Ga. Girl, 5, Is Fatally Shot by Playmate Accidentally After Man Allegedly Left Gun Unattended
A 5-year-old Georgia girl was fatally shot last week, and authorities allege the person who accidentally pulled the trigger was a small child who was her lifelong playmate.
Little Jada Willingham died on Friday, soon after arriving at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston Hospital, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WXIA-TV and WAGA-TV.
She’d been shot in the face in what police suspect was an accidental shooting.
However, detectives continue to investigate the shooting inside a home in Lithonia.
Investigators spoke to Jada’s longtime babysitter, who was in the house when the tragedy unfolded.
The 68-year-old woman told DeKalb County police investigators Jada was one of four children she was watching at the time of the shooting.
According to the Journal-Constitution, police arrived at the home at about 3:20 p.m., to find the babysitter kneeling on the ground next to Jada, using a cloth to stop the bleeding.
According to the reports, the shooter and the victim had known each other their entire young lives.
The babysitter said the two girls had been been playing together, and apparently had found a loaded handgun, playing with it in a bedroom.
The babysitter recalled hearing the gunshot from where she was in the kitchen. Crying followed; she ran to the bedroom, and found Jada unconscious on the floor, bleeding from her face,
On Saturday, police charged 36-year-old Chad Brooks, Sr., with second-degree murder and second-degree cruelty to children for allegedly leaving the gun unattended.
Brooks is currently in custody at the DeKalb County Jail. He’s yet to enter pleas to the charges he faces, and information on his attorney was unavailable Thursday.
A GoFundMe campaign has been established online to help Jada’s family pay for her impending funeral.
According to the GoFundMe page, Jada “was a beautiful, loving little girl” who loved Barbie dolls and painting.
via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/ga-girl-5-fatally-shot-161829419.html
Photo Credit: GoFundMe
Utah teacher admits to inappropriate relationship with 14-year-old student
A Utah teacher has admitted having an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old pupil — even sneaking her into their school in a large storage bin, according to an affidavit.
Father of four Lucas Sloan Talley, 38, had “personal contact via text message and email with multiple young girls” during his 12 years at South Hills Middle School in Riverton, according to the affidavit obtained by Deseret News.
That increased when the school shut down because of the pandemic and he “struggled” with no longer getting the girls’ “validation” that he “thrives on,” he told investigators, according to the affidavit.
He started to think of being a “couple” with one 14-year-old girl, with “multiple emails, text messages and video messages” showing him telling the teen “he loves her and misses her,” the affidavit said.
“Lucas began taking treats to the young female’s home and spending time (hours) inside the girl’s home with her,” admitting to hugging and inappropriately touching the girl multiple times, police said.
The girl was “scared something sexual was about to happen and felt uncomfortable” — and her mother warned the teacher to stop contacting her daughter, the Deseret News said.
But he persisted — and even smuggled her into their school when it was closed because of the pandemic, the affidavit said.
“Lucas told the girl to get into a large black and yellow Sterilite bin. Lucas placed the Sterilite bin (with the female victim inside of the bin) on a dolly device and wheeled the girl into his classroom,” the affidavit said.
He told cops that he named the bin after the girl, and put a note inside reading, “Hope your box is comfortable.”
Talley said the girl’s parents didn’t know he had put her in a bin — and admitted he “does not feel a girl at the age of 14 is able to consent or even choose to be put into a bin and wheeled into his classroom,” the report said.
Talley resigned from the school a week before he was arrested and charged with two counts of kidnapping Friday, the paper said. He is being held without bail, jail records show.
“Lucas told detectives he has had other parents reach out to him and tell him to stop talking to their young daughters,” the affidavit said.
“Detectives are still actively investigating other cases which will be linked to Lucas,” police said, according to the Utah paper.
Jordan School District spokeswoman Sandy Riesgraf confirmed that Talley is “no longer employed” by the district but declined further comment, citing the ongoing police investigation, the paper said.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/09/teacher-admits-to-inappropriate-relationship-with-14-year-old-girl/
Photo Credit: Salt Lake County Jail
Black man carrying sandwiches was shot and killed on his grandmother’s doorstep last week by a sheriff’s deputy
Franklin County sheriff’s deputy Jason Meade was working with the U.S. Marshal’s fugitive task force looking for violent offenders when he opened fire on Casey Christopher Goodson Jr., 23, as he was entering his home in Columbus Friday, Columbus police said.
Columbus police had said earlier that Goodson was carrying a gun, and that Meade, a 17 year veteran in the force, had recovered it at the scene.
Meanwhile, U.S. Marshal Peter Tobin said at a press conference Friday that Meade reported Goodson was drove by and waved a gun at him.
Goodson’s family didn’t confirm whether he was carrying a gun or not when he was shot.
But Walton + Brown LLP, the law firm representing Goodson’s family painted a different picture, saying he picked up Subway sandwiches on his way home from the dentist and was gunned down in front of his 72-year-old grandmother and two toddlers.
His family watched in horror as Goodson fell to the ground and the sandwiches laid next to him in a pool of his blood, the firm said.
Tamala Payne called her son’s death “senseless” and said couldn’t understand why he was killed.
“This was senseless. My son would not have harmed a fly. If my son was given a command, he would have listened,” the grieving mother told CNN on Tuesday. “He was a law abiding citizen. Everything he did was legal. My son was murdered and there’s no way around it. He deserves justice.”
The incident began when Meade reported seeing a man with a gun, and encountered Goodson. The two men exchanged words before Meade shot and killed Goodson, police said, adding that Goodson wasn’t the man the deputy was looking for during the investigation.
Columbus police said there were no witnesses to the shooting and no body cam footage because Franklin County deputies aren’t issued cameras.
Sean Walton, the family’s attorney, said the allegation that Goodson was waving a gun is outrageous.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he told NBC News on Monday. “Who drives down the street waving a gun out of the window? This isn’t a music video. This is real life.”
He added that Goodson was licensed to carry a gun and Ohio doesn’t prohibit the open carrying of firearms.
Meade has been placed on paid administrative leave pending and investigation, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio announced Tuesday it has opened a civil rights investigation into Goodson’s death and is working the FBI and Columbus police.
Columbus police is conducting a separate investigation where homicide detectives will turn over evidence to the Franklin County prosecutor who will then present to the grand jury, which will determine if the shooting was justified.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/09/ohio-black-man-carrying-sandwiches-fatally-shot-by-deputy/
Photo Credit: Family Photo/Courtesy of Attorney Sean Walton via AP
Woman sues boyfriend for not proposing after 8 years
A story first reported by the Kenyan news site Tuko has gone viral globally for its protagonist’s folk hero-like litigiousness. According to Tuko, Gertrude Ngoma grew tired of waiting for her boyfriend of eight years — and the father of her child — to propose and decided that he’d wasted her time to a criminal degree. So she took him to court.
Ngoma, 26, reportedly sued her partner Herbert Salaliki, 28, not only for fiddling away years of her life without eventually proposing to her, as she alleged he had promised he would, but also for texting with another woman, Tuko reported.
“He has never been serious, that is why I [brought] him to court, because I deserve to know the way forward and our future,” Ngoma told a Zambian court, according to Tuko.
Salaliki defended himself with the excuse that he is not currently in a financial position to afford a wedding and, to add insult to injury, he accused Ngoma — who still lives with her parents — of not giving him sufficient attention in their relationship.
The case’s judge, Evelyn Nalwize, reportedly told Ngoma that the court could not do anything for her as there was no formal marriage, Zambian news site Mwebantu reported.
The Tuko article compares the woman’s story to another recent marriage drama aired on the internet, in which a woman talked on-camera about how she had given up on young men because they take forever to propose and that it’s more advisable to marry an older man who will take good care of his wife.
“I’m tired of these games. A man courts you for one, two, five, others to eight years and when you ask them when you guys are getting married he never lacks a reason,” the woman said in Swahili in the clip, Tuko reported. “They claim they have not settled yet, all those years, when will you ever be ready?”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/09/woman-sues-boyfriend-for-not-proposing-after-8-years/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Server told she was ‘too old’ to ‘handle’ rowdy crowd at NYC eatery
A middle-aged Queens woman was hired at a Forest Hills restaurant, then promptly fired before taking her first drink order — when the owner told her she “couldn’t handle” the rowdy night crowds because of her age and gender, new court papers allege.
Out-of-work events planner Mara Risa Newman, 51, was desperate for a job when she applied to work as a server at Dylan’s Forest Hills on July 2, according to her Queens Supreme Court lawsuit from Tuesday.
The owner, Brian Urbina, hired her on the spot and scheduled her for training five days later, the court papers say.
When Newman showed up at the scheduled time, “Urbina sat her down and told her she was ‘too old’ for the position, which he had just days ago hired her for, and that the position was ‘beneath her,’” the court documents claim.
What’s more, “Urbina told her that as a woman she would not be able to handle the rowdy men at Dylan’s in the evening,” the suit alleges.
Newman — who says she’s planned events including the Atlantic City Borgata opening and a Maxim Superbowl party — hasn’t had work since the pandemic hit, she told The Post.
“I applied to over 1,000 jobs since March,” Newman said in an interview. “I applied for lot of server positions, a lot of manager positions.”
“I was so shocked that I was speechless, because I’ve never experienced that,” Newman said. “Especially during COVID when nothing’s beneath anyone. Minimum wage is the same for any age.”
“I would have worked 150 times harder than any 20-year-old,” Newman said.
So Newman was delighted when Urbina offered her the job — only to be devastated when he so quickly reneged on the offer, according to Newman and the court papers.
“I’m used to doing whatever it takes to make my clients happy,” she said. “So to be told that you’re too old, that being a woman you wouldn’t be able to handle being a server, is beyond my comprehension.”’
Newman’s lawyer, Matthew Blit of law firm Levine & Blit, slammed the restaurant for having “the audacity to blatantly deny my client work because of her age and gender.
“Now, instead of serving food for Dylan’s, together we will be serving justice at Dylan’s,” he said.
Urbina told The Post that Newman’s allegations are false — including that he said she couldn’t handle the rowdy patrons.
“Nobody gets rowdy. This is Forest Hills, dude. It’s not a rowdy neighborhood,” Urbina said adding that his restaurant doesn’t even have a bar area.
Knowing that Newman was an event planner he asked her to submit a proposal for starting a catering service at the restaurant. Only Newman never followed through, Urbina claimed.
“I think that she’s gone through a hard time,” Urbina said. “She showed up here crying a few times and I felt bad.
“I said, ‘We’re looking to go into catering and you do this thing, maybe you can do this for us.’ It was the biggest mistake I could have done,” Urbina said.
“I have older people working for me. It’s just not an issue,” he said. “My reputation’s impeccable.”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/09/server-told-she-was-too-old-to-handle-rowdy-crowd-at-nyc-eatery-suit/
Photo Credit: Paul Martinka
Doctors warn teens not to try new ‘scalp popping’ TikTok trend
NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) — A new TikTok trend has teens pulling their scalp in hopes of getting it to “pop.”
The hashtag “scalp popping” has more than 6.5 million views on the popular video sharing app.
But is scalp popping safe?
Pediatrician Dr. Andrew Doyle weighed in on this new trend.
“What you’re trying to do is pull tissue layers apart in your scalp,” he said. “If you pull too hard or the wrong way you risk tearing the tissue, tearing the skin itself and pulling out a whole lot of hair.”
Dr. Doyle says while this trend might not be the most dangerous thing on the Internet, it does help him discuss social media with his patients.
“Teens need to be aware that not everything they see on the Internet or on TikTok is safe or what they think it is,” he said.
One New York massage therapist says this practice has actually been around for years, but says someone could still hurt themselves or pull out a chunk of hair.
via: https://www.kmov.com/doctors-warn-teens-not-to-try-new-scalp-popping-tiktok-trend/article_7139f841-bbbc-56d6-9d59-168a5e8b04eb.html
Photo Credit: kmov.com
Wellington College bursar killed when ‘horseplay’ game of ‘slaps’ with son went wrong
A bursar at the prestigious Wellington College was killed when a “horseplay” game of ‘slaps’ with his son went tragically wrong, an inquest heard.
Army veteran Malcolm Callender and his son Ewan, 19, had been playing the game after watching football together at a bar in Reading in April last year.
CCTV footage in the bar showed Mr Callender, a bursar at top boarding school Wellington College in Crowthorne, Berkshire, raise his hand and strike his son, who went to retaliate but instead embraced his father.
But Ewan, who was himself in the army for three years, told an inquest in Reading that after leaving the bar his father turned around and told him: “Right, you can have your free shot”.
“I knew exactly what he meant, I get to slap him now”, Ewan said.
The inquest heard that Ewan did not want to slap his bigger-built father, who served in the military for 27 years, but “wanted to make his dad proud”.
Witnesses saw Ewan clench his fists before he delivered the slap which sent Mr Callender backwards onto the road, where he hit his head.
As nearby security staff and other bystanders at the scene rushed to try to assist Mr Callender, Ewan was heard screaming “wake up Dad! Dad I love you!”, before police arrested him.
Mr Callender was rushed to the Royal Berkshire Hospital where he was treated for an acute subdural haemorrhage, but he died in the early hours of the following morning and a cause of death was given as “blunt force trauma to the head.”
More than 18 months after Ewan was arrested by police at the scene, the Crown Prosecution Service decided they would not prosecute him.
At the inquest on Tuesday, Ian Wade QC, assistant coroner for Berkshire, explained that the slap should be seen as legal “horseplay.”
Ewan’s mother – Malcolm Callender’s wife – told the inquest that the slapping between father and son was a common game they played.
Kathryn Morrison-Callender, also an Army veteran, said: “As a family, we would always be messing about with each other and we would be giving each other quick little digs in the ribs which we called ‘fingers of steel’.
“Another game we would play was slaps.
“When Ewan was about 15 years old, he and Malcolm would progress to try to slap each other around the face. Malcolm would always be winding him up, saying, ‘you reckon you can take me yet?’
“Malcolm was very competitive so he would never let Ewan win, he would use it as a reminder that Ewan was not quite big enough yet.
“After Malcolm passed away I spoke to Ewan about what happened. From what he described, it sounded just like the games that they had been playing together since Ewan was a kid.”
Mr Wade said he would not reach a conclusion that Mr Callender had died from unlawful killing, explaining: “The law recognises that consent is a legitimate concept in the law of assault and the application of force that is consented to, is not assault.
“You are also allowed to consent to the application of force in what is a rather Victorian way called horseplay. It seems to me that what took place here fulfils the definition of horseplay.”
Concluding the inquest with a narrative verdict Mr Wade said Mr Callender died after “engaging in non-aggressive, not hostile, consensual horseplay.”
After a 27-year career in the military which saw “a number of tours in Bosnia”, Callender became the works and estates bursar at Wellington College in 2015 after getting a call from an old contact he made during the military.
Wellington College is a top day and boarding school in the village of Crowthorne, Berkshire, that teaches 1,100 pupils, between the ages of 13 and 18, each year.
It costs £13,860 per term for boarders, and previous alumni include author George Orwell, current Conservative MP Crispin Blunt and actor Sir Christopher Lee.
via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/wellington-college-bursar-killed-horseplay-180808884.html
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MSNBC is getting a new president, the first Black person to run a major cable news network
(CNN) — Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC for the past twelve years, will step down shortly after President-elect Biden’s inauguration in January.
Rashida Jones, a senior vice president with a wide portfolio at NBC News and MSNBC, will become president of the network on February 1.
The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news of her appointment, said that Jones will be the first Black person to run a major cable news network.
The transition was announced by NBCUniversal News Group chair Cesar Conde on Monday afternoon.
“She has an outstanding track-record and she leads with a laser-like focus and grace under pressure. I know she will be an excellent leader for MSNBC,” Conde wrote in an internal memo.
Conde said that Griffin came to him shortly after the presidential election and spoke about “his desire to depart at a time of his choosing and when he felt confident about the strength of the network he loves.”
Transitions in Washington, D.C. often lead to turnover in the news business as well.
Griffin, 64, “has many interests and passions outside news — and he is energized right now by the prospect of being able to participate in them professionally,” Conde said in his memo.
November was MSNBC’s most-watched month in its 24-year history. But the channel finds itself in a challenging competitive landscape at the end of President Trump’s time in office. In November the channel still ranked third in cable news behind CNN and Fox News, since cable news viewership was up across the board during the election period.
MSNBC’s biggest strengths are political talk shows like “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “The Beat with Ari Melber,” which have big and loyal audiences.
Conde’s memo credited Griffin with “six straight record years” in the ratings, “each one better than the last,” which is in part a testament to intense interest in Trump’s campaign and presidency.
The beginning of the Biden presidency may scramble the cable news wars in ways that remain to be seen.
Jones has been at MSNBC and NBC News since 2013. She previously worked at The Weather Channel and at local stations. She rose through the ranks at NBC and became the senior vice president for specials in 2017.
Jones’ portfolio was expanded earlier this year when she was put in charge of MSNBC’s daytime and weekend news schedule.
“In the last year alone that has meant, of course, that she has masterfully guided our coverage of the global pandemic, the social justice protests and unrest, Decision 2020, and the two most-viewed Democratic presidential debates in television history,” Conde wrote on Monday.
via: https://www.kmov.com/news/msnbc-is-getting-a-new-president-the-first-black-person-to-run-a-major-cable/article_2ad90b61-64e9-5a86-ab3e-8b9f401ca2a2.html
Photo Credit: Virginia Sherwood/NBCUniversal
Joe Exotic asks Kim Kardashian to help get him presidential pardon
Joe Exotic — the ex-zookeeper convicted of trying to hire a hit man to kill rival Carole Baskin — is hoping Kim Kardashian can get him out of jail, a report said Tuesday.
Exotic, whose story was made famous in the Netflix show “Tiger King,” penned a letter to Kardashian, asking if she could help score him a pardon from President Trump, ET reported.
“I know you have never met me and may never want to however I do believe that you hold the values of our justice system dear to your heart,” reads the note, dated Nov. 4.
“Please help me by just taking 10 minutes out of your life and placing a call to President Trump to look at my 257 page pardon,” he wrote, according to ET.
“It’s all the evidence I’m innocent and ask him to sign my pardon so I can return home to [my husband] Dillon [Passage] and my father.”
Kardashian successfully lobbied President Trump in 2018 to grant clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who was serving a life sentence without parole for drug offenses.
Since then, the reality-TV icon has continued to advocate for criminal justice reform, and met with an Oklahoma death row inmate just last month.
Joe Exotic — whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage — urged Kardashian to call him.
“No one even has to know you did it,” he wrote — though the cat’s out of the bag now that the letter was published.
The flamboyant felon, 53, is a year into his 22-year sentence in the failed murder-for-hire plot against Baskin, who runs a big-cat zoo in Florida.
His reps have been campaigning for a pardon as Trump’s time in office comes to a close — even reportedly spending $10,000 at the president’s hotel in Washington, DC.
Exotic became a star from behind bars following the hugely successful Netflix series “Tiger King,” which aired at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US.
Kardashian, 40, appears to be a fan of the show and tweeted about it back in March.
She and her friend Jonathan Cheban dressed up as Baskin and Joe Exotic for Halloween, while Kardashian’s four kids went as tigers.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Kardashian had received the letter.
Exotic recently penned another letter to Fox 23 in Oklahoma, begging for Gov. Kevin Stitt to rally on his behalf.
“I am not only asking President Trump for an immediate pardon, but I am asking Governor Stitt to place a call to President Trump and ask him to sign my pardon,” he wrote.
In April, Trump said he’d “take a look” at Exotic’s request.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/08/joe-exotic-asks-kim-kardashian-to-help-get-him-pardon/
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Ohio teacher was robbed at knifepoint by a convicted felon — who had only been out of prison for 36 days — during a Zoom meeting with a student
Amanda Zupancic, a special education teacher at Kirtland Local Schools, was alone at her Cleveland home on Nov. 23 when she heard glass shattering during a virtual session with a middle school student and his mother, she told WEWS.
“There was a man walking through my baby gate with a knife in his hand walking upstairs,” Zupancic recalled.
“He started threatening me, yelling at me, calling me names. He grabbed me upstairs into my bedroom.”
As the Zoom call was still ongoing, the knife-wielding man starting rifling through Zupancic’s belongings and grabbed watches and wedding rings, she told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“He was telling me, ‘Don’t move. Give me your wallet and keys,’” Zupanic said.
Zupancic, whose husband and 1-year-old had left just 20 minutes earlier, said she then led the armed intruder downstairs, where she unlocked a baby gate to release her two dogs: a German shepherd and a Great Dane-boxer mix.
As one of her pooches “went at him,” Zupancic took the split-second opportunity to grab a pair of scissors and chase the man to her front door, she told WEWS.
“I started chasing him with his pair of scissors, in my house shoes, down the street, yelling, ‘Help me, help me, this guy robbed me,’” the shaken teacher recalled.
A contractor working nearby spotted Zupancic and tackled the suspect, later identified as Charles Derosett, and detained him until cops arrived, WEWS reported.
“I’m lucky that there’s enough loving people in the world to figure this all out,” she told the station.
Derosett, meanwhile, was indicted by a Cuyahoga County grand jury last week on charges of aggravated robbery and felonious assault.
He had been out of prison for 36 days prior to the alleged break-in, WJW reported. It is unclear why he was in prison.
It’s unclear if Derosett has hired an attorney who could speak on his behalf, ABC News reported.
“This individual needs to be taken off the street,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley told WJW. “Our county is not safe with him out again, he is out for 36 days and breaking into occupied homes. He needs to go back to prison.”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/12/08/teacher-robbed-at-knife-point-during-zoom-call-with-student/
Photo Credit: Amanda Zupancic