11-year-old Kansas girl says boy attacked her with a metal pole, called her a racial slur
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (KCTV) — An 11-year-old girl who was attacked and knocked unconscious by a 12-year-old boy is speaking out.
The boy has now been charged with felony battery.
The incident happened last Friday at the Park 67 Apartments in Shawnee, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City.
The family of 11-year-old Nevaeh Thomas said she is recovering physically and mentally after a 12-year-old boy called her racial slurs before hitting her with the metal pole, leaving her with a broken tooth and a wound that required eight stitches.
They said she is now recovering physically and mentally.
This is a juvenile case, so police have not not shared the name of the 12-year-old suspect. However, we do know he has been charged with felony battery and is now on house arrest.
The family has provided a picture of what they said Nevaeh looked like after the attack.
The family said that, around 7 p.m. last Friday, Neveah and some friends were at the pool at Park 67 apartments.
The family said the boy approached the group and was yelling racial slurs. The family said Nevaeh stood up to him by saying, “My black is beautiful”
That’s when the family said the he left, then came back with a metal pole and a knife. He hit Nevaeh at least once with the pole, knocking her unconscious.
“It’s okay if we’re different or we have different opinions, but it’s not okay to hate and judge someone on the color of their skin,” Nevaeh said. “I think we should start talking about these things before another kid gets hurt.”
Her mother, Brandi Stewart, said, “It’s hard for me to explain to her why this is happening. I keep telling her that it’s not her fault and it’s not okay. But, a lot of people have been showing her love and support.”
Another disturbing accusation; the family said the police took two hours to arrest the 12-year-old for assaulting Nevaeh.
As more inequities are exposed in the criminal justice system, the family fears the boy will get off the hook easier.
Photo Credit: kmov.com
Hair salon had to remove job ad for ‘happy’ stylist because it is ‘discriminatory’ against unhappy people
A hair salon says it was told by a job center it couldn’t run an advertisement recruiting a “happy” stylist because the word is “discriminatory” against unhappy people.
Alison Birch listed a job ad looking for a part-time qualified hairdresser at her AJ’s Unisex Hair Salon in Stroud, England,.
The position called for someone with five years’ experience of working in a salon, who is “confident in barbering as well as all aspects of hairdressing.”
And the advertisement stated, “This is a busy, friendly, small salon, so only happy, friendly stylists need apply.”
But on Wednesday, Birch says she received a call from her local job center informing her they could not run her ad because the word “happy” is considered “discriminatory.”
Birch claims the job center told her that the advertisement may make some people feel they cannot apply if they do not consider themselves to be a “happy” person.
Birch shared the conversation she had with the job center on the salon’s Facebook page.
She claims the man at the job center said to her: “I’m sorry, but the word happy is a discriminatory word and we aren’t allowed to use it, as somebody who is not happy will be discriminated against.”
According to Birch, he then asked: “Should we change the word in case somebody thinks that they can’t apply for the job because they are not a happy person?”
Birch said she was questioning herself.
“Was I being a bit sensitive, and is the word happy discriminative? Or has this whole world all gone mad?” Birch said.
And plenty of Birch’s customers agreed with her outrage over the job center’s “ridiculous” stance on her advert.
Karen Evans commented: “The world has gone absolutely mad.
“Does this mean that every descriptive word is discriminative… happy, tall, smart, elegant? Good luck with your search.”
Julie Thickins added: “I thought this was a joke, realizing it clearly isn’t has left me absolutely speechless… what has the human race come to?”
And Charlie Brown wrote: “You cannot make it up, how ridiculous are they being.
“Stick to your guns Ali, you are a happy salon and if some numpties cannot deal with that wording then tough.”
via: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/hair-salon-job-posting-happy-hairdresser-discrimanatory
Photo Credit: SWNS
Police officer faces manslaughter charges following fatal shooting at CA Walmart in April
A California police officer was charged Wednesday in connection with a fatal shooting at an Oakland-area Walmart store in April.
San Leandro Police Officer Jason Fletcher was charged with voluntary manslaughter in connection with an incident where he fatally shot 33-year-old Steven Taylor on April 18.
According to the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, a security guard at the store called police when Taylor tried to leave San Leandro Walmart with a baseball bat and a tent without paying.
Fletcher responded to the call and approached Taylor as he entered the store. The officer tried to grab the baseball bat from Taylor, and when he couldn’t get control of the bat he drew his stun gun.
After firing the stun gun, Taylor stumbled forward with the bat sitll in his hand. According to body camera footage, Fletcher repeatedly asked Taylor to drop the bat. Fletcher then fired his gun once, a shot that proved to be fatal.
In its charging statement, the District Attorney’s office, claimed that Taylor “posed no threat of imminent deadly force or serious bodily injury” to the officers or anyone else in the store because he had “clearly experienced the shock of the taser as he was leaning forward over his feet and stumbling forward.”
Fletcher’s lawyer, Michael Rains, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he was “very disappointed” that the officer had been charged and that the charges were “undeserved.”
The decision to file the criminal complaint was made after an intensive investigation and thorough analysis of the evidence and the current law,” Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said.
Lee Merritt, an attorney for Taylor’s family, told NBC News that Taylor was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time of the shooting.
Fletcher will be arraigned on Sept. 15 at a county courthouse in Dublin, California.
Photo Credit: Alex Hider
Sheriff Who Quit Over Calling Woman ‘N*gger Lover’ Kept On Payroll ‘Out Of Compassion’
A former sheriff in Arkansas who was forced to resign over his racist views and language replete with the N-word was reportedly being shown “compassion” for his racism and has been allowed to keep getting paid even though he is no longer officially a law enforcement officer.
Yes, you read the right. Ex-Arkansas County Sheriff Todd Wright was apparently secretly recorded speaking his racist mind in public, at one point even calling a woman a “n*gger lover,” prompting a court to ask for his resignation.
To be clear, Wright was not fired, nor was that ever an apparent consideration for his racism while leading law enforcement efforts in a county that is 25 percent Black. Instead, Wright was encouraged to resign, out of apparent compassion for him. It was also “out of compassion” that the “court also unanimously passed a motion to allow Wright to continue to be paid on contract labor through September 30” even though he won’t actually be laboring at all, according to local news outlet the Stuttgart Daily Leader.
The recording provides a much clearer picture of Wright’s racist offenses, which took place during a conversation with a woman at a local grocery store. Audio of the conversation hit social media last week and shows that Wright used the N-word multiple times out of anger once he found out the woman had spoken to a Black man at the supermarket.
“Why you got to holler at f*cking n*ggers when I’m around?” he asked her at one point on the 24-second recording.
Wright appeared in court Aug. 28 to insist that he was not racist and was vehement about not resigning. However, after a friend asked him to quit, Wright tendered his resignation right there on the spot — presumably because he knew he’d still at least get paid. It was unclear what Wright’s salary was.
The racist incident in Arkansas County serves as a microcosm for many police departments around the country.
The Brennan Center for Justice released a report last week about how the “government’s response to known connections of law enforcement officers to violent racist and militant groups has been strikingly insufficient.”
While it is unclear if Wright is part of a larger racist group, his own angry and racist words on the audio recording that led to his resignation — not firing — is clear that his views are aligned with racist groups, at the very least.
via: https://newsone.com/4007075/arkansas-ex-sheriff-n-word-keeps-getting-paid/
Photo Credit: Newsone
7 Rochester police officers suspended over Daniel Prude’s death
(CNN)Seven police officers in Rochester, New York, involved in the March arrest of a Black man who was pinned to the ground and later died have been suspended, the city’s mayor announced.”Mr. (Daniel) Prude lost his life in our city. He lost his life because of the actions of our police officers,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said Thursday in a news conference.The suspensions come a day after attorneys for Prude’s family released police bodycam video that shows officers covering the man’s head with a “spit sock” and holding him on the ground in a prone position before he stopped breathing.Warren said some of the officers who were suspended appear on the body camera footage and others “had a duty to stop what was happening.” They are being suspended with pay “against the advice of council,” she said.
CNN has reached out to the Rochester Police Locust Club, the union representing the city officers, for comment about the suspensions.The mayor told reporters on Thursday that she had been misled by the city’s police chief, who she said led her to believe the man died in police custody of an overdose. She saw the body camera footage for the first time nearly a month ago, Warren said.Prude was failed by many officials before and during the March 23 incident, the mayor said. He would have been treated different if he was White, she said.”Institutional structural racism led to Daniel Prude’s death. I won’t deny it. I stand before it and I call for justice upon it,” Warren said.Prude’s daughter, Tashyra Prude, is calling for the officers’ firing and wants them to be prosecuted over her father’s death.”They should be arrested and tried as the killers that they are,” Tashyra Prude told CNN’s Erica Hill on Thursday.
‘How many more brothers got to die?,’ brother says
Prude, 41, was having a mental health episode on March 23 when his brother Joe called the Rochester Police Department for help, the family said at a press conference Wednesday.The video provided by attorneys shows officers handcuff Prude, who was naked, in the middle of a snowy wet street, and place a covering over his head.Several minutes later, EMTs arrive and begin to perform chest compressions, the video shows. He is then placed on a gurney and into an ambulance.When Prude arrived at the hospital, he was brain dead, his brother said. He died a week later.His death was ruled a homicide by the Monroe County Medical examiner, according to a copy of the autopsy report obtained by lawyers for his family. The report cites complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint as a finding. The report also cites excited delirium and acute PCP intoxication as causes of death.
The officers involved were not initially suspended and did not receive any disciplinary action. The union representing Rochester police officers had said in a statement to CNN that they have “concerns” about the incident and are working to gather more information.Speaking at a press conference Wednesday, Joe Prude said police had killed a defenseless Black man and called his brother’s death “cold-blooded murder.” Elliot Shields, one of the Prude family lawyers, said attorneys are in the preliminary stages of filing a wrongful death suit.Family members connected his March death — two months before George Floyd’s death in similar circumstances — to the movement pushing back against police violence toward Black people.”How many more brothers got to die for society to understand that this needs to stop,” Joe Prude said. “And I can’t even share with y’all the pain that I’m feeling, and my family is going through as well.”His death also raises questions about how police respond to someone in the midst of a mental health crisis. Police are often the first to respond to reports of a person acting erratically, and they occasionally use police tactics or force in their response. The Washington Post’s database of police shootings since 2015, for example, indicates that about 22% of those shot and killed by police reported signs of mental illness.After the family’s press conference, protesters gathered outside the Public Safety Building in downtown Rochester, according to CNN affiliate WHAM.Organizers from the group Free the People Roc, a Black Lives Matter group, named three officers they say were involved in the incident. CNN is working to confirm their identities and is not naming them at this time.Family members are calling for the officers to be fired and arrested.
Attorneys for Prude’s family provided CNN with edited video that compiles multiple officers’ body cameras. They also provided several police documents describing the incident.The incident began after Joe Prude and several other people called police. Joe Prude told police that his brother had made suicidal threats earlier in the day and had been taken into custody on a Mental Health Arrest, or MHA.Additionally, a witness took a Facebook Live video showing Prude undressing and defecating in the street. And a tow truck driver called police to report a naked, bloodied man trying to open a locked car door, the documents provided to CNN say.The video begins at 3:16 a.m. with Prude naked on a wet street as a light snow falls.An officer exits his patrol car, approaches Prude while asking him six times to get on the ground as the officer points a Taser at him. Prude complies and is asked to put his hands behind his back, which he quickly does. The officer then cuffs him as Prude says “yes, sir” several times.Several other officers arrive on scene and one appears to identify Prude by name.While handcuffed, Prude repeats the phrase “in Jesus Christ I pray, amen.” He also makes various remarks about getting his money to take a plane, and he asks for the officers’ guns and that they stay away from him. He yells that he has coronavirus and spits in their direction.Three minutes after the incident begins, one officer puts a spit sock — which is designed to keep a person from spitting or biting — over Prude’s head. Prude appears to try to stand at approximately 3:20 a.m., and three officers move in to restrain him and hold him to the ground. Police say Prude is spitting and appears to have vomited. Three minutes and 10 seconds after the restraint, an officer says “he started throwing up, now it looks like he doesn’t even have chest compressions.”They call in the EMT to help who instructs an officer to roll Prude over and perform chest compressions, which they do.Prude appears non-responsive and is loaded into an ambulance at 3:27 a.m., 11 minutes after the first officer arrived on scene.
In the autopsy report, medical officials cite acute myocarditis and a history of severe respiratory acidosis. They stated Prude also has a clinical history of agitation and combative behavior, as well as a clinical history of suicidal ideation and possible auditory hallucinations and paranoia.Police investigators who reviewed the footage and interviews with officers and paramedics cleared the officers of wrongdoing, according to internal documents provided by Prude’s family attorneys.”Based upon the investigation, the officers’ actions and conduct displayed when dealing with Prude appear to be appropriate and consistent with their training,” an internal police report said.New York Attorney General Letitia James started an investigation of the case on April 16.”The Prude family and the greater Rochester community deserve answers, and we will continue to work around the clock to provide them,” James said in a statement.New York Governor Andrew Cuomo described the video of Daniel Prude “deeply disturbing” Thursday and called for the “case to be concluded as expeditiously as possible.”
CNN’s Melanie Schuman, Eric Levenson, Kristina Sgueglia, Elizabeth Hartfield and Rob Frehse contributed to this report.
via: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/03/us/rochester-police-daniel-prude-death/index.html
Photo Credit: cnn.com
Question about Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake on 5th-grade quiz sparks outrage
(WLEX/CNN/Meredith) — A question on a fifth-grade quiz about Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake has sparked outrage online from the Kentucky Peace Officers Association (KPOA).
On Monday night, the organization posted a photo on Facebook of the quiz question.
The question asks, “What is the relationship between Jacob Blake and Breonna Taylor?” The correct answer choice reads, “Both were victims of police violence, sparking protests against racial injustice.”
KPOA heavily criticized the question, saying that they will be requesting a meeting soon with the Fayette County Public Schools administration.
In a statement, the president of KPOA said, “While it is the responsibility of educational leaders to shape the future, it is not their right to do so in a manner designed to intentionally and negatively influence young minds and promote a political agenda.”
Fayette County Public Schools said the Facebook post was out of context. In a statement, a spokeswoman said, in part:
“Fayette County Public Schools is committed to helping students become civically engaged citizens who are wise consumers of digital media able to think critically about the world around them. That requires we address difficult topics and teach students to have civil conversations with people who have different points of view.”
No further information was available.
Photo Credit: kmov.com
Man convicted of murdering 2 women, hiding corpses in freezer
A man was found guilty Thursday of killing two women and hiding their bodies inside a freezer at his London apartment.
Zahid Younis will spend at least 38 years behind bars for the grisly slayings of 32-year-old Henriett Szucs and Mihrican Mustafa, 38, the BBC reported.
The bodies of the victims, described in court as “vulnerable women living somewhat chaotic lives,” were discovered by police in April 2019, the report said.
The officers had been conducting a welfare check on Younis at his Canning Town apartment in East London when they noticed the freezer had flies buzzing around it.
Szucs, who lived with Younis, was killed shortly after the convicted killer purchased the lockable freezer in November 2016, it was revealed during the four-week trial.
Mustafa had been missing since May 2018.
The victims’ causes of death could not be determined, but both women were found badly beaten up.
They both had rib fractures — and Szucs suffered “dreadful” head injuries, while Mustafa’s sternum and larynx were fractured, the report said.
Younis never confessed to the killings, only admitting to placing the women inside his freezer. He claimed Szucs died while he wasn’t home, and in a panic, paid a man to hide her body.
He then claimed the accomplice forced him to also hide Mustafa’s corpse in the freezer.
At his sentencing, Younis showed no emotion, the report said as Mustafa’s family
via: https://nypost.com/2020/09/03/man-convicted-of-murdering-2-women-hiding-corpses-in-freezer/
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Family warns of viral TikTok ‘Benadryl Challenge’ after daughter dies
The family of an Oklahoma teen who died attempting the “Benadryl Challenge” on TikTok is warning others that the dangerous stunt “needs to stop.”
Chloe Phillips, 15, a sophomore at Blanchard High School, overdosed on the allergy drug Aug. 21 while taking part in the TikTok challenge to film oneself hallucinating from the medication, the Sun reported.
“This needs to stop taking our kids or putting them in the hospital,” Phillips’ great-aunt, Janette Sissy Leasure, reportedly wrote on Facebook in a post that has since been deleted or is no longer shared publicly.
Leasure said the teen was “a happy and smart young lady” who had “all kinds of plans for her future.”
Referring to the deadly online fad, she pleaded to others, “Don’t let it take any more kids.”
“I don’t want to see any families go through what we are going through right now. Don’t ever say this can’t happen to you,” she added.
“Kids are like, ‘the other person was okay, so I’ll be okay.’ Try to always know what your kids are doing or taking.”
Scott Schaeffer, director of the Oklahoma Center for Poison and Drug Information, warned teens about the perils of the stunt in the wake of Chloe’s death, saying it could “cause something potentially life-threatening,” news station KFOR reported.
“Large amounts of Benadryl can cause seizures and, particularly, problems with the heart. The heart tends to go out of rhythm and not pump blood effectively,” he said.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/09/03/family-warns-of-tiktok-benadryl-challenge-after-daughter-dies/
Photo Credit: Eisenhour Funeral Home
Woman calls cops on black joggers at California beach
A woman in California called the cops on three black women claiming she was attacked by “an African black person,” video shows.
The three women — identified only as Brittany, Jessyka and Raquel – said they were jogging early Sunday at Dockweiler State Beach when an unidentified woman starting hurling racial slurs at them.
“My emergency is that I was just attacked by an African black person,” the panicked woman yelled on the footage shared with KABC. “She just attacked me from behind.”
The three joggers said they initially encountered the woman as they started their run, when she hurled a racial slur at them. One of the black women later started recording their interaction when they met up again.
“I have to expose this, so I actually caught up to her and was like, ‘Tell me again what you said,’” Brittany told the station. “And that’s when I started recording and she just continued.”
The woman then said she was calling cops, claiming she had been attacked from behind by the three joggers.
“My environment has been harmed by this African black person,” the woman says in the clip while holding up her cellphone.
Another jogger in the trio claimed the woman called them “the virus” and said they didn’t belong in southern California.
“She continued on that she was from Mexico and this was her continent and we needed to back to our continent,” Raquel told NBC Los Angeles.
The joggers told the station they started recording the confrontation when the woman falsely claimed they had attacked her, the station reports.
The women filed a hate incident report with Los Angeles police, an LAPD spokeswoman told The Post.
“It’s still under investigation,” LAPD spokesman Officer Lizeth Lomeli said of the incident Thursday.
The unidentified woman, meanwhile, had called police in El Segundo, where officers told her following an initial investigation to reach out to LAPD, saying the incident took place in LA, NBC Los Angeles reports.
“Since then, a disturbing video has been posted on social media showing that woman using racially charged language toward the individual recording,” El Segundo police said in a statement.
“Although this incident did not occur in El Segundo, that behavior has no place in any community. El Segundo stands against racism and is committed to making sure everyone who lives, works and visits feels welcome.”
It was immediately unclear if the woman followed up and called LA cops, Lomeli said Thursday.
The joggers said the hateful encounter reminded them of Amy Cooper, the white woman who called NYPD while walking her dog in Central Park in late May, claiming a black man who was birdwatching was threatening her.
“It was very similar to what we saw in Central Park — knowing that she could arm herself with our blackness and make us a threat,” Raquel told NBC Los Angeles.
Photo Credit: nypost.com/Instagram
Teenager woke up after a night of partying in a Rhode Island house to find herself naked in a shower, surrounded by men who were laughing and taking pictures
She went to the police almost immediately, but the case stalled with little to go on beyond the girl’s painful memories from that night in December. Then, in March, the girl’s mother found a video of her daughter being sexually assaulted that one of the perpetrators had posted on Facebook.
The mother took out her phone, recorded the video on her computer screen and sent the recording to the police.
“That’s when the investigation really heated up,” Maj. David Lapatin of the Providence Police Department said in an interview Wednesday. “We were able to see who was there. We were able to see faces. We were able to see the actual act, of first-degree sexual assault.”
On Wednesday, the police said the mother’s discovery of the Facebook video helped them charge eight men with sexually assaulting the 16-year-old girl after she lost consciousness at the house party Dec. 20, 2019.
Col. Hugh Clements Jr., chief of the Providence police, said the assault was one of the worst he could recall in his 35 years with the department.
“The incident is horrifying, devastating, disturbing on so many levels to this young girl, to her family and to this community,” Clements said at a news conference.
He said the teenager had been offered counseling, housing and other services, and he thanked her and her family for coming forward to report the crime. Not only had she helped identify the men who assaulted her, he said, but she also faced the possibility of testifying in court and being sharply questioned by defense lawyers.
“I commend her bravery, her courage and her family for sticking by her,” the chief said.
“I give her a lot of credit,” he added.
The police said six men — Keith Erving Colon, 24; Jose Vargas, 18; Carlos Chacon, 19; Malcolm Baptista, 18; Luis A. Cabrera, 18; and Luis Luna, 19 — were arrested last week and charged with assault with intent to commit sexual assault and conspiracy.
A seventh man, Richard Tarell Chester, 19, was arrested and charged with first-degree sexual assault, the police said. The eighth, Carlos D. Vasquez, was being sought Wednesday on charges of assault with intent to commit sexual assault and conspiracy.
Lawyers for several of the men did not immediately respond to messages Wednesday. Chad F. Bank, a lawyer for Luna, and Nicholas Obolensky, a lawyer for Cabrera, declined to comment.
The teenager had been invited to the party by two boys she knew, Lapatin said. She remembered drinking and smoking marijuana and then not feeling well, so she went to a bedroom to lie down, he said. That’s when someone forced her to drink more alcohol, causing her to lose consciousness, she later told the police.
When she awoke, she was naked in the shower, surrounded by eight to 15 men, Lapatin said.
The teenager left the party and went to the hospital with pain in her genital area, Lapatin said. She then gave a full statement to the police, he said.
“She was able to give us some names of who was there,” he said, “but we didn’t have the evidence right then to start charging people.”
The investigation accelerated, he said, when someone told the girl’s mother about the video of the assault on Facebook.
Detectives recognized several of the men’s faces and nicknames in the video, he said, and were able to track them down.
The sharing of the video on Facebook suggests the perpetrators were “proud of what they had done and wanted to display this for others to see — and that in itself is disturbing,” said Vanessa Volz, the executive director of Sojourner House, in Providence, which provides emergency housing, counseling and other services to victims of sexual violence and their families.
“It’s obviously horrific and completely unacceptable, and I think very indicative of how we still are living in a rape culture,” Volz said.
Many of those who seek help at Sojourner House have been harassed, tracked or shamed online and on social media, Volz said.
“There’s a dehumanization element with the technology we have access to,” she said. “It’s so easy. You videotape something, you copy it, you send it. It happens so instantaneously. You can do all that in less than a minute.”
She said the case reinforced the need to change deep-seated cultural attitudes about how people treat each other. “And until that changes,” she said, “we’re going to continue to see these types of incidents.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/xandr/facebook-video-assault-found-victims-115425122.html
Photo Credit: City of Providence via The New York Times