Halle Smith, 8, Starved to Death by Mother

HOUSTON (CBS) 8-year-old Halle Smith weighed just 15 pounds and was unresponsive when her mother brought her to a Houston area emergency room in January, 2009 claiming that Halle was fine just the day before.

A coroner’s report out this week classified Halle’s death as a homicide, saying the girl died of severe malnutrition and dehydration, something that doesn’t happen overnight.

The mother, 34-year-old Almita Nicole Lockhart, was arrested Tuesday and charged with felony 1st-degree injury to a child, which carries a possible sentence ranging from 5 years to life in prison.

Donna Hawkins with the Harris County District Attorney said it took nearly a year to bring charges because Halle was a special needs child who required a feeding tube and round-the-clock care.

Murdered: Nova & Ava Henry

A former boyfriend of Nova Henry has been taken into custody by police investigating the fatal shootings of Henry — ex-girlfriend of former Chicago Bull Eddy Curry — and her baby daughter, sources said today.

The man, who has not been formally charged in the January slayings, was grabbed by Chicago police without incident Friday night on the city’s South Side, sources said.

The break in the high-profile case came after cell-phone records and physical evidence helped link the man to the killings, sources said.

Police confirmed today that a man has been taken into custody in connection with the double murder but they have not confirmed his identity.

Henry, 24, and Curry’s daughter, Ava, were found shot to death on Jan. 24 in their Near South Side condo, while Henry’s 3-year-old son was found unharmed in the home. Curry, a one-time Bulls star who now plays for the New York Knicks, also is the father of the boy.

Henry and her former boyfriend — a lawyer who had represented her in a paternity case with Curry — had quarreled on the day she was found slain, according to a preliminary report on the shootings.

A possible cause of the dispute is that her ex-boyfriend claimed Henry still owed him money for his legal representation in her dispute with Curry, sources said.

Henry’s ex-boyfriend originally was arrested in Michigan City, Ind. a day after the deadly shootings, and charged with trespassing at a hotel. He was questioned extensively by Chicago police at that time, but later released.

Court records indicate Henry’s ex-boyfriend had once choked her and also had threatened to shoot a family member.

12 Year Old Suspected of Being a Prostitute, Beaten

*Editor’s Note: Now if this doesn’t beat all. To add insult to injury, they had to nerve to charge the young girl’s father with obstruction of justice! Just read it. No words.

Original Article Found at Galveston Daily News

GALVESTON — A Houston attorney representing three Galveston policemen accused of assaulting a 12-year-old girl mistaken for a prostitute said Monday he’s working to have a lawsuit filed in federal court dismissed before it reaches trial late next year.

Bill Helfand declined to discuss specifics of the lawsuit filed Aug. 22, in which a Galveston woman alleges plain-clothed policemen targeted her daughter exactly two years earlier.

The lawsuit, filed by Galveston attorney Anthony Griffin, accuses the officers of failing to identify themselves when they approached Dymond Larae Milburn at 7:45 p.m. outside her house in the 2000 block of 24th Street.

Emily Milburn was preparing her children for school the next day when the electricity failed, and Milburn dispatched her daughter outside to flip the breaker back on, the lawsuit says.

Police were sent to the area to look for three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black man selling drugs, when Sgt. Gilbert Gomez saw a black female and ordered her detained, the lawsuit says.

Four officers got out of a blue van and ran toward Dymond, who is black.

The officers suspected she was a prostitute, because she wore tight shorts, the lawsuit says, arguing her detention was unfounded, unreasonable and violated her constitutional rights. It also says she wasn’t wearing tight shorts.

Crying For ‘Daddy’

“Dymond grabbed a tree and started yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’” Griffin wrote in the lawsuit, which accuses officer David Roark of covering Dymond’s mouth.

Officer Sean Stewart held one of Dymond’s arms, Roark handcuffed the other, while Gomez also grabbed her, the lawsuit claims.

Wilfred Louis Milburn, 47, heard his daughter’s cries for help, the lawsuit says. When Milburn and his wife went outside, “Dymond was hysterical and holding onto the tree with one arm (and) two officers were striking Dymond in the head, face and throat,” the lawsuit says.

The parents tried unsuccessfully to have police release Dymond to them, so they might comfort her, the lawsuit claims.

It is unclear how much time elapsed that night before Dymond’s parents took her to the University of Texas Medical Branch for treatment of injuries, which the lawsuit says included head injuries, multiple contusions, loss of vision and hearing and a bloody nose.

The head injury resulted from a blow from an officer’s flashlight, the lawsuit claims.

Beaten to Death: Imani Jennings

*Editor’s Note: Sad. Imani was beaten to death by her….well, take a guess. I swear, some of you women need to quit believing that having a half of a man is better than having NO man at all. RIP, Imani!

Original Article Found at Syracuse Online

Syracuse, NY — Relatives told 18-year-old Cherron Patterson and her 15-year-old boyfriend, Anthony Weakfall, earlier this year that they were spanking Cherron’s baby too hard, according to the baby’s maternal grandmother.

On Sunday, relatives said they wished they had done more to protect 20-month-old Imani Jennings.

“I saw (Weakfall) spanking the baby (in the past),” said Amy Patterson, Cherron’s mother and Imani’s maternal grandmother. “Any place where Imani had bare skin, they’d smack her. They’d smack her till she screamed and then tell her to shut up. I told Cherron that he (Weakfall) has no business putting his hands on that baby. It’s not his child.”

Still, she never thought her granddaughter’s story would end like this.

On Sunday, Imani Jennings’ relatives and members of Mothers Against Gun Violence held a candlelight vigil outside the 124 Fage Ave. home where Syracuse police said Weakfall beat the girl to death over a potty-training accident.

“I just want to know why,” said Imani’s father, Lee Jennings Jr., 20, of 607 Park St.

He said he had admonished Cherron Patterson in the summer of 2007 for slapping their daughter in the head to discipline her.

“She would slap her, pop her in the forehead, like no ordinary slap,” Jennings said. “She went beyond a disciplinarian.”

But after he stopped dating Cherron a year ago, he never suspected that she or Weakfall was abusing the toddler, Jennings said.

“I had no idea,” Jennings said.

Police said Weakfall spent nearly an hour Friday beating the toddler with a metal rod, a cable cord, bedsprings and his fists. He then left to attend Corcoran High School.

Weakfall — who was charged Saturday with murder — was being held Sunday in Hillbrook Detention Center.

Cherron Patterson, a Fowler High student, was not home when her daughter was killed, police said. But police charged the woman with assault and endangering the welfare of her child in a prior incident involving Imani. Patterson, who is six months pregnant, is being held in the Justice Center Jail.

Murdered: Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak & Sgt. Jan Pawek Pietrzak

*Editor’s Note: Before I catch any “flack” about having someone who is not African-American on the site, let me preface by saying that THIS was, in my humble opinion, a hate crime. Hate crimes are becoming far more common than ever and I’m afraid the statistics involving hate crimes will only increase now that we have elected Barack Obama as president. The victims, as shown in the photo, were an interracial couple murdered by FOUR BLACK men. This story is absolutely heart wrenching. It is said that Quiana was in the process of writing Thank You notes (for the wedding) when the accused came into the house, tortured both victims and raped her before killing them both, execution style. Why?

Original Article Found at NBC San Diego

Court records indicate four Marines acknowledged they had roles in the robbery, sexual assault and murder of a Camp Pendleton-based Iraq veteran and his wife last month in Riverside County.

Pvt. Kevin Darnell Cox, 20, of Tennessee; Pvt. Emrys John, 18, of Maryland; Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, of North Carolina; and Pvt. Kesuan Sykes, 21, of California face murder charges in connection with the case.

The four were charged Tuesday with the execution-style slayings of Marine Sgt. Jan Pawek Pietrzak and Quiana Faye Jenkins-Pietrzak. The couple, who were originally from New York, were found gagged, tied and shot in the head on Oct. 15 in the living room of their home in Winchester. Sheriff’s deputies were called after the sergeant failed to show up for work.

The couple’s home was ransacked and jewelry and other items were taken. A fire was set, apparently in an effort to destroy evidence. The Camp Pendleton-based Marine sergeant and his wife were tortured before they were shot execution-style, according to a published report.

Investigators said they believe the motive was financial in nature.

Pietrzak’s mother, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga, prepared herself the possibility that her son could die in Iraq, but, in her words, “to die like this, in their own home? They were good kids. They didn’t deserve to die like this.”

The couple married in August and had been living off-base in Winchester in a five-bedroom home they recently purchased that had been foreclosed, according to the paper.

Add’l Articles:

NY Daily News (Various Articles)
Victim’s Mother Makes Plea to Obama
Follow Up to Murderers

What Do You Propose?

*Editor’s note: Stories such as the one posted below are becoming more and more common, especially as it pertains to black children who are forced into the foster care system. You feel for these children because in most cases, they’re tossed around like a rag doll from home to home, constantly being made to feel as though they’re not loved or wanted. What I’m finding to also be a common practice is that many social workers are now taking on the practice of simply putting a child “somewhere,” as this “somewhere” is often mistaken for better than “nowhere.” Although I am not pointing the finger at ALL social workers because there are several out there who value their jobs and take pride in creating the best and most ideal situation for each case they’re in charge of, I still can’t help but to wonder how the ‘bad seeds’ manage to slip through the cracks and why MORE isn’t being done to prevent stories like the one posted below from happening? As a community, there has to be something that we can do. A child should not have to throw him or herself from a window in an effort to find assuagement from an otherwise ‘not so good’ situation. I feel for these children, as they generally can’t speak for themselves. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and an extreme advocate of women taking control of their bodies, proposed an idea in her speech entitled The Children’s Era that basically stated that just as you would interview a teacher or cook before allowing them to work for you, children should have those same rights. Sanger understood that children could not, obviously, speak for themselves in utero; however, she proposed that potential parents be given a battery of mental and physical tests to ensure that children were being placed in the most ideal situation. Although this test would not be 100% fool proof, it would most certainly lessen several incidences related to the death of children who are not being regarded as humans. What are your thoughts? Please feel free to post them here or email them to me at projectnewera@gmail.com.

Original Article Found at NBC 4

Two girls’ bodies were found in a freezer in Lusby home after a third girl jumped from a second-story window Friday to escape her adopted mother, according to the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office.

A 7-year-old girl was left unattended in a locked room at the home on Buckskin Trail, investigators said. After jumping from the window, she was found by residents on Pawnee Trail, who called the sheriff’s office. The girl appeared to be extremely abused and neglected and is receiving treatment at Children’s Hospital.

A search of the home on Buckskin led to the discovery of human remains in a freezer, according to the sheriff’s office.

Upon learning that her adopted 7-year-old daughter had been picked up by sheriff’s deputies, 43-year-old Renee Bowman contact the sheriff’s office and confessed to beating the girl with a hard-heeled shoe, investigators said.

Investigators learned that Bowman adopted three girls from the District of Columbia. Bowman told authorities the human remains are those of her other two adopted daughters, another 7-year-old girl and a 9-year-old girl. Bowman said the remains had been in the freezer since before she moved to Lusby from Rockville in February 2008.

The three children were in the D.C. Child and Family Services system but were assigned to private contractor Board of Child Care, which is headquartered in Baltimore but has an office in the District, according to D.C. Council Member Tommy Wells, the chair of the Human Services Committee, which oversees child and family services.

The freezer was taken to the medical examiner’s office in Baltimore.

Bowman is being held on first-degree child abuse charges.

Anyone with information about the case should call Maryland State Police at 410-535-1400 or the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office at 410-535-2800, extension 2454.

Starved: Danieal Kelly

*Editor’s Note: It’s been said before but it most certainly bears repeating. Some people are just too unfit to have children. Of course, it’d be a violation of human rights if we took action that prevented one from having a child based on what they WOULD do but sometimes, things like this are just needed. It should also go without saying that we need to do something to insure that those who are put in the position of social work to protect families and children are really doing their job and not just sitting back collecting a paycheck. Why bother taking a job in that field if you’re going to ignore things that are a part of your job description? If these social workers would really do as their name suggests (WORK), then incidences such as these would become few and far between. Rest in Peace, Danieal.

Original Article Found at USA Today

PHILADELPHIA — For days before Danieal Kelly died in a fetid, airless room — made stifling hot by a midsummer heat wave — the bedridden teenager begged for something to drink until she could muster only one word: water.

Unable to help herself because of her cerebral palsy, she wasted away from malnutrition and maggot-infested bedsores that ate her flesh. She died alone on a putrid mattress in her mother’s home, the floor covered in feces. She was 14 but weighed just 42 pounds.

The nightmare of forced starvation and infection that killed Danieal while she was under the protection of the city’s human services agency is documented in a 258-page grand jury report released this week that charges nine people — her parents, four social workers and three family friends — in her ghastly death.

The report describes a mother, Andrea Kelly, who was embarrassed by her disabled daughter and didn’t want to touch her, take her out in public, change her diapers or make sure she had enough fluids. It portrays Daniel Kelly, the father who once had custody of Danieal, as having no interest in raising her.

And it accuses the city Department of Human Services of being “uncaring and incompetent.”

“It was this indifference that helped kill Danieal Kelly,” an angry District Attorney Lynne Abraham said. “How is it possible for this to have happened?”

The report should “outrage the entire Philadelphia community” and bring about “earth-shattering, cataclysmic changes” at the Department of Human Services, Abraham said.

Andrea Kelly, 39, the only defendant charged with murder, was ordered held Friday without bail. The social workers — suspected of falsifying home visits and progress reports in the case — face charges ranging from child endangerment to involuntary manslaughter. The family friends are accused of lying to the grand jury about the girl’s condition before her death.