Prominent professor says grandson called N-word at elementary school
A prominent Georgetown University professor claims his 6-year-old grandson was called the N-word and threatened with a gun at his school in Washington, DC.
The incident, involving Michael Eric Dyson’s grandson Maxem, happened in the lunchroom Tuesday at Horace Mann Elementary School, DC Public Schools officials told Fox 5 DC.
Dyson, who teaches sociology at Georgetown and frequently speaks about race relations on TV, said the other student who allegedly hurled the slur and threats is a first-grader who is white.
“He says, ‘I’m going to go home and get my father’s gun and come back and shoot you,’” Dyson told Fox 5. “Unfortunately this represents for us the deep and abiding roots of white supremacy that are set loose in this country. How can a 6-year-old kid know to call his classmate the N-word?”
He said the confrontation occurred when Maxem and the other student rushed to be first in line.
The other child was allowed to finish out the school day, “which is incredible to me,” said Dyson.
District spokesman Shayne Wells said a threat was made but officials are working to determine whether a slur was also used.
The student was spoken to by the principal and officials are now determining appropriate discipline. They also plan to meet with the child’s parents.
Dyson provided an update on Twitter following a meeting Wednesday with Maxem’s parents, the other student’s parents, school officials and police.
“I’m glad to report none of them were defensive. They owned up immediately to what happened, were horrified themselves about the situation and behavior and have pledged not only to address this particular incident, but an institutional response to systemic problems of race and violence that need to be addressed,” Dyson said in a video posted on Twitter.
The scholar urged others to share similar stories.
“Send me your stories, I want to use my platform to advocate for you,” he said.
In a statement, the district said, “We will provide Mann the support it needs to adequately address this issue and continue to partner with our school communities to ensure meaningful learning and positive interactions occur within all of our school buildings.”
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/01/prominent-professor-says-grandson-called-n-word-at-elementary-school/
Photo Credit: Photo By Karl Gehring/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Students in blackface in two states prompt walkout
Blackface is causing outrage in Maryland and Illinois, where 1,000 students walked out of class to protest offensive images posted on social media by classmates.
The walkout Tuesday at Homewood-Flossmoor High School outside Chicago took place days after four unidentified male students posted a photo and video of themselves on social media wearing blackface while going through a fast-food drive-through window, WLS-TV reports.
Most students involved in the protest returned to class after a few minutes, but several dozen stayed outside to voice their disapproval of the response by school administrators, the station reports.
“The administration is honestly making it to be not a big thing and it really is,” student Karina Duncan said.
Another student, Kaila Chambliss, said she was pleased by the “big turnout” but wants school officials to respond appropriately to the controversy.
“I’m very happy with the results because this something that systematically is happening in America now and we need to see a change take place,” Chambliss told the station.
District officials, meanwhile, said in a letter to parents that administrators met with the students and their families Sunday, but did not indicate what disciplinary measures — if any — were taken.
“However, we can share that the social media postings that were seen and heard were not representative of the high expectations we have for all students that attend our school,” the statement read. “This type of behavior is contrary to our expectations, is being addressed quickly and appropriately and will not be tolerated.”
Students were allowed to take part in the walkout or stay inside, district officials said in a separate statement Tuesday.
Nearly 600 miles away, politicians in Maryland said they were troubled by two ninth-graders at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda who posted an image of themselves in blackface on social media over the weekend, the Baltimore Sun reports.
“It is unfortunate for us to be in 2019 and these types of incidents are still happening,” Montgomery County Council President Nancy Navarro told the newspaper. “In light of this, it is imperative that we continue our work to engage in education and outreach to sensitize our residents on the harmful effects of racism on the residents of our communities.”
A Montgomery County police spokesman said an officer at the nationally ranked public school characterized the incident as a “bias-related incident” and the student’s actions were determined not to be criminal.
Byron Johns of the Montgomery County branch of the NAACP said the incident was indeed offensive, but has become “more normalized” amid rising political and racial tensions throughout the country.
“It’s part of the ether now,” Johns told the Baltimore Sun.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/01/students-in-blackface-in-two-states-prompt-walkout-unrest/
Photo Credit: LOGAN CYRUS/AFP/Getty Images
FL Toddler attacked by dog while mother Cassie Anthony was on drugs
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. – A Florida woman is facing charges of neglect after police said her toddler was attacked by the family dog, WMBB reported.
According to Panama City Beach police Cassie Anthony left her one-year-old alone for just under an hour Tuesday. During that time, Anthony’s pit bull attacked the little girl, leaving her with a facial injury that required immediate surgery.
Anthony was reportedly under the influence of illicit drugs at the time of the attack, according to a police report.
She was charged with neglect of a child with great bodily injuries.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/05/01/police-toddler-attacked-by-dog-while-mother-was-on-drugs/
Photo Credit: pix11.com, mypanhandle.com
2 Dead, 4 Injured in Shooting at University of North Carolina Charlotte Campus; Suspect in Custody
A man armed with a pistol opened fire on students at a North Carolina university during the last day of classes Tuesday, killing two people and wounding four, police said. Officers who had gathered ahead of a campus concert raced over and disarmed the suspect.
The shooting prompted a lockdown at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and caused widespread panic across campus as students scrambled to take shelter.
“Just loud bangs. A couple loud bangs and then we just saw everyone run out of the building, like nervous, like a scared run like they were looking behind,” said Antonio Rodriguez, 24, who was visiting campus for his friend’s art show.
Campus Police Chief Jeff Baker said authorities received a call in the late afternoon that a suspect armed with a pistol had shot several students. He said officers assembling nearby for a concert rushed to the classroom building and arrested the gunman in the room where the shooting took place.
“Our officers’ actions definitely saved lives,” Baker said at a news conference.
He said two people were killed, and three remained in critical condition late Tuesday. He said a fourth person’s injuries were less serious. Students were among the victims, but officials would not say how many.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department identified the suspect as Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22. They said he’s in custody with charges pending.
Monifa Drayton, an adjunct professor, was walking onto campus when she heard the shots. She said she directed students fleeing the scene to take cover inside a parking deck.
“I heard one final gunshot and I saw all the children running toward me,” she said. “We started to get all the children pulled into the second floor of the parking deck and the rationale was if we’re in the parking deck and there’s a shooter and we don’t know where he is, he won’t have a clear shot.”
She added: “My thought was, I’ve lived my life, I’ve had a really good life, so, these students deserve the same. And so, whatever I could do to help any child to safety, that’s what I was going to do.”
The suspect’s grandfather Paul Rold of Arlington, Texas, said that Terrell and his father moved to Charlotte from the Dallas area about two years ago after his mother died. Terrell taught himself French and Portuguese with the help of a language learning program his grandfather bought him and was attending UNC-Charlotte, Rold said. But Terrell never showed any interest in guns or other weapons and the news he may have been involved in a mass shooting was stunning, said Rold, who had not heard about the Charlotte attack before being contacted by an Associated Press reporter.
“You’re describing someone foreign to me,” Rold said in a telephone interview Tuesday night. “This is not in his DNA.”
Shortly after UNC Charlotte issued a campus lockdown, aerial shots from local television news outlets showed police officers running toward a building, while another view showed students running on a campus sidewalk.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department later said that the campus had been secured and that officers were going through buildings to let people who were hiding know that it was safe to come out.
The university has more than 26,500 students and 3,000 faculty and staff. The campus is northeast of the city center and is surrounded by residential areas.
Spenser Gray, a junior, said she was watching another student’s presentation in a nearby campus building when the alert about the shooting popped up on everyone’s computer screens.
She said she panicked: “We had no idea where he was … so we were just expecting them at any moment coming into the classroom.”
Susan Harden, an UNCC professor and Mecklenburg County Commissioner, was at home when she heard of the shooting. She went to a staging area, she said, to provide support.
Harden said she has taught inside the Kennedy building, where the shootings occurred.
“It breaks my heart. We’re torn up about what’s happened,” Harden said. “Students should be able to learn in peace and in safety and professors ought to be able to do their jobs in safety.”
Gov. Roy Cooper said at a briefing late Tuesday that a “hard look” was needed into how the shooting happened and how to keep guns off campus and out of schools.
“A student should not have to fear for his or her life when they are on our campuses,” the Democrat said. “Parents should not have to worry about their students when they send them off to school. And I know that this violence has to stop. … In the coming days we will take a hard look at all of this to see what we need to do going forward.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Man gets trapped in tunnel he dug under his ex’s house so he could spy on her
MEXICO CITY — A man in northern Mexico had to be rescued after he accidentally trapped himself in a hole that he dug so he could spy on his former girlfriend in violation of a court order to stay away from her, authorities said Sunday.
The Sonora state attorney general’s office said the 50-year-old man had spent days digging the hole in Puerto Penasco, a town on the Gulf of California, only to become trapped and require assistance to get out.
The man had been ordered to stay away from his former girlfriend due to domestic violence charges and he is now in jail, authorities said.
The newspaper El Universal said the man dug a tunnel under the woman’s house. It said the woman told police that over the course of a week, she had heard scratching noises but assumed the noise was cats. But when the sound grew louder, she investigated and found her former partner of 14 years trapped below, the report said. She said she ended the relationship because her partner was very jealous.
Police said the man appeared intoxicated and severely dehydrated once they got him out of the tunnel.
Gender violence is in Mexico’s spotlight this week after a woman was hit by a car and then stabbed to death by her husband outside the governor’s residence in the western state of Jalisco. That incident was captured on video.
Teen beheaded classmate in jealous rage over girlfriend
A crazed teen beheaded a schoolmate who he thought had slept with his girlfriend, prosecutors said in court this week.
Mathew Borges was just 15 in November 2016 when he is accused of cutting off the head and hands of Lee Manuel Viloria-Paulino, 16, in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Borges killed the Lawrence High School sophomore in a jealous rage after accusing him with sleeping with his girlfriend, causing them to split, prosecutors said in Essex County Superior Court on Monday, according to the Boston Herald.
“I think of killing someone and I smirk … It’s all I think about every day,” he texted the girl, according to Assistant DA Jay Gubitose.
“The next time you see me, look at my eyes because that’s the last time they’ll be like that. They’ll be dead,” he texted her before the brutal murder, according to the report.
The following day, Viloria-Paulino went missing and his decapitated body was later found by a man walking his dog.
A state trooper later found the victim’s head in a bag nearby.
Surveillance video showed the two teens walking toward the river, but Borges initially told police they had gone to smoke pot.
But after Borges was arrested, police found a journal at his home with a last entry to call a few friends, wear bags on their shoes and “kill him,” the prosecutor said.
“The defendant told them he stabbed him to death and cut his head and hands off so he couldn’t be identified,” Gubitose told the court, according to the Herald.
Defense attorney Edward Hayden insisted the most Borges can be accused of doing is burglarizing the dead boy’s home — not butchering him.
“Witnesses who are going to say he committed murder are not reliable,” he said.
Borges is now 17 and being tried as an adult on the first-degree murder charge.
His trial continues and is expected to take three weeks.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/30/teen-beheaded-classmate-in-jealous-rage-over-girlfriend-prosecutors/
Parents demand answers after 15-month-old girl leaves daycare covered in bite marks
MARICOPA, Ariz. (KTVK) — The parents of a 15-month-old girl said their child got hurt when bitten several times at an Arizona daycare.
Rylee Umstead said the staff at Sunrise Preschools in Maricopa told him that a child bit his daughter, Mila, when he picked her up on Thursday, April 25. Umstead said the daycare claimed it happened 20 minutes before he got there.
“I lifted up her shirt just a little bit, and it freaked me out,” said Umstead. “I froze up, just shocked.”
Rocio Enriquez, Mila’s mom, says her little girl has changed since the incident.
“[She is] not the same Mila we knew when we dropped her off that day,” said Enriquez. “She’s gotten to the point where she doesn’t want anyone to lift her shirt up. She freaks out.”
Days later, you can still see the bite marks and bruising.
“My child has eight bite marks on her back.” said Enriquez. “How did the teacher not notice it after the first bite mark? Like, you can justify one bite mark. But eight? That’s some negligence.”
Mila’s parents said they want to see surveillance footage so they can understand exactly what happened.
Dana Vela, the president of Sunrise Preschools, released this statement about the incident:
We are truly sorry for an incident that occurred at our new center in Maricopa.
Sunrise Preschools considers safety of the children in our care job one. It is our first priority. It is why we have been privileged to provide child care for more than three decades.
On Thursday April 25th a toddler was bitten multiple times by another toddler during a very short timeframe.
This should not have happened. Only four children were under the supervision of the caregiver watching the children. That caregiver has been suspended without pay pending further investigation.
This incident was heartbreaking and unacceptable and we are working diligently to ensure it does not happen again. We are reviewing all policies and procedures and will take whatever steps are needed to prevent this rare but serious matter from repeating itself.
A video of the incident confirms the child was injured by another child very quickly and while the caregiver was changing a diaper. This is not meant to excuse the incident but to explain what happened. We can and will do better and this unfortunate matter has provided some hard learned lessons.
After the child was injured first aid was administered, and the parents of the injured child were informed. The child who bit the classmate was expelled. While there is established protocol to address occasional biting behavior common to many toddlers, the severity of the incident demanded a more appropriate response.
Sunrise is following internal policies and procedures as well as licensing regulations and employment law requirements throughout the investigative process.
But we are also determined to do more. We are reviewing our procedures. We are studying what happened. Additional steps are being evaluated to do everything possible to keep this from happening again.
We apologize again and profusely when we fail because the trust you place in us is understood and appreciated which is why Sunrise has the outstanding reputation it has for decades in Arizona.
We are welcoming both questions and input from the community.
If you have questions, concerns, or input please email me at [email protected].
Our mission is to educate as well as care for children. In this instance Sunrise will use this unfortunate incident as a way to further educate ourselves with input from our parents and the community.
Thank you,
Dana Vela
President
Sunrise Preschools
Job post seeking ‘preferably Caucasian’ applicants removed
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — A northern Virginia tech staffing company has apologized after an online job posting sought “preferably Caucasian” applicants.
Cynet Systems in Sterling, Virginia, removed the post and issued an apology Sunday on Twitter. The company said the individuals involved have been fired and the job post “does not reflect our core values of inclusivity & equality.”
The help wanted ad, posted on LinkedIn and other sites, sought an account manager for a job based in Tampa, Florida, with an unspecified pharma company. A bullet point under “Job Description” described a candidate who is “Preferably Caucasian who has good technical background.”
A Cynet statement issued Monday said the company has a longstanding policy of turning down clients requesting candidates of a specific race or gender.
“We understand why some may have been upset seeing this listing, because we were too,” the company’s co-CEO, Ashwani Mayur, said. The company statement does not say how long the ad was live.
“We are also looking at measures that could help us catch offensive or outside-of-policy ads before they ever go live to ensure this can’t happen again,” Mayur said. He noted that he and the other company owner are both Indian-American, and that his company’s workforce is 60% minority.
A LinkedIn spokeswoman said the ad was taken down as soon as it was discovered and that such postings are highly unusual.
“Discrimination of any kind is against our policies and we have no tolerance for it on our platform,” the company said in a statement. “We have dedicated teams and technical measures in place to identify content that violates our policies; they took quick action to remove the job posting.”
Mayur also said his company is reviewing all of its job postings “to ensure no similar issues exist.”
Screenshots posted online show the company had posted an ad for an account manager in Herndon, Virginia, with a notation including “female candidate only.” The listing appears to have been deleted or modified; the company did not respond to a question about that job posting.
Domino’s employee accused of assaulting his coworker for spoiling new Avengers movie
(Meredith) — A man in Texas is accused of assaulting his coworker for spoiling the ending to Avengers: Endgame.
Friendswood City Police issued Justin Gregory Surface was a citation for assault by contact after another employee spoiled something about the end of Avengers: Endgame.
That’s according to a police activity report posted to Friendswood City’s official Facebook page.
Apr. 28 (6:13 p.m.) An assault was reported at the Domino’s Pizza … . Justin Gregory Surface, 33, of Friendswood, was issued a citation for Assault by Contact after another employee revealed a spoiler about the movie, “End Game.”
Alabama police charge man with soliciting 14-year-old through shopping app
BOAZ, Ala. – A Gadsden man used a popular marketplace app to offer a 14-year-old girl money for sex, Boaz police said Monday.
James Bresett, 31, is charged with electronic solicitation of a child. Boaz police arrested him just before midnight Friday when they said he tried to meet the girl.
Police said they were notified Thursday Bresett had sent messages to the girl on the mobile app Letgo, offering money in exchange for sex. The girl told her parents who called police.
Authorities said they set Bresett up, and when he showed up to meet the girl, he met police instead. Police said they took him into custody after he tried to run away.
Boaz police said Bresett was still in the Boaz City Jail Monday morning and bond had not yet been set.