3 Month Old Baby Beaten to Death at Homeless Shelter

[FeeFee]

Originally posted by Cream
All of these stories are so sad. The story that BabyBlue 91 posted hits very close to home literally since it happened a few blocks from where I am now. This poor child. According to the last news report that I heard, they don't know how the child died yet. The authorities are waiting for a report from the medical examiner's office to see what charges should be filed.

Yeah. If the child died of natural causes, then she would only be charged with getting rid of a dead body (I forgot the legal terminology used), which is a misdemeanor. If the cause of death is otherwise, then either murder or manslaughter charges will be bought against her. Either way, what the woman did was straight messed up.

[Neosoulchild]

Grandmother Kills Baby

FLEETWOOD, Pa. (July 13) - A woman has been charged in the fatal poisoning of her 5-week-old granddaughter, authorities said.

Police said that Merry Long, 43, poured about two cups of salt into a can of powdered baby formula because she was angry at her son and his girlfriend, who is the child's mother. The couple and the child were living with Long at the time of the Feb. 11 poisoning, according to authorities.

The mother unknowingly mixed the formula with water and fed it to the baby, who went into convulsions and died Feb. 18, officials said.

Long fled the area after confessing Feb. 24 that she put salt in the formula because she was angry with the couple for the way they were treating her.

Long was charged Friday with homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. Authorities have not explained why they were unable to file charges earlier.

She has not been found.

The child, Megan Long, died from brain swelling caused by excessive sodium, the Dauphin County coroner's office said.



It seems as though out of no where all of these child endangerment cases have been coming to light. Is it just that people are reporting them more now, or have people just gone crazy over the past few months?

[blackcoffee]

My heart really cannot take all of the craziness and insane madness going on in this world. How could anyone kill a child?? I just don't understand. I look at my own little one (2 years old) and how she is such a wonderful blessing to me; how she smiles, gives me hugs and kisses - these stories truly tear at my heart.

[CrimsonTide4]

May this sorry azz burn in the deepest bluest depths of hell!!


http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/1624.htm


July 27, 2003 -- A deranged father furious over seeing his estranged common-law wife with another man hanged their 22-month-old son to death at a Queens motel yesterday, police said.

Little Omar Arias was found dangling from a shower curtain rod in the Crown Motor Inn about a half hour after his father, Juan Batista, checked into the $100-a-night Elmhurst Motel at 74-01 Queens Blvd. at 1 a.m. yesterday, cops said.

"After about a half an hour, [Batista] came down and said, 'I killed somebody; call the police,' " said motel co-owner Harshad Patel.

Patel said on-duty night desk clerk Hiren Patel immediately phone cops, who stormed into Room 303 on the third floor and found the boy had been hanged with an electrical cord.

The tot was pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital.

Batista remained in the motel lobby and surrendered to police. He was taken to Elmhurst Hospital and placed under psychiatric observation.

He is charged with second-degree murder.

The boy's mother, Alexandra Arias, was also brought to Elmhurst and treated for shock.

Law-enforcement sources said the boy was with Batista all day at his Corona home, but around 11:30 p.m., about an hour and a half before the murder, he suddenly left with the child.

Batista's sister, Emely Fernandez, said he told the family "I'll be back in 10 minutes."

He apparently took his son to a meeting point to hand the child over to Arias, but flew into a rage after he spotted his former common-law wife with a new man, sources said.

"It made him crazy with rage," the source said. "So, instead of getting out of the car and confronting the mother, he decided to get in the car and kill his kid."

Batista, a fitness trainer at a Manhattan gym, told police that after he hanged little Omar, he tried to hang himself.

Fernandez, said the boy stayed with his father Thursday and Friday at the family's Corona apartment.

Arias's sister's brother-in-law, Raymond Padilla, said Arias moved up to her family's New Britain house three months ago to "get away from" Batista.

But he followed suit, heading to the area and living out of area motels while he looked for work.

The couple, "always had problems," he said. Batista was becoming, "obsessed with her."

[RedefinedDiva]

*SMH*

There are no more words for this entire thread....

[treblk]

Lord have mercy on these crazy people.
My heart goes out to the family.

[UpPinkies]

I cannot believe this story. He decided to kill his CHILD because he saw the mother with another man. His CHILD, a BABY.

I am upset about this story. What is going on in today's world that you would get the thought to hang a baby?

This reminds me of that AA boy in Chicago and the state decided to give him back to his insane mother and she ended up hanging him.

[Steeltrap]

Two-Month-Old Dies in Hot Vehicle While Mom Applies for Job

Thursday, July 31, 2003


HARLINGEN, Texas — A 2-month-old girl died after being left inside a sweltering parked car while her mother was in a Target store applying for a job, police said.

After consulting prosecutors, police charged 24-year-old July Vreeland with abandoning-endangering a child Wednesday. Vreeland was in jail Wednesday night.

Police were still trying to determine how long the child had been in the car Wednesday afternoon.

"We'll continue our investigation by interviewing her and her relatives as we wait for the autopsy report," said Harlingen (search) police Lt. A.R. Garcia.

Police and witnesses described the child's mother as distraught.

A passer-by called 911 after hearing a woman scream upon approaching her car, a dark late-model Mitsubishi sedan. The caller saw a lifeless infant inside the vehicle.

The outside temperature was 93 degrees, Garcia said, and while police did not measure the car's interior temperature, cars can quickly heat up to 140 degrees.

Garcia said that if convicted, Vreeland could be sentenced to between two and 20 years in state prison, depending on what level of the charge prosecutors pursue.

As of July 2002, researchers had identified at least 150 children who had died since 1996 as the result of being left or trapped in a hot, parked vehicle.

[RedefinedDiva]

HAVE PEOPLE NOTGRASPED THE FACT THAT YOU SHOULD NOT LEAVE KIDS INSIDE OF CARS?

If I can't stand to sit my grown ass outside in a car in the heat, what makes people think that a kid can do it? I have the ability to roll down the windows, turn on the A/C, etc. Kids can't do that. I have an example. One day, my battery died in my car while I was at the post office. So, until someone came, I sat in the car. I had all of the windows DOWN and I was still sweltering. I was sweating and everything. The sun was beating down on everything outside. Here I am, sitting in the car and thinking that I was protecting myself from the sun. Well, I get out to stretch my legs and I SWEAR it felt 10 degrees cooler OUTSIDE.

People think that they are saving their children from being kidnapped by winding up all the windows. Well, I would rather take that risk than to allow my child to die a horrible death from heat exhaustion. The child also has a chance to scream, beg for help, get rescued, or something. Here's something else that's crazy: My downstairs neighbor was leaving out at the same time as I was one day. She started up the car and turned the A/C on full blast. She then strapped her kid into the carseat, and proceeded to go back inside to get more things. I watched her do all of this. I lingered in my parking space for as longs as I could (about 3-5 minutes) just to see when she would come back out. She hadn't by the time I had to leave! As least she did leave the A/C on for the girl, but who's to say that would be enough?

Some people....

[MsVee1980]

That is so sad and this chick should have known better! She's what...24? That's crazy. My baby would be more important than applying for a job. If I can't apply because I have a baby with me, thhen I'll come back on a day when my baby is in the care of someone else.

That's like last year around this time when this lady left her kids in her hot car while she went in the beauty shop to get her hair done. They both died. And she actually had the nerve to go shopping while inside also. Priorties I tell ya.

[CrimsonTide4]

August 18, 2003

An 8-month-old boy was found on a West Baltimore street with a cord wrapped around his neck and a rat-tailed comb lodged in his throat early yesterday -- an incident that is being investigating as child abuse, city police said.

The infant, Shelton Miller, was in serious condition and breathing with the help of a ventilator at University of Maryland Medical Center's pediatric intensive care unit, police said.

At 6:07 a.m., police received a call reporting that a baby had been abandoned in the 1400 block of Mountmor Court. When officers arrived, the baby was being comforted by an unidentified person who had found him and removed the cord. Police initially took the baby to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where the comb was removed. The baby had been in the care of his 64-year-old grandmother. No charges had been filed as of last night, police said.

[BabyBlue91]

Infants' death in SUV looks to be accidental

While awaiting test results, investigators suspect man simply forgot about 2 kids


Sunday, August 17, 2003


BY GUY STERLING AND RUDY LARINI
Star-Ledger Staff

An East Orange postal worker was released on bail yesterday while investigators awaited test results on the deaths of his two infant sons, who were left in the back seat of the family SUV during Friday's midday heat, authorities said.

Derrick Strothers, 38, was charged by the Essex County Prosecutor's Office with two counts of aggravated manslaughter and child endangerment in the deaths of his and his wife's only children, 2-year-old Derrick Jr. and 1-year-old Dylan, county authorities said.


He was released from Essex County Jail on $100,000 bail.

Investigators said Strothers may have accidentally left the boys strapped in their car seats in his 1993 Pathfinder for two hours or more while he was working at his post office job Friday afternoon.

"We're still investigating exactly what happened, but maybe he literally forgot he had them with him," said Howard Zuckerman, the assistant Essex County prosecutor assigned to the case. "That's what we're trying to figure out."

East Orange 4th Ward Councilman Zachary Turner, who has known Strothers for three years, said, "He made a horrible mistake. I don't know why he would do anything like that."

Zuckerman put the time the boys were in the Pathfinder from about 12:30 p.m. until 3 p.m. Authorities said the windows of the sport utility vehicle were shut during those hours. The National Weather Service reported temperatures in the area at close to 90 degrees between 3 and 4 p.m.

"It does appear from our initial investigation this was a tragic accident, but we need to be very careful that there are no other reasons to be concerned," added assistant prosecutor Carolyn Wright, acting chief of the Essex County office's homicide squad.

Medical examiners were still running tests yesterday and would not have a cause of death until Tuesday, Wright said. She said an examination of the boys' bodies turned up no sign of previous trauma.

The family has no history of problems with the state Division of Youth and Family Services, Wright said. DYFS representatives showed up at East Orange police headquarters Friday to discuss the deaths with investigators.

"We know what killed them: being in a hot car for two to three hours, from the looks of things," said Zuckerman.

Authorities said Strothers had dropped off his wife, Leah, at her job in Union before driving to the East Orange post office, where he is a customer service supervisor. He has been with the postal service for 15 years, with most of that time in Montclair.

Sometime before 4 p.m., Strothers drove to the front of a medical building affiliated with the East Orange Hospital and banged on the door for help. Emergency service workers found the boys dead in their car seats.

A half-hour later, the bodies were removed from the car by the Essex County Medical Examiner's Office.

Police interviewed Strothers' wife Friday evening, said Wright.

Turner said he has known Strothers from the customer service window at the main post office at Main Street/City Hall Plaza, next door to City Hall and adjacent to the East Orange police headquarters on North Munn Avenue.

'He's a pretty nice guy," Turner said. "He's friendly. I just feel bad that something like this happened to him and his family."

Turner said of the loss of the two babies, "It has touched so many people, and you have mothers and grown men who have broken down in tears because of this.

"To think how these infants must have suffered, it brings tears to my eyes. I just hope God will forgive him. Those kids didn't even get a chance to experience life at all."

Kids and Cars, a national group that raises awareness about dangers facing children, said the deaths brought to 32 the number of children who have died in suffocating car conditions this year.

In 2001, there were 34 such deaths, and last year there were 30, said Jannette Fennell, the organization's founder and president. A change in a parent's or a caregiver's routine is the cause cited most often in the fatalities, she added.

"What we don't do is call these situations 'freak accidents,' because they happen all the time," said Fennell, interviewed by telephone from her home in Kansas City, Mo.

To avoid such tragedies, Kids and Care suggested that drivers put a teddy bear or some other object in the front passenger seat as a reminder they have children in the car with them.

[Steeltrap]

Despondent mom walks into lake with her two children

She dies with daughter, but son manages to swim to shore

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


AKRON, Ohio — A woman apparently upset over money problems walked into a lake with her daughter and son in tow, drowning herself and the 4-year-old girl, police said Monday.
Kenetta Lockhart, 32, of Akron, drove her Jeep up to the Summit Lake on Sunday, parked it and either walked off a boat dock or ramp with her daughter and 8-year-old son, police said. The boy was able to swim to shore.

“Preliminary information indicates that she might have been despondent over some personal and financial problems,” said Akron Police Capt. Daniel Zampelli.

The boy was listed in fair condition at Children’s Hospital.

Divers pulled Lockhart’s body from the lake Sunday night. With nearly a dozen family members watching from the beach early Monday, divers recovered 4-year-old Kayla Langdon’s body, said Lt. Sylvia Trundle.

“It was really something to see her little body,” Trundle said. “The family was very, very loving and concerned.”

Trundle said the bodies were found in an area of the 115-acre lake that was 8 to 10 feet deep.

Police hoped to interview the boy as soon as he was able, Trundle said.

“We’ll be meeting with family. Everyone is pretty much in shock right now,” she said.

Originally published on August 18, 2003

[toocute]

I'm offically not reading this thread anymore. I can't take it. How can people do this little babies?

[Honeykiss1974]

Originally posted by toocute
I'm offically not reading this thread anymore. I can't take it. How can people do this little babies?

I am with you.

In all seriousness, we needed to have a lunchtime hour of prayer dedicated to all mothers. We need to pray that God gives all mothers strength, wisdom, and the peace to know that regardless as to what the situation seems like, God will not give you more than what you can bear. He just won't. There will be a day of rejoicing, you just have to have the strength and patience to endure.