Teen arrested for firing shots at crowd in Bronx with children nearby (Raw Video)
CONCOURSE, the Bronx — Police have made an arrest after a gunman opened fire at a crowd in the Bronx with children nearby.
Edgar Garcia, 16, was taken into custody in connection to the incident, police announced Friday.
He is expected to be charged as an adult, according to police.
Garcia is accused of approaching a 19-year-old man who was with four others in the vicinity of Gerard Avenue and McClellan Street in the Concourse section of the Bronx last Friday.
He displayed a firearm and fired at least three rounds at the victim with several people, including young children, standing nearby, police said.
No injuries were reported.
Police believe the shooting stems from an ongoing dispute between two suspected gangs.
After the surveillance footage went viral of crowds and a child with a backpack running and ducking for cover, several tips came in and detectives were able to work quickly and find Garcia.
Parents charged in death of missing baby put infant’s body in suitcase and threw it away
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles County prosecutors have filed charges against the parents of a missing baby who is presumed dead.
Adam Manson, 34, and Kiana Williams, 32, were each charged Wednesday with one count of child abuse resulting in death.
Police began looking for the couple’s 6-month-old son, Jacsun, on Jan. 25 after he was reported missing by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.
Authorities allege his parents were doing drugs in a motel room on Dec. 31 and later found their son dead. Investigators believe the parents then put the infant’s body in a suitcase and tossed it into a dumpster. The cause of death remains unclear.
“Detectives have developed reason to believe that Adam Manson and Kianna Williams are responsible for the disappearance and death of their 6-month-old son Jacsun,” the Culver City Police Department said in a statement. “We also believe that after his death, Adam and Kianna discarded Jacsun’s body in a dumpster near the Crenshaw Mall in Los Angeles.”
Culver City police officers are planning a search of the El Sobrante Landfill in the city of Corona in hope of finding the boy’s remains.
If convicted, Manson and Williams face a possible maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, according to the district attorney’s office.
High school warns parents of students spiking coffee with vanilla extract to get a ‘buzz’
(Meredith) – A high school in Atlanta is warning parents that some students are spiking their coffee with vanilla extract to apparently catch a buzz before school.
Grady High School posted the advisory to its Facebook page saying kids are buying “Pure Bourbon Vanilla Extract,” which contains 35 percent alcohol.
School officials said the students have been buying the baking ingredient from a nearby grocery store and mixing it with their lattes before heading to school. In one case, a student had to go to the emergency room after drinking the spiked coffee, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
According to the National Poison Control Center, vanilla extract contains ethanol, the same type of alcohol found in beer, wine and hard liquor.
“The amount of extract called for in recipes would not be dangerous,” the agency said. “But a child who swallowed the contents of a bottle might be at risk for alcohol poisoning.”
It’s unclear how many Grady students have been drinking the extract, but the school advised parents that it’s just “another thing to keep an eye out for.”
Man faked his own kidnapping to avoid paying $50,000 Super Bowl bet
NEWFANE, N.Y. (AP) — State police say a western New York man faked his own abduction and robbery because he was short of cash owed in a Super Bowl pool.
Troopers found 60-year-old Robert Brandel of North Tonawanda tied up in his pickup truck Monday in a parking lot in Newfane, 30 miles north of Buffalo.
Brandel told troopers two men involved in his Super Bowl squares robbed him of $16,000, drove him around for two days and left him tied up in his pickup.
Investigators determined Brandel had entered some fake names in his $50,000 squares pool hoping to take most of the winnings, but instead ended up short for the payouts.
“This guy ran a football pool, a $50,000 payout football pool. He came up with a couple different ways where he could make money off of it and eventually fell flat,” Trooper James O’Callaghan told WKBW. “And now he can’t make the money up to the people who obviously or eventually won this football pool.”
Brandel was charged with fraud and falsely reporting an incident.
It couldn’t be determined if he has a lawyer to comment.
6-year-old Brooklyn boy left alone on school bus for hours
BROWNSVILLE, Brooklyn — A six-year old boy was left on a school bus for hours Wednesday morning.
“My heart dropped. I was scared, I didn’t know what to do,” said Ceira Funn, the boy’s mother.
Funn told PIX11 she put her son Noah on the school bus around 7 a.m. and hours later she got a call from faculty at PS156 in Brownsville saying he wasn’t there.
“I’m like ‘why wouldn’t he be in school if I put him on a school bus with other kids and they got off fine? Why is he not in school? Where is he?'” she recounted.
She was told a supervisor found him asleep on the bus at a depot in Queens. He was eventually driven to the Brooklyn school, but because he has a speech delay and asthma, Funn took him to a doctor to get checked out.
According to the Department of Education, the incident was reported for investigation and the driver has been suspended.
Funn, who ironically works for the Department of Education as a paraprofessional, says she’s not putting Noah back on a bus again and she wants bus drivers to get better training.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/02/28/6-year-old-brooklyn-boy-left-alone-on-school-bus-for-hours/
Toni Harris, who starred in Super Bowl ad, nabs college football scholarship to play on men’s team
Toni Harris is an undersized defensive back with huge dreams. The free safety wants to be the first woman to play in the NFL.
While that may be a long-shot wish, she is going to be the first woman — other than a kicker — who will attend college on a full football scholarship. Harris, 22, signed a letter of intent this week with Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri, to play at the NAIA school.
“I always try to push myself every single day and keep my faith in God to let me go as far as I want to go,” she said earlier this month before Toyota aired an advertisement about her during the Super Bowl.
The ad focused on how people underestimate her as a player.
“I’ve never been a big fan of assumptions,” she says in the spot.
According to CNN affiliate KCBS/KCAL, Harris was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was 18.
“I had a tumor inside of my stomach,” she said in 2017. She beat cancer, the station reported.
She said people try all the time to talk her out of playing football and one said she couldn’t move from high school football to college.
“I had a coach tell me before that I would never get to the next level because I was a lot smaller and not as fast as the other guys, so that moment taught me to never give up,” she told CNN. “From that moment then I told myself no one’s ever going to decide what I am going to do with my life. That’s my decision.”
Last year, Harris, who is 5-foot-5 and 135 pounds, played three games as a sophomore for East Los Angeles College, and had three tackles and one pass breakup, according to the football team’s website. Her team went 4-6.
Central Methodist also went 4-6.
“As a coach giving someone the opportunity to go to college and assist them in getting a degree, that’s what it’s all about,” head coach David Calloway said of Harris, who the school lists at 5-foot-7.
ESPN reported that kicker Rebecca Longo is a scholarship player at Adams State University, an NCAA Division II school in Colorado.
Man without gun license accidentally shoots himself in genitals
MARION, Ind. – An Indiana man accidentally shot himself in his genitalia, according to the Marion Police Department.
Deputy Chief Stephen Dorsey said officers came in contact with the 46-year-old man in the emergency room of Marion General Hospital shortly before 7 a.m. Thursday, according to WXIN.
There, the man told officers he was on a walkway near a Girl Scout cabin when the Hi Point 9mm handgun on his waist began to slip. The man said he reached down to adjust the gun, accidentally causing it to discharge.
Police said the bullet entered just above the man’s penis and exited his scrotum.
According to police, the man doesn’t have an Indiana handgun license and the case will be sent to the Grant County Prosecutor’s Office for review.
Video shows daycare teacher throwing child against cabinet; worker told parents child fell down
ST. LOUIS — A three-year-old was taken to a Missouri hospital via ambulance after she was apparently thrown against a cabinet by a daycare teacher, according to KTVI.
Surveillance video at Brighter Day Care and Preschool shows the incident. In the video, the girl appears calm while standing by a chair for two minutes before a teacher walks across the room towards her. The teacher grabs the child’s arm, drags her and throws her against a cabinet.
The child was taken to a local hospital where she received seven stitches and was released.
After the child was injured, the teacher reportedly sent a note home to parents saying “she fall.”
“In no world did this family have any idea that what was called a fall was actually an assault until they came to see that video,” said attorney Jennifer Hansen.
The family hired Hansen for representation and asked to remain anonymous.
“One of the more egregious aspects of this case is that the daycare director told the family that she did not watch the surveillance tape until the family was with her,” Hansen said.
Hansen said it was five days after the incident when the child’s relative used a cell phone to record the surveillance video. You can hear her shock in the relative’s voice when she sees it wasn’t an accident as reported.
“The daycare could’ve reviewed that footage at any time,” Hansen said. “They didn’t and they allowed the daycare worker who assaulted this little girl to continue to work at the facility for five additional days.”
The director fired the teacher after seeing the video. Police are investigating along with state child care inspectors.
KTVI found those inspectors also reported past cases of kids getting hurt at that location. In May 2018, inspectors noted a second teacher “slam a child down on the cot” and a third teacher “holding a child by his wrist, dragging him across the room.”
In June 2016, inspectors said, “staff did not have a preventative plan in place” when “(one child was) repeatedly hitting and choking another child.”
And in March 2016, inspectors wrote that a “child fell out of the chair and sustained a left femoral fracture.”
Daycare director Sharon Williams told KTVI she could not comment because of the ongoing investigation. Her attorney then sent a statement, saying: “All teachers and staff are properly trained and extremely qualified. Providing a quality education in a safe environment is of the utmost importance to our teachers and staff. It has always been our policy to notify the proper authorities and to fully comply with any investigation. We have and will continue to follow said policy.”
New report finds predominantly white school districts get $23 billion more in funding than nonwhite ones
Predominantly white school districts in the US get $23 billion a year more than districts that educate mostly non-white children, an education advocacy group says.
A report from EdBuild, which promotes equity in public schools, found that the average white school district got $13,908 for every student in 2016, compared to $11,682 per student in districts that mostly serve people of color.
The country has about 13,000 traditional public school systems, averaging 3,500 students each, the report says. The report defines “white” or “non-white” districts as “racially concentrated” districts — attended by more than half of US students — in which the population is either three-quarters white or three-quarters non-white.
The money gap — a difference of roughly $2,226 per student — originates in the way Americans pay for education, with locally run schools being tied to local control of taxes.
“We need to take a different approach,” EdBuild CEO Rebecca Sibilia told CNN, suggesting that local governments reconsider how school districts are drawn.
White communities tend to have more money to spend on schools. And white school districts tend to be much smaller than non-white school districts, the EdBuild says.
“Small districts can have the effect of concentrating resources and amplifying political power,” the report says. “Because schools rely heavily on local taxes, drawing borders around small, wealthy communities benefits the few at the detriment of the many.”
The report also found that white districts enroll just over 1,500 students — half the size of the national average — while non-white districts serve over 10,000 students, about three times more than that average.
The report says 27% of students are in mostly non-white districts and 26% are in mostly white.
The biggest funding gap between the districts was in Arizona, where students in non-white districts received an average of $7,613 less each.
This inequity in Arizona is a “real problem” and a “chief concern” of the state’s newly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman, said public information officer Stefan Swiat of the Arizona Department of Education.
“This harkens back to an Arizona of the past that still exists today and we need to eradicate in the future,” Swiat said.
Sibilia called the disparity a vestige of America’s segregationist past.
“Where people live matters in terms of how well-funded their schools are,” she said.
The study considered local and state funding, the main income sources for schools. Federal money was not included since it is intended chiefly to “fill in the gaps,” Sibilia said.
Man accused of sexually assaulting girl with special needs
Mableton, GA (CBS46) — A man is behind bars after he allegedly sexually assaulted a girl with special needs at his Mableton home.
William Turner, 50, was arrested on February 20 and is charged with sexual battery, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and obscene material.
The incident allegedly took place on January 18.
According to a police report, the girl was dropped off by an Uber driver in front of the H.A.V.E.N. Academy. After noticing puppies in Turner’s yard, she went over to play with them.
Turner then invited the girl into his home. Once inside, Turner allegedly showed her pornography, touched her thigh and kissed her cheek.
A Cobb County school district spokesperson released this statement regarding the incident:
“We are aware of a student who was dropped off by Uber in the community near Haven. The student did not enter our building until after we had notified her parents and authorities that she had not arrived at school. We are supporting the student through this difficult time and in accordance with our policy, immediately informed Crimes Against Children and the Cobb County Police Department.“