Pennsylvania Dad Beat Infant Daughter To Death Because She ‘Was Fussy,’ Police Say
A Mt. Lebanon father repeatedly punched his infant daughter, killing her, because she “was fussy,” Allegheny County police alleged Monday.
Joseph Gazzam, 30, first told police that the child fell out of bed while the two napped late Sunday morning, according to a criminal complaint filed against Gazzam.
An autopsy revealed a fractured arm, brain bleeding, lacerated heart and kidney, broken ribs, bruises and hemorrhages behind 4-month-old Victoria’s eyes, according to the county medical examiner.
Police measured the distance from the edge of Gazzam’s bed to the ground – just over two feet, according to the complaint.
Gazzam is charged with homicide.
Police and paramedics initially responded to Gazzam’s Osage Road home just before 12:30 p.m. Sunday for a report of an unresponsive child, according to Lt. Andrew Schurman. Paramedics took Victoria to St. Clair Hospital, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Gazzam told police he was caring for the infant while the child’s mother was at work, according to the complaint. He said after changing and feeding Victoria, they lay down for a nap, and he fell asleep with the child tucked into the crook of his left arm.
When he awoke, he found the infant face-down on the floor, unresponsive, according to the complaint. When police asked about Victoria’s broken arm, Gazzam allegedly said he “forcefully removed her from her bassinet” earlier in the day.
Confronted with his daughter’s autopsy results, Gazzam allegedly told police that Victoria was fussy and “would not stop crying and would not fall asleep again.” He said he became angry.
“Joseph stated that he punched her twice in the head, punched her in the stomach and punched her in the back,” police wrote in the complaint.
Later, when Victoria stopped breathing and her eyes rolled back in her head, Gazzam called 911, police said.
In addition to homicide, Gazzam is also charged with reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Friday.
Affluent white student (released on $5M bail) spotted at LA Dodgers game after being charged in black man’s murder
An affluent white 18-year-old was reportedly spotted enjoying a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game with his parents, just days after being charged in a gang-related shooting of a black man.
Cameron Terrell, a Palos Verdes High School senior, was charged with murder and attempted murder in the Oct.1 fatal shooting of 21-year-old Justin Holmes, Los Angeles police said.
Terrell is accused of driving the vehicle carrying two suspects who had been arrested on suspicion of murder, according to The Daily Breeze. Police have said that Holmes wasn’t in a gang.
Terrell was released on $5 million bail, which the newspaper reported he posted on Oct. 19. The Daily Breeze also revealed the teen enjoys an affluent lifestyle that includes vacationing in Mexico and is a member of a predominately black South Los Angeles gang.
A photo of him and his parents at a World Series game at Dodger Stadium surfaced on social media days after his release, according to the paper.
Parents at Terrell’s high school were shocked that he hasn’t been suspended.
“We are here to say this child, this child-man — he’s 18 — does not belong in school with our children, with our 14-year-olds, with our 15-year-olds,” parent Sandra Valeri told KCBS-TV. “He presents a danger to them.”
However, the school’s principal says Terrell’s parents have agreed for their son to finish school at an offsite location, KTTV-TV reported.
Terrell’s arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 29.
Teen reported himself in 911 call before he was shot dead by cop on Wisconsin reservation
A teenager shot dead by a cop was revealed to be the 911 caller who reported himself as a knife-wielding male on a Wisconsin reservation, investigators said.
Jason Pero, 14, refused numerous commands to drop a butcher knife and lunged at Ashland County Sheriff’s Deputy Brock Mrdjenovich before he was fatally shot Wednesday, according to the state Department of Justice.
Pero, who was treated at the scene, later died at the hospital.
Mrdjenovich was responding to a call describing an armed, 300-pound male on Maple Street at 11:40 a.m. Investigators now say Pero made the call himself, WKOW reported.
According to the state division of criminal investigations, the teen had been despondent in the days leading up to the call.
Pero, who was raised by his grandparents Alan and Cheryl Pero, returned home from school on Wednesday with the flu.
He had been lying on the couch, watching TV while nursing a 7-Up before he got up and left. His uncle Alan Pero, who was doing laundry at the time, thought he went outside to throw up.
His family members were unsure why he was armed with a knife, saying Pero “never had one mean bone in his body.”
“He got murdered out in front of the house here,” Pero’s grandfather Alan Pero said. “He’s a boy. There’s warning shots. There’s Tasers. There’s pepper spray. You don’t go right on a 14-year-old kid and go for the kill zone.”
Mrdjenovich, who has worked for the sheriff’s office for a year, has been placed on paid administrative leave.
via: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/teen-shot-dead-reported-911-call-article-1.3631035
A former racist befriended a black man. Now they’re hosting a talk about race in Bartlesville.
It was years into their relationship before a conversation that took a young black man aback, finding out his white friend had grown up a racist. Now, the two want to get others to open up about their different experiences and backgrounds with the goal of coming together.
Tom O’Connor, a 76-year-old white man who is an admitted former racist, and David Lewis, a 27-year-old black University of Oklahoma graduate, plan to share their stories as they attempt to “unpack” institutional racism.
“We’ve both been sort of waiting for this quote-unquote national conversation for race to start, and everybody keeps avoiding the subject,” O’Connor said. “So we decided to take it upon ourselves to hold a public forum and see if we can’t spark a national conversation about race.”
A high school dropout, O’Connor said his family life growing up was plagued by alcohol and drugs. He described his poor, white neighborhood as being on the “other side of the tracks in New York City,” with violence and hatred of minorities being commonplace.
“I was a gang kid,” he said. “I believed if you were black you couldn’t come out of the projects, and if you were white you couldn’t go into the projects. We enforced that for a very long time.”
That toxic mindset stayed with him for the first 30 years of his life. It began to fade after he joined the New York Society for Ethical Culture.
O’Connor became involved in the organization’s Prison Reform Task Force and was tasked with referring people to different services offered by the city of New York.
The job introduced him to countless minorities who were denied the same services offered to white people.
“Ultimately what it came down to was they weren’t the right color,” he said. “I could see that. They were being discriminated against left and right, and suddenly I realized they’re no different than I was as a kid.
“During that period of my life, all of my attitudes — not just toward blacks, but all the people who were different than I am — changed. And they changed dramatically.”
O’Connor eventually started a market research company and moved his business to Oklahoma, where he settled down in Bartlesville and is now retired.
Lewis moved to Bartlesville in 2012 after graduating from OU and met O’Connor while attending a fundraising event at his home. He said the two hit it off instantly as they talked about life and current events.
“If you don’t know Tom, one of the things that you’ll quickly find out is he’s very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of guy,” Lewis said. “His transparency, his openness, his willingness to have a dialogue is really what attracted me to him.”
Their relationship evolved after O’Connor invited Lewis to grab a bite to eat with him and his wife. Five years later, Lewis considers him one of his closest friends.
The revelation of O’Connor’s dark past didn’t surface until last year during a conversation about the presidential election.
Learning his good friend used to be racist took Lewis aback but ended up strengthening their bond.
“You think you know someone over a course of time, but as we’ve grown closer he’s opened up about that situation,” Lewis said. “Him being able to critically think about it and say that wasn’t the right lifestyle to be living and the right way to be thinking about people, that actually drew me to him.”
One of Lewis’ biggest hopes for next week’s conversation is for people to walk away with a willingness to listen to those with different backgrounds and privileges. He said the racial dialogue happening on social media is hampered by the absence of in-person contact.
He said his goal is to sit people down face-to-face in an effort to reconcile the racial indifference affecting the nation.
“We’re not trying to bring the whole country to a Kumbaya-type moment. That’s a tall order,” Lewis said. “We’re just trying to do our part and say that at least we’re able to sit down and listen to the other. If I model that behavior for somebody else, they might do the same.”
As for O’Connor, he said he is not afraid of exposing himself by sharing his story with the world.
“That’s not difficult at all,” he said. “The truth is the truth, and I can’t change that. I was who I was, and I am who I am.”
The event is set for 7-9 p.m. Tuesday at Bartlesville’s Tri County Technology Center, 6101 Nowata Road. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
21 children injured after platform collapses at San Diego parkour gym for kids
21 children injured after platform collapses at San Diego parkour gym for kids
San Diego’s Vault PK is usually packed with bouncing and flipping children on Saturday evenings, when it hosts a “kids’ night out” for budding athletes ages 5 to 14.
This past weekend was especially packed, parents said, as people cashed in a Groupon that got three kids into the parkour facility’s open gym for just $30. The three-hour event is supervised by Vault PK staff members, so it doubles as a parents’ night out, too.
Some of the nearly 150 children present played on the obstacle course, styled similarly to those on “American Ninja Warrior,” but roughly a third had gathered on a 10-foot-by-30-foot wooden viewing platform, parent Cory Brizendine told San Diego ABC-affiliate KGTV. That’s where the pizza was being served.
“Once the majority of kids got up there, the whole platform collapsed,” he said.
The crumbling structure took a connected staircase with it, authorities and witnesses told reporters. Wood and little bodies tumbled to the ground — on top of children playing below — forming a heap of injured kids and gym equipment.
Women climb through McDonald’s drive-thru window to assault manager over McNuggets that were never ordered
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Two women exited their car to climb through a drive-thru window at a McDonald’s in Indianapolis and attacked the store manager after a disagreement over chicken McNuggets, police told PIX11 sister station WTTV.
Police officers were dispatched to the Indianapolis McDonald’s on Friday around 3 a.m., the station reports.
The store manager informed police that two women drove up to the drive-thru window saying they weren’t given the chicken McNuggets that they ordered. The manager told them they didn’t order McNuggets, and he reprinted their receipt to ensure they didn’t pay for McNuggets.
The women said they would like to purchase McNuggets, to which the manager responded by informing them they would need to drive around and re-enter the drive-thru line to place the order, police said.
They became angry and began banging their fists on the window and beeping their horn, the manager told police.
The women then climbed through the drive-thru window, knocking over the cash register and a basin of tea, and they started attacking the store manager, according to police. The store manager did not suffer any major injuries.
They then exited the store by climbing back out of the drive-thru window. The women got back into the car and fled, never receiving any McNuggets.
Video of the event was turned over to police and can be seen above.
Oklahoma Daughter Who Married Her Biological Mother After They ‘Hit It Off’ Is Sentenced
An Oklahoma woman who married her biological mother has received a 10-year, deferred sentence.
Misty Spann pleaded guilty to incest and will be on probation with two of those years under the supervision of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, KTLA sister station KFOR in Oklahoma City reported Thursday.
In September 2016, Misty Spann and her mother Patricia were arrested for incest.
A joint investigation by police and the Department of Human Services confirmed the pair’s relationship to each other. The blood relatives married in Comanche County, after filing their license application in March 2016.
Investigators told KFOR that 43-year-old Patricia Spann lost custody of Misty, 26, and two other children when they were young. They were then adopted by their grandmother.
Patricia Spann insisted to investigators she didn’t have contact with her kids until a few years ago. However, court records show she also married her biological son in Comanche County back in 2008, but the partnership was annulled in 2010.
Another one of Spann’s sons told television station KSWO in Lawton, Oklahoma, that she tried to have an inappropriate relationship with him as well, but he denied her advances.
Spann also allegedly told investigators when she reunited with her daughter “they hit it off.”
Spann said she didn’t think she was breaking any laws by marrying Misty because her name is no longer listed on her daughter’s birth certificate, according to officials.
In Oklahoma, incest is a felony, and, if convicted, is punishable up to 10 years in prison. Court records show Misty and Patricia’s marriage was annulled Oct. 12, 2017.
Misty’s mother is scheduled to appear in court in January.
Escort says she shot client because he was bad at oral sex
An escort in Washington state says she shot her client twice in the head — because he was lousy at oral sex, according to reports.
Marissa Wallen, 21, then allegedly stole her john’s wallet and gun, left him for dead and went on a $12,000 spending spree in Skagit County, according to the Herald of Everett, Wash.
The 36-year-old North Everett man’s employer grew concerned when he didn’t log in for his stay-at-home job on the morning of Oct. 24.
When police were sent to check on him, he was found alive — slumped against a wall with dried blood on his head. Two shell casings nearby did not match the caliber of his missing handgun, officials said.
He was unable to speak, so police communicated with him using hand signals, according to the news outlet. He indicated he knew his attacker but could not provide a name.
Security footage from the apartment revealed that Wallen had visited five times in October. She was last seen entering at 8:45 p.m. Oct. 21, and then fleeing at 10 p.m. clutching what appeared to be credit cards, officials said.
Store security cameras showed Wallen using the cards, according to authorities, who tracked her down at a home in Mount Vernon, Wash., on Tuesday.
When confronted with evidence, Wallen kept changing her story before finally admitting she shot the man twice in the back of the head, “because he was performing (a sex act) wrong,” according to her statement.
Wallen, who has an 11-month-old child, was ordered held on pending charges of first-degree assault, first-degree robbery and first-degree identity theft.
“I was stunned on Tuesday when the first detective came to our door,” next-door neighbor Mark Barnum told KIRO-TV. “He said, ‘Your neighbor was shot twice in the head.’”
He said he “heard what sounded like two or three taps coming from the wall. It was notable because we don’t usually hear anything.”
He said he initially thought the noise could have been from a hammer.
“It’s just kind of shocking to think perhaps that was maybe — maybe those were the shots. Maybe it was [the victim]. And I feel really badly that I was unable to help,” Barnum said.
Other neighbors said the victim works in high tech.
“He keeps to himself a lot, he’s got his computer stuff up there. He handles a lot of websites, IT security,” Erik Buxton told KIRO.
According to documents, the man “had been hiring female escorts and frequenting a strip club in Seattle, where he was bragging about how much money he earned and belongings he had at his house.”
Buxton said the victim “liked to kind of flash his money a little bit. It’s what’s going to happen — you’re going to attract negative people along the way.”
On Wednesday, a judge said Wallen had outstanding warrants for her arrest and set her bail at $1 million.
Her public defender, Pooja Vaddadi, said medical problems have prevented her from appearing in court several times, according to the Herald.
Another suspect, Jenner Matthews, was arrested in the case, KIRO reported. The probable-cause document said Wallen made payments to him through Facebook using the victim’s accounts.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/11/09/escort-says-she-shot-client-because-he-was-bad-at-oral-sex/
Denver Teen Accused of Suffocating Newborn Daughter by Shoving Rock Down Her Throat
A 16-year-old Denver girl is facing first degree murder charges after her baby was found dead with a rock in her throat, according to autopsy results released Wednesday.
Denver police said that a woman called 911 around 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 8 and said that her daughter, Alaya Dotson, gave birth and that the baby was on the ground in the backyard and “looked dead,” KTLA sister station KDVR in Denver reported.
She was named because authorities have charged her as an adult.
The baby, Amekah Dotson, was transported from the home in the 5800 block of Biscay Street to Children’s Hospital where she was pronounced dead after they removed a rock that was lodged in the baby’s throat.
Alaya Dotson’s mother told police that her daughter was sitting on the patio with a blanket wrapped around her. After leaving to make soup, she came back and discovered that Alaya had blood on her shirt and that the blanket was on the ground.
Alaya told police that her mother startled her, so after her mother went back inside, she “decided to pick up a rock that was on the ground and put it inside the baby’s mouth.”
She added that she “pushed the rock down the baby’s throat with her thumb” and then wrapped her in a blanket and placed her on the ground so when her mother grabbed the blanket, the baby “fell to the ground.”
Alaya’s mother did not know her daughter was pregnant and immediately called police.
Alaya also told police that “she did not know or believe she was pregnant.”
When police arrived, Alaya was also transported to University Hospital where she was arrested.
She is expected in court in January.
via: http://ktla.com/2017/11/08/denver-16-year-old-accused-of-suffocating-newborn-with-rock-in-throat/
Alabama Woman Sentenced to Prison After Faking Terminal Cancer, Raising Over $260K
An Alabama woman who duped kind-hearted donors into thinking she had cancer is headed to prison, a judge ordered Wednesday.
Jennifer Flynn Cataldo was sentenced to 25 months behind bars for fraudulently raising more than $260,000 by falsely portraying herself as a terminal cancer patient from 2014 to early May 2017, according to KTLA sister station WHNT in Alabama.
Cataldo pleaded guilty in August to one count of wire fraud and one count of bank fraud for using a false claim of terminal cancer to collect money from family and friends by using two GoFundMe accounts, Facebook, emails and text messages.
One of the GoFundMe fundraisers was titled “Mom has Terminal Cancer Disney Trip,” with the stated goal of raising $4,000 to take her young child to visit Disney before she died, according to prosecutors.
U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town called Cataldo’s crime “reprehensible,” saying in a statement:
“For more than two years she engaged in an elaborate scheme that preyed upon the sympathy and generosity of her friends and family. Not only did she fake cancer to take their money, she used her minor child as part of her ruse and allowed the child to believe his mother was dying. She has earned every nickel of her punishment.”
Cataldo fraudulently collected a total of $264,163 in checks and cash deposited into her personal checking account, according to her guilty plea.
“Crimes like this make good people think twice before they are willing to be charitable, and Cataldo’s conduct could have a chilling effect on donations to legitimate accounts set up for people who are truly in need,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp Jr. said. “It is hard to understand how anyone could ignore the anguish that their greed- or drug-fueled lie brought to their loved ones every single day.”
A government sentencing document states that throughout Cataldo’s scheme, she was spending part of the money she obtained fraudulently to pay for 30 to 40 non-prescribed Percocet per day.
“The fact that we now know that part of the money was going to fund illegal opioids is yet more evidence of how destructive these drugs can be,” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. “It is imperative that we confront such criminal activities and that the offenders are stopped and punished.”
A federal judge also ordered Cataldo to pay $79,629 in restitution to her victims.
via: http://ktla.com/2017/11/08/woman-sentenced-to-prison-after-faking-terminal-cancer-raising-over-260k/