Baby sitter accused of killing infant, returning him to mother without telling her he was dead
WAUSAU – The Wausau baby sitter charged with killing a 2-month-old boy in her care tried to hide the infant’s death from his mother and then went swimming at a Wausau hotel with her boyfriend and son, police say.
She dressed the baby in winter clothes and strapped him in a car seat, pretending he was alive during a trip to McDonald’s and continuing the ruse when she gave the boy back to his mom, court documents said.
Marissa Tietsort, 28, was charged Friday with first-degree intentional homicide in the baby’s death.
Family and friends of the 2-month-old boy filled the benches of a Marathon County courtroom wearing “Justice for Benson” T-shirt featuring a photo of the infant. Judge Jill Falstad issued a $500,000 cash bond and ordered that Tietsort not have any contact with children under 18 or contact with the victim’s immediate family.
Tietsort has been in jail since October on a $250,000 cash bond in a separate child abuse case. If she is ever able to post bond, Tietsort is not allowed to leave Marathon County, the judge ruled.
According to a criminal complaint, Tietsort knew the child had died while in her care but did not tell the baby’s mother when she came to pick up her son. An autopsy shows the baby died of blunt force trauma to his head, the complaint said.
The 2-month-old boy’s mother dropped off the baby and his older brother at Tietsort’s home on North Sixth Street in Wausau in the afternoon of Oct. 18. The infant was awake and Tietsort was the only adult at the home when the victim’s mother left her children there, according to the complaint.
About two hours later, the baby’s mom got a text from Tietsort letting her know that there was a story about herself on a local news outlet’s website saying she had been charged with child abuse. Tietsort told the mother she was not allowed to be in contact with children and not to tell anyone she was watching her two sons. The mother came and picked up her sons about three hours later, according to the complaint.
When the victim’s mother came to pick up her infant and older son, the infant was seated in his car seat, wearing a snow suit with a hat pulled down over his eyes. The mother told police she believed her son was sleeping, as it was past 9 p.m., according to the complaint.
The victim’s mother then brought her children to Northway Coin Laundry on West Third Street in Wausau, where she discovered her infant son was not breathing, cold to the touch and had stiff limbs. The mother immediately started doing CPR on her son while the mom’s sister called 911. When officers from the Wausau Police Department arrived on the scene around 9:45 p.m., officers observed the infant “had an ashen skin tone, his jaw was clenched and his lips were blue,” according to the complaint.
Police found Tietsort at the Plaza Hotel in Wausau at 4:15 a.m. on Oct. 19. She admitted that she had been watching the infant and his brother the day before and that the infant had died while she was watching him, according to the complaint.
Tietsort told police she did not kill the infant, but did not make any efforts to resuscitate him or get him medical help. She said she knew the baby was dead because he was cold to the touch but she did not check for a pulse, according to the complaint.
After realizing the baby had died, she dressed him in his snowsuit and hat, covered him with blankets and put him in his car seat. When Tietsort’s boyfriend returned home around 6:30 p.m., she did not tell him the infant had died. Tietsort, her boyfriend, their son and the victim’s son then went to eat at McDonald’s. Tietsort brought the dead baby with them, the complaint states.
An autopsy determined the 2-month-old boy died of “blunt force head injuries with multiple impacts to the head,” according to the complaint. The infant had at least three separate injuries to his head, which all occurred around the time of his death, forensic pathologist Robert Corliss opined. The boy also had significant injuries to his tailbone, which Corliss said was “fractured, broken off and displaced, indicating a significant amount of force was used.”
After the 2-month-old’s death, Tietsort was arrested on a child abuse charge from an incident that happened in August. According to court documents, the father of an 11-month-old girl told police that he believed Tietsort injured his child while she was baby-sitting her. Tietsort told the girl’s parents that the girl had fallen off the couch while sleeping, which resulted in injuries to the face. However, doctors told the parents that the injuries, though superficial, were not consistent with a fall from that height, court documents said.
In 2017, an infant was taken to the hospital with a bruised face and skull fracture. Tietsort told investigators that the infant’s older sister had tried to take a bottle away from Tietsort while she fed him. She told police the bottle struck the infant, which caused the injury, according to court documents. She was never charged in that incident.
In 2010, Tietsort’s boyfriend filed for temporary restraining orders after he told investigators she was abusing their two sons. Records show social services workers have removed four of Tietsort’s children from her care and were unaware that she had given birth to her fifth child. Tietsort is now in the Marathon County Jail and pregnant with her sixth child .
Tietsort is scheduled to be back in court at 1 p.m. on Jan. 18
(Photo: Courtesy of the Wausau Police Department)
‘Mama, I’m shot’: Girl who wrote essay about gun violence is killed by stray bullet in Milwaukee
(CNN) — Sandra Parks wrote an award-winning essay about the constant shootings in her hometown of Milwaukee and elsewhere, and the emotional toll they have on young people like her.
“Little children are victims of senseless gun violence,” she wrote. ” … I sit back and I have to escape from what I see and hear every day. When I do; I come to the same conclusion … we are in a state of chaos.”
Two years after she won an award for her essay, bullets shattered Sandra’s bedroom window as she watched television Monday night. The stray bullet fired from outside her home hit the 13-year-old, killing her, CNN affiliate WISN reported.
“She took it like a soldier,” her sister, Tatiana Ingram, told the affiliate. “She just walked in the room and said, ‘Mama, I’m shot’ … The bullet wasn’t even for her.”
She was killed in her home
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett described “the insanity” of gun violence in the city and nationwide.
“Sandra Parks … went into her bedroom. She never came out alive,” Barrett said at a news conference. “Tragically, her death was caused by someone who just decided they were going to shoot bullets into her house and she’s dead.”
Prosecutors charged two men in the shooting death Wednesday, including one who was found hiding in a closet after the incident, the affiliate reported. It’s unclear if the home was targeted.
‘My baby was not violent’
Parks, who was in eighth grade at Keefe Avenue School, wrote the essay in 2016, when she was in sixth grade. The essay won third place in the contest.
“Our first truth is that we must start caring about each other,” she wrote. “We need to be empathetic and try to walk in each other’s shoes. … We shall overcome, when we love ourselves and the people around us. Then, we become our brothers keeper.”
Dozens of people gathered for a vigil outside Sandra’s home Tuesday night. They held up a plaque with her essay on it as they reflected on her calls against violence.
Her mother, Bernice Parks, said her daughter constantly spoke out against violence. “My baby was not violent. My baby did not like violence,” she said.
During an appearance on Wisconsin Public Radio last year, Sandra said she picked the topic of violence for her essay because of the constant news on shootings.
“All you hear about is somebody dying or somebody getting shot and people do not just think about whose father or son or granddaughter or grandson who it was that was just killed,” she said.
Terminally ill patients now allowed to take their own lives with prescription drugs in Hawaii
(Meredith/AP) – Hawaii has become the sixth state, along with Washington D.C., to allow terminally ill patients to obtain life-ending medication.
Under the Our Care, Our Choice Act, adults with less than six months to live can request an aid-in-dying prescription. The law, which went into effect Jan. 1, requires that two health care providers confirm a patient’s diagnosis, prognosis and ability to make decisions about the prescription.
Still, few doctors and pharmacies are willing to prescribe and dispense the life-ending medications.
Hawaii Pacific Health and The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu said their pharmacies will not fill the prescriptions and hospitalized patients will not be able to take the lethal drugs on their campuses, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Tuesday.
“There are a number of health care providers, nurses and others who are really uncomfortable about this, so asking anybody to participate as a patient ends their life is a really tough thing,” said Melinda Ashton, chief quality officer for Hawaii Pacific Health, one of the state’s largest health care providers.
The state Department of Health projects that 40 to 70 patients will seek medical aid in dying this year. Care providers and the state Health Department will offer training sessions to medical personnel on how to handle the requests for life-ending medication.
Police confront 2 men, 1 white, 1 black: Only 1 is shot
MILWAUKEE (AP) — In the course of 15 months and in the space of one city block, Milwaukee police twice encountered two suspects they believed were armed.
One was black; one was white.
One was in fact unarmed; one had a gun.
One was shot; one was not.
That the black man was the one who was shot — though he had no weapon — might come as little surprise at a time when police shootings involving black men seem commonplace nationally.
Milwaukee has been an epicenter. In 2014, Dontre Hamilton , a mentally ill man, was shot 14 times by police. In August 2016, 23-year-old Sylville Smith was killed by an officer . After the first, the city equipped police with bodycams; after the second, there were riots.
The shooting of 19-year-old Jerry Smith Jr. in 2017 did not set off similar convulsions. And the blood-free resolution of the standoff involving 20-year-old Brandon Baker this past November drew little notice. But taken together, they prompt a difficult and unanswerable question:
If their races were reversed — if Smith were white, and Baker were black — would Baker have been the one who was left bleeding and writhing in pain?
———
In the darkness on Nov. 6, Election Day, Baker took to the roof of his apartment building and started firing guns. His neighbors, alarmed, called police.
Until then, his criminal record consisted of minor traffic violations, pot possession, and carrying a concealed weapon in September.
He’d created his Twitter account a few days prior and started writing about running for governor, promising money for underfunded schools, pledging to legalize marijuana. He would pardon all felons so they could regain their right to bear arms.
Just after 5 a.m., two police officers sent to the scene encountered Baker on Michigan Avenue, in front of the entrance to the building.
He refused to drop the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle he was holding. He admitted that he had fired the shots earlier, and said he had posted a video of it on Twitter. He told the officers he was running for governor, that he was going to the polls to “air it out,” that he was going to start a militia. He had a right to bear arms, he said.
As they talked, other officers approached him quietly from behind, and tackled him.
“I’m not moving, don’t shoot me!” Baker screamed in the video he was broadcasting, which WISN-TV obtained before its removal from Twitter.
Not a shot was fired.
In addition to the rifle he was holding, Baker had three loaded handguns — one in his backpack, another in his waistband, and a third in his jacket, prosecutors said. In his apartment, they said officers found 232 grams of THC, the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana; 14 stamps saturated with LSD; and 73 jars of what were believed to be psilocybin mushrooms.
Baker faces numerous charges, including recklessly endangering safety and “maintaining a drug trafficking place.” His public defender, who did not respond to requests to comment, has ordered a second doctor’s evaluation to determine whether he’s competent to stand trial.
———
On Aug. 31, 2017, officers Melvin Finkley and Adam Stahl were on patrol when they received a call about a man with a gun in the predominantly black neighborhood west of downtown Milwaukee. Finkley is black; Stahl is white.
It was around 1 p.m. when they got to the parking garage at North 29th Street and West Wisconsin Avenue. Jerry Smith was on the roof.
That afternoon, he and a friend had gone to a house in the neighborhood to confront someone with whom Smith had a problem. Police later said Smith and his friend were looking for a fight, and after a brawl ensued with several others, Smith left to get a gun. When an officer approached him to ask about the fight, he ran away and took to the roof.
A handful of officers below were yelling commands, telling him to put his hands up because they had him surrounded.
Two officers stood on the stairs leading up to the garage’s roof. When Finkley and Stahl approached, Finkley asked: “He got the gun in his hand?”
“He doesn’t have a gun in his hand, but he was hiding behind the AC unit,” an officer responded.
The tip that Smith had a gun came from the people he’d been fighting.
Finkley and Stahl climbed to the roof with their guns trained on Smith and joined the chorus of officers yelling commands. Smith briefly extended his arms just above his waist to show his empty hands, palms out, then began crouching slowly to the ground. That’s when the two officers fired three shots, with one bullet grazing Smith’s head and the others striking his abdomen.
“I’m going to die!” Smith wailed in agony, on the ground. “I didn’t do nothing.”
The encounter lasted about 10 seconds. No gun was found.
———
Smith survived, but his right leg is partially paralyzed and he needs a cane to walk. He wasn’t charged with a crime and has a pending federal lawsuit against the police, alleging officers acted “with deliberate indifference.”4 Signs Your Heart Is Quietly Failing YouHow To Avoid A Heart Attack (Do This For 7 Seconds Twice A Day)Ad By PhysioTru See More
“I had my hands up. It’s on them,” Smith said at a recent news conference.
“Everybody scared of the police, every black man that’s from around” the neighborhood where the shooting occurred, he said.
But the Milwaukee district attorney’s office reviewed Smith’s shooting and concluded the officers’ actions were justified because they “reasonably believed” Smith was armed, based on information from dispatch, and they thought he might reach for a gun behind the air conditioning unit.
Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales said people need to consider “the totality of the circumstances” when an officer is involved in a shooting. He said officers are under stress and taking in a lot of information — from what they are told while responding to a call to their own observations — and they have to make sense of it all in seconds.
“I’ve been involved in these things. And I can tell you, in the incidents I’ve been involved in more than once, when it happened, my body just did it. … There are things that are instinctual after you do it over and over again,” Morales said, at a Dec. 6 meeting of the Milwaukee Common Council.
This shooting was recorded in its entirety by Stahl’s body camera. Experts who viewed the video at the request of The Associated Press were not in agreement on what it revealed, though they acknowledged that there was little in it that justified the shooting.
Jeff Noble, an officer for 30 years who’s now a law enforcement consultant, said he saw no “immediate threat” posed by Smith but echoed Morales’ wariness of criticizing the officers’ reactions, if only because the camera did not capture everything the officers saw: “I have the luxury of sitting here in my office watching this and playing it back multiple times.”
Kevin Cokley, a psychology professor and director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin, was unequivocal: “This was not a justified shooting.”
Smith didn’t exactly follow the officers’ commands to keep his hands up, Cokley said, but he also didn’t make a move toward his pocket or waistband and police already had a tactical advantage with their guns pointed at him.
Cokley, who has written op-eds about police shootings of unarmed black men, said, “Reactions based on fear within the context of policing are often driven by implicit bias. Black males are viewed as more dangerous, even in instances when they pose no danger.”
———
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett declined to comment on Smith’s shooting because there’s pending litigation, but in a statement he cautioned against comparing the Smith and Baker cases.
“Comparing two separate incidents is inevitably problematic because circumstances police officers face and observations they make are different in every situation,” he said.
Others, though, are troubled by two encounters with very different outcomes.
Alderman Khalif Rainey, who is black, contrasted Smith’s shooting with how police apprehended Baker “without having to harm him at all.”
Rainey said he’s stopped believing he’ll never find himself in a situation like Smith’s.
“It’s real serious. At one point in time I thought, ‘Not me,'” he said. “But now it’s like, something goes wrong, you make the wrong move, you make the wrong gesture … and now I’m shot. Now I’m paralyzed. Now I’m dead.”
Man held 14-year-old in ‘sexual servitude,’ arrest warrant says
RALEIGH, North Carolina (Meredith) — A North Carolina man is facing child prostitution and human trafficking charges after he allegedly held a 14-year-old in “sexual servitude,” according to an arrest warrant.
Kevin Harold Rudolph, 23, was arrested Friday at an apartment complex in Raleigh, according to records obtained by First Coast News.
Records show Rudolph was charged with felony human trafficking of a child victim, felony sexual servitude of a child victim and felony promotion of prostitution for profits.
First Coast News reports the warrant also said Rudolph had made “profits from prostitution by any means where the prostitute is a minor at the time of the offense. The minor was 14-years-old at the time of the offense.”
Booking and bond information for Rudolph was not immediately available.
Video of Drake kissing 17-year-old girl on stage surfaces
Drake is under fire as a video making the rounds on social media purportedly shows him kissing a girl during one of his performances after she told him she was 17 years old.
In the video, which was tweeted out early Thursday morning, the “In My Feelings” rapper is seen dancing and flirting with a fan on stage.
“I told you I like your hair, right? What is this, like Herbal Essence?” the 32-year-old said before kissing her neck and wrapping his arms around her from behind.
“Ya’ll know I get carried away, I get in trouble for s–t,” he tells the crowd in the video posted by Twitter user @thespookgod and eventually unearthed by the Daily Beast.
He is then heard asking the young fan, “How old are you?” and she replied that she was 17.
When the crowd erupted, a shocked Drake said, “I can’t go to jail yet! Why you gotta look like that? [You’re] thick.”
It is not clear when or where the video was shot.
Since the footage was posted the same night the “Surviving R. Kelly” documentary aired, many Twitter users were quick to make a correlation to Drake’s relationship with 18-year-old model Bella Harris and friendship with 14-year-old actress Millie Bobby Brown.
The video concludes with the rapper saying he didn’t know “if I should feel guilty or not, but I had fun. I like the way your breasts feel against my chest,” he continued, adding, “I just want to thank you.”
He then proceeds to kiss the girl on both of her cheeks, her forehead and then on her lips.
A rep for the rapper didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Woman claims husband wants to name baby girl after his ex-lover, sparking outrage on Reddit
One pregnant woman recently took to Reddit to voice her alleged baby-naming woes, as her husband reportedly – and shockingly – wants to name their new daughter after his ex-girlfriend. The exchange, which has since gone viral, has reportedly left the woman feeling broken, while outraged Redditors urge her to seek a divorce.
Earlier this week, Redditor @Throwaway01928351 took to the social platform to air her supposed troubles in a post that has since sparked over 15,000 upvotes.C
“Divorce on table because husband and I can’t agree on baby’s name,” she begins. Detailing that she is 23 years old and that her husband is 24, the woman reveals that they’ve been a couple for several years and that she is now seven months pregnant with a little girl.
Logically, she claims the two have begun discussing names for the baby, prompting the drama to unfold.
“Ever since we found out its gonna be a girl my husband wants to name it like his exes name,” the author writes. “Its not any ex but the one he dated for long period of time and loved the most.
“In the beginning of our relationship we had [many] problems because of her but she moved away so the problems went away. He really loved her and he never hid that from me but I thought it was over once she moved away,” she continues. “Now he made it clear that he wants the baby to have that name and I can name the second child. When I asked him why does he want that name so badly he said just because he and his ex didn’t work out doesn’t mean he doesn’t want something to keep reminding him of her.
“He doesn’t understand how much its affecting me and keeps saying its just the hormones. Is he still in love with the ex or its normal that he wants to name OUR child like that [?] Thank you!” the woman concludes. The question evidently struck a nerve with many stunned Redditors, sparking more than 3,000 comments on the post.
“I’m more concerned about his lack of respect for you as his partner, his number one, his wife. You might try relationship counseling but I suspect his disrespect extends beyond the baby naming issue,” one commenter exclaimed.
“I hope you get out of this disrespectful marriage before you start believing this is all you’re worth,” another agreed.
“Put your foot down hard and be prepared to go it on your own if you have to. He is not respecting you or his child, he wants to name your daughter after a woman he used to have sex with! She’s going to mortified about that one day,” another agreed.F
Likewise, many women chimed in to similarly lament being (purportedly) named after their own father’s former lovers or girlfriends.
“I’m a girl who was named after my dad’s lover (mom had no idea) and I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE my name,” one user confessed. “He just casually told me on one occasion. In general, the name is beautiful but when I think about the reason why was I named like that it makes me puke. So for the love of God don’t ever name your child by your ex-partner, it will bring a bitter taste to your child’s mouth (pondering of renaming myself in the future, yes it’s that dreadful for me).”
“My dad named me after his ex before my mother. My name makes me sick to my stomach still at 33….” another said.
For better or worse, as the original poster reportedly has two months until her due date, hopefully she and her partner will be able to settle on a less contentious moniker.
A family’s Whirlpool refrigerator exploded inside their home
West Palm Beach, FL (WFTS/CNN) — A Florida family is grateful to be alive after they say their refrigerator exploded inside their home Saturday morning.
The force was so powerful it caused significant damage in several rooms. Luckily, neighbor Joshua Perez heard the explosion and ran inside to help the family get out safely.
“I was in my room, I was asleep and I just heard the bang,” Mark Ligondie said.
Ligondie quickly ran from his bedroom to the kitchen where moments before his parents’ refrigerator in the West Palm Beach, Florida home exploded.
“There were fumes coming everywhere,” Ligondie said.
He says the odor was so strong and that it made his eyes sting.
“The fridge exploded and if you look at this angle right here it expanded and expanded so much it bent the metal of the stove,” Ligondie said.
The family’s 4-month-old Whirlpool refrigerator was in pieces, scattered throughout the kitchen and surrounding rooms.
Their next door neighbor, Perez, rushed over to help after hearing the loud bang and smoke alarm.
“Immediately I just see the smoke,” Perez said.
Luckily, no one was hurt. The fire department showed up and cleared the home.
“And for them to say we’ve never seen this, this is something we have never seen in our life is kind of alarming,” Perez said.
Perez believes this incident is a wake-up call for all homeowners.
“I’ve actually scheduled an appointment already because of how nervous this has made me just for general maintenance and I think that’s something everyone should do,“ Perez said.
WPTV reached out to Whirlpool for comment. We are still waiting to hear back.
Meanwhile, there’s now cracks in the family’s ceiling and nearby walls, damage to the master bedroom door and a bedroom window is missing.
“It’s surreal,” Ligondie said.
Woman, 28, violently attacks parents for not taking her to Outback Steakhouse
LAKE WORTH, Florida (Meredith) — A Florida woman has been arrested for attacking her parents because they refused to take her to an Outback Steakhouse for dinner Wednesday, police said.
According to WPBF, 28-year-old Deana Seltzer is charged with one count of simple battery domestic, one count of battery of a person 65 or older and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Police responded to the home Wednesday night for reports of an armed domestic disturbance.
Police told WPBF that inside the house, officers found a 12-inch decorative knife on the kitchen counter and a glass dining room table turned over with broken glass shattered throughout the area.
Seltzer’s mother told police that her daughter asked to go to Outback Steakhouse and she told her no. Seltzer then allegedly became angry and began punching her mother. Seltzer’s father intervened and Seltzer allegedly also attacked him, leaving him with multiple scratches on his face and upper body.
Seltzer then allegedly flipped over the glass table and tore up other furniture. Police said Seltzer then grabbed the large knife and charged toward her parents, yelling “I’m going to kill you.”
The father was able to wrestle the knife away from Seltzer.
According to CW34, Seltzer is out of jail on bond. A judge ordered her to undergo a mental health evaluation upon her release from jail. She was also ordered to stay away from drugs, alcohol and weapons. It is unknown if mental health, drugs or alcohol played a part in Seltzer’s attack on her parents.
Photo credit: Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office
Woman attacked by dog, then bitten by owner
CASTRO VALLEY, Calif. – Police in Northern California are looking for a woman they say bit a jogger after the victim pepper-sprayed the suspect’s dog to fend off an attack at a park in Castro Valley on Thursday, officials said.
The unusual assault took place about 10:30 a.m. at Anthony Chabot Regional Park, the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department said in a written statement.
A woman was jogging through the park when she was attacked by a dog, police said. The jogger used pepper spray to defend herself against the animal.
The owner of the dog approached the jogger a short time later.
“The assailant tackled and punched the victim multiple times,” according to a statement obtained by KTLA. “As the victim attempted to push her assailant off of her, she was bitten on her forearm by the female, causing significant wounds.”
Police have released a photo of the suspect, taken from behind, and her dog in hopes of generating leads.
She was described as a mixed race white and Asian woman between 18 and 25 years old, about 5 feet 6 inches tall, of thin build, with blonde or auburn-colored hair.
The suspect had two dogs with her. One appeared to be a Rottweiler mix, while the other was a medium to large yellow or tan-colored dog.
Anyone with information can reach the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department at 510-881-1833.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/01/05/woman-attacked-by-dog-then-bitten-by-owner/
(Credit: East Bay Regional Park District Police Department)