Woman accused of manslaughter forcefully held crying baby, hoping he would sleep
A Lebanon woman accused of manslaughter told authorities that she forcefully pressed a screaming and crying 1-year-old’s head into her chest and rocked him back and forth, patting his butt, in an attempt to get him to sleep, according to court paperwork.
Amber Marie Scott, 20, added that she held him hard for five minutes, long enough that her left wrist was sore for the next few hours, according to a probable cause affidavit in the case.
“She could hear (the boy) making muffled whining noises into her chest. She told us (the boy) stopped making noises and that she noticed that his resistance became subtle and then she felt him go limp very quickly after,” wrote a Lebanon Police Department detective.
“She told us that she was really tired from lack of sleep and wanted to go back to bed herself,” the PC affidavit states.
The boy, Asher Carter, had turned 1 year old on Feb. 17. He was hospitalized in cardiac arrest on Feb. 19 and police learned he had been declared brain dead on Feb. 25.
Scott was arrested on Feb. 27 and charged with first-degree manslaughter in Linn County Circuit Court on Thursday.
Judge Michael Wynhausen set her bail at $100,000, and scheduled the next hearing in the case for March 11.
An emergency room nurse at Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, where Asher Carter was initially brought for medical help, notified authorities about the case.
Staff members told police that they noticed small red or purple spots around his eyes, left ear, and the left side of his neck.
Scott was living in the same household as Asher Carter and his parents in the 500 block of East Grant Street. Her boyfriend is the brother of Asher Carter’s mother.
When Asher Carter’s father was leaving for an appointment in Albany at approximately 7:30 a.m. on Feb. 19, he handed his son to Scott, who was supposed to be watching him for the day, according to the PC affidavit.
She told police that she forcefully held the boy for approximately five minutes. Scott realized while she was still holding his head that he was not breathing, the PC affidavit states.
She carried him upstairs in the home to his bed where she laid him on his back and knelt over him, according to the PC affidavit.
“She could not remember exactly how long. She told us she was still panicking and did not know what to do,” the Lebanon detective wrote.
She brought him downstairs, laid him on the couch and decided to attempt to perform CPR on the boy. After performing a few chest compressions, she called for her boyfriend for help, and he called 9-1-1, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Man admits killing Airbnb guest in Australia over $149 bill
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A man admitted in an Australian court on Monday that he choked an Airbnb guest to death over an unpaid 210 Australian dollar ($149) bill.
Jason Colton pleaded not guilty to murder in the Victoria state Supreme Court but admitted to manslaughter in Ramis Jonuzi’s death in 2017.
Colton would face a possible life sentence if a jury convicts him of murder. He would face up to 20 years in prison if the jury accepts the death was manslaughter.
Prosecutors told the jury that Colton knew his actions were likely to kill or seriously injure Jonuzi.
Jonuzi had been subletting a room in a Melbourne home from Colton, who was also a tenant.
Jonuzi first rented the room for three nights on Airbnb, but agreed to stay another week for AU$210.
But when the week was up and the rent wasn’t paid, Colton threw Jonuzi against a wall, choked him with his forearm and punched him unconscious, prosecutor Mark Gibson told the jury.
Colton also forced Jonuzi to show that he had less than AU$10 in his bank account.
Gibson said Colton choked or compressed Jonuzi’s neck to prevent him from breathing.
Colton told police he only wanted to subdue Jonuzi so he would pass out.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
Colorado cops detain black man at gunpoint for picking up trash: ‘This is my house — I live here’
Police detained a black Colorado man who was picking up trash outside his own home.
A Boulder police officer questioned the man after spotting him Friday morning picking up trash with a clamper in a partially enclosed patio behind a “private property” sign, and he asked whether the man was authorized to be there, reported The Daily Camera.
The man, whose identity has not been released, told the officer he lived and worked in the building, and presented his school identification card, but the officer detained him for further investigation and called for additional assistance, saying the man was uncooperative.
A roommate began recording the encounter, and video posted online shows the man trying to explain that he lives in the building and did not have a weapon.
“You’re on my property with a gun in your hand, threatening to shoot me, because I’m picking up trash,” the man says. “I don’t have a weapon! This is a bucket, this is a clamp.”
“I’m not sitting down and you can’t make me,” the man says as additional officers arrive. “This is my property, this is my house — I live here.”
The man counts out eight officers at the scene, and the first officer holsters his firearm after the man lays down his clamp device.
Police have launched an internal investigation of the incident.
via: https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/colorado-cops-detain-black-man-gunpoint-picking-trash-house-live/
Long Island man accused of gouging out grandmother’s eyes
SAYVILLE, N.Y. — A grandmother was rendered blind after her grandson allegedly attacked her and gouged her eyes out during a dispute last month at their Long Island home
The dispute began around 7:45 p.m. on Feb. 19 at their shared home in Sayville. Michael Grief, 30, started arguing with his 78-year-old grandmother over his use of her debit card, which he had allegedly used to overdraw her account by $1,000.
His grandmother fled the house to get help from a neighbor, police said.
Grief then chased her out the door, attacked her outside of the neighbor’s house and gouged her eyes with his fingers. The force of the assault caused the globes of her eyes to rupture.
The neighbors immediately called police.
The grandmother was transported to Stony Brook University Hospital where she underwent surgery for approximately eight hours in an attempt to save her vision. She was given a less than one percent chance to regain any vision, according to the hospital.
Suffolk County District Attorney Timothy D. Sini said Wednesday that this is “an extremely disturbing case.”
“When the defendant was talking to police and was told he had gouged his grandmother’s eyes out, he was very dismissive,” District Attorney Sini said. “He said, ‘so?,’ shrugged his shoulders, and appeared to be apathetic toward the situation.”
Grief, who faces multiple assault charges, was arraigned on the indictment Wednesday and bail was set at $500,000 cash or $1 million bond.
If convicted, Grief faces a maximum sentence of up to 25 years in prison.
Grief is due back in court on March 15.
“The message here is one about domestic violence: Often people find themselves in situations with their family members where they feel helpless or threatened, and we want to encourage those people to reach out,” District Attorney Sini said. “If you are in immediate danger, call 911. In non-emergency situations, you can also reach out to the District Attorney’s Office and we can put you in contact with a victim’s advocate who can empower you and help you navigate the process of ensuring your safety.”
via: https://pix11.com/2019/03/06/long-island-man-accused-of-gouging-out-grandmothers-eyes/
Man shot by police in Harlem pointed a wallet at officers
HARLEM, Manhattan — Police fired at a man in Harlem three times, hitting him once in the hip, after the man told them he had a gun and pointed what turned out to be a wallet at them, officials said.
Officers responded to the building following a report of a man with a gun on the 4th floor of a West 114th Street building. Three officers took the elevator up and spotted a man who matched the reported description.
His hands were in his pockets and he ignored officer requests to take his hands out.
“What do you mean take my hands out of my pocket,” he asked, according to police. “I’ve got a gun. “
Then he pulled a wallet out, assumed a shooting stance and pointed it at the cops, officials said.
The entire encounter lasted under a minute.
The man was taken to St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital. He has not yet been identified, but does have a history of arrests.
The shooting was captured on their police body cameras.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/03/06/man-shot-by-police-in-harlem-pointed-a-wallet-at-officers/
2-year-old almost died after popcorn infected his lung
Go ahead and splurge for the extra-large popcorn at your next family movie — but you might want to keep it away from the kids.
That’s what Nicole Johnson Goddard learned after letting her son Nash, 2, snack on the crunchy kernels during a Saturday night viewing of “Mrs. Doubtfire.” His older sisters — ages 7 and 9 — were eating it, and she couldn’t see the harm in letting him have some, too.
But as the flight attendant from Parker, Colo., wrote in a now viral post on Facebook, that decision had near-fatal consequences for her son, resulting in a four-day stay in the hospital.
“At first [Nash] choked on something,” Goddard, 39, tells The Post. “We heard him gasping for air so my husband picked him up to see if he could dislodge it.” Her husband put Nash down (and took away the snack), when the tot said he was fine.
That mid-February night, however, Nash developed “this really funky cough,” Goddard says, which turned into a 104-degree fever a few days later.
With a flu-like virus going around the house, Goddard says she took Nash to the pediatrician, even though she “had been in there with my girls on three separate occasions with them being sick.”
“I kind of felt like a hypochondriac,” she says.
It was her “mom instinct” that convinced her to bring him in anyway, and to mention the weekend’s choking incident to the doctor.
After X-rays and a visit to a pediatric pulmonologist, it was clear that Nash’s left lung was swollen and infected with pneumonia.
The culprit? Multiple microscopic pieces of popcorn that were still lodged in his respiratory tract.
“When he choked on it, he had a mouthful of popcorn that he had chewed up and he aspirated it,” Goddard says. It took two separate procedures, under general anesthesia, to “pick out the six pieces of popcorn: kernels, shells and everything else,” she says.
Now, with Nash healthy and out of the hospital, Goddard wants other parents to know the risks of letting their toddlers eat the movie-theater favorite. (As she learned, the American Academy of Pediatrics classifies popcorn, along with grapes and hot dogs, as a “high-risk food” for toddlers.)
“Honestly, I’m not a big Facebook sharer,” she says of writing up her story, which has been shared over 130,000 times, “but I thought, I might as well post it, because it’s alarming and I would have liked someone to do the same. Maybe it would have prevented this whole thing in the first place.”
via: https://nypost.com/2019/03/06/my-2-year-old-almost-died-after-popcorn-infected-his-lung/
Video shows Alabama high school students using n-word, anti-Semitic slurs
White Alabama high school students were caught using racist and anti-Semitic slurs in a disturbing video that has sparked an investigation by school officials.
“Without the Holocaust, what would the world be like?” says one boy in the video, which included students from both Hoover and Spain Park high schools, located in a suburb south of Birmingham, AL.com reported.
“We would have white people still,” a girl responds. “All the n—-rs would not be here,” another teen chimes in.
“F–k n—ers, f–k Jews,” another teen says.
“Jews are fine because they’re white,” the girl adds. “We just need the n—-rs gone.”
The teens also referred to racially mixed people as “mixed Oreos” and talked about putting minorities in concentration camps or waiting until they “die off.”
The father of one of the students in the video posted an apology for his daughter’s actions on his business social media page. None of the other students in the video were publicly identified.
“Earlier today a video was circulated on social media that depicted high school kids hanging out and saying some really horrible things. One of the kids you can hear talking is my daughter. We believe, that in the moment she acted completely outside her character and certainly outside the morals and principles that we worked hard to instill in her throughout her lifetime,” Gordon Stewart wrote on the Hoover Toyota Facebook page.
“Our family, Mackenzie included, blatantly reject all forms of racism or bigotry and the sentiments from the video do not accurately reflect her or her true feelings. This experience has proven to be a crucial lesson in her maturity and she directly expresses her heartfelt apologies for her insensitivities,” he wrote.
School officials said they were investigating the incident, despite it occurring off school property.
Hoover Superintendent Kathy Murphy said she spoke with both schools’ principals, confirming the students are enrolled in the school system, AL.com reported.
“We have been made aware of a recently posted video that features Hoover School System students who appear to be engaged in disturbing conduct,” Hoover City Schools said in a statement.
“The activity apparently took place this past weekend at a private residence. Although it was not part of any school function, the conduct in question is in direct conflict with our school system’s values and its mission. Our school administrators are carefully investigating the situation in order to assess our options under the Code of Student Conduct. In the meantime, the Hoover school community may be assured that the Board, together with its administrative and instructional staff, remains steadfastly committed to maintaining and strengthening a school culture that encourages and embraces diversity, inclusiveness, and tolerance,” the statement continued.
Unique Simpson, a black student at Spain Park High School, suggested racist behavior is a problem at the school.
“Honestly, I am so sick and tired of going through this same routine at Spain Park High School,“ Simpson said.
“I’ve been through so many personal experiences,” she said. “This needs to stop.”
Woman raped and burned kills attacker by dragging him into the flames
A woman who was raped and then set on fire turned the tables on the monster who attacked her — dragging him into the flames and killing him, police in India said.
The 35-year-old woman, a widow, told police that the man, 42, attacked her inside her home north of Kolkata in eastern India on Monday while her three daughters were out of the house, the AFP reported.
“Then he poured kerosene on her body and set her on fire,” police officer Sajal Kanti Biswas told the news outlet.
Miraculously, the woman survived the attack, suffering burns to her face and hands, while the man succumbed to his injuries at an area hospital.
The woman remains under treatment at the Malda Medical College and Hospital, the Times of India reported.
An ongoing sexual assault epidemic has swept India.
In 2016, an average of more than 100 rapes were reported each day, according to the AFP.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/03/06/woman-raped-and-burned-kills-attacker-by-dragging-him-into-the-flames/
Married cousins hope to change Utah laws to recognize their union
(KTVX/CNN) — A Utah couple says they’re in love—they are also first cousins, making it illegal for them to marry in their home state.
Micheal Lee tied the knot with his cousin, Angie, in Colorado instead, where it is legal but they’re also going to fight to change Utah laws.
These lovebirds say it started with a crush in second grade.
“It’s like second grade I remember I stopped her mother, I stopped her, I said, ‘I’m going to marry Angie,’ and she said, ‘No, I’m sorry you can’t but you can be friends,'” said Michael Lee.
Family vacations would bring them together but social norms would draw them apart again.
“This is something I’ve always felt very like it wasn’t. Life was unfair. Like why did the person I want to be with the most and had the most trash to the most natural feelings for why I did. Why did you have to be my cousin?,” said Micheal Lee.
They reunited after 10 years this winter. Both recently single both ready to take the plunge.
“We’re like OK this is crazy but we’re adults now we’re single now we’re just going to go for it and you know who cares what our family thinks,” said Angie Lee.
They’re crossing two big hurdles to get married. The most obvious is genetics.
According to researchers at Columbia University, first cousins share 12.5 percent of their DNA.
First cousins who have children face a 4 to 7 percent chance of their child having a genetic disorder as opposed to a 3 to 4 percent chance for an average couple.
“The genetic consequences, the biological content consequences are very small. It’s more, you know what people might think and say,” said Michael Lee.
The second major hurdle is the law. In Utah it is illegal for first cousins to get married unless they are 65 years old, or 55 years old if the couple can prove they are infertile.
So the two went to Colorado to tie the knot but as soon as they crossed over the state border they’re not married anymore.
The two are gathering signatures and hope to change the law in Utah.
“No one I’ve ever been with will make me feel as perfect as she does and her being my cousin and some of the responses is a small price to pay. I always loved you Angie. You know that,” said Michael Lee.
Florida man stopped by TSA when he attempted to board flight with military grenade launcher
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A Florida man’s plans to bring a military rocket-propelled grenade launcher back home were shot down after security screeners at a Pennsylvania airport spotted the non-functioning weapon in his checked bag.
The Transportation and Security Administration says the unassembled parts of the launcher and a replica grenade were found on Monday when an alarm went off as the bag passed through security equipment at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, about 60 miles (96 kilometers ) north of Philadelphia.
The man, from St. Augustine, was stopped by police and told officials he thought he could bring the non-functioning launcher onboard in a checked bag.
The items were confiscated and he was able to catch his flight to Orlando.
TSA says no realistic or replica weapons of a military nature are allowed onto airplanes