Children die in a scorching-car tragedy

Samantha Harper, 25, is facing two counts of especially aggravated child abuse in the deaths of her children, aged two and three, on August 2. Police found them lying beside a parked car near their home in Smyrna, Tennessee.  Police spokesman Sgt. Bobby Gibson said “It appears the children suffered heat stroke, that they may have been trapped inside the vehicle,” he said. “Their mother put them in the car. We have no idea how long they were left inside.”

Someone had pulled the children from the car before police arrived, but Gibson didn’t release any information about that person, citing the ongoing investigation.

The high temperature on Thursday was 99 degrees in Smyrna. “Even with the windows down, it could easily hit 120 degrees inside a car on a day like today,” Boyd said. “With the windows up, I’d hate to even think about it. It would be much higher … between 140 and 150 degrees.”

It doesn’t take long for a car to heat up, said Janette Fennell, founder and president of the Kansas-based KidsandCars.org, an organization aimed at keeping kids safe in and around motor vehicles.

“In 20 minutes, that car’s temperature could have spiked 20 degrees,” she said. “Children up to the age of 10 have immature respiratory systems. They heat up three to five times faster than an adult and they do not have the ability to dissipate the heat very quickly. Once their body temperature reaches 106 degrees, the internal organs begin shutting down,” she said. How fast death comes depends on a number of factors, including how much clothing the child is wearing, the color of the car and the last time the child had water, she said.

(info from The Tennessean) 

Mother arrested for serving beer to two-year-old

Earlier this month, a mother poured beer from a pitcher into her toddler's sippy cup at a pizzeria in  Arizona. A witness called 911 after seeing the child fall out of his high chair. That witness also knew what was in the sippy cup, and believed that the child might have been intoxicated.


Valerie Topete admitted to giving her two-year-old son some beer. The child was taken to a hospital and is okay. Topete was arrested and faces a child abuse charge which is a felony.

(info from MyFoxPhoenix)

Mother who thought she was dying hammered son to death so no one else could raise him

Suspected prostitute Tenika Revell beat her seven-year-old son to death because she thinks she is dying from cancer — and didn’t want anyone else to raise her boy, according to her longtime boyfriend.


“She loved him so much she didn’t want nobody else to have him,” Terrace Johnson said of his longtime girlfriend , who killed her son Bernard — bashing his head with a hammer —  on July 8 in their Brooklyn  apartment. She took pills to try and kill herself, but survived. “She didn’t want her mother or none of them to get Bernard.”


Johnson met Revell when Bernard was an infant. “I raised him,” he said. “She took my boy away from me.”


About a year after they got together, Revell’s angry side began to emerge, he said. She had done two stints in prison for robbery and burglary before meeting him.


Revell, 40, took medication for anger management, Johnson said. But her mental health declined rapidly after getting pregnant with his child last year, then having to abort the pregnancy because of her spreading cancer.


“That’s when she started really going downhill,” Johnson said. He speculates Revell may have resumed her crack habit, but insists she was a good mother to Bernard, her only child. He would scold her for buying the boy video games and scooters when she couldn’t pay the bills. “She’d spoil him rotten,” Johnson said. “She went all out.”


Revell called 911 and calmly confessed, cops said. Johnson didn’t know the boy was dead until the next morning, when he came to visit and saw the news cameras and police tape.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/heartbroken-boyfriend-brooklyn-mother-raise-son-7-killed-article-1.1110291#ixzz20CzuGuAf

Suicidal mother killed two little kids because she was pissed off at their father

Lisette Bamenga was a soccer-loving mom and terrific teacher, a cop’s girlfriend and a quiet neighbor — until she killed her two helpless kids.

Bamenga forced her five-year-old son and four-month-old daughter to drink toxic windshield wiper fluid. She used plastic and tape to seal up their apartment windows, and turned on the gas from her stove, police sources said.

Then she slashed her wrists and sat alone in their apartment.

According to a source, Bamenga — in a message left near the two tiny bodies in the kitchen — wrote that the children “were going to a better place” after their deaths. The note indicated that the woman planned to kill herself.

Bamenga survived and was charged with two counts of first degree murder. The murders were allegedly retaliation against the children's father for having an affair.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx-siblings-ages-5-4-months-killed-gas-leak-cops-eye-suicide-attempt-mom-article-1.1108911#ixzz207pFKRma

Mother makes little kids fight in video

A video posted to Facebook shows a fist fight between two small children, with the mother of one of the kids egging them on, even offering instructions to the tiny combatants.


“Got some action! Got some action!” the woman can be heard yelling as she shoots the video. “Y’all better ball up some fists!”


The video was posted to Facebook on Sunday. An acquaintance of the mother in question alerted KTVI-TV. She asked not be identified, but spoke in an interview Tuesday. "It’s just sickening and I feel like there should be some kind of criminal action taken,” she said. “I couldn’t even watch the whole video. I had to stop it and look again. It was sad.”


She says the urging of the mother was as disturbing as the pictures themselves.


“Ball up your fist. It’s like she’s training her before she starts school or something. It’s sad because today’s society in the black community, its really sickening that these kids are learning how to fight, get guns and stuff, and it shouldn’t be going on.”

(info from WTVR, photo from Kohl's)

Woman gets two life terms for pimping infant daughter

Tessa L. Vanvlerah was sentenced at the end of April to two consecutive life terms in prison for prostituting her then-five-month-old daughter to Kenneth L. Kyle. Kyle would travel to Ballwin, Missouri from San Francisco to sexually abuse the daughter and produce child pornography, crimes to which he's already pleaded guilty and received a 37-year sentence.

Pathetic Tessa allowed Kyle to choke her, burn her and urinate on her during their visits.

Attorneys argued for probation, based on a claim that Vanverlah had a psychological condition called dependent-personality disorder. The daughter was placed into protective custody in 2010, and has since been adopted.

 

(from Riverfront Times)

Young mother left two-year-old alone, with no food or drink

Stephanie Davis, a 21-year-old mother in Cumming, GA was charged with cruelty to children and reckless conduct after she left her two-year-old son alone, trapped inside of his room, with no food or drink, in a home filled with garbage.


Deputies responded to the Davis residence on June 22 after a family member had contacted the Sheriff’s Office about the child. The family member had been in touch with Davis when she called from the Roswell Police Department jail where she had been arrested. Davis told the relative that someone was watching her son. The relative told the Sheriff’s Office that she believed the child was alone at the home.


Deputies found the residence locked and no adult at home. Inside of the home, they could see a dog running from one open window to another, barking. As the deputies worked their way around the house, they could hear the cries of a child coming from inside.
A deputy pulled the screen off a window and entered the home, and found the child trapped in his room by a closed door, equipped with a safety device that prevented the child from opening the door.


“The child was dressed in a dirty white t-shift. He had removed his diaper himself and it was on the floor, filled to overflowing with feces. The child had feces on his hands, feet and legs,” according to Sheriff Ted Paxton. The deputy also found what appeared to be bug bites, possibly from fleas, on the legs of the child.


The home was described by deputies on the scene as “filthy. The odor emanating from the inside of the house was a mixture of rotting food, urine and feces.”


Two rooms, one being the room where the child was found, had only a mattress and box springs on the floor. Clothing was thrown on the floors of the bedrooms, bathroom and sofa. Towels and used razors were found on the floor outside of the shower, as well as overflowing trash. In the kitchen, deputies found dirty dishes, rotting food and trash. Outside of the home, on the porch, were over 50 bags filled with garbage. In addition, panes were broken out of some of the windows, including the room where the child was found.


Also inside of the home were two dogs that were taken out of the home by deputies and given water. Both dogs were later transported by Animal Control from the residence after no one could be found to care for them.


The Department of Family and Children’s Services (DEFACS) was contacted and has placed the child in protective custody. The mother remains incarcerated at the Fulton County Jail. 

10-year-old girl kept in closet weighed just 32 pounds

Jacole Prince, a 29-year-old mother of three from Missouri, was arrested  when police found her malnourished ten-year-old daughter living in a closet on June 22nd.

Police and Missouri Children’s Division staff went to the woman’s apartment in Kansas City after receiving an anonymous tip on a child abuse hotline about a child who was not allowed out to eat or use the bathroom.

When they arrived, they noticed a strong smell of urine and found the girl in a small  closet with the door blocked. The girl was standing in her own urine and feces and appeared to have been there for some time. She was wearing a dirty t-shirt in a size 2T.

When the 10-year-old girl was taken to the hospital, she weighed only 32 pounds. She told police that she was not allowed to eat with her family because she “messes herself”, that she was not allowed to play outside but instead played behind the couch, and that her mother would hit her when “[peed] on herself.” She said she had been in the closet, which she referred to as “her room”, for the past two days.

Police say another “failure to thrive” report was made on the girl in 2006, when she was four-years-old.

Prince was charged with assault, child abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. Her boyfriend was also arrested, but he denied knowing that the child was in the closet. Neighbors said that Prince told them she had only two children. Prince’s other two children have been taken into state care.

(info from http://www.imperfectparent.com/)

(photo from Microsoft)

Woman admitted dumping newborn in trash

A New York City mother dumped her newborn daughter in a hospital trash can out of fear the new grandmother would learn of the pregnancy.

Dawa Lama, 23, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and faces ten years in prison as part of a plea deal. Lama will be deported to her native Nepal once she finishes her sentence.

Lama left the baby girl unattended in a trash can in the emergency room of Elmhurst Hospital Center on May 10. The child survived on life support for a week.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/dawa-lama-mom-dumped-newborn-trash-pleads-guilty-article-1.1051266#ixzz1ytpURB4I

Mother killed kids by throwing them off 15th-floor balcony

A Russian woman threw her four- and seven-year-old sons out the window from the 15th floor, with both boys dying before an ambulance arrived. She explained that she was “fed up with children," and "decided to get rid of them.”

Neighbors said that quite often Galina Ryabkova complained of a lack of money, Life News reported. However, different reports say that Ryabkova’s husband works in IT in Moscow, and the family has always been considered successful and has never been on social services’ watch list.

“She did complain to neighbors that she and her husband were incompatible, said something about a difficult financial situation. But we saw nothing suspicious,” neighbors say.


(from http://rt.com/)

Dog was a better parent than baby's human parents

Owners of a dog in Ghana feared that their beloved pet had gotten lost or injured when he didn't return home at the end of the day, so they organized a search party to look for him. They looked for the pooch for most of the night -- and got the shock of their lives when they finally located him, because he wasn't alone.

Lying next to him was an abandoned newborn baby who'd been disposed of shortly after his birth.

The infant still had his umbilical cord attached, which had gotten infected while he was left in the woods to die. He likely would have died if this amazing dog hadn't cuddled up next to him all night to keep him warm.

from CafeMom

photo from Perfect Dog Training