Tag: Missouri
A Missouri teacher is accused of hiring a hitman to kill a 10-year-old boy he allegedly molested
Deonte Taylor, 36, and his boyfriend Michael Johnson, 66, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges in a St. Louis court on Wednesday, KSDK reported.
Taylor was busted in November after his DNA was found to match samples found on his former student.
He’s facing three charges of first-degree statutory sodomy related to the accusation that he took the then-7-year-old boy from class at an elementary school where he worked as a teacher’s assistant in 2015, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Court papers said he took the boy to another room, where the boy performed oral sex on him, KSDK reported.
The boy reported the alleged attack right away, but the investigation lingered after the detective on the case left the department, and charges were not immediately filed.
In the meantime, Taylor got his teaching certificate, and was hired as a teacher by a different school district. He passed a series of background checks despite the open case in his prior district, and was working at a different elementary school when he was arrested, the station reported. That district alerted families about the accusations at Taylor’s former school after he was nabbed.
Investigators said in February, Taylor met a fellow inmate and arranged to have him kill the boy — and his mother — when that inmate was released. The man instead became a confidential informant for the police, the outlet reported.
Meanwhile, Taylor then talked to Johnson, whom he lived with before he was busted, and allegedly convinced Johnson to pay for the hit, the station reported. Court papers say Johnson paid the man.
Taylor and Johnson were charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of attempting to tamper with a victim in a felony prosecution.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/20/teacher-accused-of-hiring-hitman-on-student-he-allegedly-molested/
Doctor accused of impregnating teen he planned to marry
A Missouri doctor facing child pornography charges is accused of impregnating a 16-year-old girl whom he planned to wed, according to court records.
Dr. Ashu Joshi, who works at St. Louis University Hospital, pleaded not guilty to charges of production and receipt of child pornography and transportation of a minor across state lines for sex, the St. Louis Dispatch reported.
Details of the 46-year-old doctor’s alleged relationship with the Kentucky teen were made public last week after he was released from jail on bail.
Prosecutors allege that Joshi began a relationship with the teen girl after treating her mother as a patient.
The teen initially wanted to discuss becoming a doctor with him, according to officials, but later became his babysitter.
The girl’s mother told officials that she knew her daughter was “dating” Joshi, but didn’t approve of them having a sexual relationship.
The alleged relationship became known to authorities after the pair exchanged images containing child porn on Facebook, the St. Louis Dispatch reported. They allegedly traded hundreds of photos and videos, some of which showed the pair naked together, according to officials.
Investigators said Joshi asked the girl to marry him and she admitted to officers that he was the father of her unborn child.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/11/26/doctor-accused-of-impregnating-teen-he-planned-to-marry/
Teacher suspended after student wore KKK outfit in class for presentation
A teacher in Missouri has been suspended after a student dressed up as a member of the Ku Klux Klan as part of a history class presentation, district officials said.
A ninth-grader at Poplar Bluff High School dressed as a member of the KKK on Friday as students in an American history class made presentations pertaining to amendments to the US Constitution. The student in question, wearing a white robe and hood, was part of a group assigned to the 15th Amendment — guaranteeing voting rights regardless of race or color, KFVS reports.
District officials have since suspended the teacher as an investigation continues, but they don’t believe the student was acting with intent to offend or discriminate against other students, according to the station.
“There’s no context for this,” Poplar Bluff School District Superintendent Scott Dill told KFVS. “There’s no point at which anyone in our public school system is going to say that this is OK. It is very obvious that this can’t happen in any setting anywhere, and so we will do our best to ensure that we do what we do best, which is education.”
District officials will now take steps to ensure teachers are providing “age-appropriate historical context” on key topics in a responsible manner.
“And we will make sure that our students, our teachers and our community understand the context, understand what is acceptable and what will never be acceptable,” Dill continued.
A letter of apology was sent by the unidentified teacher and read to students early Monday, KFVS reports.
“I made a mistake on Friday during our skit assignment,” the teacher wrote. “I let a student wear an inappropriate costume that was unacceptable and hurt many people’s feelings. As the professional in the room, I should have known better. I am sorry.”
The teacher’s apology continued: “I am so sorry for making this mistake, and I hope that you can forgive me and we can work through this together. I understand that healing and forgiveness take time, and I am absolutely okay with that.”
It wasn’t long before a photograph of the teen dressed as a Klansman soon began circulating on social media Friday. A former student who graduated from the school last year shared a Facebook post depicting the student but she had not been in the classroom at the time, the Springfield News-Leader reports.
“I’ve never ever heard of a history teacher who said it was okay to use a KKK costume for a project,” graduate Brianna Anthony told the newspaper. “Because when people walk into that classroom and see that uniform, that’s automatically a red flag.”
Costumes weren’t a part of history classes during her time at Poplar Bluff, Anthony said.
“We just got in group projects and did, like, reports,” she told the newspaper. “We used costumes in English, going over stories.”
via: https://nypost.com/2018/11/13/teacher-suspended-after-student-wore-kkk-outfit-in-class/
Health department poured bleach on food meant for the homeless
Missouri health department officials admitted to pouring bleach on food meant for homeless people earlier this month, claiming the volunteers preparing and serving food didn’t have permits.
On Nov. 5, Kansas City health department employees dumped vats of chili and soup as well as sandwiches in bags and soaked them in bleach to stop homeless people from eating the food — which they deemed a potential health threat.
“E. coli or salmonella or listeria can grow in the food,” director of health for Kansas City, Rex Archer, told Fox 32.
“And then you give that to homeless people who are more vulnerable, they will end up in the ER and even die from that exposure.”
But members of Free Hot Soup, the organization feeding the homeless, told KCTV that homeless people were undeterred by the bleach and ate the food anyway because they thought it would “clean out their systems.” The group said that if the health inspectors were truly concerned about the health of the homeless, they wouldn’t have left the bags of food out for them to sift through.
The organization claimed the health department’s crackdown was actually to keep homeless people from gathering in public parks
“They don’t like the quality of people we are attracting. They don’t like looking at them,” Nellie Ann McCool with Free Hot Soup told KCTV.
The health department denied that allegation, according to an article published by the Kansas City Star this week.
Members of Free Hot Soup argued that they are merely “friends of the homeless,” and said if people don’t need a permit to host a potluck dinner for friends, neither should they.
“This is scaring all of us,” one of the group’s organizer’s, Tara McGaw, told the Kansas City Star on Nov. 5. “We’re not an establishment. We’re not a not-for-profit. We’re just friends trying to help people on the side.”
Kansas City Mayor Sly James sided with the health department after the story came to light.
White woman fired after blocking black man from entering his building
A white woman was fired after getting caught on video blocking a black man from entering his own apartment building and then calling the cops on him, according to reports.
D’Arreion Toles returned to his downtown St. Louis, Mo., apartment building Friday night and found Hilary Brooke Mueller standing in the doorway with her dog on a leash. She refused to let him in unless he gave her proof he lived there.
“Please move, ma’am,” Toles, 24, asks in a video of the incident he posted to Facebook.
“I can. Do you live here?” responds Mueller, who became known as “Apartment Patty” as the video went viral. “I’m uncomfortable.”
“You can be uncomfortable, that’s fine,” Toles replies, declining to give his unit number. “That’s at your discretion. You’re uncomfortable because you’re you.”
The footage, which had been viewed over 6 million times as of Monday, shows the woman getting into the elevator with Toles and following him all the way to his apartment door in the Elder Shirt Lofts, asking for his name.
Mueller then called the cops, St. Louis police confirmed to local outlet KSDK.
“To be a black man in America & come home,” Toles captioned the video. “Never really thought this would happen to me, but it did! Then 30 mins later police knock on my door, because she called! I was shocked this is America in 2018!”
By Monday, Mueller’s employer, Tribeca STL, a luxury apartment company, said it decided to fire her after seeing the video.
“The Tribeca-STL family is a minority-owned company that consists of employees and residents from many racial backgrounds. We are proud of this fact and do not and never will stand for racism or racial profiling at our company,” the company said in a statement.
The incident is the latest in a long series of videos posted to social media showing white women — “BBQ Betty,” “Permit Patty,” “Cornerstore Caroline” — calling the cops on black people over seemingly mundane acts.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/10/15/white-woman-fired-after-blocking-black-man-from-entering-his-building/
Man charged for filming himself removing ankle monitor in Facebook video
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A Missouri man is charged with a felony after he allegedly filmed himself removing an ankle monitor and then posted the video on Facebook.
Thirty-three-year-old Dustin Burns of Springfield was charged last week with tampering with electronic monitoring equipment.
The video shows someone using a butter knife and screwdriver to remove an ankle monitor. The man advises viewers to remove the ankle monitor without damaging it to avoid hefty fines.
The Springfield News-Leader reports court records show Burns pleaded guilty to violating a restraining order earlier this year and was placed on probation.
Court records show warrants were issued this summer after several probation violations were filed against Burns. He has been in the Greene County jail since Aug. 28.
He does not have an attorney listed in online court records.
Junkie mom arrested for stealing drugs from dying daughter
A drug-addicted Missouri mom was busted this week for swiping pain medication from her terminally ill daughter — and taking it herself, cops said.
Carol Ballweg, 46, was the primary caregiver for her 20-year-old daughter, only identified as “CM,” and was required to provide her with fentanyl and oxycodone for pain, Troy, Mo., cops said in a statement.
Staff at Troy Family Practice called local police Monday to report “concerns of neglect and drug abuse related to a patient,” cops said.
They had previously made several “hotline” calls about the young woman’s care — expressing concerns that Ballweg repeatedly asked for the medications to be filled earlier than required, police said. CM’s home health provider also raised the alarm.
So doctors decided to screen CM’s urine and found no traces of her prescribed drugs — prompting them to no longer fill her prescriptions, cops said.
Meanwhile, as her mom popped her pills, police said her helpless daughter developed bed sores, which can be life-threatening.
Cops executed a search warrant at Ballweg’s home on Tuesday — when she fessed up to having an opioid addiction and taking the meds herself.
She was charged with four counts of stealing a controlled substance and two counts of abusing a disabled or vulnerable person, according to police.
Her bond was set at $100,000, and a judge ordered that she cut off contact with her daughter.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/09/14/junkie-mom-arrested-for-stealing-drugs-from-dying-daughter/
Man testified he chopped up wife’s body to keep his children
OLATHE, Kan. — A man testified Tuesday that he spent about eight hours cutting up his wife’s body after she died at a Missouri hotel because he was afraid authorities would take away his children.
Justin Rey, 36, said protecting his family was the reason he didn’t call for medical help after his wife delivered a baby at the hotel in October and afterward when she killed herself, The Kansas City Star reported. Investigators later found Rey with his newborn and 2-year-old daughter, along with bags of body parts, at a storage shed in Lenexa, Kansas.
Rey is not charged in his wife’s death, but faces child endangerment charges in Kansas and Missouri and is charged with abandonment of a corpse in Missouri. He took the unusual step of testifying at his preliminary hearing in Kansas, with defense attorney Zane Todd saying Rey wanted to correct some witness testimony. After Tuesday’s hearing, a not guilty plea was entered for Rey to Johnson County, Kansas, charges of two counts of aggravated child endangerment and two counts of contributing to a child’s misconduct.
“It’s something I had to do,” Rey testified. “My family is very dear to me. It’s something I had to do to protect my family.”
One officer who met Rey at the storage unit said the 2-year-old appeared unhealthy and “almost looked like she had cancer.” The baby had a serious eye infection, according to several witnesses. The children were put in protective custody.
Rey has said in the past that his wife died in childbirth, but Lenexa police detective Shannon Murphy testified that Rey told her his wife had killed herself. After having his children pose for photographs with her body, Rey said he “skinned her like a fish,” Murphy testified. Murphy said Rey flushed body parts that would not fit in containers down the toilet.
Deputy Johnson County Coroner Charles Glenn testified that “a number” of stab wounds were found on some parts of Jessica Rey’s body but that it wasn’t possible to tell whether the injuries were inflicted before or after she died.
Rey told the court that he and the children had not been living at the storage locker, as witnesses said, but had been there for only about 11 hours while preparing to travel to Arizona, where he said he intended to give his wife a proper burial. He also said his children were well cared for.
“I didn’t endanger my children,” he testified. “My children were perfectly healthy.”
Rey also denied flushing anything but a placenta down the toilet.
His trial on the Kansas charges was scheduled for Nov. 5.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/09/04/man-testified-he-chopped-up-wifes-body-to-keep-his-children/
Woman denied job for ‘ghetto’ name, but company blames hacker
A Missouri woman said she’s hurt and distraught after being denied a job because her name was considered too “ghetto” — but company officials insist a hacker sent the racist message.
Hermeisha Robinson, of Bellefontaine Neighbors, shared her experience with Mantality Health in Chesterfield in a Facebook post on Monday, saying she was discriminated against due to her name — even though she had what it takes to fill the job post.
“I have a public service announcement,” Robinson wrote in an all-caps post. “I am very upset because today I received an email about this job that I applied for as a customer service representative at Mantality Health … I know I’m well qualified for the position as they seen on my resume!”
Robinson’s post continued: “They discriminated against me because of my name which they considered it to be ‘ghetto’ for their company! My feelings are very hurt and they even got me second guessing my name trying to figure out if my name is really that ‘ghetto.’”
Robinson asked friends to share her post, saying the “discrimination has to stop,” but company officials contend the message isn’t authentic, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Kevin Meuret, the CEO of the clinic that treats men with low testosterone, told the newspaper on Tuesday that someone from outside Missouri hacked into its email system, most likely a disgruntled former employee.
“Thank you for your interest in careers at Mantality Health,” read the response to Robinson. “Unfortunately we do not consider candidates that have suggestive ‘ghetto’ names. We wish you the best in your career search.”
Meuret said about 20 potential employees got emails from the hacker. Reports have since been filed with police in both Chesterfield and St. Louis County, he said.
“I’m a father of three daughters, and that young lady getting that [response] is horrible,” Meuret told the newspaper. “That young lady opened something that must have felt like a freight train, and that’s unacceptable.”
Meuret promised to “pursue this even if it becomes a federal matter,” he told the Post-Dispatch.
In a statement to The Post, Meuret said the password for an independent job board site used by the company was compromised Monday.
“We are currently working with law enforcement to identify the perpetrator and consider appropriate legal action,” the statement read. “We share the anger and frustration of those who received these bogus emails.”
Robinson, meanwhile, told The Post Wednesday that she’s still reeling from the pure hatred exposed in the hacked message.
“The first thing that went through my mind is how could someone just outright say something so mean like that,” Robinson said. “I wasn’t expecting that from a job. I didn’t name myself, I didn’t give myself this name. How can people be so mean, and so horrible?”
It was the first time Robinson applied to the company and she had not been contacted by anyone investigating the matter as of Wednesday, she said.
“It just makes me not want to do anything,” she said of the entire ordeal. “I don’t want to do anything anymore: go outside, say my name to people, anything.”
Robinson’s job hunt is still ongoing. She wouldn’t accept a job at the testosterone clinic even if one were offered to her at this point, she said.
“I wouldn’t feel safe,” she told The Post. “If some hacker got my email to reach me, they have my Social Security number, my birthday, they have everything. It just wouldn’t be a good working environment.”
Robinson’s cousin, Miltina Burnett, posted a screenshot of a message she received Monday from company officials indicating that a former employee hacked into the company’s system.
But regardless of the authenticity of the messages, the damage for Robinson has been very real, she said.
Missouri Man Admits to Hiding Cameras in Bathrooms at Church and Where He Worked
A 28-year-old Missouri man was arrested after confessing to hiding cameras inside bathrooms where he worked and at the church he volunteered at, according to KTVI.
The investigation began on January 15th after an employee at Adrenaline Zone in St. Charles discovered a covert camera in one of the bathrooms, according to a spokesperson for the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators obtained the camera and examined its footage, which allegedly self-recorded 28-year-old Jeffery Eisenbath installing the device. The footage also showed people entering and exiting the bathroom.
Eisenbath was out of town while the investigation was going on, but law enforcement obtained a search warrant for a computer and recording devices at his home. Eisenbath returned to the area January 22 and was taken into custody while driving. Authorities seized his computer, memory drives, and five covert cameras.
The sheriff’s office said Eisenbath confessed to installing the camera in the Adrenaline Zone, as well as a second camera in the bathroom at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
The Archdiocese of St. Louis and Sacred Heart Parish are assisting law enforcement in the investigation.
Eisenbath was charged in St. Charles County with felony invasion of property and remains jailed on $25,000 cash-only bond. He was charged in Lincoln County with felony invasion of privacy and possession of child pornography. Bond was set at $100,000 cash-only.
via: http://ktla.com/2018/01/25/man-admits-to-hiding-cameras-in-bathroom-at-church-entertainment-complex/