Tag: featured
Plainfield teen accused of shooting parents dead at Michigan university; father was cop, Iraqi war veteran
manhunt continued late Friday for a college student from the Chicago suburbs who authorities said fatally shot his parents on the campus of Central Michigan University.
Authorities said Friday evening they had more than 100 officers from multiple agencies searching for 19-year-old James Eric Davis, of Plainfield. They warned that he should be considered armed and dangerous.
The victims were identified by authorities as Davis’ parents, James Eric Davis Sr. and Diva Jeneen Davis. Davis Sr. was a police officer in west suburban Bellwood and an Illinois National Guard veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Diva Davis’s Facebook page identified her as a real estate broker; friends said she was also a breast cancer survivor and had worked as a flight attendant.
People who knew the family called Davis Jr. “respectful” and “a good kid” and his parents “upstanding,” and said they saw no obvious signs of trouble with the teenager, who was a sophomore at the school in Mount Pleasant, Mich.
“He was a good kid, always,” said Deantre DeYoung, 20, who met Davis Jr. when they were high school freshmen at Plainfield South High School and had kept in touch. “You would never expect something like this to come from James.”
The Davises were reportedly picking up their son from college for spring break when the shooting happened inside a residence hall on campus.
But Lt. Larry Klaus of the campus police department said Davis Jr. was taken to a hospital Thursday night by campus police because of a drug-related health problem, possibly an overdose. Authorities did not elaborate.
Bellwood Police Chief Jiminez Allen confirmed Friday that Davis Sr. was a part-time officer in the village and called it “a very difficult time” for the department.
An Illinois legislator whose district includes Bellwood, Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, said in a Tweet on Friday afternoon: “My sincerest condolences go out to the family of Bellwood Police Officer James Davis Sr. and his wife who were shot and killed this morning. May they RIP.”
The younger Davis attended Plainfield South High for three years, then completed high school at Plainfield Central, where he played basketball and graduated in 2016, Plainfield Community School District 202 officials confirmed.
They declined any further comment “out of respect to the family.”
Campus police identified and released a photo of Davis Jr. during an afternoon news conference. Klaus said surveillance video suggests he fled on foot after the 8:30 a.m. shooting at Campbell Hall. Police warned the public not to confront him. Earlier Friday, they said they suspected he was still in the central Michigan area.
Jordan Murphy, a longtime friend of Davis Sr., said they worked together as Illinois Army National Guard recruiters after being deployed together as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Murphy said Davis Sr., who went by Eric, brought his son to Murphy’s home on several occasions.
“Junior was a very respectful man, raised by upstanding parents, who would do anything to protect him and his siblings,” Murphy said. “This is an incredibly tragic event, and I pray for Eric’s other children. This is so incredibly out of character, something went wrong somewhere.”
Murphy called Eric and Diva Davis “loving, ever-present parents who doted on their children.”
Besides Davis Jr., the couple had a daughter and another son.
Lt. Col. Brad Leighton, public affairs director of the Illinois National Guard, said Davis Sr. served with the guard for 24 years before retiring in 2014.
His time in the guard included a 2003 deployment to Iraq, when he was with the 1244th Transportation Co. out of North Riverside. Later, he worked as a recruiter out of the Joliet Armory, Leighton said.
Julian Leal, who lives on the same block as the Davis home in Plainfield, called Davis Sr. a good neighbor, the type who would shovel out his neighbors after a snowstorm.
“We had picnics in our backyard,” Leal said. “I just had a beer with him last week. We talked about our kids who are in college. He was proud of his son.”
Leal added there was no hint of any problems or violence.
“We’re all confused and at a loss,” he said. “We’re telling our kids to be strong and pray for them. They wouldn’t want us to fall apart.”
Klaus, the campus police lieutenant in Michigan, said anyone who sees Davis Jr. shouldn’t confront him, but needs to call 911. Officials at the school, which has about 23,000 students, urged everyone on campus to take shelter.
“He should be considered armed and dangerous,” said Klaus, adding that Davis Jr. was wearing a black hoodie but had been shedding certain clothes while on the run.
The shooting occurred on the last day of classes before spring break at the Mount Pleasant campus, which is about 70 miles north of Lansing and is about a 270-mile drive from Chicago. Parents who were trying to pick up students were told instead to go to a local hotel where staff would assist them while the manhunt was ongoing.
The school posted an alert Friday morning on social media about shots being fired at Campbell Hall. An automated phone message also was sent to students.
Halie Byron, 20, said she locked herself in her off-campus house, about a 10-minute walk from Campbell Hall. She had planned to run errands before traveling home to the Detroit area.
“It’s scary thinking about how easy a shooter can come into a college campus anywhere — a classroom, a library. There’s so much easy access,” Byron said.
In the surrounding community, students and staff in the Mount Pleasant school district were told not to leave nine buildings. Visitors also weren’t being allowed to enter.
Article via: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-james-eric-davis-central-michigan-shooting-20180302-story.html
A wrinkle in time Movie Trailer Elfen’s Food for Thought
A Wrinkle in Time is an upcoming American science fantasy adventure film directed by Ava DuVernay from a screenplay by Jennifer Lee, and based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Madeleine L’Engle. The film stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Peña, Storm Reid, Zach Galifianakis, and Chris Pine, and follows a young girl who sets off on a quest, with the help of three astral travelers, to find her father, who went missing after discovering a new planet. Principal photography on the film began on November 2, 2016, in Los Angeles, California.
Just like we supported the filmmakers and actors for a Black Panther we need to support our black female directors as well. These people. These black people. Will be able to tell fantasy stories with people who look like us. Only if we support it ! As black screen writers directors producers etc. we have to prove to the Hollywood executive colonizers white Hollywood exclusive that can greenlight our stories (Greenling get give money and the go ahead to make your film or tv show) we can be just as diverse in other areas. Of ethnicities and Culture and knowledge of other experiences with other peoples lives. So just don’t support a movie with black people in it or just a black director support that black director in everything that they do or else our stories and stories that we want to be told in a different way won’t be able to be told because you’re not supporting any of their other projects. It is us the movie goer who makes or breaks these actresses and actors and producers and directors careers if you don’t want the typical slave narrative
movies and the street slum type of stories if you’re tired of Tyler Perry’s stories and you want more of black panther or other fantasy stories with black people as the main characters you have to support or black people in everything that they make .
Teacher who made sex tape with student gets hired again
A former Staten Island teacher who resigned in disgrace after making a sex tape with a student has found greener pastures in the Garden State, according to a report.
Nadine Sudlow, 30, who taught English at Liberation Diploma Plus HS, had sex with her “pet pupil” during a hotel tryst that was caught in footage that the youth shared with his pals, according to a probe.
She regularly treated the student to free lunches and Starbucks coffee, which he said made him feel “weird” but that he thought she was just “fooling around.”
The untenured teacher — who told the student in e-mails that she was “mad horny” – resigned in July 2014, two months after a complaint was lodged with the office of a special schools investigator.
But shortly after a 2015 report in The Post, New Jersey granted Sudlow a teaching certificate and she was hired by the Newark school district, the Asbury Park Press reported Wednesday.
She claimed a principal who knew about her history encouraged her to apply for the position, the news outlet reported.
“It happens so often because they can get away with it,” said Terri Miller, president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation, or SESAME, the paper reported.
“They have the support of the teachers union. School administrators and districts would rather stay safe and save money than save children.”
New Jersey is considering legislation that would ban confidentiality agreements that protect teachers with substantiated cases of abuse or misconduct.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/02/15/teacher-who-made-sex-tape-with-student-gets-hired-again/
‘I love this s***… I thrive on it,’ Tennessee sheriff says after shooting and killing a man
Shortly after Tennessee law enforcement shot and killed a man during a two-county vehicle chase in April, White County Sheriff Oddie Shoupe seemed fired up as he recalled his conversations with dispatchers.
“They said, ‘We’re ramming (the suspect),’ ” Shoupe told a deputy in body-camera footage obtained by CNN this week. “I said, ‘Don’t ram him. Shoot him.’ “F*** that s***. You’re gonna tear my cars up.”
Shoupe later says of the chase, “I love this s***. God, I tell you what, I thrive on it.”
The comments, recorded April 13 after the sheriff arrived at the scene where officers shot and killed Michael Dial on the side of State Route 111, are at the center of a federal lawsuit filed last week by Dial’s widow against White County, Shoupe and others.
The widow, Robyn Spainhoward, alleges that a White County sheriff’s deputy and a Sparta police officer used excessive force to kill Dial, 33, of Clarksville, Tennessee.
Shoupe, in the body-camera video, says he was in another part of the county during the chase but gave orders to dispatchers that would be relayed to the pursuing officers.
In the video, he says he “gave the order to take him out because he (Dial) was going to kill somebody if we hadn’t.”
Two deputies and a police officer were injured during the pursuit, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said. The prosecutor ruled the shooting was justified, CNN affiliate WTVF reported.
District Attorney General Bryant Dunaway did not return CNN’s calls for comment about the case.
The lawsuit, which seeks up to $10 million, alleges that the sheriff ordered the shooting “solely to prevent damage to patrol cars.” The suit, filed in US District Court in Nashville, cites Shoupe’s comments lamenting damage to his vehicles for part of its argument.
“I feel with every part of me, that’s exactly what they wanted to do, was kill him,” Spainhoward told WTVF. CNN tried to contact Spainhoward through her attorney but he said she wasn’t granting any more interviews.
Citing the lawsuit, Melissa Worthington, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said Shoupe and his department would not comment.
White County Executive Denny Robinson and Sparta Police Chief Jeff Guth also declined to comment.
‘Use deadly force if necessary’
The chase began on a late April afternoon when police in Smithville, in DeKalb County some 55 miles southeast of Nashville, tried to pull Dial over on suspicion of driving with a suspended license, according to the lawsuit.
Dial, in a pickup towing a loaded, open-air trailer, kept driving. He’d been in Smithville for a flea market, Spainhoward told CNN affiliate WKRN in April.
When Dial went east into adjacent White County, Sparta police and White County sheriff’s deputies picked up the chase. Dashboard and body-camera videos obtained by CNN show squad cars trying to force the truck off the road or get it to stop, by running into it or cutting it off.
The truck and patrol cars came into contact several times as Dial headed north on Route 111, the truck at times weaving, and items spilling out of the trailer. Despite being forced into the median at one point, Dial kept going.
The lawsuit says Dial was driving around 50 mph, and “at no point after turning onto Highway 111 did Dial pose a threat to any members of the public.”
But deputies are heard telling dispatchers that at least one officer’s vehicle had been disabled.
A dispatcher eventually relays new instructions from the sheriff, who was not involved in the chase. Here’s a conversation in one of the dashboard camera recordings:
Deputy: “Get a hold of 59 (the sheriff), see if we can do something to get this maniac off the road.”
Dispatcher: “(Unintelligible), deadly force.”
(A different video — from a reserve deputy’s body camera — shows the dispatcher saying: “Per 59, take him out by any means necessary, including deadly force.”)
Deputy: “10-9 (repeat)?”
Dispatcher: “Per 59 (the sheriff), use deadly force if necessary. Take the subject out by any means necessary.”
Deputy: “10-4. Central, be advised, I’m fixing to ram him.”
Dispatcher (40 seconds later): “All units, per 59, do not ram this subject. If you need to, get up and use your shotgun and end this pursuit.”
At about this moment, a pursuing squad car hits the truck in the rear passenger side, turning it sideways.
A body camera shows a reserve deputy exiting his vehicle and firing a gun.
While the reserve deputy is running, other shots — fired by a Sparta police officer, according to the lawsuit — are heard.
The truck goes off the right of the road and down an embankment. It then goes briefly back up, toward the general area of a police car, before going back down and coming to a rest.
Both the reserve deputy and the Sparta police officer shot Dial, with one of them shooting him in the head, the lawsuit says. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Dial died of the gunshot wound to the head, a report by the White County medical examiner’s office says.
‘He meant to kill some people’
After the shooting, Shoupe arrives on the scene. Eventually he gets back into a vehicle with a deputy.
Body camera footage reveals conversations that the sheriff was having in that vehicle after the shooting:
Shoupe: “I told them, I said, ‘Take him out.’ ”
Deputy: “I heard.”
Shoupe: “Damn, I don’t give a s***.”
Deputy: “It wasn’t long after that I heard, ‘Shots fired. Shots fired.’ ”
Shoupe: “They said, ‘We’re ramming.’ I said, ‘Don’t ram him. Shoot him.’ “F*** that s***. You’re gonna tear my cars up. I got two cars tore up again.”
Shoupe then appears to engage in several phone calls. Several times, Shoupe either says Dial tried to kill an officer or posed a deadly threat.
“He’s (Dial) tore our cars all to hell. He tried to kill him. I’m telling you. You (ought) to see that city car,” Shoupe says in one call.
“He (Dial) rammed the city officer, tried to kill him, and he has tore their car all to hell. I mean he ran over the back at it, right up on top of it,” Shoupe says in a subsequent call.
Shoupe also mentions that one officer is bleeding from the mouth, and was taken to a hospital.
The TBI said three officers — a Sparta police officer and two White County sheriff’s deputies — suffered “injuries consistent with being in a vehicle crash.”
“I gave the order to take him (Dial) out because he was going to kill somebody if we hadn’t,” Shoupe says during a phone call in the body-camera footage. “I’m telling you … this is a hell of a pursuit. I mean, he meant to kill some people.”
“Anyway, sir, I just wanted to let you know that I hate it, but that’s what we do,” he says before ending the call.
He later tells an officer in the car: “If they don’t think I’ll give the damn order to kill that mother*****, they full of s***.”
After lamenting that he was on the “wrong end of the county” during the chase, Shoupe delivers one of the quotes that the lawsuit highlights:
“I love this s***. God, I tell you what, I thrive on it.”
Then Shoupe, once again, refers to Dial as a threat.
“He was going to kill somebody,” the sheriff says.
‘I don’t know how you can thrive on taking a human life’
Attorney David Weissman, who represents Spainhoward in the lawsuit, told WTVF that Dial did not have a weapon and that the shooting was unjustified. In an interview with TV station, he referred to Shoupe’s “thrive” comment.
“I don’t know how you can thrive on taking a human life,” Weissman said. “That’s not law enforcement.”
He also pointed to Shoupe’s comments about the patrol cars, asserting they show he was more concerned about the vehicles than Dial’s life.
“If that’s the mentality of the highest policymaker in the county, that’s scary,” the lawyer told WTVF.
The lawsuit alleges Shoupe shouldn’t have given the deadly-force order, in part because the sheriff wasn’t at the scene.
“The decision to order the use of deadly force when not physically present to evaluate the situation speaks volumes as to the malicious and sadistic mindset of Sheriff Shoupe,” the lawsuit reads.
Dunaway, the district attorney for an area that includes White County, ruled the shooting justified, saying in part that Dial posed a danger to law enforcement and other citizens, and that his truck was going back up the embankment toward the Sparta police officer’s vehicle, WTVF reported.
But Spainhoward has said she doesn’t believe her husband needed to die.
“They could have let him go 10 more miles down the road. He probably would have run out of gas,” she told WTVF.
Report: Yale Dental Students, Staff Took Selfie With Severed Heads
Dental school grad students and a University of Connecticut orthodontics professor took a selfie “with two severed heads used for medical research at a training workshop at Yale University” in 2017, the Associated Press reportedon Monday.
According to the AP report, the students nabbed the selfies during the DePuy Synthes Future Leaders Workshop, “which focused on dental-related facial deformities”:
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the photo from a person who received it through a private group chat. That person, who demanded anonymity because of potential harm to their career, said the person who took the selfie would not give the AP permission to publish it for fear of being expelled.
…
In the photo, [UConn Health orthodontics director and visiting Yale professor Dr. Flavio Uribe] and several graduate students are looking at the camera, while others continue to work. All are wearing surgical masks. The two severed heads are on tables, face up.
The AP added that Uribe said the photo was taken so quickly he was unaware it captured the two heads, which he was using to show the students proper placement of screws. However, a Yale spokesman told the news agency signs are posted noting the laboratory’s no-photography policy, as well as that the incident “was disturbing and an inexcusable deviation from anything Yale would expect to occur.”
Training with actual dead bodies is a critical part of medical training, as well as a somewhat morbid rite of passage at medical schools. This kind of story pops up every so often and usually comes with consequences for the personnel involved, including an alleged wave of corpse photos and videos from medical institutions making their way online in 2010, something that’s never reallystopped happening.
Today the trend is (slowly) moving towards expensive synthetic cadavers like the $95,000 SynDaver Patient, which can be remote controlled to rehearse crisis scenarios like heart attacks and boasts fake organs, muscle tissue, and blood. Advancements over the past few years have made it possible to convincingly imitate many different types of human tissue, per Smithsonian, from “subcutaneous fat to rectus femoris muscle.” Taking a selfie with one of those is probably not going to get anyone in trouble with an ethics board, though some medical professionals think they’re a long way away from replacing hands-on experience with actual cadavers.
Article via: https://gizmodo.com/report-yale-dental-students-staff-took-selfies-with-s-1822753127
Fake doctor accused of infecting 21 people with HIV
LUCKNOW, India — An Indian health official says a fake doctor treating poor villagers for colds, coughs and diarrhea has infected at least 21 of them with HIV by using contaminated syringes and needles.
Sushil Choudhury, the official, says police are looking for Rajendra Yadav, who has fled Bangarmau, a small town in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The villagers say they rarely saw him changing the needles. Choudhury said Tuesday that probably led to the spread of HIV.
With India’s health care system facing a massive shortage of doctors and hospitals, millions of poor people seek fake doctors for cheap treatment.
India had 2.1 million people living with HIV at the end of 2016, according to UNAIDS.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/02/06/fake-doctor-accused-of-infecting-21-people-with-hiv/
Father-daughter couple arrested for incest after having love child
A 42-year-old North Carolina man and his 20-year-old daughter have been arrested on incest charges after having a love child last year–and reportedly getting married.
Steven Pladl, 42, of Knightdale, and Katie Pladl, 20, were arrested Jan. 27, WNCN-TV reported, citing “warrants.” They have also been charged with adultery and contributing to delinquency. The maximum sentence for the incest charge is 10 years in prison.
The child, a boy, was born in September, the station reported.
Steven Pladl was released on a $1 million bond. Katie Pladl’s bond is also $1 million but as of last week she was still being held in a North Carolina jail. They appeared in court last week.
The charges were brought in Virginia where authorities believe the relationship began.
The station reported that Pladl gave up Katie for adoption when she was an infant.
They reunited in 2016 when she tracked him down through social media.
At the time, according to the station, Pladl was living outside Richmond with his wife, Katie’s mother, and their two children, girls who would have been Katie’s sisters.
Katie moved into the home, the station reported.
Subsequently, Pladl and his wife legally separated in November 2016 and began living apart.
She told authorities that just before she moved out he would sleep on the floor in Katie’s room, the station reported.
Online records show the wife filed for divorce in March 2017 and obtained a divorce decree three months later.
The ex-wife learned Katie was pregnant last May, the station reported.
Eight days later child welfare workers in Virginia began conducting interviews, according to the station. They interviewed the two older children who said they had been told their father fathered Katie’s baby.
The warrants show that Steven Pladl told his other children to call Katie their step-mom, the station reported.
Police in suburban Richmond issued arrest warrants for Steven Pladl and Katie last November.
The ex-wife told Richmond’s WTVR-TV that her former husband and Katie married in Maryland and then moved to North Carolina.
She believes her ex-husband brainwashed and manipulated Katie, the station reported.
“This is a pretty unique set of facts I would say,” the station’s legal analyst Todd Stone said.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/02/04/father-daughter-couple-arrested-for-incest-after-having-love-child/
Aziz Ansari Accused of Sexual Misconduct
An anonymous woman recounted how the comedian attempted to pressure her into sex on a date
Aziz Ansari, the Parks and Recreation and Master of Nonestar who has built a career out of using comedy as a means to explore modern relationships, has been accused of sexual misconduct by an anonymous woman who says she went out on a date with him shortly after the 2017 Emmy Awards.
Twenty-three-year-old photographer “Grace” described the encounter to babe, saying she met Ansari while she was taking photos at the Emmy Awards after-party. The two bonded over Ansari’s camera and eventually exchanged phone numbers. According to the woman, Ansari invited her out on a date on Monday, September 25.
On the night in question, the two allegedly met at Ansari’s TriBeCa apartment and walked over to Grand Banks, an oyster bar aboard a schooner. Grace said that they left abruptly to go back to his apartment, where Ansari began to kiss her. She told babe that she was uncomfortable with how quickly the situation escalated. “It was really quick,” she said. “Everything was pretty much touched and done within ten minutes of hooking up, except for actual sex.”
Grace said she attempted to indicate her disinterest, but Ansari followed her around the apartment as though he was executing “a football play.” “It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following and sticking his fingers down my throat again,” she said. “It was really repetitive. It felt like a fucking game.” She said he then suggested they move to the couch, where he continued to attempt to initiate sex, though she wasn’t interested: “I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored.”
She tried to verbally communicate her disinterest: “I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,” she said. Ansari appeared to understand at first, but soon continued his overtures. She said he only appeared to get the message when she emphatically said ‘no’ after he’d bent her over in front of a large mirror. He suggested they “just chill” on his couch.
Afterward, Ansari called her a car. Grace said she cried the whole trip home. She texted Ansari after the date, explaining how uncomfortable she’d felt: “Last night might’ve been fun for you, but it wasn’t for me. When we got back to your place, you ignored clear non-verbal cues; you kept going with advances. You had to have noticed I was uncomfortable.” She explained she was telling him this so that “maybe the next girl doesn‘t have to cry on the ride home.” Ansari reportedly responded, “Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”
“I believe that I was taken advantage of by Aziz,” Grace told babe. “I was not listened to and ignored. It was by far the worst experience with a man I’ve ever had.”
Ansari has delved into the nature of sexual assault and harassment both during live sets and on his show, Master of None. During his 2015 Madison Square Garden special, he asked women in the crowd who had been followed home by “creepy dudes” to raise their hands. “What I’ve learned, as a guy, is to just ask women questions and listen to what they have to say,” he told the Daily Beast of the bit. “You’ll get blown away by the things they tell you. You’ll think, ‘What the fuck? This is way darker than anything I’d imagined.’”
Read more via: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/01/aziz-ansari-accused-of-sexual-misconduct