Welcome to Sott.net
Sat, 23 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Arrow Down

Fontana family of 4 die in apparent murder-suicide

Rick Rojas
The Los Angeles Times
Wed, 01 Jan 2014 08:12 UTC
fontana murder suicide
© (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
The body of one of the shooting victims is removed from the house in Fontana.
The shooting deaths of four family members at a Fontana home is being investigated as an apparent murder-suicide, police said Tuesday.

A relative discovered the bodies Monday night after family members failed to hear from the victims and thought something might be wrong, according to Martha Guzman-Hurtado, a Fontana police spokeswoman. Inside the home were the bodies of a man and a woman, both believed to be between 30 and 35, as well as the bodies of a 12-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. Coroner's officials have not yet released their names.

Police said the woman and children each died of multiple gunshot wounds, while the man had a single gunshot wound to the head, suggesting that he shot himself. One handgun was found inside the home, authorities said.

Guzman-Hurtado said there was no record of domestic dispute calls to the residence, although police did visit the property on a code enforcement call in 2010.
      Read More...
Arrow Down

Chinese doctor admits to trafficking in newborns


ABC News
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 22:36 UTC
Chinese Orphanage
© David Woo
Children in an orphanage in central China. Many have been there since being rescued from human traffickers when much younger. This photo was taken in 2009.
A Chinese doctor has admitted in court that she stole babies from the hospital where she worked and sold them to human traffickers, state media and a court said.

Zhang Shuxia, a locally respected and soon-to-retire obstetrician, stood trial on Monday in northern Shaanxi province's Fuping county, according to online postings from the court.

Zhang told parents their newborns had congenital problems and persuaded them to "sign and give the babies up," the court postings said. Calls to the Weinan Intermediate People's Court and the local Communist Party propaganda department went unanswered.

The case exposed the operations of a baby trafficking ring that operated across several provinces centering on Zhang, who delivered babies at the Fuping County Maternal and Child Hospital.

Child trafficking is a big problem in China, despite severe legal punishments that include the death penalty. Families who buy trafficked children are driven partly by the traditional preference for male heirs, a strict one-child policy and ignorance of the law.
      Read More...
Mr. Potato

TSA destroys virtuoso flautist's 11 instruments because they were 'agricultural products'

Scott Kaufman
The Raw Story
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 19:52 UTC
Image
© The Looking Spoon
A flute virtuoso was returning to New York via John F. Kennedy Airport when Customs officials confiscated and destroyed the instruments he was carrying with him.

According to Boujemaa Razgui, the officials told him that his 11 flutes - each of which he had constructed, by hand, himself - "were agricultural products and had to be destroyed."

Razgui, who is a Canadian citizen, frequently travels with a variety of flutes, each of which is designed to be played with a specific ancient or modern genre in mind.
      Read More...
Handcuffs

'16 requests for medical attention denied': Pittsburgh waitress and single mom suffering severe PTSD after brutal cops break into her home, taze her, apply arm bars and wrist locks, and put on handcuffs so tightly her arm had to be amputated


Daily Mail
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 21:21 UTC
handcuffs
© Alamy
'Too tight': The handcuffs caused her to suffer compartment syndrome, a limb- and life-threatening condition that occurs after an injury, which resulted in her arm being amputated.
A Pittsburgh woman is suing authorities after she had to have her arm amputated because police officers used 'excessive force' while they arrested her and refused to give her access to a doctor.

The mother-of-three, Amy Needham, 35, of Ross, says the officers entered her home to execute an arrest warrant for failing to show up to a preliminary hearing.

When sheriff's office employees arrived, Needham said she was using the bathroom, but they broke down the bathroom door.

They shocked her with a Taser, applied arm bars and wrist locks, and put on handcuffs 'that were too tight' before taking her to Allegheny County Jail, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

According to her attorney, Marvin Leibowitz, the tight handcuffs caused her to suffer compartment syndrome, a limb- and life-threatening condition that occurs after an injury.
      Read More...
Bad Guys

Psychopathic fraternity: Sigma Alpha Epsilon hazing rituals have led to 9 deaths

Alex Kane
Alternet
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 08:00 UTC
sigma alpha epsilon
© Kane5187/Wikimedia Commons
Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat house
Meet the nation's deadliest frat: Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE). The fraternity, which funnels many members into the high-rolling world of finance, has over 200 chapters across the country. It has also earned the distinction of being the frat linked to the most deaths as a result of hazing, as Bloomberg points out today in an investigation.

Bloomberg focuses on the story of a student named Justin Stuart, who attends Salisbury University in Maryland. As part of a hazing ritual he endured last winter, Stuart was forced to recite SAE's motto while standing naked in a trashcan filled with ice. Stuart was sprayed with a hose and had buckets of water poured on him.

That's not all that happened. Stuart said that over the course the eight-week initiation period, fraternity members beat him with a paddle, force people to drink until they passed out and even locked frat members for hours in a dark basement without food, water or a bathroom. They blasted the same German rock music at an extremely high volume. Stuart says it "reminded" him of Guantanamo Bay and that it was "almost like torture."
      Read More...
Heart - Black

Autism therapist charged after being caught on tape abusing child

Katie DeLong
Fox6now.com
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 15:35 UTC
Stephen Jacobs
© wordpress
Stephen Jacobs
27-year-old Stephen Jacobs of Wauwatosa faces one count of physical abuse of a child, sexual assault of a child, physical abuse of a child by a child care provider.

Officials spoke with the child's mother, who said her child suffers from severe autism and had been receiving treatment through a company called Autism Intervention Milwaukee for several months.

The child's mother told officials that she was advised by her child's doctor that he may be more mentally handicapped that previously diagnosed, and that his treatment needed to change. This, according to the criminal complaint.

The criminal complaint says the child received in-home treatment from four different therapists and neither she, nor her husband were allowed to be present for the therapy.

The complaint says the child is non-verbal, and unable to communicate what happens at therapy sessions. The child's mother and father became concerned that the child's treatment was not having the desired effect, so they placed a web camera in the treatment area to record his treatments on December 12th, 13th and 14th.

The complaint says that on December 14th, the child's mother observed therapist Stephen Jacobs physically assault her son.
      Read More...
Family

Shooting victim's body ignored by convenience store customers in disturbing video, Kalamazoo, Michigan

Evan Bleier
upi.com
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 14:52 UTC
Image
"When they told me people were still coming in that gas station, stepping over my child in the doorway, I couldn't believe it; I couldn't believe it," says victim's mother.



In order to help convict a shooting suspect, Michigan prosecutors revealed a disturbing surveillance video showing people ignoring the dead body of 31-year-old victim Jheryl Wright in the doorway of a convenience store in Kalamazoo.

In the video, multiple people look at Wright's body and ignore it completely. People are continuously stepping over Wright and continuing on with their business in the store as if they didn't notice him.

Jheryl's mother, Jackel Wright, found out about the video although she hasn't been able to watch it quite yet.

"When they told me people were still coming in that gas station, stepping over my child in the doorway, I couldn't believe it; I couldn't believe it," she said. "I just can't believe people in this world would do something like that. I can't."

Jackel doesn't understand how no one bothered to try to help her son.

"How can you step over someone lying in the doorway and not help; how would they feel if that was one of their loved ones sitting there," she said. "I hope God have mercy on your soul because you was wrong, sitting there and not helping my son, like he was just a doormat; walking over him, laying there dead. I hope y'all can't sleep at night because that was awful. Just plain awful."

      Read More...
Arrow Down

Florida judge allegedly drunk during proceedings; goes to rehab instead of jail

SovereignSon
Police State USA
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 15:06 UTC
Judge Gisele Pollack
© ABC
Judge Gisele Pollack
Broward County - A Florida judge presiding over misdemeanor drug cases reportedly showed up to work intoxicated and had to be removed from court. In a palpable irony, even a person who has dedicated her career toward meddling in other people's lives and using the force of government against them is herself incapable of keeping herself sober at work.

The judge faces no legal consequences and instead of being carted off to jail like so many of the recreational drug users she has dealt with, she will voluntarily put herself in rehab.

Judge Gisele Pollack, who founded Boward County's misdemeanor drug court in 2005, was seen verbally assaulting her judicial assistant and yelling for her car keys to be returned before another judge intervened, according to an unidentified source.

The tirade followed Pollack's abrupt dismissal of the day's session after only serving an hour and a half on the bench, during which time she began slurring her words while addressing defendants.

One can only speculate how many cases Pollack, an admitted alcoholic, may have presided over while under the influence. She says she will address what she calls "health issues" during an intensive two week outpatient program before returning to the bench.

Not everyone in the legal community feels that's quite an adequate remedy.
      Read More...
Eye 2

Grand Rapids woman finds boa constrictor inside couch


wzzm13.com
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 13:28 UTC
Image
© Wikimedia Commons.
A Boa constrictor
Two months after she moved a second hand couch into her bedroom, a Grand Rapids woman discovered a boa constrictor was living under the cushions.

Holly Wright says she doesn't know where the snake came from; she found the couch on the curb outside a house in Heritage Hill.

Wright, along with her boyfriend, videotaped the discovery. "It's been living in the couch for like two months in my bedroom and I had no idea and it looks pretty big."

Wright says the couch was along the curb with a free sign in front of it. She didn't think twice about bringing it home. "We smelled it and everything-- it looked OK. We peeled off the cushions, cleaned it up, never saw anything," said Wright.

      Read More...
Stop

North Dakota town evacuated after multiple explosions from train carrying soybeans derailed and was struck by train carrying crude oil

Ryan Gorman
Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 12:43 UTC
  • The first train - carrying 112 cars of soybeans - derailed at around 2pm
  • A second train carrying 106 cars of oil struck multiple cars of the first derailed train
  • Multiple explosions sent flames and toxic clouds hundreds of feet in the air
  • North Dakota town of Casselton evacuated
Image

Bone-rattling: A massive fireball from an exploding train car rises into the air just west of Casselton
A train derailed Monday afternoon and burst into flames after being hit by another train just outside the North Dakota town of Casselton - which authorities have now ordered to be fully evacuated.

As many as a dozen train cars carrying the highly flammable cargo jumped the tracks at around 2pm before the second train filled with oil barreled into them, causing multiple massive explosions.

The toxic plume of flames and smoke has led officials to have the entire town evacuated. Casselton is a suburban town about 25 miles west of Fargo and has a population of about 2,500 people.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts