospital, with Tara posting a photo of the little girl hooked up to machines and still in her Halloween costume.
Police are treating Abbey’s case as an isolated event and don’t believe malicious intent was a factor.
Photo Credit: Brianna Travers
Florida teen charged with trying to hire hitman to kill high school staffer
A Florida teen has been arrested and accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill a staff member at his high school, authorities said Friday.
Nicholas Godfrey, 18, a student at Fivay High School in Hudson, was charged late Thursday with solicitation to commit murder, according to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
“No joke, I need him eliminated as soon as possible,” Godfrey was accused of saying.
Investigators obtained a search warrant for the Instagram account and traced the IP address to Godfrey’s home, Fox 13 reported.
When interviewed by detectives, Godfrey admitted to sending the messages and handed over the phone he used, the station reported.
“I want to thank the Pasco Sheriff’s Office and Corporal Josh Peters for their intensive work and resources used to identify and arrest this student,” Fivay principal Jason Joens said on Facebook.
“We know people sometimes struggle with the boundaries
Photo Credit: Pasco County Sheriff’s Office
Young Bronx mom survived strangling, but then her abuser shot her in the face and killed her mother
THE BRONX — Diamond Dunn was a teen mom stuck in an abusive relationship with the father of her child.
“I can remember being strangled once,” Dunn told PIX11. “I remember being dragged out of bed by my feet. And he dragged me in the bathroom and choked the life out of me. I remember hitting my head on the tub.”
Dunn survived that ordeal in Virginia when she was 19 and eventually moved home to the Bronx.
But her abuser wasn’t done with her.
During the holidays in late 2012, Raymond Mayrant visited Dunn’s Bronx apartment to see his daughter.
Dunn was living in the Monroe Houses with her little girl, then 4, and her mother.
She told PIX11 that just after New Year’s Day 2013, she resumed a physical relationship with Mayrant.
Her mother, a beloved school crossing guard, was taking a nap in another room.
Shortly after, Dunn recalled, “I see him standing over me with the gun.”
She remembered Mayrant saying, “Why are you always playing with me?”
And then, gunfire.
“There were three shots to me,” Dunn told PIX11. “In my head, in my face, and he had already grazed my thumb.”
Mayrant had shot off a piece of Dunn’s nose.
He left the room and Dunn’s mother woke up in the other room, startled.
“He shot my mom,” Dunn said. “She was kind of laying between the bed and the closet.”
Dunn grew emotional as she remembered seeing her mother.
“She had like this peaceful look on her face. And I said to her ‘Ma, get up, we gotta get out of here! Get up! Get up!”
“There is blood literally coming from my face,” she said. “I’m still trying to hold this piece of nose that I have left, together.”
Dunn’s nose would be reconstructed at the hospital, but her mother, Elzina Dunn Brown, was gone for good.
Dunn later testified against Mayrant and he was sentenced to prison, 50 years to life.
But she was still severely traumatized, something Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark noticed, when they met at an event several years later.
“When I saw her out there in the community, she looked distraught,” Clark told PIX11.
“I care! This is my job,” Clark added. “The DA is not just about locking people up and throwing away the key! I’m about prevention. I’m about support.”
The DA made a follow-up call and got Dunn into counseling.
Clark launched a program in 2017 called “The Strangulation Initiative.”
The program reaches out to victims, mostly women, as soon as police tell the DA’s office a person has survived a strangulation attempt.
“We immediately reach out to the survivor and engage them immediately,” Clark said.
Clark noted the Bronx has more strangulation cases than anywhere else in the city.
The chief of Clark’s Domestic Violence Bureau, Adrienne Giunta, noted, “Strangulation is a lethality factor.”
Amy Litwin from the DA’s office told us a strangling survivor is seven times more likely to become a homicide victim.
One third of the domestic violence prosecutions involve strangulation.
Dunn is now doing work with the mentally disabled and hopes to get certified as a day care provider, like her mother was.
She said since her mother’s murder, she’s learned to pay attention to troubling behaviors.
“I pay attention to little things with people,” Dunn said. “It made me very, very alert.”
If you need help dealing with an abusive domestic situation, here are some numbers and e-mails that may help you.
Photo Credit: pix11.com
Five men acquitted of rape because unconscious teenage victim didn’t fight back
BARCELONA, Spain — A court in Barcelona cleared five men of sexual assault charges on Thursday after saying the crime did not fit the legal definition of rape because the unconscious teenage victim didn’t fight back.
Under Spanish law, a sexual attack can only be classified as an assault or rape if the perpetrator uses violence or intimidation. Because the 14-year-old victim was unconscious, the five were convicted of a lesser charge of sexual abuse.
The case renewed pressure on the government to reform the law and specify that any sexual act without consent is an assault.
The Barcelona court sentenced the five men to 10 to 12 years in prison, despite the prosecution arguing they should be charged with assault.
The attack happened at a party in Manresa, a town northwest of Barcelona, in 2016. The court heard that the group was partying in an abandoned factory, when the victim consumed “alcohol and drugs” and became unconscious.
The men then took turns performing sexual acts on the teenager, according to a statement published on the court’s website.
“The sexual attack on the victim was extremely intense and especially denigrating, and in addition, it was produced on a minor who was in a helpless situation,” the court said in the press release.
However, the court said the victim was “in a state of unconsciousness … without being able to determine and accept or oppose the sexual relations maintained with defendants, who could perform sexual acts without using any type of violence or intimidation.”
The court said the attack had to be classified as sexual abuse because “it has been proven that the victim, while the events took place … was in a state of unconsciousness,” according to a statement published on its website.
The court also awarded the victim 12,000 euros ($13,400) in damages. Two more men attending the party were acquitted of all crimes, the court said.
Echoes of ‘Wolf Pack’ case
The hearing sparked protests across Spain reminiscent of the response to a similar case in which five men, dubbed “the Wolf Pack,” were originally acquitted of rape and convicted of abuse. Spain’s Supreme Court overturned the decision in June, after a year of demonstrations, sentencing the men to 15 years in prison for rape.
The case shocked the nation and prompted widespread outrage, which was ultimately diverted towards Spain’s judicial system.
However, while the “Wolf Pack” controversy stemmed from the interpretation of the law and what constitutes intimidation, the Manresa attack put a spotlight on what activists said is a flaw in the Spanish legal system.
The court in Barcelona said in the press release that the attack “cannot fit into any other criminal typology” because the attackers “could perform sexual acts without using any type of violence or intimidation.”
That explanation has sparked more calls for the law to be changed. Protesters gathered in front of the court during the months-long hearing, holding placards that read: “It’s rape.”
The Spanish Association of Women Judges has previously called for a reform of the law, urging the government to act quickly.
Lucia Avilés, a judge and a member of the association, said on Twitter on Friday that the issue has not yet been addressed, despite the fact that Spain has signed and ratified the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against Women, which stipulates that sex without consent is rape.
Photo Credit: pix11.com
79-year-old man beaten bloody with high heel after preaching on train
MIDTOWN MANHATTAN — A 79-year-old man was attacked on a city subway last week and hit in the head with a high heel, police said Thursday, after PIX11 News obtained video of the aftermath.
A police spokesperson said it happened at around 10:15 a.m. on Oct. 24 in Midtown Manhattan on the No. 2 train headed southbound.
An unknown suspect began to argue with the man while on the train, police said. They then took off a high-heeled shoe and hit the man in the head with it, according to police.
Video taken after the incident and posted on Instagram shows blood dripping from the man’s head. The woman who posted the video online said the man was singing gospel songs on the train. A law enforcement source also told PIX11 the man was preaching.
Police said the suspect fled the location.
The man exited the train at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, where EMS responded, police said. He was taken to NYU Hospital and treated for his injury.
Photo Credit: Instagram
Woman bites off friend’s ear in violent attack, claims she was playing a wolf
(WDIV/CNN) – A Michigan woman accused of biting off her friend’s ear in a violent attack told police she was playing a wolf and her victim a vampire.
The startling details emerged during Allison Thompson Weaver’s preliminary court hearing on Tuesday.
Police found Weaver, 44, and her 48-year-old friend partially nude and covered in blood on Sept. 17 at an apartment complex in Rochester Hills, WDIV reported.
A neighbor called police after hearing the women fighting and someone screaming for help, according to court documents.
Police said the 48-year-old victim had several bite marks on her face, and her left ear had been bitten off.
“She had a partially detached ear, puncture wounds from nails and bruising around her neck and arms,” said Sgt. Jason Dalbec, of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office. “This is very unusual. This is one of those cases that will be once in a lifetime for deputies.”
A deputy who responded to the scene said Weaver claimed it was a consensual sex act.
“Ms. Weaver told me that they were having consensual sex and that (the victim) was a vampire and that Ms. Weaver was the wolf,” Hopkins said.
Investigators believe Weaver was under the influence during the time of the attack.
The victim, whose identity remains undisclosed, testified in court that she’s known Weaver for about 12 years. She said she invited Weaver to her home on Sept. 16, and Weaver brought an opened bottle of vodka and two pouches of pre-mixed rum. She also claims Weaver gave her a hug and a kiss, which caught her off guard.
“The fact that she just came straight out with a big kiss was a little out of character, I would say, for seeing someone right away,” the victim said.
She said they sat on the couch and talked for hours, before the victim went to bed. She said Weaver stayed on the couch. Moments after falling asleep, the victim said she woke up startled.
“(I remember) jumping off my bed and seeing Allison on all fours on my bed and me standing there and she was on all fours giving me a really scary look,” the victim said. “I was, like, ‘Allison, Allison, what are you doing?’ She just kept giving me this look with her head going back and forth. I was, like, ‘What are you doing?’ She just lunged at me, and she just started strangling me.”
The victim said Weaver was nude and making animal-like movements with her head and her teeth. At one point, the victim claims she lost consciousness.
“My neck was so swollen my chin couldn’t meet my chest and I lost some kind of consciousness during this,” she said. “The next thing I remember is trying to get away and hearing her, as clear as day, with no reflection in her tone, just saying, ‘Sorry … but you’re gonna have to die today.'”
“I just started screaming bloody murder and banging on the floor, (saying), ‘No, no, no. I can’t believe I’m going to die like this. Someone come and please help,” she continued.
The victim said she and Weaver had kissed years ago, but she denied having a consensual sexual relationship with her. She also denied giving Weaver permission to touch her the night of the attack.
Weaver was charged with second-degree criminal sexual conduct, assault with intent to do great bodily harm and assault with intent to main. A fourth charge of assault by strangulation was added during the preliminary examination on Tuesday.
Photo Credit: Oakland County Sheriff’s Office