The inside of his ears had been burned with cigarettes. He was forced to drink shampoo. His caretakers bent two of his toes to the point that an amputation may be necessary, according to reports.
When a Westgate Resorts administrative assistant spotted the 7-year-old trying to serve himself cereal at the buffet in their Osceola County sales center earlier this month, the first thing she noticed was his trembling arms. They were too thin. His eyes were sunken.
"He was really skinny," said Westgate employee Hilda Berrios. "He looked like one of those kids you see on TV." "As I focused, looking on him, I noticed the bruises and the cuts. I just kept noticing one thing after another. I was like, this isn't right."
Berrios contacted her manager, who contacted Westgate security, which called the Sheriff's Office. The Department of Children and Families on Tuesday said Berrios and two other employees -- Steve Siegel and Humberto Garcia -- likely saved the boy's life.
The boy, who was alone when Berrios spotted him, had a large bruise on his temple and dried blood on his head. His legs were black and blue. Berrios asked the boy if he knew where his mom was. He didn't. She asked if he could spot her in the room. "There was no one," she said. "No one."
Two Baker County women who cared for the boy, Suzette Renee Stevenson, 45, and her girlfriend, Jamie Lynn Martin, 26, are accused of leaving the child in a car while they toured Westgate's time-shares Nov. 6. Each woman was arrested on charges of aggravated child abuse. Martin is being held at the Columbia County Jail, and Stevenson is jailed in Baker County.
Neither Stevenson nor Martin is the boy's biological mother. Stevenson told an Osceola deputy she was his adoptive mother and that the boy wasn't feeling well and wanted to stay in the car.
The child weighed only 37 pounds, officials said. In addition to being malnourished, DCF said, the 7-year-old, whom police did not identify, suffered head trauma, cuts and burns. He remains hospitalized and is slowly gaining weight. On Nov. 7, a court ordered DCF to take custody of the boy. Officials are trying to determine whether he has any surviving relatives.
According to Baker County Sheriff Joey B. Dobson, investigators don't know how Stevenson gained custody of the boy. What they have learned, Dobson said, is that the boy's father obtained custody of the boy in California. But the father gave the boy to his aunt, who raised him with her partner, Stevenson. Dobson said the aunt died and then Stevenson and the child moved to Baker County.
When interviewed by Baker County investigators, Stevenson and Martin blamed each other. Each said the other bound the child's wrists and nailed them to the wall, where he was forced to stand for hours. Each also accused the other of refusing to feed the boy and refusing to send him to school because they feared teachers would see his injuries. I'm really too angry and disgusted to make any snarky comments just now. Just remember to thank Hilda Berrios, Steve Siegel, and Humberto Garcia when you sit down to that feast today.
#1
Please pardon my presumption but from the mug shots, all I see are two bull dykes who have taken out their hatred of men upon a defenseless little boy. Flame me all you want. These two heartless and vicious scumbags need to undergo an extended stay at the Greybar Hotel. In a more just world, they would be publicly horsewhipped within an inch of their lives. And, yes, Mrs. Berrios is most definitely a hero. She literally saved this child's life.
#2
No flames here.
I find this story quite disturbing.
I would hate to think you might be
right, but ...
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
11/22/2007 15:37 Comments ||
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#3
>Columbia County Jail, and Stevenson is jailed in Baker County.
Dragoons be there. Justice will be done.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
11/22/2007 16:25 Comments ||
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#4
There's nothing in this story my wife and I haven't seen with our own eyes. That's one reason we have Timmy living with us. Even if he's returned to his mother, we're going to stay in touch to make sure what happened to him before doesn't happen again. We've also decided, even if Timmy is placed in our custody permanently, to open our home to at least one more abused child. Most anyone who wishes can become a foster-parent, and there's some excellent training available to them. And you CAN make a difference, even in a few months. If you can't be a foster-parent, even working through Big Brother/Big Sister programs can do wonders for these kids. No child should ever be starved the way this boy was, or the way our adopted son Joe was (19lbs at age 2yr 9mos).
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/22/2007 19:00 Comments ||
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#5
19lbs at age 2yr 9mos
Sweet merciful crap, OP! That isn't neglect or child abuse, that's TORTURE. How can a living human being do something like that to a defenseless child? This goes way beyond compulsive dieting women who give their infants low calorie foods. Nobody can ignore a 20 pound three year-old, even if some cretin actually managed to do so. You'd think that the child's cries of hunger would be enough to wrench even the most callouse heart. Evidently not.
OP, you have my deep respect for saving these children from a fate worse than death. I don't have to think twice about just what sort of paradise these kids stumble into when they arrive at your house. May you and your wonderful wife be blessed with every sort of happiness imaginable.
A Spanish television station faced demands to scrap a popular talk show on Wednesday after a man stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death just days after she refused a marriage proposal broadcast on the program.
"That's entertaaaaaaaaaaainment!"
In a case recalling similar incidents in the United States, the Spanish man, who was shown on his knees unsuccessfully begging the Russian woman to take him back, went to her home in Alicante five days later and stabbed her fatally in the neck.
"Oh, baby! I looooooooove you! [STAB!]"
The Association of Television Viewers in the eastern region of Catalonia demanded that television station Antena 3 drop its popular "Patricia's Diary" show, which attracts more than 2 million viewers a day. "People who make television should learn not to manipulate human emotions in order to get audience share," said the association's president Josep Ma Guerra i Mercadal.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/22/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Being embarassed before millions of people is a sure way to heighten feelings. Jenny Jones' show died shortly after she had a similar incident. Maybe she did too; her name never comes up anymore. Not that I care.
#2
Women's groups also accused the program of employing deceit to lure the former girlfriend onto a stage with the man, despite a court order requiring him to keep at least 500 meters away from her due to a previous case of abuse.
Three young men who were previously detained as suspects in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway have been re-arrested in the case, the Aruban public prosecutor's office said Wednesday.
Dutch teenager Joran van der Sloot and two Surinamese brothers, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, were arrested on suspicion of involvement in manslaughter and causing seriously bodily harm that caused the death of the 18-year-old American, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
Van der Sloot was arrested in the Netherlands, where he is attending a university, and is expected to be extradited to this Dutch Caribbean island. The Kalpoe brothers were arrested in Aruba.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/22/2007 00:00 ||
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BRANDYWINE HUNDRED, Del. -- A naked, drunk man was arrested after he caused three accidents by running into highway traffic, police said. He was unable to produce a license when asked;"I guess I left it in my other ,discarded, pants officer
Two people stopped to try to help 26-year-old Ardonas Gilbert, who was running naked along the southbound lanes of Interstate 95 on Monday night, but he allegedly cursed at them and punched them, Delaware State Police said. "Don't look, Ethel."
Gilbert then ran into traffic, causing three separate accidents as motorists tried to avoid him, police said. No one was seriously injured. But several were treated for hyperventilation due to uncontrolled laughing at the, er, diminutive size of the 'package,'
Gilbert, of Chester, Pa., was charged with two counts of assault and a single count of being drunk on a highway. No word yet if he is going to be charged with 'inadequate exposure....' If so it will only be a minor offense.
He remained in custody Wednesday. Officials of the Court of Common Pleas in New Castle County said he did not yet have an attorney to speak for him.
Hollywood socialite Nicole Richie has lent her voice to a campaign to stop dogs peeing on lamp posts. "Friends, Lohans, countrymen: Lend me your ears!
When Paris Hilton's dog-loving pal learned of Swedish inventor Lennart Järlebro's plans to design a urinal for dogs, she immediately vowed to spread the word in the United States. "This invention is just so clever. It's a cute rubber cup attached to the post and a hose that pipes urine into the gutter," Richie, 26, told the Daily Star.
Lennart Järlebro began designing a toilet for dogs after reading a newspaper report about the corrosive effects of dogs' urine on lamp posts. But he was not aware that news of his invention had spread to the US when The Local spoke to him on Thursday. "Oh blimey," he said. "That's great."
The 56-year-old inventor admitted that, while he knew who Paris Hilton was, he had never heard of her Simple Life co-star Nicole Richie, who is expecting a baby in January. "But it's fantastic that she wants to support my invention. She has clearly understood the problem," he said.
Järlebo told The Local that he was putting the finishing touches to the design and had spoken to a Chinese company interested in producing the miniature urinals, which he estimated would add fifteen years to the average lifespan of a lamp post.
A landslide has killed one worker and left two missing near China's Three Gorges dam, state media has reported. The accident happened in Badong County, a hilly area next to the dam's 660km (410 mile) reservoir, where the group were working on a railway tunnel. The cause of the accident was not known, Xinhua said, but it comes amid growing warnings the dam is threatening its surrounding environment.
That sucker is going to give way one day soon.
The landslide happened on Tuesday morning. Earth and rocks engulfed four men and severed a nearby road, Xinhua said. One of the men was later rescued. The area had suffered from heavy rain in recent days, the agency said.
Residents told Reuters news agency that the area had seen more tremors and landslides as water levels in the reservoir rose and put pressure on surrounding slopes.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/22/2007 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/22/2007 13:18 Comments ||
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#9
FlyAsh is 2 woids? My sources are disturbed.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
11/22/2007 16:32 Comments ||
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#10
The accident happened in Badong County, a hilly area next to the dam's 660km (410 mile) reservoir, where the group were working on a railway tunnel
Police chiefs will spend £15,000 creating "ethnically diverse" mascots after an officer criticised a model for being too male and white.
The uniformed mascot, known as PCSO Steve, was created by the Metropolitan Police to visit primary schools.
Not to be confused with the Army of Steve, hrrrmmph.
But one of the force's sergeants criticised the character for failing to represent the capital's communities. He said the figure, white with blue eyes and blond hair, risks leaving Asian and women officers "isolated".
The comments sparked a row with some claiming the criticism was taking political correctness too far. However, senior officers said they would invest £15,000 in the design and production of three new characters.
In a written response to the London Assembly, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said staff from the force's Diversity unit were brought in to help create the costumes. "These characters will be more representative of London's population and the diverse range of police personnel," he said. "The choice of characters will allow the concept of a Safer Neighbourhoods team to be presented to young children as well as delivering an important message about the different roles of PCSOs and constables."
The PCSO Steve costume was based on the Sutton borough police community support officer Stephen King. The character, paid for by a £1,000 deal with a plumbing firm, proved popular at schools. But one sergeant said an Asian colleague could not wear the costume because it had short sleeves.
In a letter to the police in-house magazine The Job published today, an officer said the row could damage relations with the public.
Pc Geoff Parker, who works in Islington, said: "We seem to be taking the issue to the extreme. We need to take a sensible approach to this."
The project has now been renamed "Police Pals" and new versions of the costumes - including male and female regular officers - will be ready early next year. One features a woman PCSO, named Sunita.
STRANDED on a rusty piece of sunken ship, these two teenage girls were forced to watch helplessly as two sharks circled them for 40 minutes off a NSW beach.
The 14-year-olds thought they were going to be fish food as they waited to be rescued at Byron Bay on Wednesday.
The girls, who regularly swim out to the sunken ship known as The Wreck, were horrified to see a shark, followed shortly after by a much larger predator, when they had clambered on to the structure.
"They were right there, we could see them so clearly and fully thought if we lost our balance we were going to be eaten alive by sharks," a shaken Caitlin Robinson told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
Caitlin and her friend Jett Coates had swum out to the popular spot which is just 50m off Byron Bay's main beach and were about to jump back into the water when they noticed a shark.
"We go out there all the time to jump off," Caitlin, a Byron Bay High School student, said.
"We've heard there had been some shark sightings but we thought nothing of it seeing as we hadn't seen any.
"I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the first shark."
A nearby surfer heard the girls cry out and attempted to save them but a shark started swimming towards him so he went back to shore to raise the alarm.
As the crying pair sat clinging to each other waiting to be rescued "the worst possible" thoughts entered their minds.
"We were crying and shaking, holding on to to each other so we wouldn't fall off and thinking about the worst possible scenarios," Caitlin said.
"It felt like we were stuck in the middle of nowhere because the tide was starting to rise and it was getting pretty windy. The waves were knocking against the wreck."
She said at one point the smaller shark jumped over part of the wreck, while the larger one - which was "bigger than a Malibu surfboard" - kept swimming beneath them.
"They just kept circling and I was thinking, 'Do sharks jump?'," Caitlin said.
After a gruelling 40 minutes on the wreck, lifeguard boats rescued the girls.
"We won't go back out there in a hurry but we will go back swimming just in shallow water," she said.
North Region Lifeguard Co-ordinator Steven Leahy said the girls had to wait for help because there are no lifeguard patrols until December 10.
While volunteer lifesavers man the beach on the weekends, there is no one during the week.
"The alarm was raised by police who then contacted volunteers to come and get boats to save them," he said.
He said there had been 32 shark sightings and one attack in the Byron Bay area in the past six weeks.
Everything from great whites, tiger sharks, makos, bronze whalers and bull sharks had been sighted.
LONDON - Two British military personnel were killed in Iraq on Tuesday when their Puma helicopter crashed near Baghdad, the Ministry of Defence said. Two other personnel were seriously injured, but are now recovering in hospital. It is too early to speculate on the cause of the crash, the MoD said in a statement on Wednesday, adding the families of those killed had been informed. The MoD said an inquiry had been launched and investigators were en route to Iraq.
A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said on Tuesday that initial reports indicated that the crash near the town of Salman Pak, 45 km (28 miles) south of Baghdad, was not caused by enemy fire.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/22/2007 00:00 ||
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LONDON - This was a bug you couldn't swat and definitely couldn't step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.
How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.
"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," he said.
The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.
The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.
Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."
Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."
Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.
"Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.
He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.
Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates backboned animals like ourselves."
That competition ended long ago.
But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those."
There were at least 2 periods of insect gigantism in fossil history (Late Carboniferous/Early Permian and Late Jurassic/Early Cretaceous). Both coincided with periods of higher temperature and somewhat higher atmospheric O2 levels (25-30% compared to 21% today).
There's no reason to believe it cannot or will not happen again if conditions come right. Insects like it hot.
Scientists are still arguing over just how large insects can become with current atmospheric O2 levels and temperatures. One study has shown that insect respiratory systems are 200 thousand and 10 thousand times, respectively, than our own respiratory systems are at moving and utilizing O2 and CO2. Mathematical studies show that, if the respiratory studies are correct, insects could get far larger than they are today. About the only thing holding them back is the energy requirements of building chitinous exoskeletons.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/22/2007 21:46 Comments ||
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#7
Whoa - thats one heck of a SHRIMP/LOBSTER BARBECUE for the Aussies. This what genetically manufactured [GM]foods are meant for, ala MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and DR. NEMO = CAPTAIN NEMO???
*TOPIX/REDDIT > GIANT CATFISH CAPTURED IN CAMBODIA or 'twas it Vietnam!?
OTOH, RENSE > CRYPTOMUNDO > STRANGE BIG BIRDS, i.e. 'Teranodons? or 'Dactyls?, etc. BIRD-ZILLAS allegedly seen in Texas [ergo its Dubya's fault]. OWG + IMPEACH BUSH-CHENEY NOW, D *** NG IT - THEY'RE SETTING THE STAGE FOR NOSTRADAMUS'
"HIDEOUS BEAST SEEN NEAR ORGON" BY BRINGING BACK THE FLYING PTEROSAURS/DINOSAURS. SUB-D *** NG IT, ITS NOT EVEN BARRIGADA, GUAM!
#1
Anyone who has ever marched behind a mounted unit i a parade is aware of the problems associated with this. However, there are places in France that might not notice the addition to the refuse on the streets.
#2
Unless Sark can stem the tide...the inevitable slide back to the Dark Ages has begun for Eur-o-Stan. My guess is that they'll stop around the 7th century courtesy of the "Religion of Peace"
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A Spanish television station faced demands to scrap a popular talk show on Wednesday after a man stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death just days after she refused a marriage proposal broadcast on the program.
Three young men who were previously detained as suspects in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway have been re-arrested in the case, the Aruban public prosecutor's office said Wednesday. 
Police chiefs will spend £15,000 creating "ethnically diverse" mascots after an officer criticised a model for being too male and white. 
