Mother and son arrested at Walmart after performing karate, getting nude
(Meredith) – A 25-year-old man and his 46-year-old mother were arrested at a Walmart in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, after she was allegedly performing karate while he allegedly stripped nude inside the store.
According to Gray News, Benny Vann, 25, and Lisa Smith, 46, were entering the store with Smith’s dog, Bo. She allegedly brought the dog in without a leash and the dog began running around the store, police said.
While the dog ran around the store, Smith was allegedly tearing apart displays and was asked by Walmart staff to leave. She complied, but then went out into the parking lot to perform karate, the Eau Claire Police Department said on a post on its Facebook page.
While she was doing that, Vann allegedly took off all his clothes and exposed himself to other shoppers. However, police said he was trying to cover himself by putting on clothes that were on display.
Officers arrived at the scene and arrested Smith, but not before she allegedly fought officers by kicking the windows of the patrol car. Police said they attempted to arrested Vann as well, but he didn’t comply, even going so far as to try to run over an officer while riding a scooter, Gray News reported.
Police eventually arrested Vann as well. Meanwhile, Bo was found holding a box of Jiffy cornbread in his mouth.
Vann has been charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, disorderly conduct and retail theft. Smith was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and misdemeanor bail jumping.
Man charged with shooting wife’s lover in the shower
A Texas man allegedly shot and killed his employee in the shower — after he found out that the worker had been having an affair with his wife, according to police and a new report.
Edwin Figueroa, 23, has been charged with murder in connection with the slaying of Rafael Nunez Serrano, 22, at the victim’s southwest Houston apartment around 10:20 p.m. Wednesday, police said.
An enraged Figueroa bought a pistol, did cocaine and downed some beer before heading to Serrano’s house — where he shot him in the shower, local station ABC 13 reported. Serrano was wounded but stumbled out into the apartment complex’s parking lot, prompting someone to call 911, according to the report.
As paramedics rushed him to the hospital, Serrano declared that he had been shot by his “boss,” police said. He died in surgery, ABC 13 reported.
Homicide investigators searching the area learned that Houston police officers had detained Figueroa. He was interviewed by detectives and confessed to shooting Serrano, whom he called a friend of about four years, according to police.
Figueroa had previously beaten up Serrano in a fight over the affair, ABC 13 reported.
During his court appearance, Figueroa’s bond was set at $100,000, according to the station. He’s set to return to court Monday.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/12/man-charged-with-shooting-wifes-lover-in-the-shower/
Man arrested after allegedly throwing child from third floor Mall of America balcony
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – A 5-year-old child suffered significant injuries Friday after witnesses say a man either threw or pushed the child from the third floor of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, according to local police.
Bloomington Chief of Police Jeff Potts told reporters Friday that police were called to the Mall of America at 10:17 a.m. local time, and initial information suggested a child had fallen from the third level of the mall’s interior to the first level.
Additional information from witnesses indicated the 5-year-old might have been pushed or thrown, Potts said.
Police officers gave the child first aid along with witnesses, Potts said.
“The child did suffer significant injuries,” he said. “The child has been transported to the hospital and has been receiving care.”
According to Potts, witnesses told police the person suspected of pushing or throwing the child “took off running immediately after the incident.” The suspect, a 24-year-old man was soon found inside the mall and was taken into custody.
He’s currently at the Bloomington Police Department, Potts said, and authorities don’t believe there is any further threat to the public.
“At this time, we do not believe that there is a relationship between the child or the family of the child,” Potts said, emphasizing that police believe this to be an “isolated incident.”
The area where the fall occurred has been closed.
Wisconsin teacher on leave for reportedly asking African American students to research ‘enslaved children’ games
SHOREWOOD, Wis. — A Shorewood School District teacher is under investigation for allegedly telling African-American students to “research games that had been played by enslaved children.”
A letter was sent home Thursday telling parents and guardians of the incident that happened at Shorewood Intermediate School during a seventh grade physical education class.
The letter reads in part:
“We take these allegations extremely serious. Throughout this situation, student safety and well-being have been our top priority. Our school counselor, school psychologist, Dean of Students, and the SIS principal have been providing support to the students who were directly involved in the incident. We wanted to make you aware of this development, and to reiterate that our students and families remain our highest priority.”
Shorewood School District officials said the administration became aware of the concerns April 3, and immediately launched an investigation.
The teacher has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
Read the full letter sent home to parents and guardians below:
“During a recent seventh grade Physical Education class at Shorewood Intermediate School, a teacher shared an activity with students on the subject of games from around the world. After the class on April 1, allegations were made that the teacher had suggested to African American students in the class that they research games that had been played by enslaved children. The administration became aware of these concerns on April 3. We immediately launched an internal investigation into the matter. We have placed the teacher on leave, pending the findings of the investigation.
We take these allegations extremely serious. Throughout this situation, student safety and well-being have been our top priority. Our school counselor, school psychologist, Dean of Students, and the SIS principal have been providing support to the students who were directly involved in the incident. We wanted to make you aware of this development, and to reiterate that our students and families remain our highest priority.
We are committed to providing an environment of inclusion in our schools. We will continue to assess the situation and ensure that we provide ongoing support to our students as we move forward. If your student has any concerns regarding this situation, please encourage them to contact their school administrators or school counselor.”
Botched microblading procedure leaves Missouri woman with ‘crazy brows’
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A warning to anyone considering microblading: make sure the person touching your eyebrows knows what they’re doing.
Jami Ledbetter was born without eyebrows, so she was excited when her daughters bought her a Groupon to have them microbladed in November. However, that excitement soon turned to horror when she looked in the mirror.
“I would never wish this on my worst enemy,” the 42-year-old told WDAF. “What it’s done to my self-confidence, it’s been hard.”
The $250 Groupon was for services by a woman who claimed she was certified in microblading, a beauty technique that involves tattooing someone’s eyebrows on with tiny needles or a small blade.
Ledbetter ended up with botched eyebrows.
“I was devastated,” Ledbetter said. “I was even dating a guy, and he stopped dating me at that point.”
The mom of three said she was so embarrassed she only went to work, the grocery and back home. She tried covering her messed up brows with makeup. That didn’t work. She went to another woman who told her she could “camouflage” her brows, but after six weeks they appeared to be getting worse.
“It was pretty painful,” Ledbetter said. “I tried to have a good attitude, but it burned a lot. It kind of felt bruised.”
Someone eventually referred her to Kara Gutierrez, a licensed and insured tattoo artist who owns Spot On Beauty in Lee’s Summit, Kansas.
“It took everything in me to hold back tears because this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” Gutierrez said.
The small business owner has been in the beauty industry since 2011. She has specialized in permanent cosmetics for three of those years, including tattoo removal.
“Within 24 hours of a botched job, I can remove the bad brow,” Gutierrez said.
Her first session with Ledbetter was in February. She’s removing her fumbled eyebrows with a product known as Li-ft. She said it doesn’t involve a laser but rather is a pigment lightening solution that’s tattooed into the bad ink, which has to be removed in eight-week intervals.
“You want scabs so it will pull out that pigment,” Gutierrez said. “It’s very unpredictable to how much you can remove, but it works.”
She worries more and more women will end up in situations like Ledbetter’s because microblading isn’t regulated in the state of Missouri. The practice is considered “semi-permanent” under the law.
“Nobody’s governing this,” Gutierrez said. “No one is saying, ‘This is the right way. This is the wrong way.’”
The state’s Office of Tattooing, Body Piercing & Branding has a disclaimer on its website about microblading that explains that “although the Office recognizes the potential for public safety issues, the Office has not been given specific statutory authority to regulate this practice.”
The state of Kansas does have regulations in place for permanent makeup technicians. Those seeking a license are required to have 1,200 hours of training, at least 50 completed procedures that can be verified and an apprenticeship – among other qualifications, according to the Kansas Board of Cosmetology.
“This is something that is permanent on your face,” Gutierrez said. “You have to make sure your artist knows what they’re doing.”
Missouri state Rep. Nate Tate understands the risks and, at the request of one his constituents, is sponsoring House Bill 71.
“I wanted to see what we could do to try to make the industry safer because it is becoming a very popular industry here lately,” Tate said.
It’s the same version of House Bill 877, filed in 2017, and would change the definition of a tattoo to include new cosmetic procedures like microblading to ensure more scrutiny.
“I’m not terribly in favor of more regulation when it comes to businesses, but in this particular situation whenever you’re actually punctuating the skin, we need to have some more training,” Tate said.
Currently, people wanting to practice microblading need a certificate, which can be obtained in a matter of days. Tate said some of that training doesn’t always include education regarding sanitation and blood-borne pathogens.
“The money is good [in microblading],” Tate said. “You just take the class, pay your $2,500, and you can perform it. I think as we start seeing the propagation of these microblading shops popping up, it’s going to become more of an issue.”
Gutierrez is concerned that Tate’s bill hasn’t gone far in the legislative process, and there’s little optimism that it will seriously be considered before the end of the session.
“Until a senator’s daughter or someone who can pass a bill gets messed up, this will continue happening,” Gutierrez said.
She cautioned for people wanting to undergo microblading to do their research.
“A certification is just a fancy piece of paper saying [someone] learned how to do this,” she added. “It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re
an expert. “Don’t just look into the person that’s doing it. Look into their instructor.”
Ledbetter shared the same attitude but hopes her story serves as a warning to those considering microblading.
“If I would have known it was going to turnout like this, I probably would’ve never done it at all,” she said.
The woman who botched Ledbetter’s brows is no longer in business.
Ledbetter will likely have to see Gutierrez two or three more times before her bad brows are completely gone. The full removal procedure will cost her at least $1,000.
Man allegedly killed girlfriend for staying out overnight
The Bronx man who walked into a local police precinct station house and confessed to killing his girlfriend was angry because she had stayed out overnight, police sources told The Post Thursday.
Angel Esteban Felix Rodriguez, 24, strolled into the 48th Precinct station house with an interpreter around 6 p.m. Wednesday and admitted to officers that he killed Indira Ramirez-Rivera, 21, two days prior, police and sources said.
Rodriguez gave his apartment keys to cops, who went to the couple’s Nelson Avenue basement apartment and found her lifeless body in a bedroom, sources said.
Rivera was discovered strangled to death face-up on a bed, the sources said.
Rodriquez was later charged with murder and manslaughter for the slaying. Police have not released a motive.
Shocked neighbors told The Post on Thursday the couple had a hot-and-cold relationship, and that Rivera had moved out of the apartment in the past before moving back in.
“They seemed lovable but then they argued and it was heated,” neighbor Smily Rodriguez, who has no relation to the suspect, told the Post.
Rodriguez, 35, was home when police flooded the scene Wednesday night, and said she knew things were bad when she saw police head downstairs with their rubber gloves on.
“I heard one EMT say: ‘It looked like the devil was in there,’” she said.
Neighbors said Rivera had just returned from the Dominican Republic, where she had plastic surgery.
“She wasn’t able to move around that well,” said 18-year-old Andy Ramirez.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/11/man-allegedly-killed-girlfriend-for-staying-out-overnight/
Amazon reportedly employs thousands of people to listen to your Alexa conversations
Not only is Alexa listening when you speak to an Echo smart speaker, an Amazon employee is potentially listening, too.
Amazon employs a global team that transcribes the voice commands and feeds them back into the software to help improve Alexa’s grasp of human speech so it can respond more efficiently in the future, Bloomberg reports.
Amazon reportedly employs thousands of full-time workers and contractors in several countries, including the United States, Costa Rica and Romania, to listen to as many as 1,000 audio clips in shifts that last up to nine hours. The audio clips they listen to were described as “mundane” and even sometimes “possibly criminal,” including listening to a potential sexual assault.
In a response to the story, Amazon confirmed CNN Business that it hires people to listen to what customers say to Alexa. But Amazon said it takes “security and privacy of our customers’ personal information seriously.” The company said it only annotates an “extremely small number of interactions from a random set of customers.”
The report said Amazon doesn’t “explicitly” tell Alexa users that it employs people to listen to the recordings. Amazon said in its frequently asked question section that it uses “requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems.”
People can opt out of Amazon using their voice recordings to improve the software in the privacy settings section of the Alexa app.
Bloomberg said that Alexa auditors don’t have access to the customers’ full name or address, but do have the device’s serial number and the Amazon account number associated with the device.
“Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNN Business. “While all information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption, and audits of our control environment to protect it, customers can always delete their utterances at any time.”
Amazon previously has been embroiled in controversy for privacy concerns regarding Alexa. Last year, an Echo user said the smart speaker had recorded a conversation without them knowing and sent the audio file to an Amazon employee in Seattle. Amazon confirmed the error and said the device’s always-listening microphones misheard a series of words and mistakenly sent a voice message.
Woman sets boyfriend’s NJ home ablaze after threesome because boyfriend sent her home and kept other woman in the house
WOODBURY, N.J. — Authorities say a woman set fire to her boyfriend’s home several hours after they had a consensual sexual encounter there with another woman.
Police in Woodbury, New Jersey, say Tasia Young told them she had been “going through a lot” and was angry her boyfriend had her take a cab home after the encounter while the other woman remained at the home.
No injuries were reported in Sunday night’s fire. But Young’s boyfriend and six other people who live in nearby apartments were displaced.
Authorities say the 33-year-old Woodbury woman came to police headquarters Tuesday and confessed to setting the fire.
Young is charged with arson, aggravated assault, criminal mischief and endangerment. Police didn’t know if she attorney to speak for her, and a phone listing couldn’t be found.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/04/11/police-woman-sets-boyfriends-nj-home-ablaze-after-threesome/
Woman punched infant son because baby wouldn’t stop crying
ROGERS, Ark. — Police arrested an Arkansas woman for allegedly punching her infant in the face because he wouldn’t stop crying.
Britney Kierin Joe, 21, of Rogers, was arrested Sunday and faces two counts of second-degree domestic battery.
Joe’s mother said her daughter told her she punched the 3-month-old boy because he wouldn’t stop crying, according to an affidavit.
Her mother said Joe didn’t want her to call police because she feared being arrested. However, Joe denied hitting the boy and said she found him with the bruise around his eye, according to the report.
Another person who was with Joe said she also hit a 2-year-old girl on the head with a cellphone cord and then pushed her from behind.
The boy was treated at Arkansas Children’s Hospital Northwest, where police noticed some darkening and discoloration forming around the top of his eye, according to the report.
Joe was being held Thursday at the Benton County Jail on a $7,500 bond. She has a hearing set for May 13 in Benton County Circuit Court.
Video shows NY daycare worker allegedly kicking toddler who wouldn’t nap
NEW YORK (WPIX/CNN) – A daycare worker from New York is facing assault charges after allegedly kicking a cranky 2-year-old child, who suffered a bruised leg.
The victim was in 36-year-old Valeriaya Buonadonna’s care Tuesday afternoon in a classroom inside the Znayka Day Care Center when the toddler’s mother says her son refused to take a nap.
Police say video of the incident shows Buonadonna throwing the boy to the ground then hitting him.
“He wouldn’t listen, so she grabbed him, basically threw him on the floor and kicked him,” said the boy’s mother, who did not want to be identified.
A witness told the toddler’s mother about the incident, which led to Buonadonna’s arrest.
“I was so angry there was nothing I could do. She was in the classroom with kids,” the victim’s mother said. “It’s just sad. I know you see this all the time, but I would never think it would happen to my child.”
The boy suffered pain and bruising to his leg, according to his mother, who plans to take him to a doctor.
The toddler’s mother says, though she is satisfied with the investigation, officials at the daycare have not said anything to her.
“When I walked in there, they didn’t have much to say. They didn’t apologize – nothing,” she said.
City records show the daycare has an up-to-date license. It was last inspected in August 2018, at which time no violations were found.
The 2-year-old’s mother says she thought it was a safe place.
The New York City Administration for Children’s Services is investigating the case alongside police.
“Our top priority is protecting the safety and well-being of all children in New York City,” said Chanal Caraway, a spokesperson for the administration.