The family of a mother and her 13-month-old baby that were shot in an apparent carjacking in Gary, Indiana — the mother is on life support, and the baby was killed — are saying that it was not a random carjacking at all, but rather stemmed from a personal dispute:

Samuel Shaw said his daughter moved in with him after someone threatened to kill her and the baby.

Josiah Shaw was a “miracle baby” who was born without a heartbeat but had since thrived, his grandfather said. His name came from the Bible, and the boy liked to listen to his grandfather read from Scripture. His mother, the younger of two children, is a “really sweet person” planning to become a teacher in the Gary school district, Shaw said.

Gary police on Wednesday released two 911 calls, one from Kwana Shaw’s best friend.

“Somebody just stole my best friend’s truck with her baby in it. I think he shot her,” the friend told the 911 dispatcher. “Oh my god, her baby’s in the car,” the friend said. “Please hurry up.”

Congratulations Jeremy Smith, of Somerset, Pennsylvania, you’re our “Douche of the Day”!

Smith, 31, has probably been a douche his entire adult life, but there’s one recent act that compelled us to bestow him with this coveted title — he beat up an 11-year-old baby! During an altercation with the child’s grandmother, Smith managed to fracture the baby’s arm, leg, skull and nose. He’s been sitting in jail since New Year’s Day for the assault on the woman, but the child’s injuries were just discovered when the infant was brought to the hospital for a different medical issue.

So, for beating up babies and grandmothers, give a hand to Jeremy Smith — Minor Topic’s “Douche of the Day”!

We’ve all periodically read stories about a mom leaving her kids home alone while she goes off for the weekend with her boyfriend or whatever, but this must set some sort of record. A Houston mom apparently decided that her 16-year-old was old enough to babysit her other five children, ranging in age from 1 to 15, so she left on a little jaunt — FOR A MONTH TO NIGERIA. What, was she following up on one of those lottery winning emails?

When she left for Nigeria on Dec. 31, [Shanell Monique] Mosley told her 15-year-old daughter she would return in a month, child welfare officials said.

Prosecutor John Jordan said Mosley’s six children, now in foster homes, were starving and her older children couldn’t recall their own birth dates.

Mosley’s children are ages 1, 7, 8, 9, 15 and 16, Jordan said. The other two children found in the home were 3- and 4-year-olds the family cared for on behalf of a single father who worked, Jordan said.

The 9-year-old son told authorities he and the baby ate a still-frozen pizza for breakfast the morning they were discovered home alone. There were no diapers, baby food or formula for the infant, no sheets on beds and fruit was rotting in a basket, Jordan said.

And who was this dad that dropped his kids off at this daycare from hell? He didn’t notice something was a bit off? “Oh, well, got to go to work!”

Mosley was arrested when she returned this past Monday and charged with child endangerment and child abandonment.

The shocking story of the baby thrown from a car and left at the side of the road has an update. Police have identified the infant, and are now in search of his father as a “person of interest”. An autopsy also revealed that the baby was murdered before being tossed out of the vehicle.

A search was under way for Travis Mullis, 21, after an Alvin woman, whose name hasn’t been released, tentatively identified the body as that of her son. She contacted police on Tuesday, saying she hadn’t seen her son since Mullis took him that morning.

A couple who were bird-watching discovered the baby’s body Tuesday afternoon after first mistaking it for a doll.

The couple believed to be the baby’s parents had argued the night before the infant was killed, police said Wednesday.

For the second time in a month, the police were called to the home of Britney Spears, who once again was taken away in an ambulance. This time, she is currently at the UCLA Medical Center on a “mental health evaluation hold”. Let’s hope whatever they do sticks this time, girl needs some serious help!

More than a dozen motorcycle officers and a Los Angeles Fire Department ambulance swept through the front gates of Spears hilltop Studio City residence shortly before 1 a.m., as a police helicopter hovered overheard. At 1:08 a.m., officers inside the home radioed to commanders that “the package is on the way out.”

Spears was rushed from a side entrance of her home into an ambulance. As she was driven down Coldwater Canyon Boulevard, her vehicle was escorted by more than a dozen motorcycle officers, two cruisers and two police helicopters. Her final destination was the UCLA Medical Center, authorities said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has come up with a new 5-star ratings system to help parents make a more informed choice as to which car seat is easiest for parents to properly install. In other words, a 1-star car seat will require a degree from MIT, while the 5-star is perfect for those with the hand coordination of a lobster, like us. Hopefully this will have some influence on car seat manufacturers to make them all easy to put in to stay competitive, as we don’t see too many parents having a hard time answering the question, “Hmmm, should I get the 2-star car seat that will take an hour to get in and out of the minivan, or the 5-star one that take 30 seconds?”

Regulators hope to address confusion among parents over the wide variety of seats and installation methods.

Using a five-star rating system, the new approach will judge safety seats by the ease with which the seats can be used by parents.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says seven in 10 child safety seats are either the wrong size of misused. That reduces the seats’ ability to protect kids in a crash.

You can view the new guidelines at the NHTSA website.

Tomas Delgado, the Spanish businessman who sued the parents of the boy he ran over and killed, apparently had a change of heart and has decided to drop the lawsuit. Who are we kidding — this guy obviously has no soul, and was simply embarrassed by all the negative attention:

On Wednesday, Delgado’s lawyer announced that his client decided to ditch the case because of media pressure, Spanish National Radio reported. He spoke outside the court in the small town of Haro in northern Spain to a crowd of several hundred people.

“We’re very happy,” said Anton Iriondo, father of the cyclist.

A teacher from Elmira, New York has been arrested for public lewdness after he did some naughty things at a local rest stop:

Police say Chris A. Troncone, 40, of Lawrenceville, Pa., exposed himself, committed a lewd act and made obscene comments in the presence of a rest area attendant while inside the men’s room at the rest area. The attendant said at least one other person entered the rest room but left quickly while Troncone allegedly was engaged in the lewd behavior.

Troncone, who is a first-grade teacher at Diven Elementary School in Elmira, has been suspended pending the outcome of the police investigation, Elmira City School District spokesperson Kristin Butler said.

Gotta watch out at those rest areas and forest preserves! And yes, the teacher has been suspended, but his firing is not a sure thing even if he is found guilty:

Letters from Superintendent Dr. Raymond Bryant are being sent home with all Diven students Wednesday explaining that Troncone was arrested off of school property for an incident that did not involve children. The letter also says that administrators have no reason to believe Troncone has done anything in the classroom to cause concern.

And here we were chastising Utah for having to pass a law to get pervy teachers out of the classroom. Sorry, Dr. Bryant, but while we agree with you up to a point in terms of private sector jobs, Troncone’s unfettered access to children requires a person of the utmost character. Certain behaviors a teacher engages in off of school property absolutely reflects on their worthiness of being in the classroom (and lest you think we’re prudes, we don’t think, say, racy pics on MySpace is an actionable offense).

We caused our substitute teachers some grief back in the day (and we still feel guilty about it), but it usually just involved smartass comments and spitball throwing. But the kids at the Robert K. Fulton Public School in Cleveland are hard core:

Witnesses tell Fox 8 News, the trouble started when [substitute teacher Laura] Fritz attempted to refer several students to the principal’s office for misbehavior.

They responded by throwing objects at the teacher and soon other students joined in.

“The class became disorderly, unruly and once the injury happened to the teacher, a number of other students began to act out.” said Cleveland Schools Police Chief Lester Fultz.

“They were just throwing stuff, they hit the teacher with the marker, the papers were flying around, everything, it was terrible.” said a student who witnessed the riot.

According to Cleveland Police Lt. Thomas Stacho, 18 students were arrested for the incident, three were charged.

By the way, these were 7th GRADE STUDENTS. Gah! Paging Tom Berenger!

The only thing really noteworthy about this story is that it took an act of legislation to put this in place — really, shouldn’t the various school boards already be taking this sort of action?

The [Utah] House Education Committee on Tuesday unanimously passed HB286, which would permanently revoke the license of any teacher who molests a student or any other child. Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, said he sought the bill after Frank Laine Hall, a Riverton teacher, was convicted of molesting his students.

He said the odds of Hall returning to teaching already are miniscule. The Utah State Board of Education revoked Hall’s license for 25 years.

But Wimmer wants to make sure there is no chance of that happening.

Susan and Ian Ratner are claiming that after getting lost for over three hours on a day hike at Camp Glen Gray with their four kids, they came across a park ranger who they say refused to help them:

The family later told police that the caretaker at Camp Glen Gray Campgrounds wouldn’t give them a ride or a cell phone. The family says he told them to use a pay phone.

Caretaker Drew Baumgardt tells the Record of Bergen County he did not deny the lost family aid.

The family eventually made it out of the woods by following the sound of police sirens.

Perhaps this budding teen Sofia Coppola hasn’t heard of a thing called “props” or “special effects”:

A schoolgirl movie maker filmed herself as she tried to murder her parents in their living room, a jury heard today…

In the video, the girl first filmed herself as she sat in her bedroom dressed in a silk nightgown and discussing what she planned to do to her parents, who were downstairs. The film then switched to the downstairs living room.

The girl’s mother could be seen sitting at the computer unaware of what was about to happen. In the background, the commentary of a televised rugby match could be heard and the jury were told her father was sitting on a sofa watching the match.

As the film continued, the girl then walked up to her mother, standing directly behind her and then looping a length of cord around her neck…

The mother then says to the girl “You are strangling me” and calling her husband’s name out loud she tells him “She is strangling me.” The figure of the father then appears in view as he makes his way towards his wife and daughter with his back to the camera.

As he faces the girl, there is a sudden movement and he screams out “You tried to stab me! You tried to stab me!”

A note to all you young folks out there — if you’re planning on murdering your parents in cold blood, best not to leave around videos as evidence, no matter how cool they’re gonna look on your MySpace page.

We think we could definitely be described as “animal lovers”, but if our dog mauled our toddler we might have to reconsider the dog’s place in our home (if not on Earth). But Alicia Cottier, whose two-year-old son Noah Newbold was attacked by their mastiff-staffordshire, which left very bad scarring on his face and almost cost him sight in his left eye, is defending her mutt and putting the blame solely on the kid:

“People are telling me I should shoot the dog, and as much as I love my son to death, I believe Noah was annoying her. I love the dog and she’s part of the family,” Cottier said.

Noah is nursing a range of painful injuries after being bitten on Monday night at his home at Booral in the Hunter Valley…

As the child hugged and kissed the dog yesterday, Ms Cottier said the attack was not the dog’s fault.

“It’s not like the dog picked him up and shook him or anything, she just snapped at him for pulling on her ears,” she said.

Ocnel Joseph and Merlande Alexis, the parents of the baby beaten to death with a baseball bat by her 12-year-old cousin, are asking the courts not to prosecute the boy. We initially thought it was because they were incredibly forgiving on the level of saints, but it turns out Joseph doesn’t think the boy committed the crime:

The baby’s parents, Ocnel Joseph and Merlande Alexis, are asking the Broward County State Attorney’s office to not press charges against the boy, who detectives say confessed to beating his cousin, Shaloh Joseph. The boy was baby-sitting the child at the family’s Lauderhill home on Jan. 4. He said the toddler was crying while he was trying to watch a television show.

“He’s a good child. He loves me. He loved Shaloh and I believe he didn’t do it and his life shouldn’t be put at state,” said Joseph.

McLawrence said the girl’s parents have filed an affidavit with prosecutors seeking leniency for the juvenile.

Finally some heartwarming news for once. Vanessa Anderson, a 15-year-old from Maple Valley, Washington, isn’t content with texting her friends and hanging out on MySpace all day. Instead, she’s on a mission to take a trip to Ghana, West Africa, along with a 40-foot cargo container filled with medical supplies, reading materials, and more:

Dream big, he told her. Don’t just think about taking a suitcase full of school supplies or children’s vitamins. Think about taking a cargo container full of supplies, one that could be used — when emptied — for a classroom or a clinic.

Vanessa took his words to heart.

She’s now spearheading an effort to raise $16,000 by the end of this month to buy the container and cover the cost of shipping it to Ghana.

It will go to Bamboi, a place that is just now getting electricity and where residents walk long distances for water.

For Vanessa and others making the trip, it’s more than just a faraway place in a strange land.

There’s a personal connection.

Nana Kwaku Dapaah II, a member of the church who lives in Maple Valley with his wife and the youngest of his two sons, is from that area. Dapaah, an immigrant who travels to Ghana several times each year, is paramount chief of the Mo tribe, about 100,000 people who live in northwest Ghana. Living and working in the United States allow him to take opportunities to his people that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Anyone interested in donating to this worth cause can send a check to Real Missions, P.O. Box 1511, Maple Valley, WA 98038.