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Deaths of Babies [Not kidding here]*VIOLENCE WARNING* |
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I WARN YOU.DO NOT PM ME OR COMMENT HOW IMMORAL OR SOMETHING THIS IS.READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. [Violent ones at bottom]
[NEW!!!]
TRACY, Calif. (April 11) - A Sunday school teacher was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and killing 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, whose body was found in a suitcase in an irrigation pond.
Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested at 11:55 p.m. Friday, about five hours after she drove herself to the local police station at the request of officers, said police Sgt. Tony Sheneman.
"She gave enough information to us during the course of the interview that probable cause was there to arrest her," said Sheneman. No other arrests were made.
Police did not say how Sandra died or give a possible motive.
Huckaby was being held without bail at the San Joaquin County Jail, with arraignment set for Tuesday, according to the county sheriff's Web site.
Sandra disappeared on March 27 and hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials turned out to search for her. Pictures of the girl with dark brown eyes and light brown hair were posted all over Tracy, a city of 78,000 people about 60 miles east of San Francisco.
On April 6, farmworkers draining an irrigation pond found the suitcase.
The slain girl's aunt, Angie Chavez, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press early Saturday that she was happy to learn of the arrest.
"I want to know why she did it, if she did it," Chavez said.
At an early morning news conference, Tracy Police Chief Janet Thiessen said investigators had worked on the case tirelessly.
"We have information that Sandra, by the time she was reported missing to us, that she probably had already been murdered," said Thiessen.
"It has helped us to bring Sandra home, again not in the way that we would've hoped, but that was out of our hands shortly after she went missing."
Huckaby had previously told The Tracy Press that Sandra visited her home on the day of her disappearance to play with her 5-year-old daughter. But Huckaby said she'd turned Sandra away because her daughter needed to pick up her toys and Sandra went to another friend's home. Huckaby also said she had left her suitcase in the driveway that day, and that it was missing.
The Tracy Press reported that Huckaby was released Thursday from Sutter Tracy Community Hospital, where she spent several days in intensive care for what she described as "internal bleeding."
Huckaby is a granddaughter of Pastor Clifford Lawless, whose Clover Road Baptist Church was the subject of a police search. Huckaby taught Sunday school at the church and lived with Lawless in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park that also was Sandra's home.
Lawless did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Saturday.
Huckaby's family had been questioned at length during the investigation, and their home and vehicles had been searched, Sheneman said.
Huckaby was scheduled to appear in court on April 17 to check in with a county mental health program as part of a three-year probation sentence for a petty theft she pleaded no contest to. In an interview with the newspaper on Friday, Huckaby said someone else by the same name was facing charges for the attempted November theft from Target.
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By Hilary White
HIALEA, November 2, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two Co-owners of a Miami-area abortion facility called Ginecologia may be charged with second-degree murder for killing a baby girl born alive in a recovery room. Co-owners Belkis Gonzalez and Siomara Senises are being investigated after Miami-Dade County police found the badly decomposed body of a baby girl at the facility. A search warrant reported that there was “probable cause” to pursue a second degree murder investigation.
A woman identified by Operation Rescue in their October 23 report as Ms. Betty Rojas informed police that a child had been killed by “a doctor” by drowning after being born alive.
18-year old Sycloria Williams, told police that she had arrived at the facility July 20 for the second half of a late-term abortion. She says she gave birth to a living baby girl while sitting in a recliner in the facility’s recovery room. Ms. Williams told police that she had watched her daughter moving and gasping for air for approximately five minutes.
The warrant says that the staff “began screaming that the baby was alive.” Then, “Ms. Belkis Gonzalez cut the umbilical cord, threw it into a red bag with black printing. Ms. Gonzalez then swept the baby, with her hands, into the same red bag along with the gauze used during the procedure.”
Eight days later, police found the body of the child which Rojas had informed them had been treated with a caustic chemical and left in the heat of the Florida sun to accelerate decomposition in a possible attempt to dispose of the evidence.
Proceedings are awaiting the results of an autopsy that, due to the severe decomposition of the body, might still be inconclusive. Police are interested in evidence that the baby was born alive and that she was possibly over 24 weeks gestation, the legal limit for abortion in Florida.
Since the October 23 report, the Miami New Times published a story revealing the substandard conditions of the for-profit abortion facilities owned or operated by Senises and Gonzalez. Hialeah Police Deputy Chief Mark Overton told the New Times that an unnamed witness confirmed that “the baby was born alive; it was attempting to breathe.”
Overton said, “This isn't about a botched abortion; there never was an abortion, and the mother is not the victim…The victim is the baby, and whether that baby had an hour or eight hours' worth of life, she had a right to that.”
“Palmetto General Hospital is only five minutes away,” he said, indicating that the child’s life could have been saved. “It is our opinion that this is a homicide, an unlawful killing of a human being.”
Overton told the New Times that the baby’s remains had weighed between two and three pounds and measured about 12 inches long. The average gestation of a twelve-inch foetus is between 24 and 25 weeks. The average for a baby weighing two pounds is 27 weeks.
Another of facility owned or operated by Senises and Gonzalez was closed by police in 2004 after the abortion of twins was botched and it was revealed that one doctor hired to do abortions there had no medical license. A third facility is still in operation.
On October 29, Overton told WorldNetDaily that he believes charges of second-degree murder will be filed in the case.
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PLANO, Texas - With a calm and dispassionate voice and a hymn playing in the background, Dena Schlosser confessed to the unthinkable, telling a 911 operator she’d cut off the arms of her baby girl.
The woman was sitting in her living room covered with blood when police arrived Monday. Her nearly 11-month-old daughter lay fatally injured in a crib in a bedroom of the family’s apartment in Plano. The child died shortly afterward at a nearby hospital.
Police have charged the 35-year-old mother with capital murder, but declined to reveal where she is being held.
Schlosser, who had a history of postpartum depression, had been investigated on child neglect allegations earlier this year, but Texas Child Protective Services had recently closed a seven-month investigation, concluding that Schlosser did not pose a risk to her children. Neighbors said she seemed to be a loving, attentive mother.
“There were never any indications of violence with this family,” agency spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales said. “The children had always been healthy, happy and cared for.”
'I cut her arms off'
But, on Monday, authorities discovered a grisly scene at the family’s apartment after the child’s father called a day-care center, and asked them to check on his wife and daughter.
Day-care workers called 911 after talking to the mother; an operator then called Schlosser.
Asked if there was an emergency, Schlosser calmly responded “Yes,” according to 911 tapes released by police.
“Exactly what happened?” the 911 operator asked.
“I cut her arms off,” Schlosser replied, as the hymn “He Touched Me” played in the background.
“You cut her arms off?” he repeated.
“Uh huh,” she answered.
It was not immediately clear what instrument was used to sever the baby’s arms or why the child’s father called a day-care center to check on his family.
Schlosser lived at the apartment with other family members, including her two older daughters. Authorities said the girls, ages 6 and 9, were at school when police arrived, and that their father was at work.
No one answered the door Monday night at the family’s apartment in suburban Dallas. Children’s bicycles rested near the entrance along with angel garden statues.
Woman appeared to be a 'great mother'
Neighbors said Schlosser took her children swimming in the summer, had picnics in the courtyard and walked her baby around the complex the same time each afternoon.
Dena Livingston, 43, said she saw Schlosser making her rounds with the stroller on Sunday. Two days earlier, she saw Schlosser waiting with the baby outside the elementary school where her two other daughters attend.
“She didn’t give off like she was in a distant world or didn’t care about the baby,” Livingston said.
Livingston’s husband, Brad, added: “To see her with the girls, you would just think she was a great mother.”
Child-protective officials were interviewing Schlosser’s daughters and would talk to the father before deciding whether to remove the girls from the home.
In January, the agency was called to the home after Schlosser was seen running down the street, with one of her daughters bicycling after her, authorities said. When officials arrived, the child told them her mother had left her 6-day-old sister alone in the apartment.
Schlosser appeared at the time to be suffering from postpartum depression and having a psychotic episode, Gonzales said.
Schlosser was hospitalized, and later agreed to seek counseling and saw a psychiatrist, Gonzales said.
“At the time we closed the case, we had been assured that Mom was stabilized and that she was not a risk to herself or her children,” Geoff Wool, spokesman for the Family and Protective Services Department, said.
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A mother saw her baby son crushed to death by a suspected drink-driver who mounted the pavement at the gates of a primary school.
Tina Woods, 31, was pushing her 15-month- old son Finlay in his pram when a black Toyota 4x4 careered towards them.
She was hit from behind and collapsed against a pillar, bleeding from a head wound
When she looked up, she saw the pram wedged between the vehicle and the gates. Horrified witnesses said the 4x4 repeatedly rammed into the gates, each time crushing the pram further.
Eventually it stopped and around 20 parents and neighbours battled to lift the vehicle off the baby outside Selwyn Junior School in Highams Park, East London.
Paramedics arrived within minutes and took the baby to hospital with his mother, but doctors told her his head injuries were so severe that there was nothing more they could do.
Mrs Woods was about to collect her eldest two children Livvy, seven, and Dillon, five, when the tragedy unfolded on Thursday at 3.20pm. Her own mother Linda and her other son Harvey, four, were with her, but were unhurt.
'Harvey ran a few feet ahead of us so I went after him,' said Mrs Woods. 'The next thing I knew I had been hit from behind and thrown into a pillar.
'I screamed for Harvey and saw he was okay, then I looked round and saw the 4x4 wedged in the school gates.
'The woman driver was just ramming the car into the gates over and over again. We all screamed at her to stop but she ignored us. All the time Finlay was in the pram. It was getting more and more crushed against a pillar.'
After the crash, police arrested Katie Gutierrez-Perez, the 39-year-old driver of the 4x4, on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, drink-driving and driving while unfit through drink or drugs.
She is understood to have been driving with an outdated tax disc. The driver, who is a mother of two teenagers, is a divorcee who lives a street away from the Woods family and runs a local cafe.
Mrs Woods and her husband Roger, who live in a £230,000 three-bedroom Victorian terrace house yards from the school, were struggling to come to terms with the loss of their 'ray of sunshine'
'He was talking a little bit and was already walking a little bit,' said Mrs Woods. We had bought him his first pair of shoes from the market on the morning he died.'
Scores of parents, children, neighbours and friends laid flowers at the school gates in memory of Finlay.
One tribute read: 'Sleep tight little one, I am so sorry we could not help you.'
Prayers were said for Finlay and his family at the school yesterday as educational psychologists were on hand to provide counselling and support to both children and teachers.
Headmaster Rob Highsted held a special assembly for pupils. Many were in tears as they were told exactly what happened.
Mr Highsted said: 'Many parents and staff acted with great bravery in their attempt to save a young life.'
An inquest into Finlay's death has been opened.
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YORK, Pa. - A 2-year-old girl died after being beaten with a video game controller by her mother's boyfriend, police said Tuesday. Darisabel Baez's mother overheard the beating Sunday but did nothing until she realized the girl was unconscious, police said.
The girl was pronounced dead late Monday at Hershey Medical Center, police Lt. Ron Camacho said.
Homicide was added to the list of charges against Harve L. Johnson on Tuesday; he was already in jail on counts including aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.
The girl's mother, Neida E. Baez, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
Bruises
It was clear from the bruises and other injuries on the little girl's body that Sunday was not the first time she had been abused, Dauphin County coroner Graham Hetrick told WGAL-TV. He said it was one of the worst cases of child abuse he has ever seen.
Baez, 19, called for an ambulance Sunday and said Johnson had brought the unconscious child to her, limp and wet from an attempt to revive her in a bathtub, a police affidavit said.
Johnson, 26, acknowledged beating the girl with a video game controller but did not say why, police said. Baez said Johnson had abused the girl in the past and that she heard the girl scream after Johnson beat her Sunday, according to the affidavit.
Detective Dana Ward said Baez was charged because she did not intervene or try to get help for Darisabel.
Johnson and Baez remained in custody Tuesday. His bail was set at $200,000; hers was $25,000.
Through police, family members declined requests for interviews Tuesday. Court officials said they did not know whether Johnson and Baez had lawyers to speak for them.
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NEW ORLEANS -- Six-week-old Diana Nelson succumbed to her wounds Thursday at 2:22 p.m., according to a hospital spokesman. Nelson had been on life support for days, having been beaten, burned and drugged, according to police.
Bogalusa police said they arrested a baby sitter, Amy Leighann Thomas, 22, Wednesday. Officers said Thomas confessed to abusing the child before she died.
Police said Thursday that Thomas' charges were going to be upgraded to murder.
“I had no idea what was going on," said Nelson's uncle Allen Daigle, who was present when EMTs took Nelson. “All I seen was the pale face and the blue lips. I didn’t see the burn marks until I went to the police station.”
Investigators said they examined Nelson at the hospital and found evidence of severe child abuse.
Bogalusa Police Department Sgt. Darrell Darden said the child had suffered blunt force trauma and head injuries consistent with being beaten by a fist, and that Nelson had a skull fracture. He said Nelson had also been burned repeatedly, and had been forced to swallow some kind of antidepressant like Xanax.
Investigators said the burn marks were similar to curling iron burns.
"It's a terrible situation."
- Sgt. Darrell Darden
"It's a terrible situation," Darden said. "What's best for the baby at this time is to find who done this and make them pay."
Nelson's 14-month-old sister was taken into protective custody pending the outcome of an investigation.
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SUFFOLK -- A judge dismissed on Monday charges against a 22-year-old pregnant Suffolk woman who shot herself in the stomach to abort her unborn child.
If the case had gone forward, it would have been the first time that a woman would have been tried in Virginia for aborting her own baby.
Tammy Skinner - scheduled to give birth to her third daughter on the day of the shooting - called 911 early Feb. 23 from a downtown parking lot and told the dispatcher that someone shot her. . . .
During the investigation, a neighbor said Skinner was at the neighbor's apartment about 3 a.m. the day of the shooting. Skinner called 911 about an hour later from a parking lot. Officers found a red stain on the driver's seat in her car, a .22-caliber gun and a magazine with three bullets, a search warrant indicated. The abortion charge turned into a legal headache for prosecutors because Virginia's statute has remained untested for nearly 50 years. Skinner's lawyer, Kevin E. Martingayle, argued on Monday that in two similar Florida and Georgia cases, the courts sided with mothers who shot themselves and aborted their children.
In the Florida case, an unwed teenager about 26 weeks pregnant shot herself in 1994. Her baby lived for 15 days. The state Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that a pregnant woman couldn't be held criminally liable for killing her fetus.
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(CNN) -- A Texas couple charged with killing the little girl known as "Baby Grace" now face capital murder charges, after a Texas grand jury upgraded the charges on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty against the girl's mother, Kimberly Dawn Trenor, and Trenor's husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II.
Two-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers was beaten to death and her body was disposed of in Galveston Bay.
Riley's body was found October 29 by a fisherman on an uninhabited island in the bay. It was wrapped in black plastic bags and stuffed in a blue, plastic bin.
Her identity was not known at first, and police dubbed her "Baby Grace." Police sketches of the child were widely distributed, and Sheryl Sawyers, the girl's paternal grandmother, contacted police from her Ohio home to say the drawing resembled her granddaughter. DNA testing confirmed the child's identity.
Trenor, 19, and Zeigler, 24, were initially charged with injury to a child and tampering with evidence.
But since the initial charges were filed last month the investigation has continued and police have gathered additional evidence, in addition to confirming Riley's identity, said a statement released Wednesday by Galveston County Criminal District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk.
Based on that, the grand jury was asked to upgrade the charges, he said. A three-hour hearing was held Wednesday in which grand jurors heard testimony from five witnesses, including police and FBI investigators and the medical examiner.
The grand jury deliberated for only three minutes Wednesday before upgrading the charges, Sistrunk said.
Trenor told police Riley had been beaten and thrown across a room and that her head was held under water before she died July 24.
She said the couple hid the girl's body in a storage shed for one to two months before putting it in the plastic container and dumping it into the bay.
A medical examiner said Riley's skull was fractured in three places that would have been fatal injuries.
Trenor and the girl moved to Texas from Ohio in May to be with Zeigler, who Trenor had met online.
Sistrunk said the investigation is continuing, and a decision on whether to seek the death penalty will not be made until its conclusion.
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Correction Appended
A 16-month-old Brooklyn boy drowned in a filthy tub in a bathroom with no working light on Sunday while his mother spent 40 minutes in the next room playing CD's, prosecutors said yesterday as the city's Administration for Children's Services said it was starting its own full investigation of its handling of the troubled family.
Prosecutors said the boy, Dahquay Gillians, was found face-up in the bathtub by his mother, Tracina Vaughn. They said her companion checked on Dahquay and his brother, Tramel Vaughn, after arriving at her apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Sunday evening and, thinking that the 16-month old was behind a shower curtain, left briefly to buy diapers and beer.
The Administration for Children's Services, which has been monitoring the family since Ms. Vaughn was arrested after a previous companion scalded Tramel with hot water in May 2004, said an initial investigation of the drowning showed its own caseworkers had been checking on the children at least twice a month recently. They had been in the apartment only last week, when the children were seen and found to be well fed and cared for, it said.
"We intend to gather all of the facts that will tell us what led to this child being in danger," said John B. Mattingly, the commissioner of children's services.
But interviews and a review of records showed there had been numerous signs of trouble in recent months.
The mother had violated the terms of her probation that followed the scalding by testing positive for marijuana.
She was required to attend drug counseling classes, and when she missed one, a probation violation was issued, according to a spokesman.
Also, Pat Bath, a spokesman for the Legal Aid Society, which provided law guardians for the two boys, said Ms. Vaughan missed a court appearance in October meant to monitor the children's well-being. Alarmed, the lawyers then asked that Ms. Vaughn bring the two boys to their offices.
The visit was scheduled for last Friday. Legal Aid said she never showed up. A.C.S. said its records showed she did make a court appearance in October, although the spokeswoman was unsure if she and the Legal Aid Society were talking about the same hearing.
The harrowing details of Dahquay's last moments in the apartment, at 355 Herkimer Street, were described in court yesterday as his mother stood silently at her arraignment. She was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and reckless endangerment.
Prosecutors said she spent 40 minutes playing CD's and searching for sanitary napkins, looking once in that time in the bathroom - which had no working light - to check on the children. The bathroom was so dark the mother herself was afraid to shower there, one law enforcement official said. "The conditions of the place were horrific," the official said.
Prosecutors said Ms. Vaughn's companion, whose name was not divulged in court, whom neighbors identified only as Gary, did not see the boy when he arrived in the apartment, thinking he was behind a curtain, and then left briefly. He is not a suspect, law enforcement sources said. Neighbors said he had moved in with Ms. Vaughn recently.
"His mother sees the 1-year-old face down in the tub," said Wilfredo Cotto, an assistant district attorney. He said that the companion performed CPR on Dahquay, and "a large amount of water was extracted from the child."
In March, Ms. Vaughn pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment of Tramel. Her previous companion, Tyrone Gillians, had placed the boy in scalding hot water after he soiled himself with excrement. The couple waited two days to report the burns, which oozed puss and covered 80 percent of his body.
Mr. Gillians was found guilty of assault, and imprisoned. Ms. Vaughan was placed on probation for not seeking immediate medical care for Tramel.
The Administration for Children's Services took Tramel into protective custody and placed him in foster care with a maternal cousin, Latisha Bond, in June, 2004.
Dahquay was born in July 2004 and was also placed with the cousin, who lives in Mastic, N.Y. Officials at the child welfare agency said both children were moved to a foster home closer to their mother in November 2004.
According to the agency, while the children were in foster care, their mother attended parenting classes and received individual therapy and counseling.
In March, a Family Court judge, identified by Legal Aid as Susan S. Danoff, ordered the children reunited with their mother and required the agency to supervise the family.
"There is no indication that our people did not do their basic job," Commissioner Mattingly said, "but there is going to be a second phase of this assessment to ask why we made the judgments we did with the information we had.
"Is it possible everyone involved took a certain angle and were missing some of the options," he said in response to a question of whether the agency had been overeager to return the children. "We have to look at all of those questions."
Ms. Bond, the cousin who had cared for the boys for part of their time in foster care in her tidy Long Island home, said, "The system failed again." She added: "We had several contacts with A.C.S. They knew what was happening and they did nothing. A.C.S. neglected the children."
Dahquay's death put a spotlight on the child welfare agency's policy of keeping troubled families together, theoretically under tight supervision.
As a result of that policy, the number of children in foster care in the city has dropped to a little over 17,000, down from a high of 49,000 in 1991. Meanwhile, the number of children who are victims of abuse or neglect who are being given services in their homes has grown to more than 35,000.
Child welfare advocates have begun to worry whether the agency has become too rigid in its commitment to keep families together and is not carefully evaluating each individual case.
"One of the concerns that I have had for a while is the belief that simply reducing the population necessarily means we have a better system," said Marcia Lowry, the executive director of Children's Rights Inc., a nonprofit group that issues periodic reports on New York's foster care system.
"It is really important that there be quality preventive and protective services," she said. And the city does not now have, nor has it had for years, a way to evaluate whether it is getting high-quality services for its money, she added.
After Ms. Vaughn's arraignment, her lawyer. Larry Rothstein, said that she maintained her innocence. He said he had asked that she be placed on suicide watch, and said he had requested that she be in held protective custody, in case "other ladies in the jail get wind of this."
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LAKEVILLE, Minn. -- A Lakeville mother has been charged with two counts of manslaughter in the drowning death of her 11-month-old daughter.
Lakeville police said that Katherine Renae Bodem, 38, was shopping for shoes online when her daughter, Cecelia Katherine, drowned in the bathtub.
In a criminal complaint filed in Dakota County, a Lakeville investigator said that several officers arrived at Bodem's home on Aug. 25 to find two women out in front of the house administering CPR to a baby. Officers said another woman, who was identified as Bodem, was standing nearby and was frantically yelling, "It's all my fault" and repeatedly told officers, "“I’m so stupid, this has been a horrible year for me.”
Investigators said Bodem told police that she put the girl and her 2-year-old son in the bathtub on the main floor of the house while she went downstairs for a few minutes where her other two children were playing. Bodem told officers that said she could still hear Cecelia and her brother playing and laughing, but after there was silence, she went upstairs and saw her son pulling Cecelia from the tub.
Bodem told police at the time that she had left the two children unattended in the tub for about 10 minutes.
One of Bodem's other children told police that she thought Bodem was buying shoes online when Bodem was downstairs with them, because Bodem had broken a pair. The child said she thought that Bodem had been away from the tub for about 20 minutes and that they had all heard Cecelia and her brother laughing in the tub. The child told police that they heard Cecelia crying and that shortly afterwards, the son came downstairs and said, "Mom, CC."
Meanwhile, Betty Koberoski, Bodem's mother, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that she fears her daughter suffers from depression. Koberoski told the Pioneer Press she called county authorities nearly a year ago to report her concerns about her daughter’s children. Prior to the baby’s death, Bodem had four children, the oldest of whom is 10.
Koberoski told the newspaper that she received an upbeat birthday card from her daughter after the baby’s birth. Then weeks passed without any contact, and her daughter filed a restraining order against Koberoski in November, the Pioneer Press reported.
“Last November, I called Dakota County ... and said I am so scared for those children because my daughter is suffering from postpartum depression,” Koberoski told the newspaper. "I still do not know the details. It is so sad. I loved that child so much. I love my daughter.”
Bodem is charged with two counts of second-degree manslaughter. If convicted, she could face up to 10 years in prison and $20,000 in fines.
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 Matt The Whore · Sun Oct 26, 2008 @ 02:36am · 1 Comments |
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