luvmykid's Blog

This boy gets caught with a loaded gun in school. 

He said he took it for protection against another who was picking on him but, no mention of him threatening the kid with it.  But, he was caught showing it off.

Now, the grandmothers boyfriend may be facing charges for leaving the gun in the shed where the boy got it from and the parents facing deportation because they are illegal.

Wow, the things that happen when kids do stupid things.

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Student Detained After Bringing Gun to School  
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The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says a Queen Creek Middle School employee saw the boy showing other students how to load the 9 mm pistol.

The worker immediately confiscated the weapon and school officials then notified the sheriff's office.

When deputies arrived at the school, the boy was taken into custody and the handgun secured.

The Sheriff's Office says the boy admitted bringing the gun to school in his back pack, telling deputies he did so because another student had been picking on him.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said it has been determined that the boy's parents are in the country illegally and could face deportation.

What do you think about what this woman did?  Do you think she was right in running with these 5 children who do not belong to her?

They are vitims of the Katrina Hurricane that she took in along with their mother.  She has housed them for over three years and this mother repaid her by stealing from her and and taking and wanting more.

I believe that she was doing it for the kids safety.  They have lived with her for a long time and says that she has witnessed the abuse to those children by the mother along with the drug use.

Maybe she could have reported it sooner, but, what would the mother have done if she did and the authorities did nothing of it.  Would they have been put into danger along with her for trying to help them?

What do you think should happen with these babies?

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Mother of 5 kidnapped children, caretaker dispute events 

HOUSTON  --  A woman accused of kidnapping five children said she did so because their biological mother had threatened her life but now says she plans to surrender to police, a newspaper reported.

 Houston authorities issued an Amber Alert on Wednesday in connection to the abduction of the Houston children. The Harris County District Attorney's office charged Rhonda Tavey, 44, with five counts of kidnapping. Tavey said she planned to surrender to authorities on Thursday but no additional details were provided about when she would do so.

Tavey, who is white, said all she ever wanted was to do God's will and that she also took the children, who are black, for their own safety. She said their mother, Erica Alphonse, was "abusive."

Tavey said last month she found her bank statements in the purse of Alphonse, whom she had opened her home to after the Louisiana family was devastated by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

"When I confronted her with that, she pulled a knife and threatened to kill me. That's when I made arrangements to get the kids out," Tavey said Thursday in an online edition of the Houston Chronicle.

The newspaper reported that Alphonse denies pulling a knife on Tavey and said Tavey is lying to damage Alphonse's reputation.

"I wouldn't have thought in a million years she'd have done this to me," Alphonse said Wednesday night from her aunt's Southwest Houston apartment.

The women said they worked out an agreement after meeting in Reliant Park, where Tavey had been volunteering for the American Red Cross after the hurricane. Their arrangement called for Tavey, who has two teenage daughters, to care for Alphonse's two boys and three girls who are ages 3 to 8, while Alphonse sought work to become self-sufficient.

Alphonse, calling Tavey her family's "guardian angel" after Katrina's devastation, said she told Tavey she wanted to return to her New Orleans hometown eventually, even though Tavey prayed they would remain in Houston.

Alphonse said she returned to New Orleans two years ago and left the children in Houston. She returned this summer and their arrangement turned sour, culminating in the charges against Tavey.

"I had gotten her a job, a car, set her up in an apartment," Tavey said. "I'd helped her do all that when she decided she needed to go back."

Harris County District Attorney's office spokeswoman Donna Hawkins told The Associated Press constables had contacted Tavey's attorney before filing charges against her on Monday but the woman refused to return the children.

The children are identified as:

-- Rod Keesa Alphonse, age 8,

-- Alaysa Alphonse, age 6

-- Yasmine Alphonse, age 4

-- and twin boys, Eric and Erin Alphonse, who turned 3 on Monday.

Tavey is believed to be driving a blue 2004 Chrysler Town and Country Van, Texas License: 963-PTB. Officials say Tavey may be in the Dallas-Fort Worth areas.

How many of you have gone to the grocery store to buy what you need for a good dinner with your family and come to find out, they don't carry most of the products anymore?

Last night, I went to buy the ingrediants for a whole homemad barbq...homemade brisket rub, coleslaw, patato salad, mac & cheese and carrot cake.  Well, I could not get half of the ingrediants at Sac-N-Save, which is also now called Carnival.

When I went to pay, I asked the cashier, do you not carry an American products anymore? (he was a young black man) He started laughing at me and asked me what I needed and maybe he could find it for me.  I told him, "don't bother, I just spent 2 hours in the store looking".  He laughed again.  I asked "why do you cater so much to the mexican people?  There are still Americans here who like a good American meal."  He said "you think that's bad, we are going to be putting the whole store on sale soon because we are closing down for it to be remodeled for a new store."

I asked "what store is it going to be?"  (like I really needed to ask)

"Fiesta."  He said and started laughing. 

He said that he was going to have to find himself a new job because they are only keeping "certian employees" on to the new store. 

We know what that means.  So, I said "you better start learning spanish."  (I was being sarcastic.)

This poor young man is going into his senior year in high school and is now worried that he is not going to have a job which he needs to purchase all his senior year stuff.  And, I am more than sure that he will not be allowed to keep his job when the store changes to Fiesta.

I felt so bad.  I told him of a place where he could go and apply and hopefully get a job befor he loses this one in October.

Now, I am going to have to drive further to a TomThumb in Garland or an Albertsons.  When I used to just drive around the corner.   DAMN!!!

I guess to me, this news brings a small smile to my face to know that atleast the families of these two girls that Medellin raped, beat and murdered is now in hell.

Though I still don't feelt the justice that I should feel because of my sisters killer still being free, it helps alittle to know that someone out there is not going to stand for it anymore.

I pray that more states start to see that we, as American families of victims of illegal mexicans, need to know that there is a law out there that is going to protect us.

Thanks Governer Rick Perry, for the relief you have brought to these families.

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Convicted Mexican-Born Killer Executed   Jose Ernesto Medellin


HUNTSVILLE, Texas  --  Texas has executed Mexican-born condemned prisoner Jose Medellin for the 1993 rape-slayings of two teenage Houston girls.

The state carried out the execution late Tuesday night after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his request for a reprieve in a split vote. Medellin, 33, claimed he was denied treaty-guaranteed help from the Mexican consulate when he was arrested.

Several dozen demonstrators, about evenly divided between favoring and opposing capital punishment, stood outside on opposite sides of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit, where executions are carried out. A driving rain, the remnants of Tropical Storm Eduardo, drenched many of them late Tuesday afternoon.

Medellin faced lethal injection for participating in the gang rape, beating and strangling of Elizabeth Pena, 16, and Jennifer Ertman, 14. He and five fellow gang members attacked the girls as they were walking home on a June night in 1993, raped and tortured them for an hour, then kicked and stomped them before using a belt and shoelaces to strangle them.

Their remains were found four days later. By then, Medellin already had bragged to friends about the killings.

Medellin's execution, which was the fifth this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state, attracted international attention after he raised claims he wasn't allowed to consult the Mexican consulate for legal help after he was arrested. Medellin was 3 when he came to the United States and grew up in Houston, where he learned English and attended school.

His lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution until legislation can be passed to formalize case reviews ordered by the International Court of Justice, a panel based in The Hague and also known as the World Court.

The court said in its ruling that those possibilities were too remote to justify a stay. Four justices issued dissenting opinions. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that to permit the execution would place the United States "irremediably in violation of international law and breaks our treaty promises."

Gov. Rick Perry, Texas courts and the Texas attorney general's office all said the execution should go forward and that Medellin has had multiple legal reviews. State officials noted Medellin never invoked his Mexican consular rights under the Vienna Convention until some four years after he was convicted of capital murder.

The International Court of Justice has said Medellin and some 50 other Mexicans on death rows around the nation should have new hearings in U.S. courts to determine whether the 1963 treaty was violated during their arrests. Medellin is the first among them set to die.

President Bush asked states to review the cases, but the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year neither the president nor the international court can force Texas to wait. Medellin's supporters say either Congress or the Texas Legislature should be given a chance to pass a law setting up procedures for new hearings before he should be executed and that executing Medellin now would endanger Americans abroad.

"Flouting the World Court ruling would be yet another blight on America's already tarnished international reputation," said Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, director of Amnesty International USA's death penalty abolition campaign. The human rights organization is opposed to capital punishment in all instances.

A bill to implement the international court's ruling wasn't introduced in Congress until last month and quick passage is considered unlikely. The Texas Legislature doesn't meet until January.

Sandra Babcock, one of Medellin's lawyers, said the Supreme Court "should play its part in ensuring that the United States abides by the commitments undertaken when it signed and ratified the Vienna Convention and the UN Charter."

Randy Ertman, who lost his daughter in the attack, said Medellin's supporters were misguided.

"Mexico has a big yard down there full of filth and murders and gangs and drug cartels and they're not mentioning anything about that," he said. "There's where they need to start their work."

On Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request for a reprieve and denied his lawyers permission to file new appeals. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also rejected requests for clemency and a 240-day reprieve.

"I don't want sympathy or pity, I'd rather have your anger," Medellin said on an anti-death penalty Web site where prisoners seek pen pals. "Don't feel sorry for me. I'm where I'm at because I made an adolescent choice. That's it!"

He said he'd "grown up behind bars and if the state gets its wish I'll die behind a locked steel door."

He added, erroneously, "There's no bars in the death chamber."

One of Medellin's fellow gang members, Derrick O'Brien, was executed two years ago. Another, Peter Cantu, described as the ringleader of the group, is on death row. He does not have a death date.

Two others, Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal, had their death sentences commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court barred executions for those who were 17 at the time of their crimes.

The sixth person convicted, Medellin's brother, Vernancio, was 14 at the time and is serving a 40-year prison term.

Mark Vinson, the Harris County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Medellin and is now retired, said it was interesting to him that none of the prisoner's appeals focused on his guilt or the evidence.

"I just think under cloak and dagger they're trying to reach out and grab something," he said. "I believe instead of playing this game, he should reach out to his creator. He needs to spend his time praying to his creator for mercy and forgiveness."

At least six other Mexican nationals have been executed in Texas since 1982.

On Thursday, a Honduran man, Heliberto Chi, 29, is set to die for the slaying of a suburban Dallas clothing store manager during the robbery of a clothing store seven years ago.

How many more of these stories are we going to hear?  Where teachers have sexually molested or assaulted their students.

I read a post last week where one said that both the student and the teacher shoud be faulted for this kind of behavior. 

Where, would anyone see that a 5th grade student  or any child under the age of 17 should know better than the adult?

In my opinion, a young teenager, male or female, tend to go along with it because of "first time crushes".  I know that we all, at one point or another, have had a crush on a teacher.  But, for the teacher to pursue or take advantage of any student, should be the only one to blame for something like this.  The teacher is suposed to guide our children in the right direction.  Not corrupt them for possibly the rest of their lives.

Does anyone here find that you might find it harder to trust teachers today?

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Former teacher, husband plead guilty  

HOUSTON  --  Rather than go to trial, a former fifth-grade teacher and her husband went before a district judge to plead guilty to assaulting school children, facing between five to 99 years or life in prison, officials said.

Brandy Lynn Gonzales, 28, sobbed quietly while pleading guilty on Monday to four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child.

Johnny Gonzales, 33, also pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child, according to a story in Monday's edition of the Houston Chronicle.

The charges against Brandy Gonzales involve four students in the same fifth-grade class and a fifth boy from a different class in 2004 at Piney Point elementary, where she was a teacher.

Assistant District Attorney Denise Oncken has said the students alleged that Gonzales would touch them under desks during class.

The sexual contact escalated when Gonzales would meet the boys at a movie theater. Prosecutors said the boys' parents would leave them at the theater with Gonzales, thinking she was a good teacher.

The former teacher is accused of sexually assaulting one of the boys at her apartment. The husband also allegedly performed sex acts on the boy, according to Oncken.

The couple was arrested in December 2006.

A pre-sentence investigation has already been held. State District Judge Michael McSpadden is scheduled to sentence them in October.

Now, am I understanding this lawsuit clearly?  The family is suing because of ONE MINUTE that is given to all students to do as they choose for their religion?

The student was asked to be quiet, not to pray.  So, where is the basis of the lawsuit?  She could have taken that minute and just there without disturbing the others.  But, if she was being loud or disruptive to others during their minute, then she deserved to be told to be quiet.

I am glad that they dropped the school district from the suit.  Let's see how the appeal goes.

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School District Cut from Moment of Silence Suit .  

DALLAS --  --  A school district has been dropped from a lawsuit challenging the daily moment of silence in Texas classrooms.

Shannon and David Croft's 2006 lawsuit initially named Gov. Rick Perry and the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, where the couple's three children still go in the suburbs of Dallas. They sued after they said an elementary teacher told one of their children to keep quiet because the minute is a "time for prayer."

But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday dropped the district from the lawsuit.

A 2003 law allows children to "reflect, pray, meditate or engage in any other silent activities" for one minute after the American and Texas pledges at the beginning of each school day.

In a brief filed Friday with the 5th Circuit, the state said the law is "clearly secular -- to promote patriotism, thoughtful contemplation and nondiscrimination." The state also said that allowing students to pray during the moment of silence protects religious freedom, which is a constitutional right.

W. Dean Cook, the Crofts' attorney, on Monday called the state's arguments a "smoke screen." He is appealing on the Crofts' behalf after a federal judge in January threw out a challenge to the state law as unconstitutional.

"No one knows how it would promote patriotism," Cook said. "It's just a way of trying to get prayer into public schools."

JERUSALEM - An Israeli couple going on a European vacation remembered to take their duty-free shopping and their 18 suitcases, but forgot their 3-year-old daughter at the airport, police said Monday.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a policeman found her wandering in the duty-free area at Ben-Gurion airport, Israel's bustling main international air portal. He said the officer alerted airline staff, but the flight had already taken off.

Israeli media said the parents were an ultra-Orthodox Jewish couple but did not give their names.

Rosenfeld said the parents were unaware they had boarded the aircraft with only four children instead of five until they were informed by cabin staff after 40 minutes in the air.

The child, accompanied by an airline staffer, took the next flight to Paris where she was safely reunited with her parents.

Rosenfeld said police would question the couple when they return from vacation, on suspicion of parental negligence.

Mexicans Working in US Sending Less Money Home   .

 ANTOTONILCO, Mexico --  --  Mexicans working in other countries are sending less money home, threatening businesses, stalling construction and choking cash flow to hamlets where as much as half the population works in the United States.

Analysts said stepped-up immigration raids and the slowdown in the U.S. economy accounted for the drop in the payments, which many migrants use to sustain families back home.

The payments, or remittances, have fallen about 2 percent this year to $11.6 billion, the first such drop in more than a decade since reliable records have been kept, Mexico's Central Bank said Wednesday.

And the buying power of this money has been battered by the weakening U.S. dollar, which has lost about 8 percent of its value against the Mexican peso so far this year.

In Mexico, businesses that once thrived selling everything from beds to bricks to the families of migrants have laid off workers. In this town of verdant fields beneath the snow-clad slopes of the Iztaccihuatl volcano, there's little left to rely on but small farms.

"There's no money anymore," Carlos Escalona said of his family's business, which sells concrete blocks and bricks to help people build houses with the money migrants send home. Sales have fallen by a third, forcing the business to lay off 70 percent of the staff.

Of migrant workers in the U.S., Escalona said, "They lose their jobs, and then they're afraid to leave the house. It's like they're trapped."

Bank of Mexico President Guillermo Ortiz said about 22 percent of Mexican workers in the U.S. have jobs in construction, an industry that has slowed sharply.

About 152,000 Mexican immigrant workers lost U.S. construction jobs in 2007, while overall unemployment for Mexican immigrants in the U.S. rose from 5.5 percent to 8.4 percent over the year, according to a June report by the Pew Research Center.

Gone are the days when migrants came back to Mexico each year flush with cash, then returned to jobs waiting in the United States, as they did during the boom years of 2002 to 2006.

Now, more migrants rounded up by U.S. immigration officials are being sent home penniless.

Others have decided to return for good, bringing as many household items as they can along with them and eliminating the need to buy much locally.

In Atotonilco, much of the business at Olivia Guzman's hardware store used to come around Christmas, when returning migrants would buy electric cables and circuit breakers to power up new appliances for their families in Mexico before returning to jobs up north.

Now that business has mostly dried up. Where she once sold $30 or so per day, she now sells as little as $6, she said. Her business survives only because her father owns the building and doesn't charge her rent, she added.

Things are no better at Yesica Ordonez' furniture store, Muebleria El Rosal, where migrant families once had enough money for her $50 chests of drawers or $100 beds.

Now the few customers who do appear spend remittances on necessities, she said. "It's been about two years since things were good."

Ortiz said remittances will probably drop 2 to 3 percent for the full year, the first sustained drop since 1995, when the bank began keeping a tally. In small towns, about one in eight families gets money from workers in other countries, the government estimates.

The payments have become a key source of foreign currency for the bank, representing Mexico's second-largest source of outside income, after oil exports. It represents less than 3 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product.

In the first part of the decade, the recorded payments grew rapidly -- from $9 billion in 2001 to almost $24 billion in 2007 -- because of swelling immigration and better reporting methods.

The number of Mexicans crossing the border rose to an average of 400,000 a year between 2000 and 2004, more than 10 times the migrant flow of a generation ago. About three-quarters were undocumented, according to Mexico's Population Council.

The cash those migrants sent home doubled the number of Mexican households that received remittances between 1992 and 2002. Now that growth appears to have reached an end.

Jesus Cervantes, director of economic measurement for Mexico's Central Bank, predicted the trend in annual remittances will turn around, but said the days of unbroken gains are probably over.

The pain is already being felt in places like Cheran, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, where officials say 41 percent of the town's 22,000 residents had migrated to the north, mainly to North Carolina and Michigan.

Up until a few months ago, they were the town's main source of income, sending home about $500,000 per month.

Another Michoacan town, Coalcoman, is trying to find jobs for returning immigrants by promoting organic vegetable farming, said town councilman Ramiro Godinez.

"It's like a migratory phenomenon, but in reverse," he said. "We're looking for other alternatives."

Any person, especially a family member who uses a deceased persons social security number should be punished harshly.  I think that it is one of the worst ways of someone gaining for their benefit.  I don't care what the excuse is.  It is bad enough that they were probably taking from them while they were alive then go on after their death and keep using their name and social security to steal from the government or any other group.

DHA former head chairwoman has resigned after an audit found that they had paid out nearly $20 million in rental assistance to social security numbers belonging to deceased people.

Written in the DMN:

According to the audit, the agency spent $167,000 on 45 clients whose Social Security numbers identified them as dead.

Over a two-year span, the agency also paid assistance for 235 clients whose Social Security numbers indicated they were dead as of April 2007.

The agency confirmed that it provided assistance on behalf of dead clients and said it has taken action on 204 possibly deceased clients identified by the federal audit and is working on recovering the funds, the newspaper reported.

Now that this DHA chairwoman has stepped down, she is being offered a $90,000.00 severence pay. 

Wow!  Is all I have to say.

Read this in this mornings DMN:

With an annual budget of more than $250 million, the DHA provides housing assistance to 60,000 area families. This latest federal audit of the agency, which covers January 2006 through March 2008, is the most critical yet. It is expected to be officially released soon. Findings include:

•The DHA spent more than $11 million for 872 clients that it did not report to the federal government. The agency says it will demonstrate that the families were eligible and will enter them into the HUD system.

•The agency provided nearly $8 million for 2,305 clients after it terminated them from the rental assistance program. The DHA agrees and will review records to determine if overpayment has been recovered. A new software program will allow staffers to place a hold on such payments, according to the agency.

•The agency spent more than $250,000 on duplicate payments to 376 landlords. The agency agrees and will seek to recover the funds.

•Caseworkers had up to 800 clients each, twice the number of other housing agencies. The agency responded that it has reduced caseloads to 500 clients per case manager and added training.

 •The DHA's own compliance department reported problems, including error rates as high as 91 percent, in 2006. But the problem continued. Federal auditors recommended that the authority's board should require the compliance officer to report directly to the board and the chief executive officer. The DHA responded that its compliance officer will share reviews with the board.

•The DHA has been told repeatedly about weaknesses in its system to detect problems including fraud. The agency responded by saying it continues to identify and correct problems.

•The agency did not consistently try to recover overpayments.

But, the real kicker was this one:

•The DHA spent $167,000 on 45 clients whose Social Security numbers identified them as dead. Between January 2006 and December 2007, the agency paid assistance for 235 clients whose Social Security numbers indicated they were dead as of April 2007. The authority confirmed that it provided assistance on behalf of dead clients and will seek to recover the funds. The agency may transfer the payments to eligible surviving family members.

This video shows nothing else, except a bully cop.  You can clearly and plainly see what this officers intentions were.  As you watch the video, keep an eye on the officer walking towards the sidewalk .  Where he is looking as he is walking.

This officer claims that he fell to the ground along with the cyclist when the cyclist "ran over" him.  The officer never touches the ground.

I am glad that he has been striped of everything.  Policemen/women like this, DON'T belong on the streets.

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Video Shows New York City Police Officer Shoving Bicyclist

A video posted on YouTube shows a cop apparently body-checking a bicyclist during the critical mass ride on July 25, 2008.

MyFoxNY Reports

NEW YORK  --  The New York Police Department has stripped a police officer of his badge and gun after a video posted on YouTube showed him body-checking a bicyclist who was part of a well-known monthly bike ride through the city.

Witnesses said the incident occurred Friday in Times Square during the Critical Mass ride, a monthly protest of urban reliance on vehicles.

• Click here to watch the video report from MyFoxNY

The video shows the cop standing in the street as bikes whiz past. He begins to slowly walk to one side as the cyclist, Christopher Long, approaches. Long appears to veer left to avoid the cop, but the officer seems to speed up his pace and then violently knocks Long to the ground in front of crowds of people.

The NYPD placed the unidentified officer on desk duty pending the outcome of a department investigation.

Long was arrested and charged with attempted assault, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. The criminal complaint against him claims he deliberately steered his bicycle into the officer, causing both of them to fall to the ground.

Long's lawyer said he hopes the New York County district attorney's office will drop the charges in light of the charges. The D.A. is investigating.

You would think that with all the abandoned children or orphans that we have here in the United States, that the Americans would adopt one of them.  Well, no, they go out to China or Mexico or Guatemala to pay high dollar for these children.  Not only that, most of these babies that are being adopted are stolen from mothers to satisfy a particular "need" that these American couples are asking for.

Why would these couples just not adopt our American children??  Can someone please explain this to me to where it makes sense?

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Stolen Baby Found in Guatemalan Adoption System

 Adoption officials said Wednesday that DNA tests indicate a Guatemalan baby reported stolen from her mother was being adopted by a U.S. couple, the first strong sign that the Central American nation's troubled adoption system relied in part on abducted children.

Authorities have long believed that children were stolen or bought to supply Guatemala's $100 million-a-year adoption industry before thousands of pending adoptions were frozen in May.

Previously, dozens of mothers reported stolen babies and at least two were found in orphanages, although they had not yet been put up for adoption.

But adoption officials revealed to The Associated Press on Wednesday that DNA tests identified toddler Esther Zulamita, who was reported stolen on March 26, 2007. The girl was in the process of being adopted to an unidentified U.S. couple.

Jaime Tecu, director of a team of experts reviewing all pending Guatemalan adoptions, said the DNA test results represent the first time officials have directly linked a baby reported stolen by its mother to the fraud plagued adoption system.

"This is the first time that we've been able to show, with irrefutable evidence, that a stolen child was put up for adoption," Tecu said.

The baby's mother, Ana Escobar, said armed men locked her in a storage closet at the family's shoe store north of Guatemala City and took the 6-month-old.

"When I got out, my daughter was gone," she told the AP in an earlier interview about the case.

She spent months searching hospitals and orphanages, looking for the child.

In May, Escobar says she was sitting in the National Adoption Council's offices, hoping to get access to the babies whose adoption cases were being reviewed. She looked up and saw a toddler who looked like her baby.

The image of the child being carried by an official haunted her, and she asked officials to see more photos. Soon she was sure the baby girl was hers.

All of the girl's papers were in order, including DNA tests showing that her birth mother was someone other than Escobar. But Escobar convinced officials to take new DNA tests.

"She was so sure that the child was hers that we agreed to search the house where the baby was kept," Tecu said.

The baby was placed with a caretaker while her adoption was pending, but Escobar convinced a Guatemalan judge in May to let her care for the child while the new DNA tests were performed.

"I can't explain how excited and happy I am," Escobar told the AP on Wednesday. "It's a miracle."

Tecu said officials will investigate the lawyers who handled the adoption, the doctor who signed the falsified DNA tests, and anyone else associated with the process.

"This was run by a mafia, and we going after them," he said.

Guatemala froze all 2,286 pending adoptions in May, and officials are reviewing each case to confirm there is no fraud.

At the same time, Guatemala is just starting to adopt babies under a new, more stringent system run by an independent adoption commission.

Before the reform, foreign couples, mostly from the U.S., paid up to $30,000 to adopt children.

The previous system was so quick and hassle-free it became the second-largest source of foreign babies to U.S. couples after China.

In the following article, you will read that the temps were even lower there in France than they are here in Texas and it still got up to 113 in the car where one child died.  One father, drove around with the dead child in his car after he got off of work and went to pick up the other child.

UNBELIEVABLE!!!

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Children died after forgetful fathers left them in cars

Adam Sage in Paris

Two toddlers died of heat exhaustion when their fathers forgot they were strapped in child seats in the back of their cars as they went to work.

Both cases involve middle-class men, described as devoted and loving parents, who appear to have forgotten their children in an inexplicable lapse of concentration.

Prosecutors said yesterday that a three-year-old girl had died from heatstroke and dehydration after spending the day locked in her father's vehicle in the car park at the factory where he had a managerial post.

Jean-Louis Chapuis, the regional director of public security, said: “The parents were very attached to their children and they are not a family which is in difficulty. There is no objective way of explaining this drama except to say that it was a huge moment of forgetfulness, a mental lapse.”

The outside temperature was no more than 25C (77F), which is relatively low for southern France during the summer. Inside the car, it rose to 45C, according to fire officers.

At 4pm, the father got back into the car to fetch his five-year-old son from the town's nursery school - still apparently unaware that Zoé was in the baby seat. “He didn't even realise that the child was dead in the back of the car,” said a police source.

It was more than an hour later that he finally noticed his daughter. He drove directly to the local fire and ambulance station but rescue workers were unable to revive her.

“We have not been able to question the father. He is still in a very disturbed psychological state,” said Thierry Bas, the state prosecutor in nearby Chalon-sur-Saône.

Mr Bas said that Zoé had died three to five hours after being locked in the car. He said the father had been placed under arrest in hospital. Legal sources said he could be charged with manslaughter or with the offence of deliberately depriving a child of care.

The incident came seven days after a two-year-old boy died in similar circumstances in Pont-de-Chéruy, also in eastern France.

A passer-by found Yannis strapped into the baby seat in the family vehicle after being left for about three hours by Eric Allarousse, 38, his father. The outside temperature was between 25C and 27C. Mr Allarousse, who owns a chemist's, told detectives he had forgotten his son after witnessing a traffic accident after lunch on July 15.

Mr Allarousse spent the afternoon working in his chemist and only remembered about Yannis when he noticed fire officers trying to get into his car. “Yannis was his only child and he adored him,” said Jean-Louis Andreu, a local councillor. “Eric's profession meant that he was aware of the risks. Everyone here is totally shocked.” Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to bring criminal charges against Mr Allarousse.

Deadly temperatures

— Recent US studies found that the temperature inside a car parked in the sun could rise from between 20C (68F) and 25C to between 40C and 50C in an hour

— One study concluded that the interior colour of the car probably has the greatest effect on how quickly it heats up

— A child’s body warms three to five times faster than an adult’s

— The younger the child, the more vulnerable it is to heat exposure

— The average age of children to have died in cars in the US is 24 months

— Heatstroke occurs when the body’s core temperature reaches 40C. A body temperature of 41.7C is considered lethal

Sources: Pediatrics; Times research

Thank God that they found her.  I hope to hear more on how the child is doing and why she did not come forward on her own.

(I also love how this picture CLEARLY shoes the child INFRONT of her when she smacks him with the bag AFTER she pulled him infront of her by the ear.)

I know she's wishing she had taken those "parental guidance" classes now. 

_________________________________________

Police Locate Woman in Potential Abuse Video .
Plano police say they have located a woman captured on Macy's surveillance video potentially abusing a young boy.

Police did not identify the woman but said they had referred the case to a grand jury, which will decide if the woman will face charges.

Investigators did not say how the woman and child were related or how they located her.

The video, anonymously submitted to FOX 4 last Friday, shows the woman pulling the toddler by his ear and then hitting him in the head with a shopping bag, knocking the boy to the ground.

A tipster who saw the video posted on myfoxdfw.com alerted police to the potential crime caught on tape, police said.

I just finished reading the following news posts:

1)  3 year old little girl drowned at the swimming beach at a lake and was discovered by a person who was not the parent.

2)  17 year old boy "accidently" shot in back of the head while sitting in the front passenger seat of a car talking with friends.  It is said that the gun "accidently" went off and struck him.

3)  15 year old girl killed by a stray bullet while trying to run and escape from a gun fight.  She was at a party celebrating a friends birthday.

4)  23 year old drowned.  Friends waited 3 hours before reporting he was missing to officials.

5) 13 year old witnessed going underwater.  Died on the way to the hospital. Witnesses were not the parents.

These are all young lives that have been wasted away.  And, everyday that I read more and more articles like this, it makes me want to protect my children even more instead of giving more freedom to them and letting letting them loose without supervision.

I know that the 23 year old did not need the supervision, but, was with friends who were not "friends enough" to immediatly get help for him when he disappeared.  This is one reason that I make sure that I know my childrens friends.  Their addresses, phone numbers, parents and, make sure that they spend time around us (parents) to know what kind of people they are.

How, will you please tell me, did a 3 year old drown and the parents not be the ones to find her or be there with her period!!  She was in the swim beach by herself!  What kind of parenting is that??

Too many drownings people!  If you are out at a lake or the pool, ALWAYS make sure that your babies have on life jackets!  No one gets on a boat with me or in the water unless they are wearing their life jackets.  MY RULES! If you can't do it, then you don't need to be on my boat or in the water with me.  These babies are your responsibility.  Not anyone elses!  Their lives belong to you and you are responsible for them. 

The shootings?  What can I say?  Why did these kids have guns to begin with and what were they doing out after midnight away from home with NO SUPERVISION? 

How much do we love our children?  Why are they not protected and taken care of properly?

I'm just so sad about all this happening in less than 2 days.